Re: Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

Peircers,

Here is a passage that I think is critical for
understanding what Peirce meant by a category.

| I will now say a few words about what you have
| called Categories, but for which I prefer the
| designation Predicaments, and which you have
| explained as predicates of predicates.
|
| That wonderful operation of hypostatic abstraction by which
| we seem to create ''entia rationis'' that are, nevertheless,
| sometimes real, furnishes us the means of turning predicates
| from being signs that we think or think ''through'', into being
| subjects thought of.  We thus think of the thought-sign itself,
| making it the object of another thought-sign.
|
| Thereupon, we can repeat the operation of hypostatic abstraction,
| and from these second intentions derive third intentions.  Does this
| series proceed endlessly?  I think not.  What then are the characters
| of its different members?
|
| My thoughts on this subject are not yet harvested.  I will only say that
| the subject concerns Logic, but that the divisions so obtained must not be
| confounded with the different Modes of Being:  Actuality, Possibility, Destiny
| (or Freedom from Destiny).
|
| On the contrary, the succession of Predicates of Predicates is different
| in the different Modes of Being.  Meantime, it will be proper that in our
| system of diagrammatization we should provide for the division, whenever
| needed, of each of our three Universes of modes of reality into ''Realms''
| for the different Predicaments.
|
| C.S. Peirce, CP 4.549, “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism”,
| The Monist 16, 492–546 (1906), CP 4.530–572.

The way that Peirce explains his concept of a category in this passage is also
helpful in building a bridge, or seeing the underlying continuities that exist,
between the categories of Aristotle and Kant and the mathematical concept of
a category that we find in play in more recent times. I began an exploration
of this connection in a page of rough notes that I collected a while back.

• http://mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey/Notes/Precursors

Regards,

Jon

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