On Fri, March 30, 2012 10:36, John F. Sowa wrote:
> ... (01)
> Another philosopher who mapped some related issues to logic is
> Charles Sanders Peirce. In my analysis of the debate between
> Searle and Smith (copy below), I applied Peirce's categories of
> Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness: (02)
> 1. Firstness is an aspect of something x that can be represented
> by a monadic relation or predicate P(x). The definition of
> P can be stated in terms of P itself without any reference
> to or consideration of anything outside of P. Anything that
> is called a *natural kind* such as a dog or a dandelion can be
> described by a monadic predicate P(x) that states the conditions
> for identifying x as a dog, dandelion, or other natural kind. (03)
> 2. Secondness is an aspect of something x in relation to something
> else y, which is independent of x. It can be specified by a
> dyadic relation R(x,y). An example is somebody considered as
> a mother, daughter, sister, employee, employer, driver, pilot,
> banker, skier, swimmer, patient, doctor, nurse... (04)
> 3. Thirdness is a triadic mediating relation that brings two or
> more other entities into some dyadic relation. For example,
> marriage (Thirdness) brings two human beings (described by
> Firsness) into a relationship in which one plays the role
> of husband (an aspect of Secondness) and the other plays
> the role of wife (another aspect of Secondness). (05)
> Thirdness is involved in all those examples that have been discussed
> in this thread with the terms 'conceptual' or 'social'. Among them
> are all the issues concerning contracts of any kind, whether stated
> in writing, concluded with a handshake, or established by a longstanding
> habit or pattern of behavior.
> ...
> Responsibility, by the way, is another aspect of Thirdness, which
> involves a triadic relation of somebody x with respect to something y
> for some purpose z. (06)
> In general, every instance of Thirdness involves
> some agent x (human, animal, or perhaps robot) who has established
> a relationship to some y for some reason z. (07)
This seems to greatly narrow the idea of Thirdness. Although the
examples involve agents, this does not seem to be part of the definition. (08)
As i understand it, physical support is a Thirdness. No agent is needed
to establish the relation. Natural events are types of Thirdness. Neither
the support situation nor the events are Firstnesses -- they do not exist
independent of anything else. Nor are they Secondnesses -- aspects of
one Firstness in relation to another. They are complex things that bring
various Firstnesses into dyadic relations with each other. (09)
-- doug foxvog (010)
...
> John
> _________________________________________________________
>
> Source: http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/worlds.pdf
... (011)
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