One, Two, Three
Learn to identify the three fundamentals of everything.
I mean no more than the ideas of First, Second, Third, — ideas so broad that they may be looked upon rather as moods or tones of thought, than as definite notions, but which have great significance for all that.
— Charles S. Peirce —
Imagine that you want to assemble a jigsaw puzzle:
First, a feeling of freedom seizes you as you pour the novel puzzle pieces onto the table. It’s a vague and indefinite mess. You stare at the pieces and for a moment you get absorbed into the various qualities, which are in front of you. You don’t even know what the puzzle is supposed to represent. It could potentially represent anything. But you want to assemble it, so…
Second, you have to get into action. You start by locating differences and contrasts. Instead of perceiving a vague sea of qualities, you identify individual pieces. Where is the corner piece? You compare individual pieces with one another. You put individual pieces into contact with one another. This struggle is rewarded, when…
Third, a picture begins to emerge. Individual pieces are merged together, forming a continuous representation. The pieces are in order. Now suddenly the pieces represent something, which in turn enables mediation of information. The picture can now communicate meaning. Nicely done! You were able to do this, because you used your mind and reason. The whole process was guided by a purpose, which was your desire to assemble the jigsaw puzzle.
What are we talking about?
If you have heard of Charles Peirce, then most certainly you have some idea about the three categories: 1stness, 2ndness and 3rdness.
The categories are the most general way of understanding reality and our experience. The permeate absolutely everything — literally every possible phenomena. Wherever our attention is directed, there we find the three categories.
Our experience is a qualitative combination of these three categories. Merged together, they are the “screen” we experience.
However, don’t be tempted to understand the categories as three distinct elements or substances that are mixed together like ingredients in a recipe. Rather conceptualize them as three different types of vague characteristics, which are always present. The experience is a continuous, evolving and dynamic fusion of these three characteristics at various intensities.
As an analogy, in Munsell’s color system a color is logically decomposed into three properties: hue (basic color), chroma (color intensity), and value (lightness). Now a color always involves all of these three properties, but sometimes some property is more intense or prevalent.
It could be the hue (traffic light); or chroma (enjoying a beautiful sight of flowers in direct sunlight); or the value (trying to see in the dark). It makes obviously no sense to think of these properties as distinct substances, as they are always merged together. Nevertheless, they can be logically separated. The exact same applies to the three categories.
The prevalence of the categories makes them challenging to get your head around. They are hard to understand, as their extensive generality escapes all definitions. They are hard to explain, as our language is not as basic as the categories.
And they are hard to recognize, because they permeate our whole experience. For the same reason it is hard for fish to see water. Or for you to notice your own accent or cultural habits.
But what are the categories? Here they are in a nutshell:
1stness is a spontaneous feeling of indefinite variations. 2ndness is a forceful contrast between action and reaction, force and resistance. 3rdness is the patterned behavior and mediation of various possible actions, i.e. all of our habits, and all laws of nature. This lawfulness of action enables predictions, makes the reality reasonable, and allows the mediation of information.Every other kinds of realities and experiences can be reduced to these three categories and their combinations.
Structure of this Post
The categories are found in every part of Peirce’s philosophical structure and thought. This often confuses people as the categories are approached from many different perspectives. But this is necessary, because they have such a wide meaning.
To give you sufficiently wide idea on the applicability of the categories, we approach the categories through three different sciences: Phenomenology, Semiotics (or Logic)1 and Metaphysics. Delightfully these sciences correspond with the three categories.
Phenomenology is 1stness, as it inquires the immediate qualities of experience, without making any judgement about their normativity (2ndness) or their reality (3rdness).
Semiotics is 2ndness, as it is normative science inquiring thinking (which is a type of action) and making distinctions between good and bad reasoning, regardless of the actual constitution of our universe (3rdness).
Metaphysics is 3rdness, as it inquires the fundamental ontology and laws of reality of our universe.
I’ve structured this post in the following way. We go trough the three categories in order. Within every category we look what kind of meanings it gets in these three different sciences.
I use color coding for the categories: yellow for 1stness, red for 2ndness and blue for 3rdness.
Lastly, it is important to have the courage to see the categories as metaphysically real. Without that belief, the categories, and especially semiotics, becomes an odd collection of neologisms.
1stness
Phenomenology — Qualities and Feelings
Look around you. You see all kind of colors. Now, concentrate on those colors.
Don’t think about the objects, their meanings, or their physicality. Just their color. Get lost into the color.
Once you do this for a while, you notice how you can fill your mind with just the quality of the color.
In addition, to the quality of color, there is something else present, an underlying feeling. However, it is not compulsive and without any reason. It is just a simple feeling, present in every moment.
One of the best example of this kind of experience is the state between being asleep and awake. You experience a completely free and spontaneous stream of qualities and feelings, without any constrains or limits imposed on that stream. It is purposeless play of qualities. This is 1stness.
Semiotics — Quality, Similarity, Openness
There are signs, which are mere qualities, called qualisigns. Signs that signify solely through their quality. For example the redness in a piece of cloth is a qualisign.
A sign may represent by similarity, without any actual connection, between the sign and its object. These sings are called icons. A wax sculpture represents the real person by being similar to it.
A sign may communicate mere possibilities and feelings. Rhemas are signs that do not assert anything. They remain open to interpretation. An example of this is a single word: Dog. It does not assert any fact. It leaves quote a lot hanging in the air, remaining vague and open, like a piece of art causing different feelings in different people.
Metaphysics — Chance, Possibility and Novelty
In our universe there is always real chance. Certain randomness in everything. We can’t predict the future, even if we had perfect knowledge. There is always inherent spontaneity in every action, process and event. Instead of deterministic certainties, we are dealing with probabilities.
This entails the reality possibilities. When you wake up and plan the upcoming day in your mind, you are not playing with fictions. You are dealing with real possibilities, which may later, in the course of the day, actualize.
Therefore the future remains open, which enables novelty. Something new can be created during the day. Creativity is possible, because there is openness in our universe.
2ndness
Phenomenology — Force, Otherness, Struggle
Close your eyes. What do you hear? What do you feel?
There are sounds. There is pressure felt in your body. Both of these appear with force. You can’t wish the sounds, pressure, or pain, away.
So there is forcefulness in your experience. Brutal insistence of qualities. This leads into the recognition of yourself. There is me, and then there is all this forceful otherness that intrudes my mind.
You have to struggle against this otherness. Regardless of what you do, you face resistance. Your heart has to pump blood. You have to use muscles to move. Action and reaction. Force and resistance. This is 2ndness.
Semiotics — Singularity, Connection, Assertion
There is singular signs called sinsigns. They are existent signs that signify by existing with force. A strident surprising sound is a sinsign. A sudden pain is a sinsign.
A sign can represent something by being materially or causally connected to it. A bullet hole represents a bullet, because of the causal connection. A footprint in the sand represents the foot, to which it is materially connected to.
A sign may communicate facts or cause actions. It may assert something. For example an plaque with the text “Shop”, communicates the fact, that here is a shop. Or the sentence: “Dog is mammal”, is a proposition communicating a fact. Sign may also cause an action. A sudden pain in your finger, causes you to pull your hand away from the source of pain.
Metaphysics — Existence, Particularity
The world is filled by concrete existent matter. This matter cannot be wished away. It has force. Huge rocks are tough to move.
Furthermore, there are individual things in our universe. We all are not simply just one, as some bearded dudes with headbands may sometimes say. There is me, and there is you, and there is this and that. There are particulars we can point at.
3rdness
Phenomenology— Mediation, Flow
Stop! Think about time. Feel time.
It is a strange thing. We can measure it. Hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds. Put it does not feel discrete. Our experience is not a fast series of snapshots. No…
Time is continuous. Time flows. Time mediates.
One moment melds to another. One thought merges with another.
There is continuity in experience, a certain smoothness to all of this. Deep sympathy between things. This is 3rdness.
Semiotics — Habit, Symbol, Argument
There are signs, which are habits or laws called legisigns. They are real powers, real tendencies or patterns that govern the behavior of individuals actions and beings. The habit of shaking hands is a legisign, guiding our conduct.
Sign may represent something through a habit or a convention. A flag represents a nation through a learned convention. Every word a convention. The traffic light represents “stop” and “go” by a acquired habit.
Sign may communicate an argument or a thought. An argumentative sign may control and lead you in your life. For example, the Bible is an argument that guides many people. Or the argument: “All humans are mortal. I am a human. Therefore, I am mortal” leads you away from doing dangerous stuff.
Metaphysics — Laws, Tendencies
Predictions are possible in our universe and various processes tend to unfold lawfully. Our world is bursting with patterns and permeated by various laws and habits.
These habits are real powers guiding the behavior of individuals. Rigid physical habits guide the behavior of matter. Psychological habits guide our minds. Cultural habits guide our social conduct. Some habits are rigid and crystallized, others plastic and malleable.
According to Peirce, our universe has also the tendency to form habits. Individuals move towards generality by establishing new habitual relations with others.
For example, if traffic lights stop working in a busy intersection, chaos will ensue. However, the drivers will quickly find new ways to optimize the traffic flow. Although there is no central authority coordinating the flow of traffic, an order emerges.
Furthermore, habits slowly become more reasonable, that is, they move towards harmony with the environment. Another word for this process is evolution.
Why not 4thness?
Is three really enough? How can we be sure that there is no need for more categories? Well, here is a humble “proof”.
The three categories correspond to three different kinds of relations:
1stness is relation to oneself: X is blue.
2ndness is relation to something second: X loves Z.
3rdness is mediation between the first and the second: X gives Y to Z.
In order to represent every possible type of relation, we need all of the three categories. For example, in the third example X gives Y to Z. This triadic relation cannot be decomposed to a set of dyadic relations of 2ndness.
The two relations X loses Y and Y is gained by Z, do not constitute the act of giving. Giving is not mechanical act, but a legal act. It forms one whole triadic relation, which cannot be decomposed to more elemental set of relations.
What about relations between four participants? For example, X sells Y with the price A to Z. This, on the other hand, can be decomposed to a set triadic relations of 3rdness.
X sets the price of Y at A.
Z pays price A to X.
X transfers ownership of Z to Y.
Therefore three is enough. There is no need for a fourth one. Three primary colors (yellow, red, blue) can form all the colors of the spectrum. Three particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) can form all matter.
Three is also the minimum. One isn’t enough for making distinctions between things. Two isn’t enough to put two things in evolving relation with one another.
Thus three is the right number. In the final analysis, everything can be broken down to three fundamental things.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Want to help PhiloSign reach even more curious minds? Share it with your friends and let's grow our Community of Inquirers together!
Sincerely,
Markus
For Peirce semiotics is logic. They both mean the same thing. Read more here (future link will be added).
There's some other set of ideas in which three is central. I can't remember what...