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Those commenting on the historical development of Peirce’s philosophy have cited two main contributing factors to Peirce’s needing to attempt a new method for discovering the categories.129 Peirce’s research into both the classification of the sciences and his work in the logic of relatives specifically have been cited as contributing factors to Peirce’s revised method for discovering the categories.

Hausman says the following:

We should expect that Peirce sees the need to look beyond the analysis in the “New List,” because its scope is confined to the conditions of the proposition. Thus, the list is not obviously extended to all experience, or to all aspects of what makes experience in all its dimensions intelligible…However, Peirce’s first step in moving toward his developed phenomenological theory of the categories is made through a broadening of his conception of logic.130

129 _{Hookway (1992), Hausman (1993), and Murphey(1993) are particularly helpful in}

this regard.

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The logical considerations that Peirce began to consider represented a moving away from the subject-predicate theory of the proposition.131 The catalyst for this move was Peirce’s introduction to De Morgan’s logic of relations. Peirce was introduced to this logic early in his career, even at the time of the writing of the New List but it would be a matter of decades before Peirce’s own conclusions about the logic of relations reached anything like final conclusions.132

The main conclusion that Peirce reached was that predicates were of three indecomposable kinds each identified by its being related to one, two, or three subjects. “The stove is black” is an instance of the first. “Sam is the father of Susy” is an instance of the second. And, “Bob gives grief to Mary” is an instance of the third. Modern logic has accepted this view of predication except that Peirce made an even more radical claim: predicate relations to one, two, or three subjects are necessary, but no larger relations are necessary. In other words, any larger predicate relations may be reduced to predicate relations of three or fewer. This is known as Peirce’s “reduction thesis” and has received some careful attention but with no final confirmation of its validity.

Hookway examines the mathematical proof that Peirce developed for his reduction thesis but claims that although promising the proof may be it seems that Peirce moved on and considered his phenomenological discovery of more primary importance.133 It may be that the volatility of changes in logic at the time, as well as Peirce’s own dissatisfaction with the validity of the proof of his reduction thesis led to

131 _{Murphey (1993, 298).} 132_{Hausman (1993, 109).} 133 _{Hookway (1985, 97-101).}

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his seeking a different method for discovering the categories. I will not pursue the proof here in any detail as it would take us too far afield from our present concerns. I am interested only in reasons for why Peirce was motivated to look for a phenomenological proof of the categories.134

The second reason that Peirce took seriously the need for a revision of his discovery of the categories is his is research into the overall structure and relation of the sciences otherwise known as the classification of the sciences. As early as 1898 Peirce hinted at a classification of the sciences in his Cambridge Lectures, specifically “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life.” But the unpublished “An Outline of the Classification of the Sciences” from 1903 represents a fuller and more complete classification. For Peirce mathematics in its most fundamental and abstract sense represents the first science in that it studies “what is and what is not logically possible, without making itself responsible for its actual existence.”135 Philosophy is next in order and is made up of phenomenology, normative science, and last metaphysics. After philosophy comes idioscopy which embraces all the special sciences concerned with the accumulation of new facts.

Peirce defines phenomenology in the following way:

Phenomenology ascertains and studies the kinds of elements universally present in the phenomenon; meaning by the phenomenon, whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way.136

134 _{H.G. Herzberger’s “Peirce’s Remarkable theorem” is a useful place to begin looking at}

the validity of Peirce’s theorem. It may be found in Pragmatism and Purpose, edited by Sumner, L. W., Slater, J. G. and Wilson, F., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.

135 _{Peirce (1998, 259).} 136 _{Peirce (1998, 259).}

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Since phenomenology is the science that Peirce depends on for his derivation of the categories we will look more closely at its method of discovery shortly. Here I want to merely establish the relation of mathematics, phenomenology, and logic in order to show why Peirce eventually moved away from a logical derivation of the categories.

Normative science, Peirce says,

distinguishes what ought to be from what ought not to be, and makes many other divisions and arrangements subservient to its primary dualistic distinction.137

Normative science depends on mathematics and phenomenology. Normative science is further divided into esthetics, ethics, and logic. Esthetics is defined by Peirce as the science of ideals, or “of that which is objectively admirable without any ulterior reason.” Ethics is the science of right and wrong, is dependent on esthetics, and represents “the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate conduct.” Logic finally is defined by Peirce in the following way:

the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate, thought; and as such must appeal to ethics for its principles. It also depends upon phenomenology and upon mathematics. All thought being performed by means of signs, Logic may be regarded as the science of the general laws of signs.138

We can end here with logic and see that as Peirce developed a hierarchical structure of the sciences based on the relations of dependency they had to one another the science of logic falls well within the classification depending in some sense on the findings of more fundamental inquiries which precede it. One can see why Peirce sought for a mathematical proof of his reduction thesis for the logic of relations. And, failing that,

137 _{Peirce (1998, 259).} 138 _{Peirce (1998, 260).}

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one can see why he then pursued a phenomenological approach. A logical derivation of the categories only supports the universality of the categories for everything that follows from them, namely metaphysics and the special sciences of discovery. In order to make them apply universally Peirce moved to the more fundamental science of phenomenology which considers anything that in any way may come before the mind. This interpretation is confirmed by both Hausman and Murphey.139 Murphey says:

Since logic is only one of the normative sciences, and since the divisions of the normative science are themselves obviously based on the categories, it is clear that Peirce can no longer rest his theory of the categories on logic. Peirce’s solution to this problem is the introduction of a new science which he called “phenomenology” or “phaneroscopy,” and which stands between mathematics and normative sciences. The sole function of this new science is to provide the basis for the categories. (1.280)140

We can turn our attention now to the science of phenomenology and to Peirce’s phenomenological derivation of the categories. But before we do I report one further reason for thinking the derivation of the categories had to be revised which ties directly to Peirce’s rejection of intuition that has been discussed in chapter two.

The connection was made by Murphey in the following statement: By denying the existence of first impressions of sense Peirce had completely sundered the real from perception, so that direct acquaintance with reality cannot be gained by going to the source of our cognitions.141

This is a perceptive insight on Murphey’s part and deserves to be considered along side the other reasons that have been offered thus far. Murphey’s claim is that by rejecting

139 _{Hausman (1993, 114).} 140 _{Murphey (1993, 367).} 141 _{Murphey (1993, 301).}

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intuition, by rejecting any immediate contact with objects, the source of our cognitions is therefore cut off from objects, and a derivation from the source of cognition can no longer be trusted to deliver categories of objects in general. This is an important implication of Peirce’s early rejection of intuition. The New List in which the categories are logically derived precedes the later rejection of intuition. There is no doubt that a kind of solipsism began to emerge in Peirce’s cognition series in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy of which “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man” is a member. “From the proposition that every thought is a sign, it follows that every thought must address itself to some other, must determine some other, since that is the essence of a sign.”142 The infinite regress that loomed certainly prevents one from ever reaching the object through signs.

Peirce initially placed the grounding of contact with reality in the long-run future convergence of a community of inquirers. But this logical hope as Peirce calls it is a shaky foundation for a philosophical account of experience. There is obviously no guarantee and I think Peirce began to sense the full force of his early anti- foundationalist leanings in his early cognition articles. I don’t think that Peirce ever fully resolved this issue in his work. But what we can see is that he changed his commitment to anti-foundationalism in some way which will be explored below in his second derivation of the categories. In that later derivation the justification of the categories is a matter of what we can know now through a phenomenological discovery. And it is not a matter of looking inside at an account of our form of judgment, but of an encounter

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with the outside by-passing, if successful, the earlier worry about the categorical status of the a priori concepts derived from the functions of judgment.