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Potentiality and Actuality in Peirce and Dewey

Jim Garrison

Abstract

This paper fills a gap in the literature concerning the importance of the categories of potentiality and actuality in the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. Peirce and Dewey derived their positions by revising Aristotle. Their revisions are surprisingly similar in many aspects and different in at least one significant feature – haecceity. Peirce and Dewey’s pragmatic reconstruction of actuality and potentiality is perhaps the most important advance since the Scholastics. The goal is to recover the categories of potentiality and actuality for the future development of pragmatism.

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  • 1 Searching Philosophers Index and PhilPapers returned one paper on Peirce with potentiality or actua (...)

1The categories of potentiality and actuality are fundamental to the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. However, the literature on these categories is remarkably sparse.1 The existing references are scattered, difficult to find, and often underdeveloped. The only comprehensive exposition of Dewey’s understanding of potentiality and actuality thus far found is a perceptive paper by Thomas M. Alexander (2014). Similarly, the only paper exclusively addressing Peirce’s views on potentiality and actuality appears to be Dewey’s “Peirce’s Theory of Quality.”

2Peirce and Dewey provide original revisions of Aristotle that share striking similarities, likely due to their familiarity with Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. They are perhaps the most significant advancements in the discourse on actuality and potentiality since the Scholastics. This paper seeks to prove these two categories as vital for the future development of pragmatism.

3I start by outlining Aristotle’s philosophy of potentiality and actuality before discussing Dewey’s reconstruction of Aristotle. The third section examines some of Peirce’s relevant references to Aristotle. It is followed by a discussion of secondary literature on Peirce’s Scholastic realism, universals, potentiality, and actuality. I then discuss Dewey’s presentation of Peirce on potentiality and actuality. The conclusion summarizes Peirce and Dewey’s similarities, including unique individuality and the anti-Parmenidean continuity of inquiry, while noting disparities.

1. Aristotle on Potentiality and Actuality

4Since Peirce and Dewey both reconstruct Aristotle, I begin with the rudiments of his position. In Aristotle’s metaphysics, substance (i.e., ousia) is ontologically basic. All else inheres in or is said of substance. Eidos designates essence, unchanging unique form, or constitutive nature. Eidos is the telos toward which everything that changes moves. Aristotle’s metaphysical concepts are understood primarily in terms of eidos (Metaphysics 1071b-1076a).

5Arche refers to the ultimate foundation, ultimate origin, or absolute first principle. Energeia indicates actuality, activity, functioning, active power to enact change, or efficient cause. Latent potentiality (dynamis) is the passive power or capacity to receive change. Entelecheia refers to perfect and complete actualization, ultimate, or final cause; it is nearly synonymous with energeia. Ousia and arche tend to simply become the eidos upon complete actualization (entelecheia) of an entity’s latent potential (dynamis). An acorn has the latent potential to become an oak tree. Eidos, entelecheia, ousia, arche, telos, energeia, and dynamis are reticulately related; hence, they cannot be entirely pulled apart.

6W.D. Ross observes, “We cannot explain change without potentiality” (1971: 177). However, according to Aristotle, “Nothing is promoted from potentiality to actuality without the agency of something actual” (ibid.). Potentiality for Aristotle requires a preexisting, actual essence to give it form. For instance, a piece of wood may be formed into a chair or a table. Eidos, not matter (i.e., potential), defines “chair” or “table.” For Aristotle, actuality precedes potentiality and every principle of change (Metaphysics 1051a2-3).

7According to Ross, Aristotle

distinguishes two senses of δύναμις [dynamis]. One is that which the word in ordinary Greek connotes, viz. power, the power in one thing to produce change of some sort in another. The other, in which he is mainly interested, is the potentiality in a single thing of passing from one state into another. He sees clearly that the notion of potentiality is indefinable; he can only indicate its nature by pointing to particular instances. (Ross 1971: 176; 1045 b35-1046 a11, 1048 a25-b4)

  • 2 Nowhere in this paper has emphasis been added to citations.

8Aristotle offers an active, dynamic, teleological philosophy wherein “the action is the end, and the actuality is the action. And so even the word ‘actuality’ is derived from ‘action,’ and points to the complete reality” (1050a 22-23).2 Unlike Plato, for Aristotle, the eternal forms are immanent rather than transcendent. The eternal essences depend on a never-failing succession of material realizations in individual substances.

2. Dewey’s Reconstruction of Aristotelian Potentiality and Actuality

  • 3 Dewey insists “all changes occur through interactions of conditions. What exists co-exists” (1938, (...)

9Dewey’s “The Subject-Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry” is a good place to begin examining his reconstruction of actuality and potentiality. Dewey names three irreducible traits of existence: “diverse existences, interaction, change” (1915, MW.8: 6). Diverse existences are actualities. Interactions among existences actualize potentialities, thereby affecting change.3 Dewey’s reconstruction of Aristotelian potentiality and actuality is indispensable to his reconstruction of metaphysics.

10Dewey decries the “tendency to conceive a fixed state of affairs and then appeal to a latent or potential something or other to effect change” (1918, MW.8: 11). Although rejecting Aristotle’s latent potentials leading to a predetermined entelecheia, he agrees that potentials require something actual to be actualized. Alexander observes: “‘Potentiality’ might as well be the term given to this ability to see some things as conditions of other things and those others as outcomes without making assumptions that the result was ‘contained’ [latent] in the condition absolutely” (2014: 43, fn.26). The actual is not some eternal antecedently existing essence.

11Change involves two facts. First, “the change exhibits (in connection with interaction with new elements in its surroundings) qualities it did not show till it was exposed to them” (1915, MW.8: 11). Dewey is thinking of emergent properties. Oxygen sustains combustion, hydrogen is highly combustible, and H2O extinguishes class A fires. Emergent qualities occur when existences participate in novel interactions. Alexander comments that Dewey seeks “a new sort of naturalistic metaphysics that embraced possibility, potentiality, emergence, and creativity” (2014: 20). Dewey’s Darwinian universe involves not only change but also novelty. Eidos translates into Latin as species. Dewey does for all eidon what Darwin did for species. They emerge, evolve, and become extinct. The second fact is that “the changes in which these qualities are shown run a certain course” (ibid.: 11). Changes are events having continuity.

12According to Dewey, no potentiality is actualized unless actual existences interact with other actual existences:

To say that an apple has the potentiality of decay does not mean that it has latent or implicit within it a causal principle which will some time inevitably display itself in producing decay, but that its existing changes (in interaction with its surroundings) will take the form of decay, if they are exposed or subjected to certain conditions not now operating upon them. Potentiality thus signifies a certain limitation of present powers, due to the limited number of conditions with which they are in interaction plus the fact of the manifestation of new powers under different conditions […]. Potentiality thus implies not merely diversity, but a progressively increasing diversification of a specific thing in a particular direction. (Dewey 1915, MW.8: 11)

13As potentials are actualized, diversity increases.

14In Dewey’s theory of emergence, we must not assume that the “eventual has somehow been there from the start, ‘implicitly,’ ‘potentially,’ but efficaciously enough to attend to its own realization by using material conditions at every stage” (1925, LW.1: 209). The eventual is an eventuation of interactions constituting an event (1931, LW.6: 9-10).

  • 4 Intentional agency and Picasso's Guernica were always potentials of the universe, which does not im (...)

15Here is an example of such an emergence. The first-generation stars that condensed after the “Big Bang” included only the first three elements of the periodic table: hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Gravity condensed these elements into stars that began generating fusion reactions, forming heavier elements. Beyond lithium, all the elements in the periodic table up to iron result from exploding giant red stars. Heavier elements like zinc, iodine, and gold emerged from the exploding nebula. The currently known heaviest element in the periodic table is Oganesson. It may exist nowhere else in the universe beyond the interactions in the laboratory where it was created. As Kahn comments, for Dewey, “Since our knowledge or experience of powers can never be complete, we are privileged to work within the framework of nature to create new potentialities” (1949: 716). Emergent human life, with its emergent technoscience, helps actualize the universe’s potential. Oganesson was created “intentionally,” with intentionality being an emergent actualization of the potentiality of first-generation stars.4

16In “Time and Individuality,” Dewey refines his earlier reconstruction. He examines two implications of postulating that genuine qualitative transformations occur throughout nature:

First and negatively, the idea […] is excluded that development is a process of unfolding what was previously implicit or latent. Positively it is implied that potentiality is a category of existence, for development cannot occur unless an individual has powers or capacities that are not actualized at a given time. But it also means that these powers are not unfolded from within, but are called out through [actualizing] interaction with other things. While it is necessary to revive the category of potentiality as a characteristic of individuality, it has to be revived in a different form from that of its classic Aristotelian formulation. (Dewey 1940, LW.14: 109)

17Potentiality is not a latent or passive category of existence; it is the active power of change, development, and evolution.

18Instead of antecedently existing latent potentials, the potential for change is only actualized through the interaction of individuals. Dewey complains that for Aristotle:

[P]otentialities are connected with a fixed end [entelecheia] which the individual endeavors by its own nature or essence to actualize, although its success in actualization depended upon the cooperation of external things and hence might be thwarted by the “accidents” of its surroundings – as not every acorn becomes a tree and few if any acorns become the typical oak. (Ibid.)

19Instead, to develop into an oak tree, an acorn must engage in many interactions, integrating it with diverse conditions such as soil, nutrients, sunshine, water, etc. It must also avoid acorn-squirrel interactions. Ends are flexible, evolving, and emergent in a nonteleological Darwinian world.

20One can only know the developmental potential of an individual acorn for sure after the consequences of diverse interactions emerge:

When the idea that development is due to some indwelling end which tends to control the series of changes passed through is abandoned, potentialities must be thought of in terms of consequences of interactions with other things. Hence potentialities cannot be known till after the interactions have occurred. There are at a given time unactualized potentialities in an individual because and in as far as there are in existence other things with which it has not yet interacted. (Ibid.)

21Potentialities may exist but are not known or even experienced apart from the interactions actualizing them.

2.1. Peirce, Potentiality, and Aristotle

  • 5 The influence of Aristotelianism on Dewey by F.J.E. Woodbridge is well documented (Westbrook 1991, (...)

22Houser (1992) denotes significant transitions in Peirce’s philosophy. Peirce accepts the reality of thirds (i.e., universals) early. Around 1890, “he accepted the reality of seconds, the universe of facts (influenced by Scotus)” (EP 1: xxviii). Finally, in 1896, “he broadened his evolving realism to accept the reality of firsts, the universe of possibility (influenced by Aristotle)” (ibid.). In the second and the third stages of Peirce’s career, he increasingly embraced Scholastic Aristotelianism.5

  • 6 “Secondness is predominant; for the real is that which insists upon forcing its way to recognition (...)

23Peirce depicts Aristotle’s “two grades of being” (EP 2: 180). There is “actual reactive existence” and “germinal being, an esse in potentia or I like to call it an esse in futuro(ibid.). The editors add this footnote: “Aristotle’s two grades of being are δύναμις (potentiality) and ενέργεια (actuality)” (ibid.: 522, fn.5). Peirce asserts, “In places Aristotle has glimpses of a distinction between ενέργεια [energeia6] and εντελέχεια [entelecheia]” (ibid.: 180). The same footnote mentions that this distinction is between the process of actualization and the accomplished result of action, where the latter, citing Aristotle, “tends to have the meaning of ‘complete reality’ (εντελέχεια) [entelecheia]” (ibid.: 522, fn.5).

24Peirce states Aristotle’s “dunamis is germinal being” that, while “not amounting to existence,” is “undifferentiated,” “indeterminate,” and “unknowable” (CP 6: 356). “The original potentiality,” Peirce asserts, “is the Aristotelian matter or indeterminacy from which the universe is formed” (CP 6: 206). Firstness and secondness correspond to potentiality and actuality. Peirce notes, “Indeterminacy, then, or pure firstness, and haecceity, or pure secondness, are facts not calling for and not capable of explanation” (CP 1: 405).

  • 7 Sfendoni-Mentzou (1993) finds similarities between Peirce and Werner Heisenberg on potentiality. Sh (...)

25Sfendoni-Mentzou argues that “the thread of melody” unifying the diverse ideas involved in Peirce’s theory of truth is “potentiality” (1991: 27 and 28). She points out that “potentiality” is “a concept in many respects analogous to the Aristotelian ‘potentia’ or ‘dynamis’” (ibid.: 28). She concludes that for Peirce, “potentiality is the essential characteristic of thought and reality” (ibid.: 65).7 It “expresses an indeterminacy or spontaneity which is in many respects analogous to Aristotle’s definition of matter” (ibid.: 38-9). It may not have been realized but can be if “the necessary conditions exist” (ibid.: 39).

2.2. Peirce and Scholastic Realism

  • 8 Peirce did not believe thirds could in any way contract into seconds.

26Peirce was firmly committed to the reality of universals. He notes the word “universal” was “used in the middle ages where we should now use the word General” (CP 2: 367). Peirce asserts that “general principles are really operative in nature. That is the doctrine of scholastic realism” (CP 5: 101). Peirce proclaims, “I should call myself an Aristotelian of the scholastic wing, approaching Scotism but going much further in the direction of scholastic realism” (CP 5: 77, fn.52). More stridently, “I am myself a scholastic realist of a somewhat extreme stripe” (CP 5: 470). From his extreme position, “Even Duns Scotus is too nominalistic when he says that universals are contracted to the mode of individuality in singulars, meaning, as he does, by singulars, ordinary existing things” (CP 8: 208).8 Mayorga discusses Scotus’s “nature in itself” (2007: 52). She notes that “the nature-in-itself manifests itself in only two ways” (ibid.). It may be present in intellect as “the complete universal” or “present in the particular when it is contracted by the haecceity into one numerical unity, the individual” (ibid.). She then argues that Peirce recognizes “the mode of being of the nature-in-itself in his first category, potentiality, but chides Scotus […] for making the nature-in-itself dependent on the particular thing and on the particular mind thinking it” (ibid.). The firstness of firstness, as esse in futuro, is a mode of being (i.e., reality) preceding existence. It may never exist. For Peirce, existence is only one mode of reality: “Existence, then, is a special mode of reality, which, whatever other characteristic it possesses, has that of being absolute determinate” (CP 6: 349). “Secondness is existence” (CP 1: 532), “existence is reaction” (CP 8: 262), or a “theatre of reactions” (CP 6: 195).

27Wilson points out, “Peirce considers existence as a “mode of being” that is the same with actuality” (2016: 53; CP 2: 237; CP 6: 343). Peirce states that “actuality and existence are words expressing the same idea in different applications” (CP 1: 532). Firstness is potentiality preceding existence: “The first is a posse which it has in itself; for the priman stops at can-bes and never reaches to existence, which depends on interaction, or secundanity” (CP 1: 351).

28Peirce finds the scholastic definition “a very degenerate sort of generality” requiring modification (CP 5: 103). This is because, as the editors of note, elsewhere he says, “When the Scholastics talk of universals, they merely mean general terms” (CP 2: 367). Peirce wants a sense of generality compatible with modern, counterfactual and probabilistic, scientific laws. Sfendoni-Mentzou claims that, for Peirce, “generality includes an infinite number of differentiations” (1991: 41). In Peirce’s terms, “the idea of a general” involves “variations” that “no multitude of existent things could exhaust” (ibid.; CP 5: 103). Peirce states, “in using the word law, or regularity, we bring into prominence the kind of universals to which modern science pays most attention” (CP 4: 1). Wilson helps us better understand why Peirce would prefer using generality rather than universality and why the medievals require modification: “He regards laws as a type of general and laws are the type of generals his realism emphasizes the most” and “he holds that not all laws […] are exceptionless or exact” (2016: 51). Thus, “the propositions expressing such laws are not universal propositions (quantified by “all” or “every”) but are general propositions which can admit of exceptions” (ibid.). Laws can also be probabilistic. Wilson asserts that the universals Peirce is most interested in (i.e., laws) “are not ‘contracted’ into individuals, but remain general wherever they govern individuals” (ibid.). Finally, “Peirce maintains that laws exist only if they actually govern individuals” (ibid.).

29Peirce distinguishes two kinds of generality: “Generality is either of that negative sort which belongs to the merely potential, as such, and this is peculiar to the category of quality; or it is of that positive kind which belongs to conditional necessity, and this is peculiar to the category of law” (CP 1: 427). To properly appreciate the distinction, we must first recognize that for Peirce “continuity and generality are the same thing” (CP 4: 172). According to Peirce, “Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general” (CP 6: 204). However, “Firstness, is essentially indifferent as to continuity. It lends itself readily to generalization but is not itself general” (CP 6: 205). The generality of thirdness incorporates the generality of firstness as the firstness of thirdness.

30Sfendoni-Mentzou says that “Synechism is derived from the category of Thirdness for this category expresses a generality” and, therefore, “there is a close connection in Peirce’s thought, between continuity and generality to such an extent, that eventually they become identical” (1991: 41). Peirce explicitly says, “True generality is, in fact, nothing but a rudimentary form of true continuity. Continuity is nothing but perfect generality of a law of relationship” (CP 6: 172). Generality does not become actualized as continuity except as a firstness of thirdness governing secondness (i.e., individuals). She calls the result “generality-continuity-law” (Sfendoni-Mentzou 1991: 41).

31Short claims: “A continuum is not properly speaking a combination of parts, because the parts into which it is divisible have only a potential existence” (2015: 20). He concludes: “Continuity therefore entails potentiality, i.e., law-governed possibility” (ibid.). Zalamea (2012) and Hudry (2004) explore the mathematical role of potentiality and actuality.

32Zalamea names six “polarities” that provide “enrichment of the Peircean summum bonum – understood as the continuous increase of potentiality – and an explosion of mathematical creativity into the most diverse forms” (2021: 349). He extolls the virtues of Peirce’s “non-Cantorian continuum” because it “seems to involve profound intensional characteristics that are impossible to achieve with an extensional modeling” such as that required by Zermelo’s separation axiom (ibid.: 324-5). Zalamea concludes that “the manipulation of contradictory intensional domains (in the potential) without having to confront the associated contradictory extensional classes (in the actual) that would trivialize the system” allows us to “achieve a greater flexibility in our generic approach […] to the continuum” (ibid.: 325). Such an approach enhances creativity and opens opportunities for expanding synthesis.

  • 9 “Now the points on a line not yet actually determined are mere potentialities, and, as such, cannot (...)

33Hudry mentions that Peirce was fully aware of the consistency of Cantor and Dedekind’s definitions of continuity. Peirce’s philosophical concern was that discrete “arithmetical continuity cannot constitute a true principle of [geometric] continuity” (2004: 231). He accepts the presence of points within a continuum. However, there are “no actually existent points in an existent continuum” (CP 6: 182). Peirce solves the problem by resorting to “the potential existence of points” (Hudry 2004: 232).9 Hudry notes: “The concepts of potentiality and actuality pertain to Aristotle’s metaphysical claim that a line is continuous if and only if its parts are potentially divisible and not actually divided” (ibid.: 232-3). He then states that “potentiality enables Peirce to define potential points as actually indistinct and to avoid their definitions as broken and discontinuous entities” (ibid.: 233). Peirce develops a topology wherein: “The continuous connections of loci correspond to potential places in which points do not exist in actuality, whereas the breach of continuity pertains to the existence of singular, actual points. The transition from continuous, potential places to discontinuous, actual points constitutes the essential property of Peirce’s geometric topology” (ibid.: 238). Nonetheless, “Peirce’s view is metaphysically defensible, in the sense that there is nothing wrong in identifying a potential continuum with ‘synechism’ (sunechês meaning ‘the continuous’)” (ibid.: 241). Whatever shortcoming potential continuity may have for the foundations of mathematics, Hudry concludes that if it does “correspond to the intuitive idea of continuity, then we are dealing with philosophical and metaphysical properties,” which achieves its purposes (ibid.: 239). Meanwhile, Murphey claims that for Peirce “any true continuum must contain potentialities which are not only not now actualized but which are greater in multitude than any set of events which can ever be actualized” (1993: 395-6). He concludes (ibid.: 397) this “is what Peirce meant when he said that synechism was the new Scholastic realism (CP.6 : 163).”

34Mayorga states,

Synechism, as a real force, is what propels us towards the final opinion, the object of which is the real, and this is what comprises reality. What grounds reality for Peirce, then, is synechism, which has the mode of being of a law, or Third. What grounds reality, then, is a Third. Compare that to Scotus, who grounds reality in the individual, with the mode of being of a Second. Peirce’s is an extreme scholastic realism indeed! (2007: 147)

35No doubt, Mayorga is thinking of passages such as this: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality” (EP 1: 139). Peirce further remarks that “reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks” (ibid.). It seems odd that reality is independent of what we think about it and yet what is believed in the final opinion.

  • 10 Because human intelligence has evolved with its environment, Darwinism is also connatural.

36Stango accounts for the oddity by suggesting Peirce’s position on the convergence of reality and truth accords with Aquinas’s, not Kant’s, “transcendentals.” For Aquinas, the transcendentals establish the “conformity in which truth consists, then, is not primarily the correspondence or agreement of a particular intellectual judgment with a particular state of affairs, but more deeply, the original connaturality of thought and being” (2022: 171).10 He cites Peirce: “Over against any cognition, there is an unknown but knowable reality; but over against all possible cognition, there is only the self-contradictory. In short, cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms” (EP 1: 25). Stango suggests Peirce has an “eschatological agreement theory of truth” (2022: 172). Peirce does claim truth is “the very entelechy of reality” (EP 2: 324). Peirce also says, “The very entelechy of being lies in being representable” (ibid.). The following is compelling: “[T]he objectivity of truth really consists in the fact that, in the end, every sincere inquirer will be led to embrace it […] I hold that truth’s independence of individual opinions is due (so far as there is any ‘truth’) to its being the predestined result to which sufficient inquiry would ultimately lead” (Stango 2022: 172; EP 2: 419). Peirce seems committed to a renovated version of Aristotle’s entelecheia as perfect actualization, final cause, and man’s glassy essence.

37Short approaches the oddity of reality being independent of what we think and still agreeing with the fated opinion somewhat differently. He finds it is feasible only “by the latter thought being potential, the former actual” (2022: 89). Thus, “it is not even necessary that each part of it be attained in some finite time. That is not necessary, because potentiality does not depend on future actualization. So the modal realist claims” (ibid.). What Short says next opens a valuable discussion about possibility, firstness, and thirdness.

38Once Peirce adopts modal realism,

we can say, consistently, that the final opinion is what would be thought – that is, under conditions possibly counterfactual or that cannot be known to be factual or as to which there is as yet no fact, such as that inquiry continues without end. That there is such an opinion – hence, that there is something real – is a hypothesis– a hypothesis about what is possible. (Ibid.: 90)

  • 11 CP 6: 371 lists ten sorts of possibility, beginning with logical possibility, but does not mention (...)

39Short recognizes that there are several types of possibilities.11 So, what did Peirce mean by the reality of possibility? According to Short:

He meant that some, not all, of what may be is potentiality. Something is potentiality when there is a way in which it can be brought about, that is when there is a law applying to actual things that determines that it would be were certain conditions realized. The latter conditions must also be potential, and therefore potentiality is a realm unto itself, distinct from the possibilities represented in, for example, myth. What can be made actual is really possible, as distinct from possibilities only conceived of. (2022: 199)

40The reality of possibility depends on potentiality. However, Short states: “The word ‘possible’ turns out to be equivocal: It can refer to what may be or to what would be” (ibid.). We need to clarify the difference.

41Short states: “Firstness is the root of our idea that possibility is not reducible to actuality” (2015: 19). In a footnote, he adds: “I refer here to possibility in the sense of what may be. The other type of possibility that Peirce distinguished is what would be. The first is a matter of firstness; the second, sometimes named real possibility or potentiality, belongs to Thirdness” (ibid.: 33, fn.12). Both firstness and thirdness involve the reality of possibility. Short remarks: “The actuality of a law of nature consists in its governing reactions that actually occur. Thus we can say that it is the case that such-and-so would be” (2022: 198). Meanwhile, Rosenthal remarks, “As a mere ‘may-be’ which contains no ‘would-be,’ Firstness is related neither to what has been nor to what will be. Having no relatedness, it is a ‘substratum’ of pure spontaneity or chance. Hence Peirce’s identification of both quality and chance with the category of Firstness” (1968: 162, fn.11). General laws, thirdness, govern seconds. A law specifies what “would be” actualized should specific interactions occur. Stango summarizes: “Peirce speaks of the modalities in a variety of ways – as possibilities, actualities, and necessities; as qualities, occasions, and laws; as might-bes, existents, and would-bes; Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness” (2022: 161).

42Mayorga (2007) provides a genealogy of Peirce’s Scotistic Realism from Aristotle to Alexander of Aphrodisiasto, Porphyry, and Boethius, finishing with Avicenna, who directly influenced the Scholastics, including Duns Scotus. She distinguishes four senses of universal (U1-U4). U1 means “the nature is somehow ‘in’ the thing” (2007: 24). U2 is an abstracted “entity in the mind” that is necessarily predicated of many (ibid.). U3 is a nature-in-itself such that universality and commonness are “not essential to the nature itself,” unlike U2, but are only “potential properties of the nature itself” (ibid.). “Universality and commonness are accidental” depending on whether more than one individual happens to have the same nature (ibid.).

43Avicenna develops U4 where the nature in itself “is neither universal nor singular” and “its essence belongs to it on its own” (cited by Mayorga, ibid.: 34 and 35). Mayorga understands it as a neutral, indifferent “nature in an indeterminate manner” (ibid.: 35). The nature-in-itself is an independent esse preceding universality in the mind or existence in nature. Avicenna’s U4 anticipates Peirce’s firstness of firstness (indeterminate nature-in-itself) as potentially and generality, secondness as actualized potentiality (i.e., existence, individuality, facticity) that retains potentiality as a firstness of secondness but lacks generality, and thirdness as universals governing the facticity of secondness, rendering secondness knowable as a further actualization of the potential of firstness as esse in futuro.

44For Avicenna, numerical unity is only a property of individual substance (i.e., existence, particular) in Aristotle’s sense. However, numerical unity is only a possible accident of the indeterminate nature-in-itself. The problem for the Scholastics is that as God’s creation, all beings have the property of unity, truth, and goodness. Scotus will develop his famous ideas of a real “less-than-numerical unity” and formal distinctions to resolve the problem.

45Scotus is known as the “subtle doctor,” and those who rejected this subtly called his followers dunces. Peirce was a brilliant dunce and subtle himself. I will only provide a brief sketch that is sufficient for our purposes. The Scholastics agreed on rejecting (a) Platonic Forms, (b) that universals are mind-dependent, and (c) only individuals are substances.

46Mayorga argues that U4 is “a sort of being, akin to a potentiality” (ibid.: 55). The nature-in-itself is a potential (firstness) that may be actualized in an individual sensible substance (e.g., secondness), although such actualization is contingent and unnecessary. Indeed, it may never occur. If the mind can abstract the form in the actual individual substance, then the potential (i.e., intrinsic nature) becomes actualized in the mind as a universal “essence, or nature, or quiddity (quidditas) of what is sensible” (i.e., U2), which resembles thirdness (ibid.: 45).

  • 12 Mayorga provides an argument as to why the U4 and I-U4 t are themselves formally distinct and that (...)
  • 13 Peirce accepted haecceities while rejecting contraction.

47Mayorga suggests that an individual consists of an “individuated nature” or “an individuated U4 (I-U4)” (ibid.: 48). She then concludes that “the individual consists of an individuated nature, or an individuated U4 (I-U4) and a haecceity, although these are really one […]. The I-U4 is what is formally distinct from the haecceity in the individual and is what is abstracted and synthetized [sic] into the U2” (ibid.).12 Recall that Avicenna had already argued the nature-in-itself of U4 is indifferent to the accidental qualifications of individuality or universality. Thus the intrinsic nature “can belong to many because it is not of itself (de se haec) a ‘this.’ The nature-in-itself (U4) cannot have numerical unity since it is not ‘one.’ When contracted by the haecceity into particularity it becomes one individual. When abstracted by the human intellect it becomes a numerically one universal (U2) that applies to many” (ibid.: 49).13 Of itself, the nature-in-itself U4 is a unity less than one. Indeed, it could not belong to many if it were numerically one because it would be an individual substance.

48The individual depends upon its haecceity, and the intrinsic nature contracted into it to become numerically one, although the nature and the haecceity are only formally distinct. The formal distinction is a distinction of intellect; if the intellect were not real, the formality would not be either. Mayorga explains the formal distinction:

Every individual thing has no less than two formalities: its haecceity and its quiddity; in an individual these two are joined as one, hence they are only formally and not really distinct (really the same). It is important to realize that even though the formal distinction is grounded in the thing, it is relative to thought; nowhere does Scotus suggest that it can be defined or described without reference to the fact that formalities, or realities, can be separated only in thought. Actually, the fact that Scotus says this is a type of distinction of reason (distinctio rationis) should make this clear. We can then extrapolate and say that if no intellect existed there would be no formal distinction, for though it is “prior” to the act of thinking, it occurs only in thought. (Ibid.: 63-4)

49One may separate things in thought that are not sensibility separated. Your intellect can abstract a mathematical rectangle from the door of your home.

50Peirce provides a sketch of Scotus’s realism at CP 8: 18. He begins by noting that Scotus rejects “the Platonic forms” for Scotus “the universal must be in the mind habitualiter, so that if a thing be considered as it is independent of its being cognized, there is no universality in it.” Peirce’s habits are thirds; that is universals. Peirce continues:

Such natures (i.e., sorts of things) as a man and a horse, which are real, and are not of themselves necessarily this man or this horse, though they cannot exist in re without being some particular man or horse, are in the species intelligibilis always represented positively indeterminate, it being the nature of the mind so to represent things. Accordingly any such nature is to be regarded as something which is of itself neither universal nor singular, but is universal in the mind, singular in things out of the mind […]. It is the very same nature which in the mind is universal and in re is singular; for if it were not, in knowing anything of a universal we should be knowing nothing of things, but only of our own thoughts, and our opinion would not be converted from true to false by a change in things. This nature is actually indeterminate only so far as it is in the mind […]. But this universal only differs from the singular in the manner of its being conceived (formaliter), but not in the manner of its existence (realiter). (Ibid.)

51Peirce recognizes the nature-in-itself is “neither universal nor singular,” but can be actualized de re and de dicto. He also recognizes that one is realiter and the other formaliter and that the latter is derived from the former. However, Peirce reconstructs Scotus by emphasizing not the individual abstracting mind, although it does form habits, but the continuity of the community of inquiry that continues to refine the determination of the universal seeking the opinion fated to be agreed upon by all that inquire.

  • 14 Peirce declares: “Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection, or entelechy, which he never suc (...)

52Stango (2022) explores three striking similarities between Thomism and Peircean pragmatism, revealing other aspects of Peirce’s Scholastic realism. I only discuss the one most relevant to potentiality and actuality. This comparison involves first proving that Thomist substance ontology is compatible with evolution and then comparing Peirce to Aquinas. Stango draws on Jacques Maritain to show how to account for the differentiation of forms, the increase of complexity, and the emergence of new structures, generativity, and growth “with reference to potentiality and actuality” within “a hylomorphic substance ontology” (2022: 156). Stango claims, “Peirce articulates the fundamentals of a hylomorphic view of nature by reinterpreting the Aristotelian categories of potentiality and actuality and matter and form in dialectical emergentist terms, namely, as having at their center the idea of growth” (ibid.: 158). Peirce says that of all Aristotle’s “achievements, the greatest in the eye of reason, that of bringing to light the supremacy of the element of Growth, was, after all, nothing but a special application of Aristotle’s pure vision” (EP 2: 373). Stango also argues that Peirce’s ontology relies upon a revision of “Aristotelian notions, such as final causes (EP 2: 120)” and “entelechy (EP 2: 324)” (Stango 2022: 159).14

53Stango calls Thomistic evolution “essential growth,” by which he means “the possibility that an essence can remain the same essence while changing radically” (ibid.: 163). He likens this idea to “intraspecific evolution” (ibid.). He calls attention to the following passage:

Today, the idea uppermost in most minds is Evolution […]. Whatever in the philosophies of our day […] is not Ockhamism is evolution of one kind or another; and every evolutionism must in its evolution eventually restore that rejected idea of law as a reasonableness energizing in the world (no matter through what mechanism of natural selection or otherwise) which belonged to the essentially evolutionary metaphysics of Aristotle, as well as the scholastic modification of it by Aquinas. (Ibid.: 164; EP 2: 72)

54The movement is from potentiality to actuality to the generality of laws.

55Stango sees Peirce’s modal realism as securing essential growth where, as Peirce states, “the idea of a general involves the idea of possible variations which no multitude of existent things could exhaust” (ibid.: 165; CP 5: 103). As he interprets Peirce, “Each actual being transcends itself in virtue of its general constitution and of the possible growth of the essence to which it belongs. If we take ‘essence’ to mean the real possibility defining a certain kind of substance, we can then interpret the process of diversification and specialization of its habits as a form of essential growth” (ibid.: 165). If Stango is correct, Peirce’s modal evolutionism is incompatible with Darwinism.

  • 15 Peirce proclaims, “For evolution is nothing more nor less than the working out of a definite end. A (...)

56Darwinism is nonteleological.15 It does away with final causes, entelechies, and the predestined, such as we find in the following: “Accordingly, the pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to consist in action, but makes it to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent comes more and more to embody those generals which were just now said to be destined, which is what we strive to express in calling them reasonable” (CP 5: 433). Furthermore, intraspecific (i.e., intraspecies) evolution does not include interspecies evolution. Both intraspecies and interspecies competition drive natural selection. The role of competition in Peirce’s account is unclear. Also, Peirce does not readily provide for species (eidos, essence) extinction. On Stango’s account, Peirce retains the Aristotelian idea of latent potential.

57Atkins says little about potentiality per se. However, he says much about feeling and quality, which are usually taken as psychological and metaphysical firsts. He maintains, “Phenomenologically, Peirce is ultimately compelled to deny that feelings and qualities are only conceptually distinct [distinctio rationis]” (2018: 85). Atkins claims that by the 1903 Harvard lectures, Peirce realizes: “Feeling always involves not only what is felt but a mind that feels it. As such, feelings are instances of secondness” (ibid.: 164). Again, “it is the quality of the feeling and not the feeling that corresponds to firstness” (ibid.). To support this claim, he cites the following passage three separate times: “[I]f we quite abstract vividness from feeling, nothing remains but the mere quality, which is the same as the feeling in posse” (ibid.: 145, 177, 195; R 298: 26x). This claim is crucial to Atkins’s argument that “there are possible qualities that have never been felt and so even in phenomenology we must not restrict the category of quality to those qualities that have been felt. Rather, qualities must be possible feelings” (ibid.: 168). There is something odd in all of this, however. In posse means in possibility, having the potential to exist. It contrasts with in esse, which means in actuality or existence. A feeling in posse, a potential feeling; hence, a firstness of firstness. There is no phenomenological occurrence of a firstness of firstness; we have no such experience; it does not exist. Still, it is a mode of being. However, Atkins’s concern is phenomenology, not metaphysics. Dewey has the same concern when responding to Goudge.

2.3. Firstness (Potentiality) and Secondness (Actuality): Dewey’s Reply to Goudge

58Peirce’s first two categories are the topic of Dewey’s response to Goudge, who claims: “Peirce advocated at least three mutually incompatible views concerning the given in experience: (1) That it is wholly ineffable and unknowable; (2) that it consists of qualities of feeling; and (3) that it consists of logical possibilities or universals” (1935: 538). Dewey prefaces his rebuttal by remarking that the questions canvassed in “Mr. Goudge’s criticism of Peirce on the nature of the ‘given,’ are of high importance in the contemporary state of philosophy in which the problems of the given, on one hand, and of universals and essences, on the other, bulk so large” (1935, LW.11: 86). The problem of the given far exceeds Peirce. However, Dewey notes the value of Peirce’s contribution.

  • 16 “Generality, Thirdness, pours in upon us in our very perceptual judgments, and all reasoning, so fa (...)

59Before addressing Dewey’s response, let us first clarify the “given” in Peirce. What is immediately given are percepts, or perhaps the even more primitive “impression of sense” (see CP 2: 141-3). In their immediacy: “There is no difference between a real perception and a hallucination, taken in themselves” (CP 7: 644). The difference is a matter of inference, inquiry, and “rational predictions,” a matter of cognitive judgment (ibid.). Wilson remarks, “hallucinations have the same direct effects in relation to knowledge and belief as do percepts in the case of real perception” (2016: 193). Wilson explains: “While Peirce holds that the percept by itself is sufficient to distinguish perception from other cognitive operations,” he nonetheless “recognizes that it is not sufficient for perceptual knowledge” (ibid.: 195). While the percept is given, knowledge is not. The transition to knowledge involves perceptual facts, a percipuum, perceptual judgment, and abduction. Wilson concludes: “The perceptual judgment is a propositional (and thus symbolic) representation of the perceptual fact with the assent to it. Being representation, it is also an interpretation” (ibid.: 196). Peirce tacitly accepts Wilfrid Sellars’s rejection of “the Myth of the Given.”16

60The third view, named by Goudge, that the given “consists of logical possibilities or universals” is doubly confused. First, universals are given in experience but only after perceptual judgment. Second, universals provide real possibility (i.e., would-bes), not mere logical possibility. Goudge also confuses the generality of firstness with that of thirdness as a universal. Dewey has no difficulty in refuting Goudge. Our interest is in how Dewey exposits Peirce and what it means for a pragmatic understanding of potentiality and actuality as well as diversity, interaction, change, and the given.

  • 17 Goudge recognizes that Peirce’s position is “wholly phenomenological […] to ascertain the precise n (...)

61Dewey starts by observing all the passages from Peirce to which Goudge refers explicate “experience as experienced” (1935, LW.11: 86).17 He notes that Peirce “introduces at times (and rather unfortunately in my opinion) his predilection for pan-psychic metaphysics” (ibid.). Nonetheless, here, Peirce “is not writing on a metaphysical or cosmological basis but is giving a logical analysis of experience” (ibid.). Dewey provides a familiar statement of Peirce’s categories of being: “Firstness, or sheer totality and pervading unity of quality in everything experienced […], Secondness, existentiality, or singular occurrence, and Thirdness, mediation, or continuity” (ibid.). He further defines secondness as “reaction and interaction,” “actuality in the literal sense,” and “strictly individual” (ibid.: 87).

62Dewey’s counterargument has two parts. First, when Peirce “uses the word ‘possibility’ he means by it material potentiality or power, not logical possibility” (ibid.: 86-7). Second, Peirce “does not hold that Firstness as such, that is, as the given permeating total quality of anything experienced is, strictly speaking, even potentiality” (ibid.: 87). We only experience a given quality as firstness of secondness actualized by an interaction. Firstness per se lacks existence. Nonetheless, material power is the source of spontaneous emergence. In Dewey’s terms, we cannot know a potential (dynamis) until after an actualizing interaction.

  • 18 Dewey calls attention to a nuance of firstness as possibility, may-bes, not mentioned above.

63Dewey begins with the second counterargument by identifying Goudge’s confusion regarding possibility. Goudge cites Peirce as follows: “Firstness […] is perfectly simple and without parts. […] The word possibility fits it” (1935: 537; see CP 1: 531). Dewey points out that Goudge cuts the passage off too soon. The passage reads: “The word possibility fits it, except that possibility implies a relation to what exists, while universal Firstness is the mode of being of itself. That is why a new word was required for it. Otherwise, ‘possibility’ would have answered the purpose” (1935, LW.11: 87; see CP 1: 531). According to Dewey, what Peirce “is saying in the passage quoted is that while quality is possibility in relation to Secondness, or existence, it is not possibility in and of itself” (1935, LW.11: 87).18 Although firstness per se (i.e., “the mode of being of itself”) does not exist, it is a condition of secondness. (It is also, along with secondness, a condition of thirdness.) Dewey adds, “In reference to existence so defined [secondness, interaction, actuality, individuality] quality is both possibility and generality. A pervasive unity of quality is a condition to be satisfied in connection with the existential aspect of any phenomenon” (ibid.). We never experience the potentiality or generality of firstness until it is interactionally actualized, although secondness lacks generality.

  • 19 There is a difference between the continuity and generality of thirdness and firstness, but there i (...)

64Goudge confuses the possibility of firstness as “may bes” actualized in secondness (i.e., existence), with universals as “would bes.” He also confuses the generality and continuity of firstness with the generality and continuity of thirdness. As a germinal being – an esse in potentia, or as Peirce prefers, esse in futuro – the continuity, mediation, and lawfulness of thirdness is qualified by firstness.19

65Having established interaction as the existential condition for experiencing firstness, Dewey turns to his first counterargument. Firstness is material potentiality, not that of universals. As confirmation, Dewey cites Peirce’s answer to “What, then, is quality?”:

  • 20 Dewey’s emphasis. Citation taken directly from Peirce since Dewey omits a clause from the first sen (...)

It is not anything which is dependent, in its being, upon mind, whether in the form of sense or thought. Nor is it dependent, in its being, upon the fact that some material things possess it. That quality is dependent upon sense is the great error of the conceptualists. That it is dependent upon the subject in which it is realized is the great error of all the nominalistic schools. A quality is a mere abstract potentiality, and the error of these schools lies in holding that the potential, or possible, is nothing but what the actual makes it to be. (1935, LW.11: 88; CP 1: 422)20

66Firstness has its mode of being as qualitative material potentiality apart from the mode of being of secondness, actuality, and existence. This is Scholastic realism.

67Dewey references Peirce’s rhetorical question, “Do you mean to say that a piece of iron not actually under pressure has lost its power of resisting pressure?“ (ibid.; CP 1: 422). Here is Dewey’s gloss on this passage: “Quality per se, in itself, is precisely and exclusively, according to Peirce, this potentiality” (1935, LW.11: 88-9). He recognizes potentiality as something that “may happen” or “might happen” (ibid.: 89).

  • 21 Dewey should have dropped Goudge’s phrase “logical possibilities” and stuck with “universals.” As D (...)

68Since a law, a universal, involves what would happen, although it is not currently happening, it “involves quality as potentiality” (ibid.). A potentiality is “a way of behaving” (ibid.). While it is only “actualized on particular or individual occasions,” nonetheless, “qua power it is general” (ibid.). Goudge is embarrassingly confused about generality. The generality of Peirce’s potentiality is not that of universals; instead, potentials “provide the cosmological or physical basis for logical possibilities” (ibid.).21

  • 22 Dewey’s emphasis. He omits the phrase “are mere potentialities.”

69Goudge cannot follow what Peirce means by the wholly ineffable and unknowable. To make his point, Dewey calls attention to this passage: “When we say that qualities are general, are partial determinations, are mere potentialities, etc., all that is true of qualities reflected upon; but these things do not belong to the quality-element of experience” (ibid.: 90; CP 1: 425).22 Dewey’s gloss on the passage states: “Considered in itself, quality is that which totally and intimately pervades a phenomenon or experience, rendering it just the one experience which it is. Of course, then it is ‘ineffable’” (ibid.: 90). Only when the pervasive immediate quality is reflected upon (e.g., mediated, described, taken as a sign) “in relation to existence” is it “seen to be a potentiality and to be general” (ibid.). The quality is merely the immediately pervasive phenomenon; as experienced, it is immediately given, not mediately known.

3. Conclusion: Many Significant Similarities and at Least One Significant Disparity

70Peirce and Dewey’s theories of actuality and potentially reconstruct Aristotle. They agree with Aristotle that potentiality is a category of being necessary to account for change. They also agree that potentiality requires actuality for realization. Thus, actuality is also a category of being. Furthermore, there is no experience of pure potentiality (the firstness of firstness) nor unqualified actuality (the firstness of secondness). They can only be experienced together, although they can be thought apart. They disagree with Aristotle’s that actuality is an eternal form (eidos) that depends on a succession of material actualizations. Potentials are independent powers imparting quality upon actuality. For both, potentialities are actualized as consequences of interacting conditions.

71Although Peirce and Dewey agree that potentiality and actuality are categories of being, their similarities require clarification. While Peirce distinguishes firstness from secondness (i.e., existence), Dewey proclaims that “potentiality is a category of existence” (1940, LW.14: 109). The difference is merely one of nomenclature. Recall that Dewey asserts that potentialities cannot be known until after actualizing interactions have occurred. Dewey agrees with Peirce that dunamis as “germinal being” (EP 2: 180) is of itself “unknowable” (CP 6: 356). This implicitly distinguishes potentiality from actuality as modes of being (Peirce) or modes of existence (Dewey). By comparing Peirce to Dewey, we can recognize that Dewey’s category of “existence” includes potentiality and actuality as distinct categories of being.

72Peirce and Dewey agree that individuality (i.e., actuality) is unique and unrepeatable. Peirce states, “Secondness only is while it actually is. The same thing can never happen twice. As Heraclitus said, one cannot cross the same river twice” (EP 1: 268; CP 1: 532 and 566). Meanwhile, Dewey asserts that “the particular water with which the experimenter actually deals never, as matter of fact, shows itself twice; it never recurs […]. That particular portion of water could never have presented itself at any other portion of the world's history” (MW.2: 6-7). Elsewhere, Dewey affirms:

But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself […]. Go as far back as we please in accounting for present conditions and we still come upon the mystery of things being just what they are. (1940, LW.14: 112)

73Concluding an inquiry explains an occurrence, but the brute existential fact (i.e., secondness) stands stubbornly.

74Regarding thirdness, Dewey is not a Scotistic realist. He cannot be classified as a realist, nominalist, or conceptualist about generals, although, influenced by Peirce, he is closest to realism (1938, LW.12: 260-2). Dewey acknowledges the influence: “The readers who are acquainted with the logical writings of Peirce will note my great indebtedness to him in the general position taken. As far as I am aware, he was the first writer on logic to make inquiry and its methods the primary and ultimate source of logical subject-matter” (ibid.: 17).

75Peirce’s influence is found throughout Dewey’s theory of inquiry. Consider the concept of “warranted assertibility”:

When knowledge is taken as a general abstract term related to inquiry in the abstract, it means “warranted assertibility.” The use of a term that designates a potentiality rather than an actuality involves recognition that all special conclusions of special inquiries are parts of an enterprise that is continually renewed, or is a going concern. (Ibid.: 16-7)

  • 23 Dewey’s “What Are Universals” (1935, LW.11: 105-14) relies on “leading principles” and expresses th (...)

76Dewey relies on Peirce’s pioneering method of inquiry, including habits of inference and “leading principles” (ibid.: 20).23 Dewey adopts “what Peirce called ‘fallibilism’,” arising from the “possibility and probability of a discrepancy between means available for use and consequences that follow […]. Because we live in a world in process, the future, although continuous with the past, is not its bare repetition” (ibid.: 46). Dewey fully embraces an emergent revisable continuity of inquiry.

  • 24 Peirce affirms tychism while Dewey emphasizes “the ineradicable union in nature of the relatively s (...)

77Alexander finds that Dewey challenges twenty-five hundred years of western philosophy “stemming from Parmenides’s identification of being and the known” (2013: 34). Parmenides establishes the “fixation upon the primacy of identity over continuity” and static being excluded from change and becoming (ibid.: 8). Parmenides denies contingency.24 Peirce states:

There is a famous saying of Parmenides […] “being is, and not-being is nothing.” This sounds plausible; yet synechism [continuity] flatly denies it, declaring that being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing . […] [T]he object has an imperfect and qualified existence. (CP 7: 569)

78Parmenides is a rationalist who relies on static logic. Hence, he applies the principle of noncontradiction directly to being: “Thus it must completely be or be not” (KR 273). It is otherwise with continuously generalizable firstness and thirdness.

79Taking potentiality and actuality as independent modes of being separate from knowing (i.e., cognition), although knowable, is a remarkable advance in western thought. Add evolutionary continuity along with diversity, interaction, and change as well as the rejection of the epistemological given, and the results contest most of western philosophy. Peirce and Dewey may mark the greatest advance in our thinking about potentiality and actuality since the Scholastics.

80Although Peirce and Dewey’s extraordinarily innovatory theories of potentiality and actuality display considerable concord, they have at least one significant divergence – haecceity. This is surprising since both agree that individuals are unequivocally unique. Consider the following:

  • 25 Here Peirce drops the “a” from “haecceity.”

An indexical word, such as a proper noun or demonstrative or selective pronoun, has force to draw the attention of the listener to some hecceity common to the experience of speaker and listener. By a hecceity, I mean, some element of existence which, not merely by the likeness between its different apparitions, but by an inward force of identity, manifesting itself in the continuity of its apparition throughout time and in space, is distinct from everything else, and is thus fit (as it can in no other way be) to receive a proper name or to be indicated as this or that. (CP 3: 460)25

81Peirce’s motivation for embracing haecceities seems to be logical.

  • 26 Short states, “at least by 1888, Peirce did not distinguish the actual by its being determinate but (...)

82Peirce was a pioneer in the logic of relations and modal logic. Haecceitism asserts that each individual has a unique non-qualitative nondescriptive difference. DiLeo remarks that around 1885, “Peirce discovered the theory of quantification, and thus altered his theory of denotation” (1991: 90).26 As a result, Peirce “claimed that the demonstrative ‘this’ is a sign that refers directly to an existent individual […]. Objects are now denotable by the non-qualitative and non-descriptive demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’ – words which are signs that awaken and direct the attention” (DiLeo 1991: 90). DiLeo cites Peirce:

A sign which denotes a thing by forcing it upon the attention is called an index. An index does not describe the qualities of its object. An object, in so far as it is denoted by an index, having thisness, and distinguishing itself from other things by its continuous identity and forcefulness, but not by any distinguishing characters, may be called a haecceity. A haecceity in its relation to the assertion is a subject thereof. (Ibid.; CP 3: 434)

83Here is DiLeo’s gloss on this passage:

Thus, it is the haecceity, “thisness,” or “hereness and nowness” (1: 405; 8: 266) of objects, which is denoted by terms such as “this,” “that,” “here,” and “now,” that enables the objects to be unambiguously distinguishable. These terms are to be regarded as indexicals or indicators that serve a purely denotative function, although they do not denote any properties or qualities of objects. (Ibid.)

84For Dewey, indexicals perform no such function.

85Dewey proclaims, “Propositions which are linguistically expressed by proper names and by words like this, involve demonstrative reference to singulars. Hence it is often assumed in contemporary logical theory that there are such things as pure demonstrative propositions – ‘pure’ in the sense that they involve no descriptive element” (1938, LW.12: 240). The problem with pure demonstratives is they assume “the subject-matter demonstratively present, which forms the logical subject, is immediately given” (ibid.: 241). Dewey complained about logics that assume their ontologies are unproblematically given.

86Alexander explains, “The ‘locus’ of the potential is in the total situation, not simply in the individual substance or ousia as Aristotle would have it” (2014: 28). The total situation involves interaction among diverse existences, constituting a unique individual situation. Alexander further remarks, “What Aristotle regarded as ontologically fundamental, the distinct individual being which is both a ‘what’ and a ‘that,’ a todeti, is for Dewey a feature of a more complex reality that includes the environment for living things and the cultural context as well for human beings” (ibid.: 34). Both observations about Aristotle and Dewey apply mutatis mutandis to the divergence between Peirce and Dewey.

87For Dewey, “That which is ‘given’ in the strict sense of the word ‘given,’ is the total field or situation” (1938, LW.12: 127). What is strictly individual are such situations. A singular object exists in a situation as a product of prior inquiry. Thus,

The difference between a singular and an individual is the same as that previously pointed out between an object (or set of objects in their severalty) and a situation. Singular objects exist and singular events occur within a field or situation. This or that star, man, rock or whatever, is always a discrimination or selection made for a purpose, or for the sake of some objective consequence within an inclusive field. (Ibid.: 126)

88Every situation is “a whole in virtue of its immediately pervasive quality” and, therefore, has unactualized potential (1938, LW.12: 73). Thus,

Objective interaction is the overt means by which the actualized situation is brought into existence. What was potential at a given time may be actualized at some later time by sheer change of circumstantial conditions, without intervention of any operation which has logical or intellectual intent, as when water freezes because of a specified change in temperature. But in inquiry a deliberate operation intervenes. (Ibid.: 288)

  • 27 Such an understanding of potentiality is indispensable to Alexander’s (2013) “eco-ontology.”
  • 28 If there is another place to begin, it might be Peirce’s cosmology, which assumes heterogeneous, in (...)

89Deliberate operations determine singular objects as one of a kind (ibid.: 248). For Dewey, “In actual experience, there is never any such isolated singular object or event; an object or event is always a special part, phase, or aspect, of an environing experienced world – a situation (ibid.: 72). This is why Alexander says Dewey has “an ecological concept of potentiality” (2014: 28).27 Meanwhile, for Peirce, “In pure Secondness, the reacting correlates are Singulars, and as such are Individuals” (CP 5: 70). Future work comparing Peirce and Dewey on potentiality, actuality, interaction, diversity, change, and the given might best begin with the difference between their thinking about haecceity and ontology.28

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Peirce Charles Sanders, (1931-1958), Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vol., Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. [CP. Paragraph numbers follow the volume number in CP references.]

Peirce Charles Sanders, (1992, 1998), The Essential Peirce, 2 vol., Bloomington, Indiana University Press. [EP. Page numbers follow the volume number in EP references.]

Peirce Charles Sanders, (1967-1971), Charles S. Peirce Manuscripts, Houghton Library, Harvard University. [Citations are by manuscript number (as assigned in Robin 1967 and 1971) and, where available, page number. Abbreviated as R.]

Rosenthal Sandra B., (1968), “The ‘Would-Be’ Present of C. S. Peirce,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 4(3), 155-62.

Ross William David, (1971), Aristotle, London, Methuen & Co Ltd.

Sfendoni-Mentzou Demetra, (1991), “Towards a Potential-Pragmatic Account of Peirce’s Theory of Truth,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 27(1), 27-77.

Sfendoni-Mentzou Demetra, (1993), “The Role of Potentiality in Peirce’s Tychism and in Contemporary Discussions in Quantum Mechanics and Microphysics,” in Edward C. Moore (ed.), Charles S. Peirce and the Philosophy of Science, Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 247-61.

Short Thomas Lloyd, (2007), Peirce’s Theory of Signs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Short Thomas Lloyd, (2015), “Empiricism Expanded,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 51(1), 1-13.

Short Thomas Lloyd, (2022), Charles Peirce and Modern Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Wilson Aaron Bruce, (2016), Peirce’s Empiricism, Lanham, Lexington Books.

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Notes

1 Searching Philosophers Index and PhilPapers returned one paper on Peirce with potentiality or actuality in the title (Sfendoni-Mentzou 1991) and one on Dewey (Kahn 1949). Canvassing several Dewey scholars, none knew of other sources. Some of my reviewers found sources on Peirce, potentiality, and actuality. I will at least mention what I found on the following pages. I want to thank all my reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

2 Nowhere in this paper has emphasis been added to citations.

3 Dewey insists “all changes occur through interactions of conditions. What exists co-exists” (1938, LW.12: 220).

4 Intentional agency and Picasso's Guernica were always potentials of the universe, which does not imply that either necessarily had to be actualized. As Peirce puts it, “a quality [potential, firstness] is eternal, independent of time and of any realization” (CP 1: 420).

5 The influence of Aristotelianism on Dewey by F.J.E. Woodbridge is well documented (Westbrook 1991, among others). However, Dewey’s major professor, George Sylvester Morris, studied with the influential German neo-Aristotelian Friedrich Trendelenburg. Peirce refers to Trendelenburg several times.

6 “Secondness is predominant; for the real is that which insists upon forcing its way to recognition as something other than the mind’s creation […]. The real is active; we acknowledge it, in calling it the actual. (This word is due to Aristotle’s use of {energeia}, action, to mean existence, as opposed to a mere germinal state.)” (CP 1: 325).

7 Sfendoni-Mentzou (1993) finds similarities between Peirce and Werner Heisenberg on potentiality. She calls attention to passages in Heisenberg, such as his claim that elementary particles are “a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts” (ibid.: 253). She concludes, “What chance, spontaneity, and generally share in common is that they are all manifestations of the same mode of being, namely, of firstness” (ibid.: 250).

8 Peirce did not believe thirds could in any way contract into seconds.

9 “Now the points on a line not yet actually determined are mere potentialities, and, as such, cannot react upon one another actually; and, per se, they are all exactly alike; and they cannot be in one-to-one correspondence to any collection, since the multitude of that collection would require to be a maximum multitude” (CP 3: 568).

10 Because human intelligence has evolved with its environment, Darwinism is also connatural.

11 CP 6: 371 lists ten sorts of possibility, beginning with logical possibility, but does not mention mathematical possibility.

12 Mayorga provides an argument as to why the U4 and I-U4 t are themselves formally distinct and that I-U4 is formally distinct from the haecceity (2007: 64-6). Also, quiddity only arises after the potential of the nature-in-itself U4 is actualized in an existent individual U1 and abstracted by mind U2. This is the sort of subtlety we cannot further consider.

13 Peirce accepted haecceities while rejecting contraction.

14 Peirce declares: “Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection, or entelechy, which he never succeeds in making clear. We may adopt the word to mean the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so identical […] with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by it” (EP 2: 304).

15 Peirce proclaims, “For evolution is nothing more nor less than the working out of a definite end. A final cause may be conceived to operate without having been the purpose of any mind: that supposed phenomenon goes by the name of fate” (CP 1: 204). Peirce is mistaken from a Darwinian perspective.

16 “Generality, Thirdness, pours in upon us in our very perceptual judgments, and all reasoning, so far as it depends on necessary reasoning, that is to say, mathematical reasoning, turns upon the perception of generality and continuity at every step” (CP 5: 150).

17 Goudge recognizes that Peirce’s position is “wholly phenomenological […] to ascertain the precise nature of the given” (1935: 533).

18 Dewey calls attention to a nuance of firstness as possibility, may-bes, not mentioned above.

19 There is a difference between the continuity and generality of thirdness and firstness, but there is also a connection. For instance, “habit is a generalizing tendency, and as such a generalization, and as such a general, and as such a continuum or continuity. It must have its origin in the original continuity which is inherent in potentiality. Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general” (CP 6: 204).

20 Dewey’s emphasis. Citation taken directly from Peirce since Dewey omits a clause from the first sentence, “in its being,” between the words “dependent” and “upon.” He also omits the antepenultimate sentence.

21 Dewey should have dropped Goudge’s phrase “logical possibilities” and stuck with “universals.” As Dewey uses “logical possibilities,” he means Peirce’s “universals.”

22 Dewey’s emphasis. He omits the phrase “are mere potentialities.”

23 Dewey’s “What Are Universals” (1935, LW.11: 105-14) relies on “leading principles” and expresses the stance taken in his 1938 Logic. Dewey rejects “traditional nominalism” for linguistic/semiotic reasons (1925, LW.1: 145).

24 Peirce affirms tychism while Dewey emphasizes “the ineradicable union in nature of the relatively stable and the relatively contingent” (1925, LW.1: 56).

25 Here Peirce drops the “a” from “haecceity.”

26 Short states, “at least by 1888, Peirce did not distinguish the actual by its being determinate but, rather, by its haecceity” (2007: 79). DiLeo refers to the 1903 Gamma system as “Peirce’s attempt at dealing with the logic of possible worlds: modal logic” (ibid.: 101). Haecceities make it much easier to secure transworld identity in possible world semantics for modal logic (Kaplan 1975).

27 Such an understanding of potentiality is indispensable to Alexander’s (2013) “eco-ontology.”

28 If there is another place to begin, it might be Peirce’s cosmology, which assumes heterogeneous, indeterminate, chaotic nothing as a latent potential or arche, ultimately evolving into a perfectly actualized rational entelecheia. Houser (1992) remarks that Peirce seems to waver between “an end of history” and “a state of equilibrium between chance and law” (EP 1: xxxiii).

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References

Electronic reference

Jim Garrison, “Potentiality and Actuality in Peirce and Dewey”European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XVI-2 | 2024, Online since 19 December 2024, connection on 21 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/4351; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/12yvv

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About the author

Jim Garrison

Virginia Tech
wesley[at]vt.edu

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