Broadening Peirce’s Phaneroscopy: Part One

Abstract

in the first part of this essay (The Pluralist 7.2, Summer 2012, pp. 1–29), I argued against the Narrow Conception of phaneroscopy by showing that it is not to be found in Peirce’s writings and that several passages in Peirce’s writings indicate the Narrow Conception is false. As a consequence, we must broaden our understanding of phaneroscopy’s aim. In this part, I shall argue that we should broaden our understanding of phaneroscopy’s method, that is, our understanding of phaneroscopic observation, description, and analysis. However, before proceeding, I should reply to one claim that has cropped up every now and then. Some interpreters of Peirce have commented in correspondence with me that Peirce’s phaneroscopy is not analytic but synthetic. This is simply false, as Peirce very clearly states that phenomenology “make[s] the ultimate analysis of all experiences the first task to which philosophy must apply itself” (CP 1.280; emphasis added). Moreover, insofar as phaneroscopy is concerned with discovering the “indecomposable elements” of the phaneron—that is to say, those elements of the phaneron that are “incapable of being separated by logical analysis into parts” (MS 908.5)—it follows that phaneroscopy must analyze the phaneron by separating the decomposable from the indecomposable elements. Furthermore, in “On a New List of Categories”— widely regarded as the origins of Peirce’s phaneroscopy—Peirce refers to “the conceptions which, according to our analysis, are the most fundamental ones . . . in the sphere of logic” (W 2.59; emphasis added). So, phaneroscopy is concerned with the analysis of the phaneron. At any rate, it would be absurd to suggest that phaneroscopy is synthetic since, as explained in part one, the phaneron is already one, a unity. Indeed, Short correctly notes that phaneroscopy “observes, describes, and analyses the phaneron” (Peirce’s Theory 68). But to what does each of these amount?