These two-tiered relations have much in common with Peirce's realm of secondness, insofar as the immediacy of given determinacy characterizing
firstness is supplanted by relations in which each determinacy is relative to something that posits its determination.
Holding moreover that the passions inherent in transcendental operations of a faculty bespeak only a capacity to draw meanings from a reservoir of virtual meanings, he indicates that both Peirce and Whitehead are right to insist on the '
firstness' of feelings in their respective metaphysics.
The other chapters in this section more narrowly focus on the relation between Peirce's realism and categories of
firstness and secondess, on the one hand, and Hegel's ontology, on the other.
(17) "
Firstness" is the "iconic" expression of spontaneity emerging out the chaotic creativity resident at the base of the real.
We still need to introduce the aspects of
Firstness and Thirdness to provide any intellectual content to experience.
(47) Necessity and priority, even more than
firstness or commensurate universality, are the salient features of premises of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].
In contrast, his category of
firstness is designed to call attention to the qualitatively immediate aspects of our experiential encounters and their diverse disclosures.
8) consisting, in part, of a logic of relatives, a theory of abduction, and a metaphysics of "new categories":
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
Rosenthal concludes by linking pluralism to Peirce's derivation of his metaphysical categories of
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
There are according to him, however, three basic types of relations: (1) the monadic relation or relation of
firstness (which properly speaking is not actually a relation, although we think it in terms of the relation it involves with something consignified); (2) the dyadic relation or relation of secondness, based on
firstness, which is a relation between two things, and; (3) the triadic relation or thirdness,(48) based on both the preceding types and which is a relation between three terms, among which the third element or element of thirdness acts as mediator.
He clarifies some of Pierce's basic triadic distinctions and their interrelations: (1)
firstness, secondness, and thirdness; (2) qualisign, sinsign, and legisign; (3) icon, index, and symbol; (4) representamen, object, and interpretant; and (5) energetic, emotional, and logical interpretants.
Evolution is seen in terms of the movement from a primal state of pure
firstness (Peirce's concept of potentiality and pure feeling) to the determinate world of interaction.