The Ontological Ground of Peirce's Semiotics: Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness

Far more than a theory of signs, Peirce's semiotics is also an attempt to summarize ontology as seen in his time and in the Kantian tradition in which he is situated. The concepts of firstness, secondness and thirdness sum up the forms and conditions under which anything can exist, within the framework of the ontological tradition that Peirce belonged to. Peirce has various ways of defining Firstness. It is ‘what the world was to Adam on the day he opened his eyes, before he had even drawn distinctions, or had become conscious of his own existence’ (1.357). This makes Peirce's definition of firstness somewhat difficult to comprehend, since elsewhere he uses the red colour of Lady Welby's servants' uniforms as an example of firstness, in short the quality of being red, which these uniforms embody (Lieb, 1953). However, if we are to take the above quotation literally, which would preclude drawing distinctions in firstness, then even the redness of these uniforms could presumably not be appreciated without presupposing a drawing of distinction between red and other colours? Peirce further says about firstness: ‘It avoids being the object of some sensation. It precedes all synthesis and all determination. It has no unity and no parts. It cannot be articulately thought. Assert it and it has already lost its characteristic innocence; for assertion always implies a denial of something else. Stop to think of it and it has flown’ (1.357).