The Commens Dictionary

Quote from ‘Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism: Lecture II’

Quote: 

In short, any simple and positive quality of feeling would be something which our description fits, – that it is such as it is quite regardless of anything else. The quality of feeling is the true psychical representative of the first category of the immediate as it is in its immediacy, of the present in its direct positive presentness. Qualities of feeling show myriad-fold variety, far beyond what the psychologists admit. This variety however is in them only insofar as they are compared and gathered into collections. But as they are in their presentness, each is sole and unique; and all the others are absolute nothingness to it, – or rather much less than nothingness, for not even a recognition as absent things or as fictions is accorded to them. The first category, then, is Quality of Feeling, or whatever is such as it is positively and regardless of aught else.

Date: 
1903
References: 
EP 2:150; CP 5.44
Citation: 
‘Quality of Feeling’ (pub. 14.10.15-16:54). Quote in M. Bergman & S. Paavola (Eds.), The Commens Dictionary: Peirce's Terms in His Own Words. New Edition. Retrieved from http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-harvard-lectures-pragmatism-lecture-ii-8.
Posted: 
Oct 14, 2015, 16:54 by Mats Bergman