For the next blogs, discussing Tatha Wiley’s Original Sin (2002), I will rely on a foundational semiotic tool: “precission”.

Charles Sanders Peirce formulated precission as a way to describe a crucial relation between his three categories of being: thirdness, secondness and firstness.

The categories are both simple and difficult to comprehend.

Thirdness is the realm of sign, mediation and judgment.  Every being in thirdness brings at least two other beings into relation.  Three elements are required, hence the term: “thirdness”.  Beings in thirdness cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched.  They are purely relational.

Secondness is the realm of actuality, cause and effect, brute force, and situations.  This is the realm of the senses, plus more, since many physical processes cannot be sensed.  Consider the idea of phenomena.  “Phenomena” require “something to be observed” and “an observer”.  At least two elements are required, hence the term: “secondness”.

Firstness is the realm of possibility, potential, purpose, essence, design and implications.   Imagine walking up to someone and asking: “What is the matter?”  This “what” can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched, but that is not what the question is about.  The question is about what could happen.

Another way to say it: “Matter” makes “what is observed” possible.

Only one element is required, hence the term: “firstness”.

Precission is the relation of “emergence” between the categories:  Each category “emerges” or “precinds from” the immediate lower category.  Thirdness prescinds from secondness.  Secondness prescinds from Firstness.