Charles Sanders Peirce (/pɜːrs/[a][8]PURSS; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician,logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father ofpragmatism".[9][10] According to philosopherPaul Weiss, Peirce was "the most original and versatile of America's philosophers and America's greatest logician".[11]Bertrand Russell wrote "he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years, Peirce meanwhile made major contributions to logic, such as theories ofrelations andquantification.C. I. Lewis wrote, "The contributions of C. S. Peirce to symbolic logic are more numerous and varied than those of any other writer—at least in the nineteenth century." For Peirce, logic also encompassed much of what is now calledepistemology and thephilosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch ofsemiotics or study ofsigns, of which he is a founder, which foreshadowed the debate amonglogical positivists and proponents ofphilosophy of language that dominated 20th-century Western philosophy. Peirce's study of signs also included atripartite theory of predication.
Inmetaphysics, Peirce was an "objective idealist" in the tradition of German philosopherImmanuel Kant as well as ascholastic realist about universals. He also held a commitment to the ideas of continuity and chance as real features of the universe, views he labeledsynechism andtychism respectively. Peirce believed an epistemicfallibilism and anti-skepticism went along with these views.
Peirce's birthplace. Now part ofLesley University's Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences.
Peirce was born at 3 Phillips Place inCambridge, Massachusetts. He was the son of Sarah Hunt Mills andBenjamin Peirce, himself a professor of mathematics andastronomy atHarvard University.[b] At age 12, Charles read his older brother's copy ofRichard Whately'sElements of Logic, then the leading English-language text on the subject. So began his lifelong fascination with logic and reasoning.[13]
He suffered from his late teens onward from a nervous condition then known as "facial neuralgia", which would today be diagnosed astrigeminal neuralgia. His biographer, Joseph Brent, says that when in the throes of its pain "he was, at first, almost stupefied, and then aloof, cold, depressed, extremely suspicious, impatient of the slightest crossing, and subject to violent outbursts of temper".[14] Its consequences may have led to the social isolation of his later life.
Peirce went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree (1862) from Harvard. In 1863 theLawrence Scientific School awarded him a Bachelor of Science degree, Harvard's firstsumma cum laudechemistry degree.[15] His academic record was otherwise undistinguished.[16] At Harvard, he began lifelong friendships withFrancis Ellingwood Abbot,Chauncey Wright, andWilliam James.[17] One of his Harvard instructors,Charles William Eliot, formed an unfavorable opinion of Peirce. This proved fateful, because Eliot, while President of Harvard (1869–1909—a period encompassing nearly all of Peirce's working life), repeatedly vetoed Peirce's employment at the university.[18]
Between 1859 and 1891, Peirce was intermittently employed in various scientific capacities by the United States Coast Survey, which in 1878 was renamed theUnited States Coast and Geodetic Survey,[19] where he enjoyed his highly influential father's protection until the latter's death in 1880.[20] At the Survey, he worked mainly ingeodesy andgravimetry, refining the use ofpendulums to determine small local variations in the Earth'sgravity.[19]
This employment exempted Peirce from having to take part in theAmerican Civil War; it would have been very awkward for him to do so, as theBoston Brahmin Peirces sympathized with theConfederacy.[21] No members of the Peirce family volunteered or enlisted. Peirce grew up in a home where white supremacy was taken for granted, and slavery was considered natural.[22] Peirce's father had described himself as asecessionist until the outbreak of the war, after which he became aUnion partisan, providing donations to theSanitary Commission, the leading Northern war charity.
"The World on aQuincuncial Projection", 1879.[29] Peirce's projection of a sphere onto a squarekeeps angles true except at four isolated points on the equator, and has less scale variation than theMercator projection. It can betessellated; that is, multiple copies can be joined continuously edge-to-edge.
During the 1880s, Peirce's indifference to bureaucratic detail waxed while his Survey work's quality and timeliness waned. Peirce took years to write reports that he should have completed in months.[according to whom?] Meanwhile, he wrote entries, ultimately thousands, during 1883–1909 on philosophy, logic, science, and other subjects for the encyclopedicCentury Dictionary.[32] In 1885, an investigation by theAllison Commission exonerated Peirce, but led to the dismissal of SuperintendentJulius Hilgard and several other Coast Survey employees for misuse of public funds.[33] In 1891, Peirce resigned from the Coast Survey at SuperintendentThomas Corwin Mendenhall's request.[34]
Brent documents something Peirce never suspected, namely that his efforts to obtain academic employment, grants, and scientific respectability were repeatedly frustrated by the covert opposition of a major Canadian-American scientist of the day,Simon Newcomb.[36] Newcomb had been a favourite student of Peirce's father; although "no doubt quite bright", "likeSalieri inPeter Shaffer's Amadeus he also had just enough talent to recognize he was not a genius and just enough pettiness to resent someone who was". Additionally "an intensely devout and literal-minded Christian of rigid moral standards", he was appalled by what he considered Peirce's personal shortcomings.[37] Peirce's efforts may also have been hampered by what Brent characterizes as "his difficult personality".[38] In contrast,Keith Devlin believes that Peirce's work was too far ahead of his time to be appreciated by the academic establishment of the day and that this played a large role in his inability to obtain a tenured position.[39]
Juliette and Charles by a well at their home Arisbe in 1907
Peirce's personal life undoubtedly worked against his professional success. After his first wife,Harriet Melusina Fay ("Zina"), left him in 1875,[40] Peirce, while still legally married, became involved withJuliette, whose last name, given variously as Froissy and Pourtalai,[41] and nationality (she spoke French)[42] remains uncertain.[43] When his divorce from Zina became final in 1883, he married Juliette.[44] That year, Newcomb pointed out to a Johns Hopkins trustee that Peirce, while a Hopkins employee, had lived and traveled with a woman to whom he was not married; the ensuing scandal led to his dismissal in January 1884.[45] Over the years Peirce sought academic employment at various universities without success.[46] He had no children by either marriage.[47]
In 1887, Peirce spent part of his inheritance from his parents to buy 2,000 acres (8 km2) of rural land nearMilford, Pennsylvania, which never yielded an economic return.[48] There he had an 1854 farmhouse remodeled to his design.[49] The Peirces named the property "Arisbe". There they lived with few interruptions for the rest of their lives,[50] Charles writing prolifically, with much of his work remaining unpublished to this day (seeWorks). Living beyond their means soon led to grave financial and legal difficulties.[51] Charles spent much of his last two decades unable to afford heat in winter and subsisting on old bread donated by the local baker. Unable to afford new stationery, he wrote on theverso side of old manuscripts. An outstanding warrant for assault and unpaid debts led to his being a fugitive in New York City for a while.[52] Several people, including his brotherJames Mills Peirce[53] and his neighbors, relatives ofGifford Pinchot, settled his debts and paid his property taxes and mortgage.[54]
Peirce did some scientific and engineering consulting and wrote much for meager pay, mainly encyclopedic dictionary entries, and reviews forThe Nation (with whose editor,Wendell Phillips Garrison, he became friendly). He did translations for theSmithsonian Institution, at its directorSamuel Langley's instigation. Peirce also did substantial mathematical calculations for Langley's research on powered flight. Hoping to make money, Peirce tried inventing.[55] He began but did not complete several books.[56] In 1888, PresidentGrover Cleveland appointed him to theAssay Commission.[57]
From 1890 on, he had a friend and admirer in Judge Francis C. Russell of Chicago,[58] who introduced Peirce to editorPaul Carus and ownerEdward C. Hegeler of the pioneering American philosophy journalThe Monist, which eventually published at least 14 articles by Peirce.[59] He wrote many texts inJames Mark Baldwin'sDictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901–1905); half of those credited to him appear to have been written actually byChristine Ladd-Franklin under his supervision.[60] He applied in 1902 to the newly formedCarnegie Institution for a grant to write a systematic book describing his life's work. The application was doomed; his nemesis, Newcomb, served on the Carnegie Institution executive committee, and its president had been president of Johns Hopkins at the time of Peirce's dismissal.[61]
The one who did the most to help Peirce in these desperate times was his old friendWilliam James, dedicating hisWill to Believe (1897) to Peirce, and arranging for Peirce to be paid to give two series of lectures at or near Harvard (1898 and 1903).[62] Most important, each year from 1907 until James's death in 1910, James wrote to his friends in the Boston intelligentsia to request financial aid for Peirce; the fund continued even after James died. Peirce reciprocated by designating James's eldest son as his heir should Juliette predecease him.[63] It has been believed that this was also why Peirce used "Santiago" ("St. James" in English) as a middle name, but he appeared in print as early as 1890 as Charles Santiago Peirce. (SeeCharles Santiago Sanders Peirce for discussion and references).
Peirce died destitute inMilford, Pennsylvania, twenty years before his widow. Juliette Peirce kept the urn with Peirce's ashes at Arisbe. In 1934, Pennsylvania GovernorGifford Pinchot arranged for Juliette's burial in Milford Cemetery. The urn with Peirce's ashes was interred with Juliette.[c]
Bertrand Russell (1959) wrote "Beyond doubt [...] he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever".[64] Russell andWhitehead'sPrincipia Mathematica, published from 1910 to 1913, does not mention Peirce (Peirce's work was not widely known until later).[65]A. N. Whitehead, while reading some of Peirce's unpublished manuscripts soon after arriving at Harvard in 1924, was struck by how Peirce had anticipated his own "process" thinking. (On Peirce andprocess metaphysics, see Lowe 1964.[27])Karl Popper viewed Peirce as "one of the greatest philosophers of all times".[66] Yet Peirce's achievements were not immediately recognized. His imposing contemporariesWilliam James andJosiah Royce[67] admired him andCassius Jackson Keyser, at Columbia andC. K. Ogden, wrote about Peirce with respect but to no immediate effect.
The first scholar to give Peirce his considered professional attention was Royce's studentMorris Raphael Cohen, the editor of an anthology of Peirce's writings entitledChance, Love, and Logic (1923), and the author of the first bibliography of Peirce's scattered writings.[68]John Dewey studied under Peirce at Johns Hopkins.[7] From 1916 onward, Dewey's writings repeatedly mention Peirce with deference. His 1938Logic: The Theory of Inquiry is much influenced by Peirce.[69] The publication of the first six volumes ofCollected Papers (1931–1935) was the most important event to date in Peirce studies and one that Cohen made possible by raising the needed funds;[70] however it did not prompt an outpouring of secondary studies. The editors of those volumes,Charles Hartshorne andPaul Weiss, did not become Peirce specialists. Early landmarks of the secondary literature include the monographs by Buchler (1939),Feibleman (1946), andGoudge (1950), the 1941 PhD thesis byArthur W. Burks (who went on to edit volumes 7 and 8), and the studies edited by Wiener and Young (1952). TheCharles S. Peirce Society was founded in 1946. ItsTransactions, an academic quarterly specializing in Peirce's pragmatism and American philosophy has appeared since 1965.[71] (See Phillips 2014, 62 for discussion of Peirce and Dewey relative totransactionalism.)
By 1943 such was Peirce's reputation, in the US at least, thatWebster's Biographical Dictionary said that Peirce was "now regarded as the most original thinker and greatest logician of his time".[72]
In 1949, while doing unrelated archival work, the historian of mathematicsCarolyn Eisele (1902–2000) chanced on an autograph letter by Peirce. So began her forty years of research on Peirce, “the mathematician and scientist,” culminating in Eisele (1976, 1979, 1985). In 1952, theScottish philosopherW. B. Gallie had his bookPeirce and pragmatism[73] published, which introduced the work of Peirce to an international readership.A.J. Ayer, the English philosopher, provided the Editorial Foreword to Gallie's book. In it he credited Peirce's philosophy as being 'not only of great historical significance, as one of the original sources of American pragmatism, but also extremely important in itself.' Ayer concluded: 'it is clear from Professor Gallie’s exposition of his doctrines that he is a philosopher from whom we still have much to learn.'[74]
Beginning around 1960, Max Fisch (1900-1995),[75] the philosopher andhistorian of ideas, emerged as an authority on Peirce (Fisch, 1986).[76] He included many of his relevant articles in a survey (Fisch 1986: 422–448) of the impact of Peirce's thought through 1983.
Currently, considerable interest is being taken in Peirce's ideas by researchers wholly outside the arena of academic philosophy. The interest comes from industry, business, technology, intelligence organizations, and the military; and it has resulted in the existence of a substantial number of agencies, institutes, businesses, and laboratories in which ongoing research into and development of Peircean concepts are being vigorously undertaken.
In recent years, Peirce'strichotomy of signs is exploited by a growing number of practitioners for marketing and design tasks.
John Deely writes that Peirce was the last of the "moderns" and "first of the postmoderns". He lauds Peirce's doctrine of signs as a contribution to the dawn of thePostmodern epoch. Deely additionally comments that "Peirce stands...in a position analogous to the position occupied byAugustine as last of the WesternFathers and first of the medievals".[78]
After Peirce's death,Harvard University obtained from Peirce's widow the papers found in his study, but did not microfilm them until 1964. Only after Richard Robin (1967)[80] catalogued thisNachlass did it become clear that Peirce had left approximately 1,650 unpublished manuscripts, totaling over 100,000 pages,[81] mostly still unpublished excepton microfilm. On the vicissitudes of Peirce's papers, see Houser (1989).[82] Reportedly the papers remain in unsatisfactory condition.[83]
The first published anthology of Peirce's articles was the one-volumeChance, Love and Logic: Philosophical Essays, edited byMorris Raphael Cohen, 1923, still in print.Other one-volume anthologies were published in 1940, 1957, 1958, 1972, 1994, and 2009, most still in print. The main posthumous editions[84] of Peirce's works in their long trek to light, often multi-volume, and some still in print, have included:
1931–1958:Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (CP), 8 volumes, includes many published works, along with a selection of previously unpublished work and a smattering of his correspondence. This long-time standard edition drawn from Peirce's work from the 1860s to 1913 remains the most comprehensive survey of his prolific output from 1893 to 1913. It is organized thematically, but texts (including lecture series) are often split up across volumes, while texts from various stages in Peirce's development are often combined, requiring frequent visits to editors' notes.[85] Edited (1–6) byCharles Hartshorne andPaul Weiss and (7–8) byArthur Burks, in print and online.
1976:The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, 4 volumes in 5, included many previously unpublished Peirce manuscripts on mathematical subjects, along with Peirce's important published mathematical articles. Edited by Carolyn Eisele, back in print.
1977:Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between C. S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby (2nd edition 2001), included Peirce's entire correspondence (1903–1912) withVictoria, Lady Welby. Peirce's other published correspondence is largely limited to the 14 letters included in volume 8 of theCollected Papers, and the 20-odd pre-1890 items included so far in theWritings. Edited by Charles S. Hardwick with James Cook, out of print.
1982–now:Writings of Charles S. Peirce, A Chronological Edition (W), Volumes 1–6 & 8, of a projected 30. The limited coverage, and defective editing and organization, of theCollected Papers led Max Fisch and others in the 1970s to found thePeirce Edition Project (PEP), whose mission is to prepare a more complete critical chronological edition. Only seven volumes have appeared to date, but they cover the period from 1859 to 1892, when Peirce carried out much of his best-known work.Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 8 was published in November 2010; and work continues onWritings of Charles S. Peirce, 7, 9, and 11. In print and online.
1985:Historical Perspectives on Peirce's Logic of Science: A History of Science, 2 volumes. Auspitz has said,[86] "The extent of Peirce's immersion in the science of his day is evident in his reviews in theNation [...] and in his papers, grant applications, and publishers' prospectuses in the history and practice of science", referring latterly toHistorical Perspectives. Edited by Carolyn Eisele, back in print.
1992:Reasoning and the Logic of Things collects in one place Peirce's 1898 series of lectures invited by William James. Edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner, with commentary byHilary Putnam, in print.
1992–1998:The Essential Peirce (EP), 2 volumes, is an important recent sampler of Peirce's philosophical writings. Edited (1) by Nathan Hauser and Christian Kloesel and (2) byPeirce Edition Project editors, in print.
1997:Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking collects Peirce's 1903 Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism" in a study edition, including drafts, of Peirce's lecture manuscripts, which had been previously published in abridged form; the lectures now also appear inThe Essential Peirce, 2. Edited by Patricia Ann Turisi, in print.
He worked on applied mathematics in economics, engineering, and map projections, and was especially active inprobability and statistics.[87]
Discoveries
↓
ThePeirce arrow, symbol for "(neither) ...nor ...", also called theQuine dagger
Peirce made a number of striking discoveries in formal logic and foundational mathematics, nearly all of which came to be appreciated only long after he died:
In 1860,[88] he suggested a cardinal arithmetic for infinite numbers, years before any work byGeorg Cantor (who completedhis dissertation in 1867) and without access toBernard Bolzano's 1851 (posthumous)Paradoxien des Unendlichen.
In 1885,[91] he distinguished between first-order and second-order quantification.[92][d] In the same paper he set out what can be read as the first (primitive)axiomatic set theory, anticipatingZermelo by about two decades (Brady 2000,[93] pp. 132–133).
Peirce wrote drafts for an introductory textbook, with the working titleThe New Elements of Mathematics, that presented mathematics from an original standpoint. Those drafts and many other of his previously unpublished mathematical manuscripts finally appeared[87] inThe New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce (1976), edited by mathematicianCarolyn Eisele.
Nature of mathematics
Peirce agreed withAuguste Comte in regarding mathematics as more basic than philosophy and the special sciences (of nature and mind). Peirceclassified mathematics into three subareas: (1) mathematics of logic, (2) discrete series, and (3) pseudo-continua (as he called them, including thereal numbers) and continua. Influenced by his fatherBenjamin, Peirce argued that mathematics studies purely hypothetical objects and is not just the science of quantity but is more broadly the science which draws necessary conclusions; that mathematics aids logic, not vice versa; and that logic itself is part of philosophy and is the scienceabout drawing conclusions necessary and otherwise.[95]
Peirce was a working scientist for 30 years, and arguably was a professional philosopher only during the five years he lectured at Johns Hopkins. He learned philosophy mainly by reading, each day, a few pages ofImmanuel Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason, in the original German, while a Harvard undergraduate. His writings bear on a wide array of disciplines, including mathematics,logic, philosophy, statistics,astronomy,[27]metrology,[3]geodesy,experimental psychology,[4] economics,[5]linguistics,[6] and thehistory and philosophy of science. This work has enjoyed renewed interest and approval, a revival inspired not only by his anticipations of recent scientific developments but also by his demonstration of how philosophy can be applied effectively to human problems.
Peirce's philosophy includes a pervasive three-category system: belief that truth is immutable and is both independent from actual opinion (fallibilism) and discoverable (no radical skepticism), logic as formal semiotic on signs, on arguments, and on inquiry's ways—including philosophicalpragmatism (which he founded),critical common-sensism, andscientific method—and, in metaphysics:Scholastic realism, e.g.John Duns Scotus, belief in God, freedom, and at least an attenuated immortality,objective idealism, and belief in the reality of continuity and of absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and creative love.[99] In his work, fallibilism and pragmatism may seem to work somewhat likeskepticism andpositivism, respectively, in others' work. However, for Peirce, fallibilism is balanced by ananti-skepticism and is a basis for belief in the reality of absolute chance and of continuity,[100] and pragmatism commits one to anti-nominalist belief in the reality of the general (CP 5.453–457).
For Peirce, First Philosophy, which he also called cenoscopy, is less basic than mathematics and more basic than the special sciences (of nature and mind). It studies positive phenomena in general, phenomena available to any person at any waking moment, and does not settle questions by resorting to special experiences.[101] Hedivided such philosophy into (1) phenomenology (which he also called phaneroscopy or categorics), (2) normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic), and (3) metaphysics; his views on them are discussed in order below.
Peirce did not write extensively in aesthetics and ethics,[102] but came by 1902 to hold that aesthetics, ethics, and logic, in that order, comprise the normative sciences.[103] He characterized aesthetics as the study of the good (grasped as the admirable), and thus of the ends governing all conduct and thought.[104]
Umberto Eco described Peirce as "undoubtedly the greatest unpublished writer of our generation"[105] and byKarl Popper as "one of the greatest philosophers of all time".[106] TheInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says of Peirce that although "long considered an eccentric figure whose contribution to pragmatism was to provide its name and whose importance was as an influence upon James and Dewey, Peirce's significance in his own right is now largely accepted."[107]
Consider what effects that mightconceivably have practical bearings youconceive the objects of yourconception to have. Then, yourconception of those effects is the whole of yourconception of the object.
As a movement, pragmatism began in the early 1870s in discussions among Peirce,William James, and others inthe Metaphysical Club. James among others regarded some articles by Peirce such as "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) and especially "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) as foundational topragmatism.[108] Peirce (CP 5.11–12), like James (Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 1907), saw pragmatism as embodying familiar attitudes, in philosophy and elsewhere, elaborated into a new deliberate method for fruitful thinking about problems. Peirce differed from James and the earlyJohn Dewey, in some of their tangential enthusiasms, in being decidedly more rationalistic and realistic, in several senses of those terms, throughout the preponderance of his own philosophical moods.
In 1905 Peirce coined the new namepragmaticism "for the precise purpose of expressing the original definition", saying that "all went happily" with James's andF.C.S. Schiller's variant uses of the old name "pragmatism" and that he coined the new name because of the old name's growing use in "literary journals, where it gets abused". Yet he cited as causes, in a 1906 manuscript, his differences with James and Schiller and, in a 1908 publication, his differences with James as well as literary authorGiovanni Papini's declaration of pragmatism's indefinability. Peirce in any case regarded his views that truth is immutable and infinity is real, as being opposed by the other pragmatists, but he remained allied with them on other issues.[109][circular reference]
Pragmatism begins with the idea that belief is that on which one is prepared to act. Peirce's pragmatism is a method of clarification of conceptions of objects. It equates any conception of an object to a conception of that object's effects to a general extent of the effects' conceivable implications for informed practice. It is a method of sorting out conceptual confusions occasioned, for example, by distinctions that make (sometimes needed) formal yet not practical differences. He formulated both pragmatism and statistical principles as aspects of scientific logic, in his "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series of articles. In the second one, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", Peirce discussed three grades of clearness of conception:
Clearness of a conception familiar and readily used, even if unanalyzed and undeveloped.
Clearness of a conception in virtue of clearness of its parts, in virtue of which logicians called an idea "distinct", that is, clarified by analysis of just what makes it applicable. Elsewhere, echoing Kant, Peirce called a likewise distinct definition "nominal" (CP 5.553).
Clearness in virtue of clearness of conceivable practical implications of the object's conceived effects, such that fosters fruitful reasoning, especially on difficult problems. Here he introduced that which he later called thepragmatic maxim.
By way of example of how to clarify conceptions, he addressed conceptions about truth and the real as questions of thepresuppositions of reasoning in general. In clearness's second grade (the "nominal" grade), he defined truth as a sign's correspondence to its object, and the real as the object of such correspondence, such that truth and the real are independent of that which you or I or any actual, definitecommunity of inquirers think. After that needful but confined step, next in clearness's third grade (the pragmatic, practice-oriented grade) he defined truth as that opinion whichwould be reached, sooner or later but still inevitably, by research taken far enough, such that the real does depend on that ideal final opinion—a dependence to which he appeals in theoretical arguments elsewhere, for instance for the long-run validity of the rule of induction.[110] Peirce argued that even to argue against the independence and discoverability of truth and the real is to presuppose that there is, about that very question under argument, a truth with just such independence and discoverability.
Peirce said that a conception's meaning consists in "all general modes of rational conduct" implied by "acceptance" of the conception—that is, if one were to accept, first of all, the conception as true, then what could one conceive to be consequent general modes of rational conduct by all who accept the conception as true?—the whole of such consequent general modes is the whole meaning. His pragmatism does not equate a conception's meaning, its intellectual purport, with the conceived benefit or cost of the conception itself, like a meme (or, say, propaganda), outside the perspective of its being true, nor, since a conception is general, is its meaning equated with any definite set of actual consequences or upshots corroborating or undermining the conception or its worth. His pragmatism also bears no resemblance to "vulgar" pragmatism, which misleadingly connotes a ruthless andMachiavellian search for mercenary or political advantage. Instead the pragmatic maxim is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of experimentational mentalreflection[111] arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and disconfirmatory circumstances—a method hospitable to the formation of explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the use and improvement of verification.[112]
Peirce's pragmatism, as method and theory of definitions and conceptual clearness, is part of his theory of inquiry,[113] which he variously called speculative, general, formal oruniversal rhetoric or simply methodeutic.[114] He applied his pragmatism as a method throughout his work.
In "The Fixation of Belief" (1877), Peirce gives his take on the psychological origin and aim of inquiry. On his view, individuals are motivated to inquiry by desire to escape the feelings of anxiety and unease which Peirce takes to be characteristic of the state of doubt. Doubt is described by Peirce as an "uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief." Peirce uses words like "irritation" to describe the experience of being in doubt and to explain why he thinks we find such experiences to be motivating. The irritating feeling of doubt is appeased, Peirce says, through our efforts to achieve a settled state of satisfaction with what we land on as our answer to the question which led to that doubt in the first place. This settled state, namely, belief, is described by Peirce as "a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid." Our efforts to achieve the satisfaction of belief, by whichever methods we may pursue, are what Peirce calls "inquiry". Four methods which Peirce describes as having been actually pursued throughout the history of thought are summarized below in the section after next.
Critical common-sensism,[115] treated by Peirce as a consequence of his pragmatism, is his combination ofThomas Reid's common-sense philosophy with afallibilism that recognizes that propositions of our more or less vague common sense now indubitable may later come into question, for example because of transformations of our world through science. It includes efforts to raise genuine doubts in tests for a core group of common indubitables that change slowly, if at all.
In "The Fixation of Belief" (1877), Peirce described inquiry in general not as the pursuit of truthper se but as the struggle to move from irritating, inhibitory doubt born of surprise, disagreement, and the like, and to reach a secure belief, belief being that on which one is prepared to act. That let Peirce frame scientific inquiry as part of a broader spectrum and as spurred, like inquiry generally, by actual doubt, not mere verbal, quarrelsome, orhyperbolic doubt, which he held to be fruitless. Peirce sketched four methods of settling opinion, ordered from least to most successful:
The method oftenacity (policy of sticking to initial belief) – which brings comforts and decisiveness but leads to trying to ignore contrary information and others' views as if truth were intrinsically private, not public. The method goes against the social impulse and easily falters since one may well notice when another's opinion seems as good as one's own initial opinion. Its successes can be brilliant but tend to be transitory.
The method ofauthority – which overcomes disagreements but sometimes brutally. Its successes can be majestic and long-lasting, but it cannot regulate people thoroughly enough to withstand doubts indefinitely, especially when people learn about other societies present and past.
The method of thea priori – which promotes conformity less brutally but fosters opinions as something like tastes, arising in conversation and comparisons of perspectives in terms of "what is agreeable to reason". Thereby it depends on fashion inparadigms and goes in circles over time. It is more intellectual and respectable but, like the first two methods, sustains accidental and capricious beliefs, destining some minds to doubt it.
The method ofscience – wherein inquiry supposes that the real is discoverable but independent of particular opinion, such that, unlike in the other methods, inquiry can, by its own account, go wrong (fallibilism), not only right, and thus purposely tests itself and criticizes, corrects, and improves itself.
Peirce held that, in practical affairs, slow and stumbling ratiocination is often dangerously inferior to instinct and traditional sentiment, and that the scientific method is best suited to theoretical research,[116] which in turn should not be trammeled by the other methods and practical ends; reason's "first rule"[117] is that, in order to learn, one must desire to learn and, as a corollary, must not block the way of inquiry.Scientific method excels over the others finally by being deliberately designed to arrive—eventually—at the most secure beliefs, upon which the most successful practices can be based. Starting from the idea that people seek not truthper se but instead to subdue irritating, inhibitory doubt, Peirce showed how, through the struggle, some can come to submit to truth for the sake of belief's integrity, seek as truth the guidance of potential conduct correctly to its given goal, and wed themselves to the scientific method.
Insofar as clarification by pragmatic reflection suits explanatory hypotheses and fosters predictions and testing, pragmatism points beyond the usual duo of foundational alternatives:deduction from self-evident truths, orrationalism; andinduction from experiential phenomena, orempiricism.
Based on his critique of threemodes of argument and different from eitherfoundationalism orcoherentism, Peirce's approach seeks to justify claims by a three-phase dynamic of inquiry:
Active,abductive genesis of theory, with no prior assurance of truth;
Deductive application of the contingent theory so as to clarify its practical implications;
Inductive testing and evaluation of the utility of the provisional theory in anticipation of future experience, in both senses:prediction andcontrol.
Thereby, Peirce devised an approach to inquiry far more solid than the flatter image of inductive generalizationsimpliciter, which is a mere re-labeling of phenomenological patterns. Peirce's pragmatism was the first time thescientific method was proposed as anepistemology for philosophical questions.
A theory that succeeds better than its rivals in predicting and controlling our world is said to be nearer the truth. This is an operational notion of truth used by scientists.
Peirce extracted the pragmaticmodel ortheory of inquiry from its raw materials in classical logic and refined it in parallel with the early development of symbolic logic to address problems about the nature of scientific reasoning.
Abduction, deduction, and induction make incomplete sense in isolation from one another but comprise a cycle understandable as a whole insofar as they collaborate toward the common end of inquiry. In the pragmatic way of thinking about conceivable practical implications, every thing has a purpose, and, as possible, its purpose should first be denoted. Abduction hypothesizes an explanation for deduction to clarify into implications to be tested so that induction can evaluate the hypothesis, in the struggle to move from troublesome uncertainty to more secure belief. No matter how traditional and needful it is to study the modes of inference in abstraction from one another, the integrity of inquiry strongly limits the effectivemodularity of its principal components.
Peirce's outline of the scientific method in §III–IV of "A Neglected Argument"[118] is summarized below (except as otherwise noted). There he also reviewed plausibility and inductive precision (issues ofcritique of arguments).
Abductive (or retroductive) phase. Guessing, inference to explanatory hypotheses for selection of those best worth trying. From abduction, Peirce distinguishes induction as inferring, on the basis of tests, the proportion of truth in the hypothesis. Every inquiry, whether into ideas, brute facts, or norms and laws, arises from surprising observations in one or more of those realms (and for example at any stage of an inquiry already underway). All explanatory content of theories comes from abduction, which guesses a new or outside idea so as to account in a simple, economical way for a surprising or complicated phenomenon. The modicum of success in our guesses far exceeds that of random luck, and seems born of attunement to nature by developed or inherent instincts, especially insofar as best guesses are optimally plausible and simple in the sense of the "facile and natural", as byGalileo's natural light of reason and as distinct from "logical simplicity".[119] Abduction is the most fertile but least secure mode of inference. Its general rationale is inductive: it succeeds often enough and it has no substitute in expediting us toward new truths.[120] In 1903, Peirce called pragmatism "the logic of abduction".[121] Coordinative method leads from abducting a plausible hypothesis to judging it for its testability[122] and for how its trial would economize inquiry itself.[123] The hypothesis, being insecure, needs to have practical implications leading at least to mental tests and, in science, lending themselves to scientific tests. A simple but unlikely guess, if not costly to test for falsity, may belong first in line for testing. A guess is intrinsically worth testing if it has plausibility or reasoned objective probability, whilesubjective likelihood, though reasoned, can be misleadingly seductive. Guesses can be selected for trial strategically, for their caution (for which Peirce gave as example the game ofTwenty Questions), breadth, or incomplexity.[124] One can discover only that which would be revealed through their sufficient experience anyway, and so the point is to expedite it; economy of research demands the leap, so to speak, of abduction and governs its art.[123]
Deductive phase. Two stages:
i. Explication. Not clearly premised, but a deductive analysis of the hypothesis so as to render its parts as clear as possible.
ii. Demonstration: Deductive Argumentation,Euclidean in procedure. Explicit deduction of consequences of the hypothesis as predictions about evidence to be found.Corollarial or, if needed, Theorematic.
Inductive phase. Evaluation of the hypothesis, inferring from observational or experimental tests of its deduced consequences. The long-run validity of the rule of induction is deducible from the principle (presuppositional to reasoning in general) that the real "is only the object of the final opinion to which sufficient investigation would lead";[110] in other words, anything excluding such a process would never be real. Induction involving the ongoing accumulation of evidence follows "a method which, sufficiently persisted in", will "diminish the error below any predesignate degree". Three stages:
i. Classification. Not clearly premised, but an inductive classing of objects of experience under general ideas.
ii. Probation: direct Inductive Argumentation. Crude or Gradual in procedure. Crude Induction, founded on experience in one mass (CP 2.759), presumes that future experience on a question will not differ utterly from all past experience (CP 2.756). Gradual Induction makes a new estimate of the proportion of truth in the hypothesis after each test, and is Qualitative or Quantitative. Qualitative Gradual Induction depends on estimating the relative evident weights of the various qualities of the subject class under investigation (CP 2.759; see alsoCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 7.114–120). Quantitative Gradual Induction depends on how often, in a fair sample of instances ofS,S is found actually accompanied byP that was predicted forS (CP 2.758). It depends on measurements, or statistics, or counting.
iii. Sentential Induction. "...which, by Inductive reasonings, appraises the different Probations singly, then their combinations, then makes self-appraisal of these very appraisals themselves, and passes final judgment on the whole result".
Peirce drew on the methodological implications of thefour incapacities—no genuine introspection, no intuition in the sense of non-inferential cognition, no thought but in signs, and no conception of the absolutely incognizable—to attack philosophicalCartesianism, of which he said that:[125]
"It teaches that philosophy must begin in universal doubt" – when, instead, we start with preconceptions, "prejudices [...] which it does not occur to uscan be questioned", though we may find reason to question them later. "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."
"It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is...in the individual consciousness" – when, instead, in science a theory stays on probation till agreement is reached, then it has no actual doubters left. No lone individual can reasonably hope to fulfill philosophy's multi-generational dream. When "candid and disciplined minds" continue to disagree on a theoretical issue, even the theory's author should feel doubts about it.
It trusts to "a single thread of inference depending often upon inconspicuous premisses" – when, instead, philosophy should, "like the successful sciences", proceed only from tangible, scrutinizable premisses and trust not to any one argument but instead to "the multitude and variety of its arguments" as forming, not a chain at least as weak as its weakest link, but "a cable whose fibers", soever "slender, are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected".
It renders many facts "absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that 'God makes them so' is to be regarded as an explanation"[f] – when, instead, philosophy should avoid being "unidealistic",[g] misbelieving that something real can defy or evade all possible ideas, and supposing, inevitably, "some absolutely inexplicable, unanalyzable ultimate", which explanatory surmise explains nothing and so is inadmissible.
On May 14, 1867, the 27-year-old Peirce presented a paper entitled "On a New List of Categories" to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, which published it the following year. The paper outlined a theory of predication, involving three universal categories that Peirce developed in response to readingAristotle,Immanuel Kant, andG. W. F. Hegel, categories that Peirce applied throughout his work for the rest of his life.[19] Peirce scholars generally regard the "New List" as foundational or breaking the ground for Peirce's "architectonic", his blueprint for a pragmatic philosophy. In the categories one will discern, concentrated, the pattern that one finds formed by the three grades of clearness in "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878 paper foundational to pragmatism), and in numerous other trichotomies in his work.
"On a New List of Categories" is cast as a Kantian deduction; it is short but dense and difficult to summarize. The following table is compiled from that and later works.[126] In 1893, Peirce restated most of it for a less advanced audience.[127]
Peirce's categories (technical name: the cenopythagorean categories)[128]
In 1918, the logicianC. I. Lewis wrote, "The contributions of C.S. Peirce to symbolic logic are more numerous and varied than those of any other writer—at least in the nineteenth century."[134]
On Peirce and his contemporariesErnst Schröder andGottlob Frege,Hilary Putnam (1982)[92] documented that Frege's work on the logic of quantifiers had little influence on his contemporaries, although it was published four years before the work of Peirce and his student Oscar Howard Mitchell. Putnam found that mathematicians and logicians learned about the logic of quantifiers through the independent work of Peirce and Mitchell, particularly through Peirce's "On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation"[91] (1885), published in the premier American mathematical journal of the day, and cited byPeano and Schröder, among others, who ignored Frege. They also adopted and modified Peirce's notations, typographical variants of those now used. Peirce apparently was ignorant of Frege's work, despite their overlapping achievements in logic,philosophy of language, and thefoundations of mathematics.
Peirce's work on formal logic had admirers besidesErnst Schröder:
The Polish school of logic and foundational mathematics, includingAlfred Tarski;
Arthur Prior, who praised and studied Peirce's logical work in a 1964 paper[27] and inFormal Logic (saying on page 4 that Peirce "perhaps had a keener eye for essentials than any other logician before or since").
A philosophy of logic, grounded in his categories and semiotic, can be extracted from Peirce's writings and, along with Peirce's logical work more generally, is exposited and defended in Hilary Putnam (1982);[92] the Introduction in Nathan Houseret al. (1997);[137] andRandall Dipert's chapter inCheryl Misak (2004).[138]
Peirce regarded logicper se as a division of philosophy, as a normative science based on esthetics and ethics, as more basic than metaphysics,[117] and as "the art of devising methods of research".[139] More generally, as inference, "logic is rooted in the social principle", since inference depends on a standpoint that, in a sense, is unlimited.[140] Peirce called (with no sense of deprecation) "mathematics of logic" much of the kind of thing which, in current research and applications, is called simply "logic". He was productive in both (philosophical) logic and logic's mathematics, which were connected deeply in his work and thought.
Peirce argued that logic is formal semiotic: the formal study of signs in the broadest sense, not only signs that are artificial, linguistic, or symbolic, but also signs that are semblances or are indexical such as reactions. Peirce held that "all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs",[141] along with their representational and inferential relations. He argued that, since all thought takes time, all thought is in signs[142] and sign processes ("semiosis") such as the inquiry process. Hedivided logic into: (1) speculative grammar, or stechiology, on how signs can be meaningful and, in relation to that, what kinds of signs there are, how they combine, and how some embody or incorporate others; (2) logical critic, or logic proper, on the modes of inference; and (3) speculative oruniversal rhetoric, or methodeutic,[114] the philosophical theory of inquiry, including pragmatism.
In his "F.R.L." [First Rule of Logic] (1899), Peirce states that the first, and "in one sense, the sole", rule of reason is that,to learn, one needs to desire to learn and desire it without resting satisfied with that which one is inclined to think.[117] So, the first rule is,to wonder. Peirce proceeds to a critical theme in research practices and the shaping of theories:
...there follows onecorollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.
Peirce adds, that method and economy are best in research but no outright sin inheres in trying any theory in the sense that the investigation via its trial adoption can proceed unimpeded and undiscouraged, and that "the one unpardonable offence" is a philosophical barricade against truth's advance, an offense to which "metaphysicians in all ages have shown themselves the most addicted". Peirce in many writings holds thatlogic precedes metaphysics (ontological, religious, and physical).
Peirce goes on to list four common barriers to inquiry: (1) Assertion of absolute certainty; (2) maintaining that something is absolutely unknowable; (3) maintaining that something is absolutely inexplicable because absolutely basic or ultimate; (4) holding that perfect exactitude is possible, especially such as to quite preclude unusual and anomalous phenomena. To refuse absolute theoretical certainty is the heart offallibilism, which Peirce unfolds into refusals to set up any of the listed barriers. Peirce elsewhere argues (1897) that logic's presupposition of fallibilism leads at length to the view that chance and continuity are very real (tychism andsynechism).[100]
The First Rule of Logic pertains to the mind's presuppositions in undertaking reason and logic; presuppositions, for instance, that truth and the real do not depend on yours or my opinion of them but do depend on representational relation and consist in the destined end in investigation taken far enough (see below). He describes such ideas as, collectively, hopes which, in particular cases, one is unable seriously to doubt.[143]
TheJournal of Speculative Philosophy series (1868–1869), including
Questions concerning certain Faculties claimed for Man (1868)
Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868)
Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four Incapacities (1869)
In three articles in 1868–1869,[142][125][144] Peirce rejected mere verbal orhyperbolic doubt and first or ultimate principles, and argued that we have (as he numbered them[125]):
No power of Introspection. All knowledge of the internal world comes by hypothetical reasoning from known external facts.
No power of Intuition (cognition without logical determination by previous cognitions). No cognitive stage is absolutely first in a process. All mental action has the form of inference.
No power of thinking without signs. A cognition must be interpreted in a subsequent cognition in order to be a cognition at all.
No conception of the absolutely incognizable.
(The above sense of the term "intuition" is almost Kant's, said Peirce. It differs from the current looser sense that encompasses instinctive or anyway half-conscious inference.)
Peirce argued that those incapacities imply the reality of the general and of the continuous, the validity of the modes of reasoning,[144] and the falsity of philosophicalCartesianism (see below).
Peirce rejected the conception (usually ascribed to Kant) of the unknowable thing-in-itself[125] and later said that to "dismiss make-believes" is a prerequisite for pragmatism.[145]
Peirce sought, through his wide-ranging studies through the decades, formal philosophical ways to articulate thought's processes, and also to explain the workings of science. These inextricably entangled questions of a dynamics of inquiry rooted in nature and nurture led him to develop his semiotic with very broadened conceptions of signs and inference, and, as its culmination, a theory of inquiry for the task of saying 'how science works' and devising research methods. This would be logic by the medieval definition taught for centuries: art of arts, science of sciences, having the way to the principles of all methods.[139] Influences radiate from points on parallel lines of inquiry inAristotle's work, in suchloci as: the basic terminology ofpsychology inOn the Soul; the founding description ofsign relations inOn Interpretation; and the differentiation ofinference into three modes that are commonly translated into English asabduction,deduction, andinduction, in thePrior Analytics, as well as inference byanalogy (calledparadeigma by Aristotle), which Peirce regarded as involving the other three modes.
Peirce began writing on semiotic in the 1860s, around the time when he devised his system of three categories. He called it bothsemiotic andsemeiotic. Both are current in singular and plural. He based it on the conception of a triadicsign relation, and definedsemiosis as "action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation ofthree subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs".[146] As to signs in thought, Peirce emphasized the reverse: "To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs."[142]
Peirce held that all thought is in signs, issuing in and from interpretation, wheresign is the word for the broadest variety of conceivable semblances, diagrams, metaphors, symptoms, signals, designations, symbols, texts, even mental concepts and ideas, all as determinations of a mind orquasi-mind, that which at least functions like a mind, as in the work of crystals or bees[147]—the focus is on sign action in general rather than on psychology, linguistics, or social studies (fields which he also pursued).
Inquiry is a kind of inference process, a manner of thinking and semiosis. Global divisions of ways for phenomena to stand as signs, and the subsumption of inquiry and thinking within inference as a sign process, enable the study of inquiry on semiotics' three levels:
Conditions for meaningfulness. Study of significatory elements and combinations, their grammar.
Validity, conditions for true representation. Critique of arguments in their various separate modes.
Conditions for determining interpretations. Methodology of inquiry in its mutually interacting modes.
Peirce uses examples often from common experience, but defines and discusses such things as assertion and interpretation in terms of philosophical logic. In a formal vein, Peirce said:
On the Definition of Logic. Logic isformal semiotic. A sign is something,A, which brings something,B, itsinterpretant sign, determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence (or a lower implied sort) with something,C, itsobject, as that in which itself stands toC. This definition no more involves any reference to human thought than does the definition of a line as the place within which a particle lies during a lapse of time. It is from this definition that I deduce the principles of logic by mathematical reasoning, and by mathematical reasoning that, I aver, will support criticism ofWeierstrassian severity, and that is perfectly evident. The word "formal" in the definition is also defined.[148]
Peirce's theory of signs is known to be one of the most complex semiotic theories due to its generalistic claim. Anything is a sign—not absolutely as itself, but instead in some relation or other. Thesign relation is the key. It defines three roles encompassing (1) the sign, (2) the sign's subject matter, called itsobject, and (3) the sign's meaning or ramification as formed into a kind of effect called itsinterpretant (a further sign, for example a translation). It is an irreducibletriadic relation, according to Peirce. The roles are distinct even when the things that fill those roles are not. The roles are but three; a sign of an object leads to one or more interpretants, and, as signs, they lead to further interpretants.
Extension × intension = information. Two traditional approaches to sign relation, necessary though insufficient, are the way ofextension (a sign's objects, also called breadth, denotation, or application) and the way ofintension (the objects' characteristics, qualities, attributes referenced by the sign, also called depth,comprehension, significance, or connotation). Peirce adds a third, the way ofinformation, including change of information, to integrate the other two approaches into a unified whole.[149] For example, because of the equation above, if a term's total amount of information stays the same, then the more that the term 'intends' or signifies about objects, the fewer are the objects to which the term 'extends' or applies.
Determination. A sign depends on its object in such a way as to represent its object—the object enables and, in a sense, determines the sign. A physically causal sense of this stands out when a sign consists in an indicative reaction. The interpretant depends likewise on both the sign and the object—an object determines a sign to determine an interpretant. But this determination is not a succession of dyadic events, like a row of toppling dominoes; sign determination is triadic. For example, an interpretant does not merely represent something which represented an object; instead an interpretant represents somethingas a sign representing the object. The object (be it a quality or fact or law or even fictional) determines the sign to an interpretant through one's collateral experience[150] with the object, in which the object is found or from which it is recalled, as when a sign consists in a chance semblance of an absent object. Peirce used the word "determine" not in a strictly deterministic sense, but in a sense of "specializes",bestimmt,[151] involving variable amount, like an influence.[152] Peirce came to define representation and interpretation in terms of (triadic) determination.[153] The object determines the sign to determine another sign—the interpretant—to be related to the objectas the sign is related to the object, hence the interpretant, fulfilling its function as sign of the object, determines a further interpretant sign. The process is logically structured to perpetuate itself, and is definitive of sign, object, and interpretant in general.[152]
Peirce held there are exactly three basic elements in semiosis (sign action):
Asign (orrepresentamen)[i] represents, in the broadest possible sense of "represents". It is something interpretable as saying something about something. It is not necessarily symbolic, linguistic, or artificial—a cloud might be a sign of rain for instance, or ruins the sign of ancient civilization.[154] As Peirce sometimes put it (he definedsign at least 76 times[152]), the sign standsfor the objectto the interpretant. A sign represents its object in some respect, which respect is the sign'sground.[130]
Anobject (orsemiotic object) is a subject matter of a sign and an interpretant. It can be anything thinkable, a quality, an occurrence, a rule, etc., even fictional, such asPrince Hamlet.[155] All of those are special or partial objects. The object most accurately is theuniverse of discourse to which the partial or special object belongs.[155] For instance, a perturbation of Pluto's orbit is a sign about Pluto but ultimately not only about Pluto. An object either (i) isimmediate to a sign and is the object as represented in the sign or (ii) is adynamic object, the object as it really is, on which the immediate object is founded "as on bedrock".[156]
Aninterpretant (orinterpretant sign) is a sign's meaning or ramification as formed into a kind of idea or effect, an interpretation, human or otherwise. An interpretant is a sign (a) of the object and (b) of the interpretant's "predecessor" (the interpreted sign) as a sign of the same object. An interpretant either (i) isimmediate to a sign and is a kind of quality or possibility such as a word's usual meaning, or (ii) is adynamic interpretant, such as a state of agitation, or (iii) is afinal ornormal interpretant, a sum of the lessons which a sufficiently considered signwould have as effects on practice, and with which an actual interpretant may at most coincide.
Some of the understanding needed by the mind depends on familiarity with the object. To know what a given sign denotes, the mind needs some experience of that sign's object, experience outside of, and collateral to, that sign or sign system. In that context Peirce speaks of collateral experience, collateral observation, collateral acquaintance, all in much the same terms.[150]
Lines of joint classification of signs. Every sign is:[157]
1.
2.
3.
I.
Qualisign
or
Sinsign
or
Legisign
and
II.
Icon
or
Index
or
Symbol
and
III.
Rheme
or
Dicisign
or
Argument
Among Peirce's many sign typologies, three stand out, interlocked. The first typology depends on the sign itself, the second on how the sign stands for its denoted object, and the third on how the sign stands for its object to its interpretant. Also, each of the three typologies is a three-way division, atrichotomy, via Peirce's three phenomenologicalcategories: (1) quality of feeling, (2) reaction, resistance, and (3) representation, mediation.[157]
I.Qualisign, sinsign, legisign (also called tone, token, type, and also calledpotisign, actisign, famisign):[158] This typology classifies every sign according to the sign's own phenomenological category—the qualisign is a quality, a possibility, a "First"; the sinsign is a reaction or resistance, a singular object, an actual event or fact, a "Second"; and the legisign is a habit, a rule, a representational relation, a "Third".
II.Icon, index, symbol: This typology, the best known one, classifies every sign according to the category of the sign's way of denoting its object—the icon (also called semblance or likeness) by a quality of its own, the index by factual connection to its object, and the symbol by a habit or rule for its interpretant.
III.Rheme, dicisign, argument (also calledsumisign, dicisign, suadisign, alsoseme, pheme, delome,[158] and regarded as very broadened versions of the traditionalterm, proposition, argument): This typology classifies every sign according to the category which the interpretant attributes to the sign's way of denoting its object—the rheme, for example a term, is a sign interpreted to represent its object in respect of quality; the dicisign, for example a proposition, is a sign interpreted to represent its object in respect of fact; and the argument is a sign interpreted to represent its object in respect of habit or law. This is the culminating typology of the three, where the sign is understood as a structural element of inference.
Every sign belongs to one class or another within (I)and within (II)and within (III). Thus each of the three typologies is a three-valued parameter for every sign. The three parameters are not independent of each other; many co-classifications are absent, for reasons pertaining to the lack of either habit-taking or singular reaction in a quality, and the lack of habit-taking in a singular reaction. The result is not 27 but instead ten classes of signs fully specified at this level of analysis.
Borrowing a brace of concepts fromAristotle, Peirce examined three basic modes ofinference—abduction,deduction, andinduction—in his "critique of arguments" or "logic proper". Peirce also called abduction "retroduction", "presumption", and, earliest of all, "hypothesis". He characterized it as guessing and as inference to an explanatory hypothesis. He sometimes expounded the modes of inference by transformations of the categoricalsyllogism Barbara (AAA), for example in "Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis" (1878).[159] He does this by rearranging therule (Barbara's major premise), thecase (Barbara's minor premise), and theresult (Barbara's conclusion):
Deduction.
Rule: All the beans from this bag are white. Case: These beans are beans from this bag. Result: These beans are white.
Induction.
Case: These beans are [randomly selected] from this bag. Result: These beans are white. Rule: All the beans from this bag are white.
Hypothesis (Abduction).
Rule: All the beans from this bag are white. Result: These beans [oddly] are white. Case: These beans are from this bag.
In 1883, in "A Theory of Probable Inference" (Studies in Logic), Peirce equated hypothetical inference with the induction of characters of objects (as he had done in effect before[125]). Eventually dissatisfied, by 1900 he distinguished them once and for all and also wrote that he now took the syllogistic forms and the doctrine of logical extension and comprehension as being less basic than he had thought. In 1903 he presented the following logical form for abductive inference:[160]
The surprising fact, C, is observed;
But if A were true, C would be a matter of course,
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.
The logical form does not also cover induction, since induction neither depends on surprise nor proposes a new idea for its conclusion. Induction seeks facts to test a hypothesis; abduction seeks a hypothesis to account for facts. "Deduction proves that somethingmust be; Induction shows that somethingactually is operative; Abduction merely suggests that somethingmay be."[161] Peirce did not remain quite convinced that one logical form covers all abduction.[162] In hismethodeutic or theory of inquiry (see below), he portrayed abduction as an economic initiative to further inference and study, and portrayed all three modes as clarified by their coordination in essential roles in inquiry: hypothetical explanation, deductive prediction, inductive testing
On the issue of universals, Peirce was ascholastic realist, declaring the reality ofgenerals as early as 1868.[163] According to Peirce, his category he called "thirdness", the more general facts about the world, are extra-mental realities. Regardingmodalities (possibility, necessity, etc.), he came in later years to regard himself as having wavered earlier as to just how positively real the modalities are. In his 1897 "The Logic of Relatives" he wrote:
I formerly defined the possible as that which in a given state of information (real or feigned) we do not know not to be true. But this definition today seems to me only a twisted phrase which, by means of two negatives, conceals an anacoluthon. We know in advance of experience that certain things are not true, because we see they are impossible.
Peirce retained, as useful for some purposes, the definitions in terms of information states, but insisted that the pragmaticist is committed to a strongmodal realism by conceiving of objects in terms of predictive general conditional propositions about how theywould behave under certain circumstances.[164]
Continuity andsynechism are central in Peirce's philosophy: "I did not at first suppose that it was, as I gradually came to find it, the master-Key of philosophy".[165]
From a mathematical point of view, he embracedinfinitesimals and worked long on the mathematics of continua. He long held that the real numbers constitute a pseudo-continuum;[166] that a true continuum is the real subject matter ofanalysis situs (topology); and that a true continuum of instants exceeds—and within any lapse of time has room for—anyAleph number (any infinitemultitude as he called it) of instants.[167]
In 1908 Peirce wrote that he found that a true continuum might have or lack such room. Jérôme Havenel (2008): "It is on 26 May 1908, that Peirce finally gave up his idea that in every continuum there is room for whatever collection of any multitude. From now on, there are different kinds of continua, which have different properties."[168]
Peirce believed in God, and characterized such belief as founded in an instinct explorable in musing over the worlds of ideas, brute facts, and evolving habits—and it is a belief in God not as anactual orexistent being (in Peirce's sense of those words), but all the same as areal being.[169] In "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908),[118] Peirce sketches, for God's reality, an argument to a hypothesis of God as the Necessary Being, a hypothesis which he describes in terms of how it would tend to develop and become compelling in musement and inquiry by a normal person who is led, by the hypothesis, to consider as being purposed the features of the worlds of ideas, brute facts, and evolving habits (for example scientific progress), such that the thought of such purposefulness will "stand or fall with the hypothesis"; meanwhile, according to Peirce, the hypothesis, in supposing an "infinitely incomprehensible" being, starts off at odds with its own nature as a purportively true conception, and so, no matter how much the hypothesis grows, it both (A) inevitably regards itself as partly true, partly vague, and as continuing to define itself without limit, and (B) inevitably has God appearing likewise vague but growing, though God as the Necessary Being is not vague or growing; but the hypothesis will hold it to bemore false to say the opposite, that God is purposeless. Peirce also argued that the will is free[170] and (seeSynechism) that there is at least an attenuated kind of immortality.
Peirce held the view, which he calledobjective idealism, that "matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws".[171] Peirce observed that "Berkeley's metaphysical theories have at first sight an air of paradox and levity very unbecoming to a bishop".[172]
Peirce asserted the reality of (1) "absolute chance" or randomness (histychist view), (2) "mechanical necessity" or physical laws (anancist view), and (3) what he called the "law of love" (agapist view), echoing hiscategories Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, respectively.[99] He held that fortuitous variation (which he also called "sporting"), mechanical necessity, and creative love are the three modes of evolution (modes called "tychasm", "anancasm", and "agapasm")[173] of the cosmos and its parts. He found his conception of agapasm embodied inLamarckian evolution; the overall idea in any case is that of evolution tending toward an end or goal, and it could also be the evolution of a mind or a society; it is the kind of evolution which manifests workings of mind in some general sense. He said that overall he was a synechist, holding with reality of continuity,[99] especially of space, time, and law.[174]
Peirce outlined two fields, "Cenoscopy" and "Science of Review", both of which he called philosophy. Both included philosophy about science. In 1903 he arranged them, from more to less theoretically basic, thus:[101]
Science of Discovery.
Mathematics.
Cenoscopy (philosophy as discussed earlier in this article – categorial, normative, metaphysical), as First Philosophy, concerns positive phenomena in general, does not rely on findings from special sciences, and includes thegeneral study of inquiry and scientific method.
Idioscopy, or the Special Sciences (of nature and mind).
Science of Review, as Ultimate Philosophy, arranges "... the results of discovery, beginning with digests, and going on to endeavor to form a philosophy of science". His examples includedHumboldt'sCosmos,Comte'sPhilosophie positive, andSpencer'sSynthetic Philosophy.
Practical Science, or the Arts.
Peirce placed, within Science of Review, the work and theory ofclassifying the sciences (including mathematics and philosophy). His classifications, on which he worked for many years, draw on argument and wide knowledge, and are of interest both as a map for navigating his philosophy and as an accomplished polymath's survey of research in his time.
^"Peirce", in the case of C. S. Peirce, always rhymes with the English-language word "terse" and so, in most dialects, is pronounced exactly like the English-language word "purseⓘ."
^It was in Peirce's 1885 "On the Algebra of Logic". See Byrnes, John (1998), "Peirce's First-Order Logic of 1885",Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society v. 34, n. 4, pp. 949–976.
^Peirce condemned the use of "certainlikelihoods" (The Essential Peirce, 2:108–109) even more strongly than he criticizedBayesian methods. Peirce usedBayesian inference in criticizing parapsychology (Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 6:76).
^However, Peirce disagreed with Hegelianabsolute idealism. See for exampleCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8.131.
^Much of the mathematics of relations now taken for granted was "borrowed" from Peirce, not always with all due credit; on that and on how the youngBertrand Russell, especially hisPrinciples of Mathematics andPrincipia Mathematica, did not do Peirce justice, see Anellis (1995).[65]
^Representamen (/ˌrɛprɪzɛnˈteɪmən/REP-ri-zen-TAY-mən) was adopted (not coined) by Peirce as his technical term for thesign as covered in his theory, in case a divergence should come to light between his theoretical version and the popular senses of the word "sign". He eventually stopped using "representamen". SeeThe Essential Peirce, 2:272–273 andSemiotic and Significs p. 193, quotes in "Representamen" atCommens Digital Companion to C.S. Peirce.
^abcdMoore, Edward C., and Robin, Richard S., eds., (1964),Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Second Series, Amherst: U. of Massachusetts Press. On Peirce the astronomer, see Lenzen's chapter.
^Russell, Bertrand (1959),Wisdom of the West, p. 276
^abAnellis, Irving H. (1995), "Peirce Rustled, Russell Pierced: How Charles Peirce and Bertrand Russell Viewed Each Other's Work in Logic, and an Assessment of Russell's Accuracy and Role in the Historiography of Logic",Modern Logic 5, 270–328.ArisbeEprintArchived 2013-09-24 at theWayback Machine
^Popper, Karl (1972),Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, p. 212
^See Royce, Josiah, and Kernan, W. Fergus (1916), "Charles Sanders Peirce",The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Method v. 13, pp. 701–709.ArisbeEprint
^"The manuscript material now (1997) comes to more than a hundred thousand pages. These contain many pages of no philosophical interest, but the number of pages on philosophy certainly number much more than half of that. Also, a significant but unknown number of manuscripts have been lost." – Joseph Ransdell (1997), "Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic",end note 2Archived 2008-01-14 at theWayback Machine, 1997 light revision of 1977 version inSemiotica 19:157–178.
^Houser, Nathan, "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Peirce Papers", Fourth Congress of theIASS, Perpignan, France, 1989.Signs of Humanity, v. 3, 1992, pp. 1259–1268.Eprint
^Memorandum to the President of Charles S. Peirce Society by Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, U. of Helsinki, March 29, 2012.Eprint.
^See 1987 review by B. Kuklick (ofPeirce byChristopher Hookway), inBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Sciencev. 38, n. 1, pp. 117–119.First page.
^Auspitz, Josiah Lee (1994), "The Wasp Leaves the Bottle: Charles Sanders Peirce",The American Scholar, v. 63, n. 4, Autumn 1994, 602–618.ArisbeEprintArchived 2013-11-03 at theWayback Machine.
^abBurks, Arthur W., "Review: Charles S. Peirce,The new elements of mathematics",Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society v. 84, n. 5 (1978),pp. 913–918 (PDF).
^Peirce (MS, winter of 1880–1881), "A Boolian Algebra with One Constant",Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 4.12–20,Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 4:218–221. GooglePreview. See Roberts, Don D. (1973),The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce, p. 131.
^Peirce (1881), "On the Logic of Number",American Journal of Mathematics v. 4, pp.85–95. Reprinted (CP 3.252–288), (Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 4:299–309). See Shields, Paul (1997), "Peirce's Axiomatization of Arithmetic", in Houseret al., eds.,Studies in the Logic of Charles S. Peirce.
^abPeirce (1885), "On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation",American Journal of Mathematics 7, two parts, first part published 1885, pp.180–202 (see Houser inlinked paragraphArchived 2016-02-12 at theWayback Machine in "Introduction" inWritings of Charles S. Peirce, 4). Presented, National Academy of Sciences, Newport, RI, October 14–17, 1884 (seeThe Essential Peirce, 1,Headnote 16Archived 2014-10-19 at theWayback Machine). 1885 is the year usually given for this work. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 3.359–403,Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 5:162–190,The Essential Peirce, 1:225–228, in part.
^abcPutnam, Hilary (1982), "Peirce the Logician",Historia Mathematica 9, 290–301. Reprinted, pp. 252–260 in Putnam (1990),Realism with a Human Face, Harvard.Excerpt with article's last five pages.
^Brady, Geraldine (2000),From Peirce to Skolem: A Neglected Chapter in the History of Logic, North-Holland/Elsevier Science BV, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
^See Peirce (1898), Lecture 3, "The Logic of Relatives" (not the 1897Monist article),Reasoning and the Logic of Things, pp. 146–164 [151]
^Peirce (1898), "The Logic of Mathematics in Relation to Education" inEducational Review v. 15, pp.209–216 (viaInternet Archive). ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 3.553–562. See also his "The Simplest Mathematics" (1902 MS),Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 4.227–323.
^Haack, Susan and Kolenda, Konstantin (1977), "Two Fallibilists in Search of the Truth",Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, v. 51, pp. 63–104.JSTOR4106816
^abcPeirce (1893), "Evolutionary Love",The Monist v. 3, pp. 176–200. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 6.278–317,The Essential Peirce, 1:352–372.ArisbeEprintArchived May 20, 2007, at theWayback Machine
^abPeirce (1897) "Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution",Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1.141–175 (Eprint), placed by theCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, editors directly after "F.R.L." (1899,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1.135–140).
^abPeirce (1903),Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1.180–202 and (1906) "The Basis of Pragmaticism",The Essential Peirce, 2:372–373, see "Philosophy" atCommens Digital Companion to C.S. Peirce.
^ab"That the rule of induction will hold good in the long run may be deduced from the principle that reality is only the object of the final opinion to which sufficient investigation would lead", in Peirce (1878 April), "The Probability of Induction", p.718 (viaInternet Archive ) inPopular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 705–718. Reprinted inCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 2.669–693,Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 3:290–305,The Essential Peirce, 1:155–169, elsewhere.
^Peirce (1902),Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.13 note 1.
^SeeCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1.34Eprint (in "The Spirit of Scholasticism"), where Peirce ascribed the success of modern science less to a novel interest in verification than to the improvement of verification.
^SeeJoseph Ransdell's comments and his tabular list of titles of Peirce's proposed list of memoirs in 1902 for his Carnegie application,Eprint
^Peirce (1905), "Issues of Pragmaticism",The Monist, v. XV, n. 4, pp.481–499. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.438–463. Also important:Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.497–525.
^Peirce, "Philosophy and the Conduct of Life", Lecture 1 of the 1898 Cambridge (MA) Conferences Lectures,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1.616–648 in part andReasoning and the Logic of Things, 105–122, reprinted inThe Essential Peirce, 2:27–41.
^abcPeirce (1899 MS), "F.R.L." [First Rule of Logic],Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1.135–140,Eprint
^abPeirce (1908), "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God", published in large part,Hibbert Journal v. 7, 90–112. Reprinted with an unpublished part,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 6.452–485,Selected Writings pp. 358–379,The Essential Peirce, 2:434–450,Peirce on Signs 260–278.
^Peirce (c. 1906), "PAP (Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism)" (MS 293),The New Elements of Mathematics v. 4, pp. 319–320, first quote under "Abduction" atCommens Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce.
^Peirce (1903), "Pragmatism – The Logic of Abduction",Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.195–205, especially 196.Eprint.
^abSee MS L75.329–330, from Draft D ofMemoir 27Archived 2011-05-24 at theWayback Machine of Peirce's application to the Carnegie Institution:
Consequently, to discover is simply to expedite an event that would occur sooner or later, if we had not troubled ourselves to make the discovery. Consequently, the art of discovery is purely a question of economics. The economics of research is, so far as logic is concerned, the leading doctrine with reference to the art of discovery. Consequently, the conduct of abduction, which is chiefly a question of heuretic and is the first question of heuretic, is to be governed by economical considerations.
^Peirce, C. S., "On the Logic of Drawing Ancient History from Documents",The Essential Peirce, 2, see pp. 107–109. On Twenty Questions, see 109:
Thus, twenty skillful hypotheses will ascertain what 200,000 stupid ones might fail to do.
^abcdePeirce (1868), "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities",Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 2, n. 3,pp. 140–157. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.264–317,Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 2:211–242,The Essential Peirce, 1:28–55.ArisbeEprint.
^Peirce (1893), "The Categories" MS 403.ArisbeEprintArchived 2014-07-31 at theWayback Machine, edited byJoseph Ransdell, with information on the re-write, and interleaved with the 1867 "New List" for comparison.
^"Minute Logic", CP 2.87, c. 1902 and A Letter to Lady Welby, CP 8.329, 1904. See relevant quotes under "Categories, Cenopythagorean Categories" inCommens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms (CDPT), Bergman & Paalova, eds., U. of Helsinki.
^abThe groundblackness is the pure abstraction of the qualityblack. Somethingblack is somethingembodying blackness, pointing us back to the abstraction. The qualityblack amounts to reference to its own pure abstraction, the groundblackness. The question is not merely ofnoun (the ground) versusadjective (the quality), but rather of whether we are considering the black(ness) as abstracted away from application to an object, or instead as so applied (for instance to a stove). Yet note that Peirce's distinction here is not that between a property-general and a property-individual (atrope). See "On a New List of Categories" (1867), in the section appearing in CP 1.551. Regarding the ground, cf. the Scholastic conception of a relation'sfoundation, Google limited previewDeely 1982, p. 61.
^A quale in this sense is asuch, just as a quality is a suchness. Cf. under "Use of Letters" in §3 of Peirce's "Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives",Memoirs of the American Academy, v. 9, pp. 317–378 (1870), separately reprinted (1870), from which seep. 6 via Google books, also reprinted in CP 3.63:
Now logical terms are of three grand classes. The first embraces those whoselogical form involves only the conception of quality, and which therefore represent a thing simply as "a —." These discriminate objects in the most rudimentary way, which does not involve any consciousness of discrimination. They regard an object as it is in itself assuch (quale); for example, as horse, tree, or man. These areabsolute terms. (Peirce, 1870. But also see "Quale-Consciousness", 1898, in CP 6.222–237.)
^Lewis, Clarence Irving (1918),A Survey of Symbolic Logic, see ch. 1, §7 "Peirce", pp. 79–106, seep. 79 (Internet Archive). Note that Lewis's bibliography lists works by Frege, tagged with asterisks as important.
^Beil, Ralph G. and Ketner, Kenneth (2003), "Peirce, Clifford, and Quantum Theory",International Journal of Theoretical Physics v. 42, n. 9, pp. 1957–1972.
^Houser, Roberts, and Van Evra, eds. (1997),Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce, Indiana U., Bloomington, IN.
^Misak, ed. (2004),The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, Cambridge U., UK.
^abPeirce (1882), "Introductory Lecture on the Study of Logic" delivered September 1882,Johns Hopkins University Circulars, v. 2, n. 19, pp.11–12 (via Google), November 1882. Reprinted (The Essential Peirce, 1:210–214;Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 4:378–382;Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 7.59–76). The definition of logic quoted by Peirce is byPeter of Spain.
^Peirce (1878), "The Doctrine of Chances",Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 604–615 (CP 2.645–668,Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 3:276–290,The Essential Peirce, 1:142–154).
... death makes the number of our risks, the number of our inferences, finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain. The very idea of probability and of reasoning rests on the assumption that this number is indefinitely great. ... logicality inexorably requires that our interests shallnot be limited. ... Logic is rooted in the social principle.
^Peirce,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.448 footnote, from "The Basis of Pragmaticism" in 1906.
^abcPeirce, (1868), "Questions concerning certain Faculties claimed for Man",Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 2, n. 2,pp. 103–114. On thought in signs, see p. 112. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.213–263 (on thought in signs, see 253),Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 2:193–211,The Essential Peirce, 2:11–27.ArisbeEprintArchived 2007-10-14 at theWayback Machine.
^Peirce (1902), The Carnegie Institute Application, Memoir 10, MS L75.361–362,ArisbeEprintArchived 2011-05-24 at theWayback Machine.
^abPeirce, "Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four Incapacities",Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. II, n. 4,pp. 193–208. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.318–357,Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 2:242–272 (Peirce Edition Project,EprintArchived 2010-05-28 at theWayback Machine),The Essential Peirce, 1:56–82.
^Peirce (1905), "What Pragmatism Is",The Monist, v. XV, n. 2, pp. 161–181,see 167. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.411–437, see 416.ArisbeEprint.
^Peirce 1907,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.484. Reprinted,The Essential Peirce, 2:411 in "Pragmatism" (398–433).
^See "Quasi-mind" inCommens Digital Companion to C.S. Peirce.
^abSee pp. 404–409 in "Pragmatism" inThe Essential Peirce, 2. Ten quotes on collateral experience from Peirce provided by Joseph Ransdell can be viewedhere at peirce-l's Lyris archive. Note: Ransdell's quotes fromCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8.178–179 are also inThe Essential Peirce, 2:493–494, which gives their date as 1909; and his quote fromCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8.183 is also inThe Essential Peirce, 2:495–496, which gives its date as 1909.
^Peirce, letter to William James, dated 1909, seeThe Essential Peirce, 2:492.
I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former. My insertion of "upon a person" is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.
^abPeirce (1909), A Letter to William James,The Essential Peirce, 2:492–502. Fictional object, 498. Object as universe of discourse, 492. See "Dynamical Object" atCommens Digital Companion to C.S. Peirce.
^abPeirce (1903 MS), "Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are Determined", under other titles inCollected Papers (CP) v. 2, paragraphs 233–272, and reprinted under the original title inEssential Peirce (EP) v. 2, pp. 289–299. Alsosee image of MS 339 (August 7, 1904) supplied to peirce-l byBernard Morand of theInstitut Universitaire de Technologie (France),Département Informatique.
^Popular Science Monthly, v. 13, pp. 470–482, see472 orthe book at Wikisource.Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 2.619–644 [623]
^See, under "Abduction" atCommens Digital Companion to C.S. Peirce, the following quotes:
On correction of "A Theory of Probable Inference", see quotes from "Minute Logic",Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 2.102, c. 1902, and from the Carnegie Application (L75), 1902,Historical Perspectives on Peirce's Logic of Science v. 2, pp. 1031–1032.
On new logical form for abduction, see quote from Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, 1903,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.188–189.
See also Santaella, Lucia (1997) "The Development of Peirce's Three Types of Reasoning: Abduction, Deduction, and Induction", 6th Congress of theIASS.Eprint.
^"Lectures on Pragmatism", 1903,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 5.171.
Peirce (1897), "The Logic of Relatives",The Monist v. VII, n. 2 pp. 161–217, see206 (via Google). ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 3.456–552.
Peirce (1905), "Issues of Pragmaticism",The Monist v. XV, n. 4, pp. 481–499, see495–496 (via Google). Reprinted (CP 5.438–463, see 453–457).
Peirce (c. 1905), Letter to Signor Calderoni,Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8.205–213, see 208.
Lane, Robert (2007), "Peirce's Modal Shift: From Set Theory to Pragmaticism",Journal of the History of Philosophy, v. 45, n. 4.
^Peirce (1903 MS),Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 6.176: "But I now define apseudo-continuum as that which modern writers on the theory of functions call acontinuum. But this is fully represented by [...] the totality of real values, rational and irrational [...]."
^Peirce (1902 MS) andRansdell, Joseph, ed. (1998), "Analysis of the Methods of Mathematical Demonstration",Memoir 4Archived 2013-11-03 at theWayback Machine, Draft C, MS L75.90–102, see 99–100. (Once there, scroll down).
Peirce (1908), "Some Amazing Mazes (Conclusion), Explanation of Curiosity the First",The Monist, v. 18, n. 3, pp. 416–444, see463–464. ReprintedCollected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 4.594–642, see 642.
Havenel, Jérôme (2008), "Peirce's Clarifications on Continuity",Transactions Winter 2008 pp. 68–133, see 119.Abstract.
^Peirce in his 1906 "Answers to Questions concerning my Belief in God",Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 6.495,EprintArchived February 23, 2008, at theWayback Machine, reprinted in part as "The Concept of God" inPhilosophical Writings of Peirce, J. Buchler, ed., 1940, pp. 375–378:
I will also take the liberty of substituting "reality" for "existence." This is perhaps overscrupulosity; but I myself always useexist in its strict philosophical sense of "react with the other like things in the environment." Of course, in that sense, it would be fetichism to say that God "exists." The word "reality," on the contrary, is used in ordinary parlance in its correct philosophical sense. [....] I define thereal as that which holds its characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or men may havethought them to be, or ever will havethought them to be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forciblemeans are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched.
^Peirce (1891), "The Architecture of Theories",The Monist v. 1, pp.161–176, seep. 170, viaInternet Archive. Reprinted (CP 6.7–34) and (The Essential Peirce, 1:285–297, see p. 293).
Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway, Joseph Ransdell, ed.Archived 2022-11-30 at theWayback Machine. Includes over 100 annotated writings by Peirce, hundreds of papers on Peirce, and archives of a Peirce email forum.
L'I.R.S.C.E. (1974–2003) –Institut de Recherche en Sémiotique, Communication et Éducation, Gérard Deledalle, Joëlle Réthoré, U. ofPerpignan, France.
Minute Semeiotic,Vinicius Romanini, U. ofSão Paulo, Brazil. English, Portuguese.
Peirce atSigno: Theoretical Semiotics on the Web, Louis Hébert, director, supported by U. of Québec. Theory, application, exercises of Peirce'sSemiotics andEsthetics. English, French.
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