In this essay, we propose that Peirce’s Existential Graphs can derive the desired uniqueness implication (or in a weaker claim, the definite description readings) of donkey pronouns in conjunctive discourse (A man walks in the park. He whistles), without postulating a separate category of E-type pronouns.

Robert Brandom holds that what we mean is best understood in terms of what inferences we are prepared to defend, and that such a defence is best understood in terms of rule-governed social interactions. This manages to explain quite a lot. However, for those who think that there is more to making correct/incorrect inferences than obeying/breaking accepted rules, Brandom’s account fails to adequately capture what it means to reason properly. Thus, in an effort to sketch an alternative that does not (...) rely primarily on peer pressure, I draw on the work of C. S. Peirce. Peirce argued that, when we reason, we manipulate abstract diagrams in order to observe what results. Since some manipulations are barred by the self-same nature of the diagrams, I try to show that this qualitative incompatibility, which I dub “contrapiction,” is a good reason to regard some reasoning as bad. (shrink)

Endoporeutic method exemplifies the fundamental principle concerning the direction of the flow of interpretation in Peirce’s diagrammatic logic of existential graphs. It boils down to the fact that in EGs, one starts with the outermost graph-instance or the cut and proceeds inwards according to the conventions of EGs. The interpretation is dialogic, which Peirce laid out in his semeiotics in terms of two players, the Interpreter and the Utterer, and in EGs in terms of the Grapheus and the Graphist. Endoporeutic (...) method is thus closely related to semantic games. It is also an early sketch of model theory in logic, and marks an outlook on logic that puts the notion of compositionality under critical scrutiny. (shrink)