There are significant differences between the neopragmatism as formulated by Rorty, based on James’ and Dewey’s pragmatism, and what Peirce, in order to distinguish his own approach from the last two thinkers, called pragmaticism. I take in this paper the concept of solidarity as a focus, from which those differences will be implied, albeit many other points could be chosen. I highlight that the usual Rorty’s sentence beginning with ‘we pragmatists…’ shall necessarily exclude Peirce. Exemplarily, I could mention the concepts (...) of representation, which for Peirce has nothing to do with mirror, and of truth that, for him, also has no relation at all with fixed essences. Those differences will not only mark a very clear border between the two concepts of pragmatism, but also will question how the idea of community can be supported only by dialogical agreements, without the anchor of common open human experience. Pragmaticism and neopragmatism differ not only regarding their specific range of philosophical problems but, moreover, on what kind of problems they really consider as genuinely philosophical. (shrink)

This chapter presents a detailed explanation of Peirce’s early and late views on semiotic indeterminacy and then considers how those views might be applied within biosemiotics. Peirce distinguished two different forms of semiotic indeterminacy: generality and vagueness. He defined each in terms of the “right” that indeterminate signs extend, either to their interpreters in the case of generality or to their utterers in the case of vagueness, to further determine their meaning. On Peirce’s view, no sign is absolutely determinate, i.e., (...) every sign is indeterminate to at least some degree and so exhibits some degree of generality or vagueness. If Peirce was right about this, then no instance of biosemiosis is completely determinate—every biosign must be general or vague to some degree. I show that on Peirce’s view, whether a sign is general or vague depends on its immediate object, “the idea which the sign is built upon,” and I explain how Peirce would go about identifying the immediate object of a sign lacking both a minded utterer and a minded interpreter—an identification that must be possible if any biosign is indeterminate. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.