In this paper I examine parallels between C.S. Peirce's most mature account of signs and contemporary philosophy of language. I do this by first introducing a summary of Peirce's final account of Signs. I then use that account of signs to reconstruct Peircian answers to two puzzles of reference: The Problem of Cognitive Significance, or Frege's Puzzle; and The Same-Saying Phenomenon for Indexicals. Finally, a comparison of these Peircian answers with both Fregean and Direct Referentialist approaches to the puzzles highlights (...) interesting parallels and important differences between Peirce's final account of signs, and the concepts used in analytic philosophy of language. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza el caso del descubrimiento del megaterio desde una perspectiva abductiva, prestando atención al proceso de generación y selección de hipótesis de algunos de los actores involucrados en este singular acontecimiento. El análisis muestra la importancia de ciertos puntos metodológicos relacionados con la práctica y el rigor científico para proponer hipótesis plausibles.

Epistemologie a kognitivní věda se zabývají studiem procesů poznání. Z výsledků takového bádání vyplývají určité diagnostické a preskriptivní závěry s cílem pozitivně regulovat způsob myšlení. Předložená práce má za cíl ukázat, že epistemické a kognitivní studie nejsou doposud dostatečně vyvinuté, aby mohly kategoricky doporučit správný a universální způsob myšlení. Pokrok ve vědě je výsledek kolektivního úsilí nejen současnosti, ale i minulých objevů a omylů. Na historickém případě chybné teorie flogistonu se tato práce bude snažit doložit, že se na objevení pravdy (...) plodně podílí i nesprávné epistemické procesy. Tendence některých myslitelů dneška takové praktiky morálně odsuzovat na základě prevalence pseudovědeckých názorů je málo produktivní. Podrobné studium dynamiky chybující minulosti osvětlí poznávací proces lépe než soubor sterilních epistemických pravidel. (shrink)

This account will demonstrate that the element of surprise is a fundamental device in establishing double consciousness regimes; it further shows how such dialogic paradigms foster abductive inferences by filtering out irrelevant percepts/antecedents. The account sets up Peirce’s Pheme to be the primary device which shocks interpreters’ sensibilities – starting them on a course to question conflicting principles between ego and non-ego. The natural disposition of surprise to instantaneously deliver insight into which antecedents are relevant to vital, anomalous consequences demonstrates (...) its indispensability in generating logical and semiotic advances. For Peirce, vividness, as an element of surprise in Secondness, is largely responsible for the nuts and bolts of how surprise facilitates logic; its means to activate searches for plausible antecedents makes vividness the prime candidate. The success of vividness at turning the mind of interpreters to new ways of explaining the consequence largely hinges upon the external properties of the unexpected consequence – not merely objects’ instantaneity, but their striking characteristics, as well. Even though vividness is external, it produces internal responses, in the form of a war against feelings. In this way, double consciousness paradigms are initiated, which, in turn, call for hypothesis generation. (shrink)

The extent of harm and suffering caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted a debate about whether the epidemic could have been contained, had the gravity of the crisis been predicted earlier. In this paper, the philosophical debate on predictive reasoning is framed by Hume’s problem of induction. Hume argued that it is rationally unjustified to move from the finite observations of past incidences to the predictions of future events. Philosophy has offered two major responses to the problem of induction: (...) the pragmatic induction of Peirce and the critical rationalism of Popper. It is argued that of these two, Popper’s critical rationalism provides a more potent tool for preparing for unanticipated events such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Popper’s notion of risky predictions equips strategic foresight with clear hypotheticals regarding potential crisis scenarios. Peirce’s pragmatic induction, instead, leans on probabilities that are slower to be amended as unexpected events start unfolding. The difference between the two approaches is demonstrated through a case study of the patterns of reasoning within the World Health Organization in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. (shrink)

Peirce’s category of Firstness is first and fundamental. Without Firstness, we can say, nothing can (later) be – no time, no space, no things, no processes, no growth, no regularities, and no thoughts – hence, nothing of which we can ever conceive. However, despite the fundamentality of Peirce’s category of Firstness, we still do not believe that it has received the attention that it rightly deserves; not by Peirce himself, nor by his commentators. In the following we will, therefore, look (...) at the category of Firstness and try to give a modest glimpse of its fundamentality in relation to four other of Peirce’s central concepts: namely, evolution, consciousness, icon, and, finally, abduction. (shrink)

El presente artículo presenta cuatro visiones sobre la función de la abducción en el pragmatismo de Peirce y el modo en que afronta el tema de la novedad en la ciencia. La primera visión reduce la abducción a una intuición. La segunda indica que la abducción no sirve sin un “instinto descubridor”, la tercera apunta a que la abducción es insuficiente para explicar la novedad en la ciencia. La cuarta visión, que es la que se sostiene en este artículo, afirma (...) que desde el pensamiento de Peirce se dan las herramientas suficientes para resolver el problema de la novedad en la ciencia desde el pragmatismo como lógica de la abducción. Estas herramientas son las tres tesis cotarias. (shrink)

Following the Peirce’s proposal drawn in the Neglected Argument, here we focus on the equivalence, from the generative and methodological point of view, of what we will call the religious and scientific abductive experiences. To articulate these connections, we also rely on William James's Gifford Lectures collected under the title The Varieties of Religious Experience. Moreover, we study extensively the universality of the Musement which is related to the mental processes that lead to the generation of the most creative abductions; (...) finally, we fully identify the Musement with a recent discovery of neuroscience, the brain’s default mode network. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the case of the discovery of the megatherium from an abductive perspective, paying attention to the process of hypothesis generation and selection of some of the agents involved in this unique event. The analysis shows the importance of certain methodological issues related to scientific rigor in order to propose plausible hypotheses.

In this article I analyze the Peirce’s concepts of abduction, insight, logica utens and logica docens in order to propose, finally, a vision in which “genuine” abductions are generated only after an exercise in logica docens. These “genuine” abductions are characterized in contrast to those generated by means of logica utens.