C.S. Peirce held what is nowadays called a “commitment view” of assertion. According to this type of view, assertion is a kind of act that is determined by its “normative effects”: by asserting a proposition one undertakes certain commitments, typically to be able to provide reason to believe what one is asserting, or, in Peirce’s words, one “takes responsibility” for the truth of the proposition one asserts. Despite being an early adopter of the view, if Peirce’s commitment view of assertion (...) is mentioned at all in contemporary discussions it is only in passing. His view is, however, far more complex and nuanced than he has been given credit for. My primary goal here, then, is to get a better understanding of Peirce’s version of a commitment view of assertion. I also argue that figuring out the details of Peirce’s theory of assertion can also provide us with a viable way to respond to problems that contemporary commitment views of assertion face. (shrink)

Cheryl Misak offers a strikingly new view of the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. Pragmatism, the home-grown philosophy of America, thinks of truth not as a static relation between a sentence and the believer-independent world, but rather, a belief that works. The founders of pragmatism, Peirce and James, developed this idea in more and less objective ways. The standard story of the reception of American pragmatism in England is that Russell and Moore savaged James's theory, and that pragmatism (...) has never fully recovered. An alternative, and underappreciated, story is told here. The brilliant Cambridge mathematician, philosopher and economist, Frank Ramsey, was in the mid-1920s heavily influenced by the almost-unheard-of Peirce and was developing a pragmatist position of great promise. He then transmitted that pragmatism to his friend Wittgenstein, although had Ramsey lived past the age of 26 to see what Wittgenstein did with that position, Ramsey would not have liked what he saw. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Huw Price’s widely read “Truth as Convenient Friction” overstates the onerousness, and underrates the utility, of the ontological commitments involved in Charles S. Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth. This argument comes in three parts. First, I briefly explain Peirce’s view of truth, and relate it to his account of assertion. Next, I articulate what I take Price’s grievance against Peirce’s view to be, and suggest that this criticism misses the target. Finally, (...) I argue that Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth has greater explanatory power than the narrowly linguistic version put forward by Price, such that even the ontology-averse should accept it. (shrink)

Written in an outstandingly clear and lively style, this 1969 book provokes its readers to rethink issues they may have regarded as long since settled.

In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; (...) rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science. (shrink)

The American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce, best known as the founder of pragmatism, has been influential not only in the pragmatic tradition but more recently in the philosophy of science and the study of semiotics, or sign theory. Strands of System provides an accessible overview of Peirce's systematic philosophy for those who are beginning to explore his thinking and its import for more recent trends in philosophy.

Charles Sanders Peirce proposed two different solutions to the Liar Paradox. He proposed the first in 1865 and the second in 1869. However, no one has yet noted in the literature that Peirce rejected his 1869 solution in 1903. Peirce never explicitly proposed a third solution to the Liar Paradox. Nonetheless, I shall argue he developed the resources for a third and novel solution to the Liar Paradox.In what follows, I will first explain the Liar Paradox. Second, I will briefly (...) rehearse Peirce's 1865 solution and his reasons for rejecting it.1 Third, I will review his 1869 solution and his reasons for rejecting it in 1903. Lastly, I will propose a novel solution to the Liar Paradox by drawing upon Peirce's later.. (shrink)

The paper gives a detailed reconstruction and discussion of Peirce’s doctrine of propositions, so-called Dicisigns, developed in the years around 1900. The special features different from the logical mainstream are highlighted: the functional definition not dependent upon conscious stances nor human language, the semiotic characterization extending propositions and quasi-propositions to cover prelinguistic and prehuman occurrences of signs, the relations of Dicisigns to the conception of facts, of diagrammatical reasoning, of icons and indices, of meanings, of objects, of syntax in Peirce’s (...) logic-as-semiotics. (shrink)

In this important new work, Haack develops an original theory of empirical evidence or justification, and argues its appropriateness to the goals of inquiry. In so doing, Haack provides detailed critical case studies of Lewis's foundationalism; Davidson's and Bonjour's coherentism; Popper's 'epistemology without a knowing subject'; Quine's naturalism; Goldman's reliabilism; and Rorty's, Stich's, and the Churchlands' recent obituaries of epistemology.

1 INTRODUCTION Above the other titles he might justly have claimed, Charles S. Peirce prized the title 'logician'. He expressed in several places his ...

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the semantics of knowledge-attributing sentences, not just among epistemologists but among philosophers of language seeking a general understanding of linguistic context sensitivity. Despite all this critical attention, however, we are as far from consensus as ever. If we have learned anything, it is that each of the standard views—invariantism, contextualism, and sensitive invariantism—has its Achilles’ heel: a residuum of facts about our use of knowledge attributions that it can explain only with (...) special pleading. This is not surprising if, as I will argue, there is a grain of truth in each of these views. (shrink)

For some time, it seemed that one had to choose between two sharply different theories of epistemic justification, foundationalism and coherentism. Foundationalists typically held that some beliefs were certain, and, hence, basic. Basic beliefs could impart justification to other, non-basic beliefs, but needed no such support themselves. Coherentists denied that there are any basic beliefs; on their view, all justified beliefs require support from other beliefs. The divide between foundationalism and coherentism has narrowed lately, and Susan Haack attempts to synthesize (...) these competing accounts into a view she calls "foundherentism.". (shrink)

Each volume in the Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy examines the fundamental ideas of a single philosopher, presenting one basic text by the thinker in question, and supplementing this by “a very thorough and up-to-date commentary.” The format is most successful when a reasonably short classic work containing the subject’s most important claims can be found. We might expect it to work much less well with a thinker like Peirce, serious study of whose work cannot avoid (...) taking seriously a large number of different papers and lectures: good reasons can be found for regarding any selection of a basic text unsatisfactory. It is thus a pleasure to report that Douglas Anderson met this challenge with considerable success. The commentary is of very high quality; and his choice of texts, although initially surprising, works very well. (shrink)

From Realism to "Realicism" is a unique critical study of Peirce's metaphysics, and his repeated insistence on the realism of the medieval schoolman as the key to understanding his own system. By tracing the problem of universals beginning with its Greek roots, Rosa Maria Perez-Teran Mayorga provides the necessary yet underrepresented background of moderate realism and Peirce's eventual revision of metaphysics.

Peirce discusses the nature and structure of propositions in several manuscripts written in the 1890’s and during the first decade of this century. In this paper I shall outline the main features of Peirce’s theory of the proposition, especially his account of what may be called indeterminate indices in propositions.

"Unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published ... in 1950." Bibliographical footnotes.

A case study of multimodal systems and a new interpretation of Charles S. Peirce's theory of reasoning and signs based on an analysis of his system of ...

In a recent paper, Richard Rorty begins by telling us why pragmatists such as himself are inclined to identify truth with justification: ‘Pragmatists think that if something makes no difference to practice, it should make no difference to philosophy. This conviction makes them suspicious of the distinction between justification and truth, for that distinction makes no difference to my decisions about what to do.’ (1995, p. 19) Rorty goes on to discuss the claim, defended by Crispin Wright, that truth is (...) a normative constraint on assertion. He argues that this claim runs foul of this principle of no difference without a practical difference: ‘The need to justify our beliefs to ourselves and our fellow agents subjects us to norms, and obedience to these norms produces a behavioural pattern that we must detect in others before confidently attributing beliefs to them. But there seems to be no occasion to look for obedience to an additional norm – the commandment to seek the truth. For – to return to the pragmatist doubt with which I began – obedience to that commandment will produce no behaviour not produced by the need to offer justification.’ (1995, p. 26) Again, then, Rorty appeals to the claim that a commitment to a norm of truth rather than a norm of justification makes no behavioural difference. This is an empirical claim, testable in principle by comparing the behaviour of a community of realists (in Rorty’s sense) to that of a community of pragmatists. In my view, the experiment would show that the claim is unjustified, indeed false. I think that there is an important and widespread behavioural pattern that depends on the fact that speakers do take themselves to be subject to such an additional norm. Moreover, it is a.. (shrink)

This brief text assists students in understanding Peirce's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), On Peirce is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers (...) sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

It is well known that C. S. Peirce eventually accepted an "extreme scholastic realism" about "generals" and "vagues." But it has been a subject of debate among Peirce scholars whether he was a nominalist early on. In particular, it remains unsettled whether Peirce's earliest position regarding generals was one of antirealism or whether he was a realist about generals from the very beginning. In this essay I argue that despite first appearances, the textual evidence does not support the claim that (...) Peirce moved from a position of antirealism to one of realism about generals. His earliest statements on the subject are compatible with a moderate, nonmodal realism about generality. (shrink)

This work is the intellectual biography of the greatest of American philosophers. Peirce was not only a pioneer in logic and the creator of a philosophical movement pragmatism he also proposed a phenomenological theory, quite different from that of Husserl, but equal in profundity; and long before Saussure, and in a totally different spirit, a semiotic theory whose present interest owes nothing to passing fashion and everything to its fecundity. Throughout his life Peirce wrote continually about sign and phenomenon (or (...) phaneron). Consequently his writings must be studied chronologically if they are not to appear incomprehensible or contradictory. One of the merits of this book is to clarify Peirce's thought by analysing its development chronologically. We follow the evolution of Peirce's thought from his critique of Kantian logic and Cartesianism (Chap. I, “Leaving the Cave”: 1851-1870) to his discovery of modern logic and pragmatism (Chap. II, “The Eclipse of the Sun”: 1870-1887) and finally to a semiotic founded on a phenomenology the base of which is the logic of relations and the crowning-point scientific metaphysics (Chap. III, “The Sun Set Free”: 1887-1914). The book includes a detailed chronology, a general bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was a thinker of extraordinary depth and range - he wrote on philosophy, mathematics, psychology, physics, logic, phenomenology, semiotics, religion and ethics - but his writings are difficult and fragmentary. This book provides a clear and comprehensive explanation of Peirce's thought. His philosophy is presented as a systematic response to 'nominalism', the philosophy which he most despised and which he regarded as the underpinning of the dominant philosophical worldview of his time. The book explains (...) Peirce's challenge to nominalism as a theory of meaning and shows its implications for his views of knowledge, truth, the nature of reality, and ethics. It will be essential reading both for Peirce scholars and for those new to his work. (shrink)