In this paper Peirce's notion of sign is studied to try to characterize the artistic sign as representation. Then, some considerations about the work of art as a sign are developed involving three elements: experience, expression and interpretation. Finally it is concluded that beauty requires for Peirce a peculiar balance, the imaginative conjunction of the sensible and the reasonable in an artistic sign; it requires moreover the expression of something that transcends the sensible; it requires, as a sign, (...) an interpretation which is not exact and which implies growth. It requires, finally, love, because an artist will only reach beauty guided by agape updating and harmonizing possibilities through abduction, that is, creating new signs that give form to what does not have it; the artist only reaches beauty when he loves what he does and when he can express himself freely. -/- En este artículo se estudia, en primer lugar, la noción de signo de Peirce para tratar de caracterizar después el signo artístico como representación. Se desarrollan enseguida algunas consideraciones sobre la obra de arte como signo que como tal conlleva tres elementos: experiencia, expresión e interpretación. Finalmente se concluye que la belleza requiere para Peirce un peculiar equilibrio, la conjunción imaginativa de lo sensible y lo razonable en un signo artístico; requiere además la expresión de algo que trasciende lo sensible; requiere, en tanto signo, de una interpretación que no es exacta y que implica crecimiento. Requiere, por último, amor, pues el artista solo alcanzará lo bello cuando sea guiado por el ágape y a través de la abducción vaya actualizando y armonizando posibilidades, creando nuevos signos que den forma a lo que no la tiene, cuando ame lo que hace y se exprese libremente. (shrink)

In this article we wish to share the work in which the Group of Peirce Studies of the University of Navarra has been involved since 2007: the study of a very interesting part of the extensive correspondence of Charles S. Peirce, specifically, his European letters. Peirce wrote some of these letters over the course of his five trips to Europe (between 1870 and 1883), and wrote others to the many European scientists and intellectuals he communicated with (...) over the course of his life. The translation of those letters has been an excellent practical example of the creative and abductive nature of translation, as well as of the cooperative character of research. Translating Peirce's letters has allowed us a deep study of some theoretical aspects, and at the same time it has permitted us to work creatively and cooperatively to enrich the common vision of this scientist and philosopher. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze Charles S. Peirce’s so-called “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God”. Peirce formulated the Neglected Argument as a “nest” of three different but sequentially developed arguments. Taken as a whole, the Neglected Argument aims to show that engaging in a religious way of life, adoring and acting in accordance with the hypothesis of God, is a subjective, non-evidentially grounded though naturally founded human reaction, and that it is this (alleged) (...) natural foundation that makes it reasonable to accept the hypothesis of God as it being actually true, thereby grounding a properly religious way of life. I argue that Peirce’s Neglected Argument lacks of any serious apologetic force since it fails to justify, on independent, non-question-begging grounds, the claim that we are all naturally (and thus inevitably) lead to formulate, and later adore and act in accordance with, the hypothesis of God. (shrink)

Connections between J.L.Vives and C.S. Peirce are shown. Not only is reflec-tion on language and meaning central in both thinkers, but Peirce also knew Vives' thought especially through W. Hamilton and the Scottish common sense school. Peirce credited Vives with being a forerunner of the use of dia-grams in logic, and both share a critical view of late medieval nominalistic logicians and a social and hierarchical conception of knowledge.

Thirty years ago Richard Rorty detected the similarities between Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953) and the philosophical framework of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), the founder of pragmatism. Rorty tried to show that Peirce envisaged and repudiated in advance logical positivism and developed insights and a philosophical mood very close to the analytical philosophers influenced by the later Wittgenstein (Rorty 1961). In spite of that, the majority of scholars have considered both thinkers as totally alien. Some scholars have attributed (...) the pragmatist flavor of the Philosophical Investigations to the influence of Frank P. Ramsey, who awoke Wittgenstein from the dogmatic slumber of the Tractatus. Nevertheless, the real scope of the influence of American pragmatist philosophy in Wittgenstein's later thought is not clearly known. The purpose of my paper is not to describe the common themes between Wittgenstein and Peirce, but the way in which recent scholarship has established some links between both philosophers. -/- . (shrink)

A brief history of the reception of Charles S. Peirce in the city of Tucuman in the North of Argentina is described with some detail: 1) Courses and lectures; 2) Publications.

The American novelist Walker Percy (1916-90) considered himself a "thief of Peirce", because he found in the views of C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, an alternative approach to prevailing reductionist theories in order to understand what we human beings are and what the peculiar nature of our linguistic activity is. -/- This paper describes, quoting widely from Percy, how abduction is the spontaneous activity of our reason by which we couple meanings and experience in our linguistic expressions. (...) This coupling of personal creativity and cultural tradition makes it possible to bridge the gaps between persons and cultures. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to describe in some detail the actual relationship between Charles S. Peirce and Alfred N. Whitehead, paying particular attention to the Peircean notions of science and metaphysics, with the conviction that this contrast can help to understand better the scope and depth of C. S. Peirce’s thought.

In this paper the relations between the almost unknown Spanish mathematician Ventura Reyes Prósper (1863-1922) with Charles S. Peirce and Christine Ladd-Franklin are described. Two brief papers from Reyes Prósper published in El Progreso Matemático 12 (20 December 1891), pp. 297-300, and 18 (15 June 1892) pp. 170-173 on Ladd-Franklin, and on Peirce and Mitchell, respectively, are translated for first time into English and included at the end of the paper.

According to Charles S. Peirce and to Mariano Artigas, science is the collective and cooperative activity of all those whose lives are animated by the desire to discover the truth. The particular sciences are branches of a common tree. The unity of science is not achieved by the reduction of the special sciences to more basic ones: the new name for the unity of the sciences is cross-disciplinarity. This is not a union of the sciences themselves, but rather (...) the unity and dialogue of scientists, the real inquirers into the truth. In the light of Peirce’s and Artigas’s teachings, we can see that philosophers are in just the right place to call for this unity of sciences. This call should not be seen as promoting a return to the old scientism, but seeks a deep dialogue between the particular sciences and philosophy in order to deal with the presuppositions of the scientific enterprise. The key to the cross-disciplinarity of knowledge is not revolution, but rather shared efforts in a unique mixture of continuity and fallibilism, of affection and reason, of the attempt to understand others’ disciplines as well as our own. (shrink)

Necessity is a touchstone issue in the thought of Charles Peirce, not least because his pragmatist account of meaning relies upon modal terms. We here offer an overview of Peirce’s highly original and multi-faceted take on the matter. We begin by considering how a self-avowed pragmatist and fallibilist can even talk about necessary truth. We then outline the source of Peirce’s theory of representation in his three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, (monadic, dyadic and triadic (...) relations). These have modal purport insofar as the first category corresponds to possibility, the second to mechanical necessity and the third to a kind of semantic or intentional necessity. We then turn to Peirce’s explicit modal epistemology and show how it began as information-relative, with different modalities (e.g. logical, physical, practical) distinguished in terms of respective ‘designated states of information’, and shifted later in his life towards a more robust realism founded in direct perception of ideas in their relations. We then turn to Peirce’s formal logic, focusing on his diagrammatic system of Existential Graphs where he did his most serious logical research. Finally we discuss Peirce’s modal metaphysics and its implications for determinism and realism about universals. (shrink)

Bez wątpienia, Peirce nie oferuje w swoim pismach jasnego ujęcia koncepcji przekonania, a jego poglądy, ewoluujące w ciągu całego życia, nie wydają się prowadzić do wyraźnej konkluzji. Niemniej jednak pozostaje autorem inspirującym, który pozosta- wił trwałe osiągnięcia na gruncie logiki symbolicznej i semiotyki. Metoda hermeneutyczna, którą zastosowaliśmy w tej pracy, miała na celu, w zgodzie z jego własną wskazówką metodyczną, ukazanie koncepcji przekonania, którą można by uzgodnić z dostępnymi stwierdzeniami samego Peirce’a, jak również jego komentatorów.

(Also titled "A Place for Peirce's Categories?"in Meaning without Analyticity.) This book arose from the author’s recent dissertation written under the Gerhard Schönrich at Munich. It focuses on Peirce’s theory of categories and his epistemology. According to Baltzer, what is distinctive in Peirce’s theory of knowledge is that he reconstrues objects as “knots in networks of relations.” The phrase may ring a bell. It suggests a structuralist interpretation of Peirce, influenced by the Munich environs. The study (...) aims to shows how Peirce’s theory of categories supports his theory of knowledge and how “question concerning a priori structures of knowledge” are transformed within this relational framework. A chief critical target is David Savan’s semiotics, specifically the idea that “the multiplicity of development of the categories” is “conditioned by nothing but the indefiniteness of the categories.” But in contrast with this, if there is any indefiniteness in the categories, they cannot fully direct their own application, and this is to say regarding them “that our knowledge is never absolute but always swims, as it were, in a continuum...” If the doctrine of continuity applies to the categories, they also have a continuum to swim in. (shrink)

This book arose from the author’s recent dissertation written under the Gerhard Schonrich at Munich. It focuses on Peirce’s theory of categories and his epistemology. According to Baltzer, what is distinctive in Peirce’s theory of knowledge is that he reconstrues objects as “knots in networks of relations.” The phrase may ring a bell. It suggests a structuralist interpretation of Peirce, influenced by the Munich environs. The study aims to shows how Peirce’s theory of categories supports his (...) theory of knowledge and how “question concerning a priori structures of knowledge” are transformed within this relational framework. A chief critical target is David Savan’s semiotics, specifically the idea that “the multiplicity of development of the categories” is “conditioned by nothing but the indefiniteness of the categories.”1 But in contrast with this, if there is any indefiniteness in the categories, they cannot fully direct their own application, and this is to say regarding them “that our knowledge is never absolute but always swims, as it were, in a continuum...”2 If the doctrine of continuity applies to the categories, they also have a continuum to swim in. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce famously claimed that ‘The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth’ (W3: 273). Christopher Hookway has argued for a highly distinctive interpretation of this claim in terms of speech-acts and the normative commitments we incur in performing them. So-construed, Peirce’s conception of truth is difficult to compare with standard theories of the concept, which tend to focus instead upon some property or (...) feature that is shared by all and only true propositions, and with whether or not that property is substantive or metaphysically significant. This paper examines Hookway’s interpretation of Peirce’s conception of truth in an effort to clarify its position in logical space. It then raises some difficulties for the way Hookway tries to accommodate Peirce’s remarks about the special status of assertion and belief in science. (shrink)

A surprising fact in the historiography of the Hispanic philosophy of this century is its almost total opacity towards the American philosophy, in spite of the real affinity between the central questions of American pragmatism and the topics addressed by the most relevant Hispanic thinkers of the century: Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, d'Ors, Vaz Ferreira. In this paper that situation is studied, paying special attention to Charles S. Peirce, his personal connections with the Hispanic world, the reception of (...) his texts in Spanish, and some of the connections that lie almost hidden under the mutual ignorance which divides the two traditions. -/- . (shrink)

In this essay I explore the potential contribution of Peirce's theory of scientific inquiry to moral philosophy. After a brief introduction, I outline Peirce's theory of inquiry. Next, I address why Peirce believed that this theory of inquiry is inapplicable to what he called "matters of vital importance," the latter including genuine moral problems. This leaves us in the end with two options: We can try to develop an alternative way of addressing moral problems or we can (...) seek to reconcile moral problems with scientific inquiry as described by Peirce. Though Peirce seems to argue for the former, I argue for the latter. (shrink)

This entry explores Charles Peirce's account of truth in terms of the end or ‘limit’ of inquiry. This account is distinct from – and arguably more objectivist than – views of truth found in other pragmatists such as James and Rorty. The roots of the account in mathematical concepts is explored, and it is defended from objections that it is (i) incoherent, (ii) in its faith in convergence, too realist and (iii) in its ‘internal realism’, not realist enough.

Twenty years ago I put a sign on the door to my office —and it’s still there— with the sentence of Peirce that I have used in my title: "The life of science is in the desire to learn" (CP 1.235, c.1902). I learned this quote from the late professor of logic at MIT, George Boolos. Like him, I put it on my door to invite students to come in to inquire, to ask questions, since their questions are not (...) just the life of science, but also the sparks that inflame my passion for teaching. Those —professors and students— who desire to learn are the real agents, the main characters, of philosophical development. Philosophy should not be understood and taught as the transmission of old solutions to outdated problems, but as a way of life devoted to learning the truth wherever we might find it. My exposition will be divided into four sections: 1) A brief presentation of Peirce, focusing on his work as a professional scientist and a scientific philosopher; 2) Peirce considered as an educational philosopher; 3) Some practical suggestions I have drawn from Peirce's ideas and from my experience teaching philosophy today; and finally, 4) A brief conclusion. (shrink)

George M. Searle (1839-1918) and Charles S. Peirce worked together in the Coast Survey and the Harvard Observatory during the decade of 1860: both scientists were assistants of Joseph Winlock, the director of the Observatory. When in 1868 George, a convert to Catholicism, left to enter the Paulist Fathers, he was replaced by his brother Arthur Searle. George was ordained as a priest in 1871, was a lecturer of Mathematics and Astronomy at the Catholic University of America, and (...) became the fourth superior general of his congregation from 1904 to 1909. Among the books he wrote for non-Catholic audiences was Plain Facts for Fair Minds (1895). On the 8th of August of 1895, Peirce found that book in a bookstore and the following day wrote a letter to George Searle developing his strong reservations about the question of the infallibility of the Pope. This letter (L 397) is almost unknown amongst Peirce's scholars. -/- After describing these historical circumstances as a framework, the aim of my paper is to describe Peirce's arguments against papal infallibility presented by George Searle in his book, and the contrast between the genuine scientific attitude and the putative metaphysical notion of absolute truth that is —according to Peirce— behind Searle's defense of infallibility. In this sense, Peirce's fallibilism will be explained with some detail, giving an account also of his practical infallibilism: "The assertion that every assertion but this is fallible, is the only one that is absolutely infallible. But though nothing else is absolutely infallible, many propositions are practically infallible; such as the dicta of conscience" (Minute Logic, CP 2.75, c. 1902). -/- Finally, having in mind the present interest in Peirce's religious ideas it will be suggested that some of Peirce's ideas on infallibility are nearer to contemporary understanding of that issue than Searle's defense. "I would with all my heart join the ancient church of Rome if I could. But your book," —Peirce writes to Searle— "is an awful warning against doing so." -/- . (shrink)

This paper has two separate aims, with obvious links between them. First, to present Charles S. Peirce and the pragmatist movement in a historical framework which stresses the close connections of pragmatism with the mainstream of philosophy; second, to deal with a particular controversial issue, that of the supposed logicistic orientation of Peirce's work.

La atención relativamente escasa que los estudiosos del filósofo y científico norteamericano Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) han prestado a lo largo de los años a las dimensiones religiosas de su pensamiento siempre me ha parecido cuando menos sorprendente. Desde mis primeras lecturas de Peirce me impresionó profundamente esa desatención que tanto contrastaba con la ubicuidad de las referencias religiosas en los escritos de Peirce, especialmente en sus años de madurez. En mis encuentros con reconocidos estudiosos peirceanos (...) solía preguntarles acerca de Dios y la religión en Peirce, y la respuesta que recibí casi siempre fue que efectivamente había una gran cantidad de cuestiones religiosas en su obra, pero que no estaban interesados en ellas. Por otra parte, me sorprendió gratamente que el fallecido novelista Walker Percy se considerara a sí mismo en su correspondencia con Ken Ketner como “un ladrón de Peirce”, aspirando a “usar a CSP como uno de los pilares de la apologética cristiana”. Me pareció que el novelista converso al catolicismo estaba en algún sentido mucho más cercano al Peirce real que aquellos estudiosos a los que les había preguntado acerca de Dios y la religión en Peirce. -/- El objetivo de este artículo es subrayar el hecho de que para Peirce la creencia en Dios no es sólo un producto natural de la abducción o "instinto racional", de las conjeturas educadas del científico o del hombre corriente, sino que también la creencia en Dios y el desarrollo científico están interrelacionados. No sólo la creencia en Dios es capaz de cambiar la conducta del creyente, sino que de acuerdo con Peirce la realidad de Dios dota de sentido a toda la empresa científica. Esto puede sonar un poco extraño a los oídos positivistas contemporáneos, pero para comprender realmente a Peirce es preciso estudiar sus preocupaciones religiosas, que de forma creciente se consideran quizá tan importantes filosóficamente como sus preocupaciones científicas6. Más aún, en algún sentido quiero sugerir que para Peirce la actividad científica es una empresa genuinamente religiosa, quizá incluso la actividad religiosa por excelencia, y que separar religión y ciencia es contrario tanto al espíritu científico como al Peirce real. (shrink)

This article aims to show that the contribution of Charles Sanders Peirce to communicology is much earlier than the advent of epistemological integration of semiotics in communication studies, being phaneroscopy as a early form of communicology. This reflection is based on the study of the categorical degeneration theorized by Peirce, his influence on communicational thinking (especially on Gilles Deleuze’s cinema theory), as well as the conceptual link between degeneration and phenomenon from the philosophical point of view of (...) quaternions. (shrink)

In this comment on Misak’s Cambridge Pragmatism, I examine a case study—debate about the existence of free will—in order to explore residual tensions between Misak’s ‘truth-affirming,’ Peircean pragmatism, and mainstream analytic philosophy. I suggest that Misak’s Peirce makes a metaphysical commitment to the existence of rational self-control, and thereby to the existence of free will. I also suggest, however, that her ‘analytic pragmatism’ thus far offers few clues about how we should defend such a commitment from skeptical arguments emerging (...) from contemporary analytic metaphysics. I conclude that analytic pragmatists have more work to do in explaining pragmatism’s complex relationship with metaphysics, and defending its core commitments from skeptical threats. (shrink)

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)

Trata-se de uma proposta de investigação das ideias cosmológicas de Charles S. Peirce, particularmente das que dizem respeito à pertinência da inclusão de esquemas de explicação que façam uso da causalidade final como instância determinante do desenvolvimento dos fenômenos naturais. Anterior à avaliação desse tipo de explicação cabe uma investigação sobre as características mais relevantes de seu pensamento, que o próprio autor julgava construído arquitetonicamente. Com esse objetivo, centramos a análise no conceito de continuum, que pode ser visto (...) como fundamental para o desenvolvimento da obra de Peirce. É o estudo do continuum que permitirá e conduzirá a investigação das categorias ontológicas peirceanas: acaso, existente e lei. A passagem do acaso à lei, isto é, a própria origem do cosmos, se dá por um processo evolutivo que tem na lei da mente seu principal motor. A lei da mente, por sua vez, atua de modo finalístico, tornando mais provável o desenvolvimento dos fenômenos em certas direções, restringindo, assim, o horizonte das possibilidades, sem, contudo, esgotá-lo. (shrink)

In his 1903 Syllabus, Charles S. Peirce makes a distinction between icons and iconic signs, or hypoicons, and briefly introduces a division of the latter into images, diagrams, and metaphors. Peirce scholars have tried to make better sense of those concepts by understanding iconic signs in the context of the ten classes of signs described in the same Syllabus. We will argue, however, that the three kinds of hypoicons can better be understood in the context of (...) class='Hi'>Peirce's sixty-six classes of signs. We analyze examples of hypoicons taken from the field of information design, describing them in the framework of the sixty-six classes, and discuss the consequences of those descriptions to the debate about the order of determination of the 10 trichotomies that form those classes. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe the situation of mutual ignorance between American and Hispanic philosophical traditions, paying special attention to the figure and thought of the founder of pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914). In order to do this, first of all I will justify the usage of the expression "Hispanic Philosophy", highlighting its heuristic and practical value. Secondly, I will discuss some of Peirce's comments in relation with the Hispanic world. And finally, by way (...) of conclusion, I will mention some of the connections that lie nearly hidden under the cloak of ignorance which divides the two traditions. (shrink)

In addition to being a founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce was a scientist and an empiricist. A core aspect of his thoroughgoing empiricism was a mindset that treats all attitudes as revisable. His fallibilism seems to require us to constantly seek out new information, and to not be content holding any beliefs uncritically. At the same time, Peirce often states that common sense has an important role to play in both scientific and vital inquiry, and (...) that there cannot be any “direct profit in going behind common sense.” Our question is the following: alongside a scientific mindset and a commitment to the method of inquiry, where does common sense fit in? Peirce does at times directly address common sense; however, those explicit engagements are relatively infrequent. In this paper, we argue that getting a firm grip on the role of common sense in Peirce’s philosophy requires a three-pronged investigation, targeting his treatment of common sense alongside his more numerous remarks on intuition and instinct. By excavating and developing Peirce’s concepts of instinct and intuition, we show that his respect for common sense coheres with his insistence on the methodological superiority of inquiry. We conclude that Peirce shows us the way to a distinctive epistemic position balancing fallibilism and anti-scepticism, a pragmatist common sense position of considerable interest for contemporary epistemology given current interest in the relation of intuition and reason. (shrink)

Isaac Levi (1980) targets an implicit tension in C.S. Peirce’s epistemology, one that exists between the need to always be open-minded and aware of our propensity to make mistakes so that we do not “block the road of inquiry,” and the need to treat certain beliefs as infallible and to doubt only in a genuine way so that inquiry can proceed in the first place. Attempts at alleviating this tension have typically involved interpreting Peirce as ascribing different normative (...) standards to different areas of inquiry. I argue here that such “double-standard” interpretations face significant problems. I offer instead an interpretation of Peirce on which the differences between different areas of inquiry are descriptive rather than normative. Such a view resolves Levi’s tension while interpreting Peirce as consistently subscribing to one normative standard for all inquiry. (shrink)

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)

Structured around Charles S. Peirce's three-fold categorical scheme, this article proposes a comparative study of Ayn Rand and Peirce's realist views in general metaphysics. Rand's stance is seen as diverging with Peirce's argument from asymptotic representation but converging with arguments from brute relation and neutral category. It is argued that, by dismissing traditional subject-object dualisms, Rand and Peirce both propose iconoclastic construals of what it means to be real, dismissals made all the more noteworthy by (...) the fact each chose to ground them in indissoluble triads of self-evident first principles. (shrink)

Several recent publications attest to a renewed interest, at the dawn of the 21st century, in the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. While agreeing with the relevance of Peirce philosophy for the 21st century, we disagree with some interpretations of Peirce as a utilitarian-based pragmatist, or with attempts to extract from Peirce a theory of social justice for 21st century societies. A critical exploration of Peirce’s philosophy of science, particularly his idea of scientific inquiry (...) as “the study of useless things”, serves to illuminate the un-pragmatic and anti-utilitarian dimension of Peirce’s thought, as well as to reveal his true ethical relevance for the 21st century. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the long-standing debate over the coherence of Charles Sanders Peirce’s overall system of philosophy. It approaches that issue through the lens of a contemporary debate over the notion of metaphysical grounding, or more broadly, the nature of metaphysical explanation, employing the laws of logic as a case study. The central question concerns how we can take seriously what we shall call Peirce’s Rule—that nothing can be admitted to be absolutely inexplicable—without being (...) vulnerable to a vicious regress or equally vicious circularity. I first argue that in Peirce’s early work he offers a quietist conception of grounding that provides a persuasive and ground-breaking answer to this central question. I then raise a familiar concern, that in Peirce’s later work we find hints of a more metaphysical conception of grounding that seems unable to answer that question and is thus inconsistent with his earlier work. The paper ends with a speculative interpretation of Peirce’s approach to metaphysics and its possible role in grounding logical principles. (shrink)

Charles Peirce's diagrammatic logic — the Existential Graphs — is presented as a tool for illuminating how we know necessity, in answer to Benacerraf's famous challenge that most ‘semantics for mathematics’ do not ‘fit an acceptable epistemology’. It is suggested that necessary reasoning is in essence a recognition that a certain structure has the particular structure that it has. This means that, contra Hume and his contemporary heirs, necessity is observable. One just needs to pay attention, not merely (...) to individual things but to how those things are related in larger structures, certain aspects of which relations force certain other aspects to be a certain way. (shrink)

In a world of ever growing specialization, the issue of complexity attracts a good amount of attention from cross-disciplinary points of view as this Congress provides evidence. Charles S. Peirce's thought may help us not only to shoulder once again philosophical responsibility which has been largely abdicated by much of 20th century philosophy, but also to tackle some of the most stubborn contemporary problems. The founder of pragmatism identified one century ago most of these problems, and he also (...) mapped out some paths that we could follow to overcome the poverty of contemporary scientistic reductionism. One of these paths is related with the issue of complexity, that lies at the heart of all his conception. -/- Along this line, the aim of my paper is to describe what Peirce can teach about complexity to semioticians coming from very different scientific backgrounds. The lecture will be divided in three sections: 1) a presentation of Peirce, stressing his personal authority as a scientist philosopher, providing also some biographical details; 2) the theory of categories as the heart of complexity according to Peirce and, finally, 3) some consequences of Peirce's notion of complexity in relation with abduction and creativity, semiosis, cross-disciplinarity and communication. -/- . (shrink)

This article presents some results of a research on computational strategies for the visualization of sign classification structures and sign processes. The focus of this research is the various classifications of signs described by Peirce. Two models are presented. One of them concerns specifically the 10-fold classification as described in the 1903 Syllabus (MS 540, EP 2: 289–299), while the other deals with the deep structure of Peirce’s various trichotomic classifications. The first is 10cubes, an interactive 3-D model (...) of Peirce’s 10-fold classification, as described in the Syllabus. The second is 3N3, a computer program that builds equivalent diagrams for any n-trichotomic classification of signs. We are specially interested in how a graphic design methodology, associated with computer graphic resources and techniques, can contribute to the construction of interactive models that serve as tools for the investigation of C. S. Peirce’s theory of signs. (shrink)

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)

I examine and resolve an exegetical dichotomy between two main interpretations of Peirce’s theory of abduction, namely, the Generative Interpretation and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation. According to the former, abduction is the instinctive process of generating explanatory hypotheses through a mental faculty called insight. According to the latter, abduction is a rule-governed procedure for determining the relative pursuitworthiness of available hypotheses and adopting the worthiest one for further investigation—such as empirical tests—based on economic considerations. It is shown that the Generative (...) Interpretation is inconsistent with a fundamental fact of logic for Peirce—i.e., abduction is a kind of inference—and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation is flawed and inconsistent with Peirce’s naturalistic explanation for the possibility of science and his view about the limitations of classical scientific method. Changing the exegetical locus classicus from the logical form of abduction to insight and economy of research, I argue for the Unified Interpretation according to which abduction includes both instinctive hypotheses-generation and rule-governed hypotheses-ranking. I show that the Unified Interpretation is immune to the objections raised successfully against the Generative and the Pursuitworthiness interpretations. (shrink)

A surprising fact about the Hispanic philosophical historiography2 of the 20th century is its almost complete ignorance of the American philosophical tradition. This disconnect is even more surprising when one takes into account the striking affinities between the topics and problems treated by the most relevant Hispanic thinkers (Unamuno, Ortega, Vaz Ferreira, Ferrater Mora, Xirau) and the central questions raised in the most important native current of American thought in the late 19th and 20th centuries, pragmatism. In recent years there (...) has been a resurgence of pragmatist philosophy in contemporary culture, which is producing a deep renovation and transformation. One of the important features of this process is precisely the recuperation and improved understanding of the thought of Charles S. Peirce, who offers suggestions for dealing with some of the most persistent problems in contemporary philosophy, and who in addition can help us to reassume our responsibilities as philosophers, responsibilities that a good part of the philosophy of the 20th century had renounced. We can confidently say, as will be clear from what follows, that Spain and the Latin American countries are playing an important role in this increased understanding and diffusion of Peircean thought throughout the world. (shrink)

While William James and Charles Sanders Peirce are considered the two fathers of American Pragmatism, Peircian Pragmatism is often being presented as the comparatively ‘objective’ alternative to metaphysical realism, with the Jamesian version being castigated as an overly ‘subjective’ departure from Peirce’s position. However, while James clearly does put more of an emphasis on ‘subjective’ factors than does Peirce, his doing so is often the result of his simply drawing out consequences of the framework that (...) class='Hi'>Peirce presented in an 1872 meeting of their ‘Metaphysical Club’ where James and Peirce famously discussed the core ideas that have been associated with pragmatism ever since. In particular, while Peirce was still flirting with idealism at the time, James drew out some of the consequences that followed from those 1872 discussion once they were placed more firmly in a naturalistic, particularly Darwinian, framework. Peirce was never comfortable with these consequences, and in later work tried to distance himself from a number of positions defended in his earlier papers. James, by contrast, never rejected that early framework, which resulted in the increasing differences between the versions of pragmatism developed by the two. These differences show up most clearly in their conflicting conceptions of both when our beliefs are rationally justified, and what it would take for those beliefs to be true. (shrink)