This is a genealogical study that traces a “broadly Cartesian” pattern of argumentation: from Augustine’s scriptural semiotic to the “narrowly Cartesian” practice of foundationalism to Charles Peirce’s pragmatic and reparative semiotic. The essay argues (1) that Augustine transformed Stoic logic into a scriptural semiotic; (2) that this semiotic breeds both Cartesian foundationalism and the pragmatic semiotic that repairs it; (3) that Peirce’s semiotic displays the latter. In sum, Augustine’s inquiry risks foundationalism but also breeds a self-corrective “reparative reasoning.” This (...) reasoning is at once scriptural and philosophic. (shrink)

"It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time, a loosening of old landmarks, a softening of oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another on the part of systems anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of extant school-solutions. The dissatisfactions with these seems due for the most part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is confused (...) and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to crave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though it were at some cost of logical rigor and formal purity." - William James (1904). -/- Abstract: The study of model-based reasoning (MBR) is one of the most interesting recent developments at the intersection of psychology and the philosophy of science. Although a broad and eclectic area of inquiry, one central axis by which MBR connects these disciplines is anchored at one end in theories of internal reasoning (in cognitive science), and at the other, in C.S. Peirce’s semiotics (in philosophy). In this paper, we attempt to show that Peirce’s semiotics actually has more natural affinity on the psychological side with ecological psychology, as originated by James J. Gibson and especially Egon Brunswik, than it does with non-interactionist approaches to cognitive science. In particular, we highlight the strong ties we believe to exist between the triarchic structure of semiotics as conceived by Peirce, and the similar triarchic stucture of Brunswik’s lens model of organismic achievement in irreducibly uncertain ecologies. The lens model, considered as a theory of creative abduction, provides a concrete instantiation of at least one, albeit limited, interpretation of Peirce’s semiotics, one that we believe could be quite fruitful in future theoretical and empirical investigations of MBR in both science an philosophy. (shrink)

Faith has many aspects. One of them is whether absolute logical proof for God’s existence is a prerequisite for the proper establishment and individual acceptance of a religious system. The treatment of this question, examined here in the Jewish context of Rabbi Prof. Eliezer Berkovits, has been strongly influenced in the modern era by the radical foundationalism and radical skepticism of Descartes, who rooted in the Western mind the notion that religion and religious issues are “all or nothing” questions. Cartesianism, (...) which surprisingly became the basis of modern secularism, was criticized by the classical American pragmatists. Peirce, James and Dewey all rejected the attempt to achieve infallible absolute knowledge, as well as the presumptuousness of establishing such a knowledge by means of casting Cartesian hyperbolic doubt. They advocated an alternative approach which was more holistic and humane. This paper lays out Descartes’s approach and the pragmatists’ critique. Despite the place that pragmatic considerations hold in Jewish tradition, some thinkers reject the relevance of these ideas. Yet Berkovits’s thought suggest a different path. He rejected Descartes’ radical skepticism and his radical foundationalism, in favor of a moderate foundationalism, which allows for a belief in God alongside constructive doubts. Similar to Peirce’s conception of the fixation of belief, Berkovits views local doubts (distinct from the hyperbolic doubt) as necessary for thought. Berkovits’s understanding of the biblical human-divine encounter, following Rosenzweig, Buber, and Heschel, is conceptualized here as “encounter theology”. Berkovits criticizes the propositionalist attempts to prove God’s existence logically, as well as the presumptuousness of basing religious belief on the teleological world-order. However, Berkovits’s conception of the ‘caring God’ is not provable, and thus defined as a pragmatic ‘postulate’. The article concludes by considering Berkovits’s “encounter theology”. In contrast to the approach described by Haym Soloveitchik, of halakhic stringency and lack of subjective experience of God’s face, Berkovits’s approach is dialogic through and through. (shrink)

A comprehensive account of Peirce's third branch of semiotic--universal or speculative rhetoric. The article places Peirce's work in the context of the rhetorical tradition. Unlike the direction that analytic and positivist philosophy took, Peirce does not separate logic and rhetoric. Instead Peirce uses his novel theory of rhetoric to show how logic and scientific investigation is tied to a cooperative community of inquiry.

A Review of Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought by Phillip Cary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xxiv + 344 pp. -/- Phillip Cary has written another highly significant book on Augustine, and his writing displays the art of a master stylist. A complement to his Inner Grace, Outward Signs extends Cary’s thesis in Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self: that Augus- tine’s Trinitarian and semiotic theology, groundbreaking as it was, remains beholden to a (...) Platonist privileging of inner vs. outer and idea over sacramental performance. Outward Signs should be of special interest to readers of Modern Theology, because the inwardness Cary interrogates displays a dimension of Augustine’s work that receives significant attention from a number of Modern Theology authors. Once again, Cary has offered an appropriate warning about any uncritical embrace of Augustine as theologian for the church today: the embrace could bring with it a turn to spiritualism, subjectivism, intellectualism, and also supersessionism (since the Old Testament and Jewish “law” belong to the merely outward life of the Word). Like Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty before him, Cary captures the line of potential influence that moves from Plato to Augustine to Descartes and Kant. Here, knowledge tends to ocular knowing, and Cary shows how inadequate that model is to account for performative knowing in the church, of which sacramental life is one instance. But performative knowing would apply, as well, to the study of Augustine’s writ- ings. Read “outwardly,” Augustine’s corpus generates several possible vectors of theological practice. The stronger vectors may point “inward,” but readers should also attend to those (weak or strong) which point to that which is inward, outward, both, and neither. (shrink)

Since Peirce defined the first operators for three-valued logic, it is usually assumed that he rejected the principle of bivalence. However, I argue that, because bivalence is a principle, the strategy used by Peirce to defend logical principles can be used to defend bivalence. Construing logic as the study of substitutions of equivalent representations, Peirce showed that some patterns of substitution get realized in the very act of questioning them. While I recognize that we can devise non-classical notations, I argue (...) that, when we make claims about those notations, we inevitably get saddled with bivalent commitments. I present several simple inferences to show this. The argument that results from those examples is ‘pragmatic’, because the inevitability of the principle is revealed in use (not mention); and it is ‘semiotic’, because this revelation happens in the use of signs. (shrink)

In the course of. his philosophic career, Charles Peirce made repeated attempts to construct mathematical definitions of the commonsense or experimental notion of 'continuity'. In what I will label his Final Definition of Continuity, however, Peirce abandoned the attempt to achieve mathe­matical definition and assigned the analysis of continuity to an otherwise unnamed extra-mathematical science. In this paper, I identify the Final Definition, attempt to define its terms, and suggest that it belongs to Peirce's emergent semiotics of vagueness. I argue, (...) further, that it marks the transformation of Peirce's synechism. Before the time of his Final Definition, Peirce adopted a theory of continuity as a foundational principle of metaphysics and assumed this principle might be formalized in a mathe­matics of continuity. After the Final Definition, Peirce abandoned his foundationalism in favor of what he called a critical common-sensism. This is the claim that philosophy (and with it, logic) derives its norms from the observation of actual cognitive practices and that continuity is a distinguishing mark of actual as opposed to merely possible or imagined practices. (shrink)

Scholars often argue that Charles Sanders Peirce was responsible for Josiah Royce's semiotic turn in _The Problem of Christianity_ of 1913. Thus scholars tend to assume that a _Roycean_ approach to semiotics was a later development and derives almost entirely from Peirce's semiotics. Far from a later development, Royce probably read Peirce much earlier. Indeed, even before Royce had read Peirce, the kernel of a Rocyean approach to semiotics is found in the dissertation of 1878. Thus the present essay will (...) prove that a Roycean approach to semiotics did not have a basis in Peirce's semiotics, whether early or later, but rather grew out of Royce's earliest writings. The first part will reconstruct the early pragmatism in the dissertation of 1878 and find that the kernal of a Roycean approach to semiotics was the idea of a _mediating third_. The second part will show how the disseration's pragmatism develops into a phenomenology of time that contains Royce's earliest semiosic insights. The third part will explain how the early pragmatism and phenomenology come together in the argument on the possibility of error from Royce's _The Religious Aspect of Philosophy_ of 1885. The possibility of error is Royce's original argument for absolute idealism, so the essay will conclude that a Roycean approach to semiotics entails a semiotics of the absolute. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: There is an abundance of scholarship on John Dewey. Dewey's writings are vast, so scholars try to find the crux that connects their many themes into a distinctive vision for philosophy and life. Many claim that the democratic way of life is the center of Dewey's philosophical vision. Others claim that Dewey's response to Darwin was the impetus for a philosophical experimentalism that could envision a better life (...) by responding to the needs in an age of modern industry. Some claim that the crux is a dynamic and non-mechanistic naturalism that Dewey develops to critically undo the dualisms of tradition, most especially the distinction between nature and culture. There has even been an effort to interpret each of these themes within Dewey's theory about the conditions for aesthetics in life, the life of art within an experience, and an experience of life as art. Arguably, no strategy is more preferable than another because each is plausible. Each plausibly selects a crux that connects the many themes across an array of writings, since Dewey's philosophy is multimodal by design and shuns reductionism for pluralism. Even amidst plurality, through many modes of activity and existence, each of these themes and all of Dewey's writings have a concern for meaning in life and how life is a process of meaning-making. And yet, meaning, for Dewey, is irreducible to verbal or written language and is made by more than propositions, but extends beyond the divide of nature and culture to potentially encompass all of life and life's processes. This expansive conception of meaning has more in common with semiotics, especially those of Charles Sanders Peirce, than any philosophy of language. And yet almost no scholar has sought to semiotically interpret Dewey's philosophy as a whole. Perhaps, though, Dewey's multimodal and pluralistic vision for philosophy and life also has a semiotic crux that intersects with the others in ways that are fundamentally important. There are scholars who have dealt with semiotic themes or insights with implications for semiotics in Dewey's writings. None have sought to semiotically interpret Dewey's philosophy as a whole, or, as a consequence, to chronologically survey Dewey's writings to determine if there is a conceivably Deweyan approach to semiotics that might contrast with or contribute to the more dominant approaches. There is a reason scholars may not have sought a Deweyan approach to semiotics. Dewey did not have an explicit theory of semiotics. There is no attempt to devise a doctrine of signs in Dewey's writings. Never did Dewey try to classify the fundamental types of sign, analyze the relations of signification by which they differ, or methodically explain how the logic of signification works. This contrasts sharply with Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce has an explicit theory of semiotics that divides the fundamental types of sign into icons, indices, and symbols by their distinct relations of signification that are at work in the logic of inference by the categories. During his second year at Johns Hopkins, Dewey was actually Peirce's student in a class on logic. This already suggests the possibility of influence. Dewey's writings around 1883 even espouse the central thesis of Peirce's semiotics. All signs, however else their significations may differ, are triadic relations for both Peirce and Dewey. Whether and how far Peirce's logic was an influence on Dewey at Johns... (shrink)

This article explores the usefulness of interdisciplinarity as method of enquiry by proposing an investigation of the concept of information in the light of semiotics. This is because, as Kull, Deacon, Emmeche, Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt state, information is an implicitly semiotic term (Biological Theory 4(2):167–173, 2009: 169), but the logical relation between semiosis and information has not been sufficiently clarified yet. Across the history of cybernetics, the concept of information undergoes an uneven development; that is, information is an ‘objective’ entity (...) in first order cybernetics, and becomes a ‘subjective’ entity in second order cybernetics. This contradiction relegates the status of information to that of a ‘true’ or ‘false’ formal logic problem. The present study proposes that a solution to this contradiction can be found in Deely’s reconfiguration of Peirce’s ‘object’ (as found in his triadic model of semiosis) into ‘thing’ and ‘object’ (Deely 1981). This ontology allows one to argue that information is neither ‘true’ nor ‘false’, and to suggest that, when considered in light of its workability, information can be both true and false, and as such it constitutes an organism’s purely objective reality (Deely 2009b). It is stated that in the process of building such a reality, information is ‘motivated’ by environmental, physiological, emotional (including past feelings and expectations) constraints which are, in turn, framed by observership. Information is therefore found in the irreducible cybersemiotic process that links at once all these conditions and that is simultaneously constrained by them. The integration of cybernetics’ and semiotics’ understanding of information shows that history is the analytical principle that grants scientific rigour to interdisciplinary investigations. As such, in any attempt to clarify its epistemological stance (e.g. the semiotic aspect of information), it is argued that biosemiotics does not need only to acknowledge semiotics (as it does), but also cybernetics in its interdisciplinary heritage. (shrink)

Descartes held that it is impossible to make true statements about what we perceive, but I go over alleged cases of illusory experience to show why such a skeptical conclusion (and recourse to God) is overblown. The overreaction, I contend, stems from an insufficient awareness of the habitual expectations brought to any given experience. These expectations manifest themselves in motor terms, as perception constantly prompts and updates an embodied posture of readiness for what might come next. Such habitual anticipations work (...) best when they efface themselves, so it is easy to blame perception when our expectations get frustrated. I illustrate this misdirected blame with the example of a stick partially in water: it is only because we expect the stick to be straight that its appearance as bent is deemed problematic. I thus conclude that, if we factor in the habitual interpretations operative in perception and switch to a processual view that allows practical engagement, we can deflate the worries that led Descartes to rule out perceptual truths. Distancing myself from the naïve “sign” of folk semiotics, my critique draws inspiration from the triadic semiotic model developed in some late medieval schools of Portugal. (shrink)

Throughout Peirce’s writing, we witness his developing vision of a machine that scientists will eventually be able to create. Nadin (2010) raised the question:Why do computer scientists continue to ignore Peirce’s sign theory? A review of the literature on Peirce’s theory and the semiotics machine reveals that many authors discussed the machine;however, they donot differentiate between a physical computer machine and its software. This paper discusses the problematic issues involved in converting Peirce’s theory into a programming language, machine and software (...) application. We demonstrate this challenge by introducing Peirce’s sign theory as a software application that runs under an open-source R environment. (shrink)

Fourteen philosophers share their experience teaching Peirce to undergraduates in a variety of settings and a variety of courses. The latter include introductory philosophy courses as well as upper-level courses in American philosophy, philosophy of religion, logic, philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, semiotics, metaphysics, etc., and even an upper-level course devoted entirely to Peirce. The project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The session, (...) organized by James Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. (shrink)

Imagine an equilateral triangle “pointing upward”—its horizontal base under its apex angle. A semiotic triangle has the following three “vertexes”: (apex) an expression, (lower-left) one of the expression’s conceptual meanings or senses, and (lower-right) the referent or denotation determined by the sense [1, pp. 88ff]. One example: the eight-letter string ‘coleslaw’ (apex), the concept “coleslaw” (lower-left), and the salad coleslaw (lower-right) [1, p. 84f]. Using Church’s terminology [2, pp. 6, 41]—modifying Frege’s—the word ‘coleslaw’ expresses the concept “coleslaw”, the word ‘coleslaw’ (...) denotes or names the salad coleslaw, and the concept “coleslaw” determines the salad coleslaw—recalling Frege’s principle that sense determines denotation. Church [2, p. 6] wrote: -/- We shall say that a name denotes or names its denotation and expresses its sense. […] Of the sense we say that it determines its denotation, or is a concept of the denotation. -/- Aristotle seems cognizant of distinctions going beyond those in semiotic triangles. The expression Aristotle’s semiotic pyramids seem warranted by Aristotle’s Categories, 1a1: -/- When [two] things have a name (onoma) in common and the concept (logos) of being (ousia) which corresponds to the name in each case is different, they are called same-named (homonuma). Thus, for example, both a man and a picture [of an animal] are called animals. These have only a name in common. In each case the name’s concept of being [an animal] is different; for if one says what being an animal is for each of them, one will give two distinct concepts. -/- Semiotic triangles and pyramids in Aristotle’s logic are compared to those in Church’s [2]. [1] JOHN CORCORAN, Sentence, proposition, judgment, statement, and fact, Many Sides of Logic, College Publications, 2009. [2] ALONZO CHURCH, Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Princeton, 1956. -/- The semiotic pyramid in Categories, 1a1 has a square base under the vertex ‘animal’. On the corners of the square are: the concept “animal”, the concept “animal picture”, the animals, and the animal pictures. The animals are homonymous with the animal pictures. People find Aristotle’s example far-fetched or inept even if the experience of pointing to a picture while saying “That is Tarski” is familiar. Imagine looking at a painting while thinking “That is an animal”. Without putting too fine a point on this, notice that in Aristotle’s sense it is individual things that are homonymous, not words. It would be natural to say also in his sense that two things are homonyms if one is homonymous with the other. In contrast, we use the words homonym and homonymous to relate words that are spelled the same and pronounced the same but have different meaning. Consider the noun ‘center’ and the verb ‘center’. Consider the noun ‘smell’ and the verb ‘smell’. The spelling of two homonyms is an ambiguity, or an ambiguous spelling. We need appropriate adjectives to distinguish the Categorical senses of ‘homonym’ and ‘homonymous’ from the current English sense just mentioned. I propose ‘ontological’ for the sense relating things and ‘linguistic’ for that relating words. Given that all words are things but not all things are words, we ask are words that are linguistically homonymous also ontologically homonymous? END OF POST ABSTRACT. (shrink)

Peirce’s pragmatic maxim is closely related to his conception of abduction. The acquisition of the actual effect required by the method of scientific reasoning expressed by Peirce’s maxim must be accomplished by resorting to abductive logic. Abductive logic starts from a surprising fact, derives a hypothetical explanation about that fact, and finally arrives at the possibility that the hypothesis is true. This is the process of abductive reasoning, as provided by Peirce, which is distinct from induction and deduction and generates (...) explanatory views. Peirce opposed a unified and unchangeable concept of causality. He used different interpretations of causality to illustrate the considerable differences in people’s understanding of cause and effect in different periods. The concept of pragmatism, as developed from the pragmatic maxim to abduction and then to scientific inference to the best explanation, is precisely what Peirce initially proposed, and inference to the best explanation is the starting point and the final result of the pragmatic maxim. (shrink)

The German Jewish philosophers Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig introduced a critique and extension of Kant's transcendental philosophy that looks to us today like the foundations of a rabbinic semiotics. It is a theory about the semiotic character of our knowledge of the world, of other humans and of God. And it is a claim that such a theory is embedded in the classical literature of rabbinic Judaism. More recently, the American rabbinic thinker Max Kadushin presented a more (...) elaborate analysis of the logic of what he called the rabbis' "organic thinking." While influenced in some ways by Charles Peirce, Kadushin did not offer his analysis as a semiotic. In this paper, I suggest that Kadushin's analysis is better served if it is restated more precisely in the vocabulary of Peirce's semiotics. The resulting construction then serves as a complement to the work of the German Jewish philosophers. (shrink)

By definition, “logic of postmodernism" would appear to be a contradiction in terms: philosophic post¬modernism emerged as a critique of attempts to found philosophy on some principle of reasoning and to found reasoning on some formal guidelines for how we ought to think. Nonetheless, there are two reasons why Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) ought to be labeled the logician of postmodernism — the philosopher who, more than any other, etched out the normative guidelines for postmodern thinking. The first reason is (...) that Peirce attempted to accomplish the impossible, or at least the contradictory. He launched his philosophic career with a logical critique of "Cartesianism" — his label for the modernist attempt to found philosophy on some formal principles of reasoning. He then attempted to replace the principles of Cartesian reasoning with a set of anti-modernist principles that proved themselves to be as modernist as their contraries. The second reason for giving Peirce his label is that his failures to accomplish the impossible engendered in him something he was unable to achieve willfully: a habit of self-critical yet self-affirming thinking that was neither modernist nor anti-modernist but, rather, a disciplined variety of postmodern thinking. In his later years, Peirce began to sketch out the principles of philosophic postmodernism by describing features of his own emergent habit of thinking. This sketching comes close enough to what I would label a logic of postmodernism — where the method of logic is as postmodern as the thinking it describes. (shrink)

According to Greimas, the semiotic square is far more than a heuristic for semantic and literary analysis. It represents the generative “deep structure” of human culture and cognition which “define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or of a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects” (Greimas & Rastier 1968: 48). The potential truth of this hypothesis, much less the conditions and implications of taking it seriously (as a truth claim), have received little attention in (...) the literature. In response, this paper traces the history and development of the logical square of opposition from Aristotle to Greimas and beyond, to propose that the relations modelled in these diagrams are embodied relations rooted in gestalt memories of kinesthesia and proprioception from which we derive basic structural awareness of opposition and contrast such as verticality, bilaterality, transversality, markedness and analogy. To make this argument, the paper draws on findings in the phenomenology of movement (Sheets-Johnstone 2011a, 2011b, 2012, Pelkey 2014), recent developments in the analysis of logical opposition (Beziau & Payette 2008), recent scholarship in (post)Greimasian semiotics (Corso 2014, Broden 2000) and prescient insights from Greimas himself (esp. 1968, 1984). The argument of the paper is further supported through a visual and textual content analysis of a popular music video, both to highlight relationships between the semiotic square and mundane cultural ideologies and to show how these relationships might be traced to the marked symmetries of bodily movement. In addition to illustrating the enduring relevance of Greimasean thought, the paper further illustrates the neglected relevance that embodied chiasmus holds for developments in anthropology, linguistics and the other cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Las «metáforas», «analogías» o «alegorías» tienen un lugar bien ganado en la tradición filosófica. Han sido atacadas por dar lugar a una interpretación poco rigurosa de las nociones que describen, pues permite asociarles propiedades que originalmente no se había pensado (ni resulta deseable) que formen parte de su concepto. Sin embargo, a pesar del reclamo en favor de procedimientos estrictos de definición, el uso de una imagen apropiada suele ser el mejor modo de explicar esas cuestiones que cada siglo escapan (...) a la disección que el filo de las mejores definiciones pretendía darle. Tal es el caso de las ilustraciones usadas por Charles S. Peirce en sus artículos "Algunas consecuencias de cuatro incapacidades" y "Cómo esclarecer nuestras ideas" para dar cuenta del pensamiento. Primero veremos el papel que juegan estas imágenes en la argumentación conque Peirce establece dos principios importantes de su filosofía: el de que toda cognición se encuentra determinada por otras cogniciones previas, y el de que no tenemos ningún poder de introspección. Luego hallaremos que dos de las imágenes presentan cierta incompatibilidad en un aspecto especialmente relevante desde el punto de vista de lo que tratan de ilustrar. Para finalizar, consideraremos una explicación que sea consistente con los textos y que permita resolver la discrepancia, brindando una mejor comprensión conjunta de ambas ilustraciones . (shrink)

The fundamental problem for theoretical aesthetics is its inability to account for art’s meaning-value (Trimarchi, 2022). As previously argued, Art’s higher meaning is only found emerging from the artwork’s tacit dimensions, where empirical-historical intentionality is almost completely inconsequential (Trimarchi, 2024b). The latter’s interpretable ‘phenomenology of sequence’ produces a false theorising tendency, disconnecting art from the history of ideas and severing aesthetics from ethics and logic. Art appears ‘infinitely interpretable’, hence entirely subjective. Adapting Arnold’s (2011) actantial processual approach, I show how (...) Peircian semiotics, via ‘real Secondness’, uncovers art’s higher meaning. Peirce’s ‘diagrammatic thinking’ exposes art’s unique role of ‘objectifying’ the Person (in any subject, via appropriate propositions), without de-valuing this bearer of moral values. His ‘semiotic realism’ helps unveil Scheler’s anthropological (also termed ‘ethical’) phenomenology emerging from Merleau-Ponty’s ‘obscure zone’, to discern poetic from other speculation. Art’s ‘subject-objectivation’ (or, ethical intentionality) is thus able to be mapped phenomenologically to reveal any artwork’s meaning-value orientation. This paper combines Peirce’s ‘phenomenology of reason’ with Scheler’s hierarchy of values and Schelling’s ‘mythological categories’ (Trimarchi 2024b) to suggest a methodology for moving beyond neo-Kantian theoretical aesthetics (and analytical philosophy’s grip on the anti-art of ‘modernity’). That is, moving from the realm of perception to knowing, reviving art’s ontological connection to normative aesthetics. In conclusion, Peirce’s ‘science of ideals’ is thus revealed as Complexity Science, which – via his ‘suspended second’ (or, Ricoeur’s ‘second ontology’) - vindicates Schelling’s claim for how ‘aesthetics becomes objective’ (Trimarchi, 2024a). (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of Johannes Clauberg’s intentions in writing his Logica vetus et nova (1654, 1658). Announced before his adherence to Cartesianism, his Logica was eventually developed in order to provide Cartesian philosophy with a Scholastic form, embodying a complete methodology for the academic disciplines based on Descartes’ rules and a medicina mentis against philosophical prejudices. However, this was not its only function: thanks to the rules for the interpretation of philosophical texts it encompassed, Clauberg’s Logica was meant (...) to provide a general hermeneutics designed to put an end to the quarrels raised by the dissemination of Cartesianism. Such quarrels, according to Clauberg, were caused by the misinterpretation of Descartes’ texts in Revius’ Methodi cartesianae consideratio theologica (1648) and Statera philosophiae cartesianae (1650) and in Lentulus’ Nova Renati Descartes sapientia (1651), which criticized the apparent lack of a logical theory in Descartes’ philosophy and its supposed inconsistencies. Clauberg answers their criticisms by giving a clear account of Descartes’ logical theory and by undermining the interpretative criteria they assumed, in light of a general theory of error. Polemics over Cartesian philosophy, in this way, favored the development of a comprehensive Cartesian methodology for academic disciplines and of the first hermeneutics for philosophical texts. (shrink)

Robert Brandom’s expressivism argues that not all semantic content may be made fully explicit. This view connects in interesting ways with recent movements in philosophy of mathematics and logic (e.g. Brown, Shin, Giaquinto) to take diagrams seriously - as more than a mere “heuristic aid” to proof, but either proofs themselves, or irreducible components of such. However what exactly is a diagram in logic? Does this constitute a semiotic natural kind? The paper will argue that such a natural kind does (...) exist in Charles Peirce’s conception of iconic signs, but that fully understood, logical diagrams involve a structured array of normative reasoning practices, as well as just a “picture on a page”. (shrink)

Using Peirce as a guide, this paper explores the way in which light mediates finitude through the relational process of semiosis. Embodying the triadic logic of identity, difference and return, light creates space, time and matter. Attention is on simple bodily forms and the meta-physics of their relationality. The first section introduces the mathematical and metaphysical contours of Peirce’s approach. The second section motivates Peirce’s three categories as interwoven process. In the third section, Peirce’s formalism of the sign is presented (...) and applied to simple physical and biological bodies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to suggest how the internal logic and dynamics of the development of Cartesian philosophy can be reconstructed by means of the historical-theoretical analysis of one of the most forgotten lines of reception of Cartesianism, leading through the philosophy of British thinkers minorum gentium: Arthur Collier, John Norris, Richard Burthogge etc. Such analysis of the particular stages of the evolution of post-Cartesian thought – within one intellectual-cultural context, makes it possible to situate Berkeley’s system (considered (...) as a culminating point of the development of post-Cartesian British idealism) in the stream of the widely understood Cartesian thought. At the same time the analysis provides sufficient data to draw some general conclusions regarding the logic of the development of Cartesian-inspired philosophical systems. (shrink)

Many scholars believe that "On a New List of Categories" is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. This essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by precision . Afterwards, the article will draw support from Peirce's youthful and mature writings to explain how the new way of listing the categories can serve as a genealogy of meaning : how different types of terms, propositions and arguments emerge in the reasoning process as different types of (...) signs. In this way, the genealogy of meaning would then qualify as both a phenomenology of logic and a science of semiotics.. Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in inference: namely, uniparance, diaparance and comparance. Then, the three types of comparison will give rise to three types of relative in different types of proposition: namely, concurrent, disquiparant, and equal. Finally, the three types of relative will give rise to different types of signs corresponding to different types of terms: namely, icons, indices and symbols. With this classification, then, there is an explanation of how the reasoning process is a semiotic process with three forms of valid arguments: namely, hypothesis, induction and deduction . (shrink)

In his article “Issues of Pragmaticism” published in 1905, in The Monist, Charles S. Peirce complains that “Logicians have been at fault in giving Vagueness the go-by, so far as not even to analyze it.” That same year, occupying himself with the consequences of “Critical commonsensism,” he affirmed, “I have worked out the logic of vagueness with something like completeness,” a statement that causes the majority of the commentators on his work, including the editors of the Collected Papers to ask (...) where this logic is to be found. The fever for finding Peirce's manuscripts is fed by the hope of some researchers of discovering the logic of vagueness, a hope that has grown since Carolyn Eisele's publication of his mathematical works. Others - and I count myself among them - believe that in reality this is a matter of something already known. That is, they interpret the affirmation ending the paragraph of reproach addressed to logicians, “The present writer has done his best to work out the Stechiology, Critic, and Methodeutik of the subject,” as a tripartite semiotic of the vague, still limited, according to Peirce's older works, to symbols, that is, to the signs of natural language examined from the perspective of logic. (shrink)

Commentators have not said much regarding Berkeley and Stoicism. Even when they do, they generally limit their remarks to Berkeley’s Siris (1744) where he invokes characteristically Stoic themes about the World Soul, “seminal reasons,” and the animating fire of the universe. The Stoic heritage of other Berkeleian doctrines (e.g., about mind or the semiotic character of nature) is seldom recognized, and when it is, little is made of it in explaining his other doctrines (e.g., immaterialism). None of this (...) is surprising, considering how Stoics are considered arch-materialists and determinists. My aim is to suggest that our understanding of Berkeley’s philosophy is improved significantly by acknowledging its underlying Stoic character. I argue that Berkeley proposes not only a semantic ontology based on assumptions of Stoic logic but also a doctrine in which perceptions or ideas are intelligible precisely because they are always embedded in the propositions of a discourse or language. (shrink)

This article presents the first results of a research on visual models for the classifications of semiotic processes. The main issue discussed is how a graphic design methodology, associated with computer graphics resources, may contribute to the construction of interactive models, that can be used as tools for the investigation of C. S. Peirce theory of signs. Two models are presented: the first is an interactive 3-D model of Peirce's 3-trichotomic classification; the second is a computer program that builds diagrams (...) for any n-trichotomic classification of signs, and facilitates the analysis and comparison of different hypothesis regarding their structures. (shrink)

Biosemiotics belongs to a class of approaches that provide mental models of life since it applies some semiotic concepts in the explanation of natural phenomena. Such approaches are typically open to anthropomorphic errors. Usually, the main source of such errors is the excessive vagueness of the semiotic concepts used. If the goal of biosemiotics is to be accepted as a science and not as a priori metaphysics, it needs both an appropriate source of the semiotic concepts and a reliable method (...) of adjusting them for biosemiotic use. Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy offers a plausible candidate for both these needs. Biosemioticians have adopted not only Peirce’s semiotic concepts but also a number of metaphysical ones. It is shown that the application of Peirce’s basic semiotic conceptions of sign and sign-process (semiosis) at the substantial level of biosemiotics requires the acceptance of certain metaphysical conceptions, i.e. Tychism and Synechism. Peirce’s method of pragmaticism is of great relevance to biosemiotics: 1. Independently of whether Peirce’s concepts are used or even applicable at the substantial level of biosemiotics, Peirce’s method remains valuable in making biosemiotics and especially in adjusting its basic concepts. 2. If Peircean semeiotic or metaphysics is applied at the substantial level of biosemiotics, pragmaticism is valuable in clarifying the meaning and reference of the applied Peircean concepts. As a consequence, some restrictions for the application of Peirce in biosemiotics are considered and the distinction of Peirce’s philosophy from the 19th century idealistic Naturphilosophie is emphasized. (shrink)

Bacon’s philosophy had a wide dissemination in Dutch Seventeenth Century context. This can be explained by the coeval diffusion of Cartesianism. Bacon’s project of a reformation of science was deemed by Heereboord and De Raey as the manifesto of a new philosophy. Along with Geulincx, moreover, De Raey borrowed Bacon’s arguments on the causes of error and on the replacement of Aristotelian natural history, aimed at integrating Descartes’s physics. Also in logic Bacon’s influence was noticeable, as the development of a (...) new Organon had its accomplishment in the Cartesian logic of Clauberg and of De Raey himself. In theology, Heidanus relied on Bacon in order to confute Socinianism. The fortune of Dutch Baconianism had its end with the rise of Newtonianism: as a quantitative, experimental philosophy arose, Bacon’s works were no more regarded as a valuable source of arguments. (shrink)

We argue that the extant evidence for Stoic logic provides all the elements required for a variable-free theory of multiple generality, including a number of remarkably modern features that straddle logic and semantics, such as the understanding of one- and two-place predicates as functions, the canonical formulation of universals as quantified conditionals, a straightforward relation between elements of propositional and first-order logic, and the roles of anaphora and rigid order in the regimented sentences that express multiply general propositions. We (...) consider and reinterpret some ancient texts that have been neglected in the context of Stoic universal and existential propositions and offer new explanations of some puzzling features in Stoic logic. Our results confirm that Stoic logic surpasses Aristotle’s with regard to multiple generality, and are a reminder that focusing on multiple generality through the lens of Frege-inspired variable-binding quantifier theory may hamper our understanding and appreciation of pre-Fregean theories of multiple generality. (shrink)

The present study defines the function of the foundation of science in early modern Dutch philosophy, from the first introduction of Cartesian philosophy in Utrecht University by Henricus Regius to the acceptance of Newtonian physics by Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande. My main claim is that a foundation of science was required because the conceptual premises of new ways in thinking had to be justified not only as alternatives to the established philosophical paradigms or as an answer to the “sceptical crisis” (...) signalled by Richard Popkin, but also in order to be introduced in the academia. This being my general thesis, different kinds of foundation of scientific knowledge are analysed in the light of the specific problems philosophers had to face. To this end, foundational theories are analysed in the light of 1) the overall aim of their philosophy, 2) the relations of disciplines they thought out, 3) what they regarded as scientific knowledge. Through this analysis, I assess that the foundation of science was carried out by metaphysical, logical and theological arguments, which fitted the needs of answering the didactical and introductory requirements of new paradigms, assessed the reliability of new methodology in leading us to grasp the truth, and provided philosophy with its conceptual apparatus. Finally, I demonstrate that a philosophy of science as a reflection on the principles, methods, concepts and application of modern science emerged in the Dutch Republic. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of Gabriel, Hülser and Schlotter’s 2009 article on a possible causal relation between Stoic logic and Frege. The paper provides detailed argument for why Rudolf Hirzel should not be taken as the qualified middleman in philosophical discussion with whom Frege learned what he ‘borrowed’ without acknowledgement from Stoic logic. Additionally, this paper offers some modest findings about some aspects of Frege's and Hirzel's lives and work habits, which may help us understand a little (...) better Frege's connection to Hirzel and to Stoic logic as well as Frege’s failure to acknowledge the Stoics. This paper is a purely historical offshoot of my essay ‘Frege plagiarized the Stoics’. Zero direct insights into either Frege’s or Stoic philosophy are offered. OPEN ACCESS. Choose 'without proxy' below. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: An introduction to Stoic logic. Stoic logic can in many respects be regarded as a fore-runner of modern propositional logic. I discuss: 1. the Stoic notion of sayables or meanings (lekta); the Stoic assertibles (axiomata) and their similarities and differences to modern propositions; the time-dependency of their truth; 2.-3. assertibles with demonstratives and quantified assertibles and their truth-conditions; truth-functionality of negations and conjunctions; non-truth-functionality of disjunctions and conditionals; language regimentation and ‘bracketing’ devices; Stoic basic (...) principles of propositional logic; 4. Stoic modal logic; 5. Stoic theory of arguments: two premisses requirement; validity and soundness; 6. Stoic syllogistic or theory of formally valid arguments: a reconstruction of the Stoic deductive system, which consisted of accounts of five types of indemonstrable syllogisms, which function as nullary argumental rules that identify indemonstrables or axioms of the system, and four deductive rules (themata) by which certain complex arguments can be reduced to indemonstrables and thus shown to be formally valid themselves; 7. arguments that were considered as non-syllogistically valid (subsyllogistic and unmethodically concluding arguments). Their validity was explained by recourse to formally valid arguments. (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over other (...) methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

Charles Peirce claimed that logically "every true universal, every continuum, is a living and conscious being." Such a claim is precisely what hunter-gatherers believe: a world-view depicted as animism. Suppose animism represents a sophisticated world-view, ineradicably embodied in our physical bodies, and that Peirce's philosophy points toward a new kind of civilization, inclusive of what I term animate mind. We are wired to marvel in nature, and this reverencing attunement does not require a concept of God. Marveling in nature proves (...) to be not only a motive source of human evolution, but key to continued development. (shrink)

This essay addresses two preeminent figures in the study of the doctrine of signs. The first is John Poinsot (9 July 1589 – 15 June 1644). The second is John Deely (26 April 1942 – 7 January 2017). In many ways, the academic lives of these two noteworthy scholars are forever intertwined because of their scholarly contributions to the doctrine of signs. On the one hand, John Poinsot authored a very significant, but long neglected document, Tractatus de Signis, which articulated (...) a comprehensive analysis of the doctrine of signs. Moreover, his work constituted a significant link between Christian theology, philosophical Latinity, and modern and postmodern scholarly matters. In this regard, John Deely resurrected Poinsot’s neglected text by providing a detailed, annotated translation of the original Latin version together with a meticulous account of its implications for the doctrine of signs. As a result, we now possess the “missing link” between these philosophical and intellectual epochs. Deely further addressed the role that Charles Sanders Peirce played in the study of the doctrine of signs. Finally, there is a discussion of the “International Open Seminar on Semiotics: A Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing” available at the University of Coimbra website. (shrink)

This very brief paperli provides plausible answers to the two residual questions that Jamie Tappenden states, but leaves unanswered, in his 2024 paper ‘Following Bobzien: Some notes on Frege’s development and engagement with his environment’, namely, why Frege read Sigwart’s Logik and what caused Frege to read Prantl. (This paperli is merely historical and offers no special philosophical insights of any sort.) ---------- OPEN ACCESS. Choose 'without proxy' below.

C. S. Peirce is often credited as a forerunner of the verificationist theory of meaning. In his early pragmatist papers, Peirce did say that if we want to make our ideas clear(er), then we should look downstream to their actual and future effects. For many who work in philosophy of mind, this is enough to endorse functionalism and dismiss the whole topic of qualia. It complexifies matters, however, to consider that the term qualia was introduced by the founder of pragmatism (...) himself. Peirce was adamant that only triadic relations can support language and cognition. Even so, he insisted on purely logical grounds that, when we analyze triadic signs all the way, we are left with a qualitative residue he called Firstness. Such an isolated relatum could never be studied experimentally. Yet, given that this primitive state can be confirmed by means of a formal or prescissive distinction, I believe the Peircean account can do justice to many of the intuitions that generate the so-called hard problem of consciousness. My goal, then, is to show that Peirce's semiotic commitment to qualia is compatible with his foundational statements about pragmatism. (shrink)

According to the logical positivists, signs (words and pictures) of imaginary beings have no referent (Goodman). The semiotic theory behind this assumption is dualistic and Cartesian: signs vs. nonsigns as well as the mental vs. the material world are in fundamental opposition. Peirce’s semiotics is based on the premise of the sign as a mediator between such opposites: signs do not refer to referents, they represent objects to a mind, but the object of a sign can be existent or nonexistent, (...) a feeling or an idea, something merely imaginary or even something false. The paper examines the nature of imaginary, nonexistent, and nonfigurative objects, such as unicorns, phoenixes, or nonrepresentative paintings, and shows why verbal or visual representations of imaginary beings and even nonfigurative paintings, which seem to represent nothing, are fully developed signs with a variety of objects determining their representation. (shrink)

This paper contends that Stoic logic (i.e. Stoic analysis) deserves more attention from contemporary logicians. It sets out how, compared with contemporary propositional calculi, Stoic analysis is closest to methods of backward proof search for Gentzen-inspired substructural sequent logics, as they have been developed in logic programming and structural proof theory, and produces its proof search calculus in tree form. It shows how multiple similarities to Gentzen sequent systems combine with intriguing dissimilarities that may enrich contemporary discussion. (...) Much of Stoic logic appears surprisingly modern: a recursively formulated syntax with some truth-functional propositional operators; analogues to cut rules, axiom schemata and Gentzen’s negation-introduction rules; an implicit variable-sharing principle and deliberate rejection of Thinning and avoidance of paradoxes of implication. These latter features mark the system out as a relevance logic, where the absence of duals for its left and right introduction rules puts it in the vicinity of McCall’s connexive logic. Methodologically, the choice of meticulously formulated meta-logical rules in lieu of axiom and inference schemata absorbs some structural rules and results in an economical, precise and elegant system that values decidability over completeness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A detailed presentation of Stoic theory of arguments, including truth-value changes of arguments, Stoic syllogistic, Stoic indemonstrable arguments, Stoic inference rules (themata), including cut rules and antilogism, argumental deduction, elements of relevance logic in Stoic syllogistic, the question of completeness of Stoic logic, Stoic arguments valid in the specific sense, e.g. "Dio says it is day. But Dio speaks truly. Therefore it is day." A more formal and more detailed account of the (...) Stoic theory of deduction can be found in S. Bobzien, Stoic Syllogistic, OSAP 1996. (shrink)

This article offers an account of the philosophy of language expounded in the Cogitata de interpretatione (1692) of the Dutch philosopher Johannes De Raey (1620-1702). In this work, De Raey provided a theory of the formation and meaning language based on the metaphysics of René Descartes. De Raey distinguished between words signifying passions and sensations, ideas of the intellect, or external things. The aim of this article is to shift away the discussion of De Raey’s critique on the application of (...) the language of practical matters by Lodewijk Meijer and Spinoza, and to redirect modern interpretations to the originality of De Raey’s own reflections on the uses of language. In his linguistic thought, De Raey criticized philosophers such as Hobbes, who supposedly deprived Aristotelian terminology of any reference and meaningful use. The analysis of De Raey testifies to the emergence of the philosophy of language out of the double traditions of logic and metaphysics. It is to be interpreted as an effect of the emergence of an alternative worldview to Aristotelianism. This called for an update of the semantic catalogue of philosophy and practical disciplines. (shrink)

Following C. S. Peirce’s claim that aesthetics precedes ethics and logic, I argue for reconceiving aesthetics as a normative science. The deteriorated relations between these links in the ‘modern mythology’ is associated with art’s decline and apparent indistinguishability from the ‘general aesthetic’ (aided by ‘aesthetics as theory’). ‘Naturalizing’ art, according to F. W. Schelling’s system, is proposed to ameliorate this. Bringing together Peircian semiotics with Schelling’s ‘process metaphysics’ suggests how to restore the historicized split between Art ‘as principle’ and the (...) Person (two ‘perfect signs’) by attending to the ‘ethical phenomenology’ of artworks. An argument is then made for how modern ethics and ‘morals’ may be reconnected. (shrink)

Dans un texte désormais célèbre, Ferdinand de Saussure insiste sur l’arbitraire du signe dont il vante les qualités. Toutefois il s’avère que le symbole, signe non arbitraire, dans la mesure où il existe un rapport entre ce qui représente et ce qui est représenté, joue un rôle fondamental dans la plupart des activités humaines, qu’elles soient scientifiques, artistiques ou religieuses. C’est cette dimension symbolique, sa portée, son fonctionnement et sa signification dans des domaines aussi variés que la chimie, la théologie, (...) les mathématiques, le code de la route et bien d’autres qui est l’objet du livre La Pointure du symbole. -/- Jean-Yves Béziau, franco-suisse, est docteur en logique mathématique et docteur en philosophie. Il a poursuivi des recherches en France, au Brésil, en Suisse, aux États-Unis (UCLA et Stanford), en Pologne et développé la logique universelle. Éditeur-en-chef de la revue Logica Universalis et de la collection Studies in Universal Logic (Springer), il est actuellement professeur à l’Université Fédérale de Rio de Janeiro et membre de l’Académie brésilienne de Philosophie. SOMMAIRE -/- PRÉFACE L’arbitraire du signe face à la puissance du symbole Jean-Yves BÉZIAU La logique et la théorie de la notation (sémiotique) de Peirce (Traduit de l’anglais par Jean-Marie Chevalier) Irving H. ANELLIS Langage symbolique de Genèse 2-3 Lytta BASSET -/- Mécanique quantique : quelle réalité derrière les symboles ? Hans BECK -/- Quels langages et images pour représenter le corps humain ? Sarah CARVALLO Des jeux symboliques aux rituels collectifs. Quelques apports de la psychologie du développement à l’étude du symbolisme Fabrice CLÉMENT Les panneaux de signalisation (Traduit de l’anglais par Fabien Shang) Robert DEWAR Remarques sur l’émergence des activités symboliques Jean LASSÈGUE Les illustrations du "Songe de Poliphile" (1499). Notule sur les hiéroglyphes de Francesca Colonna Pierre-Alain MARIAUX Signes de vie Jeremy NARBY Visualising relations in society and economics. Otto Neuraths Isotype-method against the background of his economic thought Elisabeth NEMETH Algèbre et logique symboliques : arbitraire du signe et langage formel Marie-José DURAND – Amirouche MOKTEFI Les symboles mathématiques, signes du Ciel Jean-Claude PONT La mathématique : un langage mathématique ? Alain M. ROBERT. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A detailed presentation of Stoic logic, part one, including their theories of propositions (or assertibles, Greek: axiomata), demonstratives, temporal truth, simple propositions, non-simple propositions(conjunction, disjunction, conditional), quantified propositions, logical truths, modal logic, and general theory of arguments (including definition, validity, soundness, classification of invalid arguments).

Henri Lelevel’s La philosophie moderne par demandes et réponses is a very interesting as well as pretty neglected attempt to disseminate the new philosophy among a larger audience, including the non specialists. Either the style of presentation or the oversimplification of the topics discussed is clearly intended to reach people interested to a smattering of philosophy. More than the comparisons between the traditional and the new philosophy and the compendia, this work vouches for the great interest toward the new philosophy. (...) In this particular case the model is the philosophy of Malebranche, whose interpretation of Descartes thought is preferred by Lelevel, worried by the excessive twist given toward empiricism in P.-S. Régis rendering of Cartesian philosophical system. Lelevel’s logic is directed to eliminate the confusion between sense data and knowledge, echoing also Malebranche’s notion of éténdue idéale, one of the major contribution to the reconsideration of Descartes’ thought. This paper aims to sketch the mains topics discussed in the four sections of Lelevel’s work, with some cross-references to Malebranche’s writings. (shrink)

Corcoran, J. 2007. Syntactics, American Philosophy: an Encyclopedia. 2007. Eds. John Lachs and Robert Talisse. New York: Routledge. pp.745-6. -/- Syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics are the three levels of investigation into semiotics, or the comprehensive study of systems of communication, as described in 1938 by the American philosopher Charles Morris (1903-1979). Syntactics studies signs themselves and their interrelations in abstraction from their meanings and from their uses and users. Semantics studies signs in relation to their meanings, but still in abstraction (...) from their uses and users. Pragmatics studies signs as meaningful entities used in various ways by humans. Taking current written English as the system of communication under investigation, it is a matter of syntactics that the two four-character strings ‘tact’ and ‘tics’ both occur in the ten-character string ‘syntactics’. It is a matter of semantics that the ten-character string ‘syntactics’ has only one sense and, in that sense, it denotes a branch of semiotics. It is a matter of pragmatics that the ten-character string ‘syntactics’ was not used as an English word before 1937 and that it is sometimes confused with the much older six-character string ‘syntax’. Syntactics is the simplest and most abstract branch of semiotics. At the same time, it is the most basic. Pragmatics presupposes semantics and syntactics; semantics presupposes syntactics. The basic terms of syntactics include the following: ‘character’ as alphabetic letters, numeric digits, and punctuation marks; ‘string’ as sign composed of a concatenation of characters; ‘occur’ as ‘t’ and ‘c’ both occur twice in ‘syntactics’. However, perhaps the most basic terms of syntactics are ‘type’ and ‘token’ in the senses introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), America’s greatest logician, who could be considered the grandfather of syntactics, if not the father. These are explained below. (shrink)

In 1992, Peter Ochs and a few Christian and Muslim colleagues began to gather small groups, in and outside the classroom, to practice close and attentive reading of the sacred Scriptures of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions. The hope was that members of different religions could hear one another through the patient, respectful reading of each other's Scripture. Hearing each other, participants might enter into interreligious relationships that might point a way to the peaceful engagement of religions--especially those who, (...) after September 11, 2001, too often found themselves at each other's throats. It was a hope for religion without violence. In Religion without Violence, Ochs reflects on the practical and philosophic lessons he has learned from hosting hundreds of Scriptural Reasoning engagements. He introduces the "scriptural pragmatism" of Scriptural Reasoning." He painstakingly recounts instances of successful scriptural reasoning and warns where and how it might fail. He provides guidance on how to introduce and facilitate Scriptural Reasoning in the classroom. He shows how reading out of the "hearth" of a faith can contribute to peace building across religions. And, drawing on the resources of rabbinic tradition, Augustine, and Charles Peirce, he moves beyond practice to reflect on the implications of Scriptural Reasoning for discerning what kinds of "reasoning" best address and help repair societal crises like religion-related violent conflict. (shrink)