Peirce’s Pragmatic Maxim: Realist or Nominalist?

1996 ◽  
pp. 91-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent G. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Extreme Form ◽  
Pragmatic Maxim ◽  
Philosophical Doctrine

This chapter argues that American pragmatism is not to be simply identified with positivism. Positivism refers to a rather extreme form of nominalism that developed along the lines of classical empiricism. Nominalism refers to any philosophical doctrine that denies the reality of general ideas as part of the ontological structure of things. While this is an incomplete characterization of positivism, it is sufficient in the sense that these essential notes of nominalism are what the chapter denies of pragmaticism as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. It should also be said at the outset that certain forms of classical rationalism are likewise nominalistic and have developed into a type of positivism all their own.

Normative Science and the Pragmatic Maxim

1996 ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Vincent G. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Late Development ◽  
System P ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
Pragmatic Maxim

This chapter explores how Charles Sanders Peirce was convinced that his account of the hierarchical dependence of logic on ethics, and of ethics on esthetics, was a discovery of fundamental importance for a correct understanding of his thought, and one that distinguished his “pragmaticism” from other, more familiar, interpretations of his own famous maxim. It would be a mistake to think that because this was a late development in Peirce's thought, it was an afterthought. It would also be a mistake to think that because Peirce's exposition of that role was short and unsatisfactory, it was not an integral part of what he conceived to be his “architectonic” system.

Charles Sanders Peirce: An Overview

1996 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Vincent G. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Georg Cantor ◽  
Academic World ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
George Boole

This chapter provides an overview of the life of Charles Sander Peirce—philosopher, logician, scientist, and father of American pragmatism. This man, unappreciated in his lifetime, virtually ignored by the academic world of his day, is now recognized as perhaps America's most original philosopher and her greatest logician. Indeed, on the latter score, he is surely one of the logical giants of the nineteenth century, which produced such geniuses as Georg Cantor, Gottlob Frege, George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whitehead. Today, more than eighty years after his death, another generation of scholars is beginning to pay him the attention he deserves. The chapter shows the brilliant and tragic career of Peirce. Though he never published a book on philosophy, his articles and drafts fill volumes.

The Scholarship of Knowledge in the Modernised University

2014 ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
Gregory Heath
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Production Mode ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Mode 2 ◽  
Traditional Discipline ◽  
Mode 2 Knowledge Production

This chapter investigates how the modernised university might be transformed by the wider adoption of Mode-2 knowledge production. Mode-2 knowledge production, production of dispersed, team-based knowledge, as distinct from the traditional discipline-based Mode-1 knowledge production, was first identified and discussed by Gibbons et al. in 1994. Since then, the terminology has found its way into more general discourse about research and teaching and learning, but in that discourse, Mode-2 knowledge production has struggled to find the legitimacy and acceptance accorded to Mode-1. This is in spite of the fact that knowledge today is most often produced in collaboration, is transmitted in multi-mediated modalities, and utilised in transformative ways very often not envisioned by the generators of that knowledge. It is argued that the reason for the lack of acceptance lies in the fact that a supporting epistemology for Mode-2 knowledge has not, to date, been adequately developed. Thus, the chapter proposes that an epistemology based in philosophical or “American” pragmatism founded by Charles Sanders Peirce can be adopted to provide an articulated and well-grounded epistemology to support Mode-2 as a legitimate form of knowledge production.

Fallibilism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rescher
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Scientific Claims ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Philosophical Doctrine

Fallibilism is a philosophical doctrine regarding natural science, most closely associated with Charles Sanders Peirce, which maintains that our scientific knowledge claims are invariably vulnerable and may turn out to be false. Scientific theories cannot be asserted as true categorically, but only as having some probability of being true. Fallibilists insist on our inability to attain the final and definitive truth regarding the theoretical concerns of natural science – in particular at the level of theoretical physics. At any rate, at this level of generality and precision each of our accepted beliefs may turn out to be false, and many of them will. Fallibilism does not insist on the falsity of our scientific claims but rather on their tentativity as inevitable estimates: it does not hold that knowledge is unavailable here, but rather that it is always provisional.

Lines Crossed and Circles Breached

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kockelman
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Organizational Logic

This chapter lays out the key moves, and organizational logic, of the entire book. It argues that, rather than privileging mere ‘relations’, our analysis must foreground a particular ensemble of relations between relations if we are to properly understand the following modes of mediation: semiotic processes, semiological structures, agentive practices, environment-organism interfaces, communicative channels, social relations, and parasitic encounters. And it shows the ways such modes of mediation get computationally enclosed through processes that automate, format and network them, such that their meaningfulness is made to seem relatively portable: applicable to many contents and applicable across many contexts. It reviews and reworks several key ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism. And it summarizes each of the chapters, highlighting key themes, arguments, and interlocutors.

scholarly journals Logic of Relations and Diagrammatic Reasoning: Structuralist Elements in the Work of Charles Sanders Peirce

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-272
Author(s):  
Jessica Carter
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Diagrammatic Reasoning ◽  
Structuralist View

This chapter presents aspects of the work of Charles Sanders Peirce showing that he adhered to a number of pre-structuralist themes. Further, it indicates that Peirce’s position is similar in spirit to the category theoretical structuralist view of Steve Awodey (2004). The first part documents Peirce’s extensive knowledge of, and contribution to, the mathematics of his time, illustrating that relations played a fundamental role. The second part addresses Peirce’s characterization of mathematical reasoning as diagrammatic reasoning, that is, as reasoning done by constructing and observing rational relations in diagrams.

The Pragmatic Method

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jackman
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Pragmatic Maxim

This article examines the pragmatic method and its application in solving philosophical problems. While classical pragmatism quickly became identified with the theory of truth that dominated critical discussions of it, both of its founders, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, understood pragmatism essentially as a method. The article begins with an overview of pragmatism and the “Pragmatic Maxim”. In particular, it compares Peirce’s conceptions of pragmatism with James’s view that the pragmatic method would allow us to resolve many disputes in philosophy, and argues that their differences undermine any purely ‘Peircian’ reading of James’s Pragmatic Maxim. It then examines the advantages and drawbacks of three other readings of James’s maxim: the “activist” reading, the “subjectivist” reading, and the “practical” reading.

Translation and other acts of meaning: In between cognitive semiotics and semiotics of culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson
Keyword(s):  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Cultural Translation ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
Roman Jakobson ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractIf translation is an act of meaning transaction, semiotics should be able to define its specificity in relation to other semiotic acts. Instead, following upon suggestions by Roman Jakobson, the Tartu school, and, more implicitly, Charles Sanders Peirce, the notion of translation has been generalized to cover more or less everything that can be done within and between semiotic resources. In this paper, we start out from a definition of communication elaborated by the author in an earlier text, characterizing translation as a double act of meaning. This characterization takes into account the instances of sending and receiving of both acts involved: the first one at the level of cognition and the second one at the level of communication. Given this definition, we show that Jakobson’s “intralinguistic translation” is, in a sense, the opposite of translation and that his “intersemiotic translation” has important differences and well as similarities to real translation. We also suggest that “cultural translation” has very little to do with translation proper except, in some cases, at the end of its operation. Peirce’s idea of exchanging signs for other signs is better understood as a characterization of tradition.

scholarly journals THE INTERACTION OF TWO COMPLEX LOCI, ZESTE AND BITHORAX IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER

Genetics ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-321
Author(s):  
T C Kaufman ◽  
S E Tasaka ◽  
D T Suzuki
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Heterocyclic Compounds ◽  
Larval Instar ◽  
Sensitive Period ◽  
Temperature Sensitive ◽  
Extreme Form ◽  
The Third ◽  
Specific Allele ◽  
Pigment Change

ABSTRACT It has been found that certain alleles of the zeste locus (za 1-1.0) have no phenotype of their own, but interact with certain alleles at the bithorax locus (bx 3-58.8). This interaction takes the form of an enhancement of the homeotic bx phenotype to a more extreme form—i.e., the metathorax is transformed into mesothorax in varying degrees depending on the bx allele used. This enhancement is somewhat reminiscent of the transvection effect described by Lewis (1954). The characterization of the interaction thus far has shown that the enhancement only effects bx alleles which arise spontaneously, whereas the origin of the za allele is unimportant. The gene claret nondisjunctional was used for the production of gynandromorphs which showed that the enhancing ability of za, like the eye pigment change caused by z, is autonomous. The enhancement of one specific allele (bx34e), which is temperature-sensitive, has allowed a delineation of the temperature-sensitive period of the bithorax locus to a period extending from the middle of the second larval instar to the middle of the third larval instar. These results, as well as those of other enhancer and suppressor systems in Drosophila, have revealed the possibility of the involvement of heterocyclic compounds in the control of cell determination and fate in Drosophila melanogaster.

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