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Comments on six papers, appearing in this issue of the Transactions, discussing rational inquiry, pragmatism, truth, cognitive progress, and value. The six papers were originally presented at 'The Idea of Pragmatism,' a conference held at the University of Sheffield on 18-19 May 2015 to honour the work of Christopher Hookway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model of the continuous structure of Cognition based on several theses proposed by Charles S. Peirce in his youth and in his mature period. In this model, cognitions are discontinuous parts on a continuum and a cognitive process becomes "individually-synthetic," as a hypostatic abstraction from discontinuous transformations of informational fluxes in the continuous course of experience. That is, they are salient regions or neighborhoods on a continuum rather than points, and the relations of succession and precession among them are inferential, fluid, time sensitive, and goal-directed. First, this paper will outline the theses found in the young Peirce's work, which inspire a conception of continuous Cognition. Two questions will be raised regarding such a conception: (1) at what point does a particular act of cognition conclude? and (2) how should we characterize individual cognitions? To address these questions, the paper will later introduce the concept of continuity that Peirce developed in his mature years. The synthetic character of the continuum leads to the formulation of the concepts of neighborhood and synthetic individuality. These notions support the conception of a continuous model of Cognition in which the relations of succession and precession between individual finite cognitions are explained. The paper ends with a brief reflection regarding the possibility of developing this model of continuous Cognition as a theory of extended cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Issues of Pragmaticism" (1905) contains the only published version of Peirce's doctrine of "critical common-sensism." One of the claims of that doctrine is that common sense beliefs are invariably vague. In this paper, we seek to explain this claim. We begin by providing a philological reconstruction of the drafts of "Issues of Pragmaticism" and a comparison of Peirce's several, successive expositions of critical common-sensism across those drafts. Then we examine Peirce's theory of vagueness; we show that there is both a "subjectal" and a "predicative" variety of vagueness, and that Peirce construes predicative vagueness according to three distinct models. Finally, we assess in what sense, i.e., according to which of the three models, common sense beliefs may be said to be invariably vague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 2019, a granite monument was erected at the Peirce gravesite in the Milford Cemetery in place of the small eroded tombstone which for many years had been thought to be inadequate as a sign of Peirce's enduring importance as a philosopher and man of science. A small symposium featuring six papers was held in conjunction with the dedication of the new monument. Those six papers, along with an account of the challenging campaign to replace the old tombstone, follow this introduction. Here the papers are encapsulated in an account of Peirce's life after the death of his father, his marriage to Juliette, and the loss of his position at Johns Hopkins. Peirce's move to Milford, Pennsylvania, in 1887, completed a transition from membership in the society of the scientific and intellectual elite to the ranks of the outsiders. From that time on, Peirce would be in perpetual conflict over the urgent need for income and his sense of duty to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. Many of the most troubled and distressing times of Peirce's life occurred during his Milford years and yet they also fostered much of his best and most creative thought. The following symposium papers provide illuminating accounts of important facets of Peirce's life and thought during these times providing new information and insights about the man whose ashes lie under the new monument but whose ideas continue to grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand Peirce's practical conservatism, this paper examines Peirce's views on a liberal arts education and the political potential of the university. Peirce's views on education raise a puzzle for his political thought: Given his practical conservatism, why does Peirce think it is important to teach citizens and future leaders how to think, not what to think? If tradition, sentiment, and instinct are the best guides for the active life, why should those who lead active lives receive an education that focuses on strengthening and improving reasoning abilities? Why not simply teach them traditional wisdom and morality—as is often the case with conservative institutions and societies? This examination reveals an understanding of both the potential and limits of reason in the practical realm, resulting in a moderate practical conservatism. We also learn of the important moral lessons offered by institutions devoted to the noble pursuit of truth for its own sake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short introduction to a set of five papers on various aspects of several of Peirce's contributions to understanding religion. Papers range from Peirce's Neglected Argument, infant baptism, and the practice of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze an apparent paradox that exists in the concept of the assertiveness of terms, an idea put forth by Peirce in the manuscript R 787, c. 1896. The scrutiny of this case sheds new light on Peirce's speculative grammar, especially on his account of subject and predicate. After briefly reviewing the current relevance of Peirce's thought for speech act theories, this paper investigates the role of rudimentary assertions in Peirce's thought, which lies at the crossroads of semiotics, logic and linguistics. In order to reach this goal, this paper (i) considers the place of assertions in Peirce's thought; (ii) analyzes the general conditions for assertion, especially its syntactical structure; (iii) redefines Peirce's original concepts of subject, predicate and copula, which differ from traditional logic and Indo-European grammars; and (iv) explores the structure of reasoning tacitly assumed in our linguistic habits, such that even a term might be understood as assertoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly before writing the papers that many consider the birthplace of pragmatism, Peirce studied Antoine Cournot's application of the calculus to political economy. Though there is no explicit evidence that Peirce's reading of Cournot influenced his theory of inquiry, there is a discernable affinity between Cournot's approach to economics and Peirce's approach to inquiry. The current paper aims at making this affinity explicit and show that looking at Peirce through the lens of Cournot's approach to economics can give us a better understanding of Peirce's views on inquiry and his understanding of truth in terms of a final opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cheryl Misak has presented an argument for democracy based on her analysis of the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce: If we care about the truth of our beliefs—as everyone does, according to Misak—then we ought to support democratic norms and democratic political institutions. We argue in the present paper that Misak's argument does not adequately justify a democratic political system. Her argument does, however, justify a rational commitment to the standard liberal-democratic values of freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the like. We demonstrate as well that Misak's argument for the democratic values withstands well-known objections against her argument for a democratic political system. We also show that weaker premises involving every agent's commitment to pursuing their own subjective ends can get us to Misak's conclusions regarding liberal values. These weaker premises avoid objections raised against Misak's Peircean view and are acceptable even to those who reject Misak's idea, taken from her reading of Peirce, that truth is a constitutive norm of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper gives a survey and presents a critical analysis of Peirce's studies in Egyptology from 1885 to 1904, as documented mainly in MSS 1227, 1228, 1244, and 1294. It examines Peirce's studies and advances in the language and script of Pharaonic Egypt as well as his assessments of the scientific achievements of the Ancient Egyptians. Among the linguistic topics in focus are Peirce's assumptions concerning the iconicity of hieroglyphic writing, his conjectures on the origins of indexical words from nouns, and his hypotheses concerning the proximity of Ancient Egyptian to the ursprache of humans. The paper traces some of Peirce's hypotheses concerning the structure of Egyptian to his fundamental assumptions about iconicity and indexicality in language. Altogether, Peirce was not only very familiar with the state of the art of contemporary Egyptology, but he also achieved a remarkable competence of the Egyptian language and its hieroglyphic writing. While some of Peirce's insights into the language and civilization of the Ancient Egyptians are still tenable, others reflect certain misinterpretations of the scholarship of his time, which call for correction in light of the state of the art of today's Egyptology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frank Ramsey is usually taken to be an emotivist or an expressivist about the good: he is usually taken to bifurcate inquiry into fact-stating and non-fact-stating domains, ethics falling into the latter. In this paper I argue that whatever the very young Ramsey's view might have been, towards the end of his short life, he was coming to a through-going and objective pragmatism about all our beliefs, including those about the good, beauty, and even the meaning of life. Ethical beliefs are not mere expressions of emotion, but rather fall under our cognitive scope. They can be assessed as rational or irrational, true or false. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T.L. Short's Charles Peirce and Modern Science, in which he discusses Peirce's intimate relation to modern science, simultaneously functions as Short's own philosophical testament. Short's overall argument is that Peirce takes inquiry to be the main definition of science, implying that all other definition attempts or central issues of science are but products of inquiry: methods, experiments, observations, conclusions, results, syntheses, theory buildings, system constructions, laws, predictions, metaphysical assumptions, scientific values, etc. On this basis, Short develops central Peircean ideas such as inquiry into inquiry, phenomenology, and his "normative sciences" as elements of a reinvigorated and metaphysically ambitious version of empiricism. In this process, however, certain problems appear, such as Short's tendency to refute any relevance in scientific investigations of systematicity, the a priori, the strive for conclusions and results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with Isaac Levi's approach to justifying changes in our states of full belief and offers a Peircean criticism of his strategy for resolving conflicts between the results of what inquirers deem to be the most reliable programs for a given situation and the settled beliefs about which we have no doubts. In the first section, I discuss the central features of Levi's theory of justifying changes to our state of full belief. In the second section, I present a Peircean approach to evaluating the reliability of these programs for routine expansion of belief, and I argue that there is a conflict between Levi's approach to situations where an inquirer has expanded her beliefs into inconsistency and Peirce's criticisms of non-scientific methods for settling opinion. The third section presents two potential objections to the Peircean approach, objections that emphasize the importance of our concern to avoid error, and in the fourth section, I propose an original supplement to the Peircean approach that better addresses that concern. Ultimately, my aim is to develop and defend a Peircean approach that is in opposition to Levi's views about when it is appropriate to question the reliability of our programs for routine expansion of belief but that also addresses his legitimate worries about underemphasizing our concern to avoid error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon Peirce's philosophy of inquiry to recommend a theory of religious participation as a form of maximally habitual, inhabited inquiry. It argues for conceiving of inquiry as a ubiquitous phenomenon and works from Peirce's writings on 'vital matters' and science to develop distinctions between different forms of inquiry that are, nevertheless, continuous with one another. As a form of inquiry religious participation, even in its most conservative manifestations, is inquisitive and fallible and the paper argues that scholars of religion would do well to reject conceptions of religion that excise religion and religious people from larger theories of fallible inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about Peirce's understanding and notational realization of the relationship between the logical content of conjunction and the illocutionary force of assertion. The argument moves from an imaginary, subtextual dialogue between several authors in the history of logic and the philosophy of language (Aristotle, Ammonius, Boethius, Frege, Peirce, Geach, and Dummett) and shows that the problem of the relationship between conjunction and assertion is quite old and has received distinct and irreconcilable treatments. Peirce has an original take on the problem, which he addresses, as often happens in his mature writings, in notational terms: the anomaly of conjunction (i.e., the fact that, unlike the other connectives, conjunction is subject to assertion distribution) is not to be hidden behind a uniform notation, like standard sentential calculus, in which the conjunction connective is treated on a par with the other connectives. Rather, a sentential language is possible that embodies rather than conceals the anomaly, and this is Peirce's system of Existential Graphs, which from 1896 onwards understandably becomes his preferred instrument of logical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until well into the 1890s, Peirce did not pay special attention to the act of asserting a proposition, and he used "proposition" and "assertion" interchangeably. This began to change in the period of the "Grand Logic" and the "Short Logic", and in Peirce's vast semiotic development after 1902, no less than three theories of assertion are developed to account for the ability of certain signs to claim truth. One is assertion as a special self-reference of proposition signs, claiming that the sign itself is indexically connected to its object as a truth grant; another is the assumption of social responsibility for the sign's truth on the part of the utterer; the third is the purpose of asserting a proposition, namely to persuade some interlocutor about the truth of the sign. These three theories are oftentimes developed in isolation, but this paper argues they fit together in the way that the third presupposes the second, in turn presupposing the first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some philosophers claim that truth is the norm of assertion, or that asserting that p commits one to the truth of p. In some seminal works Peirce put it in terms of responsibility: asserting that p makes one responsible for the truth of the proposition that p. I take this thesis to be stimulating but inaccurate, since making an assertion generally commits one to sincerity, not to truth. This explains how it is possible to be truthful liars and why we are disappointed by these. Justification of belief is also important, as shown by the cases of the justified falsity-teller and the unjustified truth-teller. So, for the assessment of assertion, what matters is (a) what we believe, (b) whether we assert what we believe and (c) whether we have a justification for what we believe. This does not throw truth out of the picture, however: insofar as asserting that p is asserting that one believes that p , and believing that p is believing that it is true that p , asserting that p is asserting that one believes that it is true that p. The paper also distinguishes some senses in which truth is normative for belief and assertion, and endorses a teleological understanding of this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 1909, Charles S. Peirce conducted a series of experiments with three-valued logic, anticipating the pioneering work of Jan Łukasiewicz and Emil Post by ten years. These experiments are entirely contained within six or seven pages of Peirce's Logic Notebook. Due to the work of Atwell Turquette, the formalisms contained in those pages are relatively well understood. What is less understood are Peirce's philosophical reasons for conducting those experiments. His explanation of the need for his "triadic" logic is very brief, taking up little more than a single short page in the Notebook. Here he gives us two clues about his motivations, one connected to modal notions and one to his views on continuity. There are two previous accounts of the philosophical motivations behind triadic logic, due to Max Fisch and Turquette, and to Robert Lane. In this paper, I re-evaluate those views and connect the two clues to Peirce's hypothetical cosmology. I argue that in conducting his three-valued experiments, Peirce was trying to create a logic to capture his notion of the evolving universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Peirce's concept of analogy. I begin by arguing that he understands it along two main lines: (1) as a natural cognitive operation that discerns the resemblance of structural relations, pivotally signified by the diagram sign-class, and (2) as a "mixed" form of argument employing abduction, deduction, and induction. After exploring these two aspects, along with their interpenetration, I compare Peirce's account of analogous reasoning with the highly influential view of the late-Medieval scholastic Thomas Cajetan. I argue that Peirce presents a superior approach because his diagrammatic logic renders a view that is methodologically open to further inquiry, explains that openness in terms of inference through sampling, and capaciously accepts a variety of potential determinations for any one analogy due to the objective vagueness of signs. Cajetan's appeal to the irreducible proportionality of analogous thinking, on the other hand, excludes further explanation of analogy's workings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Peirce's mature accounts of his classification of the sciences never lack a few sentences about Science of Review, the role that this principal division of science plays for both his architectonic of science in general and the heuretic coenoscopic philosophical sciences in particular remains rather unclear, although it even seems to contain philosophical disciplines such as a philosophia ultima. The aim of this paper is to take stock of Peirce's remarks on Science of Review in published and unpublished writings from the years 1902–1911 in order to (I.) provide a philologically reliable account of the development of Peirce's conception of this branch of science, (II.) highlight the nature of Peirce's work as a taxonomist of the sciences as a contribution to one of the three essential orders of Science of Review, and finally (III.) shed light on its architectonic role as an integral function of scientific semeiosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empiricists have traditionally assumed that an epistemic subject has immediate access only to some primitive perceptual objects, so that judgments about kinds, modal properties, and dispositions are parasitic upon and less certain than those about what is given in perception. Against this view, Peirce argues that perception provides doxastic warrants in virtue of subconscious inferential processes that constitute the content of a temporally extended perceptual episode. According to Peirce, perceptual judgments have an abductive logical form, and they supply the perceiver with novel hypotheses about the world. Though the production of these hypotheses is not subject to conscious control, it is subject to subconscious control, when a present percept is compared to other features of perceptual experience. By examining Peirce's account of the continuity and temporality of perception and his investigations of subconscious processes, this paper considers how experience can confirm or falsify prior beliefs and produce novel knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peirce's sign type of "Dicent Indexical Legisigns" has received relatively little scholarly attention, and it is sometimes confused with the "Dicent Symbol" category. This stems from an inconsistency between Peirce's general explanation and his exemplifications of the category. Taking the lead from the latter, this paper argues that while the role of "Dicent Symbols" is descriptive, the task of "Dicent Indexical Legisigns" is not to describe but rather to establish identity of reference by connecting some proper name to an object or to another identifying sign of that object. Thus, it appears as an overlooked sign type playing an important role both in everyday agreement upon reference and in scientific negotiations over identity, terminology, existence, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Flórez's idea that an inference having the form of Peirce's abduction is to be found in chapter 13 of the first book of the Posterior Analytics , where Aristotle expounds the distinction between "syllogism of the that" and "syllogism of the why." It is shown that this idea is mistaken because all of Aristotle's examples in APo. I.13 are deductively valid first-figure syllogisms (either of the why or of the that), while abduction is a deductively invalid second-figure syllogism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how Peirce's semeiotics can be applied to explain the representation of non-existent or unreal objects, whether in misrepresentation or in thought and discourse about fictional objects. Such representation would seem to require a relation between a sign and an unreal object, and the puzzle is how a real object (the sign) can bear a relation to an unreal object. Peirce can solve this puzzle without denying that representation generally is relational. However, he can deny that the representation of an unreal object involves a real relation to that object. The key lies with his distinction between the immediate object and the dynamical object of a sign, as an unreal object is always only an immediate object. With a functional substitution model of signs (suggested by Peirce's writings, and defended here) we can understand an unreal immediate object in terms of an interpreter responding to a sign as if it were related to a real object. The remainder of this Peircean solution rests upon a realist interpretation of dynamical objects, as well as upon his abstract definition of truth as the correspondence of a sign to its object, which helps to explain how some propositions about unreal objects can be true. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine recent treatments of Peircean truth in terms of regulative principles or intellectual hopes, drawing on work by Christopher Hookway, Cheryl Misak, and Andrew Howat. In doing this I show that recent arguments by Huw Price that Peirce's account cannot provide an effective truth norm do not apply when Peircean truth is construed as a regulative assumption on inquiry. I conclude by comparing the 'anthropological' sensibilities of Price's account of truth as convenient friction, and Peirce's account of truth as a regulative assumption or intellectual hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most specialists agree that Peirce upholds his abstract definitions of reality and truth simultaneously and consistently with his pragmatic clarifications of those concepts. But some might assume that his pragmatic clarifications (the third grade of clearness) restrict the extensions of abstract definitions (the second grade of clearness), such that anything real must both be independent of what anyone thinks about it, per the abstract definition, and be an object of the would-be "final opinion", per the pragmatic clarification. I call this reading Interpretive Dependence of the second grade of clearness on the third grade. In contrast, on Interpretive Independence , which I defend here, a concept can have a different extension on the second grade than it has on the third grade, such that it could be true, in a purely abstract sense, that there are realities that can never be known (metaphysical realism). "True" here must also be interpreted only according to an abstract definition, namely, one which Peirce endorses in 1906 and which, I argue, is a deflationary definition. Interpretive Independence not only allows Peirce to explain the intuitive appeal of metaphysical realism, while at the same time rejecting it, it also allows him to explain how there can be truths about fictional objects and truths in pure mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution describes summarily Peirce's five European trips and highlights some of the documental findings related with those journeys done by the members of the Group of Peirce Studies in the University of Navarra, Spain, during the last two decades. Up to April of 2019 we have transcribed, translated into Spanish, annotated and uploaded to the website of the Group more than 170 letters and another 413 documents related with Peirce's five European journeys and with his relationship with some 36 European and 18 American correspondents. The links to some of the images available online on the website are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My aim in this essay is to shed light on the origins of Peircean vagueness. The intention is therefore primarily historical-philological, exploring the logical-semiotic roots of vagueness. First, I distinguish the two senses in which Peirce treats the notion of vagueness: one referring to the subject, the other to the predicate within a proposition, specifying that I am only concerned here with the first sense of vagueness. Second, I argue that Brock and Chauviré, while attempting to unravel the origins of Peircean vagueness through the notion of the individuum vagum , fail to fully resolve the problem. Third, I expound the medieval theory of suppositio , which concerns the denotation and quantification of the propositional subject. This medieval logical theory aimed to clarify the meaning of indefinite and indeterminate propositions. Fourth, I present textual evidence in which Peirce demonstrates his thorough knowledge of the medieval theory of suppositio , Peter of Spain's theory in particular. In the same section, I highlight a neglected detail within R 530, in which Peirce directly refers to the origins of the notion of vagueness. Finally, I argue that once the quantifiers (existential and universal) were discovered and formalized, Peirce gradually lost interest in the theory of suppositio as a useful tool for clarifying vague (indefinite) and general (indeterminate) propositions, since he had a better logical tool at his disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short's assertion that Peirce lacked a cohesive philosophical system is critically examined, and the interconnectedness of Peirce's 1884–1893 "cosmology" with other aspects of his work is explored, countering Short's claims of its limited systematic relevance. Additionally, Short's claim that Peirce "expanded empiricism empirically" is scrutinized, and his interpretation of Peirce's account of perception is criticized. By contrasting Short's anti-system reading, I highlight the importance of studying Peirce's philosophy holistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When confronted with moral dilemmas, Charles S. Peirce would recommend that we trust our sentiments, not our reasoning. A scientific exploration of ethics may affect our daily conduct but should only do so gradually. Some modern approaches take the opposite stance and deny the significance of moral sentiments. Considering both Peirce and his opponents, I aim to contribute to the discussion of a radical moral theory: effective altruism. Stating that we should strive to do the most objective good we can, effective altruism regularly conflicts with our moral sentiments. In response, effective altruists claim that our sentiments are misguided and should be overcome. Which side is right? Using Peirce's work to answer this question reveals that effective altruism cannot clearly define how it aims to affect our daily conduct. In addition, it seeks to change our sentiments, but may alter them for the worse. Taking Peirce's insights seriously leads us to conclude that we should be cautious of how we adopt effective altruism in our lives—and that while we deliberate this, we should instead trust our sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on Bellucci's and Murphey's accounts of Peirce's early logic of signs by making a pair of contributions to the literature on Peirce's reduction of illation to the sign relation. First, I reinvestigate the connection between the structure of inference and the representative relation, relying here on Peirce's early accounts of sign inference from 1865 and 1866. Second, with the development of Peirce's theory of inquiry in mind, I elucidate the implications of Peirce's early view of sign inference. These contributions deepen our understanding of Fisch's claim that the Illustrations series "is thought out within the framework of the doctrine of signs." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the steps that took Peirce from his early 1882 proposals to represent logic by graphs to the advent of the full theory of quantification in his 1896 logic of Existential Graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking my lead from Robert Talisse and Scott Aikin's distinction between 'meaning pragmatism' and 'inquiry pragmatism,' and guided throughout by Christopher Hookway's understanding of Peirce, I revisit some of the best-known locuses of both Peirce's meaning pragmatism and his inquiry pragmatism, and conclude that the distinction dissolves in Peirce. For Peirce, the very mechanism for elucidating a concept's meaning, the pragmatic maxim, requires ongoing inquiry. Moreover, in performing an inquiry, we elucidate meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rorty in private exchanges and public discourse occasionally gave me remarkably bad advice (e.g., in teaching pragmatism, especially to undergrads, it is better to focus on James and Dewey to the exclusion of Peirce). He however was far better than this. As a philosopher preoccupied with meta-philosophy and intimately linked to this with issues of justification, he displayed reflexive finesse unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. As someone who identified with James and Dewey even more than Marx, Freud, Foucault, and Derrida, he was animated by a pragmatic imagination oriented to the ongoing task of reconstructing the democratic ethos of our daily lives. Chris Voparil has made a painstaking and responsible case for taking the thought of Rorty to be continuous with that of Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams. It is far from clear that the path forward requires us to go through, rather than 'round, Rorty; but it is one possible route. Moreover, even if Voparil in the end offers a "weak misreading" of a "strong misreader," he offers an engaging, erudite, and illuminating portrait of a controversial figure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that traditional formulations of the reduction thesis that tie it to privileged relational operations do not suffice for Peirce's justification of the categories and invite the charge of gerrymandering to make it come out as true. We then develop a more robust invariant formulation of the thesis, one that is immune to that charge, by explicating the use of triads in any relational operations. The explication also allows us to track how Thirdness enters the structure of higher order relations and even to propose a numerical measure of it. Our analysis reveals new conceptual phenomena when negation or disjunction are used to compound relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my response to the commentators, I agree with Rosa Mayorga that Duns Scotus should be included as an important influence on Peirce's notion of agency, as well as his sense of the highest good. I explain, however, how Peirce's triadic view of agency is an improvement that relates to current debates between moral internalism and externalism. In response to Diana Heney, I defend Peirce's notion of evolutionary love as a form of intergenerational altruism, necessary to any community of inquiry. I also argue, in response to her query, that Peirce did not subscribe to moral perfectionism. Instead, there is good reasons to think that he was a meliorist in Dewey's sense. The end is improvement, which seems to be an endless process, rather than the movement towards a static end. I agree with Aaron Wilson's claim that the pragmatic definition of truth implies the convergence theory of truth. However, I explain how the convergence theory of truth might be elaborated as to apply to ethical claims. I also discuss how the 'would be' of the convergence theory of truth is a problematic measure of moral claims. Like progress in science, it is better to measure a moral norm in terms of its improvement from previous ones. I take issue with Wilson's account of moral reality and his claim that truth can be attained by individuals in the absence of community. I end by arguing that reasonableness has to be understood as a process rather than a perfected state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece offers a reflection on James Liszka's book, Charles Peirece on Ethics, Esthetics, and the Normative Sciences. I consider Liszka's approach to Peirce's writings, especially the Minute Logic and "Evolutionary Love", and explore his extension of Peirce's ethical thought. I conclude that Liszka's work in this volume shows us what reasonableness as self-correction might require of us, and suggests ways in which we can take up the work of the normative sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences , I argue that Peirce was motivated to develop a normative science of ethics because of his growing concern with the corruption of science in the Gilded Age, and the recognition that the pragmatic maxim entailed an amoral instrumentalism. Rather than taking a Kantian approach to resolve the latter issue, he adopts an Aristotelian one, engaging in a search for an ultimate end that could order all other ends. What is right is what would be conducive to that end. As such he sees the necessity of a science of esthetics which would study such an end. However, rather than eudaimonia as the highest end, Peirce sees reasonableness as the summum bonum. Although barely sketched by Peirce, I argue that its principal sense is that of an ongoing process of self-correction away from error. In regard to this end, what is most important is the design of practices and the establishment of habits of conduct and sentiment most conducive to self-correction. For this reason, a proper community of inquiry with these features ought to be established, armed with the general methodology of science to assess the norms that guide the experiments of living together. Assurance that communities of inquiries are moving away from error and toward improvement is based on a convergence theory of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of John Duns Scotus' doctrine of the free will on Charles Peirce's normative theory is proposed in the context of commentaries on James J. Liszka's latest book on Peirce and the normative sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An aspect of Peirce's thought that might still be underappreciated is his resistance to what Levi calls pedigree epistemology, i.e., to the idea that a central focus in epistemology should be the justification of current beliefs. Somewhat more widely appreciated is his rejection of the subjective view of probability. We argue that Peirce's criticisms of subjectivism, to the extent that they grant that such a conception of probability is viable at all, revert back to pedigree epistemology. A thoroughgoing rejection of pedigree in the context of probabilistic epistemology, however, does challenge prominent subjectivist responses to the problem of the priors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Departing from Anderson's (2016) suggestion that there are three communities in Peirce's thought corresponding to his three normative sciences of logic, ethics, and esthetics, I argue that these communities partake in a relationship of dependence similar to that found among the normative sciences. In this way, just as logic relies on ethics which relies on esthetics, so too would a logical community of inquirers rely on an ethical community of love, which would rely on an esthetic community of artists. A community could conduct inquiry together only if it pursued the same goal; and it could pursue the same goal only if it first imaginatively construed it. Any logical or ethical community requires a shared imaginative repertoire of ideal ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The misconception that pragmatism is a philosophy of action often serves the cause of rampant individualism. Despite the fact that "vulgar" pragmatism is rarely treated in scholarly discussions, the ideas that it entails, such as that persons are isolated entities, that nominalism is a more viable doctrine than idealism or realism, and the utilitarian gospel of greed, still emerge in scholarly debates. If we think about what Charles S. Peirce and Josiah Royce considered fundamental to the pragmatic vision—the purport of ideas and the growth of meaning—such a misreading not only loses ground, but we are forced to reevaluate our engagement with the pragmatic tradition as a whole. For if meaning is always deferred towards an indefinite future to be developed by communal reasonableness, then the sanctity of the individual could be considered only in relation to a community. I argue that both Peirce and Royce are representatives of a prophetic tradition in philosophy that grounds the community as a fundamental problem of philosophy and that they may justifiably be called prophets of community. Prophetic pragmatism is here understood to be (1) a critique of culture, (2) a response to the time-bound experience of humanity, (3) an inventive philosophical practice, and (4) a religiously inspired moral project. Examining Peirce and Royce from this perspective allows us to redeem what is of "eternal" value in their work from the personal prejudices that plagued their thought. Moreover, this approach helps us realize the need for communities to be more open to self- and mutual-interpretation in the hope that we might "learn to understand one another." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with one of the most pressing issues of Peirce’s late attempt at a classification of signs, namely, the order in which the ten trichotomies should be arrayed with the intention of deriving sixty-six signs. The first part of the article tracks the proposals made by Peirce and other scholars about the order of the ten trichotomies. They have proposed several different ways to array the ten trichotomies, but there is still no consensus about the correct order, and besides Peirce, no one has tried to derive types of signs from those orders. In the second part, we discuss other criteria for arraying the trichotomies, such as comparing groups of trichotomies in order to see which trichotomy is prior and which is posterior, and classifying logical inferences according to the types of signs derived from those trichotomies. The result is a linear order of trichotomies according to the principle of determination. With that order, we undertake the task of deriving some kinds of signs (although not the sixty-six possible ones) through the principle of degeneracy in order to establish that there are no contradictions or incongruencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Sanders Peirce argued that we have no right to harshly punish criminals, especially by causing them to suffer and die in prison. Summarily stated, his argument is that the state has only those rights and powers conferred on it by its citizens, and as its citizens do not have the right to but are morally prohibited from harshly punishing criminals, the prison system must be reformed. This essay develops and defends Peirce's argument in the context of his nascent sentimentalism and suggests that as the prison system of Peirce's time is akin to our own, his argument is as applicable today as it was then. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard histories of economics usually treat the "marginal revolution" of the mid-19th century as both supplanting the "classical" economics of Smith and Ricardo and as advancing the idea of economics as a mathematical science. The marginalists—especially Jevons and Walras—viewed Cournot's (1838) book on mathematical economics as a seminal work on which they could build. Surprisingly, the scientist, philosopher, and logician Charles S. Peirce discovered Cournot before the marginalist economists and possessed a deeper appreciation of his mathematical approach. While Peirce's contributions to economics are limited, the influence of economics on his philosophy is subtle and not well understood. In a number of fragments, Peirce, who, despite Ricardo's lack of mathematical form, nonetheless regarded him as a paradigmatic mathematical economist, refers to "Ricardian inference" as a fundamental contribution to scientific method. Two options, perhaps complementary, are explored as to exactly what Peirce meant by "Ricardian inference." On the one hand, he associates Ricardo with the "primipostnumeral syllogism," which is a sort of generalization to uncountably infinite sets of what Peirce calls Fermatian inference (often referred to as mathematical induction). On the other hand, he holds up Ricardo as an exemplar of the "analytical method," which is Peirce's name for a hybrid form connecting analogy, abduction, and induction. On either account, economics plays a larger and more fundamental role in Peirce's philosophy of science than is generally understood. In the Harvard Lectures the two threads are linked together in Peirce's use of an economic example to exemplify pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I distinguish between a monistic and a dualistic interpretation of the history of pragmatism. The former emphasizes the continuities between Peirce, James, and Dewey whereas the latter assumes that there is a chasm between the positions of James and Dewey, on the one hand, and Peirce, on the other. This article assumes the monistic position. Based on this position, I advance a novel understanding of the history of pragmatism in the middle of the 20th century. It rejects the traditional view that pragmatism suffered an eclipse in that period and argues that we should actually split that period into two periods. The first period is dominated by the logical positivist account of C. I. Lewis and its pragmatic inclinations. I call this period "the dimming period of pragmatism." The latter period is characterized by Quine's and Sellars's critiques of logical positivism as critiques in the spirit of pragmatism and made with tools from pragmatism. I call it the "supposed eclipse but actual demolition" period of pragmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What would happen to Peirce's study of signs if we did not focus to such a great extent on such phenomena as a sunflower turning toward the sun, or a person knocking on a door, or the formation of a fossil, or even a string of sentences woven into a text such as a literary essay or scientific memoir, but rather preoccupied ourselves with such complex and open-ended phenomena as the history of a science (say, the science of biology)? Would this make any difference for how we (for example) conceive the object of semiosis? Moreover, do not the paradigmatic instances of the experimental sciences in which Peirce was most interested display their vitality as much as anywhere in the continual refashioning (at least, rethinking) of their most basic concepts? These are the questions with which the author of this essay concerns himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of abduction was extensively analyzed by the pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce more than a century ago. Modern philosophers typically treat abduction as being the same as "inference to the best explanation" and often even attribute this position to Peirce. But this was not his position. For him, abduction involved inference to any possible explanation. He was particularly concerned with how people respond to experiences they were not expecting by acquiring new beliefs which would make such experiences expected. We spell out the eight cognitive steps from unexpected experience to new belief that are implicit in Peirce's work on abduction, and using a particular historical example we show how promising this theory of belief acquisition is. We identify two lacunae in this theory that will need to be filled in if we are to have a complete theory of how unexpected experiences ("surprising facts") give rise to new beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although drawn from the historical fact of modern science, Peirce's concept of science is unusual, radical, and difficult: he defined it not by its alleged method—scientific discovery is also of methods—but by its 'spirit', viz., of restless dissatisfaction with what already is known. Endless inquiry replaces the classical ideal of a body of knowledge in which inquiry comes to rest. This modifies how "The Fixation of Belief" is to be understood. The advent of modern science created a new kind of person, the specialist researcher, with novel ambitions, pleasures, and values, and a new kind of community, of diverse specialists. It entailed a linear view of history and it required a faith in the future like that which Christianity had introduced to Europe. This concept of science is fundamental to Peirce's philosophy, but that theme is not here developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]