Head Notes for the EP 2
This companion expands on the annotations and apparatus included in the print edition of EP2. Eventually, it will include the full-texts for each chapter in addition to more explanatory materials. It will be developed as time permits (the chronological edition is our primary focus).
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18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

Chapter 1

MS 886. [First published in CP 7.565-78. This article, submitted on 4 May 1893, was written for the weekly magazine The Open Court and was favorably considered for The Monist, but was not published because of a misunderstanding between Peirce and their editor, Paul Carus.] In this short and provoking paper, Peirce considers synechism, his doctrine that everything is continuous, and characterizes the stance of the synechist toward various philosophical questions. He applies his doctrine to the question of immortality and finds that it is rash to assume that we only have carnal life. Peirce maintains that synechism is a purely scientific philosophy and predicts that it will help reconcile science and religion.


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Chapter 2

MS 404. [Published in part in CP 2.281, 285, and 297-302. This work, probably composed early in 1894, was originally the first chapter of a book entitled "The Art of Reasoning," but was then turned into the second chapter of Peirce's multi-volume "How to Reason: A Critick of Arguments" (also known as "Grand Logic").] In this selection Peirce gives an account of signs based on an analysis of conscious experience from the standpoint of his three universal categories. He discusses the three principal kinds of signs--icons, indices, and symbols--and provides many examples. He maintains, as he had earlier, that reasoning must involve all three kinds of signs, and he claims that the art of reasoning is the art of marshalling signs, thus emphasizing the relationship between logic and semiotics.


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Chapter 3

MS 595. [Published in part in CP 2.282, 286-91, 295-96, 435-44, and 7.555-58. This is the first part of a work entitled "Short Logic" that Peirce began in 1895 for Ginn & Co. (who had rejected his lengthy "How to Reason"). This is the only chapter Peirce wrote.] The relationship between logic and semiotics is more deeply examined in this selection. Peirce considers reasoning in a broad context that includes both the process of belief change and the expression of thoughts in language, but he stresses the centrality of signs for reasoning. Here, as in the second selection, he focuses on icons, indices, and symbols, again giving many helpful examples, and applies this classification in his analysis of propositions and inferences. He divides the study of signs into three branches, which he calls the philosophical trivium: speculative grammar, logic, and speculative rhetoric. Peirce then explains our success in discovering natural laws by our affinity with nature.


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Chapter 4

MS 437.[Published in CP 1.616-48, in part, and in RLT 105-22. Delivered on 10 February, this was the first of eight Cambridge Conferences Lectures Peirce gave in February and March 1898.] Peirce objects here to "the Hellenic tendency to mingle philosophy with practice" and argues that true scientific investigation must not be conducted with the question of utility in mind. The purpose of philosophy is not to win adherents and to improve their lives. Peirce makes a telling distinction between matters of vital importance and the selfless advancement of knowledge, and argues that, for the former, reason is a poor substitute for sentiment and instinct while, for the latter, reason is key. The upshot is that belief has no place in science but is what must guide action in practical affairs.


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Chapter 5

MSS 442, 825. [Published in CP 5.574-89 and 7.135-40 (in part), and in RLT 165-80. Delivered on 21 February 1898, this is the fourth Cambridge Conferences Lecture. William James, who had read it a month earlier, told Peirce it was "a model of what a popular lecture ought to be" and implored him "on bended knees to give it first," but Peirce rewrote his first lecture instead and kept this one, much revised, as his fourth.] Peirce considers the role of observation in deduction, induction, and retroduction, and compares the three kinds of reasoning with respect to their self-correcting properties and their usefulness for supporting belief. He puts forward the rule that "in order to learn you must desire to learn," and contrasts, if only implicitly, his "Will to Learn" with the "Will to Believe" that had been expounded the previous year by William James. Peirce claims that American universities have been "miserably insignificant" because they have been institutions for teaching, not for learning. In this lecture, Peirce returns to the distinction between matters of vital importance, which James extolled, and matters of importance for science.


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Chapter 6

P 802: Popular Science Monthly 58 (January 1901):296-306. [Published in CP 8.132-52. The complete title includes the subtitle: "Annotations on the First Three Chapters" (but some remarks are made on the fourth chapter as well). Peirce first wrote this piece for The Psychological Review.] In this review, Peirce objects to Pearson's claim that human conduct should be regulated by Darwinian theory, and to the related view that social stability is the sole justification of scientific research. Peirce holds that these doctrines lead to bad ethics and bad science. "I must confess that I belong to that class of scallawags who propose, with God's help, to look the truth in the face, whether doing so be conducive to the interests of society or not." The man of science should be motivated by the majesty of truth, "as that to which, sooner or later, every knee must bow." Against Pearson's nominalistic claim that the rationality inherent in nature owes its origin to the human intellect, Peirce argues that it is the human mind that is determined by the rationality in nature. Peirce also rejects Pearson's claim that there are first impressions of sense that serve as the starting point of reasoning, and argues that reasoning begins in percepts, which are products of psychical operations involving three kinds of elements: qualities of feelings, reactions, and generalizing elements.


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Chapter 7

MS and TS from the Smithsonian Institution Archives (Record Unit 31, Office of the Secretary, Incoming Correspondence, 1891-1906, Box 52, Folder 4). [Published in Philip P. Wiener's Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings, pp. 289-321. From a longer paper, "Hume on Miracles and Laws of Nature," and eventually retitled "The Laws of Nature and Hume's Argument against Miracles," written at the end of May 1901 at the invitation of Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. After many revisions, Langley declined to publish it.] Peirce aims here to explain to non-specialists what laws of nature are and how they have been conceived--his foil being the nominalist conception typical of Hume's thought and of modern empiricism. Every genuine law of nature is an objective generalization from observations and must support verifiable predictions about future observations. Subjective generalizations put forward as laws of nature cannot pass the test of predictability. In explaining how predictability is possible, Peirce introduces a theme that will come to dominate his later thought: "Must we not say that . . . there is an energizing reasonableness that shapes phenomena in some sense, and that this same working reasonableness has molded the reason of man into something like its own image?" Peirce points out that his evolutionary conception of law is that of the scientific man, claiming that the reliability of laws of nature leads scientists to accept them as facts, "almost to be called [things] of power," although with the caveat that any such law might be falsified.


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Chapter 8

MS 690.[Published in CP 7.164-231 and HP 2:705-62. Only the first half of the document is printed here. It was written in October and November 1901, with the financial support of Francis Lathrop, whose secretary had the manuscript typed. Peirce made a number of revisions in the typescript, and the present text, transcribed from the manuscript, incorporates those revisions.] In this monograph, Peirce argues that even though Hume's method of balancing the veracity of a witness against the improbability of his narrative may be defended in certain cases, it is not generally applicable and is rarely used by historians. The probabilities generally relied on by historians are subjective--"mere expressions of their preconceived notions"--and are completely unreliable. Peirce claims that what is needed for scientific history is a method that does not turn on either estimates of probability or degrees of belief. He recommends the general method of experimental science. Peirce gives a sustained discussion of the logic of science, outlining many nuances of the different kinds of reasoning, including two types of deduction (corollarial and theorematic) and three types of induction. Peirce gives a detailed account of the economic and other factors that must be brought to bear on the selection of historical hypotheses.


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Chapter 9

MS 427. [Published in CP 1.203-37. Written in February 1902, this selection comes from Chapter II of Peirce's projected book, "Minute Logic."] In this selection, excerpted from a broader discussion on logic and the classification of sciences, Peirce discusses his theory of natural classes and classification, and presents his conception of science. The problem of natural classes had been of interest to Peirce from early in his career, when he was concerned with distinguishing his views from those of J. S. Mill, but here he refines his views by giving final causation a prominent role in his theory. Natural classes are defined by final causes, though not necessarily by purposes. Peirce then characterizes science as "a living thing," not the collection of "systematized knowledge on the shelves." Science is what scientists do; it "consists in actually drawing the bow upon truth with intentness in the eye, with energy in the arm." Peirce argues that the divisions of science that have grown out of its practice are natural classes.


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Chapter 10

MS 301. [Published in CP 5.14-40 and in HL 104-21. This lecture, delivered on 26 March 1903, was left untitled.] This is the first in a series of seven lectures, delivered at Harvard from March through May, 1903, in which Peirce sought to build a case for pragmatism by examining its pros and cons. He also wanted to distinguish his pragmatism from other, more popular, versions. These are the lectures that William James characterized as "flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness!" In Lecture I, Peirce considers the utility of the pragmatic maxim and claims that its usefulness does not constitute a proof of its truth--it must pass "through the fire of drastic analysis." Peirce outlines the steps he will take to support his version of pragmatism. He rejects his earlier appeal to facts of psychology and points out that if pragmatism teaches that what we think is to be understood in terms of what we are prepared to do, then the doctrine of how we ought to think (logic) must be a branch of the doctrine of what we deliberately choose to do (ethics). But what we choose to do depends on what we are prepared to admire, which brings us to esthetics. An examination of pragmatism, therefore, involves all three of the normative sciences: logic, ethics, and esthetics. But first we must consider phenomenology, the science that deals with phenomena objectively and isolates the universal categories that pervade all our experience.


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Chapter 11

MSS 305, 306. [Published in CP 5.41-56, 59-65 (in part) and in HL 150-65. These two manuscripts together form the version of the text that Peirce most likely used to deliver his second Harvard lecture on 2 April 1903.] Peirce remarks near the beginning of this lecture that "my purpose this evening is to call your attention to certain questions of phenomenology upon the answers to which, whatever they may be, our final conclusion concerning pragmatism must repose at last." He goes on to clarify the nature of phenomenology (later called phaneroscopy), whose goal is to isolate the universal categories of experience. Peirce has found these to be, first, the quality of feeling, second, the element of struggle or reaction in experience or consciousness, and third, an intellectual element that seems much like representation or a sense of learning. He believes that this third element is necessary to explain a mode of influence on external facts that cannot be explained by mechanical action alone and he thinks that the idea of evolution requires this element. Near the end of this lecture Peirce remarks that "what the true definition of Pragmatism may be, I find it very hard to say; but in my nature it is a sort of instinctive attraction for living facts."


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Chapter 12

MS 308. [Published in CP 5.66-81, 88-92 (in part) and in HL 167-88. This is the third Harvard lecture, delivered on 9 April 1903.] In this lecture Peirce goes into more detail concerning the nature of his categories and uses them to distinguish three kinds of signs: icons, indices, and symbols. He analyzes in particular one type of symbol, the proposition, which always refers to its object in two ways: indexically, by means of its subject, and iconically, by means of its predicate. Peirce defends his categories against the view he attributes to A. B. Kempe that Thirdness is not required to express the relations of mathematics, and he argues for the independence of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.


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Chapter 13

MS 309. [Published in CP 5.77n, 93-111, 114-18, 1.314-16, 5.119, 111-13, 57-58; also in HL 189-203. This is the fourth Harvard lecture, delivered on 16 April 1903.] Here Peirce uses his doctrine of categories to characterize seven systems of metaphysics: Nihilism, Individualism, Hegelianism, Cartesianism, Berkeleyanism, Nominalism, and Kantianism. The systems are distinguished by which categories are admitted "as important metaphysico-cosmical elements." Peirce regards these seven systems, and variants of them, as exemplifying the full scope of metaphysics. Peirce aligns himself with the seventh system, arguing for the reality of all three categories and claiming that each is really operative in nature. He argues that perceptual judgements are the first premisses of all our reasonings, that symbols influence events in the way natural laws do, and that the universe is a great symbol "working out its conclusions in living realities." He strongly recommends a version of the fundamental "ethical" maxim: never say die.


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Chapter 14

MS 312.[Published in CP 5.120-50 and in HL 205-20. Untitled by Peirce, this fifth Harvard lecture was delivered on 30 April 1903.] Peirce reviews his classification of the sciences, especially the normative sciences: esthetics, ethics, and logic. He argues that reasoning is a form of action and is thus subject to ethical considerations; in particular, it is subject to the need for self-control. The logically good, Peirce says, is a species of the morally good, and the morally good is itself a species of the esthetically good. Now the esthetically good involves the choice of aims, or purposes. Pragmatism comes back in at this point, for pragmatism involves the conception of actions relative to aims. Peirce continues his lecture by considering different types of reasoning or argumentation with respect to their logical goodness, and concludes by claiming that although we have neither immediate consciousness nor direct experience of generality, nevertheless we perceive generality: it "pours in" with our perceptual judgments.


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Chapter 15

MSS 314, 316. [Published in CP 5.151-79 (in part), and in HL 221-39. This is the sixth Harvard lecture, delivered on 7 May 1903.] Peirce sets out from his concluding claim in Lecture V, that perceptual judgments involve generality. He gives a sustained discussion of the different kinds of reasoning--deduction, induction, and abduction--and discusses other logical conceptions relevant to the question of the nature of meaning. He will use "meaning" technically, he says, to "denote the intended interpretant of a symbol." He then considers the role of perception in the acquisition of knowledge and the relation of perception to reasoning. Peirce claims that "every single item" of established scientific theory is the result of abduction but that the human faculty of "divining the ways of nature" is not subject to self-control. He argues that perception and abduction shade into one another and claims that pragmatism is the logic of abduction.


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Chapter 16

MS 315. [Published in CP 5.180-212 (in part) and in HL 241-56). Untitled by Peirce, this is the last of the seven Harvard lectures, delivered on 14 May 1903.] This lecture was added so that Peirce could extend his remarks about the relation of pragmatism to abduction. He elaborates in particular on three key points raised in the sixth lecture: (1) that nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses, (2) that perceptual judgments contain general elements, and (3) that abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them. Pragmatism follows from these propositions. Peirce reiterates that the function of pragmatism is to help us identify unclear ideas and comprehend difficult ones. It is in this lecture that Peirce delivers his famous dictum: "The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason." In developing these ideas, Peirce emphasizes that in making every conception equivalent to a conception of "conceivable practical effects," the maxim of pragmatism reaches far beyond the merely practical and allows for any "flight of imagination," provided only that this imagination "ultimately alights upon a possible practical effect."


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Chapter 17

MSS 448-449. [Partly published in CP 1.591-610 (MS 440), 7.611-15 and 8.176 (MS 449). Composed at the end of the summer 1903 and delivered on 23 November 1903, this is the first of eight lectures Peirce gave at the Lowell Institute in Boston under the general title "Some Topics of Logic bearing on Questions now Vexed."] In this lecture, Peirce refutes "a malady" that "has broken out in science," namely the idea then in vogue that rationality rests on a feeling of logicality, and that it is futile to try to find an objective distinction between good and bad reasoning. On the contrary, Peirce claims, that distinction is not at all a matter of what we approve of, but is a question of fact. Good reasoning is based on a method that "tends to carry us toward the truth more speedily than we could otherwise progress." Peirce discusses the significance of even a slight tendency to guess correctly, arguing that, given the right method, that is all that is required to assure progress toward the truth. He continues the argument, first made in the Harvard Lectures, that reasoning is a form of controlled conduct, and thus has an ethical dimension. Peirce concludes with a discussion of the scope of logic, which he now equates with semiotics as a whole.


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Chapter 18

MS 478. [Found in CP 1.180-202, this text is the first section of "A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic," a large document composed mostly in October 1903 to supplement the Lowell Lectures. The original syllabus contains six sections, of which four are printed here (selections 18-21). Omitted are "Nomenclature and Divisions of Dyadic Relations" (MS 539; CP 3.571-608) and "Existential Graphs: The Conventions" (MS 508; CP 4.394-417). The first two sections and part of the sixth were printed for the audience by the Lowell Institute (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1903); the selection below is found there pp. 5-9.] This first part of the "Syllabus" is literally, as proclaimed in its title, an outline. In its summary form, it provides an easy guide to Peirce's mature classification of the sciences, with the normative sciences--esthetics, ethics, and logic--constituting the central branch of philosophy. Peirce defines logic as "the science of the general laws of signs," and divides it, as he had in his first 1903 Lowell Lecture (previous selection) into three departments: speculative grammar, critic, and methodeutic. Peirce's subsequent development of semiotics will be built on this classification.


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Chapter 19

MS 478. [This is the second section of the 1903 Syllabus (pp. 10-14 of the printed version), published in CP 2.219-26.] Here Peirce argues for a rational approach to scientific terminology, in particular for philosophy. He gives several compelling reasons for wanting this kind of reform, among them that good language is the essence of good thought and that there can be no scientific progress without collaboration. Philosophy finds itself in the odd situation of having to retain popular language as a resource--part of its purpose being the study of common conceptions--while at the same time requiring a specialized vocabulary for analytical precision. Peirce concludes with seven rules for instituting a scientific terminology for philosophy. He will appeal to these rules to explain his own use of neologisms.


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Chapter 20

MS 478 [The third and longest section of the 1903 Syllabus, this text was not printed in the pamphlet for the audience. The subsection entitled "Speculative Grammar" was published in large part in CP 2.274-77, 283-84, 292-94, and 309-31.] Peirce begins here an important extension of his semiotic theory. He presents his doctrine of signs in the context of his more general theory of categories, making use of three kinds of "separation in thought": dissociation, prescission, and discrimination. He remarks that logic, in fulfilling its historical mission to distinguish good from bad reasonings, develops into a general theory of signs, and he reviews the place of logic within his classification of sciences. Peirce then takes up the first department of logic (semiotics), speculative grammar, and, on the basis of his categories, divides signs into two trichotomies: (1) icons, indices, and symbols, and (2) sumisigns (later called rhemes), dicisigns, and arguments. The second trichotomy is here given for the first time. This is followed by a sustained discussion of propositions as signs, and of how they are related to dicisigns and other semiotic constituents. Peirce concludes with a discussion of the class of signs we call "arguments" and surveys how its three types--deduction, induction, and abduction--work together to perform the operation of reasoning.


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Chapter 21

MS 540. [This is the fifth section of 1903 Syllabus, first published in CP 2.233-72.] In this well-known essay on signs, Peirce introduces a third semiotic trichotomy (placed first in the logical order of trichotomies)--qualisign, sinsign, legisign--and then generates his famous ten-fold classification of signs. Peirce considers each of the ten classes separately, giving an especially helpful account of the tenth class, the argument (which must also be a symbol and a legisign). He explains his division of arguments into deductions, inductions, and abductions, from the standpoint of his extended semiotic theory, including his division of deduction into two types and of induction into three types. He concludes with a brief reconsideration of his theory of propositions.


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Chapter 22

MS 517. [First published in NEM 4:235-63. This document was most probably written in early 1904, as a preface to an intended book on the foundations of mathematics.] Peirce begins with a discussion of "the Euclidean style" he planned to follow in his book. Euclid's Elements presuppose an understanding of the logical structure of mathematics (geometry) that Peirce, in his "New Elements," wants to explicate. Having recently concluded that the scope of logic should be extended to include all of semiotics, Peirce now wants to work out the semiotic principles that he hopes will shed light on the most abstract science. Building on his work in his 1903 "Syllabus," Peirce deepens his semiotic theory by linking it with the mathematical conception of "degrees of degeneracy." Symbols are taken to be non-degenerate, genuine, signs, while indices are signs degenerate in the first degree and icons are degenerate in the second degree. Symbols must always involve both indices and icons, and indices must always involve icons. Peirce limits his attention to this trichotomy but carries his discussion deeply into epistemology and metaphysics, making such arresting claims as that "representations have power to cause real facts" and that "there can be no reality which has not the life of a symbol." Max Fisch described this paper as Peirce's "best statement so far of his general theory of signs."


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Chapter 23

MS 774. [First published by J. M. Krois in Philosophy and Rhetoric 11 (1978):147-55. Probably intending it for the Popular Science Monthly, Peirce wrote this article late in 1904, after he had published a negative review of a book by T. C. Allbutt on scientific writing (CN 3:179-81). Peirce planned a two-part essay on the rhetoric of scientific communications, the first to be general, and the second, special, but he only wrote the first one, whose complete title ended with "No. 1" here omitted.] Somewhat more popular in style than most of Peirce's writings, this short paper should be considered along with selections 20-22 as part of the first comprehensive statement of Peirce's "mature" general theory of signs. Here Peirce focuses on the third science of his semiotic trivium, rhetoric, which he has liberated from its traditional limitation to speech. The aim of his "speculative rhetoric" is to find out "the general secret of rendering signs effective," no matter what their kind. The range of semiotic effects taken to be legitimate interpretants is extended to include feelings and even physical results, in addition to thoughts and other symbols. Among the surprises of this paper, we learn that nothing can be represented unless it is of the nature of a sign and that ideas can only be communicated through their physical effects. Although brief, this paper provides a vivid snapshot of a broad terrain that still contains virgin territory for semioticians and language theorists.


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Chapter 24

P 1078:The Monist 15 (April 1905):161-81. [Published in CP 5.411-37. Initially planned as a part of a review of Herbert Nichols's A Treatise on Cosmology, this paper was composed in the middle of the summer 1904. When it appeared in The Monist, it was supposed to be followed by two additional papers, "The Consequences of Pragmaticism" and "The Evidences for Pragmaticism," but this plan metamorphosed over the following two years, and even though two more papers appeared, the series was never concluded.] With this series, Peirce returns to his 1903 project to explain his pragmatism in a way that would distinguish it from popular variants and facilitate the exposition of its proof. He renames it "pragmaticism," a name "ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers," and explores the underlying presuppositions, summing them up in the cryptic admonition: "Dismiss make-believes." A key belief is that learning, or mental development of any kind, has to begin with the "immense mass of cognition already formed." In an imagined dialog between a pragmaticist and a critic, Peirce addresses concerns about the purpose and consequences of pragmaticism, emphasizing the importance of experimentation and explaining how the meaning of every proposition lies in the future. He concludes by arguing that while the pragmaticist regards Thirdness as an essential ingredient of reality, it can only govern through action, and action cannot arise except in feeling. It is the dependence of Thirdness on action (Secondness) and feeling (Firstness) that distinguishes pragmaticism from the absolute idealism of Hegel.


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Chapter 25

P 1080: The Monist 15 (October 1905):481-99. [Published in CP 5.438-63. Initially titled "The Consequences of Pragmaticism" as were several other earlier documents, Peirce changed the title in its last draft (MS 290). Only the last 44 pages of the 61-page manuscript, completed in June 1905, are today extant in the Open Court archives preserved at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (Special Collections, The Morris Library). The text below reproduces pages 481-86 of the Monist article, and then follows the manuscript.] Peirce begins by restating his pragmatic maxim in semiotic terms, by identifying the meaning that pragmaticism seeks to enunciate as that of symbols rather than of conceptions. He devotes most of this article to a consideration of two long-held doctrines, now seen to be consequences of pragmaticism: critical common-sensism and scholastic realism. Peirce enumerates and discusses "six distinctive characters" of critical common-sensism, among them the important doctrine of vague ideas. He extends his realism to include the acceptance of "real vagues" and "real possibilities," and he points out that "it is the reality of some possibilities that pragmaticism is most concerned to insist upon." Because of this, Max Fisch has claimed that pragmaticism is pragmatism "purged of the nominalistic dross of its original exposition."


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Chapter 26

MS 908. [The last part of this document was published in CP 1.317-21. Many versions of a text titled "The Basis of Pragmaticism" are extant; they were written over a period of nine months starting in August 1905, and they were all meant to become Peirce's third Monist paper. The present text is Peirce's fifth attempt, probably written in December 1905. The words "in Phaneroscopy" have been added to the title of this version.] Peirce's original plan for this series of articles called for the third one to present the proof of pragmaticism. In this selection and the one that follows, Peirce lays the foundation on which to erect his proof (but he later decided that his best case needed to be made with the Existential Graphs). His preliminary efforts offer important insights as to how deeply pragmaticism is embedded in his system of philosophy. The basis for pragmaticism that Peirce develops here is his phaneroscopy and the doctrine of the valency of concepts that derives from it. Peirce explains why it makes sense to expect that experience will exhibit only three "indecomposable elements," and offers an abbreviated proof of his reduction thesis. This article well exhibits Peirce's intention to do what he can to make philosophy a science, toward which end it is necessary to "abandon all endeavor to make it literary." Still, Peirce concludes this draft with a poetic characterization of the crucial interplay between the world of fancy, the rudeness of experience, and our "garment of contentment and of habituation."


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Chapter 27

MS 283. [Only a small part was published in CP 1.573-74, 5.448n, and 5.449-54. This paper, which was mostly composed in January 1906, is Peirce's sixth attempt at writing his third Monist paper "The Basis of Pragmaticism." The words "in the Normative Sciences" have been added to the title of this version.] How does one do philosophy? A proof of pragmaticism will have to be understood from the perspective of our answer to this question. Peirce sets out to situate philosophy among the "heuretic" sciences, and to characterize its purpose and method. He returns to a consideration of experience, here characterized as a "male" intrusion into the mind, the "female" field of available consciousness. From this union, knowledge is born. This is Aristotle's idea of growth: first, the idea; second, the act; third, the life-giving principle. In selection 26, Peirce had considered why we should expect to find three fundamental elements in experience; here he examines why we should expect philosophy to separate naturally into three departments corresponding to the three kinds of experience. It is the second department, normative science, that becomes the main focus of this article, and the basis for Peirce's proof of pragmaticism. All three normative sciences--esthetics, ethics (practics), and logic--are essential, but it is logic, the general theory of signs, that is now seen to be the key to the proof.


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Chapter 28

MS 318. [A highly complex and multi-layered manuscript, MS 318 contains five intermingled versions of an article initially conceived as a long "letter to the editor." The article was rejected by both the Nation and the Atlantic Monthly. All versions share the same beginning--the "introduction" below, also found in CP 5.11-13 and 464-66. Other portions are published in CP 1.560-62 and 5.467-96. "Variant 1" below is the third version, composed in March-April 1907, and "Variant 2" the fifth, composed a few months later.] In this selection, Peirce comes closer than in any other to fully expressing his brand of pragmatism and to giving a clearly articulated proof. He begins by reaffirming that pragmatism (pragmaticism) is not a doctrine of metaphysics, nor an attempt to determine the truth of things, but is only a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and abstract concepts. By this time, Peirce has thoroughly integrated his pragmatism with his semiotics, and he bases his proof in his theory of signs (rather than in his theory of perception as he had for the 1903 proof in his Harvard Lectures). His semiotic proof begins with the premiss that every concept and every thought beyond immediate perception is a sign, and works its way to the proposition that a logical interpretant must be of the nature of a habit. "Consequently," Peirce concludes, "the most perfect account of a concept that words can convey will consist in a description of that habit which [it] is calculated to produce. But how else can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise." Since Peirce's conclusion amounts to a paraphrase of his definition of pragmatism, his proof is complete.


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Chapter 29

MS 841 and P 1166: The Hibbert Journal 7 (October 1908):90-112. [Published in CP 6.452-91. In April 1908, Peirce was invited by his mathematician friend Cassius J. Keyser to contribute an article to the Hibbert Journal. Peirce accepted and spent the next three months diligently writing and rewriting his celebrated paper. The final version was sent in toward the end of June 1908.] This is one of Peirce's most enigmatic writings. He outlines an "argument" that is forceful in bringing anyone who practices musement to a belief in the reality of God, a belief that is exhibited in changed conduct; but it turns out that this "argument" is not a matter of reasoning at all. It is more like an instinctive response to the very idea of God. In his addendum, Peirce calls this the "Humble Argument." The Neglected Argument, it seems, is an "argumentation" to demonstrate how the reality of God can be proved from the effectiveness of the Humble Argument. The neglect is on the part of theologians, who have taken surprisingly little interest in why the mere contemplation of the idea of God leads to belief. A key question is why our "instinct" for guessing--Galileo's il lume naturale--is so successful. In section IV, Peirce gives a good account of the three stages of scientific inquiry, but its application to the preceding argument(s) is left mostly to the reader. Whether this paper is an elaboration of or an offense against pragmaticism is an unsettled question.


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Chapter 30

MS 675. [In the spring of 1909, J. W. Slaughter and G. F. Stout, two friends of Victoria Lady Welby, decided to honor her with a collection of essays on "Significs," and eagerly sought a contribution from Peirce. He was glad to accept, but ill health slowed him down until a reminder from Slaughter, in April 1911, revived his impetus. MS 675, probably written in August 1911, is one of the more polished versions of Peirce's eventually unsuccessful attempt to complete his assignment. Maybe as a consequence, the collection of essays was never published.] Although this writing is at most only a fragment of the paper Peirce had in mind, it contains important clarifications and sheds much light on the late trajectory of Peirce's thought. By "logical critics," Peirce means "the theory of the kinds and degrees of assurance that can be afforded by the different ways of reasoning." This is, for Peirce, a semiotic question, and one that exercised him a great deal in his later years. Although he never really reaches the question here, he does come to discuss "precisely" what we mean by "reasoning," and points out that it is only one of two ways that knowledge is acquired, the other being experience. Belief acquired through reasoning must be justified by what preceded it in our minds; but belief gained from experience needs no justification. Peirce discusses two faults with his 1877-78 pragmatism papers: his definition of "belief," and his failure to see that "a true would-be is as real as an actuality." He concludes with a call for a cooperative scientific attack on the "problems of the nature, properties, and varieties of Signs."


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Chapter 31

MS 682. [This text, composed in September-October 1913, a few months before Peirce's death, belongs to a series of unfinished papers on reasoning.] Written in a retrospective mood, this unfinished work shows Peirce continuing to assess the completeness of his logic and the scope of his pragmatism. We learn that reasoning involves a trade-off between security and uberty (rich suggestiveness), and that, not surprisingly, deductive reasoning provides the most security, but little uberty, while abduction provides much uberty but almost no security. Pragmatism, it seems, falls in on the side of security: "[it] does not bestow a single smile upon beauty, upon moral virtue, or upon abstract truth;--the three things that alone raise Humanity above Animality." Peirce objects strongly to Francis Bacon's pessimistic claim that nature is beyond human understanding and repeats his long-held conviction that psychology can offer no significant aid to logic. The essay ends with a reminder that the connection between words and thought is as intimate as that between body and mind.


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Chapter 32

L 463 and Welby Collection, York University. [The first excerpt comes from L 463:98-102, a letter-draft composed in the early spring of 1906; it was published in Semiotics and Significs, pp. 196-97. The second comes from a letter dated 23 December 1908, also published in Semiotics and Significs, pp. 80-85. The third comes from L 463:132-46, a letter-draft begun a few days before Christmas 1908; published in CP 8.342-76.] Peirce's letters to Lady Welby are among the richest records of the evolution of his semiotic thought. In the first excerpt, we learn that there are two semiotic objects and three interpretants, and we meet with the striking idea of the commens, that fused mind of utterer and interpreter without which there can be no communication. We also learn that the dynamic object, the object of experience, though not in the sign, is not outside the mind. In the 1908 segments, Peirce delivers his famous "sop to Cerberus"--his insertion of the phrase "upon a person" in his definition of "Sign"--and builds the case for his ten trichotomies. In the final postscript he diagrams a ten-fold classification of signs based on the modalities of Idea, Occurrence, and Habit.


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Chapter 33

L 224 and William James Papers, Houghton Library. [The four excerpts below were written in 1909. The first comes from pp. 6-14 of a long letter Peirce began on 26 February but did not send (L 224:90-98, CP 8.177-85 with some omissions, and NEM 3:839-44). This unwieldy letter was replaced with two shorter ones sent on March 9 and 14. The second excerpt consists of pages 6-10 of the 14 March letter, partly published in CP 8.314. The third excerpt includes pages 19-22 of a letter sent on 1 April, and published in CP 8.315. The last extract consists of the first eight pages of a letter begun on Christmas day; NEM 3:867-71.] Peirce's effort to establish a "commens" with James resulted in interesting and sometimes unusual presentations of his semiotic ideas. Nearly all of the technical terms of Peirce's semiotics, including "sign," are well worked over in these excerpts. Not surprisingly, Peirce makes sure to let James know that "the Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act." In the final segment, Peirce outlines his "System of Logic," a book on semiotics he was working on, and provides one of the last summary accounts of his theory. Among other things, we learn that "every conceivable thing is either a May-be, and Actual, or a Would-be." Peirce admits that there may be more than ten trichotomies of signs, but his ten "exhibit all the distinctions that are generally required by logic." In his discussion of "Critic," Peirce describes the kind of warrant that applies to each of the three types of reasoning.


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