Morris vs. Peirce

Most people who learn about Peirce end up learning about him indirectly. Even a lot of people who study semiotics or related disciplines never really get to read Peirce beyond perhaps a few major papers (typically from his pre-1890 period). The problem is that Peirce, as presented, tends to come more from Charles Morris whose [...]

Peirce, Heidegger and Ready at Hand

Graham Harman has up a post about his theory of tool-use in Heidegger. (HT: Enowning) It’s an interesting post about ready-at-handedness in Heidegger. Heidegger has a famous passage where he analyzes hammers to make a larger point. He suggests that while hammering we don’t notice the hammer. When it is hidden like this it is [...]

Doubt, Reasons and Imitating Mathematics

Here’s your Peirce quote of the day. This is from the early Peirce but it is a killer quote I like to go back to a lot. …the whole history of thought shows that men cannot doubt at pleasure or merely because they find they have no positive reason for the belief they already hold. [...]

Constraining Metaphysics

What constrains metaphysical thinking? I obviously don’t mean of necessity. Clearly we can imagine that we’re all brains in a vat, for instance, even if we don’t take it terribly seriously. But what ought constrain what we think about and give credence to? Obviously on one hand all metaphysical thinking is fairly speculative. On my [...]

Consciousness Goes Away?

Elsewhere Blake made the following comment that really brought into focus a few things I’ve been thinking of the past couple of years. The problem is that our “intelligence” goes away every time we sleep or get hit on the head. Our consciousness is clearly dependent on a functioning brain-nervous system in some sense.

Peirce on Universals

A few Peircean thoughts related to that quote about Derrida from yesterday.

Derrida and Universals

This is a great quote I came upon. It deals with Derrida but applies equally to Pierce’s conception of universals. (I’ll see if I can’t find a Peirce quote tomorrow) I think Derrida was actually somewhat influenced by Peirce here. (Looking at this section on Peirce in On Grammatology) Although I think his primary influence [...]

A Pragmatic Government

Over on Peirce-L there was an interesting bit of post-election discussion. The debate was whether Obama was a pragmatist. Here meaning the more philosophical sense of Peirce, James and Dewey rather than the more typical sense of the term. Joseph Ransdell, whose writings I almost always read, offered some interesting comments.

The Idealistic Argument

Sorry for being so busy I’ve not written much. I’m working on a post on Blake’s book right now. Sorry for the delay there. In the mean time I came upon this great quote from Peirce. It gets at, I think, what is of concern in the so-called Continental tradition. (At least up through the [...]

Peirce and Consciousness

OK, I’m still pretty swamped. In the meantime here’s an interesting quote from Peirce that popped up at Peirce-L.

Strength of Belief

OK, I didn’t quite get the post on Blake’s book finished as I’d hoped to. In the meantime Splintered Mind had a thought provoking post on in-between believing. The situation is the well known case where someone answers that they aren’t racist yet in subtle ways acts in a racist manner.

Intuitionist Mathematics and Physics

There’s a great post at Mathematics and Computation on Intuitionist Mathematics and Physics. (HT: Philosophy, Science, and Method) I always found Intuitionism a bit vague in some key places but there’s a lot about it I like. The big issue is in what counts as evidence. I tend to favor the Peirce view of falsification. [...]

Peirce on Intuition

I’d discussed on the weekend intuitions and whether they are trustworthy. I was using the term more as some underlying cognitive process. Over at Brandon’s post I misread him as using that usage as well. Brandon’s point was basically that an intuition is just an element in an argument and as such even talking about [...]

Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind 2

This is a followup to my prior post on Davidson’s paper “Knowing Ones Own Mind” in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Sorry for the delay. The part that is left in the paper deals with the question of “where” thoughts are. It’s an interesting question and one I’ve switched my own views on. At one time I [...]

Quickly – Peircean Generals

I’d written a big post on Peirce’s view of Generals and Universals. After finishing it I decided it just was way too technical and got into too much of Peirce’s metaphysics. So instead of expounding on Peirce’s theories let me offer a brief outline of a cosmology that I think works. I don’t want to [...]

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