This volume represents an important contribution to Peirce’s work in mathematics and formal logic. An internationally recognized group of scholars explores and extends understandings of Peirce’s most advanced work. The stimulating depth and originality of Peirce’s thought and the continuing relevance of his ideas are brought out by this major book.

This volume represents an important contribution to Peirce’s work in mathematics and formal logic. An internationally recognized group of scholars explores and extends understandings of Peirce’s most advanced work. The stimulating depth and originality of Peirce’s thought and the continuing relevance of his ideas are brought out by this major book.

"... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books "The Monist essays are included in the first volume of the compact and welcome Essential Peirce; they are by Peirce’s standards quite accessible and splendid in their cosmic scope and assertiveness."—London Review of Books A convenient two-volume reader’s edition makes accessible to students and scholars the most important philosophical papers of the brilliant American thinker (...) Charles Sanders Peirce. This first volume presents twenty-five key texts from the first quarter century of his writing, with a clear introduction and informative headnotes. Volume 2 will highlight the development of Peirce’s system of signs and his mature pragmatism. (shrink)

: What is it about pragmatism that has from its inception been found disturbing? I am reminded of Daniel Dennett's remark in his 2000 American Philosophical Association Presidential Address that "many people dislike Darwinism in their guts." There is something about pragmatism that has always been found deeply troubling and I believe it is related to what troubles people about Darwinism. Inspired by Dennett's treatment of the idea and impact of evolutionary theory in his Presidential Address and in his book, (...) Darwin's Dangerous Idea, I will look at pragmatism in that light and will suggest that it may be even more threatening than Darwinism to traditional western values and the glorification of individualism. I will suggest that pragmatism is a naturalistic philosophy that presupposes a radical evolutionism and that, try as they might to subsititute a belief in an exuberant meliorism for religious faith, pragmatists must eventually face the fact that everything is fleeting and that ignorance will prevail. In fact, taking the long view of things, there really is no future. But, surprisingly perhaps, this is no cause for a pessimistic outlook. Futility, in the long run, is no excuse for despair today. Interlaced with these somewhat didactic themes, I will include some comparison of Dennett's parsimonious philosophy with the views of the original pragmatists, especially with Peirce's semiotic pragmatism, and I will briefly consider whether the naturalism running from Quine to Dennett is a branch of neo-pragmatism that has been largely unrecognized.Key-words: pragmatism; Peirce; Dennett; Darwinism; evolutionism; naturalismResumo: O que há com o pragmatismo que desde seu nascimento é considerado perturbador? Lembro-me da observação de Daniel Dennett, em seu Pronunciamento Presidencial da American Philosophical Association, que "muitas pessoas detestam visceralmente o darwinismo". Há algo com o pragmatismo que sempre foi considerado profundamente incômodo, e eu acredito que isso esteja relacionado com o que incomoda as pessoas no darwinismo. Inspirado no tratamento de Dennett, em seu Pronunciamento Presidencial e em seu livro Darwin's Dangerous Idea, da idéia e do impacto da teoria evolucionária, olharei para o pragmatismo sob essa luz e sugerirei que ele pode ser ainda mais ameaçador do que o darwinismo, para os valores tradicionais do ocidente e para a glorificação do individualismo. Sugerirei que o pragmatismo é uma filosofia naturalista que pressupõe um evolucionismo radical e que, tentem o quanto puderem substituir uma crença em um meliorismo exuberante pela fé religiosa, os pragmatistas devem conseqüentemente encarar o fato de que tudo é passageiro e de que a ignorância prevalecerá. Mas, talvez surpreendentemente, isto não é causa para uma perspectiva pessimista. A futilidade, em longo prazo, não é desculpa para o desespero, hoje em dia. Incluirei, entrelaçada com estes temas algo didáticos, alguma comparação da filosofia parcimoniosa de Dennett com as visões dos pragmatistas originais, especialmente com o pragmatismo semiótico de Peirce, e considerarei brevemente se o naturalismo que vem de Quine para Dennett é um ramo neopragmatista que foi amplamente ignorado.Palavras-chave: pragmatismo; Peirce; Dennett; darwinismo; evolucionismo; naturalism. (shrink)

Peirce, like his father before him, was proud of his American heritage and was convinced of his fitness to stand shoulder to shoulder with scientists and philosophers from any place or time. Yet, as he well understood, scientific progress is a long- term communal enterprise and he knew that the roots of his own knowledge sprang from European thought. To understand Peirce as an American philosopher it is necessary to grasp that he was profoundly influenced by European thought and culture (...) and to inquire how his American and European experiences worked together to form his ideas and shape him into the world philosopher he became. (shrink)

On 26 April 1883, two days after the divorce from his first wife, Harriet Melusina Fay, was finalized, Charles Peirce married Juliette Pourtalai, a woman of unknown, or at least of unspoken, origin.1 This marked the most consequential juncture of Peirce's life for it triggered a turn of events which led to his dismissal from Johns Hopkins University and his separation from the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey2 and it precipitated his exclusion from influential social circles he had belonged to (...) and even to some extent from his own family. Four years after their marriage, Charles and Juliette abandoned urban living and retreated to Milford, Pennsylvania, a village in the Upper Delaware River Valley between... (shrink)

The themes of SSA 2006, “The Future of Semiotics”, and of SSA 2007, “Semiotics and Survival”, are linked by an initial consideration of the prospects for the survival of semiotics as a discipline. Since its separation from philosophy in the United States in the mid-twentieth century and its founding as a separate multi-disciplinary study, semiotics has faced an uphill battle for acceptance in the academy. The pervasive dogma of physicalism, which rejects outright the idea of semiosis as non-reducible to physical (...) action, has been the principal threat to the survival of semiotics. The theme of “Semiotics and Survival” is then extended to a consideration of the centrality of signs for survival in the Katrina crisis (a matter of vital importance, in Peirce’s terminology) and a more general consideration of the centrality of signs for survival (with reference to the problem of vanishing context). A deep link between signs and survival is conjectured to exist in the ubiquitous formation of habits throughout the universe. Finally, the role of semioticians in the survival of great cities and cultures is considered, especially when signs are turned into weapons that threaten established ways of life. (shrink)

O trumpismo nos Estados Unidos, assim como outras erupções populistas ao redor do mundo, demonstra que valores fundamentais herdados pelo Iluminismo são muito menos seguros no Ocidente do que fora presumido. Estima pela racionalidade e conhecimento objetivo e o respeito pela liberdade individual vem sendo enfraquecidos pela dissolução da sociedade em facções intransigentes. O abandono de princípios centrais que por muitas gerações serviram como base comum para a civilização Ocidental, fragmentou a sociedade Ocidental em campos aparentemente irreconciliáveis, não mais sujeitos (...) a uma mente comunal compartilhada. Como pode suceder que uma sociedade governada por uma mente social compartilhada, e já estabelecida de longa data, sumariamente se fragmenta em campos, de opinião muito diferentes, claramente sob a influência de princípios discrepantes? Seriam a desintegração de ideias e a dissolução da mente, consequências inevitáveis de conteúdo mental proliferante, de entropia intelectual talvez até inerente? Guiado pela semiótica de Peirce e pela filosofia da mente, e utilizando a chacoalhada provocada pelo Trump na vida social e político dos EUA como exemplo ilustrativo de um cismo cultural profundo, considerarei algumas possíveis causas estruturais de um crescente sectarismo e abordarei as condições semióticas que explicariam a desintegração da mente social. (shrink)

"... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books "The Monist essays are included in the first volume of the compact and welcome Essential Peirce; they are by Peirce’s standards quite accessible and splendid in their cosmic scope and assertiveness."—London Review of Books A convenient two-volume reader’s edition makes accessible to students and scholars the most important philosophical papers of the brilliant American thinker (...) Charles Sanders Peirce. This first volume presents twenty-five key texts from the first quarter century of his writing, with a clear introduction and informative headnotes. Volume 2 will highlight the development of Peirce’s system of signs and his mature pragmatism. (shrink)

The PEIRCE EDITION contains large sections of previously unpublished material in addition to selected published works. Each volume includes a brief historical and biographical introduction, extensive editorial and textual notes, and a full chronological list of all of Peirce’s writings, published and unpublished, during the period covered.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become nearly ubiquitous in modern society, from components of mobile applications to medical support systems, and everything in between. In societally impactful systems imbued with AI, there has been increasing concern related to opaque AI, that is, artificial intelligence where it is unclear how or why certain decisions are reached. This has led to a recent boom in research on “explainable AI” (XAI), or approaches to making AI more explainable and understandable to human users. In the (...) military domain, numerous bodies have argued that autonomous and AI-enabled weapon systems ought not incorporate unexplainable AI, with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United States Department of Defense both explicitly including explainability as a relevant factor in the development and use of such systems. In this article, I present a cautiously critical assessment of this view, arguing that explainability will be irrelevant for many current and near-future autonomous systems in the military (which do not incorporate any AI), that it will be trivially incorporated into most military systems which do possess AI (as these generally possess simpler AI systems), and that for those systems with genuinely opaque AI, explainability will prove to be of more limited value than one might imagine. In particular, I argue that explainability, while indeed a virtue in design, is a virtue aimed primarily at designers and troubleshooters of AI-enabled systems, but is far less relevant for users and handlers actually deploying these systems. I further argue that human–machine teaming is a far more important element of responsibly using AI for military purposes, adding that explainability may undermine efforts to improve human–machine teamings by creating a prima facie sense that the AI, due to its explainability, may be utilized with little (or less) potential for mistakes. I conclude by clarifying that the arguments are not against XAI in the military, but are instead intended as a caution against over-inflating the value of XAI in this domain, or ignoring the limitations and potential pitfalls of this approach. (shrink)

As Vetter says, we are at the “beginning of the debate, not the end” (2015: 300) when it comes to evaluating her potentiality-based account of metaphysical modality. This paper contributes to this developing debate by highlighting three problems for Vetter’s account. Specifically, I begin (§1) by articulating some relevant details of Vetter’s potentiality-based view. This leads to the first issue (§2), concerning unclarity in the idea of degrees of potentiality. Similarly, the second issue (§3) raises trouble for Vetter’s proposed individuation (...) conditions for potentialities. Finally, the third issue (§4) is about apparently unmanifestable intrinsic potentialities, and suggests that there might be some deeper problems with anchoring metaphysical possibilities in concrete objects. More generally, though the issues detailed here are problematic, I do not take them to be fatal. However, they do show that, at minimum, further clarification of Vetter’s potentiality view is required. As Vetter says, we are at the “beginning of the debate, not the end” (2015: 300) when it comes to evaluating her potentiality-based account of metaphysical modality. This paper contributes to this developing debate by highlighting three problems for Vetter’s account. Specifically, I begin (§1) by articulating some relevant details of Vetter’s potentiality-based view. This leads to the first issue (§2), concerning unclarity in the idea of degrees of potentiality. Similarly, the second issue (§3) raises trouble for Vetter’s proposed individuation conditions for potentialities. Finally, the third issue (§4) is about apparently unmanifestable intrinsic potentialities, and suggests that there might be some deeper problems with anchoring metaphysical possibilities in concrete objects. More generally, though the issues detailed here are problematic, I do not take them to be fatal. However, they do show that, at minimum, further clarification of Vetter’s potentiality view is required. (shrink)

In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes what (...) makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

In international law and the ethics of war, there are a variety of actions which are seen as particularly problematic and presumed to be always or inherently wrong, or in need of some overwhelmingly strong justification to override the presumption against them. One of these actions is assassination, in particular, assassination of heads of state. In this essay I argue that the presumption against assassination is incorrect. In particular, I argue that if in a given scenario war is justified, then (...) assassination of the enemy state's leader is also justified, and in fact ought to be pursued as a means short of war. I defend this position on both consequential and deontic grounds, arguing that assassination is both more discriminate than war and serves to harm only those most responsible for the situation which justifies war in the first place. I conclude by arguing that a norm of assassination, far from being a destabilizing force, as some have argued, would in fact serve to reinforce international norms of rights and respect for persons by making clear that tyrants and would-be oppressors cannot hide behind military forces or notions of sovereignty to protect themselves from judgment and retribution. (shrink)

The principle of proportionality demands that a war (or action in war) achieve more goods than bads. In the philosophical literature there has been a wealth of work examining precisely which goods and bads may count toward this evaluation. However, in all of these discussions there is no mention of one of the most certain bads of war, namely the psychological harm(s) likely to be suffered by the combatants who ultimately must fight and kill for the purposes of winning in (...) conflict. This paper argues that harms to one’s own soldiers must be included in proportionality judgments, and goes on to argue that one of the most significant harms one’s soldiers face are the psychological stresses and traumas associated with combat. The arguments draw on a growing wealth of psychological literature exploring the connections between combatancy and psychological trauma, and highlight, in particular, the uniquely negative impact which killing has on a combatant’s mental well-being. The paper concludes that these factors place an almost certain and rather weighty negative weight in any proportionality calculations concerning wars with ground combatants who must fight “up close and personal”, and that for more remote warfighters, there is also evidence to show that they may suffer deep psychological harm as a result of their combat roles as well. The argument, however, does not attempt to demonstrate that these factors render war impermissible. Rather, it merely shows that these harms, or bads, which can be quite significant, must be factored into our considerations of proportionality. The arguments themselves are rather uncontroversial, but they bring to light an element in the moral calculus which is sadly overlooked in most discussions of the ethics of war. (shrink)

Contemporary proponents of republican political theory often focus on the concept of freedom as non-domination, and how best to promote it within a state. However, there is little attention paid to what the republican conception of freedom demands in the international realm. In this essay I examine what is required for an agent to enjoy freedom as non-domination, and argue that this might only be achieved for individuals if one of two possibilities is pursued internationally: either (1) all nations are (...) made equally powerful, such that none may arbitrarily impose its will on another without penalty, or (2) all nations are joined under a global sovereign which guarantees that the weaker states are not subject to the whims of the stronger. I further argue that the first condition cannot suffice for achieving true non-domination, and as a result, republicanism must prescribe working toward the establishment of a global state. This paper provides an important contribution to the literature by addressing the international implications of the republican conception of freedom. (shrink)

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

This article evaluates an emerging element in popular debate and inquiry: DYOR. (Haven’t heard of the acronym? Then Do Your Own Research.) The slogan is flexible and versatile. It is used frequently on social media platforms about topics from medical science to financial investing to conspiracy theories. Using conceptual and empirical resources drawn from philosophy and psychology, we examine key questions about the slogan’s operation in human cognition and epistemic culture.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for AquinasR. E. HouserI expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. Then his successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.—Francis Cardinal George (2010)Here I propose to (...) present a feature of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, his ethical doctrine of virtue, concentrating on the four cardinal virtues—justice, prudence or good practical judgment, courage, and temperance. Plato first selected them as the four premier virtues, but they go back at least to Homer, for whom wily Odysseus exemplified prudence, warlike Achilles courage, old Nestor justice, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus' wife and son, temperance. And I offer them as central to living the morally good life required to "rebuild civilization" in an America that so fair and judicious a man as Cardinal George could call a "ruined society." To see the need for Thomas's solution, we must begin with the problem. Now, all societies depend upon the deep and fundamental ideas of the most important thinkers, prophets and sages, saints, and yes, even philosophers. Their ideas "trickle down" to influence regular folk, like you and me, those who whose hard work actually makes a society thrive, or die. And when those fundamental ideas change, the moral principles of those who embrace those ideas change, and consequently their actions change, and as a result the wider society in which they live changes, for better or worse. Such effects can now be felt across America [End Page 135] by all; but most of us are unaware of the primary intellectual agents of these changes, since they operate at the level of fundamental ideas, not politics or business or day-to-day life. And often their originators have died before the ideas reach full cultural force. So, ignorance of history makes it difficult to deal with present problems caused by those ideas.My first conclusion will be that a major cause of the current coarsening of our culture is the group of ideas of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, even though most Americans have never heard of him, and most of those who recognize his name have not read his works carefully enough to see the connection. Why Sartre? In the honors program at my university, I had a bright young lady of Muslim heritage who had gone to a lycée, one of France's elite classical secondary schools. "Did you read the classics?" "Yes." Expecting Montaigne or Pascal, I asked, "Who?" Her answer: "Sartre." So let us begin with the theory and practice of Sartre and his long-time lover Simone Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex was an intellectual spark for the women's liberation movement. Then we turn to some real-life examples of Sartrean influence on ourselves and American culture. Finally, for the best remedy for non-Christian and Christian alike, I recommend Aquinas's doctrine of virtue, when taken in its full scope.Sartre's Ethics of Absolute FreedomIn 1946, the year I was born, Sartre gave a lecture to a meeting of French librarians, which became his most popular book, Existentialism is a Humanism. There he laid out the core of his thought about God, humans, and their ethical behavior. Here I arrange his main ideas in an order that facilitates comparison with Aquinas, beginning with his view of human ontology and proceeding to its impact on the four cardinal virtues.Human OntologySartre turned his back on the traditional metaphysical view that every creature is an individual substance defined by a nature or essence it has in common with all other things of that type. In his "first principle of existentialism," Sartre skips over other animate things, plants and animals, and compares humans to inanimate objects:Let us consider... a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.... One cannot postulate a man who makes a paper-cutter but does not know what it is... (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of expertise. Trespassing is ubiquitous in this age of interdisciplinary research and recognizing this will require us to be more intellectually modest.