Les dernières oeuvres de Diderot révèlent une écriture et une pensée morales plurielles, mettant en scène des points de vue complémentaires. Diderot réfléchit en outre, dans l'Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron, à une véritable éthique de l'interprétation.

In the atavistic model of cancer progression, tumor cell dedifferentiation is interpreted as a reversion to phylogenetically earlier capabilities. The more recently evolved capabilities are compromised first during cancer progression. This suggests a therapeutic strategy for targeting cancer: design challenges to cancer that can only be met by the recently evolved capabilities no longer functional in cancer cells. We describe several examples of this target‐the‐weakness strategy. Our most detailed example involves the immune system. The absence of adaptive immunity in immunosuppressed (...) tumor environments is an irreversible weakness of cancer that can be exploited by creating a challenge that only the presence of adaptive immunity can meet. This leaves tumor cells more vulnerable than healthy tissue to pathogenic attack. Such a target‐the‐weakness therapeutic strategy has broad applications, and contrasts with current therapies that target the main strength of cancer: cell proliferation. (shrink)

The emerging concern about software piracy and illegal or unauthorized use of information technology and software has been evident in the media and open literature for the last few years. In the course of conducting their academic assignments, the authors began to compare observations from classroom experiences related to ethics in the use of software and information technology and systems. Qualitatively and anecdotally, it appeared that many if not most, students had misconceptions about what represented ethical and unethical behaviors in (...) these realms. Clearly, one can argue that if college students are uncertain about what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior then this uncertainty will be carried forward into their workplaces upon graduation. Furthermore, if their workplaces don't provide ethics training as a component of a new employee orientation program, one can project a potential for unintentional violations and infringements of copyrights and law in the field. This study was conducted among graduate and undergraduate students to gain insight into their attitudes, perceptions and understanding of some of the relevant ethics issues. A questionnaire of 11 statements was employed that described ubiquitous but most likely unethical (or surely dubious) behaviors in the prevailing business and academic environments. Each respondent was asked to evaluate each statement twice (once for “self” and once for “colleague”) on a five-option highly ethical (5) to neutral (3) to highly unethical (1) scale. The statements were worded such that lower instrument score was associated with higher ethical responses. The questionnaire's two-part structure was designed to solicit honest answers. The encouraging learning from this study was that the overall sample and its various sub-samples did not consider any of the eleven behaviors to be “ethical” or “highly ethical.” It was also encouraging to note that the overall sample and all sub-samples considered “highly unethical” those behaviors associated with personal privacy or property or outright theft. This indicated that moral judgment and probity prevail. The discouraging learning was that behaviors associated with the use of enterprise property were viewed as “neutral” i.e., neither “ethical” nor “unethical.” These findings suggested confusion and lack of clarity and definition around workplace deportment as it regards ethics in software and information technology use. The current study suggests that additional research needs to be conducted to define and clarify the issues, which in turn can form the basis for programs to rectify or at least ameliorate the situation. (shrink)

With the rise of state sponsored standardized testing and curriculum alignment, it is important to consider the impact such practices may have on educational aims. In this paper, I argue that critical thinking ought to be the principle aim in every educational pursuit, and that practices such as “teaching to the test” may be detrimental to its development. I maintain these claims with a discussion of the philosophical works of Harvey Siegel, Israel Scheffler, and John Dewey. Operating from their definitions (...) of critical thinking, rationality, and education respectively, I offer support for my conclusion based on one’s ability to challenge the soundness of claims, and the revisional quality of true belief. The issue of critical thinking as general or subject specific is also addressed. Using Siegel’s notion of a critical spirit, I propose that a universal quality of critical thinking lies in its normative as opposed to technical aspects. (shrink)

Background: Low rates of participation of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) in clinical oncology trials may contribute to poorer outcomes. Factors that influence the decision of AYAs to participate in health research and whether these factors are different from those that affect the participation of parents of children with cancer. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of data from validated questionnaires provided to adolescents (>12 years old) diagnosed with cancer and parents of children with cancer at 3 sites in Canada (...) (Halifax, Vancouver, and Montreal) and 2 in the United States (Atlanta, GA, and Memphis, TN). Respondents reported their own research participation and cited factors that would influence their own decision to participate in, or to provide parental authorization for their child to participate in health research. Results: Completed questionnaire rates for AYAs and parents were 86 (46.5%) of 185 and 409 (65.2%) of 627, respectively. AYAs (n = 86 [67%]) and parents (n = 409 [85%]) cited that they would participate in research because it would help others. AYAs perceived pressure by their family and friends (16%) and their physician (19%). Having too much to think about at the time of accrual was an impediment to both groups (36% AYAs and 47% parents). The main deterrent for AYAs was that research would take up too much time (45%). Nonwhite parents (7 of 56 [12.5%]) were more apt to decline than white parents (12 of 32 [3.7%]; P < .01). Conclusions: AYAs identified time commitment and having too much to think about as significant impediments to research participation. Addressing these barriers by minimizing time requirements and further supporting decision-making may improve informed consent and impact on enrollment in trials. (shrink)

PURPOSE: There is an increasing demand for researchers to provide research results to participants. Our aim was to define an appropriate process for this, based on needs and attitudes of participants. METHODS: A multicenter survey in five sites in the United States and Canada was offered to parents of children with cancer and adolescents with cancer. Respondents indicated their preferred mode of communication of research results with respect to implications; timing, provider, and content of the results; reasons for and against (...) providing results; and barriers to providing results. RESULTS: Four hundred nine parents (including 19 of deceased children) and 86 adolescents responded. Most parents (n = 385; 94.2%) felt that they had a strong right to research results. For positive results, most wanted a letter or e-mail summary (n = 238; 58.2%) or a phone call followed by a letter (n = 100; 24.4%). If the results were negative, phone call (n = 136; 33.3%) or personal visits (n = 150; 36.7%) were preferred. Parents wanted the summary to include long-term sequelae and suggestions for participants (n = 341; 83.4%), effect on future treatments (n = 341; 83.4%), and subsequent research steps (n = 284; 69.5%). Understanding the researcher was a main concern about receiving results (n = 145; 35.5%). Parents felt that results provide information to support quality of life (n = 315; 77%) and raise public awareness of research (n = 282; 68.9%). Adolescents identified similar preferences. CONCLUSION: Parents of children with cancer and adolescents with cancer feel strongly that they have a right to be offered research results and have specific preferences of how and what information should be communicated. (shrink)

If code is law then standards bodies are governments. This flawed but powerful metaphor suggests the need to examine more closely those standards bodies that are defining standards for the Internet. In this paper we examine the International Telecommunications Union, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the World Wide Web Consortium. We compare the organizations on the basis of participation, transparency, authority, openness, security and interoperability. We conclude that the IETF and (...) the W3C are becoming increasingly similar. We also conclude that the classical distinction between standards and implementations is decreasingly useful as standards are embodies in code – itself a form of speech or documentation. Recent Internet standards bodies have flourished in part by discarding or modifying the implementation/standards distinction. We illustrate that no single model is superior on all dimensions. The IETF is not effectively scaling, struggling with its explosive growth with the creation of thousands of working groups. The IETF coordinating body, the Internet Society, addressed growth by reorganization that removed democratic oversight. The W3C, initially the most closed, is becoming responsive to criticism and now includes open code participants. The IEEE SA and ITU have institutional controls appropriate for hardware but too constraining for code. Each organization has much to learn from the others. (shrink)

How internal categories influence how we perceive the world is a fundamental question in cognitive sciences. Yet, the relation between perceptual awareness and perceptual categorization has remained largely uncovered so far. Here, we addressed this question by focusing on face perception during subliminal and conscious perception. We used morphed continua between two face identities and we assessed, through a masked priming paradigm, the perceptual processing of these morphed faces under subliminal and supraliminal conditions. We found that priming from subliminal faces (...) followed linearly the information present in the primes, while priming from visible faces revealed a non-linear profile, indicating a categorical processing of face identities. Our results thus point to a special relation between perceptual awareness and categorical processing of faces, and support the dissociation between two modes of information processing: a subliminal mode involving analog treatment of stimuli information, and a supraliminal mode relying on discrete representation. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Researchers have a moral responsibility to offer to return research results to participants, but the needs and attitudes of parents and adolescents with cancer in paediatric oncology regarding the issue are relatively unknown.OBJECTIVES: To explore the needs of potential research participants or their guardians with respect to the offer of a return of research results. METHODS: A questionnaire was used in a focus group and in telephone interviews with eight adolescents and 12 parents of children with cancer. The participants (...) were asked to respond to the questions and to comment on the inclusiveness of the questionnaire.RESULTS: The majority of participants (18 of 20) wished to receive research results. Two somewhat unexpected findings are described. First, all participants in the present study felt that it was the primary responsibility of the participant to retain contact with the researchers for the purpose of obtaining research results. Second, few participants (n=2) indicated that the Internet would be a satisfactory way of transmitting these results. One-half of the participants wished to have face-to-face communication of results.CONCLUSIONS: These results provide preliminary guidance for the return of research results to participants and validate the use of the questionnaire in a larger study of this issue. (shrink)

Imagine that you are part of the editorial board of a young bioethics journal committed to publishing open access (OA) and to ensuring accessibility to high quality and innovative scholarship. To support junior and interna- tional scholars who might not otherwise find places for their work in the leading Western bioethics journals, you do not charge author fees. Imagine also that you have no financial resources to pay for a professional website, auto- mated submissions manager, or even a part-time coordina- (...) tor: Your government has cut all grants for journals, you cannot go to industry for private funding because of the evident risk of apparent conflicts of interest, and your strapped-for-cash institution cannot afford to offer you any support. If one of the major publishers were to approach you to sign a deal, the temptation would be strong to accept. However, this would likely mean putting aside your ideals: It would be impossible to stay a “Green OA” publication (i.e., free of author publication charges) or supportive of junior and international scholars (because of pressures to “increase credibility” through artificially high rejection rates, for example). (shrink)

This is an analysis of the shift in educational emphasis at the first state supported Black institution of higher education in Louisiana during its first three decades. The national emphasis on Agricultural and Mechanical training with the expanded Morrill Act of 1890 was embraced by the University. Thus it qualified and received the Land Grant funding and developed a progressive, well-attended program in Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. This article closely reviews and describes its inner workings, facilities, curriculum, and funding.

In recent years, Charles Sanders Peirce has emerged, in the eyes of philosophers both in America and abroad, as one of America’s major philosophical thinkers. His work has forced us back to philosophical reflection about those basic issues that inevitably confront us as human beings, especially in an age of science. Peirce’s concern for experience, for what is actually encountered, means that his philosophy, even in its most technical aspects, forms a reflective commentary on actual life and on the (...) world in which it is lived. In Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals, Potter argues that Peirce’s doctrine of the normative sciences is essential to his pragmatism. No part of Peirce’s philosophy is bolder than his attempt to establish esthetics, ethics, and logic as the three normative sciences and to argue for the priority of esthetics among the trio. Logic, Potter cites, is normative because it governs thought and aims at truth; ethics is normative because it analyzes the ends to which thought should be directed; esthetics is normative and fundamental because it considers what it means to be an end of something good in itself. This study shows that pierce took seriously the trinity of normative sciences and demonstrates that these categories apply both to the conduct of man and to the workings of the cosmos. Professor Potter combines sympathetic and informed exposition with straightforward criticism and he deals in a sensible manner with the gaps and inconsistencies in Peirce’s thought. His study shows that Peirce was above all a cosmological and ontological thinker, one who combined science both as a method and as result with a conception of reasonable actions to form a comprehensive theory of reality. Peirce’s pragmatism, although it has to do with "action and the achievement of results, is not a glorification of action but rather a theory of the dynamic nature of things in which the "ideal" dimension of reality – laws, nature of things, tendencies, and ends – has genuine power for directing the cosmic order, including man, toward reasonable goals. (shrink)

Bioethics experts played a key role in ensuring a coherent ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the fields of healthcare, public health, and scientific research in Canada. In the province of Quebec, a group of academic and practicing bioethicists met periodically in the early months of the pandemic to discuss approaches and solutions to ethical dilemmas encountered during the crisis. These meetings created the opportunity for a national survey of bioethics practitioners from different fields. The survey, in which forty-five (...) Canadian bioethics practitioners (clinical ethicists, ethicist members of REBs and government health policy ethicists, or any bioethicist practicing outside of academia) participated, explored their concerns, challenges and opportunities during the first wave of the pandemic, with the objective of informing bioethics research about the difficulties experienced by bioethicists “in the field”. Participants reported increased stress levels, increased workloads, and a greater proportion of their work being devoted to public health ethics. Most of their concerns focused on groups other than themselves, such as health professionals, patients, research participants, and people in vulnerable socio-economic situations. An optimism about the future of bioethics was noted due to an increased awareness of the importance of bioethics by the public and by health and research institutions. (shrink)

I am honoured and pleased to address you this evening on the life and work of an extraordinary American thinker, Charles Sanders Peirce. Although Peirce is perhaps most often remembered as the father of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, I would like to impress upon you that he was also, and perhaps, especially, a logician, a working scientist and a mathematician. During his life time Peirce most often referred to himself, and was referred to by his colleagues, as (...) a logician. Furthermore, Peirce spent thirty years actively engaged in scientific research for the US Coast Survey. The National Archives in Washington, DC, holds some five thousand pages of Peirce's reports on this work. Finally, the four volumes of Peirce's mathematical papers edited by Professor Carolyn Eisele eloquently testify to his contributions to that field as well. (shrink)

Based on a careful study of his unpublished manuscripts as well as his published work, this book explores Peirce's general theory of signs and the way in which Peirce himself used this theory to understand subjectivity.

This book is designed to acquaint the reader with C.I. Lewis' ethics by providing critical commentary on Lewis' work in addition to reprinting some of Lewis' writings in ethics. The commentary is not meant to be a substitute for the complete work in ethics that Lewis was preparing before his death but merely a systematic study of some central aspects of his thought in ethics.

This collection of thirteen essays, when viewed together, offers a unique perspective on the history of American philosophy. It illuminates for the first time in book form, how thirteen major American philosophical thinkers viewed a problem of special interest in the American philosophical tradition: the relationship between experience and reflection. Written by well-known authorities on the figure about which he or she writes, the essays are arranged chronologically to highlight the changes and developments in thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism to (...) Process Philosophy. While Doctrine and Experience will be of particular interest to specialists in American Philosophy, there is also much to offer anyone interested in the intellectual and cultural history of the United States. In order of appearance, the essays are: "Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening" by John E. Smith "Heart and Head: The Mind of Thomas Jefferson" by Andrew J. Reck"Emerson and the American Future" by Robert C. Pollock"Chauncey Wright and the Pragmatists" by Edward Madden"Charles S. Peirce: Action Through Thought – The Ethics of Experience" by Vincent G. Potter"Life Is in the Transitions’: Radical Empiricism and Contemporary Concerns" by John J. McDermott"John Dewey and the Metaphysics of American Democracy" by Ralph W. Sleeper"Individualization and Unification in Sartre and Dewey" by Thelma Z. Levine"Josiah Royce: Anticipator of European Existentialism and Phenomenology" by Jacqueline Ann K. Kegley"The Transcendence of Materialism and Idealism in American Thought" by John Lachs"C. I. Lewis and the Pragmatic Tradition in American Philosophy" by Sandra Rosenthal"The Social Philosophy of George Herbert Mead" by David Miller"Existence as Transaction: A Whiteheadian Study of Causality" by Elizabeth Kraus. (shrink)

The author of this paper explores a central strand in the complex relationship between Peirce and Kant. He argues, against Kant (especially as reconstructed by Christine Korsgaard), that the practical identity of the self-critical agent who undertakes a Critic of reason (as Peirce insisted upon translating this expression) needs to be conceived in substantive, not purely formal, terms. Thus, insofar as there is a reflexive turn in Peirce, it is quite far from the transcendental turn taken by Immanuel Kant. The (...) identity of the being devoted to redefining the bounds of reason (for the drawing of such bounds is always a historically situated and motivated undertaking) is not that of a disembodied, rational will giving laws to itself. Nor is it that of a being whose passions and especially sentiments are heteronomous determinations of the deliberative agency in question. Rather the identity of this being is that of a somatic, social, and historical agent whose very autonomy not only traces its origin to heteronomy but also ineluctably involves an identification with what, time and again, emerges as other than this agent. A strong claim is made regarding human identity being practical identity (practical identity being understood here as the singular shape acquired by a human being in the complex course of its practical involvements, its participation in the array of practices in and through which such a being carries out its life). An equally strong claim is made regarding the upshot of Peirce's decisive movement beyond Kant's transcendental project: this movement unquestionably drives toward a compelling account of human agency. (shrink)

: While the work of such expositors as Max H. Fisch, James J. Liszka, Lucia Santaella, Anne Friedman, and Mats Bergman has helped bring into sharp focus why Peirce took the third branch of semiotic (speculative rhetoric) to be "the highest and most living branch of logic," more needs to be done to show the extent to which the least developed branch of his theory of signs is, at once, its potentially most fruitful and important. The author of this paper (...) thus begins to trace out even more fully than these scholars have done the unfinished trajectory of Peirce's eventual realization of the importance of speculative rhetoric. In doing so, he is arguing for a shift from the formalist and taxonomic emphasis of so many commentators to a more thoroughly pragmaticist and "rhetorical" approach to interpreting Peirce's theory of signs. (shrink)

Habit plays a central role in Peirce's pragmatic account of human signification. What he means by meaning is, hence, fully intelligible only in reference to the role he accords to habit in this account. While the main focus of Peirce's critical attention is, especially in the mature articulation of his thoroughgoing pragmatism, upon deliberately acquired habits, it is reasonable to suggest that often his concern is actually with something broader in one sense and narrower in another than individual or isolated (...) habits. Any given disposition to act in certain ways in certain circumstances is taken by him to be an integral part of more or less integrated dispositions to act, feel, and even imagine: it is not taken to be operative apart from these other habits. In this sense, then, his concern is primarily with such integrated dispositions, not isolated habits. Thus, it is broader than the inattentive reader is likely to suspect. But, since those deliberately cultivated dispositions of rational agents that are at the center of Peirce's concerns are ones specifiable only in reference to some human practice such as experimental inquiry or everyday conversations, religious worship or artistic innovation, these dispositions are appropriately taken to be not simply habits in any way whatsoever but primarily habits to act in a competent or expert manner. More simply put, these deliberately cultivated dispositions are, in many instances, best conceived as competencies or expertise. While not all habits equip agents with expert or even competent ways of addressing the shifting demands of experiential situations (that is, while not all habits are instances of competence or expertise), all cases of competence and expertise are, at bottom, more or less harmoniously integrated clusters of flexible, nuanced, and alterable habits. Accordingly, any account of Peirce's conception of habit, especially as it pertains to his pragmatic theory of meaning, must bring into sharper focus the complex relationship among habits, competence, and expertise than Peirce and even his most imaginative expositors have done thus far. The aim of this paper is to push our investigation of the Peircean notion of human habituation in precisely this direction. Against an evolutionary background, the historical foreground of historically evolved and evolving practices will be sketched. Habits in their guise as competencies and expertise will then be seen in the context of such practices, with equal emphasis on initiation into a practice and the open-ended process of acquiring ever more refined expertise. (shrink)

: The author of this paper explores a central strand in the complex relationship between Peirce and Kant. He argues, against Kant (especially as reconstructed by Christine Korsgaard), that the practical identity of the self-critical agent who undertakes a Critic of reason (as Peirce insisted upon translating this expression) needs to be conceived in substantive, not purely formal, terms. Thus, insofar as there is a reflexive turn in Peirce, it is quite far from the transcendental turn taken by Immanuel Kant. (...) The identity of the being devoted to redefining the bounds of reason (for the drawing of such bounds is always a historically situated and motivated undertaking) is not that of a disembodied, rational will giving laws to itself. Nor is it that of a being whose passions and especially sentiments are heteronomous determinations of the deliberative agency in question. Rather the identity of this being is that of a somatic, social, and historical agent whose very autonomy not only traces its origin to heteronomy but also ineluctably involves an identification with what, time and again, emerges as other than this agent. A strong claim is made regarding human identity being practical identity (practical identity being understood here as the singular shape acquired by a human being in the complex course of its practical involvements, its participation in the array of practices in and through which such a being carries out its life). An equally strong claim is made regarding the upshot of Peirce's decisive movement beyond Kant's transcendental project: this movement unquestionably drives toward a compelling account of human agency. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosopher and Scientist Scientific Intelligence and Theoretical Knowledge Philosophy Within the Limits of Experience Alone The Conduct of Inquiry Clarifying Meaning The Theory of Signs Absolute Chance, Brute Reaction, and Evolving Law.

While the work of such expositors as Max H. Fisch, James J. Liszka, Lucia Santaella, Anne Friedman, and Mats Bergman has helped bring into sharp focus why Peirce took the third branch of semiotic (speculative rhetoric) to be "the highest and most living branch of logic," more needs to be done to show the extent to which the least developed branch of his theory of signs is, at once, its potentially most fruitful and important. The author of this paper thus (...) begins to trace out even more fully than these scholars have done the unfinished trajectory of Peirce's eventual realization of the importance of speculative rhetoric. In doing so, he is arguing for a shift from the formalist and taxonomic emphasis of so many commentators to a more thoroughly pragmaticist and "rhetorical" approach to interpreting Peirce's theory of signs. (shrink)

Taylor’s dissatisfaction with the current political situation in Canada stems from the failure of the federal government to ratify constitutional accords which he supported, and which would have promoted Quebec as a distinct society and self-rule by the Aborigines. Among the consequences are what Taylor defines as a “rights society” based upon an “atomistic” conception of citizenship which emphasizes conflict via litigation, compounded by domineering mainstream values of English Canada. Taylor prefers a participatory democracy that keeps power at a regional (...) level. (shrink)

A. N. WHITEHEAD SUGGESTS philosophy is akin to poetry. Let me count the ways or, more exactly, identify four facets of this kinship. After touching upon these facets, I will in the second part of this paper focus directly on the relationship between being and articulation, regardless of the form in which being comes to expression. Then, in the third section, I offer Charles S. Peirce’s categoreal scheme as a compelling articulation of what are, arguably, the most ubiquitous and (...) indeed basic features of being. Finally, the last section of this paper considers human beings precisely in their ongoing efforts to give adequate expression to human experience in its broadest reach and deepest import. Philosophers and poets alike struggle to speak in an intelligible, arresting, and acute voice: they would have their utterances stop us, so that we might discern more sharply and attentively the meanings in which we are enmeshed. On the part of both, one observes countless “attempts to escape our humanness,” but one also hears deliberate endeavors “[t]o speak humanly from the height or from the depth” of experience. The philosophical no less than the poetic voice has been a distinctively human voice in which a finite, fallible, and mortal animal has given arresting expression to the most telling disclosures of human experience. It is, accordingly, to the kinship between poetry and philosophy that I now turn. (shrink)

George Santayana was not only a poet but also a philosopher whose style, concerns, and even positions drew in his own time and continues to draw in ours the attention of poets and, more broadly, literary authors. He was, in short, a poet's philosopher. In so characterizing Santayana, however, there is no slight of his strictly philosophical achievement. The philosophical finesse with which he treated complex topics is, indeed, nowhere more evident than in his rigorous analysis of poetic utterance. The (...) author of this essay explores Santayana's nuanced account of poetic utterance and, then, interprets Santayana's own literary accomplishments, including his philosophical writings, in light of this account. Given the attention which Angus Kerr-Lawson has paid to the rhetorical strategies and literary qualities of this singular philosopher, it is fitting to contribute such an essay to an issue in his honor. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Charles Sanders Peirce ‐ Scientist, Logician, and Philosopher Scientific Intelligence and Theoretical Knowledge Philosophy Within the Limits of Experience Alone The Conduct of Inquiry The Scope of Philosophy The Theory of Signs The Conjecture of a Physicist: Absolute Chance, Brute Reaction, and Evolving Law Conclusion.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is any unified theory of mental phenomena in the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce . Our thesis is that we find in Peirce's semiotic approach to human consciousness a remarkably unified perspective. ;In order to understand Peirce's reflections on the nature of mind, it is necessary first to situate them in the larger context of his philosophical system. Thus, in the first chapter, we present an overview of his system (...) of thought. In the second chapter, we examine Peirce's concept of sign-activity or what he called semiosis, since this constitutes for him the perspective from which all manifestations of mind must be interpreted. In order to be in a position to grasp Peirce's semiotic approach to mind, it is essential to have a basic understanding of his concept of semiosis. ;In the third chapter, we consider the way in which Peirce's critique of intuitionism cleared the way for his semiotic interpretation of mental phenomena. In the fourth chapter, we examine the particulars of Peirce's attempt to interpret the various modifications of human consciousness as instances of semiosis or sign-activity. ;This semiotic interpretation of mental phenomena is found in Peirce's early writings. But, as a result of later refinements and developments in his understanding of semiosis, Peirce's theory of mind undergoes corresponding refinements and developments. In the fifth and final chapter, we examine Peirce's mature formulation of his semiotic theory, a formulation which gives a prominent place to both habits and self-control. (shrink)

John E. Smith has contributed to contemporary philosophy in primarily four distinct capacities; first, as a philosopher of religion and God; second, as an indefatigable defender of philosophical reflection in its classical sense ( a sense inclusive of, but not limited to, metaphysics); third, as a participant in the reconstruction of experience and reason so boldly inaugurated by Hegel then redically transformed by the classical American pragmatists, and significantly augmented by such thinkers as Josiah Royce, william Earnest Hocking, and Alfred (...) North Whitehead; fourth, as an interpreter of philosophical texts and traditions (Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche no less than Charles Peirce, WIlliam James and John Dewey; German idealism as well as American; the Augustinian tradition no less than the pragmatic). Reason, Experience, and God provides an important and comprehensive look at the work of John E. Smith by collected essays which each address aspects of his life-long work. A response by John E. Smith himself draws a line of continuity between the pieces. (shrink)

Among his other contributions to advancing our understanding of classical American pragmatism and, in particular, Charles S. Peirce, none is more worthy of our attention than Richard S. Robin's characteristically painstaking attempt to address the puzzle of Peirce's "Proof" of pragmaticism.1 In this as in so many other respects,2 he shows himself to be, in effect, the student of Max H. Fisch (see especially 1986, chapter 19).3 There are hermeneutical traditions as well as philosophical ones and often the former (...) are integral parts of the latter. This is certainly the case regarding pragmatism. A deeper or better understanding of the inaugural figures in this philosophical movement is taken, by the interpreters of.. (shrink)