In 1907, Charles Peirce attempted to write an article that would introduce his distinct variety of pragmatism to a general audience. He eventually produced more than five hundred handwritten sheets, culminating in five major variants. Peirce left the second unfinished, while extensive portions of the third through fifth have appeared in collections of his writings, including the beginning that is common to all five. This is the completed and signed first version, which has never been published before and offers (...) fresh insights into the evolution of its author’s thinking about semeiotic and pragmatism. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the reasons behind what it calls the erosion of democracy under George W. Bush's presidency since September 11, 2001, and claims that they are twofold: first, the erosion in question can be attributed to a crisis of the state and the belief that security is its only genuine function. In other words, the erosion of democracy is an erosion of the very idea of the public sphere beyond security and war. Secondly, the erosion of the ethical sphere (...) goes hand in hand with an extraordinary resurgence of what, still following Hegel, I call "morality," and which privileges the subjective over the objective, or moral feeling over institutions and the law. (shrink)

The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper (...) seeks to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting. (shrink)

In scholarship on the history of philosophy, it is widely assumed that Charles Fourier was a utopian socialist who could not have exerted a significant influence on the development of Karl Marx's thought. Indeed, both Marx and Engels seem to have advanced this view. In contrast, I argue that in 1844 when Marx was developing his anthropology and social critique, he relied upon Fourier's thought to supply a key assumption. After establishing this connection, I explain why Marx's tacit reliance (...) on Fourier creates a problematic undercurrent in his thought. (shrink)

Dennis Schmidt is developing a way of thinking that has at its core his understanding of "idiom," especially in what he calls "original ethics" and "idiomatic truth." This paper engages that understanding, distinguishes linguistic idioms and "event idioms," shows the transformative effects in both his thought and his life that his focus on idioms has had and is having in the present direction of his constructive philosophy, and further shows that this direction has the potential to change considerably major (...) aspects of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but his dissatisfaction with how others understood and appropriated it prompted him to rename his own doctrine “pragmaticism” and to compose several variants of his original maxim defining it, as well as numerous restatements and elaborations. This paper presents an extensive selection of such formulations, followed by analysis and commentary demonstrating that for Peirce the ultimate meaning of an intellectual concept is properly expressed as a conditional proposition about the deliberate, self-controlled (...) conduct of its interpreters, not the law-governed behavior of its object. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but the name that he preferred for his overall system of thought was ‘‘synechism’’ because the principle of continuity was its central thesis. He considered time to be the paradigmatic example and often wrote about its various aspects while discussing other topics. This essay draws from many of those widely scattered texts to formulate a distinctively Peircean philosophy of time, incorporating extensive quotations into a comprehensive and coherent synthesis. (...) Time is not an existential subject with past, present, and future as its incompatible predicates, but rather a real law enabling things to possess contrary qualities at its different determinations, and Peirce identifies four classes of such states based on when and how they are realized. Because time is continuous, it is not composed of instants, and even the present is an indefinite lapse during which we are directly aware of constant change. The accomplished past is perpetually growing as the possibilities and conditional necessities of the future are actualized at the present, and the entire universe evolves from being utterly indeterminate toward being absolutely determinate. Nevertheless, time must return into itself even if events are limited to only a portion of it, a paradox that is resolved with the aid of projective geometry. Temporal synechism thus touches on a broad spectrum of philosophical issues including mathematics, phenomenology, logic, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Although Peirce frequently insisted that continuity was a core component of his philosophical thought, his conception of it evolved considerably during his lifetime, culminating in a theory grounded primarily in topical geometry. Two manuscripts, one of which has never before been published, reveal that his formulation of this approach was both earlier and more thorough than most scholars seem to have realized. Combining these and other relevant texts with the better-known passages highlights a key ontological distinction: a collection is bottom-up, (...) such that the parts are real and the whole is an ens rationis, while a continuum is top-down, such that the whole is real and the parts are entia rationis. Accordingly, five properties are jointly necessary and sufficient for Peirce’s topical continuum: rationality, divisibility, homogeneity, contiguity, and inexhaustibility. (shrink)

Charles Peirce incorporates modality into his Existential Graphs by introducing the broken cut for possible falsity. Although it can be adapted to various modern modal logics, Zeman demonstrates that making no other changes results in a version that he calls Gamma-MR, an implementation of Jan Łukasiewicz's four-valued Ł-modal system. It disallows the assertion of necessity, reflecting a denial of determinism, and has theorems involving possibility that seem counterintuitive at first glance. However, the latter is a misconception that arises from (...) overlooking the distinction between the intermediate truth values that are assigned to possibly true propositions as either X-contingent or Y-contingent. Any two propositions having the same ITV are possible together, while any two propositions having different ITVs, including those that are each other's negation, are possible individually yet not possible together. Porte shows that Ł-modal can be translated into classical logic by defining a constant for each ITV such that its implication of another proposition asserts the latter's possibility, while its conjunction with another proposition asserts the latter's necessity. These are expressed in the Alpha part of EG without broken cuts, simplifying derivations and shedding further light on Łukasiewicz's system, as long as graphs including either of the constants are properly interpreted. Ł-modal and Gamma-MR thus capture the two-sided nature of possibility as the limit between truth and falsity in Peirce's triadic conception. (shrink)

In scholarship on the history of philosophy, it is widely assumed that Charles Fourier was a utopian socialist who could not have exerted a significant influence on the development of Karl Marx's thought. Indeed, both Marx and Engels seem to have advanced this view. In contrast, I argue that in 1844 when Marx was developing his anthropology and social critique, he relied upon Fourier's thought to supply a key assumption. After establishing this connection, I explain why Marx's tacit reliance (...) on Fourier creates a problematic undercurrent in his thought. (shrink)

Modern approaches to engineering ethics typically involve the systematic application of universal abstract principles, reflecting the culturally dominant paradigm of technical rationality (techne). By contrast, virtue ethics recognizes that sensitivity to context and practical judgment (phronesis) are indispensable in particular concrete situations, and therefore focuses on the person who acts, rather than the action itself. Virtues are identified within a specific social practice in accordance with its proper purpose, its societal role and associated responsibilities, and the internal goods that are (...) unique to it. As a result, ethics is recognized as something integral to engineering, rather than supplemental to it. This is necessary and appropriate, since engineers are often the decision-makers in contexts where the potential beneficiaries and harm-bearers are not the same; even their routine technical choices have ethical ramifications. The reasoning process commonly employed by engineers is similar in structure to that of scientists as articulated by Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of philosophical pragmatism. As a "logic of ingenuity," it requires retroductively creating a diagrammatic model of a problem and its proposed solution, and then deductively working out the consequences, such that this serves as an adequate substitute for inductively evaluating the actual situation, which does not yet exist. As with ethical deliberation more generally, the key to success is having the ability to discern the significant aspects of reality and consistently capture them, before definitively selecting a way forward from among multiple viable options. This requires a carefully cultivated habit of imagining possibilities, assessing alternatives, and selecting one of them to bring about. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to raise the question of ethical life independently of the framework of metaphysical assumptions, above all, independently of the language and idiom of conceptual reason. In order to carry out this project, which is akin to what Heidegger described as the project of formulating an “original ethics,” I take up several works by Charles Scott that I find offering especially productive openings for that project.

The purpose of this paper is to raise the question of ethical life independently of the framework of metaphysical assumptions, above all, independently of the language and idiom of conceptual reason. In order to carry out this project, which is akin to what Heidegger described as the project of formulating an “original ethics,” I take up several works by Charles Scott that I find offering especially productive openings for that project.

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...) writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...) to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states ; or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons. I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. (shrink)

Das Buch beschreibt die Transformation des Diskurses der Kulturwissenschaft, der seit seinem Entstehen um die Jahrhundertwende auch die deutsch-jüdische Interkulturalität retten sollte, in einem Diskurs der politischen Theologie (Carl Schmitt und Gerschom Scholem), über den sich der katastrophale Trennungsprozess beider Kulturen vollstreckt.

Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

I present an explanatory argument for the reasons-first view: It is superior to knowledge-first views in particular in that it can both explain the specific epistemic role of perception and account for the shape and extent of epistemic justification.

Discusses contemporary notions of the self, and examines their origins, development, and effects.

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

Sartre pädagogisch lesen, dies ist bislang versäumt worden. Zu entdecken ist in seinem Denken eine deutliche Nähe zum Bildungsbegriff des frühen Nietzsche und damit auch eine Akzentuierung der Selbstverantwortlichkeit des Subjekts gegenüber allen situativen Einschränkungen seiner Freiheit. In Zeiten einer drohenden Selbstabdankung des Subjekts ist die Anknüpfung an Sartres Verständnis der Authentizität hilfreich für das Bemühen um die Neuformulierung eines tragfähigen Bildungsbegriffs. Die Sportpädagogik gewinnt über Sartres Analysen des Körpers eine bis heute unerschlossene phänomenologische Perspektive auf ihre anthropologischen Grundlagen.

Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)