Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was a thinker of extraordinary depth and range - he wrote on philosophy, mathematics, psychology, physics, logic, phenomenology, semiotics, religion and ethics - but his writings are difficult and fragmentary. This book provides a clear and comprehensive explanation of Peirce's thought. His philosophy is presented as a systematic response to 'nominalism', the philosophy which he most despised and which he regarded as the underpinning of the dominant philosophical worldview of his time. The book explains (...) Peirce's challenge to nominalism as a theory of meaning and shows its implications for his views of knowledge, truth, the nature of reality, and ethics. It will be essential reading both for Peirce scholars and for those new to his work. (shrink)

(2008). Neither Dogma nor Common sense: Moore's confidence in his ‘proof of an external world’1. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 163-195.

Charles Peirce is often credited for being among the first, perhaps even the first, to develop a scientific metaphysics of indeterminism. After rejecting the received view that Peirce developed his views from Darwin and Maxwell, I argue that Peirce's view results from his synthesis of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy and George Boole's contributions to formal logic. Specifically, I claim that Kant's conception of the laws of logic as the basis for his architectonic, when combined with Boole's view of probability, yields (...) Peirce's metaphysics of probabilistic laws. Indeterminism provides, therefore, an excellent illustration of how Peirce attempted to use logic to clarify metaphysical problems.Since everyone must have conceptions of things in general, it is most important that they should be carefully constructed. I shall enter into no criticism of the different methods of metaphysical research, but shall merely say that in the opinions of several great thinkers, the only successful mode yet lighted upon is that of adopting our logic as our metaphysics. (W1: 490, 1866)2. (shrink)

Forster explains how Santayana squares his commitment to naturalism with his reliance on methods of transcendental criticism. Rather than view naturalism and transcendental criticism as antagonistic, Santayana reconciles them in an account of human knowledge that he considers more comprehensive than either is alone.

A epistemologia de Charles Sanders Peirce parece paradoxal quando comparada a de Rudolf Carnap e W.V. Quine. Como Carnap, mas diferentemente de Quine, Peirce considera que o conhecimento científico reside em princípios lógicos que devem se sustentar para que o discurso sobre o verdadeiro e o falso tenha sentido. Ele também compartilha a visão de Carnap de que esses princípios são anteriores à, e independentes das constatações nas ciências naturais, uma visão que Quine notoriamente rejeita. Todavia, como Quine, mas diferentemente (...) de Carnap, Peirce insiste que não há conhecimento além daquele que é obtido por meio de testes empíricos, que as verdades da lógica estão epistemologicamente a par das verdades descobertas nas ciências naturais, e que nos revelam algo sobre como as coisas são, em vez de carecerem de conteúdo fatual, como Carnap afirma. Um ar de paradoxo emerge no comprometimento simultâneo de Peirce às visões comumente consideradas próprias das teorias epistemológicas incompatíveis. A análise desse paradoxo pela comparação da concepção de conhecimento de Peirce ao de Quine e Carnap nos ajuda a apreciar melhor sua importância na tradição filosófica e na profundeza e originalidade de suas razões. (shrink)

Peirce claims that the methods of abduction, deduction and induction are jointly sufficient for the attainment of truth, regardless of the state of belief from which inquiry begins. This article summarizes Peirce’s defence of the thesis that the scientific method is self-corrective and addresses common mistakes in its interpretation.

Pragmatism is usually viewed as a unifed school, movement or tradition. Lists of its most important tenets typically include advocacy of open inquiry, pursued with an awareness of human fallibility, a view of justifcation that appeals to shared experience in all its manifestations – aesthetic, religious, moral, political and scientifc – and a conception of philosophy as a practice interwoven with problems of contemporary life. While disagreements among pragmatists are widely acknowledged, they are most often treated as easily resolved or (...) of marginal importance given the substantial body of doctrine that pragmatists are thought to share. I argue that this view of pragmatism obscures important philosophical differences among its proponents, to the serious detriment of our understanding of the tradition. I point out that fgures most often credited with advancing pragmatism – Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty – defend signifcantly divergent views, views that are anything but easy to reconcile. Their differences go to the very heart of how pragmatism is to be understood and defended and present serious obstacles to any characterization of it as a tradition with a common philosophical method, purpose or core set of doctrines. Pragmatism is far more diverse, subtle and diffcult to come to terms with than contemporary accounts of what is living and dead in it commonly presume. (shrink)