- Philosophy Program
Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University
221 Burwood Hwy
Burwood 3125
AUSTRALIA
Catherine Legg
Deakin University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- University of Waikato, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Faculty Memberadd
- Philosophical Logic, Pragmatism (Philosophy), History of Analytic Philosophy, Architectonic reasoning, Philosophy Of Language, Metaphysics, and 19 morePhilosophy Of Mathematics, Semiotics, Academic Integrity, Diagrammatic Reasoning, Virtue Epistemology, Formal Ontology, Universals, Plato and Platonism, Icon, Index, Symbol, Charles S. Peirce, Metaphilosophy, Existential Graphs, Extended Mind, Ampliative Inferences, Peirce, Theory of Categories, Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and Pragmatismedit
The philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) enhances our understanding of educational processes.
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Wikipedia is a goldmine of information; not just for its many readers, but also for the growing community of researchers who recognize it as a resource of exceptional scale and utility. It represents a vast investment of manual effort and... more
Wikipedia is a goldmine of information; not just for its many readers, but also for the growing community of researchers who recognize it as a resource of exceptional scale and utility. It represents a vast investment of manual effort and judgment: a huge, constantly evolving tapestry of concepts and relations that is being applied to a host of tasks. This
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There are many examples of diagrams in which one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with a certain empiricism largely taken for granted in contemporary philosophy,... more
There are many examples of diagrams in which one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with a certain empiricism largely taken for granted in contemporary philosophy, which believes perception is not capable of such feats. The reason for this belief, though not commonly made explicit, is often thought well-summarized in Hume’s maxim: ‘there are no necessary connections between distinct existences’. It is also thought that even if there were such necessities, perception is too passive or localized a faculty to register them. We here defend the perception of necessity against such Humeanism, drawing on examples from mathematics.
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This entry explores Charles Peirce's account of truth in terms of the end or ‘limit’ of inquiry. This account is distinct from – and arguably more objectivist than – views of truth found in other pragmatists such as James and Rorty. The... more
This entry explores Charles Peirce's account of truth in terms of the end or ‘limit’ of inquiry. This account is distinct from – and arguably more objectivist than – views of truth found in other pragmatists such as James and Rorty. The roots of the account in mathematical concepts is explored, and it is defended from objections that it is (i) incoherent, (ii) in its faith in convergence, too realist and (iii) in its ‘internal realism’, not realist enough.
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Although 20th century logic largely bypassed Peirce’s Existential Graphs, Peirce himself considered them his ‘chef d’oeuvre’ in logic, due to their greater iconicity. This paper argues that the graphs have important lessons to teach the... more
Although 20th century logic largely bypassed Peirce’s Existential Graphs, Peirce himself considered them his ‘chef d’oeuvre’ in logic, due to their greater iconicity. This paper argues that the graphs have important lessons to teach the epistemology of modality, specifically how we come to know necessary truth. It is boldly suggested that structural articulation, characteristic of icons alone, is the source of all knowledge of necessity. In other words, recognizing a statement as necessarily true consists only in an unavoidable recognition that a structure has the particular structure that it in fact has. (What else could it consist in?)
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This paper takes indexicality as a case-study for critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics as currently conceived in mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre-indexical’ and ‘post-indexical’ analytic... more
This paper takes indexicality as a case-study for critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics as currently conceived in mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre-indexical’ and ‘post-indexical’ analytic formal semantics are examined and found wanting, and instead an argument is mounted for a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’, according to which we do not work out what signs mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rather, we must understand to what use signs are being put in order to work out what they mean.
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Much mainstream analytic epistemology is built around a sceptical treatment of modality which descends from Hume. The roots of this scepticism are argued to lie in Hume’s (nominalist) theory of perception, which is excavated, studied and... more
Much mainstream analytic epistemology is built around a sceptical treatment of modality which descends from Hume. The roots of this scepticism are argued to lie in Hume’s (nominalist) theory of perception, which is excavated, studied and compared with the very different (realist) theory of perception developed by Peirce. It is argued that Peirce’s theory not only enables a considerably more nuanced and effective epistemology, it also (unlike Hume’s theory) does justice to what happens when we appreciate a proof in mathematics.
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We discuss the one-many problem as it appears in the Philebus and find that it is not restricted to the usually understood problem about the identity of universals across particulars that instantiate them (the Hylomorphic Dispersal... more
We discuss the one-many problem as it appears in the Philebus and find that it is not restricted to the usually understood problem about the identity of universals across particulars that instantiate them (the Hylomorphic Dispersal Problem). In fact some of the most interesting aspects of the problem occur purely with respect to the relationship between Forms. We argue that contemporary metaphysicians may draw from the Philebus at least three different one-many relationships between universals themselves: instantiation, subkind and part, and thereby construct three new “problems of the one and the many” (an Eidetic Dispersal Problem, a Genus-Species Problem, and an Eidetic Combination Problem), which are as problematic as the version generally discussed. We then argue that this taxonomy sheds new and interesting light on certain discussions of higher-order universals in recent Australian analytic philosophy.
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Robert Brandom‟s expressivism argues that not all semantic content may be made fully explicit. This view connects in interesting ways with recent movements in philosophy of mathematics and logic (e.g. Brown, Shin, Giaquinto) to take... more
Robert Brandom‟s expressivism argues that not all semantic content may be made fully explicit. This view connects in interesting ways with recent movements in philosophy of mathematics and logic (e.g. Brown, Shin, Giaquinto) to take diagrams seriously as more than a mere „heuristic aid‟ to proof, but either proofs themselves, or irreducible components of such. However what exactly is a diagram in logic? Does this constitute a semiotic natural kind? The paper will argue that such a natural kind does exist in Charles Peirce‟s conception of iconic signs, but that fully understood, logical diagrams involve a structured array of normative reasoning practices, as well as just a „picture on a page‟.
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This paper seeks an explanation for the challenges faced by Semantic Web developers in achieving their vision, compared to the staggering near-instantaneous success of the World Wide Web. To this end it contrasts two broad philosophical... more
This paper seeks an explanation for the challenges faced by Semantic Web developers in achieving their vision, compared to the staggering near-instantaneous success of the World Wide Web. To this end it contrasts two broad philosophical understandings of meaning, and argues that the choice between them carries real consequences for how developers attempt to engineer the Semantic Web. The first is Rene Descartes’ ‘private’, static account of meaning (arguably dominant for the last 400 years in Western thought) which understands the meanings of signs as whatever their producers intend them to mean. The second is Charles Peirce’s still relatively unknown ‘public’, evolutionary account of meaning, according to which the meaning of signs just is the way they are interpreted and used to produce further signs. It is argued that only the latter approach can avoid the unmanageable attempts to ‘preprocess’ interpretation of signs on the Web which have dogged the project from DAML to RDF Schema to OWL, and thereby do justice to the scale, rapid changeability and exciting possibilities of online information today.
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Charles Peirce famously divided all signs into icons, indices and symbols. The past few decades have seen mainstream analytic philosophy broaden its traditional focus on symbols to recognise the so-called essential indexical. Can the... more
Charles Peirce famously divided all signs into icons, indices and symbols. The past few decades have seen mainstream analytic philosophy broaden its traditional focus on symbols to recognise the so-called essential indexical. Can the moral now be extended to icons? Is there an “essential icon”? And if so, what exactly would be essential about it? It is argued that there is and it consists in logical form. Danielle Macbeth’s radical new “expressivist” interpretation of Frege’s logic and Charles Peirce’s existential graphs are mobilized in support of this claim.
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Argument-forms exist which are valid over finite but not infinite domains. Despite understanding of this by formal logicians, philosophers can be observed treating as valid arguments which are in fact invalid over infinite domains. In... more
Argument-forms exist which are valid over finite but not infinite domains. Despite understanding of this by formal logicians, philosophers can be observed treating as valid arguments which are in fact invalid over infinite domains. In support of this claim I first present an argument against the classical pragmatist theory of truth by Mark Johnston. Then, more ambitiously, I suggest the fallacy lurks in certain arguments for physicalism taken for granted by many philosophers today.
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This article explores how Robert Brandom's original "inferentialist" philosophical framework should be positioned with respect to the classical pragmatist tradition. It is argued that Charles Peirce's original attack (in "Questions... more
This article explores how Robert Brandom's original "inferentialist" philosophical framework should be positioned with respect to the classical pragmatist tradition. It is argued that Charles Peirce's original attack (in "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" and other early papers) on the use of "intuition" in nineteenth-century philosophy of mind is in fact a form of inferentialism, and thus an antecedent relatively unexplored by Brandom in his otherwise comprehensive and illuminating "tales of the mighty dead." However, whereas Brandom stops short at a merely "strong" inferentialism, which admits some non-inferential mental content (although it is parasitic on the inferential and can only be "inferentially articulated"), Peirce embraces a total, that is, "hyper-," inferentialism. Some consequences of this difference are explored, and Peirce's more thoroughgoing position is defended.
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Much discussion of meaning by philosophers over the last 300 years has been predicated on a Cartesian first-person authority (i.e. ‘infallibilism’) with respect to what one’s terms mean. However this has problems making sense of the way... more
Much discussion of meaning by philosophers over the last 300 years has been predicated on a Cartesian first-person authority (i.e. ‘infallibilism’) with respect to what one’s terms mean. However this has problems making sense of the way the meanings of scientific terms develop, an increase in scientific knowledge over and above scientists’ ability to quantify over new entities. Although a recent conspicuous embrace of rigid designation has broken up traditional meaning-infallibilism to some extent, this new dimension to the meaning of terms such as ‘water’ is yet to receive a principled epistemological undergirding (beyond the deliverances of ‘intuition’ with respect to certain somewhat unusual possible worlds). Charles Peirce’s distinctive, naturalistic philosophy of language is mined to provide a more thoroughly fallibilist, and thus more realist, approach to meaning, with the requisite epistemology. Both his pragmatism and his triadic account of representation, it is argued, produce an original approach to meaning, analysing it in processual rather than objectual terms, and opening a distinction between ‘meaning for us’, the meaning a term has at any given time for any given community and ‘meaning simpliciter’, the way use of a given term develops over time (often due to a posteriori input from the world which is unable to be anticipated in advance). This account provocatively undermines a certain distinction between ‘semantics’ and ‘ontology’ which is often taken for granted in discussions of realism.
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Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following is widely regarded to have identified what Kripke called “the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date”. But does it? This paper examines the problem in the... more
Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following is widely regarded to have identified what Kripke called “the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date”. But does it? This paper examines the problem in the light of Charles Peirce’s distinctive scientific hierarchy. Peirce identifies a phenomenological inquiry which is prior to both logic and metaphysics, whose role is to identify the most fundamental philosophical categories. His third category, particularly salient in this context, pertains to general predication. Rule-following scepticism, the paper suggests, results from running together two questions: “How is it that I can project rules?”, and, “What is it for a given usage of a rule to be right?”. In Peircean terms the former question, concerning the irreducibility of general predication (to singular reference), must be answered in phenomenology, while the latter, concerning the difference between true and false predication, is answered in logic. A failure to appreciate this distinction, it is argued, has led philosophers to focus exclusively on Wittgenstein’s famous public account of rule-following rightness, thus overlooking a private, phenomenological dimension to Wittgenstein’s remarks on following a rule which gives the lie to Kripke’s reading of him as a sceptic.
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This paper contrasts the scholastic realists of David Armstrong and Charles Peirce. It is argued that the so-called 'problem of universals' is not a problem in pure ontology (concerning whether universals exist) as Armstrong construes it... more
This paper contrasts the scholastic realists of David Armstrong and Charles Peirce. It is argued that the so-called 'problem of universals' is not a problem in pure ontology (concerning whether universals exist) as Armstrong construes it to be. Rather, it extends to issues concerning which predicates should be applied where, issues which Armstrong sets aside under the label of 'semantics', and which from a Peircean perspective encompass even the fundamentals of scientific methodology. It is argued that Peirce's scholastic realism not only presents a more nuanced ontology (distinguishing the existent front the real) but also provides more of a sense of why realism should be a position worth fighting for.
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How should we proceed when confronted with a phenomenon (or evidence which points towards a phenomenon) which baffles us? The term "miracle" is a convenient term on which to hang this question. It has a religious meaning, and the... more
How should we proceed when confronted with a phenomenon (or evidence which points towards a phenomenon) which baffles us? The term "miracle" is a convenient term on which to hang this question. It has a religious meaning, and the arguments I will be discussing are applicable to the case of deciding, for example, whether to believe in the Judaeo-Christian God, based on the reports of miracles offered by the Bible. However, one can generalise from this case to deeper issues about our attitude to the apparently inexplicable. By the apparently inexplicable I mean that which contradicts our most well-confirmed beliefs. This general question is the theme of this paper
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Would be fairer to call Peirce’s philosophy of language “extensionalist” or “intensionalist”? The extensionalisms of Carnap and Quine are examined, and Peirce’s view is found to be prima facie similar, except for his commitment to the... more
Would be fairer to call Peirce’s philosophy of language “extensionalist” or “intensionalist”? The extensionalisms of Carnap and Quine are examined, and Peirce’s view is found to be prima facie similar, except for his commitment to the importance of “hypostatic abstraction”. Rather than dismissing this form of abstraction (famously derided by Molière) as useless scholasticism, Peirce argues that it represents a crucial (though largely unnoticed) step in much working inference. This, it is argued, allows Peirce to transcend the extensionalist-intensionalist dichotomy itself, through his unique triadic analysis of reference and meaning, by transcending the distinction between (as Quine put it) “things” and “attributes”.
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This talk was presented at the workshop "Buddhism and Philosophy: A Workshop with Jay L. Garfield, August 10, 2018. The workshop was hosted by the Deakin Philosophy Program and organised by Leesa Davis. It compares and contrasts... more
This talk was presented at the workshop "Buddhism and Philosophy: A Workshop with Jay L. Garfield, August 10, 2018. The workshop was hosted by the Deakin Philosophy Program and organised by Leesa Davis.
It compares and contrasts distinctions between 'two truths' in: i) Wilfrid Sellars' philosophy, ii) Buddhist thought as presented by Garfield in his excellent recent book, "Engaging Buddhist Philosophy".
It compares and contrasts distinctions between 'two truths' in: i) Wilfrid Sellars' philosophy, ii) Buddhist thought as presented by Garfield in his excellent recent book, "Engaging Buddhist Philosophy".
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Presented at the Conference of the Australian Hegel Society: "Naturalism and Sociality", University of NSW, 14-15 February 2019
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A look at current debates around our so-called 'post-truth regime' from the perspective of Charles Peirce's epistemology. Is such a regime present? Is it unprecedented? And if so what should we do about it?
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This talk was delivered at the Liberal Naturalism Conference held at Deakin University, 23-24 November 2017. It draws on Charles Peirce's semiotics to reconceive ‘objectivity’ in a (recommended) more open-minded and fallibilist manner,... more
This talk was delivered at the Liberal Naturalism Conference held at Deakin University, 23-24 November 2017.
It draws on Charles Peirce's semiotics to reconceive ‘objectivity’ in a (recommended) more open-minded and fallibilist manner, based around a logical rather than scientific notion of ‘object’ by means of an indexical normative pragmatics. At this point, ‘naturalism’'s key question becomes – is what you're talking about merely a reflection of your own idiosyncracies? Or does it have a *nature*?...
As this presentation is as yet unpublished, comments are very welcome. (c.legg@deakin.edu.au)
It draws on Charles Peirce's semiotics to reconceive ‘objectivity’ in a (recommended) more open-minded and fallibilist manner, based around a logical rather than scientific notion of ‘object’ by means of an indexical normative pragmatics. At this point, ‘naturalism’'s key question becomes – is what you're talking about merely a reflection of your own idiosyncracies? Or does it have a *nature*?...
As this presentation is as yet unpublished, comments are very welcome. (c.legg@deakin.edu.au)
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Talk delivered at University of Melbourne and Latrobe University, October 2017.
A written-up version exists - if you'd like a copy, please email me (c.legg@deakin.edu.au)
A written-up version exists - if you'd like a copy, please email me (c.legg@deakin.edu.au)
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Talk given at AAP Conference, Adelaide Australia, 6 July 2017, in special stream in memory of Josh Parsons (the title of whose AJP paper "There is no Truthmaker Argument Against Nominalism" this talk acknowledges. This talk brings... more
Talk given at AAP Conference, Adelaide Australia, 6 July 2017, in special stream in memory of Josh Parsons (the title of whose AJP paper "There is no Truthmaker Argument Against Nominalism" this talk acknowledges.
This talk brings together contemporary analytic discussions of truthmaker realism with recent exciting work by Frederik Stjernfelt on the structure and function of the proposition drawing on Charles Peirce's theory of signs.
This talk brings together contemporary analytic discussions of truthmaker realism with recent exciting work by Frederik Stjernfelt on the structure and function of the proposition drawing on Charles Peirce's theory of signs.
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1. Introduction
2. Idea-based Epistemology and its Conception of Truth
3. Habit-based Epistemology and its Conception of Truth
4. Peirce’s Ethics
5. Analytic Explication vs Pragmatic Elucidation
6. Developing the Ideal of Truth
2. Idea-based Epistemology and its Conception of Truth
3. Habit-based Epistemology and its Conception of Truth
4. Peirce’s Ethics
5. Analytic Explication vs Pragmatic Elucidation
6. Developing the Ideal of Truth
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This is a recently-created third-year lecture that I was particularly proud of, so I decided to upload it here. It takes later Wittgenstein's 'form of life' and puts it up against Jonathan Lear's heart-breaking presentation in his book... more
This is a recently-created third-year lecture that I was particularly proud of, so I decided to upload it here. It takes later Wittgenstein's 'form of life' and puts it up against Jonathan Lear's heart-breaking presentation in his book Radical Hope of the collapse of a certain system of meaning held by the Crow Nation, as they gave up war and hunting and moved onto the reservation. The lecture finishes with some tough questions from Naomi Scheman about whether being 'at home' in a form of life is so great after all.
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This paper takes indexicality as a case-study for a critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics in contemporary mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre-indexical’ and a ‘post-indexical’ analytic formal... more
This paper takes indexicality as a case-study for a critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics in contemporary mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre-indexical’ and a ‘post-indexical’ analytic formal semantics are examined and found wanting, and instead an argument is mounted for a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’ according to which we do not work out what signs mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rather, we must understand to what use signs are being put in order to understand what they mean. This move is highly congenial to - but not identical with - recent Brandomian explorations of the pragmatic topography of the space of reasons (e.g. Kukla and Lance, 2009).
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One of the central ideas in C19th British Idealism was the concrete universal, described by Bosanquet as the universal in the form of a world, as opposed to the universal in the form of a class. This talk compares the understanding of the... more
One of the central ideas in C19th British Idealism was the concrete universal, described by Bosanquet as the universal in the form of a world, as opposed to the universal in the form of a class. This talk compares the understanding of the reality of universals in T.H. Green with his C19th pragmatist peer Charles Peirce.
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There are many examples of diagrams in which one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with some well-known philosophical theses, inherited from Hume, according to... more
There are many examples of diagrams in which one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with some well-known philosophical theses, inherited from Hume, according to which there cannot be any “necessary connections between distinct existences” to be perceived; and even if there were, perception would not be capable of gaining access to them. We defend the perception of necessity, and explain why Hume fails to show its impossibility.
We discuss the one-many problem as it appears in the Philebus and find that it is not restricted to the usually understood problem about the identity of universals across particulars that instantiate them (the “Dispersal Problem”). In... more
We discuss the one-many problem as it appears in the Philebus and find that it is not restricted to the usually understood problem about the identity of universals across particulars that instantiate them (the “Dispersal Problem”). In fact some of the most interesting aspects of the problem occur purely with respect to the relationship between Forms. In this domain we distinguish three one-many problems: the Eidetic Dispersal Problem, the Genus-Species Problem, and the Eidetic Combination Problem, which turn on the relations of instantiation, subkind-kind and part-whole respectively. We examine certain discussions of higher-order universals in recent Australian analytic philosophy in the light of this new analysis.
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Temporal parts Paradoxes of Time Travel Relationship between time and change Why you can’t change the past (or the future either!) The Grandfather paradox Does Time Pass? Is Time Unreal? Two understandings of time: The A and B Series... more
Temporal parts
Paradoxes of Time Travel
Relationship between time and change
Why you can’t change the past (or the future either!)
The Grandfather paradox
Does Time Pass?
Is Time Unreal?
Two understandings of time: The A and B Series
Argument that for time to be real, the A series needs to be real, but it isn’t.
Paradoxes of Time Travel
Relationship between time and change
Why you can’t change the past (or the future either!)
The Grandfather paradox
Does Time Pass?
Is Time Unreal?
Two understandings of time: The A and B Series
Argument that for time to be real, the A series needs to be real, but it isn’t.
Why Study Philosophy?
What is Metaphysics?
Defining Time
Defining Possibility
Logical possibility / necessity
Physical possibility / necessity
Epistemic possibility / necessity
What is Metaphysics?
Defining Time
Defining Possibility
Logical possibility / necessity
Physical possibility / necessity
Epistemic possibility / necessity
This paper offers an expressivist account of logical form, arguing that in order to fully understand it one must examine what valid arguments make us do (or: what Achilles does and the Tortoise doesn’t, in Carroll’s famed fable). It... more
This paper offers an expressivist account of logical form, arguing that in order to fully understand it one must examine what valid arguments make us do (or: what Achilles does and the Tortoise doesn’t, in Carroll’s famed fable). It introduces Charles Peirce’s distinction between symbols, indices and icons as three different kinds of signification whereby the sign picks out its object by learned convention, by unmediated indication, and by resemblance respectively. It is then argued that logical form is represented by the third, iconic, kind of sign. It is noted that icons uniquely enjoy partial identity between sign and object, and argued that this holds the key to Carroll’s puzzle. Finally, from this examination of sign-types metaphysical morals are drawn: that the traditional foes metaphysical realism and conventionalism constitute a false dichotomy, and that reality contains intriguingly inference-binding structures.
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This presentation offers an expressivist account of logical form, arguing that in order to fully understand it one must examine what valid arguments make us do (or: what Achilles does and the Tortoise doesn’t, in Carroll’s famed fable).... more
This presentation offers an expressivist account of logical form, arguing that in order to fully understand it one must examine what valid arguments make us do (or: what Achilles does and the Tortoise doesn’t, in Carroll’s famed fable). It introduces Charles Peirce’s distinction between symbols, indices and icons as three different kinds of signification whereby the sign picks out its object by learned convention, by unmediated indication, and by resemblance respectively. It is then argued that logical form is represented by the third, iconic, kind of sign. It is noted that icons uniquely enjoy partial identity between sign and object, and argued that this holds the key to Carroll’s puzzle. Finally, from this examination of sign-types metaphysical morals are drawn: that the traditional foes metaphysical realism and conventionalism constitute a false dichotomy, and that reality contains intriguingly inference-binding structures.
The somewhat old-fashioned concept of philosophical categories is revived and put to work in automated ontology building. We describe a project harvesting knowledge from Wikipedia’s category network in which the principled ontological... more
The somewhat old-fashioned concept of philosophical categories is revived and put to work in automated ontology building. We describe a project harvesting knowledge from Wikipedia’s category network in which the principled ontological structure of Cyc was leveraged to furnish an extra layer of accuracy-checking over and above more usual corrections which draw on automated measures of semantic relatedness.
In the last few decades virtue ethicists have profoundly reassessed the goals and theories of mainstream ethics. The traditional focus on whether individual acts are right or wrong has been at least supplemented by discussion of ‘thick’... more
In the last few decades virtue ethicists have profoundly reassessed the goals and theories of mainstream ethics. The traditional focus on whether individual acts are right or wrong has been at least supplemented by discussion of ‘thick’ moral virtues (e.g. patience, courage, honesty...) The even newer discipline of virtue epistemology seeks to extend analogous insights to mainstream epistemology – supplementing the traditional focus on whether individual beliefs are known by discussion of ‘thick’ truth-seeking virtues (e.g. e.g. patience, courage, honesty...) Another recent debate of interest in ethics is moral particularism, the view that moral evaluation is not fully capturable by any set of general principles but requires the ability to respond sensitively to the unique exigencies of moral situations. I inquire whether this view also might be ‘exported’ to epistemology. I suggest that it can and should be, and that this is in fact embodied in the maxim of classical American pragmatism that to truly understand an idea, one must be able to apply it in specific cases
The current of development in 20th century logic bypassed Peirce’s existential graphs, but recently much good work has been done by formal logicians excavating the graphs from Peirce’s manuscripts, regularizing them and demonstrating the... more
The current of development in 20th century logic bypassed Peirce’s existential graphs, but recently much good work has been done by formal logicians excavating the graphs from Peirce’s manuscripts, regularizing them and demonstrating the soundness and completeness of the alpha and beta systems (e.g. Roberts 1973, Hammer 1998, Shin 2002). However, given that Peirce himself considered the graphs to be his ‘chef d’oeuvre’ in logic, and explored the distinction between icons, indices and symbols in detail within the context of a much larger theory of signs, much about the graphs arguably remains to be thought through from the perspective of philosophical logic. For instance, are the graphs always merely of heuristic value or can they convey an ‘essential icon’ (analogous to the now standardly accepted ‘essential indexical’)? This paper claims they can and do, and suggests important consequences follow from this for the epistemology of modality. It is boldly suggested that structural articulation, which is characteristic of icons alone, is the source of all necessity. In other words, recognizing a statement as necessarily true consists only in an unavoidable recognition that a structure has the particular structure that it in fact has. (What else could it consist in?)
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This book, officially a contribution to the subject area of Charles Peirce’s semiotics, deserves a wider readership, including philosophers. Its subject matter is what might be termed the great question of how signification happens (what... more
This book, officially a contribution to the subject area of Charles Peirce’s semiotics, deserves a wider readership, including philosophers. Its subject matter is what might be termed the great question of how signification happens (what Peirce called the ‘riddle of the Sphinx’, who in Emerson’s poem famously asked, ‘Who taught thee me to name?’), and also Peirce’s answer to the question (what Peirce himself called his ‘guess at the riddle’, and Freadman calls his ‘sign hypothesis’).
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A volume of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, dedicated to the Reception of Peirce in the world. I'm one of the editor of the Symposia of the volume, where you can find contributions from Italy, Colombia, Spain,... more
A volume of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, dedicated to the Reception of Peirce in the world. I'm one of the editor of the Symposia of the volume, where you can find contributions from Italy, Colombia, Spain, UK, Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, New Zealand and Japan.
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As an informational technology, the World Wide Web has enjoyed spectacular success. In just ten years it has transformed the way information is produced, stored, and shared in arenas as diverse as shopping, family photo albums, and... more
As an informational technology, the World Wide Web has enjoyed spectacular success. In just ten years it has transformed the way information is produced, stored, and shared in arenas as diverse as shopping, family photo albums, and high-level academic research. The “Semantic Web” was touted by its developers as equally revolutionary but has not yet achieved anything like the Web’s exponential uptake. This 17 000 word survey article explores why this might be so, from a perspective that bridges both philosophy and IT.
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Abstract Traditionally in WSNs, the sensor nodes are used only for capturing data that is then later analyzed in the more powerful gateway nodes. This requires a continuous communication that wastes energy at the sensor nodes and greatly... more
Abstract Traditionally in WSNs, the sensor nodes are used only for capturing data that is then later analyzed in the more powerful gateway nodes. This requires a continuous communication that wastes energy at the sensor nodes and greatly reduces the overall network lifetime. We propose a semantic-based in-network data processing that reduces energy consumption and improves the scalability of heterogeneous sensor networks.
The somewhat old-fashioned concept of philosophical categories is revived and put to work in automated ontology building.
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This is an introduction to a special issue of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society devoted to the legacy of Joseph Ransdell (19312010). Joe received his PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1966, and spent most of... more
This is an introduction to a special issue of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society devoted to the legacy of Joseph Ransdell (19312010). Joe received his PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1966, and spent most of his career at Texas Tech University. His guiding intellectual passion was understanding how communication might best encourage and support truth-seeking, guided by the sign theory and philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. This led him to develop innovative early uses of online fora to support discussion of Peirce’s thought: most notably the email list and online community peirce-l, which he founded in 1993 and moderated in unique style until his death, and an accompanying website that he beta-launched in 1997 and called Arisbe, after the house where Peirce lived in his later years.
As well as presenting a precis of the special issue’s three author papers and two previously unpublished pieces by Joe, this introduction outlines some of Joe’s achievements, and pays tribute to his on-list philosophical voice, which had a distinctive depth, acerbic commentary and wide-ranging creative fire.
As well as presenting a precis of the special issue’s three author papers and two previously unpublished pieces by Joe, this introduction outlines some of Joe’s achievements, and pays tribute to his on-list philosophical voice, which had a distinctive depth, acerbic commentary and wide-ranging creative fire.
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This paper describes an experiment in teaching undergraduate epistemology (specifically, the topic of reality), guided by Charles Peirce’s pragmatic maxim.
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Charles S. Peirce's semiotics uniquely divides signs into: i) symbols, which pick out their objects by arbitrary convention or habit, ii) indices, which pick out their objects by unmediated 'pointing', and iii) icons, which pick out their... more
Charles S. Peirce's semiotics uniquely divides signs into: i) symbols, which pick out their objects by arbitrary convention or habit, ii) indices, which pick out their objects by unmediated 'pointing', and iii) icons, which pick out their objects by resembling them (as Peirce put it: an icon's parts are related in the same way that the objects represented by those parts are themselves related). Thus representing structure is one of the icon's greatest strengths. It is argued that the implications of scaffolding education iconically are profound: for providing learners with a navigable road-map of a subject matter, for enabling them to see further connections of their own in what is taught, and for supporting meaningful active learning. Potential objections that iconic teaching is excessively entertaining and overly susceptible to misleading rhetorical manipulation are addressed.
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This paper seeks to bring recent ground-breaking work by Frederik Stjernfelt on Charles Peirce's notion of the proposition (or 'Dicisign') to contemporary truthmaker theory. It is suggested that this can open up new and original insights... more
This paper seeks to bring recent ground-breaking work by Frederik Stjernfelt on Charles Peirce's notion of the proposition (or 'Dicisign') to contemporary truthmaker theory. It is suggested that this can open up new and original insights into how truthmaker theory might be used as a support for realism. Realism is here defined against nominalism, as the view which highlights principles with explanatory force, and nominalist truthmaker theorists are argued to be illicitly seeking a 'modal free lunch'.
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This is a written-up version of a presentation I gave at the “Peirce’s Mathematics” conference, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, November 25-27, 2015. It is forthcoming in volume 7 of Cuadernos de Sistemática Peirceana.
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PREPRINT Neopragmatism has been accused of having ‘an experience problem’. This paper begins by outlining Hume's understanding of perception according to which ideas are copies of impressions thought to constitute a direct confrontation... more
PREPRINT
Neopragmatism has been accused of having ‘an experience problem’. This paper begins by outlining Hume's understanding of perception according to which ideas are copies of impressions thought to constitute a direct confrontation with reality. This understanding is contrasted with Peirce's theory of perception according to which percepts give rise to perceptual judgments which do not copy but index the percept (just as a weather-cock indicates the direction of the wind). Percept and perceptual judgment thereby mutually inform and correct one another, as the perceiver develops mental habits of interpreting their surroundings, so that, in this theory of perception, as Peirce puts it: “[n]othing at all…is absolutely confrontitional”. Paul Redding has argued that Hegel’s “idealist understanding of logical form” ran deeper than Kant’s in recognising that Mind is essentially embodied and located, and therefore perspectival. Peirce’s understanding arguably dives deeper still in distributing across the space of reasons (and thus Being) not just Mind’s characteristic features of embodiedness and locatedness, but also its infinite corrigibility.
Neopragmatism has been accused of having ‘an experience problem’. This paper begins by outlining Hume's understanding of perception according to which ideas are copies of impressions thought to constitute a direct confrontation with reality. This understanding is contrasted with Peirce's theory of perception according to which percepts give rise to perceptual judgments which do not copy but index the percept (just as a weather-cock indicates the direction of the wind). Percept and perceptual judgment thereby mutually inform and correct one another, as the perceiver develops mental habits of interpreting their surroundings, so that, in this theory of perception, as Peirce puts it: “[n]othing at all…is absolutely confrontitional”. Paul Redding has argued that Hegel’s “idealist understanding of logical form” ran deeper than Kant’s in recognising that Mind is essentially embodied and located, and therefore perspectival. Peirce’s understanding arguably dives deeper still in distributing across the space of reasons (and thus Being) not just Mind’s characteristic features of embodiedness and locatedness, but also its infinite corrigibility.
Research Interests:
Peirce's mathematics and synechism