#charles s peirce

[quotidiansacred]

Four semiotic concepts of Charles S. Peirce

[perkwunos]

I’m returning to an article I can remember reading and trying to seriously think through a few years ago—back around 2019. The article is Sandra Rosenthal’s “Continuity, Contingency, and Time: The Divergent Intuitions of Whitehead and Pragmatism,” published in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society in 1996. In the article, Rosenthal argued that there is “a fundamental chasm” separating what she calls “Whiteheadian and pragmatic process philosophies” (542). This separation derives from “different intuitions of the nature of time” that are then “inextricably intertwined with diverse perceptions of the nature and interrelation of continuity, discreteness, and contingency” (ibid.). This initial article actually incited a reply by Lewis Ford the next year, to which Rosenthal then wrote a reply of her own, and then Chris van Haeften wrote what was essentially a follow-up to those previous discussions in 2001. So from a certain perspective the whole thing was quite productive.

Reading through it now, though, I’m struck by just how poor the level of argument is—but then I’m also not especially surprised. Lately I’ve really been coming to the assessment that the scholarship on Whitehead is, in general, extremely poor. Maybe I’m being harsh, and in general you’re not bound to find that much legitimately good scholarship on any philosophy, especially more marginal philosophers from older time periods.

Rosenthal states, early on in the article, that “the philosophical search for the security of fixity, the fully definite, as well as the a-temporal, has survived surprisingly well in Whitehead's philosophy” (542-543). This is, in fact, true in a rather mundane and obvious way, so that Rosenthal has no warrant for appending “surprisingly” to her sentence. Whitehead always made it clear that his philosophy included both (1) entities that are fully definite and determinate (in many of the distinct ways we could importantly define either of those two terms) and (2) permanent entities, including even entities that are a-temporal (which, again, could apply given at least a couple distinct ways of defining a-temporality).

Whitehead does, after all, include something called “eternal objects” in his category of entities. Or, if we want to turn to one of his more poetic (and thus, on an initial read, more memorable) phrasings, take how, in Process and Reality, he cites these lines from a hymn:

Abide with me; Fast falls the eventide.

He then writes, “Here the first line expresses the permanences, ‘abide,’ ‘me’ and the ‘Being’ addressed; and the second line sets these permanences amid the inescapable flux. Here at length we find formulated the complete problem of meta­physics. Those philosophers who start with the first line have given us the metaphysics of ‘substance’; and those who start with the second line have developed the metaphysics of ‘flux.’ But, in truth, the two lines cannot be tom apart in this way” (209). Later in the book Whitehead will refer back to these lines, and state his point again: “Ideals fashion themselves round these two notions, permanence and flux. In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence. Those who would disjoin the two elements can find no interpretation of patent facts” (338).

So Rosenthal is not wrong to state that Whitehead retains a place for “fixity, the fully definite, as well as the a-temporal”, no matter her moralizing over it—and it’s a common feature running through this paper that she uses moralizing terms like the “security” above while discussing what are really pretty mundane things. So Rosenthal is also correct in noting that actual occasions, upon coming into existence, “do not change, do not alter while maintaining an identity” (543). Thus there is, as she put it, “a fully fixed, unchanging past” (ibid.). She seems to want this to be somehow shocking to the reader. She later criticizes Whitehead’s philosophy for the way in which “potentiality and actuality are fundamentally isolated, for becoming actual is a process of achieving definiteness, and the moment of attaining full actuality and perishing is at once the attaining of absolute definiteness. There can be no residue of potentiality in the fully actual or it would not be fully actual, fully definite” (552). She characterizes this as actuality and potentiality being “strangely separated from each other” (ibid.). Her characterization again uses moral terminology—“isolated” and “separated”—in the process of characterizing what seems, rather, to be the mundane and common sense position, and perhaps even the semantically tautologous position. A process that may possibly occur many different ways will, when it occurs, occur in just one definite way: it will be actualized, and once it is actualized, there is no longer any potential for it to go any other way: it is now in the past. That's, semantically, the difference between saying it's merely possible but not actual, and saying it's actual. None of this seems, in itself, at all shocking. There surely could be metaphysical premises accepted for one reason or another that contradict this and thus motivate us to not agree with Whitehead, but those are not obvious and the position in itself is certainly not “strange.”

This problem of possibility and actuality is in general treated in a confusing manner by Rosenthal. Take, for example, this passage:

Because of this absolute fixity of the past, Whitehead's system requires eternal objects to account for novelty. For, if the past provided everything for the present, then nothing new could appear; the apparently new would be merely a configuration of the old. Since the past is fixed and final, novelty is possible only by the intervention of something eternal or a-temporal; the future exists as possible in the form of inert, fixed, objective real possibilities. The ingression of eternal objects into events is Whitehead's way of getting contingency from a fixed, fully determinate past that cannot itself adequately allow for contingency and emergence. Every actual occasion introduces novelty into the world by prehending and newly integrating what the past sends to it, and it does this via a "lure" directed to the future through its prehension of eternal objects. (544)

What Rosenthal is discussing is the distinction between forms that may possibly characterize future actual occasions, and the actual characterization of actual occasions by such forms. Thus, in Whitehead’s philosophy, we may assert that it is possible for an actual occasion to be P—with some definite identity to the predicate P—before any such actual occasion characterized by P comes into being. Furthermore, from one occasion to the next, this characteristic P is identifiably that same characteristic. That is to say, the characteristic P is necessarily P—it has a definite identity independent of any realization in spatiotemporal events and thus can’t be said to come into being at some point in spacetime, so that it is eternal (hence, it’s an “eternal object” in Whitehead’s terminology). But the actual characterization of an event as P is itself contingent: it might occur, and it might not.

So, when a new actual occasion comes into being it will be feeling a given actual world, consisting of already satisfied actual occasions that will all have their own characteristics: the past is determinately of one character and not another. You can’t change what’s already happened. The new actual occasion is capable of realizing forms of activity not already actualized in this world, due to the nature of eternal objects described above whereby they have their identity as forms of possible activity independently of any actual activity. This is the basic gist of it, but it formulates the position in a hopefully less confusing manner than Rosenthal’s language (though, to be fair to Rosenthal, Whitehead was himself confusing). She barely really touches on the actual premises to be argued over, one way or another.

But ultimately the worst features of the paper come through with the discussion of Whitehead’s theory of extension. There, Rosenthal does not appropriately distinguish between two entirely separate (though certainly related) aspects of creativity: (1) extension as a feature of the physical prehensions of the actual occasion, and (2) the linear succession of actual occasions through the creative advance (and, similarly, the linear succession of prehensions within phases of the concrescence of one actual occasion). Thus, she argues that time, in Whitehead’s philosophy, “is ultimately understood in terms of discreteness. Time is a result of the succession of actual occasions, and hence though time seems continuous to the observer, it is actually atomic in its development” (543). But the above is certainly not true of time as temporalized extension. She further argues: “Actual occasions, then, are temporal atoms or temporal building blocks, but are not themselves temporal. Each one is an indivisible epoch having no internal temporal phase” (543). Here, however, she is again producing paradox where it is not necessary, by not distinguishing between different senses of time. Whitehead argued that temporal extension is only one feature of the concrescence, whereas Rosenthal was discussing time’s arrow and the fundamental asymmetry of becoming, something not explicable in terms of temporal extension. In the same way that actual occasions relate to each other in an asymmetrical, linear manner, so too do prehensions: this is entirely distinct from extension, which is a characteristic of physical prehensions (i.e., relations between actual occasions).

I won’t bother arguing any further with the text, as I’m well aware that I’m entering the point where basically no one is familiar with what Whitehead’s really doing here—and that’s including Whitehead scholars--so that I'd need to write a lot to really unpack what I'm saying. What I'm most interested in, now, is distinguishing the formal properties of how actual occasions, as atomic unities, aggregate into nexuus, from the formal properties of extension as that characterizes a specific type of relationship said actual occasions enter into. This would be, I believe, the difference between a mereology not reducible to topology (i.e., a mereology where the relation of parthood is not reducible to topological enclosure), and a mereology that is so reducible to topology (i.e., the mereology of Part IV of Process and Reality).

[visuallanguage-ryanmurphy]

Index brief research

Through my research I have found that in recent years the 'crisis of representation' has been a topic of wide discussion in the field of creative industries. The concepts of 'index' and 'indexicality' have helped to build our understanding of cultural techniques of touch and reproduction, of trace and imprint. Indexical relations between objects (and their subjects) seem to provide a new way to view art opposed to the categories of likeness that have been used for years.

Historically, the index-concept can be traced back to pragma-semiotics and Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce’s sign-theory is based on the trichotomy of signs between likeness, indexicality, and symbolic meaning, which he defines as icon, index, and symbol. According to Peirce, an index is “a representation, which refers to its object not so much because of any similarity or analogy with it, as because it is in dynamical connection both with the individual object, and with the senses or memory of the person for whom it serves as a sign”

Since Rosalind Krauss introduced the term to characterise appropriative rather than mimetic strategies in American art of the 1970's, the term has gained favour, especially in the theory/field of photography. As an index makes an essential point of departure to investigate art historical and media theoretical issues of ‘reproduction’, copy, trace, and proximity in a triple way: as a theoretical and heuristic paradigm in image history, as a category of image production, and as a core phenomenon of material culture.

I find this way of viewing creative work to be interesting, on one hand it can feel cold and analytical, in my opinion inherently nihilistic in nature as it is looking at the remnants of what was there. On the other hand, it can be entirely down to interpretation by the viewer, the feelings and opinions are projections of your own links (or lack of) to the piece you are viewing.

[zigzigzag]

Queda

Vejamos como Charles S. Peirce diferencia os níveis de lógica: …a abdução é o processo para formar hipóteses explicativas. É a única operação lógica a introduzir novas ideias; pois que a indução não faz mais do que determinar um valor e a dedução envolve apenas as consequências necessárias de uma pura hipótese… A abdução será, assim, uma espécie de raciocínio hipotético… Aparece, às vezes,…

[joeabdelsater1]

Blog Post 8: Game Semiotics

This blog post will serve as a way for me to exemplify the use of signs in video game construction. By making use of researchers' outlook on semiotics, I will try to talk about the ways signs are used in video game creations that have been released throughout the years.

When semiotics was first discussed, it was believed that signs have an arbitrary nature that determines meaning. As presented by Ferdinand De Saussure (1959), there is no direct correlation in the relationship between signifier and signified, as he believed that the meaning merely relies on social constructs and cultural understandings of representations. On the other hand, American semiotician Charles S. Peirce (1873) distinguished himself from other theorists through his proposed concept. He believed that every sign, including ideas and predictions of future events, holds a physical connection to the object it signifies. He assigns three attributes to a sign away from arbitrariness: material quality, demonstrative connection to the signified thing, and appeal to the mind. The latter is explained by an example that he made: "A weathercock is a sign of the direction of the wind. It would not be so unless the wind made it turn round" (Pierce, 1991, p.141). Taking this case in point, a weathercock has a distinct shape and material first. Second, there is a physical wind force representing a solid connection between the weathercock and the direction of the wind. Third, the weathercock is only functional as a sign of wind because it projects a signal to the human mind that comprehends it as so.

Initially, many video games require players to read signs, solve mysteries, and find evidence through riddles. This is where the first use of semiotics is detected in the scope of video game design to make sure there is clear communication between the players and the game they are experiencing. I believe that one of the biggest mistakes in studying game design is confining its purpose to storytelling. Some people consider games as a form of text which only represents the storyline it offers and believe that it can be analysed using traditional literary techniques. The reality is that in nature, the definition of a text should not be simplified in that manner when discussing it in the realm of video games. For example, would we be able to study Tetris (1985) by solely thinking of it as a written work (Bruchansky, 2011)?

To push this further, a text should actually be seen as the meaning or the content behind the creation of a game as well. David Herman explains this concept best in his writing of Story Logic (2002). He clarifies that “Narrative can also be thought of as systems of verbal or visual cues prompting their readers to spatialize storyworlds into evolving configurations of participants, objects, and places" (cited in Bruchansky, 2011, p.1). In that sense, game worlds are no longer just the environments, characters, and actions imagined by the storytellers of the game. They become directly related to the virtual world represented to players in the form of visual signs like computer graphics, and auditory ones like sound effects. It's in that way that semiotics allows individuals to appreciate the relativity of their cultural system and understand the motivations behind different types of representations within the gaming medium (Bruchansky, 2011).

In the world of semiotic analysis, numerous approaches exist, yet they all acknowledge three fundamental constituents of sign systems: representations (signs and symbols), referents (what is represented by signs and symbols), and the relationship between the two. Among these three, the interplay between the representation and the represented stands out the most (Myers, 1999). Moving beyond narratives, semiotics plays a crucial role in user interface design within video games. Signs can appear as symbols in the form of a heads-up display (HUD) which is basically the graphical user interface (GUI) of a game. It is responsible for explaining to the player the status of a character and the functionality of other elements in the virtual environment while progressing in the game. For this reason, comprehending how meaning is produced in video games requires a grasp of Peirce's triadic model of signs. To be exact, the semiotician differentiated between three types of signs: iconic, indexical, and symbolic.

Iconic

In video games, iconic signs can be seen as symbols that resemble or mirror their objects in some manner. These indicators have a direct visual resemblance, which allows the players to detect and correlate them with certain meanings at once. The health bar display in many games, for instance, is an excellent usage of iconography since it is commonly recognized as a sign of health. This helps in establishing an obvious link between the visual depiction and its real-world equivalent. Take the example of the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) where the heart symbol acts as a visual indicator of the player character's health state. As players, we are somehow capable of automatically interpreting the loss of hearts as a degradation in the character's well-being. This iconic usage of signs improves gameplay by offering immediate feedback and creating a smooth player immersion.

Indexical

In video games, indexes provide a direct, causal link between the sign and its object. These indicators mainly rely on observable correlations, which frequently reveal cause-and-effect dynamics. A notable example is the appearance of footsteps in the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). In-game, footprints are highlighted in the mud when Geralt, the main protagonist, is tracing down a character or a monster. This operates as an indexical sign that serves real-time feedback and guides the player to the target. It is worth mentioning that indexes are used for more than just visual clues. In some horror games, the sound of heartbeats becomes more intense as danger approaches, which acts as an indicator of an impending threat. Through the use of sound effects, the player's increased awareness marks an imminent encounter with a game boss for example, creating a thrilling atmosphere and enhancing the user experience.

Symbolic

Symbolic signs in games are based on conventional and arbitrary associations, which are frequently influenced by common agreements set by members of game culture. This is one area where Peirce's view of signs as being non-arbitrary could be refuted since players must get familiar with and comprehend the meanings associated with these signs in the context of the game environment. The use of certain symbols can be considered a paradigm, a set of signs available in the context of the gaming interface, aiding players in navigation and interaction (De Saussure, 1959). The notion of a paradigm was in fact proposed by De Saussure, who as I stated earlier was a firm believer in the cultural nature of signs. One example that serves as an illustration is how keys are used in different video games as symbols to open doors. To demonstrate, the lead character of the video game Silent Hill (2006) often finds symbolic keys that can unlock doors to advance in the game. In this case, the key represents the unlocking mechanism rather than being an exact replica of an actual key. Through gameplay, players decipher the symbol, highlighting the significance of shared conventions in semiotic understanding.

Sources:

Bruchansky C, 2011. The Semiotics of Video Games. [e-journal] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315703967_The_Semiotics_of_Video_Games. [Accessed 28 Dec. 2023]

Peirce C S, 1991. "On the Nature of Signs.” Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Hoopes J. [e-book] University of North Carolina Press. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469616810_hoopes.12.[Accessed 28 Dec 2023]

Myers D, 1999. Simulation as Play: A Semiotic Analysis. Simulation & Gaming. [e-journal] 30(2), pp.147–162. Available at: https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/home/sagb [Accessed 28 Dec 2023]

De Saussure F, 1959. Course in General Linguistics. Edited by Bally C, Sechehaye A, and Reidlinger A Translated by Baskin W. Philosophical Library. New York. [pdf] Available at: https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/download/CourseinGeneralLinguistics_10009049.pdf. [Accessed 28 Dec. 2023]

[alphaman99]

Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

Two Quotes

"It is frightening to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, hidden in the head, will act at some point as a fraction of inert matter which obstructs an artery, preventing the feeding of the brain." — Charles S. Peirce, Values in a Universe of Chance

“When he recites his propaganda lesson and says that he is thinking for himself, when his eyes see nothing and his mouth only produces sounds previously stenciled into his brain, when he says that he is indeed expressing his judgment – then he really demonstrates that he no longer thinks at all, ever, and that he does not exist as a person.” —Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

[laura-a-bordo]

.˚˖ 15/09, semiótica ˚₊‧

A semiótica, quando aplicada à dança, torna-se abstrata e muito íntima, tanto para quem dirige e coreografa a peça, quanto para quem assiste a performance.

Na semiótica, TUDO tem sentido, pois este está dentro do interpretante, e depende dos conhecimentos pessoais do indivíduo. Retomando os estudos de Peirce (1931-35), o mesmo exalta a inter-relação entre estética, ética e lógica para a construção de significação de signos,

"A Estética considera aquelas coisas cujos fins devem incorporar qualidades do sentir, enquanto que a Ética considera aquelas coisas cujos fins residem na ação e a Lógica, aquelas coisas cujo fim é o de representar alguma coisa" (PEIRCE, CP 5.129).

Seguindo o pensamento intimista de significação de obras de arte, como dança e pintura, fica entendido que toda obra tem tom abstrato, pois é tentacular, ou seja, permite e sofre diferentes interpretações.

Assim, retomando os estudos sobre signo, significante e significado vistos na primeira aula deste componente, podemos afirmar que a arte é polissêmica; o significado de um signo também, pois depende do repertório e interpretação humana.

Referências

PEIRCE, C. S. (1931-35). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ed. by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Vols. 1-6, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

[onepageleftmedia]

But that which has been inconceivable today has often turned out indisputable on the morrow. Inability to conceive is only a stage through which every man must pass in regard to a number of beliefs--unless endowed with extraordinary obstinacy and obtuseness. His understanding is enslaved to some blind compulsion which a vigorous mind is pretty sure soon to cast off.

--Charles S. Peirce, "The Doctrine of Necessity"

[dominicrojas]

Link de descarga del Hombre, signo y comos. La filosofía de Charles Sandres Peirce, del genial y maestro y divulgador Darin McNabb 🦉

[anaxerneas]

If a man desires to assert anything very solemnly, he takes such steps as will enable him to go before a magistrate or notary and take a binding oath to it. Taking an oath is not mainly an event of the nature of a setting forth, Vorstellung, or representing. It is not mere saying, but is doing. The law, I believe, calls it an “act.” At any rate, it would be followed by very real effects, in case the substance of what is asserted should be proved untrue. This ingredient, the assuming of responsibility, which is so prominent in solemn assertion, must be present in every genuine assertion. For clearly, every assertion involves an effort to make the intended interpreter believe what is asserted, to which end a reason for believing it must be furnished.

But if a lie would not endanger the esteem in which the utterer was held, nor otherwise be apt to entail such real effects as he would avoid, the interpreter would have no reason to believe the assertion. Nobody takes any positive stock in those conventional utterances, such as “I am perfectly delighted to see you,” upon whose falsehood no punishment at all is visited. At this point, the reader should call to mind, or, if he does not know it, should make the observations requisite to convince himself, that even in solitary meditation every judgment is an effort to press home, upon the self of the immediate future and of the general future, some truth. It is a genuine assertion, just as the vernacular phrase represents it; and solitary dialectic is still of the nature of dialogue. Consequently it must be equally true that here too there is contained an element of assuming responsibility, of “taking the consequences.”

Charles Sanders Peirce, circa 1908

[packedwithpackards]

Examining the sources of the Plymouth Colony Pages [Part 34]

Ebenezer W. Peirce, Civil, Military and Professional Lists of Plymouth and Rhode Island Colonies (Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1881; reprinted Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1968; Baltimore: Clearfield Co., 1995).

This book is available online in some places. On HathiTrust there are the following results for Samuel Packards:

Inn keeper on March 8, 1671 (would likely be Samuel Packard), described on a later page.

Ensign in October 1689 (would be Samuel Packard's son)

Along with varying other results. Of course, in two-page preface, he does not outline his sources. Obviously, some primary sources are used, but which ones? Some other results show a "Samuel Packer" listed as a Surveyor of Highways in 1672, the position of which is described later.

Charles Edward Banks, The Planters of the Commonwealth. A Study of the Emigrants and Emigration In Colonial Times ... 1620-1640 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930; reprinted Baltimore, multiple editions).

This book is only available through a limited search on HathiTrust, with "Samuel Packer" noted on page 194. It can be found some other places but not many in general.

Henry Edwards Scott, Vital Records of Plympton Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1923).

This book is on Internet Archive but is also indexed online separately. Births in Plympton, MA:

Mary Holmes, ch. Perez [q. v.] and Mercy Bradford (Sherman), July 27, 1844, in P. Orlando, ch. Perez [q. v.] and Mercy Bradford (Sherman), Oct. 15, 1846, in Halifax. Orlando Hinds, s. Isaac of W. Bridgewater and Mary Jones, Sept. 6, 1817. Perez, h. Mercy Bradford (d. Lt. Joseph Sherman and Nancy of P.), s. Isaac and Mary Jones of W. Bridgewater, Dec. 4, 1821, in W. Bridgewater.

And marriages in the same place:

Cynthia (see Sintha). Elizabeth, wid., of Middleborough, d. Benjamin Pratt dec'd of Middleborough, and Alfred Churchill of P., s. Ebenezer and Lucy of P., Oct. 6, 1841, in P. Mary Jones of Abington, wid. Isaac of W. Bridgewater, d. Samuel Foster of Abington and Mary Jones, and Ezekiel Ripley of P., s. Ezekiel dec'd of P., int. Apr. 3, 1831, cert. given Apr. 18. Perez [dup. abt. 21] of P. s. Isaac of W. Bridgewater and Mary Jones, and Mercy Bradford Sherman [dup. 19 y. 4 m.] of P., d. Lt. Joseph and Nancy of P., Jan. 1, 1843 [dup. in P.]. (Reuel) and Molley Harlow, ch. Barnabas ((s. James)) and Molley ((d. Dea. Peter West of Kingston), ----). Sarah of Bridgewater and Caleb Loring of P., int. Mar. 7, 1802. Sintha [int. Cyntha] of Bridgewater and Levi Churchill of P., Sept. 19, 1799, in Bridgewater.

And deaths of Packards in the same place:

Orlando Hinds, s. Isaac dec'd of W. Bridgewater and Mary Jones, Jan. 23, 1837, a. 19 y. 4 m. 17 d., "at ..his father-in-law, Mr. Ezekiel Ripley," in P.

Note: This was originally posted on Apr. 27, 2018 on the main Packed with Packards WordPress blog (it can also be found on the Wayback Machine here). My research is still ongoing, so some conclusions in this piece may change in the future.

© 2018-2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[masticadoresdeletraslatino]

DE VISITA EN EL MUSEO

DE VISITA EN EL MUSEO

By Jaime Nubiola El sábado 9 de octubre tuve ocasión de visitar la Gemäldegalerie en Berlín que alberga una amplia colección de hermosísimas obras de arte: entre ellas, centenares de cuadros de la Virgen María de los siglos XIII a XVIII, dos Vermeer y numerosos Rembrandt. Cuando voy a un museo me gusta fijarme en la gente, pues —con Charles S. Peirce— estoy persuadido de que la esencia de la…

[perkwunos]

Logic, from logos, meaning word and reason, embodies the Greek notion that reasoning cannot be done without language. Reason, from the Latin ratio, originally meaning an account, implies that reasoning is an affair of computation, requiring, not words, but some kind of diagram, abacus, or figures. Modern formal logic, especially the logic of relatives, shows the Greek view to be substantially wrong, the Roman view substantially right. Words, though doubtless necessary to developed thought, play but a secondary role in the process; while the diagram, or icon, capable of being manipulated and experimented upon, is all-important. Diagrams have constantly been used in logic, from the time of Aristotle; and no difficult reasoning can be performed without them.

C.S. Peirce, Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Vol. 8

[ebouks]

Charles S Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics

Charles S Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics

Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics Gerard Deledalle Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs examines Peirce’s philosophy and semiotic thought from a European perspective, comparing the American’s unique views with a wide variety of work by thinkers from the ancients to moderns. Parts I and II deal with the philosophical paradigms which are at the root of…

[anarchistin]

Logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community. This community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation. It must reach, however vaguely, beyond this geological epoch, beyond all bounds.

He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle.

Charles S Peirce, The Doctrine of Chances, 1878