Vincent Colapietro

The aim of this article is to show how intimately connected Beth J. Singer's theory of operative rights is with her understanding of the deliberative process. I thus argue against Cynthia Gayman's effort to set in contrast Singer's theory of rights and Dewey's characteristic emphasis on reflective morality. Since I take the value of Singer's approach to be most evident in its relevance to the abortion debate as an ongoing deliberation, I question whether Mary Magada‐Ward sufficiently appreciates the dialogical and deliberative emphases of Singer's stance. My goal, however, is not so much to argue against either Gayman or Magada‐Ward as it is to argue for taking Singer's position even more seriously than either author does. In particular, I want to highlight the finely nuanced character of Singer's philosophical intervention in the debate regarding abortion, especially stressing certain features that Gayman and Magada‐Ward overlook.

ABSTRACT This article offers a critique of a deeply engrained tendency to narrate the story of American pragmatism exclusively or primarily in terms of modern European philosophy. While it suggests alternative stories, it is principally a metanarrative, an intentionally polemical story about our entrenched habits of philosophical storytelling. Indeed, the pragmatics of storytelling merits, especially in reference to historical accounts of American pragmatism, critical attention. The seemingly simple question, “What are we doing when we tell the story of this movement in this manner rather than that?” is a truly important one. It is also an avowedly pragmatic question.

Peirce was a thinker who claimed that his mind had been thoroughly formed by his rigorous training in the natural sciences. But he was also the author who proclaimed that nothing is truer than true poetry. In making the case for Peirce’s relevance to issues of education, then, it is necessary to do justice to the multifaceted character of his philosophical genius, in particular, to the experimentalist cast of his mind and his profound appreciation for the aesthetic, the imaginative, and (more narrowly) the metaphorical in their myriad guises. My aim in this paper is to go some distance, however small, toward doing such justice to Peirce.

: The essay explores how C. S. Peirce, especially in his mature thought, addressed the question of meaning. It underscores how he not only took meaning to be at bottom a function of our habits but also how he conceived these habits themselves to be functions of the histories in which they originate and operate. Hence, what I propose here is this: One of the most fruitful ways to interpret Peirce's own contribution to this question is to see his efforts as carrying forward the impetus intensified by Hegel and Darwin's emphasis on temporality and historicity.In Part One of this paper, I suggest how Peirce approaches the question of meaning primarily in reference to what I call the drama of self-correction. Moreover, his approach is explicitly related to his pragmatism, semeiotic, and phenomenological doctrine of categories. Finally, the historical development of his own reflections on this question is taken to provide a basis for an historicist interpretation of his mature position. In Part Two, I propose that the metaphor of a route provides a corrective to the excessively formal and indeed formalistic interpretations of Peirce's theory of signs still dominating the discussion of this theory. Routes are understood here not as antecedently fixed paths, but as historically emergent and alterable trajectories defined by the movements of travelers. In conjunction with this emphasis I explore several distinct senses in which both beliefs and signs are what agents go on. Such reflections are articulated for the purpose of facilitating a deeper understand of not only what Peirce meant by meaning but also what we might mean by this elusive term.Key-words: Meaning. Sign. Interpretant. History. Pragmatism. Evolutionism. Intuition. Self-correction.Resumo: O ensaio explora como C. S. Peirce, particularmente em seu pensamento maduro, abordou a questão do significado. Ressalta como ele não apenas tomou significado como, basicamente, uma função de nossos hábitos, mas também como ele concebeu esses próprios hábitos como funções das histórias nas quais se originam e operam. Assim, o que proponho aqui é o seguinte: Uma das formas mais fecundas de interpretar a própria contribuição de Peirce a essa questão é ver seus esforços como levando adiante o ímpeto intensificado pela ênfase dada por Hegel e Darwin à temporalidade e à historicidade.Na Primeira Parte deste trabalho, sugiro como Peirce aborda a questão do significado principalmente em referência ao que eu chamo de drama da autocorreção. Ademais, sua abordagem está explicitamente relacionada ao seu pragmatismo, a sua semiótica e sua doutrina fenomenológica das categorias. Finalmente, o desenvolvimento histórico das suas reflexões sobre essa questão é considerado como base para uma interpretação historicista de sua posição madura. Na Segunda Parte, proponho que a metáfora de um caminho proporciona uma correção às interpretações excessivamente formais, e, até mesmo, formalísticas, da teoria dos signos de Peirce que ainda dominam a discussão dessa teoria. Os caminhos devem ser entendidos aqui não como rotas pré-fixadas, e sim como trajetórias historicamente emergentes e alteráveis, definidas pelos movimentos dos viajantes. Juntamente com a ênfase, exploro alguns sentidos distintos, nos quais tanto as crenças como os signos são aquilo em que os agentes se fundamentam. Essas reflexões são articuladas com a finalidade de facilitar um entendimento mais profundo não só do que Peirce quis dizer com significado, mas também o que nós queremos dizer com esse termo indefinido.Palavras-chave: Significado. Signo. Interpretante. História. Pragmatismo. Evolucionismo. Intuição. Autocorreção.