Aaron Wilson

South Texas College
  •  9
    Introduction to Pragmatism and Idealism
    European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 10 (2). 2018.
    Introduction Recent years have seen increased interest in the complex relationships between the thought of German Idealists (understood to include both transcendental and absolute idealists) and the thought of those philosophers commonly categorized as “American Pragmatists” – from Charles S. Peirce (the progenitor of this alleged tradition) to Richard Rorty and his student, Robert Brandom. This issue presents a collection of papers that, as a collection, do justice to those complex relations...
  •  7
    Breaking the Boundaries Collective – A Manifesto for Relationship-based Practice
    with D. Darley, P. Blundell, L. Cherry, J. O. Wong, S. Vaughan, K. Vandenberghe, B. Taylor, K. Scott, T. Ridgeway, S. Parker, S. Olson, L. Oakley, A. Newman, E. Murray, D. G. Hughes, N. Hasan, J. Harrison, M. Hall, L. Guido-Bayliss, R. Edah, G. Eichsteller, L. Dougan, B. Burke, S. Boucher, A. Maestri-Banks, and Members of the Breaking the Boundaries Collective
    Ethics and Social Welfare 18 (1): 94-106. 2024.
    This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we w…Read more
  •  2
    On Short's Anti-System Reading of Peirce
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 59 (4): 416-431. 2024.
    Abstract:Short’s assertion that Peirce lacked a cohesive philosophical system is critically examined, and the interconnectedness of Peirce’s 1884–1893 “cosmology” with other aspects of his work is explored, countering Short’s claims of its limited systematic relevance. Additionally, Short’s claim that Peirce “expanded empiricism empirically” is scrutinized, and his interpretation of Peirce’s account of perception is criticized. By contrasting Short’s anti-system reading, I highlight the importan…Read more
  •  62
    Peirce and the A Priori
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 51 (2): 201. 2015.
    What exactly are Peirce’s views about the a priori?1Though the term “a priori” and others derived from it do not occur in Peirce’s writings very frequently, they occur often enough to motivate the above question. Their best known appearance is in his “The Fixation of Belief ”, in which he famously rejects the “a priori method” in favor of the “scientific method”. Of course, we cannot take this rejection alone as sufficient evidence that his philosophy is incompatible with any claim to a priori k…Read more
  •  6
    Remarks on James Liszka's Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 58 (3): 243-252. 2022.
    Abstract:Peirce held a convergence theory of moral truth, as James Liszka persuasively argues in Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics, and the Normative Sciences (2021). Here I emphasize: (1) that Peirce's convergence theory follows from the application of the maxim of pragmatism to the concept of moral goodness or rightness; (2) that in connection with Peirce's account of the ethical summum bonum, morally right action can be understood as action that conforms or contributes to the growth of conc…Read more
  •  90
    The Perception of Generals
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (2): 169-190. 2012.
    In this paper I argue that, according to Peirce’s mature account of perception, we directly perceive generals, or "Thirds," in external reality which should be described as physical and not as mental. I argue against three other interpretations of the role of Thirdness in Peirce’s account: (I) we do not directly perceive Thirds, although they are involved in the interpretive and judgmental part of perception; (II) we directly perceive Thirds, but they are imposed on external objects by our minds…Read more
  •  18
    Interpretation, Realism, and Truth: Is Peirce's Second Grade of Clearness Independent of the Third?
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 56 (3): 349-373. 2020.
    Most specialists agree that Peirce upholds his abstract definitions of reality and truth simultaneously and consistently with his pragmatist clarifications of those concepts. But some might assume that his pragmatist clarifications (the third grade of clearness) restrict the extensions of abstract definitions (the second grade of clearness), such that anything real must both be independent of what anyone thinks about it, per the abstract definition, and be an object of the would-be “final opinio…Read more
  •  19
    Peirce’s Hypothesis of the Final Opinion
    European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 10 (2). 2018.
    Idealist and Strong Empiricist approaches to Peirce’s thought are irreconcilable so far as an Idealist interpretation commits Peirce to some form of a priori knowledge, particularly a priori knowledge of the conditions of empirical knowledge. However, while I favor the strong empiricist approach, I agree that there is something like a “condition for the possibility of empirical knowledge” in Peirce, and that this lies with his famous conjecture that, with enough time and experience, there would …Read more
  • What Do We Perceive? How Peirce "Expands Our Perception"
    In Kathleen Hull & Richard Kenneth Atkins (eds.), Peirce on Perception and Reasoning: From Icons to Logic, Routledge. pp. 1-13. 2017.
    On Peirce’ view, we can perceive many things commonly thought not to be perceptible—or thought to be ‘abstract’—including but not necessarily limited to (some) generals or universals, habits or law-like properties, modal properties, and semeiotic properties (sign relations). My contention turns on his arguments in ‘Some Consequences’ that ‘no cognition of ours is absolutely determinate’, his mature account of perception, particularly his criteria for what counts as perception and what does not, …Read more
  •  81
    The Transhumanist Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce
    Journal of Evolution and Technology 27 (2): 12-29. 2017.
    We explain how the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) – the founder of semiotics and of the pragmatist tradition in philosophy – contributes an epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical foundation to some key transhumanist ideas, including the following claims: technological cognitive enhancement is not only possible but a present reality; pursuing more sweeping cognitive enhancements is epistemically rational; and current humans should try to evolve themselves into posthumans. On Peir…Read more
  •  18
    The Peircean Solution to Non-Existence Problems: Immediate and Dynamical Objects
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 53 (4): 528. 2017.
    Whether in Plato’s Sophist or in Quine’s “Plato’s Beard,”1 the representation of unreal or non-existent objects is usually presented as a puzzle. How is it that we can think and talk coherently about things that do not exist or are not real, given that thinking and talking about such things seem to involve relations between things that exist and things that don’t exist? Uriah Kriegel articulates the problem most generally as the following inconsistent triad:One can think of non-existents.One can…Read more
  •  32
    Peirce and the Conduct of Life: Sentiment and Instinct in Ethics and Religion by Richard Kenneth Atkins (review)
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 53 (1): 146-152. 2017.
    The heart of Richard Kenneth Atkins’s Peirce and the Conduct of Life: Sentiment and Instinct in Ethics and Religion is an interpretation and defense of Peirce’s sentimental conservatism, as well as an extension of that idea to Peirce’s philosophy of religion and to the casuistic approach to practical ethics. “A Defense of Peirce’s Sentimental Conservatism” is the explicit title of the second of the book’s six chapters. But the only chapter in which Peirce’s sentimental conservatism does not itse…Read more
  •  19
    Reid's Account of Judgment and Missing Fourth Kind of Conception
    Journal of Scottish Philosophy 11 (1): 25-40. 2013.
    According to Thomas Reid, every act of mind is accompanied by a conception of its object. For instance, he holds that the thing one conceives in an act of perception is always an individual thing that exists, and that the thing one conceives in an act of judgment is the thing expressed by the proposition judged. However, Reid never is clear about what kind of thing is expressed by a proposition; neither is it clear from the existing literature on Reid. What he says about judgments, propositions,…Read more
  •  23
    Justice and Lung Cancer
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (2): 219-234. 2013.
    Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths, yet research funding is by far the lowest for lung cancer than for any other cancer compared with respective death rates. Although this discrepancy should appear alarming, one could argue that lung cancer deserves less attention because it is more attributable to poor life choices than other common cancers. Accordingly, the general question that I ask in this article is whether victims of more avoidable diseases, such as lung cancer, deserve to …Read more
  •  38
    Locke's Externalism about 'Sensitive Knowledge'
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (3): 425-445. 2014.
    Locke characterizes sensitive knowledge as knowledge of the existence of external objects present to the senses, and in terms of an ‘assurance’ that falls short of the certainty of intuition and demonstration. But it is unclear how this fits with his general definition of knowledge, as the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and it is unclear how that assurance can amount to knowledge, rather than amounting to mere probability (which he contrasts with knowledge). Some contend t…Read more
  •  7
    This book defends an interpretation of Peirce’s philosophical work as forming a systematic whole, emphasizing his empiricist epistemology and explaining the roots of his thought in earlier empiricist and common sense philosophers. In particular, the book develops the connections between Peirce, Reid, and the British empiricists, and provides focused analyses of Peirce’s accounts of experience, habit, perception, semeiosis, truth, and ultimate ends.