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1895Peirce and Education - an OverviewEncyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. 2019.The philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) enhances our understanding of educational processes.
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1447What is a Logical Diagram?In Sun-Joo Shin & Amirouche Moktefi (eds.), Visual Reasoning with Diagrams, Birkhaüser. pp. 1-18. 2013.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…Read more
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1129The Hardness of the Iconic Must: Can Peirce’s Existential Graphs Assist Modal Epistemology?Philosophia Mathematica 20 (1): 1-24. 2012.Charles Peirce's diagrammatic logic — the Existential Graphs — is presented as a tool for illuminating how we know necessity, in answer to Benacerraf's famous challenge that most ‘semantics for mathematics’ do not ‘fit an acceptable epistemology’. It is suggested that necessary reasoning is in essence a recognition that a certain structure has the particular structure that it has. This means that, contra Hume and his contemporary heirs, necessity is observable. One just needs to pay attention, n…Read more
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1085Predication and the Problem of UniversalsPhilosophical Papers 30 (2): 117-143. 2001.This paper contrasts the scholastic realisms 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. Rather, it pertains to which predicates should be applied where, issues which Armstrong sets aside under the label of 'semantics', and which from a Peircean perspective encompass even fundamentals of scientific methodology. It is argued that Peirce's scholastic…Read more
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1074Perceiving NecessityPacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (3): 320-343. 2017.In many diagrams 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 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 l…Read more
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1069Diagrammatic Teaching: The Role of Iconic Signs in Meaningful PedagogyIn Inna Semetsky (ed.), Edusemiotics – a Handbook, Springer. pp. 29-45. 2018.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 implication…Read more
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1049Peirce and Sellars on Nonconceptual ContentIn Luca Corti & Antonio M. Nunziante (eds.), Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 125-143. 2018.Whereas Charles Peirce’s pragmatist account of truth has been much discussed, his theory of perception still offers a rich mine of insights. Peirce presented a ‘two-ply’ view of perception, which combines an entirely precognitive ‘percept’ with a ‘perceptual judgment’ that is located in the space of reasons. Having previously argued that Peirce outdoes Robert Brandom in achieving a hyper-inferentialism (“Making it Explicit and Clear”, APQ, 2008), I now wish to examine his philosophy in the light…Read more
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957The Problem of the Essential IconAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 45 (3): 207-232. 2008.Charles Peirce famously divided all signs into icons, indices and symbols. As recent decades have seen mainstream analytic philosophy of language broaden its traditional focus on symbols to recognise the "essential indexical", can the moral be extended to icons? Is there an “essential icon”? If so, what exactly would be "essential" about it? I argue that essential iconicity does exist, and a prime example is logical form, insofar as it cannot be discursively described, only 'shown'. Danielle Mac…Read more
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923Higher-Order One–Many Problems in Plato's Philebus and Recent Australian MetaphysicsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (1): 119-138. 2013.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 t…Read more
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890Bill Gates is not a parking meter: Philosophical quality control in automated ontology buildingProceedings of the Symposium on Computational Philosophy, AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 (Birmingham, England, July 2-6). 2012.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.
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762Much 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 ap…Read more
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748Idealism Operationalized: How Peirce’s Pragmatism Can Help Explicate and Motivate the Possibly Surprising Idea of Reality as RepresentationalIn Kathleen A. Hull & Richard Kenneth Atkins (eds.), Peirce on Perception and Reasoning: From Icons to Logic, Routledge. pp. 40-53. 2017.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 jud…Read more
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705Extension, Intension and Dormitive VirtueTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35 (4). 1999.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,…Read more
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691Discursive Habits: a Representationalist Re-reading of TeleosemioticsSynthese 199 (5-6): 14751-14768. 2021.Enactivism has influentially argued that the traditional intellectualist ‘act-content’ model of intentionality is insufficient both phenomenologically and naturalistically, and minds are built from world-involving bodily habits – thus, knowledge should be regarded as more of a skilled performance than an informational encoding. Radical enactivists have assumed that this insight must entail non-representationalism concerning at least basic minds. But what if it could be shown that representation …Read more
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687The Solution to Poor Opinions is More Opinions: Peircean Pragmatist Tactics for the Epistemic Long GameIn Michael Peters, Sharon Rider, Tina Besley & Mats Hyvonen (eds.), Post-Truth, Fake News: Viral Modernity & Higher Education, Springer. pp. 43-58. 2018.Although certain recent developments in mendacious political manipulation of public discourse are horrifying to the academic mind, I argue that we should not panic. Charles Peirce’s pragmatist epistemology with its teleological arc, long horizon, and rare balance between robust realism and contrite fallibilism offers guidance to weather the storm, and perhaps even see it as inevitable in our intellectual development. This paper explores Peirce’s classic “four methods of fixing belief”, which tak…Read more
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670Charles Sanders Peirce on NecessityIn Adriane Rini, Edwin Mares & Max Cresswell (eds.), Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap: The Story of Necessity, Cambridge University Press. pp. 256-278. 2016.Necessity is a touchstone issue in the thought of Charles Peirce, not least because his pragmatist account of meaning relies upon modal terms. We here offer an overview of Peirce’s highly original and multi-faceted take on the matter. We begin by considering how a self-avowed pragmatist and fallibilist can even talk about necessary truth. We then outline the source of Peirce’s theory of representation in his three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, (monadic, dyadic and triadic r…Read more
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665This 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…Read more
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636Mining Meaning from WikipediaInternational Journal of Human-Computer Interactions 67 (9): 716-754. 2009.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 article provides a comprehensive description of this work. It focuses on research that extracts and makes use of the concepts, relations, f…Read more
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633What is Intelligence For? A Peircean Pragmatist Response to the Knowing-How, Knowing-That DebateErkenntnis 87 2265-2284. 2022.Mainstream philosophy has seen a recent flowering in discussions of intellectualism which revisits Gilbert Ryle’s famous distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’, and challenges his argument that the former cannot be reduced to the latter. These debates so far appear not to have engaged with pragmatist philosophy in any substantial way, which is curious as the relation between theory and practice is one of pragmatism’s main themes. Accordingly, this paper examines the contemporary de…Read more
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595Anne Freadman, "The Machinery of Talk: Charles Peirce and the Sign Hypothesis" (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (4): 642-645. 2006.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 is brought about (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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588Richard Smyth, "Reading Peirce Reading" (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (3). 2002.Book Information Reading Peirce Reading. By Richard A. Smyth. Rowman and Littlefield. Maryland. 1997. Pp. ix + 327. Hardback, US$64.50. Paperback, US$24.95.
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562Hacking: The Performance of Technology? Review of Douglas Thomas, "Hacker Culture" (review)Techne 9 (2): 151-154. 2005.The word “hacker” has an interesting double meaning: one vastly more widespread connotation of technological mischief, even criminality, and an original meaning amongst the tech savvy as a term of highest approbation. Both meanings, however, share the idea that hackers possess a superior ability to manipulate technology according to their will (and, as with God, this superior ability to exercise will is a source of both mystifying admiration and fear). This book mainly concerns itself with the f…Read more
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562Charles Peirce's Limit Concept of TruthPhilosophy Compass 9 (3): 204-213. 2014.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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555Is Truth Made, and if So, What Do we Mean by that? Redefining Truthmaker RealismPhilosophia 48 (2): 587-606. 2020.Philosophical discussion of truthmaking has flourished in recent times, but what exactly does it mean to ‘make’ a truth-bearer true? I argue that ‘making’ is a concept with modal force, and this renders it a problematic deployment for truthmaker theorists with nominalist sympathies, which characterises most current theories. I sketch the outlines of what I argue is a more genuinely realist truthmaker theory, which is capable of answering the explanatory question: In virtue of what does each part…Read more
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515The Meaning of Meaning-FallibilismAxiomathes 15 (2): 293-318. 2005.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 exte…Read more
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509Metaphysics — Low in Price, High in Value: A Critique of Global ExpressivismTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 54 (1): 64. 2018.Pragmatism’s heartening recent revival (spearheaded by Richard Rorty’s bold intervention into analytic philosophy Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) has coalesced into a distinctive philosophical movement frequently referred to as ‘neopragmatism’. This movement interprets the very meaning of pragmatism as rejection of metaphysical commitments: our words do not primarily serve to represent non-linguistic entities, but are tools to achieve a range of human purposes. A particularly thorough and …Read more
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489CatnessesIn Steven D. Hales (ed.), What Philosophy Can Tell You about Your Dog, Open Court. 2008.An introduction to cat metaphysics
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466Argument-Forms which Turn Invalid over Infinite Domains: Physicalism as Supertask?Contemporary Pragmatism 5 (1): 1-11. 2008.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 will first present an argument against the classical pragmatist theory of truth by Mark Johnston. Then, more ambitiously, I will suggest the fallacy lurks in certain arguments for physicalism taken for granted by many philosophers today.
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455The Epistemology of Mathematical NecessityIn Peter Chapman, Gem Stapleton, Amirouche Moktefi, Sarah Perez-Kriz & Francesco Bellucci (eds.), Diagrammatic Representation and Inference10th International Conference, Diagrams 2018, Edinburgh, UK, June 18-22, 2018, Proceedings, Springer-verlag. pp. 810-813. 2018.It seems possible to know that a mathematical claim is necessarily true by inspecting a diagrammatic proof. Yet how does this work, given that human perception seems to just (as Hume assumed) ‘show us particular objects in front of us’? I draw on Peirce’s account of perception to answer this question. Peirce considered mathematics as experimental a science as physics. Drawing on an example, I highlight the existence of a primitive constraint or blocking function in our thinking which we might ca…Read more
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442A Properly Pragmatist Pragmatics: Peircean Reflections on the Distinction Between Semantics and PragmaticsPragmatics and Cognition 27 (2): 387-407. 2020.Although most contemporary philosophers of language hold that semantics and pragmatics require separate study, there is surprisingly little agreement on where exactly the line should be drawn between these two areas, and why. In this paper I suggest that this lack of clarity is at least partly caused by a certain historical obfuscation of the roots of the founding three-way distinction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in Charles Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy of language. I then argue fo…Read more
Deakin, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Interest
2 more
Metaphilosophy |
History of Western Philosophy |
Meaning |
Truth |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Wilfrid Sellars |
Ludwig Wittgenstein |