This book offers a new interpretation of the metaphysics of Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism and one of America's greatest philosophers. Robert Lane begins by examining Peirce's basic realism, his belief in a world that is independent of how anyone believes it to be. Lane argues that this realism is the basis for Peirce's account of truth, according to which a true belief is one that would be settled by investigation and that also represents the real world. He then (...) explores Peirce's application of his Pragmatic Maxim to clarify the idea of reality, his two forms of idealism, and his realism about generality and vagueness. This rich study will provide readers with a clear understanding of Peirce's thoughts on reality and truth and how they intersect, and of his views on the relation between the mind and the external world. (shrink)

“The most likely use for Haack’s volume will be in introductory pragmatism courses and it is eminently appropriate for this task. However, others who would wish to speak out about pragmatism authoritatively would do well to go through the book from cover to cover. Outside of philosophy, the volume provides an introduction to a vital aspect of what philosophy has to offer to other disciplines, psychology among them....it is hard to think what could have been done to improve upon the (...) collection.”. (shrink)

For many years, Charles Peirce maintained that all senses of the modal terms "possible" and "necessary" can be defined in terms of "states of information." But in 1896, he was motivated by his work in set theory to criticize that account of modality, and in 1905 he characterized that criticism as a return "to the Aristotelian doctrine of a real possibility ... the great step that was needed to render pragmaticism an intelligible doctrine." But since Peirce was a realist about (...) modality before 1896, and since he continued defining "possibility" in terms of "states of information" after that date, it is not clear exactly what he changed his mind about. In this essay I explain what it was that Peirce changed his mind about and why, in retrospect, he viewed that change as a decisive step in the development of pragmaticism. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

This is a discussion of a three-valued logic in Peirce's writings.

In this essay I describe two of the accounts that Peirce provides of personhood: the semiotic account, on which a person is a sequence of thought-signs, and the naturalistic account, on which a person is an animal. I then argue that these disparate accounts can be reconciled into a plausible view on which persons are numerically distinct entities that are nevertheless continuous with each other in an important way. This view would be agreeable to Peirce in some respects, as it (...) is modeled on his theory of perception, incorporates his categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and is in harmony with his objective idealism. But it diverges from Peirce in one important respect, viz. its rejection of the idea that some groups of human beings count as persons. (shrink)

... I was many years ago led to define "real" as meaning being such as it is, no matter how you, or, I, or any man or definite collection of men may think it to be; where I use the long and awkward phrase in order to avoid all appearance of meaning independently of human thought. For obviously, nothing that I or anybody ever can mean can be independent of human thought. That is real which men would eventually and finally (...) come to think to be absolutely necessary to be thought in order to understand the truth, supposing the existence and advance in knowledge of the human race to be continued without any limitation, though I cannot pretend that I have as distinct an idea of exactly what that means as I could wish.... (shrink)

This is the first of two papers that examine Charles Peirce’s denial that human beings have a faculty of intuition. The semiotic and epistemo-logical aspects of that denial are well-known. My focus is on its neglected metaphysical aspect, which I argue amounts to the doctrine that there is no determinate boundary between the internal world of the cognizing subject and the external world that the subject cognizes. In the second paper, I will argue that the “objective idealism” of Peirce’s 1890s (...) cosmological series is a more general iteration of the metaphysical aspect of his earlier denial of intuition. (shrink)

Don Marquis has argued that abortion is immoral because it deprives the fetus of a "future like ours." But Marquis's argument fails by incorrectly assuming that a zygote and the late-term fetus with which it is physically continuous are numerically identical. In fact, the identity of a prebirth human (PBH) across gestation is indeterminate, such that it is determinately morally permissible to destroy an early-term PBH and determinately immoral to destroy a late-term PBH. Beginning at some indeterminate point during gestation (...) and ending at some indeterminate point later in gestation, destroying a PBH is neither determinately morally permissible nor determinately immoral. (shrink)

This chapter presents a detailed explanation of Peirce’s early and late views on semiotic indeterminacy and then considers how those views might be applied within biosemiotics. Peirce distinguished two different forms of semiotic indeterminacy: generality and vagueness. He defined each in terms of the “right” that indeterminate signs extend, either to their interpreters in the case of generality or to their utterers in the case of vagueness, to further determine their meaning. On Peirce’s view, no sign is absolutely determinate, i.e., (...) every sign is indeterminate to at least some degree and so exhibits some degree of generality or vagueness. If Peirce was right about this, then no instance of biosemiosis is completely determinate—every biosign must be general or vague to some degree. I show that on Peirce’s view, whether a sign is general or vague depends on its immediate object, “the idea which the sign is built upon,” and I explain how Peirce would go about identifying the immediate object of a sign lacking both a minded utterer and a minded interpreter—an identification that must be possible if any biosign is indeterminate. (shrink)

Peirce was the first logician to define three-valued logical connectives. In 1909, he defined four one-place three-valued connectives and six two-place three-valued connectives, all of which were rediscovered by later logicians. Peirce’s motivation was to accommodate within formal logic a specific, narrow range of propositions he took to be neither true nor false, viz. propositions that predicate of a breach in mathematical or temporal continuity one of the properties that is a boundary-property relative to that breach.

Since the mid?1960s in advanced and rapidly advancing economies, there has been a rising tide of clinical depression and dysphoria, a decline in mutual trust, and a loosening of social bonds. Most studies show that above a minimal level, income is irrelevant to one's sense of well?being, but companionship and social support increase well?being. Since shopping and consumption are increasingly solitary activities, and watching television is not genuinely sociable, the increased time devoted to these activities may be responsible for rising (...) levels of depression. Advanced societies are likely to increase ?utility? if they maximize friendship rather than the getting and spending of wealth. (shrink)

Susan Haack has argued that an account of perception based on that developed by Charles Peirce can overcome the false dichotomy between realist theories that downplay perception's interpretative character and irrealist theories that deny its directness. Haack believes that this dichotomy is overcome by Peirce's distinction between the perceptual judgment, the belief that accompanies a perceptual experience, and the percept, the phenomenal, interactive aspect of a perceptual experience. But I provide reasons for thinking that Haack's account of perception is inadequate.

This is the second of two papers that examine Charles Peirce’s denial that human beings have a faculty of intuition. In the first paper, I argued that in its metaphysical aspect, Peirce’s denial of intuition amounts to the doctrine that there is no determinate boundary between the internal world of the cognizing subject and the external world that the subject cognizes.In the present paper, I argue that, properly understood, the “objective idealism” of Peirce’s 1890s cosmological series is a more general (...) iteration of the metaphysical aspect of his earlier denial of intuition. I also consider whether Peirce continued to deny that there is a definite boundary between the internal and external worlds in the years after the cosmological series. (shrink)

People are excused from moral blame for the harm they are said to have caused if they could not have done otherwise. Such excuses rely on causal explanations deriving mostly from social and biological sciences whose paradigms are probabilistic, disjunctive, and combine dispositional and circumstantial factors according to the variance accounted for by each type of factor. The more complete the explanation, the less choice the harm-doer seems to have and therefore the less moral blame is warranted. Thus, the biological (...) bases of people’s behaviour, their earlier socialization, and their prior choices reduce the scope and severity of moral blame — but have no effect on judgments of right and wrong. Fairness also requires a similar analysis of the behaviour of moral judges whose standards vary with their dispositions, social class, and culture. It follows that moral assessments are joint products of both ethics and the social and biological sciences, with neither group able to make fair moral assessments of people’s behaviour without help from the other. (shrink)

Charles Peirce claimed that "anything is general in so far as the principle of excluded middle does not apply to it and is vague in so far as the principle of contradiction does not apply to it." This seems to imply that general propositions are neither true nor false and that vague propositions are both true and false. But this is not the case. I argue that Peirce's claim was intended to underscore relatively simple facts about quantification and negation, and (...) that it implies neither that general propositions are neither true nor false nor that vague propositions are both true and false. (shrink)

I provide an account of the moral status of pre-birth humans that integrates ideas from Charles Peirce, including: synechism, the idea that "all that exists is continuous"; the reality of "Seconds," independently existing individual entities; and Peirce's pragmatic conceptions of truth and reality. This account implies that destroying a pre-birth human is determinately moral very soon after conception and determinately immoral very late in pregnancy. But it also implies that during much of gestation, destroying a pre-birth human is of indeterminate (...) moral status, neither determinately moral nor determinately immoral. (shrink)

I provide an account of the moral status of pre-birth humans that integrates ideas from Charles Peirce, including: synechism, the idea that "all that exists is continuous"; the reality of "Seconds," independently existing individual entities; and Peirce's pragmatic conceptions of truth and reality. This account implies that destroying a pre-birth human is determinately moral very soon after conception and determinately immoral very late in pregnancy. But it also implies that during much of gestation, destroying a pre-birth human is of indeterminate (...) moral status, neither determinately moral nor determinately immoral. (shrink)

Some opponents of reproductive human cloning have argued that, because of its experimental nature, any attempt to create a child by way of cloning would risk serious birth defects or genetic abnormalities and would therefore be immoral. Some versions of this argument appeal to the consent of the person to be conceived in this way. In particular, they assume that if an experimental reproductive technology has not yet been shown to be safe, then, before we use it, we are morally (...) obligated to get either the actual consent or the presumed consent of the person to be conceived. In this article, I attempt to explain the appeal of such consent-based arguments as deriving from a mistaken view of personal identity. I then argue that since this view is false, such arguments are unsound. Finally, I argue that even if reproductive cloning is unsafe, it may still be morally permissible in some circumstances. (shrink)

It is well known that C. S. Peirce eventually accepted an "extreme scholastic realism" about "generals" and "vagues." But it has been a subject of debate among Peirce scholars whether he was a nominalist early on. In particular, it remains unsettled whether Peirce's earliest position regarding generals was one of antirealism or whether he was a realist about generals from the very beginning. In this essay I argue that despite first appearances, the textual evidence does not support the claim that (...) Peirce moved from a position of antirealism to one of realism about generals. His earliest statements on the subject are compatible with a moderate, nonmodal realism about generality. (shrink)

Peirce’s principles of excluded middle and contradiction more resembled those of Aristotle than those of contemporary logicians. While the principles themselves are simple and straightforward, many of Peirce’s comments about them have been misunderstood by commentators. In particular, his belief that the principle of excluded middle does not apply to the general and that the principle of contradiction does not apply to the vague have been mistakenly connected to his eventual rejection of the principle of bivalence and development of three-valued (...) logical connectives. An understanding of Peirce’s view of those logical principles shows that those beliefs motivated neither his rejection of bivalence nor his work in triadic logic. (shrink)

If the obstacles to human development lie in the paucity of resources, in insuperable technical barriers, the task would be hopeless. We know instead that it is too often a lack of political commitment, not of resources, that is the ultimate cause of human neglect. United Nations, Human Development Report, 1991.

Rational choice theories have been falsified by experimental tests of economic behavior and have not been supported by analyses of behavior in the market. Politics is an even less fertile field of application for rational choice theories because politics deals with ends as well as means, thus preventing ends?means rationality; voters have partisan loyalties often ?fixed? in adolescence; political benefits have no common unit of measurement; ?rational ignorance? inhibits rational choices; and there is no market?like feedback to facilitate learning. Research (...) comparing public and private efficiency does not support rational choice. Ironically, while law and business schools are now employing better microeconomic theories, political scientists are taking up rational choice theory, regardless of the disconfirming evidence. (shrink)

Contributors explore the social, medical, and ethical dilemma of assisted suicide in this revised edition that includes international as well as domestic viewpoints. The federal government's continued challenges to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, the disabled community's response to assisted suicide, and the slippery slope argument are all examined.

If the obstacles to human development lie in the paucity of resources, in insuperable technical barriers, the task would be hopeless. We know instead that it is too often a lack of political commitment, not of resources, that is the ultimate cause of human neglect. United Nations, Human Development Report, 1991.

Wilson's comments on The Market Experience are deficient for at least three reasons. First, his lack of knowledge regarding subjective well?being deprives him of an adequate frame of reference from which to evaluate my work. Second, he fails to appreciate that a theory may legitimately draw upon more than one explanatory factor. Third, Wilson apparently did not read the entire book.

This book argues that the best way to understand the stories of the Old and New Testaments is to consider them as human stories with sophisticated narrative techniques at play. God is a character in these stories from the beginning, and considering god as a character in a narrative proves fruitful in responding to the human voices of these stories. -/- Although many readers go to the Bible to find the revealed word of Yahweh or of the Christian God, what (...) they find there is always an interpretation of the text through the filters of a religious dogma which exists prior to the reading of the text. Reading the Bible suggests another way of reading the texts, a way of reading which concentrates not on "what does it mean?" but on "what does it say?" and "what do I see there?" The result is a fresh approach to the reading of these biblical texts, an approach which celebrates human storytelling while investigating myth, language, and the act of reading a text. (shrink)

Francis Bacon wrote of his method of eliminative induction that it was "a new and certain road for the mind to take" and that it would "establish degrees of certainty". I argue that Bacon's method is not certain in either of two different senses of "certain": (a) resulting in maximally justified conclusions or (b) being as secure as a deductively valid argument.

Charles Peirce’s simple definition of a sign as something that stands for something to something belies the depth and complexity of his foundational work in semiotics, or as he sometimes wrote, “semeiotic.” T. L. Short’s Peirce’s Theory of Signs is a dense book, and at points difficult. But only the shallowest work on this difficult subject could fail to challenge the reader, and Short’s book is anything but shallow. It is, in fact, a major achievement, a singularly important work on (...) Peirce’s theory of signs and one of the most important works ever to be published on Peirce.The first three chapters set the stage for Short’s eventual explanation of Peirce’s teleological conception of signs. The first reviews historical antecedents of, and alternatives to, Peirce’s approach, while the second considers changes in his views from the 1860s through the 1900s—changes that, on Short’s account, enabled Peirce’s mature theory to avoid devastating problems. Chapter three is a remarkably clear introduction to Peirce’s phenomenological analysis of his three universal categories, around which his taxonomy of signs is organized. (shrink)