Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Reply to Second Objections' and 'Reasoning and the Logic of Things'

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8 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 2. Invocation to Philosophy
19250 Everything interesting should be recorded, with records that can be rearranged [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Everything worth notice is worth recording; and those records should be so made that they can readily be arranged, and particularly so that they can be rearranged.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], V)
     A reaction: Yet another epigraph for my project! Peirce must have had a study piled with labelled notes, and he would have adored this database, at least in its theory.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly
19228 Sciences concern existence, but philosophy also concerns potential existence [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Philosophy differs from the special sciences in not confining itself to the reality of existence, but also to the reality of potential being.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I)
     A reaction: One might reply that sciences also concern potential being, if their output is universal generalisations (such as 'laws'). I take disposition and powers to be central to existence, which are hence of interest to sciences.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
19241 An idea on its own isn't an idea, because they are continuous systems [Peirce]
     Full Idea: There is no such thing as an absolutely detached idea. It would be no idea at all. For an idea is itself a continuous system.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], III)
     A reaction: This is the new anti-epigraph for this database. This idea is part of Peirce's idea that relations are the central feature of our grasp of the world.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 6. Hopes for Philosophy
19227 Philosophy is a search for real truth [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Philosophy differs from mathematics in being a search for real truth.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I)
     A reaction: This is important, coming from the founder of pragmatism, in rejecting the anti-realism which a lot of modern pragmatists seem to like.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 1. Nature of Metaphysics
19218 Metaphysics is pointless without exact modern logic [Peirce]
     Full Idea: The metaphysician who is not prepared to grapple with the difficulties of modern exact logic had better put up his shutters and go out of the trade.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I)
     A reaction: This announcement comes before Russell proclaimed mathematical logic to be the heart of metaphysics (though it is contemporary with Frege's work, of which Peirce was unaware). It places Peirce firmly in the analytic tradition.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 5. Metaphysics beyond Science
19229 Metaphysics is the science of both experience, and its general laws and types [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Metaphysics is the science of being, not merely as given in physical experience, but of being in general, its laws and types.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I)
     A reaction: I agree with this. The question then is whether such a science is possible. Dogmatic empiricists think not. Explanatory empiricists (me) think it is.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual
19219 Metaphysical reasoning is simple enough, but the concepts are very hard [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Metaphysical reasonings, such as they have hitherto been, have been simple enough for the most part. It is the metaphysical concepts which it is difficult to apprehend.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I)
     A reaction: Peirce is not, of course, saying that it is just conceptual, because for him science comes first. It is the woolly concepts that alienate some people from metaphysics. Metaphysicians should challenge the concepts they use much, much more!
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 6. Logical Analysis
19231 Metaphysics is turning into logic, and logic is becoming mathematics [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Metaphysics is gradually and surely taking on the character of a logic. And finally seems destined to become more and more converted into mathematics.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], I)
     A reaction: Remarkably prescient for 1898. I don't think Peirce knew of Frege (and certainly not when he wrote this). It shows that the revolution of Frege and Russell was in the air. It's there in Dedekind's writings. Peirce doesn't seem to be a logicist.