Category Archives: Sources

“What we’ve got here is (a) failure to communicate” • 4

Excerpt from Sigmund Freud, “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895) The Experience of Satisfaction The filling of the nuclear neurones in Ψ has as its consequence an effort to discharge, an impetus which is released along motor pathways. Experience shows … Continue reading

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Definition and Determination • 10

The moment, then, that we pass from nothing and the vacuity of being to any content or sphere, we come at once to a composite content and sphere.  In fact, extension and comprehension — like space and time — are … Continue reading

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C.S. Peirce • The Proper Treatment of Hypotheses

Selection from C.S. Peirce, “Hume On Miracles” (1901), CP 6.522–547 530.   Now the testing of a hypothesis is usually more or less costly. Not infrequently the whole life’s labor of a number of able men is required to disprove a … Continue reading

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Wherefore Aught?

Re: R.J. Lipton and K.W. Regan • Why Is There Something? Here is another one of those eternally recurring ideas echoed inimitably by C.S. Peirce in his sketch of a Cosmogonic Philosophy. It would suppose that in the beginning,—infinitely remote,—there was … Continue reading

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These are the times that try men’s soles

You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate … to me, he was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually … Continue reading

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C.S. Peirce • Of Triadic Being

Selection from C.S. Peirce, “Some Amazing Mazes, Fourth Curiosity” (c. 1909) Of triadic Being the multitude of forms is so terrific that I have usually shrunk from the task of enumerating them; and for the present purpose such an enumeration would … Continue reading

Posted in Logic, Logic of Relatives, Mathematics, Peirce, References, Relation Theory, Semiotics, Sources | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

C.S. Peirce • Logic as Semiotic

Selection from C.S. Peirce, “Ground, Object, and Interpretant” (c. 1897) Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for semiotic (σημειωτική), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs.  By describing the doctrine as … Continue reading

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C.S. Peirce • On the Definition of Logic

Selections from C.S. Peirce, “Carnegie Application” (1902) No. 12.  On the Definition of Logic Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic.  A definition of a sign will be given which no more refers to human thought than does the … Continue reading

Posted in C.S. Peirce, Inquiry, Logic, Mathematics, Peirce, Semiotics, Sign Relations, Sources, Triadic Relations | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

C.S. Peirce • The Reality of Thirdness

Selections from C.S. Peirce, “Lowell Lectures of 1903”, CP 1.343–349 343.   We may say that the bulk of what is actually done consists of Secondness — or better, Secondness is the predominant character of what has been done.  The immediate … Continue reading

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C.S. Peirce • Objective Logic

Selections from C.S. Peirce, “Minute Logic” (1902), CP 2.111–118 111.   With Speculative Rhetoric, Logic, in the sense of Normative Semeotic, is brought to a close.  But now we have to examine whether there be a doctrine of signs corresponding to … Continue reading

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