iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I shall be obliged to presume that after leaving the lecture room you will do some close thinking on your own accounts.

Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I have so much more to say than I have of time to say it in that all my statements have to be left in the rough and I know I must produce an impression of vagueness and haziness of thought that would disappear upon close examination.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

They are just as much abstractions as that celebrated jack-knife that got a new blade and then a new handle and was finally confronted with a resurrected incarnation of its former self. There is no denying this I believe, and therefore I do not think that /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Atoms are supposed to have existences independent of one another. But in that case according to our definition of an abstraction, a collection of atoms, such as are all the things we see and handle are abstractions.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Symbols, and in some sort other Signs, are either Terms, Propositions, or Arguments.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 29/09/2026

“It's by delaying his conclusions, even when they seem to him evident, that a philosopher progresses.” — Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Transuasional logic, which I term Speculative Rhetoric, is substantially what goes by the name of methodology, or better, of methodeutic. It is the doctrine of the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other Signs to the Interpretants which they aim to determine....

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Originalian logic, or Speculative Grammar, is the doctrine of the general conditions of symbols and other signs having the significant character. It is this department of general logic with which we are, at this moment, occupying ourselves.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Obsistent logic, logic in the narrow sense, or Critical Logic, is the theory of the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other Signs to their professed Objects, that is, it is the theory of the conditions of truth.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Logic is the science of the general necessary laws of Signs and especially of Symbols. As such, it has three departments.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Such, for example, is the exclamation "Hi!" as indicative of present danger, or a rap at the door as indicative of a visitor.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Genuine mediation is the character of a Sign.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Transuasion in its obsistent aspect, or Mediation, will be shown to be subject to two degrees of degeneracy.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Two Qualities which are alike, as all Qualities are, are, in so far, the same Quality.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

According to a very familiar conception of matter,—whether it be true or not does not concern us,—every particle is supposed to exist in such a sense that all other matter might be annihilated without this particle ceasing to exist. Supposing that to be the case the particle is, /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We may define a particle as a portion of matter which can be, and at every instant of time is, situated in a point.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

By a more primary substance I mean one whose being does not depend upon all that the being of the less primary substance [does] but only upon a part thereof.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Whether there is any primary substance in this sense or not we may leave the metaphysicians to wrangle about.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

By a primary substance I mean a substance whose being is independent of what may be true of anything else.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

If there truly be such a circumstance, that is all that it can possibly mean,—according to the pragmatist maxim,—to say that opium really has a dormitive virtue. Indeed, nobody but a metaphysician would dream of denying that opium really has a dormitive virtue. /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

To say that opium has a dormitive virtue means nothing and can have no practical consequences except what are involved in the statement that there is some circumstance connected with opium that explains its putting people to sleep..

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Originality is being such as that being is, regardless of aught else.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

But in this science errors become enormously magnified in their effects; and stricter accuracy is for that reason rendered obligatory. No distinction--the reader may assure himself--will here be insisted upon without an adequate motive, even if it be a mistaken one.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The reader will often think that the writer makes far too much of microscopic distinctions.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Intellectual triplicity, or Mediation, is my third category.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This use of the words is fully as well authorized as the other if not more so; and this is the sense in which I shall exclusively employ the words. Hard is concrete[,] hardness abstract.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The other sense in which for example hard is concrete and hardness is abstract, is more usual in English than in other languages for the reason that English is more influenced by medieval terminology than other languages.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 26/09/2026

“The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction…. At the limit of this process of reproductibility, the real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: the hyperreal.” — Jean Baudrillard, Simulations

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I have a feeling of deep guilt in inflicting your ladyship with such a dissertation. [Letter to Lady Welby.]

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Nevertheless, when one closely scrutinizes it or puts it under a magnifying glass,—one can detect something in it that is not pure nonsense.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There are useful abstractions and there are comparatively idle ones; and that one about dormitive virtue, which was invented with a view to being as silly as one could, of course does not rank high among abstractions.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Here we have pairednesses between the experiments and the results of the experiments, consisting in the fact that the results follow the experiments in accordance with a previous hypothesis; and the nature of these pairednesses is such that they could not have existed had not a third thing, /1

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 24/09/2026

“The world is all that is the case.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In respect to its immediate object a sign may either be a sign of a quality, of an existent, or of a law.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Let me at this point recall to your minds that the correlatives abstract and concrete are used in two very little connected senses in philosophy. In one sense, they differ little from general and special or particular, and are for that reason hardly indispensible terms; /1

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 23/09/2026

“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Temps Modernes, vol 1 (October 1945)

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The type of an idea of Secondness is the experience of effort, prescinded from the idea of a purpose. It may be said that there is no such experience, that a purpose is always in view as long as the effort is cognized. This may be open to doubt; /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The idea of the present instant, which, whether it exists or not, is naturally thought as a point of time in which no thought can take place or any detail be separated, is an idea of Firstness.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The typical ideas of firstness are qualities of feeling, or mere appearances.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 18/09/2026

It is the study of the general sense of divination. It explains the past from the future, whereas in history the contrary is the case. It considers everything in isolation, in the state of nature — unconnected.” — Novalis, General Draft

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 18/09/2026

“Philosophy is antihistorical from the ground up. It moves from the world of the future and the necessary to the real. (1/2)

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 21/09/2026

“An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.” — John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

You know that I particularly approve of inventing new words for new ideas.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If we are on the wrong track, an emphatic negative soon gets put upon the guess, and so our conceptions gradually get nearer and nearer right. The improvements of our inventions are made in the same manner.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We here proceed by experimentation. That is to say, we guess out the laws bit by bit. We ask, What if we were to vary our procedure a little? Would the result be the same? We try it.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

All our knowledge of the laws of nature is analogous to knowledge of the future, inasmuch as there is no direct way in which the laws can become known to us.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Instead of an explanation he simply transforms the premiss by the introduction of an abstraction, an abstract noun in place of a concrete predicate. It is a poignant satire, because everybody is supposed to know well enough that this transformation from a concrete predicate to an abstract noun /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

You remember the old satire which represents one of the old school of medical men,—one of that breed to whom medicine and logic seemed to be closely allied sciences,—who asked why opium puts people to sleep answers very sapiently ‘because it has a dormitive virtue.’

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

For men of the first class, nature is a picture; for men of the second class, it is an opportunity; for men of the third class, it is a cosmos, so admirable, that to penetrate to its ways seems to them the only thing that makes life worth living.

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