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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 3h

“My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-1916

Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 14h

But since symbols rest exclusively on habits already definitely formed but not furnishing any observation even of themselves, and since knowledge is habit, they do not enable us to add to our knowledge even so much as a necessary consequent, unless by means of a definite preformed habit.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 14h

These enable us to count, they teach us that collections are individuals (individual = individual object), and in many respects they are the very warp of reason.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 14h

Moreover, Symbols afford the means of thinking about thoughts in ways in which we could not otherwise think of them. They enable us, for example, to create Abstractions, without which we should lack a great engine of discovery.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Center for PhilSci @center4philsci.bsky.social · 15h

Join us as we sit down with visiting fellow Caterina Sisti to learn more about her work here at the Center! #philsci Watch on YouTube: youtu.be/oldeZ4gr82o Don't miss Caterina's Lunchtime Talk next Tuesday: "Ramsey on conditionals and variable hypotheticals"

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

to remain uncut. But my own position is different. It lies directly in the path of my duty to consider the question critically. /2x

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

In like manner, if a reader who has thought it worth while to listen to what I have had to say upon normative logic finds objective logic too remote from his interests to care to listen to any discussion of it, I shall fully approve of his allowing the leaves of my chapter upon this subject /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

This I should do upon the same grounds upon which I declined to join the American Psychical Research Society when it was started; namely, that I thought that to do so would be to sanction a probable great waste of time, together with the placing of some men in a compromising position.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I should promptly recommend them to apply elsewhere. /2x

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Mind, that if some forenoon,while I was in the midst of one of the most valuable of the chapters of my "Minute Logic,"a rap should come at my outer door, and if,upon going to the door, I were to find two men who proposed to come in and discuss with me the principles of Mormonism or ChristianScience,

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I have no objection to the pooh-pooh-ing of fairies, provided it be critical pooh-pooh-ing; but I wish I had the leisure to place before those gentlemen a work to be entitled The History of Pooh-pooh-ing. I think it would do them good; and make room in their minds for an essay /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

there be also a greater life-history that every symbol furnished with a vehicle of life goes through, and what is the nature of it. There are minds who will pooh-pooh an idea of this sort, much as they would poohpooh a theory involving fairies. /2x

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

they will go through a certain order of development, and if so, whether this development be merely of such a nature that the same round of changes of form is described over and over again whatever be the matter of the thought or whether, in addition to such a repetitive order, /2

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

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 Hegel's objective logic; that is to say, whether there be a life in Signs, so that--the requisite vehicle being present-- /1

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Arnisador @arnisador.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Peirce predicts the rise of AI:

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

In order to cover every possibility, this should be founded on a general doctrine of methods of attaining purposes, in general; and this, in turn, should spring from a still more general doctrine of the nature of teleological action, in general.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Nowadays methods alone can arrest attention strongly; and these are coming in such flocks that the next step will surely be to find a method of discovering methods. This can only come from a theory of the method of discovery.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Time was when a theorem could constitute a considerable contribution to mathematical science. But now new theorems are turned out wholesale. A single treatise will contain hundreds of them.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 12/10/2026

“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.” — John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

(But do not let me be understood as saying that a Form possesses, itself, Identity in the strict sense; that is, what the logicians, translating arithmo, call ‘numerical identity.’)” [N.B. In the text, ‘arithmo’ is written in Greek letters.]

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Thus, this algebraic Diagram presents to our observation the very,identical object of mathematical research, that is, the Form of the harmonic mean,which the equation aids one to study.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 11/10/2026

“The enslavement of language in prattle is joined by the enslavement of things in folly almost as its inevitable consequence.” — Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

“But why do that, when the thought itself is present to us?” Such, substantially, has been the interrogative objection raised by more than one or two superior intelligences, among whom I single out an eminent and glorious General.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Come on, my reader, and let us construct a diagram to illustrate the general course of thought; I mean a System of diagrammatization by means of which any course of thought can be represented with exactitude.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Rorty QOTD @rortyquotes.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Despite the best efforts of positivists, pragmatists, and deconstructionists, ontology is as popular among contemporary philosophers as it was in the days of Democritus and Anaxagoras. Phil as Poetry p.3 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Ontology

When it comes to Reality, however, there is no such thing as common sense. Unlike the case of trees, there are no platitudes accepted by both the vulgar and the learned. In some circles, you can get general agreement that the ultimate nature of Reality is atoms and void. In others, you can get a consensus that it is God—an immaterial, non-spatio-temporal, being. The reason quarrels among metaphysicians about the nature of Reality seem so ludicrous is that each of them feels free to pick a few of his favorite things and claim ontological privilege for them. Despite the best efforts of positivists, pragmatists, and deconstructionists, ontology is as popular among contemporary philosophers as it was in the days of Democritus and Anaxagoras. Most analytic philosophers still take the question of whether the human mind can get in touch with the really real with perfect seriousness.

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

All these ideas may be said to have virtually existed in the form of the Boolian algebra originally given by Boole. But in 1870 I greatly enlarged and I may say revolutionized the subject by the virtual introduction of an entire new kind of abstractions.

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

It is the relation that M has to M and to B and that B has to B but that B does not have to M. It is the connecting link between the general ideas of logical dependence and the idea of the sequence of quantity.

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

I have only noticed a few of the most interesting of these abstractions. But I have not mentioned the most interesting of all the dyadic relations, that of inclusion, the great importance of which, now generally recognized, was first pointed out and demonstrated by me in 1870.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This triadic relation is a case of the general triadic relation of aggregation. To say that Z stands in the relation of aggregation to X and Y is to say that Z is true wherever X is true and where Y is true and that either X or Y is true wherever Z is true. /2x

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

As an example of a triadic relation between relations take the relation between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd relations between M and B. That is the relation between first the relation of M only to B only, of B only to M only, and of otherness of M to B and of B to M. /1

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Center for Dewey Studies @deweycenter.siu.edu · 09/10/2026

“Society is one word, but many things.” – John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916, MW 9:87)

A middle-aged John Dewey holding a surprised-looking baby

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

but they are particularly pestiferous rules, much worse than none at all; and these unfortunately have become, through judges' charges to juries and otherwise, widely current among people who never opened a book of logic.... /2x

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I furthermore show that they invariably leave the doors open, theoretically and practically, to bad reasoning. In fact, there are no rules at all, for the most part, which follow as necessary corollaries from the theories. From the ordinary theories of hypotheses, on the other hand,rules do flow; /1

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I show that the arguments which their authors identify with inductions have in some cases no force at all, but lead to manifest absurdity, and that in no cases are they nearly as strong as the true inductive argument.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I now go back to consider other theories of the validity of induction and hypothesis than my own. I give as complete an account of these theories as I can.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thus the relation of M to B is the converse of the relation of B to M and this relation of converseness is a dyadic relation between relations.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There are dyadic relations between dyadic relations.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It is true that owing to there being but two primary substances, there is no triadic relation between three different primary substances. But there can be a relation between three different dyadic relations.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

But there are also triadic relations.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Those four relations are dyadic relations. That is,considered as abstractions their existence consists in something being true of two primary substances.Thus to say that M is in the relation of otherness to B is to say that M is other than B which is a fact about the two primary substances M and B.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

When the philosophy of probability has once been put upon a sure footing, the question of inverse probabilities gives no serious difficulty.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 07/10/2026

“All philosophy is idealism, and there exists no true realism except that of poetry. But poetry and philosophy are only extremes. (1/2)

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I may, however, say that I am one of those who maintain that a probability must be a matter of positive knowledge, or confess itself a nullity.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is why I cannot here in a few words approximately define my position so that a person acquainted with the state of discussion can get a general idea of where I stand.

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The first of the two questions mentioned is by no means one to be settled at one blow. A whole nest of fallacies is hidden in it.

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Reposted by Charles S. Peirce

Philosophy Bits @philosophybits.com · 07/10/2026

“Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth.” — Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

and that M has to B and to nothing else. Without counting the absurd relation that nothing has to anything. That third relation is the self-converse relation of otherness. /2x

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Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Namely 1st the relation that M has to B and that M has to nothing else, and that nothing but M has to anything. 2nd there will be the converse relation that B has to M and to nothing else and that nothing but B has to anything, and 3rd the relation that B has to M and to nothing else /1

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