148 research outputs found
Letting reality bite
Describes an experiment in teaching undergraduate epistemology, guided by Peirceâs pragmatic maxim
Peirce, meaning and the semantic web
The so-called âSemantic Webâ is phase II of Tim Berners-Leeâs original vision for the WWW, whereby resources would no longer be indexed merely âsyntacticallyâ, via opaque character-strings, but via their meanings. We argue that one roadblock to Semantic Web development has been researchersâ adherence to a Cartesian, âprivateâ account of meaning, which has been dominant for the last 400 years, and which understands the meanings of signs as what their producers intend them to mean. It thus strives to build âsilos of meaningâ which explicitly and antecedently determine what signs on the Web will mean in all possible situations. By contrast, the field is moving forward insofar as it embraces Peirceâs âpublicâ, evolutionary account of meaning, according to which the meaning of signs just is the way they are interpreted and used to produce further signs. Given the extreme interconnectivity of the Web, it is argued that silos of meaning are unnecessary as plentiful machine-understandable data about the meaning of Web resources exists already in the form of those resources themselves, for applications that are able to leverage it, and it is Peirceâs account of meaning which can best make sense of the recent explosion in âuser-defined contentâ on the Web, and its relevance to achieving Semantic Web goals
The Epistemology of Mathematical Necessity
It seems possible to know that a mathematical claim is necessarily true by inspecting a diagrammatic proof. Yet how does this work, given that human perception seems to just
(as Hume assumed) âshow us particular objects in front of usâ? I draw on Peirceâs account of perception to answer this question. Peirce considered mathematics as experimental a science as physics. Drawing on an example, I highlight the existence of a primitive constraint or blocking function in our thinking which we might call âthe hardness of the mathematical mustâ
Review of Jon and Susan Josephson, âAbductive Inferenceâ
This article reviews the book 'âAbductive Inferenceâ by Jon and Susan Josephson
Review of James Jakob Liszka, âAn introduction to the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirceâ
This article reviews the book 'An Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce' by James Jakob Liszka
Peirce and Sellars on Nonconceptual Content
Whereas Charles Peirceâs pragmatist account of truth has been much discussed, his theory of perception still offers a rich mine of insights. Peirce presented a âtwo-plyâ view of perception, which combines an entirely precognitive âperceptâ with a âperceptual judgmentâ that is located in the space of reasons. Having previously argued that Peirce outdoes Robert Brandom in achieving a hyper-inferentialism (âMaking it Explicit and Clearâ, APQ, 2008), I now wish to examine his philosophy in the light of inferentialismâs âoriginal fountâ â Wilfrid Sellars. Does Peirceâs percept commit him to the Myth of the Given? I argue that it does not, because although the percept is understood as nonepistemic, it is not understood to justify the perceptual judgment. Rather, the perceptual judgement indexes the percept. I explain this original view, then argue that Peirce and Sellars actually have a great deal in common in their rare diachronically mediated yet at the same time direct perceptual realism, and the âcritical commonsensistâ epistemology to which it gives rise
This is simply what I do: Peirce's real generality meets Wittgenstein's rule-following?
Wittgensteinâs discussion of rule-following is widely regarded to have identified what Kripke called âthe most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to dateâ. But does it? This paper examines the problem in the light of Charles Peirceâs distinctive scientific hierarchy. Peirce identifies a phenomenological inquiry which is prior to both logic and metaphysics, whose role is to identify the most fundamental philosophical categories. His third category, particularly salient in this context, pertains to general predication.
Rule-following scepticism, the paper suggests, results from running together two questions: âHow is it that I can project rules?â, and, âWhat is it for a given usage of a rule to be right?â. In Peircean terms the former question, concerning the irreducibility of general predication (to singular reference), must be answered in phenomenology, while the latter, concerning the difference between true and false predication, is answered in logic. A failure to appreciate this distinction, it is argued, has led philosophers to focus exclusively on Wittgensteinâs famous public account of rule-following rightness, thus overlooking a private, phenomenological dimension to Wittgensteinâs remarks on following a rule which gives the lie to Kripkeâs reading of him as a sceptic
The hardness of the iconic must: Can Peirceâs existential graphs assist modal epistemology?
Charles Peirceâs diagrammatic logic - the Existential Graphs - is presented as a tool for illuminating how we know necessity, in answer to Benacerrafâs famous challenge that most âsemantics for mathematicsâ do not âfit an acceptable epistemologyâ. It is suggested that necessary reasoning is in essence a recognition that a certain structure has the structure that it has. This means that, contra Hume and his contemporary heirs, necessity is observable. One just needs to pay attention, not just to individual things but to how those things are related in larger structures, certain aspects of which force certain others to be a particular way
Review of Douglas Thomas, âHacker Cultureâ
This article reviews the book 'âHacker Cultureâ by Douglas Thomas
Naturalism and wonder: Peirce on the logic of Humeâs argument against miracles
How should we proceed when confronted with a phenomenon (or evidence which points towards a phenomenon) which baffles us? The term "miracle" is a convenient term on which to hang this question. It has a religious meaning, and the arguments I will be discussing are applicable to the case of deciding, for example, whether to believe in the Judaeo-Christian God, based on the reports of miracles offered by the Bible. However, one can generalise from this case to deeper issues about our attitude to the apparently inexplicable. By the apparently inexplicable I mean that which contradicts our most well-confirmed beliefs. This general question is the theme of this paper
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