Peirce's evolutionary pragmatic idealism

In this paper I synthesize a unified system out of Peirce's life work, and name it “Peirce's Evolutionary Pragmatic Idealism”. Peirce developed this philosophy in four stages: (I) His 1868–69 theory that cognition is a continuous and infinite social semiotic process, in which Man is a sign.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43816/1/11229_2004_Article_BF00413590.pd

Mattering: A Recreation of the Realism of Charles S. Peirce

Mattering' is the process and the product of Reality. It is One from nothing. Whether there is more than one universe as the string theorists argue, is beyond my ken. Fortunately I am not concerned here with epistemology but with understanding. Nor am I preoccupied with revealing Truth. Rather, my purpose is to explore the meaning and consequences of 'mattering': to be able to say that, beyond reasonable doubt, I believe that 'it' matters – that 'it' is 'mattering'. This can be made intelligible by way of reflection on the Pragmatic Maxim of the American polymath Charles S. Peirce [1839-1914] and validated with his systematic method of inquiry. Part 1 of my thesis explores and presents Peirce's work. Part 2 is an exposition of my three part hypothesis of 'mattering', that: 1. value functions as a condition of intelligibility - purpose, as the ground of 'mattering' is dependent on value; 2. power - where power is the capacity to cause - is the enabler of force functioning as actual 'mattering'; 3. 'mattering' is evolutionary realization of universal telos. For Peirce, inquiry is triggered by genuine doubt. His method begins with imagination: with the generation of a hypotheses that, if valid, will relieve the irritation of doubt. Creating my hypothesis of 'mattering' free of consideration of truth was liberating. This is what Peirce called abduction: active imagination which can be considered as reasonable, but only in so far as it can be reasoned from by deduction and induction. This is Mathematics, the first of the heuretic sciences (the branch of sciences which treats of discovery or invention) and its aim is to draw necessary conclusions; Philosophy is the next class of the heuretic sciences, followed by the Special Sciences. The first order of Peirce's second class, Philosophy, is his Phenomenology - his doctrine of categories - the purpose of which is to describe what is before the mind and to show that the description is correct. It is the beginning of discovering meaning, and involves observation of what Peirce called the phaneron (whatever is before the mind) - in my case, my hypothesis. Through differentiation, abstraction or prescision, and dissociation it identifies the three irreducible categories of reality identified by Peirce as First (possibility), Second (actuality) and Third (probability). The second order of his philosophical method is the Normative Sciences of Esthetics (aesthetics), the ideal, Ethics, going for the ideal, and Semeiotic or logic, what can reasonably be hoped for. By practicing what he preached, Peirce built the third order of Philosophy, his Metaphysics of Tychism (chance), Synechism (continuity), and Agape. [In physics, Agape arguably is gravity and the still to be discovered something that will deliver the Holy Grail: the theory of everything.] This is 'mattering'. I argue it is grounded in the values of integrity, respect and transparency, values which are expressed through the enactment (or powering) of 'mattering's' purpose or telos which grows and develops. This is, 'mattering': universal realisation of evolutionary telos. Our species, which evolved, as did the Universe, from the Universe - the process and product of 'mattering' - appears set on a trajectory of ecocide for which we are responsible. One model for understanding this travesty is Freud's scheme of Id (desire) Ego (mediator) Superego (should). If Ego, which makes choices, sides with and empowers the unmitigated, individual wanting that is Id, by ignoring Superego - cooperative imperatives for universal growth and development - Earth's evolutionary trajectory is jeopardised. We ignore the categorial values of integrity, respect, and transparency with which evolutionary universal telos is co-dependent, at our peril. The global dysfunction of Egos, especially those that have commandeered power by disempowering others, can be healed. Together, but only together, we can get back on track and reclaim Earth's and our future. This one Universe from which we evolved and with which we are evolving, can do it, and, even granted that it has been practicing longer, we too can do it: we can make it matter. It matters. It is 'mattering'

Teleology and logical mechanism

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43835/1/11229_2004_Article_BF00869605.pd

Tartu Ülikooli toimetised. Tööd semiootika alalt. 1964-1992. 0259-4668

http://www.ester.ee/record=b1331700*es

Complex, Dynamic and Contingent Social Processes as Patterns of Decision-Making Events – Philosophical and Mathematical Foundations

This work presents a post-positivist research framework to explain any surprising fact in the evolutionary path of a complex, dynamic and contingent social phenomenon. Primarily, it reconciles the ontological and epistemological assumptions of Critical Realism with the principles of American Pragmatism. Then, the research approach is presented: theoretical propositions about a social structure are translated into a set of grammar rules that acknowledges a pattern of sequences of events of either individual action or social interaction between actors within a real social system. The result is a discrete mathematical model for a concrete category of social process based on these rules. Finally, data-grounded refinement of the theory is possible by the comparison between cases belonging to the same category, but differing about some contingent pattern of sequences of event outcomes. Consequently, their grammars differ in some pairs of context-sensitive rules that can explain this surprising fact, such that the derivation of this alternative historical trajectory of event outcomes becomes an extension to the early category of social process. In this sense, the proposed framework suggests there is a hierarchy of classes of grammars for middle-range explanations based upon the ontological assumption of the generative nature of social reality

Graph Theory and Universal Grammar

Tese arquivada ao abrigo da Portaria nº 227/2017 de 25 de Julho-Registo de Grau EstrangeiroIn the last few years, Noam Chomsky (1994; 1995; 2000; 2001) has gone quite far in the direction of simplifying syntax, including eliminating X-bar theory and the levels of D-structure and S-structure entirely, as well as reducing movement rules to a combination of the more primitive operations of Copy and Merge. What remain in the Minimalist Program are the operations Merge and Agree and the levels of LF (Logical Form) and PF (Phonological form). My doctoral thesis attempts to offer an economical theory of syntactic structure from a graph-theoretic point of view (cf. Diestel, 2005), with special emphases on the elimination of category and projection labels and the Inclusiveness Condition (Chomsky 1994). The major influences for the development of such a theory have been Chris Collins’ (2002) seminal paper “Eliminating labels”, John Bowers (2001) unpublished manuscript “Syntactic Relations” and the Cartographic Paradigm (see Belletti, Cinque and Rizzi’s volumes on OUP for a starting point regarding this paradigm). A syntactic structure will be regarded here as a graph consisting of the set of lexical items, the set of relations among them and nothing more

Bergsonian Intuition, Husserlian Variation, Peirceian Abduction: Toward a Relation Between Method, Sense and Nature

Husserlian variation, Bergsonian intuition and Peirceian abduction are contrasted as methodological responses to the traditional philosophical problem of deriving knowledge of universals from singulars. Each method implies a correspondingly different view of the generation of the variations from which knowledge is derived. To make sense of the latter differences, and to distinguish the different sorts of variation sought by philosophers and scientists, a distinction between extensive, intensive, and abductive-intensive variation is introduced. The link between philosophical method and the generation of variation is used to illuminate different philosophical conceptions of nature and nature’s relation to meaning and sense

Philosophy of mathematics education

PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION\ud This thesis supports the view that mathematics teachers should be aware of differing views of the nature of mathematics and of a range of teaching perspectives. The first part of the thesis discusses differing ways in which the subject 'mathematics' can be identified, by relying on existing philosophy of mathematics. The thesis describes three traditionally recognised philosophies of mathematics: logicism, formalism and intuitionism. A fourth philosophy is constructed, the hypothetical, bringing together the ideas of Peirce and of Lakatos, in particular. The second part of the thesis introduces differing ways of teaching mathematics, and identifies the logical and sometimes contingent connections that exist between the philosophies of mathematics discussed in part 1, and the philosophies of mathematics teaching that arise in part 2. Four teaching perspectives are outlined: the teaching of mathematics as aestheticallyorientated, the teaching of mathematics as a game, the teaching of mathematics as a member of the natural sciences, and the teaching of mathematics as technology-orientated. It is argued that a possible fifth perspective, the teaching of mathematics as a language, is not a distinctive approach. A further approach, the Inter-disciplinary perspective, is recognised as a valid alternative within previously identified philosophical constraints. Thus parts 1 and 2 clarify the range of interpretations found in both the philosophy of mathematics and of mathematics teaching and show that they present realistic choices for the mathematics teacher. The foundations are thereby laid for the arguments generated in part 3, that any mathematics teacher ought to appreciate the full range of teaching 4 perspectives which may be chosen and how these link to views of the nature of mathematics. This would hopefully reverse 'the trend at the moment... towards excessively narrow interpretation of the subject' as reported by Her Majesty's Inspectorate (Aspects of Secondary Education in England, 7.6.20, H. M. S. O., 1979). While the thesis does not contain infallible prescriptions it is concluded that the technology-orientated perspective supported by the hypothetical philosophy of mathematics facilitates the aims of those educators who show concern for the recognition of mathematics in the curriculum, both for its intrinsic and extrinsic value. But the main thrust of the thesis is that the training of future mathematics educators must include opportunities for gaining awareness of the diversity of teaching perspectives and the influence on them of philosophies of mathematics