Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces 303109624X, 9783031096242

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Ivo Assad Ibri

Semiotics and Pragmatism Theoretical Interfaces

Semiotics and Pragmatism

Ivo Assad Ibri

Semiotics and Pragmatism Theoretical Interfaces

Ivo Assad Ibri Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Translation from the Portuguese language edition: “Semiótica e pragmatismo: interfaces teóricas” by Ivo Assad Ibri, © Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências 2020. Published by Oficina Universitária/Cultura Acadêmica/FiloCzar. All Rights Reserved. ISBN 978-3-031-09624-2    ISBN 978-3-031-09625-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword by David Dilworth

Truth and justice are forces of nature. Civilizing ideas carry forward nature’s new incipiencies of growth. Nature’s ameliorative possibilities pour in on us every moment. To our humankind, the most plastic species on planet earth, nature seems patiently-­ paced, slow-moving in its myriads of evolutionary transformations; progressive phases of human civilization appear to pick up the pace of nature’s metamorphoses. Yet, everywhere and when, nature is the genius loci, possessed of Anaxogorean rationes seminales in inexhaustible proliferations. Natura naturans gives the rule to art: human ingenuity is the gift and vector of nature’s own genius. Nothing is predetermined. Ripeness is all.1

Let these sentences prompt a path of access into the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, “the man and his works,” regarded in the full ripeness of his philosophic achievement in the history of philosophy. At the same time, let them serve as an anticipation of the contents of Ivo Assad Ibri’s erudite interpretations of Peirce’s philosophy. The present work assembles Ivo Assad Ibri’s career-essays on Peirce, strategically centered around (before and after) the publication of his magisterial Kósmos Noetós: The Metaphysical Architecture of C. S. Peirce.2 For current and—importantly—for future generations of scholars, it memorializes decades of Ibri’s leadership role in Peirce Studies in Brazil, as well as bearing witness to his veritable globe-trotting participation in professional conferences with focus on the fields of American Philosophy and Pragmatism. In recognizing Ivo Assad Ibri as one the leading exponents of qualitative interpretations of Peirce in the world today, I refer especially to Ibri’s concentration on Peirce’s later-phase metaphysical writings which probe and illumine the heart and soul of Peirce’s essential contributions to the history of philosophy. Ibri’s expertise will be seen to consist in his precise reformulations of Peirce’s full-fledged  Peirce, Charles Sanders. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. vol. 2. Edited by the Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington; Indiana University Press, p. 309–343, 1998. 2  Ibri, Ivo A. Kósmos Noetós: The Metaphysical Architecture of Charles S. Peirce (Springer, 2017). Translated by Henry Mallet (Portuguese edition: Paulus Editora, 2015). 1

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philosophy, not just pursuing specialized minor topics. It is always the big picture, including Ibri’s commanding role in recognizing the Schellingian poetic provenance of Peirce’s career-text. Ibri’s role in featuring the Schellingian provenance of Peirce’s thought has been a force turner in the academic interpretation of Peirce. Arguably, Peirce’s status as a major philosopher in the history of philosophy comes to light in the same consideration.3 Peirce’s system of ideas exhibited teleological development over the course of five decades of polymathic interests and activities. In the course of that development he inherited a mainstream of progressive metaphysical empiricism in the mid­ nineteenth century, and he carried it forward into the first decade of the twentieth century. I refer to a mainstream of prospective a posteriori intelligence in bottom-­ line registers of normative philosophical theory. The landmark lines of this mainstream trace back to the legacies of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling—there were of course other, minor, tributaries of modern thought. In the context of his times, Peirce’s philosophical writings had a catalytic effect of transmuting the variables of the Kantist line in tandem with the burgeoning scientific development of Darwin’s century. Peirce first heard the news of The Origin of Species (1859) when, age 20, he was surveying in the wilds of Louisiana. He remarked then and there that Darwin’s work could not sustain interpretation within the confines of a nominalistic (and mechanistic) interpretation. This challenge aligned with his prodigious aspiration to revise Kant’s categories concerning the forms of epistemic and ontological cognition. In due course Peirce came to challenge the hegemony of the traditional methods of dogmatic reasoning from clear and distinct axiomatic premises, in effect turning the directions of science and philosophy—and, more comprehensively, the logic of inquiry tout court, on its head— by way of prioritizing the probabilistic forms of valid inference functioning inductively and abductively in a vitally evolving universe of symbolic transformations. Peirce’s Fallibilism—Pragmatism, Pragmaticism, and speculatively grammatical and ontological Semeiotics—reset the gamut of sciences and arts in the forward orientation of nature’s intrinsically improvising reasonability, thus overturning the entire merely formulaic platform of nominalistic anthropocentrism in science, philosophy, and modern life in general, in favor of a scientific logic of inquiry featuring the symbiotic symmetries and connatural affinities of mind and Nature. Now, as Ivo Assad Ibri’s astute essays clarify, contemporary corollaries of Peirce’s theoretical achievements remain relevant today. For one example, the Hegel line of immanently discursive inference—the sublational logic of which still energizes its left-wing version in Marxist praxis today—can be seen to have been already eclipsed in the categorical architectonics of Peirce. Equally at a foundational level, Peirce undercut the traditional line of logical empirical positivism that is carried on in the contemporary professional academy.  Esposito, Joseph L. Evolutionary Metaphysics: The Development of Peirce’s Theory of Categories (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980) remains a substantial expression of Peirce’s Schellingian career trajectory and the array of its foundational concepts. 3

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Not to mention that, for the most part, the early waves of Peirce scholarship came out of the analytic wing of the academy trained in logical positivism. In this regard, a signature accomplishment of Ivo Assad Ibri’s writings consists in his recognition of Peirce’s innovative absorption of a mainstream of progressive metaphysical empiricism—in Schelling’s phrase—which already undercut both the Hegelian and psychological-positivistic currents. I refer especially to Schelling’s classic Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809), which, along with the later work The Grounding of the Positive Philosophy (Berlin Lectures, 1841), deserves careful reading as the provenance to Peirce’s Fallibilism in its full-­ fledged—epistemic, cosmological, and ontologically semeiotic—scope. Kant’s self-styled Copernican revolution virtually invented modern philosophy. Which is to say that Kant’s first two Critiques configured foundational concepts of Nature and Freedom decisive for the various projects of philosophic modernity overall. Kant carried these two foundational concepts over into his third Critique’s reflection on a transcendental hope, that is to say, a priori possibility of discovery of specific forms of lawfulness, aesthetical and teleological, within the contingent randomness of phenomena. Concomitantly with that, Kant’s third Critique postulated a theory of genius which rang changes on certain suggestions of “harmonious” congenialities between natural phenomena and imaginative intelligence—albeit for Kant in the nominalistic form of regulative only intelligence. Still, such an a priori function of the aesthetical and teleological forms of reflective judgment constituted a huge mediation in Kant’s baseline theory insofar as suggesting a poetic middle ground between his original dichotomy of Nature and Freedom—one that is experienced in the symbiotic interplay of objective nature and subjective mind along the gamut of the sciences and the arts of heuristic discovery. This symbiotic interplay Friedrich von Schiller forthwith articulated in the terms of a “play instinct” (Spieltrieb) in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), the work that became the Harvard undergraduate Peirce’s first philosophical reading.4 The next generation of Kantists proceeded forthwith to reconfigure Kant’s three Critiques upon an even higher platform of theoretical speculation itself. In Kant’s own lifetime, Fichte’s Wissenschaftlehre took off in the direction of reconstructing Kant’s dichotomy of Nature and Freedom by postulating a more radically foundational transcendentalism, namely, by accounting for Nature within the a priori depths of noesis itself, a univocal dimension of self-positing human Freedom per se and überhaupt.5 Fichte’s brilliant overhaul of Kant’s binary employments of phenomenon (Nature) and noumenon (Freedom) opened the theoretical possibilities of the speculative careers of Schelling and Hegel (not to forget Schopenhauer’s denunciation of Fichte, Shelling, and Hegel, together with his eccentric reformulation of Kant’s dualism). In due course, Schelling transcended his own early Fichteanism— diverging from and arguably outdistancing his earlier speculative colleague Hegel

 Esposito (1980, p. 12–14).  See the excellent treatment of Fichte’s Wissenschaftlehre by David Breazeale, “Johann Gottlieb Fichte” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantive revision, 2018. 4 5

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as well—in engendering the momentum toward a theory of metaphysical freedom and embodied rationality in the nature of things. Arguably Schelling’s innovative endeavors to express such a metaphysical empiricism was a quantum leap forward in the history of philosophy. For his part, Peirce came to endorse all phases of Schelling’s career, especially his Naturphilosophie, and called himself “a Schellingian, of some stripe.” He evolved his initial Pragmatism as a forward-minded, realistically consequential, philosophy of ongoing, inter-generational intelligence and heuristic discovery set within nature’s concrescently variescent energetic reasonableness. To this effect, among the many sterling pronouncements of his career-text, Peirce epitomized his contribution to the entire history of philosophic speculation in the following exemplary passage: The very being of the General, of Reason, consists in its governing individual events. So, then, the essence of Reason is such that its being never can have been completely perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth. It is like the character of a man which consists in the ideas that he will conceive and in the efforts that he will make, and which only develops as the occasions actually arise. Yet in all his life long no son of Adam has ever fully manifested what there was in him. So, then, the development of Reason requires as a part of it the occurrence of more individual events than ever can occur. It requires, too, all the coloring of all qualities of feeling, including pleasure in its proper place among the rest. This development of Reason consists, you will observe, in embodiment, that is, in manifestation. The creation of the universe which did not take place during a certain busy week in 4004 B.C., but is going on today and never will be done, is the very development of Reason. I do not see how one can have a more satisfying ideal of the admirable that the development of Reason so understood. The one thing whose admirableness is not due to an ulterior Reason is Reason itself comprehended in all its fullness, so far as we can comprehend it.6

As well, in the context of this 1903 essay’s prioritization of the Esthetic ideal of embodied Reason, Peirce went on to establish a sequent parallelism between the forms of Ethical and Logical Reasonability: Under this conception, the ideal of conduct will be to execute our little function in the operation of the creation by giving a hand toward rendering the world more reasonable whenever, as the saying goes, it is “up to us” to do so. In logic, it will be observed that knowledge is reasonableness; and the ideal of reasoning will be to follow such methods as must develop knowledge the most speedily.7

Can we reasonably ask for more? Here Ivo Assad Ibri offers us strong readings of the multiform inter-latticings of Peirce’s text. Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY, USA

David A. Dilworth

 “What Makes a Reasoning Sound”, 1903 (EP 2, p. 254–55).  Loc. cit. Peirce’s “up to us” carries on his expression of ethical sensibility in “Evolutionary Love”, 1893, in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. vol. 1. Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. Bloomington; Indiana University Press, p. 353–54, 1992. 6 7

Foreword by André De Tienne

What is an interface? The word, although made up of two ancient Latin words, was born only in the late nineteenth century to denote a surface shared as a common boundary by two immediately adjacent portions of the same kind of substance. One has to wait for the early 1960s for the term to denote a means or place or time of transition or mediation between two distinct eras, institutions, or systems, or some commonality that brings together different parties, viewpoints, research methods through some sort of collaboration or exchange. That new usage then helped usher in the technological meaning of any sort of connector or adapter that allows one device to connect to another device. When a Brazilian philosopher imbued with German idealism, American pragmatism, and especially Peircean methods of thinking uses the word “interface” in the title of a work that collects a significant portion of his intellectual legacy, one must suspect that such a philosopher, known for his unusually deep sensitivity to nuances, has motives born from the word’s own deeper motive. It is one thing for an interface to be something that lies or sits or stands directly between two other things, each of which has its own form or manifestation or “face.” It is another thing for an interface to be the face of the mediator, the face of the relational, the face of the borderland that facilitates meetings of differing minds. That which is inter-facies is either an agent (stage actor) or a patient (stage or audience) of betweenness, of transition, of mediation, and also of transformation, between faces, or face to face. It is commonly said that a good mediator needs to represent in their fairest light the viewpoints of each meeting participant to every other participant, viewpoints that cannot be separated from their facial utterances. Mediation requires much preparatory work, an inner sense of diplomacy, and an ingrained habit of listening attentively, interpreting justly, and eliciting mutual respect. Being the mediating face through which the other faces get to see and hear one another without their biasing blinders is a tall act of semiosis. It is like fashioning oneself not so much into a boundary neither in nor out than into a two-way, or multi-way, crossing post, or crossing agent that both transforms and yet preserves. This is an art that Professor Ibri has long mastered with so much advantage, notably in his annual organization of the Pragmatism conference at his university in São ix

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Paulo, that one cannot but express it by stating that he has managed to turn himself into a splendid interface, one that mixes congeniality with attentiveness and nurturing love for the exposition and exchange of ideas among articulate and insightful minds. What is a theoretical interface? It could be an interface between distinct theories, some sort of mediating conceptual device that brings them together, for instance by pointing out shared objects of study, analogous methods, similar conclusions, identical frameworks, common assumptions or interests, complementary angles of research, mutual dependencies. Or it could be a theory that serves as both an explicitly explanatory and an implicitly ontological interface between an unidentified origin of a determinative process and ensuing observable puzzling effects, or between distinct modalities of reality such as entailed within the actualization of the possible or the instantiation of the general. Or again a theoretical interface may also be the manner in which a theoretician gets one theory to work itself out into another theory by injecting into the latter not merely the symbols that it conceived, but the very forms carried by those symbols, forms that transcend the limits of their hosting symbols or of the larger theory owing to their capacity to exercise their distinctive power within layers of experience more fittingly captured in the associated theory. Much of what Ivo Ibri does in the chapters of his collected works is a quest for those different kinds of theoretical interfaces, but especially the last kind. The reason is straightforward. Peirce’s own overarching method of philosophical inquiry entails and justifies the expectation that students of his writings should be able to recognize and identify plenty of “interfacing moments” every time Peirce moves from one plane of theoretical consideration to another. Professor Ibri happens to have long nurtured a passionate interest in one particular set of Peirce’s own researches, a set of philosophical activities that it took Peirce decades to figure out how they interfaced with one another. Peirce never used the word “interface” but that matters little, for he certainly did conduct a lifelong investigation of dependence connections among sciences, especially the philosophical sciences. The concept of dependence is at the logical core of that quest. It refers to the many strategies that allow vital supports (organic or semiosic) to produce and sustain distinct offspring that “hang down” from them, offspring that may well evolve in quite distinct ways. How to recognize real dependence relations (or real interfacing hinges) that are not merely contingent but necessary requires a special act of abstractive operation that Peirce defined and resorted to frequently. He called it “prescission” (the better spelling among variants). Prescission is a powerful heuristic tool when deftly wielded. It is particularly efficient at recognizing and especially confirming whether A actually and necessarily entails, involves, produces, generates, provokes, determines, conditions B in such a way that, while B can never be prescinded from A because B hangs down from A, A can actually be prescinded from B in order to be investigated independently. Prescission is the only method of heuristic analysis that can figure out how synthesis works without messing it up. That is because it specializes in identifying the non-reciprocal order of dependence that governs the transmission of information-­ laden signs across the relational hinges that link distinct stages within an inferential

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process. Never a fully severing cut because it stops short of scission, prescission reveals, by using no more than a fine scraper with a blunt edge, the inner dynamic and directional structure of distinct real parts, displays the nature of the formal power peculiar to each hinge, and shows that all are indispensable to the whole. It therefore provides processual distinctions that have the advantage of being at once non-arbitrary and verifiable because they are open to testing and criticism. When combined with an inductive inquiry that identifies possibly distinct necessary conceptual parts, prescission ascertains their respective logical role, their non-­ redundancy, their unidirectionality, the reality of their gradation (gradual ordering), their indispensability, and the limits of their transformative effects throughout the chain of logical modifications. Put differently, prescission is the fundamental tool for exploring not only theoretical interfaces, but even more fundamentally the logic of interfacing. And that is what readers will notably experience when reading Ivo Ibri’s sequence of essays. Why? Because what has long attracted his attention is the complex set of interfaces that govern the passage from phenomenology (or phaneroscopy) to and through the normative sciences (aesthetics, ethics, semio-logic) and to and through metaphysics. Those are the philosophical sciences alluded to previously, those that it took a long time for Peirce to figuring out their non-arbitrary “gradation” and their respective philosophical mission, those regarding which Ibri has conducted recurrent research driven by his acute sensitivity to the variform manifestations of Peirce’s three categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Needless to say, the first time Peirce himself defined and wielded his prescissive scraper was when he spent the mid-1860s laboring on the new list of categories, redefining what was a category (a distinct and irreducible stage of the structure of inquiry), what form their list had to take (the form of their gradual unidirectional order), and what each consisted in. That took prolonged inductive observation and prescissive scrubbing of the process that originates and expresses propositions that connect elements of experience with others through correlation, comparison, and predication. It took him another 20 years to generalize them from the merely epistemic and logical to the metaphysical writ large, thanks to a protracted and multiform scientific investigation that convinced him of the reality of the governing tricategorial structure across all the sciences, philosophical, physical, or psychical. Categorial prescission it was, too, that allowed him in the early 1900s to finalize his map of the philosophical sciences and of much else, including his theory of perception, of inferences, and of semiotics, with essential consequences in metaphysics and even cosmology—all matters carefully broached in Ibri’s book. Most important of course is the overarching “-ism” that spans that entire philosophical enterprise: Peirce’s pragmaticism. Though Peirce may have modestly confined pragmaticism to its method of clarification of scientific conceptions, it remains that, historically speaking, no other “-ism” can claim to have been grounded on a demonstrable theorem—Peirce’s ever-evolving pragmatic maxim, which eventually turned into the most fundamental logical claim logic itself could ever make, the maxim that actually breathes the very spirit of logic. Peirce since his youth had established that fundamental definitions tend to express a functional purpose. The

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pragmatic maxim expresses a purpose, too, the most fundamental purpose of logic, which is inquiry as the least arbitrary and most comprehensive quest for truth-­ oriented meaning one could suggest. Peirce turned adherence to that maxim into a condition of symbolical meaningfulness within scientific pursuits. Such a philosophical move could not be contingent nor arbitrary: the claim not only had to be demonstrable like a theorem, it also had to have solid metaphysical backing given Peirce’s speculation that the cosmos itself, as noetos and intelligible, had to and did manifest throughout its evolution processes that were formally identical to, while far more general than, processes of inquiry—processes accountable in terms of semiosis. Here is a book, then, that professes to investigate the interfacing framework between semiotics and pragmatism. The book’s contents, however, and most fortunately, are broader than the title, because what Ibri really does is to sound the depths of interfaces between phaneroscopy and aesthetics, between aesthetics and ethics, between ethics and semio-logic, and between the normative sciences and metaphysics. That sounding of depths is a necessary step toward Ibri’s exploration of pragmaticism, enabling him to show how that entire set of dynamic interfaces is actually buttressed and traversed by pragmatism’s continuous interfacial stance. The latter interface, between pragmatism and each of the philosophical sciences, is not one of prescissive transition, however, for pragmatism is not a philosophical science but a method and spirit of inquiry that embraces a three-category realism while adopting a critical commonsensist stance. The interfaces that are woven by the dependence relations among the philosophical sciences are categorially driven for the most part. But not the interface between them and pragmatism: that one is of a different kind, one that evokes the relationship between a painting and its frame. The frame itself, even if thinned to invisibility, is an interface between painting and wall. But the frame does more than helping viewer transition from one universe to another. The frame is far more concerned with the painting than with the wall. It does something to it, some sort of conditionalizing that may take many forms with many effects. A frame tends to set a general tone, an encompassing perspective, a third instantiated into a second that actualizes myriad firsts. The painting cannot but be informed by the frame. That is what pragmatism does to phaneroscopy, to aesthetics, to ethics, to semio-logic, and to metaphysics in Peirce: it frames them all, its own interface affecting subtly the distinct interfaces through which each of them gets to “touch” its neighbors. And that is what Ivo Ibri, in many rich ways, manages to capture throughout his chapters. One way to get a deeper general sense of Ibri’s interfacial method, while also confirming its legitimacy and well-groundedness, is to observe its congruence with Peirce’s attempts to formulate the pragmatic maxim through the abstractive activity of prescission, keeping in mind that this activity needs to ascertain the reality of non-reciprocal dependence relations through an inductive test that recognizes each of them under every experiment regardless of conditional or circumstantial variations. Only then, by identifying their ultimate dynamic components and displaying their respective mutual roles, will emerge the processual and dialectic logic that characterizes interface-defining dependencies.

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In June 1905 Peirce reformulated the pragmatic maxim in these semiotic terms: The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol.

The intellectual purport of a symbol constitutes its meaning, and the maxim therefore provides the meaning of meaning in succinct form. As one retraces the history of Peirce’s reformulations of that maxim from 1877 to the end of his life, each propelled by varying “circumstances and desires,” one cannot but be struck by the several “prescissions” Peirce had to commit in order to make that idea clear. Peirce’s post-1903 reformulations manifest especially well how he came to rely on the more refined distinctions brought about within his mature semiotic theory. His elaborate definition of the sign’s triadic relation is replete with acts of prescission, as are his several attempts to classify the functions fulfilled by different classes of signs. Most characteristic is the “logical interpretant” from which one can prescind energetic interpretants, and from either of which one can prescind emotional interpretants (never the reverse). Except for one kind, a feature of all logical interpretants is their continuous appeal to other such interpretants. The only exception is the “final logical interpretant,” which Peirce argued manifests itself only in one particular fashion: that of a habit. Habits are both “terminal” and teleological: they bring inquiry to an end and bring about action—action as conduct informed by the conditional telic rule embodied in that habit. It happens that such a habit, so logically or semiotically defined, corresponds to Peirce’s pragmaticist definition of meaning. The embodied rule is a resolution to adopt a certain conduct, or to imprint to actions a direction or a strategy meant to realize a particular but general configuration of transformational acts and events (energetic interpretants) that end up in a certain state of things, notably conveyed experientially through emotional interpretants. Ibri’s collection has much of value to say about their relations to experience, conduct, habit, and semiosis, whose very structure is inhabited by an interfacial agency. How the final logical interpretant works itself out into conduct-driven rule-bound actions involves three theoretical interfaces: between ethics and pragmatism (see Ibri’s Chap. 21), between ethics and semiotics (or semio-logic), and between aesthetics and ethics as normative sciences Peirceanly defined. The first two follow from the pragmatist acknowledgment that symbolic meanings end up becoming applicable to human conduct in a form “which is most directly applicable to self-­ control under every situation and to every purpose” (EP 2, p. 340, 1904). A conduct that cares for the aim it is designed to fulfill also cares for correcting itself for the sake of that aim: that is what self-control is about. It has to do with the self-­discipline of holding itself to the plan of conduct, thus turning itself into an effective habit or a “unitary determination” (EP 2, p. 551, n. 15, 1908) not rigid but flexible since the permanently telic final interpretant is terminal only temporarily: it may re-enter inquiry at any time. The interface between aesthetics and pragmatism (see Ibri’s Chap. 23) follows from the other pragmatist acknowledgment that symbolic meanings, like any

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symbolical complex no matter how general, need to be experientially compelling or attractive in order to have any rhetorical power (the power of prompting new interpretants to join in). There is deep semiotic grounding for this idea. Aside from the qualisigns that a sinsign happens to anchor, there are other qualisigns that relate to the sinsign as such (as opposed to the forms that get anchored), and Peirce called them a sinsign’s indefinite “aspects.” The same reasoning applies to legisigns: those, too, must have qualisigns that register their modes of governing, and Peirce called such qualisigns a legisign’s vague “despects” (R 284 ISP 66, c. 1905–06). The conditionality or “if-then-ness” of general laws or habits bears its own colors, as it were (those are the vague firsts of thirds), and thus the distinction between types of qualisigns matters much because of the bearing its gives to Ibri’s interpretation of Peirce’s cosmogenesis. Even theories, as symbolic constructions, trigger emotional interpretants (see Ibri’s Chap. 18). True, Peirce did exclaim in late 1913 that the maxim of Pragmatism did “not bestow a single smile upon beauty, upon moral virtue, or upon abstract truth—the three things that alone raise Humanity above Animality” (EP 2, p. 465). That statement has long puzzled scholars. Peirce made that point to emphasize the fact that the pragmatic maxim was all about security and not about uberty in our reasonings. The maxim is not a method to create new ideas or hypotheses, nor a method to create aesthetic experiences or virtuous activities or truthful pronouncements. The maxim is not there to teach any particular normative lesson of any kind. But as regards new hypotheses, it is a method that follows them through, once they have been formulated, across all conceivable circumstances. As to aesthetic experiences, the maxim is a method that triggers admirative appreciation both for its final cause and for the quality of its outcomes. As to moral virtue, it is a method that aims at its own summum bonum, dubbed concrete reasonableness. As to abstract truth, it is a method that embodies a living conception of truth as the telic vector that urges on a limitless community of inquirers. It makes inquiry agapastic. To talk about the pragmatic maxim as a method is one thing. But there is another point of view that is worth exploring, especially because Ibri has so much to say about it that is illuminating (see Chaps. 13, 14, and 15): the maxim itself is a habit, an acquired habit that requires training, discipline, and continued interpretation for the sake of its applications. What matters for any habit is to get itself instantiated through a continuum of conduct and action on those occasions that call for it. One of Ibri’s significant contributions is to draw attention to the philosophical significance of the timing of the instantiation. Peirce wrote a great deal about time (or Chronos) but did not thematize that aspect of what could be couched in semiotic terms as the replication of a legisign that calls for the actualization of opportune qualia or possibilia. To recognize that a particular developing situation is building up a set of circumstances and desires whose resolution would call for the application of just a certain kind of novel aesthetic apprehension or ethical conduct animated by the urge to fulfill just a particular kind of purpose or intention, that requires a blend of sensitivity and judiciousness. Ibri has usefully repurposed the concept of Kairós to account for the origination of that very capacity to sense novel forms and instantiate a general or to exercise, even correct, a habit when the opportunity arises in the blink of an eye. How so?

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There are several sides to Ibri’s exploration of Kairós, two that are explicit in his work: the side of aesthetics (in part as theory of art) and the side that blends epistemology with ontology; and one side that is implicit but undeniably present, so much so that it is a fair prediction that the author will explore it further in subsequent work: the side of ethics. Ibri relies in all regards on a crucial passage at the end of Peirce’s sixth Cambridge Conferences lecture of 1898, titled “Causation and Force” (CP 6.86, RLT 216). Peirce there introduced the hypothesis that Chronos “has a point of discontinuity at the present” —a point that corresponds to the actual instant that, in some respect, appears and thus is experienced as independent from the other processing (incoming and outgoing) instants. That Peirce declared two lectures later that there was every reason to suppose that time is not discontinuous (CP 6.210, RLT 264) is no contradiction because the point of discontinuity does not affect the continuum per se, which is not made of points. Ibri is the first Peirce scholar to have provided a genuinely insightful interpretation of that point of discontinuity in chapter 5 of his Kósmos Noētos (Paulus, 2015; Springer, 2017). It is one thing for Chronos’s time to flow undisturbed in its inherent thirdness, and quite another for that flow to get sensed and experienced. The present happens to coincide with time’s own presencing or manifestation, but the flow of manifestation or presencing is a distinct continuum—hence the mark of discontinuity in a point that, as any point, is a sign of experiential representation of the reality of the underlying continuum, a sign that marks it without altering it. Ibri calls the continuous experiencing of that ever diversifying and yet unique marking Kairós, for the core of any presencing as experienced is primarily its phaneralization, the non-dual medium or host of which is what Peirce called quale-consciousness. Kairós is to Chronos what a chalk line is to the blackboard in the course of its tracing. Ibri’s proposal is that Kairós is time internalized while Chronos is objective time externalized. They are perpendicular to each other, crossing each other at that particular point of experiential discontinuity where what predominates within the experiencing mind is the presentness of the present as First. That self-presencing moment consists of a presencing, not of an infinity of potential firsts, but of only of those that happened to be serendipitously actualizable across that very moment—which is what makes them fundamentally kairotic because what of it emerges to phaneral awareness is under no control. Peirce confirmed this insight of the author, especially on the side of a theory of perception, 5  years later when he drew attention to the “highly confrontitial” moment of perception “that is continually flowing upon us” (R 881: 65, CP 7.653, June 1903)—Kairós’s flow, that is, not Chronos’s. But it stands to ontological and semiotic reason that Kairós, as a cross-continuum of phaneral apprehension of firsts open to musement, would also extend to aspectual and despectual firsts that root normativity as Peirce came to conceive of it in the early 1900s, when he realized that aesthetics, not as a theory of art but as a more fundamental science of the normative or attractive power of firsts, was itself rooting ethics and logic. At a fundamental aesthetic level, Kairós brings unplanned Firsts to emerge from within the flow, as fortuitous and somehow opportune variations that bring out, in raw heuristic fashion, singular forms and thus new insights, yet unnamed but full of potential. They may flicker away or exert longer-lasting impressions, thus offering themselves

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as aesthetic occasions of wonderment that in turn may call for judicious adjustment and plastic adaptation of a mindset to new interpretations, not only emotional, but in time also aspectually energetic or despectually logical. Such presencing moments of experience provide the phaneralizing mind with the chance of genuine chance-­ encounters: immediate awareness of firsts that attention to Chronos would hide. Kairós, then, opens up moments when Chronos’s teleological continuum’s final cause gets to interface with—and thus to impress, and likely be impressed by—the continuum of existence, within which unforeseen qualia and possibilia may well get unexpectedly actualized in ways that alter strategies of being while expanding its horizon. This is how Kairós also comes with ethical resonances that induce, seemingly out of the blue, moments of freedom of choice and action, moments when our subjective interpretation gets to decide somehow instinctively what to do if it cares to, gets to take a risk, gets possibly to interfere with Chronos’s continuum, and thus gets to err while doing so, and in so doing gets to “exist.” The distinction between Chronos and Kairós also governs Ibri’s distinction between the two sides of habits (Chap. 14). Habits, he says, do not by themselves generate development. Accidents and catastrophes do—episodes of secondness, or discontinuities. Once more, the discontinuous is not necessarily a break in a continuum; it is rather a moment where a succession of events cannot pursue its course without importing into itself suggestions coming down from another, likely overarching, or merely alternative, continuum. Such suggestions are not brought in miraculously but through a semiosic process of logical interpretance. Ibri explains that every habit synchronizes Chronos and Kairós in that regard. Episodes of secondness rise to consciousness vividly especially when they break the regularity we are in. They create a hiatus, and a hiatus is an opportunity for attending to what had been neglected through the sheer inertia of set habits. Sometimes the hiatus gets easily diagnosed and repaired, but sometimes not: sometimes no logical interpretant comes to the rescue for lack of relevance to or familiarity with the incidental cause of the hiatus. The forms at play cannot be experienced intelligibly yet, they await mediation, representation, meaning. Ibri talks eloquently about the “immense residue of the world that does not fit in our conceptual networks” and suggests that it behooves artists and poets to first capture them. Here it is where the pragmatic maxim succeeds or fails to come to the rescue, though only to the extent that meanings need to be grasped. As a habit, it tells us what general conduct to adopt when seeking meanings. But conduct in the actualizing moment is not as broadly general and cannot avail itself of the maxim’s embedded eternity. The bet of intelligibility is not always won. It is not that the maxim is a habit that can get broken: it may not bestow smiles upon interpretants not logical, but it does not glare either. It is rather that, as any habit, it is specialized in its kind of outcomes always subject to the vagaries of experience. The pragmatic maxim’s goal is the continuous concretion of reasonableness, but it cannot achieve it by itself. Its fuller meaning implies experienceability, and therefore other maxims as well, aesthetic and ethical. Peirce did not craft its formulation naively, as warrants the theoretical interface that allows pragmatism to frame semiotics and the other normative sciences. In that regard, Ivo Ibri’s collected essays

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brims with clarifying insights from beginning to end. He manages to reveal plenty of aspects of Peirce’s thought from angles the traditional scholarship has not been equipped to notice. How not to miss such kairotic theoretical opportunities and how to exploit them to heuristic advantage is a lesson well taught in this outstanding book. The scholarship’s debt of gratitude to the author can only be paid by learning that lesson. Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, IN, USA

André De Tienne

Abbreviations of Works Cited in the Book Works by Peirce CP: Collected Papers [followed by the volume number and paragraph number]

PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1931–35 e 1958. 8 volumes. Electronic Edition. EP: The Essential Peirce [followed by the volume number and page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. The Peirce Edition Project (Ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. V. 1. PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. The Peirce Edition Project (Ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. V. 2. HP: Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science [followed by the volume number and page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam, Mouton, 1985; 2 volumes; Carolyn Eisele (editor). N: Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to the Nation [followed by the volume number and page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to the Nation. Lubbock, Texas Tech Press, 1975–1987; 4 volumes; Kenneth L. Ketner, James Edward Cook (editors). NEM: The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce [followed by the volume number and page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce. The Hague, Mouton, 1976, 4 volumes; Carolyn Eisele (editor).

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Abbreviations of Works Cited in the Book

PW: Semiotic and Significs – The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby [followed by the page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. Semiotic and Significs – The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1977; Charles S. Hardwick (editor). RLT: Reasoning and the Logic of Things [followed by page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. Reasoning and the Logic of Things – The Cambridge Conferences; Lectures of 1898. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1992; Kenneth L. Ketner (editor). W: Writings of Charles S. Peirce [followed by the volume and page number] PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce: A Chronological Edition. The Peirce Edition Project (Ed.). Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982–2010. 8 Volumes.

Works by Other Authors CIS: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity [followed by page number] RORTY, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. EHO: Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers [followed by page number] RORTY, Richard. Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers. Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ORT: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers [followed by page number] RORTY, Richard. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. PMN: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [followed by the page number] RORTY, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

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PSH: Philosophy and Social Hope [followed by page number] RORTY, Richard. Philosophy and Social Hope. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1999. TP: Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers [followed by page number] RORTY, Richard. Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Preface

The idea of making a book with a collection of essays came from a motivation that can be considered obvious: to bring together what was scattered in a wide variety of publications, both in Brazil and abroad. Furthermore, readers can envision two functions that the book will, to some extent, fulfill. The first is to provide direct access to the work of a single author to scholars interested in the themes presented here, sparing them the task of searching for them in numerous publications in different vehicles. On the other hand, this profile of work enables the author to take stock of his own research, giving him the private experience of the memory proper to each of the texts: of the contingency of his writing, of his personal motivation, and, mainly, of the reflection stimulated by academic experiences. However, when it comes to proposing possibly relevant topics to potentially interested readers, the question arises: to whom should the text be addressed? To specialists or to students of philosophy in general? These questions arise when it comes to reflecting on the work of an author like Peirce, who engaged in intense dialogue with the ideas and problems spanning the entire history of philosophy. Although he is still a relatively little-known thinker, he has been increasingly studied, and therefore it is our mission to present the reader with a framework of concepts, definitions, and specific vocabulary that will allow them to situate themselves within this language universe through which the topics of the book will navigate. Moreover, it is worth noting that the task of reflecting heuristically on Peirce’s thought implies making explicit an approach that has been recurrent in the essays of this work, that is, that the fullest understanding of Peirce’s work requires an awareness of the systemic character of his philosophy, characterizing a distinctive path of interpretation. The price one pays for fulfilling this kind of mission is not becoming bored with the almost-ubiquitous need of making it possible to understand the author this work is centered on. With essays sequentially ordered as chapters in each section, it was necessary, as much as possible, to remove redundancies in quotations and passages that, in each of these essays, put into context the general theoretical framework of the topic specifically discussed. Many passages taken from Peirce’s work will find their way xxiii

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back into later chapters. However, we consider that they serve to reinforce concepts dear to the specific approach of the text and, frequently, their re-exposition is due to the exploration of additional, even proximal, meanings that were important to encompass for the specific nature of the text. Incidentally, the chosen title is emblematic of the line of reflection on Peirce’s philosophy to which we have dedicated ourselves. We believe that the interfaces between Semiotics and Pragmatism define the theoretical territory in which circulate the various nuances of the notion of meaning that is grounded in the first of the sciences of Philosophy, Phenomenology. Within Phenomenology we find the categories of experience, the modes of being of all phenomena that can appear to a potentially cognitive mind. This fertile relationship between Semiotics, Pragmatism, and Phenomenology provides an experimental field that confers verisimilitude to the propositions derived from it, allowing us to cast hypothetical, abductive nets for the formulation of a metaphysics—in particular, an ontology—that makes it feasible to rethink a realism of the universals, no longer in terms of the problems posed in its scholastic origin, but in light of issues arising from contemporary culture in its most general expressions. With a very original terminology, often taken from ancient Greek, Peirce’s philosophical language seeks to be faithful to his text Ethics of Terminology,1 which preaches the adoption of a system for naming concepts that seeks to attribute semantic univocity to new ideas, while respecting the names of concepts already established throughout time in their specific historical context, avoiding unjustified renaming that might obscure meaning. This task of the careful use of philosophical vocabulary already fulfills, to a great extent, the elimination of polysemy that could be detrimental to the clarity of ideas, without, however, making this focus on language the main object that philosophy should be concerned with. On the contrary, Peirce ventures into a metaphysics that he himself called scientific, based on the theoretical ground of a phenomenology in which we find a differentiated and ample spectrum of his concept of experience. Experience, in the Peircean sense, is not confined to what is immediately given to the senses but consists of what can be perceived and interpreted spatiotemporally. This is one of the basic requisites of his ontological realism, together with the cognitive continuity of interpretations that can always be checked by factual otherness. This realism is born phenomenologically of the pragmatic discovery of the cognitive insufficiency of the immediate, and forces us into a relationship with Chronos, in the form of an awareness of its otherness as the irrevocable past and in the expectation of the way it will write the future: that which will be habitually identified and that which may surprise us. Of this scripture, in truth, we have only a limited perception. A factual, temporal portion, we apprehend at the mercy of the spectrum of our questions to phenomena, as Kant would say. This perceptual restriction is shaped by the criterion of relevance

 See CP 2.219–2.226 and EP II, p. 263–266.

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of the elements that are potentially susceptible of being interpreted. There is, here, a strong trace of a Peircean-style realist philosophy: reality is not constituted by language or by the set of representations we make of it—it is not to be confused with the selection made from it by our criteria of relevance. I have called what remains outside our logical representations the residue of the world. This residue is not only constituted by what we do not yet know, but also by a portion of phenomena that do not fit into our network of logically structured language, which does not require that they be silenced. The rich categorical ontology of Peirce’s philosophy enables us to think of the ineffable beyond the fate of pure silence, semantically endorsing other forms of language in which everything can be said. Therefore, a universe of possible meanings overflows from the logical descriptions of the world, referring precisely to the residual abandonment of part of our experience, which will assume its pragmatic meaning through the possible affection of our human conduct. As we know, the expression practical consequences, present in the maxim of pragmatism as proposed by Peirce, establishes what gives concepts their possible meaning. In turn, the meaning of the expression, which led the maxim to be mistakenly interpreted by other versions of pragmatism that superlativize action and make it an end in itself, lends the principle a link to the phenomenological categories and, by doing so, delimits the meaning of action to one of them—secondness. Allied to what we have emphasized above, there is an imperative for this work to clarify what distinguishes Peirce’s pragmatism from other schools of thought which, lacking a complex system of interconnected doctrines into which his pragmatism would also be inserted, including a realist ontology, result in reductionist versions that defend a vulgar view of the concept of action, attributing to it a meaning that makes the theories mere instruments or tools [sic] that are useful for achieving ends also endowed with some utility, in a type of rustic practicalism that Peirce never intended. Scholars of Peirce’s style of Pragmatism know that the term practical is related to conduct and that the latter cannot be reduced to the particular instance of mere action, but to something that generalizes it and, therefore, depends on its spatial-­ temporal observation. Considering conduct as a generalization of action or way of acting, it will be placed within the third Peircean category. It is by this approach that the maxim of pragmatism is understood as linking the meaning of concepts to the affectation of conduct that they induce. There is no doubt that what can be directly observed are the actions of the various beings that constitute the theater of existence, but their generalization is inferential, and it is in this inference, provided by their mirroring in actions, that the possibilities of meaning are located. The allegedly difficult experiential field of the so-called human sciences has in the triple alliance of Semiotics, Pragmatism, and Phenomenology the possibility to redeem itself from the claim that the natural sciences can, almost exclusively and more clearly, submit their propositions to experience. Human actions, understood according to Peircean pragmatism, can always be observed as the determined form

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of exhibiting concepts, beliefs, habits, in short, all the sign forms that, in some way, shape and define individual or collective conduct. Therefore, pragmatism proposes a principle of meaning that depends on the way concepts, and everything of their nature, appear phenomenologically in experience and can be interpreted by the range of signs offered by Semiotics, namely, interpretative signs. In these, there is the possibility of identifying meanings that are not exclusive to the logical network of language but can be sought directly in experience. In Peirce’s philosophy, the identification of immediations as well as mediations is provided by the categories. While the experiences under the categories of firstness and secondness do not relate to time, and so are of an immediate nature, those under thirdness contemplate what is temporally structured, forming general signs, where the mediations that seek to represent the conduct of objects are to be found. The commitment to phenomenological appearance is, after all, what both nurtures a logical, predictive philosophy, possibly adherent to future experience, and what does not disregard that which is not situated in this realm of mediative logical inferences. It opens up the possibility of considering a kind of residue of the world that can be collected and signified by its importance in human behavior, recognizing in it a complexity that goes beyond the limits of the logical reach of language. In going through Semiotics and finding forms of meaning beyond those usually contained in statements of logical origin, we can foresee the summoning of bridges, interfaces with Pragmatism where conduct can be affected not only by the otherness of phenomena, but also by what they carry of feeling, of existential accidentalness, of the intense presence of Chronos, and, equally important, its radical absence. Not without reason, Peirce’s concept of reality is justifiably consistent with the phenomenological possibilities of various aspects of experience. The possibility of giving voice to each of them is one of the consequences of the interfacing between Semiotics and Pragmatism against the backdrop of the broad universe of classes of experience brought by Peircean Phenomenology. The heuristic power of this trio results in a conception of Nature whose forms of being become logically harmonious with its modes of appearance, relieving the subject of experience of the burden of constituting reality as is the case in the most frequent form of nominalism. On the contrary, a kind of equivalence of rights made possible by the validity of the categories both on the phenomenological and ontological planes allows us to conceive a connaturality between the human and the natural, in the good inheritance that Peirce receives from Schelling, an author who marks the spirit of his philosophy much more than he does in the letter—a century of history separates them, and their distinctiveness also derives from the cultural background of both. Peirce is a logician, albeit of an unusual strain because he gives voice to what, in general, logicians have not even dreamed of. His logical theory of discovery, given by the theory of Abduction, is based on objective elements derived from a philosophy of Nature and a system of doctrines that intertwine harmoniously, born from the trio mentioned above—Semiotics, Pragmatism, and Phenomenology. Schelling is immersed in the atmosphere of German Romanticism, answering to the demands of the poets of his time who rejected a mechanistic vision of the world

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and demanded not only a natural vitalism, but also attributed an eidos to Nature that would justify it as a work of art. The reader will be able to find them together, Peirce and Schelling, in some of the texts of this book and verify their theoretical proximity. Cohabiting in the theoretical building of an author makes us listen to invitations of ideas that wander inside its environment. They combine in unusual ways and summon others, available throughout history, to form rich conjectures that open up horizons of thought and allow a free creative play that can result in new philosophical discoveries. Thus, the intense immersion in the ideas of an author who built a complex theoretical system, perhaps the last in the history of philosophy who did so, awakens ambitions to pursue the conjectures that this system began, spreading its potentially combinatory valences to various fields of human culture. Within the scope of these ambitions is a new understanding of the sciences, the arts, and human relations. For this, it is not enough, as a personal testimony, a mere logical articulation of the doctrines proposed by the system, but what Schelling demanded from his readers in order to understand his writings: sensitivity. Alongside the arduous study of Peirce’s philosophy, this Schellingian sensitivity comes to play an important role in grasping the reach of ideas beyond their merely logical motivation. Training it exemplarily through music and poetry, however unusual it may sound, will allow the spirit to perceive what goes beyond the apparent content of the philosophical doctrines of an essentially heuristic system, suggesting a renewed and creative vision of the world and of human relations. A poetic semiotics can account for that part of the world that refuses to be included in logical diagrams, especially because, by its own nature, it does not fit into Chronos. In order to perceive it, we need to accept its invitation to abandon the factual chronology and surrender ourselves to a time of an inner, subjective nature, where the creative freedom of art can, with propriety, collect that residue of reality which cannot be predicted by logical theories. A realism of universals is clearly consummated, no longer restricted to those endowed with formal syntax, but also to those that, despite being formless, typify continua of possibilities that can only be represented in polysemic systems of signs, proper to the various expressions available to the language of art. It could be said that the work of discussing a relatively new philosophy imposes, besides the basic task of offering the premises that constitute it, for the sake of its intelligibility, also that we should emphasize its dialoguing character with the history of ideas, which disqualifies monothematic approaches, not infrequent in the theoretical schools that have appropriated it. The consequences of Peirce’s philosophy are not yet properly explored, and once his theoretical system is understood it is possible to conjecture what they might be. This is undoubtedly an expectation nurtured by the doctrine of Synechism,2 under

 Term derived from the Greek Synechés, concerning his theory of ontological continuity, replacing the notion of universality. 2

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which the author recommends the continuity of investigation and the conjectures that give rise to them, fueling a philosophy that is driven by invention and discovery. This set of tasks that intends to summon the non-specialist to appreciate a distinctive author, offering him or her the foundations on which a new vision of the world and the knowledge that his thought provides, may, in certain situations, bore the specialist already familiar with Peirce’s work. For the latter, I hope that each one of the texts in this book may compensate for an eventual return to familiar foundations, offering them, in this sense, the difficult condition of showing something original and provocative for the continuity of their reflection. I believe that Peirce would approve that scholars of his work allow themselves to be imbued with the heuristic and speculative spirit of his thought, so that at some point they venture into new ideas in philosophy that allow them to say: with Peirce and beyond him. Finally, it is worth emphasizing, once again, that the experience of going through these essays as an author presents an awareness of how much remains to be said in each of them, bringing with it the commitment to give shape, in future texts, to what was contingently silenced in each of them. I hope that the reader’s research will be made easier by this work, and that he or she will be able to make use of the suggestions, explicit or silent, that each essay may possibly provide about what else could have been said. São Paulo, Brazil

Ivo Assad Ibri

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Desirée Paschoal de Melo for the outstanding work on the preparation of the manuscript of this book as well as Ryan Holke for the English translation of it. I also would like to especially thank Caique Marra de Melo, who has worked on all aspects of the manuscript and led with extreme competence the team he worked with. Let me also thank the fundamental support received from Bruno Fiuza, from Springer Brazil, who has articulated the book’s editorial work with the Springer International staff.

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Contents

Part I On Philosophy of Art 1

Reflections on a Poetic of Otherness������������������������������������������������������    3

2

 Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy������������������������    9 2.1 Conjectures on the Possible Starting Point of a Philosophy ������������   11 2.2 The Influence of Schelling����������������������������������������������������������������   15 2.3 Unity as a Starting Point in Peirce’s Philosophy������������������������������   19 2.4 The Theoretical System��������������������������������������������������������������������   22 2.4.1 Mathematics��������������������������������������������������������������������������   22 2.4.2 Phenomenology and Categorial Genetic Symmetry: The Roots of a Theory of World ����������   23 2.4.3 The Fabric of Ontology��������������������������������������������������������   27 2.4.4 The Normative Sciences ������������������������������������������������������   31 2.4.5 The Concept of Play�������������������������������������������������������������   33 2.5 Thematic Overview��������������������������������������������������������������������������   34

3

 Peircean Seeds for a Philosophy of Art��������������������������������������������������   37 3.1 First Seed: The Role of Mathematics������������������������������������������������   38 3.2 Second Seed: A Hiatus in Time��������������������������������������������������������   41 3.3 Third Seed: Chance and Creativity ��������������������������������������������������   43 3.4 Fourth Seed: The Ontological Limits of Science and the Nameless Things������������������������������������������������������������������   45 3.5 Fifth Seed: Idealism and Cosmology������������������������������������������������   47 3.6 Sixth Seed: Polysemy and the World of Icons����������������������������������   48 3.7 Thematic Overview��������������������������������������������������������������������������   49

4

 The Poetics of Nameless Things��������������������������������������������������������������   51 4.1 Thoughts on Peirce’s Philosophy: Some Boundary Conditions for a Theory of Art����������������������������������������������������������   52 4.2 On Things That Have Names������������������������������������������������������������   56 4.3 On Nameless Things ������������������������������������������������������������������������   57 4.4 A Passage Through Peirce’s Cosmology������������������������������������������   58 xxxi

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4.5 Returning to Some Aspects of Peirce’s Phenomenology������������������   59 4.6 Finally Art ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   61 4.7 A Very Brief Conclusion, Out of the Many Possible Ones��������������   62 5

The Meaning of Firstness in Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Peirce�����������������������������������������������������������������������   65 5.1 On Firstness as Freedom in Schelling����������������������������������������������   65 5.2 On Firstness as Liberation in Schopenhauer������������������������������������   68 5.3 Firstness in Peirce ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   70 5.4 Thematic Overview��������������������������������������������������������������������������   74

Part II On Heuristic Logic 6

 The Heuristic Exclusivity of Abduction in Peirce’s Philosophy����������   79 6.1 Section I��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   79 6.2 Section II������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   82 6.3 Section III������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   91

7

 The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce’s Philosophy����������������������   97 7.1 On the Relation Between Ideality and Reality in Peirce������������������   97 7.1.1 Reflections on Peirce’s Realism��������������������������������������������   98 7.1.2 Reality and Ideality in Peirce’s Categories ��������������������������   99 7.1.3 Concerning a Synthesis of the Categories����������������������������  101 7.1.4 Enhancing Objective Idealism����������������������������������������������  102 7.1.5 Further Observations on the Overlapping of Reality and Ideality in Peirce’s Philosophy����������������������  103 7.1.6 Some Important Consequences of Peirce’s Realism-Idealism������������������������������������������������������������������  104 7.2 Reflections on The Law of Mind ������������������������������������������������������  106 7.2.1 Peirce’s Evolutionism: Agapism as Heuristic Principle��������  111 7.3 Thematic Overview��������������������������������������������������������������������������  115

8

On Uncertainty����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  117 8.1 Chance and Uncertainty��������������������������������������������������������������������  117 8.2 Evolutionism and the Origin of Laws ����������������������������������������������  120 8.3 Thematic Overview��������������������������������������������������������������������������  121

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Vital Ends and Practical Otherness: On Applied Sciences in Peirce’s Philosophy������������������������������������������  123 9.1 Reflecting on Peirce’s Considerations of Applied Sciences ������������  124 9.1.1 The Nexus with Peirce’s Pragmatism ����������������������������������  125 9.1.2 What, After All, Is Experience in Applied Sciences? ����������  127 9.1.3 The Implicit Fallibilism in Applied Sciences������������������������  130 9.2 Thematic Overview��������������������������������������������������������������������������  131

Contents

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Part III On the Theory of Beliefs 10 Additional  Reflections on Choices, Dogmatisms, and Bets: Justifying Peirce’s Realism����������������������������������������������������  135 10.1 The Path of Peirce’s Thoughts on Realism ������������������������������������  136 10.2 Representation and Mediation Under a Realistic Approach ����������  140 10.3 Thematic Overview������������������������������������������������������������������������  143 11 The  Twilight of Reality and the Melancholic Irony of Brilliant, Unlasting Success: Reflecting on Emotional and Logical Interpretants in Peirce’s Modes for Fixation of Beliefs������������������������������������������������������������������������������  147 11.1 Interpretants in the Forms of Belief������������������������������������������������  150 Part IV Historical Context of Pragmatism in Brazil 12 Topics  on the Studies of Peirce’s Pragmatism and North American Philosophy in Brazil��������������������������������������������  157 12.1 Overview of North American Philosophy Studies in Brazil ����������  157 12.2 Reflecting on the Specific Reception of Peirce’s Philosophy in Brazil������������������������������������������������������������������������  159 12.3 A Latin Element in Peirce’s Philosophy? ��������������������������������������  162 Part V On the Theory of Habits 13 The  Formation of Habits and the Origin of Laws in Ch. S. Peirce’s Cambridge Conference VII ��������������������������������������  167 13.1 A Fundamental Question����������������������������������������������������������������  168 13.2 On the Law of the Conservation of Energy and Nonconservative Actions����������������������������������������������������������  168 13.3 Reality and Deviation Within Laws������������������������������������������������  169 13.4 Types of Associations of Ideas��������������������������������������������������������  170 13.5 On the Origin of the Laws of Nature����������������������������������������������  171 13.6 Habits as the Origin of the Physical and Psychical Laws ��������������  173 13.7 For Future Reflection����������������������������������������������������������������������  173 14 The  Double Face of Habits: Time and Timeless in Pragmatic Experience ������������������������������������������������������������������������  177 14.1 The Heuristic Nature of Peircean Phenomenology������������������������  177 14.1.1 The External Face of Firstness������������������������������������������  184 14.1.2 The Inner Face of Firstness ����������������������������������������������  186 14.2 On Chronos and Kairós������������������������������������������������������������������  189 14.3 The Double Face of Habits ������������������������������������������������������������  191 15 Habits  Formation and Self-Organization: A Peircean Approach ������������������������������������������������������������������������������  195 15.1 On Logical and Emotional Interpretants����������������������������������������  196

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Contents

15.2 The Phenomenology of Qualisigns and Sinsigns����������������������������  199 15.3 Emotional Interpretants and Crude Induction��������������������������������  201 15.4 Self-Organization and Habits of Interpretation������������������������������  204 15.5 Thematic Overview������������������������������������������������������������������������  205 Part VI On Pragmatism and Objective Idealism 16 The  Schellingian Roots of Peirce’s Idealism������������������������������������������  209 16.1 A Synthesis: On Peirce’s Idealism and Its Schellingian Roots������  223 17 The  Continuity of Life: On Peirce’s Objective Idealism����������������������  225 17.1 On Philosophical Terminology: Setting the Stage for a Better Understanding of Some Peircean Concepts����������������  226 17.2 Why Realism and Idealism in Peirce? Genesis Conjectures����������  228 17.3 Connaturality, Semiotic Dialogy, and Pragmatism ������������������������  233 17.4 Mind and Matter: Idealism in Light of Pragmatism ����������������������  234 17.5 Evolutionarily Grounded Idealism��������������������������������������������������  236 17.6 Idealism and the Peircean Notion of Life ��������������������������������������  238 17.7 The Continuity of Life��������������������������������������������������������������������  240 18 The  Semiotic Resilient Mind: Conflictual and Agapic Relationship Between Logical and Emotional Interpretants��������������  241 18.1 Choosing an Entrance in the Peircean Edifice��������������������������������  241 18.2 The Pragmatic Realism of the Internal and External Worlds����������  244 18.3 Knowing Habits: Prospecting the Future����������������������������������������  248 18.3.1 The Water and the Fishing Net������������������������������������������  250 18.4 The Resilient Mind: A Synthesis����������������������������������������������������  250 Part VII On Pragmatism and Pragmaticism 19 Neopragmatism  Viewed by Pragmaticism: A Redescription ��������������  255 19.1 On the Concepts of Representation and Truth (Theses A and B)������������������������������������������������������������  258 19.2 On Discovery and Invention (Theses C and D)������������������������������  261 19.3 Mediation and Redescription (Theses E and F)������������������������������  262 19.4 On Community and Solidarity (Thesis G)��������������������������������������  263 19.5 Thematic Overview������������������������������������������������������������������������  265 20 The  Ontology of Action in Peirce’s Philosophy ������������������������������������  267 20.1 On Peirce’s Categories��������������������������������������������������������������������  268 20.1.1 Phenomenology of Pragmatic Reason������������������������������  268 20.1.2 On the Ontology of Action������������������������������������������������  273 20.2 A Final Word����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  275 21 Considerations  on the Statute of Ethics in Charles S. Peirce’s Pragmatism���������������������������������������������������������  277

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22 Ethical  Aspects of Fake News and Alternative Facts: A Semiotic-­Pragmatic Approach������������������������������������������������������������  283 22.1 Considerations on the Theme����������������������������������������������������������  283 22.2 Some Historical Topics ������������������������������������������������������������������  284 22.3 Classes of Fake News���������������������������������������������������������������������  286 22.4 On the Semiotic Distinction Between Immediate and Dynamic Objects: Reality and Fiction ������������������������������������  287 22.5 A Passage Through Peirce’s Theory of Belief��������������������������������  289 22.6 The Deleterious Fiction of Fake News: The Indistinction Between Imaginary and Real������������������������������  290 22.7 Thematic Overview������������������������������������������������������������������������  291 23 The  Aesthetic Face of Peirce’s Pragmaticist Epistemology������������������  295 23.1 A Philosophy to Be Continued ������������������������������������������������������  295 23.2 The Ethical Vein of Pragmaticism��������������������������������������������������  303 23.3 Pragmatic Ethicality in the Forms of Beliefs����������������������������������  305 23.4 The Incessant Pursuit of Form��������������������������������������������������������  307 23.5 The Living Form of the Admirable ������������������������������������������������  309 23.6 To Those Who Have Not Yet Experienced the Genetic Unity of Beauty ����������������������������������������������������������  310 24 Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces������������������������������  311 References ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  321 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  333

About the Author

Ivo Assad Ibri  ([email protected]) is full Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the founder and director of the Center for Pragmatism Studies at his university and editor of the journal Cognitio. His work is mainly focused on American pragmatism and German idealism. He published several essays on pragmatism and semiotics and a book on Peirce’s metaphysics called Kósmos Noétos (Springer, 2017). He is fellow past president (2014–2016) of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society and honorary president of the Latin America Peirce Society.

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Part I

On Philosophy of Art

Chapter 1

Reflections on a Poetic of Otherness

The Universe is not an idea of mine; My idea of the universe is an idea of mine. Night doesn’t fall by my eyes; My idea of night is what falls by my eyes. Fernando Pessoa (Poemas Inconjuntos, author’s own translation)The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it.Charles S. Peirce (CP 8.12)

Keywords  Otherness · Object · Realism · Peirce Similarly to a kind of divinity that, like the mathematician, builds possible worlds, the artist at times discerns a possible poetry in the world’s otherness. In his interiority, a universe where the free play of imagination conceives alternative realities through the playful task of invention, he allows himself for a while to be overcome by the poetic enchantment of the no. Perhaps the bored artist reveals his ennui of that object, which he himself composes. Servile, the object of art is always obliged to grow from an act of will of its creator, to develop in the shape and diversity that imagination bestows on it, to infuse its veins with the same fluid of atemporality that nourishes the aura of the work. Perhaps the object, equally bored of being a mere reference within the ever self-representative work of art, reveals its weariness and, in a wordless dialogue, suggests to its creator that he perceives the poetry in that which does not depend on whatever we happen to think of it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it. It will no longer suffice, therefore, to cast a mere contemplative gaze on the world in order to, yet again, enjoy subverting it, promoting an ever scheming semantic displacement of the metaphor that contradicts every non sequitur, causing discomfort to those spirits that strictly conform to accepted rules of space-temporality. This chapter was already published in Baggio, Guido; Bella, Michela; Maddalena, Giovanni; Santarelli, Matteo (eds.). Esperienza, contingenza, valori—Saggi in onore di Rosa M. Calcaterra. Macerata, Qodlibet Studio, p. 101–106, 2020. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_1

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Akin to a divinity bored by its omnipotence, the poet draws enchantment from his own impotence in bringing dusk to night. Night says no and challenges him to find a possible poetry written on a kind of hidden face of otherness. Endowed by the gods of magic power always to tell the whole truth in an indirect way, the poet now faces the effectively true. He can no longer say that the universe is his idea, no longer can he betray the night: at the blink of an eye, snuff out its existence. Something exterior challengingly remains. Something objects. Something is Object. Fundamentally, it is to this real being that Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) refers in his famous semiotic triad: sign, object, and interpretant. This forever challenging exteriority called World, Nature, is a seductive invitation to deciphering through science, an infinite production of art, according to Schelling. That which is genetically admirable, which was always revealed to Plato’s gaze in Theaetetus, which aroused nostalgia in Schiller in The Gods of Greece, and which inspired Einstein to ride a ray of light to see it differently. A universe revealed by astronomers in a scale that encourages us, on the one hand, to forgo that notion of space provided by our urban look through a geometric aluminum window and, on the other, a dimension of time contained within the human interlude between life and death. An immediate admirability banishes time from consciousness, and introduces it again, awakened to the temporality of intentionally cognitive observation. For no other reason, knowing, as transcendence of mere appearance, as the search of a way of being, requires the permanence and that independence of the object that will make the latter deny false representations, namely, those that predict a flow of facts distinct from an observable flow of facts. Under this view, all judgment of a possible similarity between sign and object is thus subject to a future. This positive, mediatory knowledge of ours, therefore, always refers to what still existentially is not, to a becoming, to a possible experience, a Kantian concept fully accepted within Peirce’s epistemology. Above all, it is to this otherness of an object, indifferent to representation, that Peirce refers when he acknowledges that “one thing is to be; another is to be represented”1. In the author’s definition of sign, there are also concepts of the determinability of the sign and interpretant beyond this crucial idea of the object’s otherness: I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.2

The Object has been defined, essentially, as something which our interiority cannot seize arbitrarily; an absolute second, whose being is characterized precisely by the fact of remaining unaffected by our way of conceiving it. In this passage of the author’s work, it is noticeable that this same Object, as it is made explicit, immediately determines the sign and, mediately, its interpretant. The interpretant can be  CP 5.6; N. c86.  PW, p. 80–81; my italics.

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understood here, in simplified terms, as a sign that signifies in a continuous process, that is, whose meaning will also be revealed in futuro. One may ask, then: how does this general, mediate and immediate determination take place and, first of all, what should we understand by the object determining the sign? Let us return to our poet and remember that, the more he shuts his eyes, night continues being night, and in case no wonder is seen in this, the poet may be led to think that night, as such, determines the true sign in his mind that it is simply night, abandoning the false sign of supposing that it could be submitted to his will. The man of science, certainly more familiar with the otherness of the world, seeks his semiotic interpretants as genuine mediations before the challenge of the Object. Would not the artist of genius, in turn, be the one likely to find a kind of mediatory poetics in the face of otherness, when discovering what simply is in his future possibilities of being? Would he then transcend, in a poetic effusion, the aesthetic experience of mere fulfillment in pure presentness, conferring to it a deeper meaning? This certainly requires an enchanting theory for enchantment, in the possibly germinal nature in which a genuine interpretant is interpolated in time. Just as Schelling cautioned his readers on the need for an aesthetic sensitivity in order to understand his writings, calling on those who did not possess it to forgo reading, many may see nothing in otherness but the hell of contrariety, the curtailment of freedom by the presence of the non-self. Considering this way of regarding it, would there remain only the solitude of the absolute self and emptiness of the world? Alternatively, what would remain: philosophical pessimism or the anguish of silence? Notwithstanding this viewpoint, history shows that the creative genius, endowed with a kind of magical poetic probe, draws beauty from the depths of pain. Remember the torturing beauty of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 or Mozart’s Requiem. Recall also the Duino Elegies, by Rilke. Explicit in the latter but veiled in the former is a desperate cry before the self-sufficient egoism of beauty that suffices itself, disdaining the one who loves it, piercing the soul like a feeling of death. Such an absolute first, genetic beauty impassions, but refrains from dialogue. Mere appearance, it determines nothing. Because it lacks interiority, it hides nothing, other than solely the explicit vacuity of its game. Cruel, it awakens and frustrates an insane desire for possession. Solely a deaf, terrible angel: only Time shall shatter its impossible pretension to eternity. However, the Object that determines itself as representation also offers itself amorously to cognition, dialogues by having behavior, allows for meaning as a possibility in futuro, challenges the creation of the possible to become real discovery. There lies, in the act of knowing, this challenge introduced in temporality, the wonder of the revelation of the Object, overflowing with hidden poetry. Adverse to strict causality, this Universe-Object reveals itself asymmetric, full of variety, displaying its law-deviant freedom. Adverse to chaos, it allows for the possibility of thought, and through it, sketches its cosmic grammar. Still more is revealed in Peirce’s definition of sign. The determination of the Object goes beyond its mere objecting. How could the material world determine its

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form in the mind? To what dialogue, then, does it refer, if the object is, possibly, of a nature foreign to ideality? In regard to this problem, the history of philosophy presents the solution of retiring oneself to the interiority of ideas, denying that matter is something with a possible meaning, as Berkeley exemplarily does. To him, as only the fabric of ideality has any possible meaning, the cause of our thoughts should be relinquished to divinity. Assuredly, considering the frustrated experience of expunging the night with our sleep, but also considering the possibility of bringing with the sign the [object] revealed to the interiority of thought, the hypothesis of a connaturality between object and sign seems more plausible, admitting them to be substantially ideality. Ideality that permeates the knowledge of science, intertwined in the intelligence of the laws of Nature. Ideality susceptible to silent discovery by the poet who, at some moment, may ask himself: how can dead matter awaken live feelings? Being led, perhaps, to discern in such death a contradictory predicate. More than virtually capable of disavowing the judgment of the false sign, the Object potentially determines its general conduct in representation, and this generality correlates to the generality of thought and, hence, to language. This is an oblique and unpretentious presentation of Peirce’s realism. Not a Realism that solely admits the existence of things external to our interiority, but rather, that which recognizes the reality of a fabric of generality that is connatural in its ideality with our thought. A continuous structure of order, developing evolutionarily from a primeval chaos. It is this order, and it alone, that allows us to predict the future conduct of the world. Often wrongly or fallibly, but evolutionarily capable of growth. Interpretants with no pretense of absolute certainty, this soporific and innocuous search of so many philosophies. Constituting a third way of being of the Universe, this order is what renders cosmic what, immediately, as second, simply opposes, conferring intelligible interiority to that first, beautiful, and virtually cruel, appearing. From its interiority, this Object becomes exterior, making its cognoscibility its very essence of being; to remain concealed as a thing in itself would be tantamount to sealing itself off from existence and abstaining from evolution. Peirce’s categories affectively intertwine with his Pragmatism. The practical consequences, in his maxim, are a requirement for a possible signification: to display from the interiority of the concept what is shown to observation, to exteriorize it as world, in order to penetrate again into the interiority as sign, the only path of evolutionary growth. What is cruel, then, is that which appears and impassions without a cognizable interiority. It stands to reason that Peirce is not satisfied with beauty that merely appears without having any more to say beyond demanding from whoever it enraptures, contemplation and silence. The amorous dialogue of knowing, however, seeks a beauty that is stratified more deeply. The beauty of an open attitude toward the sign, as a sign; a dialoguing and evolutionary order translating Love not as a mere word, but as Agape, a

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cosmically efficient force for the development not only of Reason, but also of Reasonableness3. Recall Shakespeare. The open interiority of lovers transgresses what was mere appearance—there is a deeper beauty indifferent to temporality—resorting to the latter only to attain true amorous mediation: And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new.4

As a poet, the Universe also has its amusement. Never has it allowed itself to paint the sky in the same way on each late afternoon. At no time did it refrain from deviating from its own laws, exercising its diversity-creating freedom. Creative, it proceeds on its daily task, mocking the word twilight, undoing, for centuries, the clocks by which we represent it. Also, amorous and patient, it allows us to believe we can organize it with our thought and with our language. A hideous and undiscerned human confusion between criterion of relevance and actual order. Knowing what to ask is, simply, a way of ensuring meaning to us. Our human language does not shape the world; on the contrary, it draws from it the condition of possibility as mediation. Patient and amorous, the Universe is aware of our misconceptions and makes us sleep when night falls. At some future time, it awaits our acknowledgment that the idea of Universe is not ours.

 CP 1.613–615.  Sonnet XV. Shakespeare, W. 2012: Complete Sonnets, Mineola NY, Dover Publications.

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Chapter 2

Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy

It will be a proof that convinces the wise if not the clever. Plato, Phaedrus (245c)

Keywords  Poetic ground · Symmetrical Peircean categories · Philosophical starting point · Logical harmony This chapter1 is based on the hypothesis that Peirce’s mature works, after the consolidation of his classification of the sciences including—in the realm of philosophy—Phenomenology, the Normative Sciences, and his Metaphysics, contains an aesthetic quality that may possibly be genetic, derived from his account of the admirableness of Nature, which we here describe as poetic ground. This ground, however, under classical theoretical patterns, does not claim a foundationalism in Peircean philosophy; rather, it conjectures regarding a starting point that would explain why Peirce went so far in the development of his doctrines, symmetrizing logical2 rights between Man and Nature through his categories, as if seeking a unity that, ultimately, would not be justified solely as a support for any one of the philosophical problems that he addressed, taken alone in its particularity. Besides various passages of his work that suggest the importance of that admirableness, the

 I would like to thank all those who read this essay and who, in various ways, helped toward its improvement with comments and suggestions, such as Nathan Houser, Carl Hausman, Tom Short, and David Dilworth. 2  I mean by the expression “logical rights” a consequence of the symmetry of categories. This consequence considers that the three steps of logical reasoning, namely, Abduction, Deduction, and Induction, are also discoverable in Nature as, respectively, introducing diversity, the law operation by necessity, and habit acquisition (see CP 2.713 and NEM IV, p. 344). 1

First published in Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, v. 45, n. 3, p. 273–307, 2009. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_2

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scholar’s own contact with Peircean writings, taken in their systemic whole, and structured, at least, in those three major divisions of philosophy adopted by him and not partially focused on any specific discipline, leads to the perception of a theoretical edifice that, fitting its scope, is enhanced by its logical beauty. The beauty of the logical character is enhanced by its theoretical harmony in which various doctrines intertwine, structuring not only an interlaced network of concepts but also a worldview. This worldview could be interpreted simply as something theoretically necessary to provide a better perspective for the solution of philosophical problems, such as a ubiquitous question in Peircean work, namely, the heuristics of the sciences or theory of Abduction. However, the scope of Peircean doctrines, as noted above, seems to reach beyond the needs of those problems, suggesting that, ultimately, his thought effectively constituted a vast system of ideas. The hermeneutic exercise practiced by scholars of Peirce’s works has justifiably progressed, often seeking to topically interpret concepts in their historicity, revealing their constructive evolution. I would stress that, in this chapter, I refer primarily to Peirce’s mature writings, in which the existence of an edifice can be evidenced, an edifice that if not finished, is at least self-supporting, i.e., without logical inconsistencies that might condemn its internal structure. In this regard, this chapter does not endeavor to determine anything deductively and so does not resort to arguments of necessity. It conjectures based on evidence that requires from the reader a certain familiarity with the whole of Peirce’s system of ideas, particularly his Metaphysics, and with the traditional authors dearest to him. Among these, there are those whose work agreed with Peirce, according to the letter of his thought, while others, tacitly, according to the spirit. While Kant emerges among the former, Schelling3 appears among the latter. Peirce is very frugal when referring to Schelling, notwithstanding having emphatically declared himself “Schellingian” in various passages. Intriguing as this statement may seem, it at least steers the scholar toward Schelling’s works in the search for affinities, if not for theoretical development in the construction of concepts and doctrines, at least as regards their assumptions. Indeed, Schelling is a rare realist philosopher in the scholastic meaning of the term. He is also a singularly non-anthropocentric thinker—after refuting the subjectivist principles of Fichte’s philosophy—a philosopher who, in his own way and by interaction with German romanticism, did not make of Nature a mere stage for the human saga. Precociously, prior to Darwinism and consistent with the foundation of his pantheism, Schelling was an indeterminist, acknowledging in Nature a principle

 I had the pleasure of sending some time ago a nearly finished version of this paper to Robert Lane, who was at the time working on his article on Persons, Signs, Animals: A Peircean Account of Personhood (Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society, v. 45, n. 1, p.  1–26, 2009). He had asked for my help in locating the passages where Peirce declared himself a follower of Schelling, particularly as regards the origin of his Objective Idealism. I was gratified to see that Lane was able to make good use of my essay by referring to the same passages. My wish is that our positive collaboration will help promote more discussion on the relationship between Peirce and Schelling, on which I have been insisting for many years. 3

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of freedom with which he deals nimbly in his philosophy of art, although devoid of the logical resources to develop it and coherently to incorporate it into his philosophy of Nature in the form of an ontological theory of Chance. However, the acknowledgment of this principle represents an important and distinctive step amid the determinism that dominated modern thought for several centuries. Existence to him represents the external side of experience that is determined from indetermination and is exposed as a phenomenon, recognizing in it a principle of otherness resistant to all undue attempts at the appropriation of reality by language. In philosophical maturity, one must acknowledge the attempts, often frustrating and innocuous, of comparing authors by their doctrines, by the developed body of their theories, it being, however, seemingly more rewarding to do this within the confines of the presuppositions, the starting points, of that which in principle inspires the beginning of reflection. In this regard, we dare to say that, by declaring himself “Schellingian,” Peirce acknowledged in the German thinker an affinity of assumptions that, in our view, harmonizes with the three categories that shape the totality of his philosophy. In view of this affinity, what stands out is perhaps that which is more commonly known about the proximity between the two authors, namely, their Objective Idealism and their consideration of matter as partially effete mind, exhausted by repetitious behavior, an idea that Peirce acknowledged he derived from Schelling. At the same time that I consider Peirce’s philosophical edifice more clearly evidenced when a privileged space is provided for his mature Metaphysics, I affirm that the consequences of this edifice are, as yet, almost entirely unexplored and that Peirce himself, presumably, was not entirely aware of what they might be. Nevertheless, one can discern that they seem to be philosophically rich. In light of Peircean fallibilism, we can begin to explore these consequences conjecturally and perhaps discover new entry doors to that edifice. This chapter intends to show, under its hypothesis, a viewpoint through which one of these doors seems to take shape.

2.1 Conjectures on the Possible Starting Point of a Philosophy When seeking a motive for philosophical reflection, beyond the fortuitousness of having run into it as a mere academic and/or professional activity, one can find systems of ideas that history provides. Each one of them will, when the aforementioned motivation is taken into consideration, affect our reason and sensitivity in distinct manners, despite the fact that philosophical maturity brings with it the knowledge that even those systems which did not initially attract our sympathy possess exceptional theoretical aspects, worthy of the best moments of human thought. One can, thus, commence a course through philosophy from sundry gateways. One of them is, divested of theoretical resources, to simply contemplate the world,

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amazed by its vivid and intense presence, whose mystery shifts from its minuscule appearance to its gigantic scale in the face of human minuteness, whether related to time or to space. Powers of ten are confronted, wherein we become infinitesimal in any space-time dimension. Along this course emerges the possibility of having a sense experience with whatever is closest to Nature, characterized by a relation of pure dissolution of its strongest presence, unable to distinguish, in a contemplative state, what we feel from the object of our feeling.4 There is here, in this dissolution, a loss of one’s self-­ consciousness, the positive state of individuality, which reveals itself solely when immersed in the negative sea of otherness.5 In the individuality of self-­consciousness one finds the undoing of that vagueness of contemplation which gathers mere possibilities of existence—it represents, due to its very essence, separation and determination: we are here; the world, there. The course of contemplation, as I have denominated it here, is thus of a genesis distinct from that initial separation which defines individuality. It is, perhaps, a course in which we surrender our own internal world to an external one, whose exteriority we are no longer aware of. We are enveloped by something uncannily amenable to the dissolution of the ego, of self-consciousness. One could call this experience an aesthetic one, a state of enchantment in the presence of pure qualities, a unity of feeling with the object of senses, a boundless oblivion in which the flow of time is no longer perceived, enabling the spirit to run its course, since it does so exclusively in that which is absolutely present. Nothing is collected as past, nothing is envisioned as future.6 From a logical-philosophical viewpoint, this commencement of philosophy occurs through the gateway of unity. A system of ideas emerges as an experience that does not differentiate subjective and objective worlds and, possibly, for this very reason, must unfold under a principle of freedom. Spirit is boundlessly present in its absolute presentness—to be out of temporality is to experience an absoluteness which announces itself as born in nature and which consummates itself in that dissolution of consciousness in Nature.7

 Peirce in several passages explicitly exposes this experience of presentness (see, exemplarily, CP 1.310; 1.304; 5.44) where our consciousness is composed purely by qualities of feelings. 5  “We become aware of ourself in becoming aware of the not-self” (CP 1.324). 6  See, for example, the following passage where Peirce directly mentions the relationship between presentness and poetic experiences, the common unity of which occurs in a hiatus of time: “Go out under the blue dome of heaven and look at what is present as it appears to the artist’s eye. The poetic mood approaches the state in which the present appears as it is present. Is poetry so abstract and colorless? The present is just what it is regardless of the absent, regardless of past and future. It is such as it is, utterly ignoring anything else” (CP 1.304). 7  Here, I am using the term spirit, which is not exactly a Peircean expression, only to make a provisional reference to a subjective inner world. I think that when you are trying to establish a kind of dialogue between one thinker and other traditional thinkers, you must venture into a terminological common ground in order to provide communication among them, despite some imprecision which you carefully try to eliminate. 4

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This point of departure, to the very extent that it is valued as philosophically significant, may suggest the adoption of the logical presupposition that the multiplicity of the qualities which constitute the exterior side, notwithstanding the fact that such exteriority does not appear as such, shares the same nature as that of the internal side—both comprising an eidetic unity of common belonging. This experience’s spiritual nature would prevail, transcending its mere recognition as pure subjectivity, extending such nature to the qualities that appear. There is, here, a kind of hypothesis of symmetry.8 It is true, however, that this experience may only suggest that the spirit provides such unity that it has a solely human origin. Admirable would be the spirit, and all that it poses for itself, heuristically. Everything else would be a scenario for this saga of that which is, historically, a human product. In both cases, I believe that the starting point to adopt would depend on the spirit of the one who starts a philosophy. There is nothing to prove in the comparison between the two beginning points of view. Both depend on a choice, one might say, a poetic choice. On the one hand, it seems to us that the hypothesis of symmetry holds an affinity with a realistic approach to the world, while the second favors the subject pole as the depository of enchantment, a nominalist account of the world. There is, in this second approach, necessarily, a rejection of introspection and, perhaps, even a dismissal of the possibility of a reflexive dialogue of the spirit with itself. From these two starting points, we may also suppose that in otherness there is the basic experience that originally mobilizes philosophy. It would be entirely unfair to deny to this starting point its own kind of admirableness. Perhaps a harder poetry may be extracted from it, based on the pain of impotence before otherness, in the inexorable consciousness of finitude, in the tragic fight for freedom in the face of space-time conditionality, and in the saga of reducing to understanding that which appears as mere brute facticity.9 However, a point of departure of such nature could be grounded on a kind of disenchantment with all that could genuinely enchant, deriving from disappointments imposed by a real which, insolently and unashamedly, takes the space of dream.10 The start of a philosophy through the duality of the experience of otherness may often occur with the spirit cornered by power. This duality may be of the most severe kind as an origin for a philosophy. It will cry out for human values, for freedom, or may plunge into the most desperate pessimism. The intersubjective

 I use this expression at this point to convey the genesis of what will become clearer as this essay progresses. Symmetry will mean sharing of predicates, depolarization of the traditional approach of subject-object relationship. This symmetry will be provided by the equipollent validation of Peirce’s categories, as much for man as for Nature. 9  The phrase “harder poetry” is Nathan Houser’s creation, and it arises from a dialogue with him about kinds of poetry. 10  In NEM IV, p. 135, we find (my italics): “It has often been said that the difference between the real world and a dream is that the real world coheres and is consistent. Undoubtedly this is the principal characteristic. The real events conspire as it were against the unreal ones, because there is not room for all.” 8

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bipolarity is the most intense focus of theoretical reflection; the intense presence of the other will impose the need for a kind of rationality, political in its nature. Again, here, Nature becomes just a scenario and, possibly, the experience of unity as described above, the sole instance of the warrior’s rest. Let us consider, also, commencing from reason. The deciphering of the paths of Nature is, doubtlessly, a legitimate starting point. So is the analysis of reason itself. In the latter, there seems to occur, once more, and perhaps more strongly, the possibility or not of the hypothesis of symmetry. Are forms represented or imposed? Again, realism and nominalism intervene as world views to be investigated; certainly not as grounds of the method of investigation, but as vital components in the choice of the objects of knowledge. Thus, these world views may cause, say, side effects, triggering other consequences, suggesting other hypotheses or, alternatively, inhibiting them, and thus, perhaps, making more complex and enriching (or not) the courses of investigation. Once any given world construction is adopted, it often subsumes the content of other hypotheses that presuppose it. Classical and highly controversial is the commencement through reason which is founded on the deconstruction of all knowledge. The self that thinks itself should have also deconstructed the language—stricto sensu, as already observed in history—of which it has made use. We must also recall, exemplarily, Fichte’s significant critique of the cogito11: one must perceive that, firstly, the will places the self genetically as a reaction to the world; from this act derives thought, due to the need for the mediation of the conflict between self and not-self.12 First existing, then thinking.13 It should be stressed that it does not seem equivocal to say that to seek the ground of knowledge in reason itself is to start from a privileged pole. This privilege, from such a starting point, cannot be undone by philosophy. It will have to be developed under the shadow of this genetic asymmetry, creating, nevertheless, remarkable philosophies such as Kant’s. It seems trivial to aver that the presuppositions of a philosophy determine its development and theoretical consequences. Often, however, there are tacit presuppositions that do not appear in the letter, but rather in the spirit of a thought. For this reason, the starting point of a philosophy is not always explicit—it often simply starts, developing from a question or directing itself toward it. Its edifice will define its internal space wherein thought will move; its more or less opened windows will allow the entrance of an external light with which it will interact. On other occasions, it will close them in hope of profit from the introspection of an all-founding system, from which all forms of exteriority will have already been given. But what really determines the choice of a starting point? The

 AA I, 2 262 (Fichte, 1964).  AA I, 2 266 (Fichte, 1964). 13  Despite the disdain that Peirce seems to have for Fichte’s extreme nominalism (see CP 4.551), this inversion of the cogito is a very interesting insight by the German thinker, harmonious with the ontological sequence of Peirce’s categories foundation, when one takes into account the principles of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and Peirce’s cosmology. 11 12

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contingency of a problem, or the interference of something for which there is no objective proof, but that will be good enough for the wise, leaving the experts unsatisfied?14

2.2 The Influence of Schelling As aforementioned, to specify unity as a starting point of a philosophy is to suppose that such beginning occurs through an experience of freedom, a dissolution of individuality within a whole, or through a depersonalization due to the radical absence of otherness and the conditionality of space and time.15 This experience may occur through a communion between interiority and exteriority in such a way that one is no longer conscious of one’s limits or borders. Complete in itself, such a quality of feeling, notwithstanding a complex of qualities, is experienced as a totality, a whole, a continuum without parts, a genuine qualisign. It is evident to scholars that what is being described here is the typical experience under the category of Firstness in the philosophy of Peirce. But why should the unity be confined to this subject-object amalgam, where both are in a relationship of identity, to use a Schellingian expression? Could not such unity do without the world or, more precisely, without its qualities? Calling Fichte back into our discussion, it is interesting to remember that the first principle of his Wissenschaftslehre is formed by the self-identity of the self, not of a self determined by a self-consciousness, but by the atemporal unconditionality of a continuum devoid of any world, whose sole predicate is only itself, as in the expression A=A where subject and predicate are equal. As a pure introspection of intellectual intuition, according to Fichte, such an absolute subject is the ultimate ground of all existence and all knowledge. The philosopher’s following step, determined in the second principle of his Doctrine of Science, is the determination of a self that enters temporality, acting upon the world, and placing it in the consciousness as mere reaction. The absolute infinite of the self will now be a self constrained by the presence of otherness, although it always underlies, as a ground, the original absoluteness of self-identity. Here, all the ground of philosophy radically dispenses with the world—it appears as mere second, a supporting actor in a kind of tragedy: the loss of absoluteness that must be, somehow, rescued in existence by overcoming the constraining otherness. To this end, knowledge plays a major role—to represent the other is to represent its behavior and to appropriate it. Reason mediates and takes possession of what

 See quotation at the beginning of this chapter.  Let me clarify that this unity is not the Kantian transcendental unity necessary for the possibility of every synthesis. An epistemological unity is considered in Peirce’s philosophy as well, but its logical unity is justified by his Synechism and constitutes the category of thirdness. The unity mentioned here is characteristically from firstness, and so in Peircean terms it expresses a continuum of free possibilities, not the continuum of law. 14 15

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constrains freedom, aiming at overwhelming it. Nature places itself as a mere obstacle to be overcome by the will and by reason. It is interesting also to recall this distinction of genesis between Fichte’s and Schelling’s philosophies. In Schelling something very similar to the experience of Firstness occurs in his concept of aesthetic intuition. There is a whole, absoluteness, provided in the experience of contemplating Nature, such as can be found in the work of Peirce, who was, incidentally, his confessed admirer.16 In the mature Schelling, freed from the influence of Fichte’s subjectivism, there is also an outline of a realistic philosophy, no longer dependent on the constituting pole of the Kantian subject. The genetic unity of aesthetic experience in the presence of Nature takes on a vital significance in Schelling’s work. His philosophy commences there and, in it, there is no room for the mechanism or determinism inherited from Kant and from the rationalism of the Enlightenment. It could be said that in the hands of each author there is a rudder leading thought in multifarious directions. I believe that choices depend on what will be most valuable to him: whatever derives most prominently from his sensitivity or reason. It is true that few authors are capable of devising a philosophy starting from an experience of unity—one should ask beforehand: even if it were valuable, how would it generate a philosophy? How through it will one arrive at knowledge? At ethics? How, from what is in principle unspeakable, does one reach that which can be spoken? As a matter of fact, should not such a philosophy explain why that principle is unspeakable and, indeed, in what language it is not speakable? To us, it seems there is a risk of losing oneself on the way. On the one hand, one might get lost because it does not seem easy to deal with this starting point, by providing it with the continuum of a philosophy. On the other, one could get lost because, despite starting from the universe of feeling, one can be led to a philosophy that seduces through its literary language—a language which is inadequate to provide a desirable precision of concepts and which does not avoid a psychologism that appears as the only hope for a system of ideas not always consistent with its logical structure. In Schelling, the beginning through aesthetic intuition is not tacit, but explicit.17 In it lies the primary identity with the Absolute, the possibility of the transcendence  There are invariably, as mentioned before, brief references to Peirce’s and Schelling’s relationship among commentators of Peirce’s works. Exception is made, however, to an excerpt from a letter to William James, where Peirce clearly and remarkably assumes his affinity with Schelling’s thought: “My views were probably influenced by Schelling—by all stages of Schelling, but especially by the Philosophie der Natur. I consider Schelling as enormous; and one thing I admire about him is his freedom from the trammels of a system and his holding himself uncommitted to any previous utterance. In that, he is like a scientific man. If you were to call my philosophy as a Schellingism transformed in light of modern physics I should not take it hard” (Letter to W. James, January, 28, 1894, in Barton (1935, v. 2, p. 415–416)). 17  This is one good example of shared terminology between two thinkers. For sure, intuition is not an appropriate term in Peirce’s philosophy, considering his criticism of Cartesian epistemology. But in order to establish a dialogue between him and Schelling, which is necessary to understand why Peirce declares himself Schellingian, let us here take aesthetic intuition as a qualisign, as both 16

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of the finitude revealed as experience. Nature appears as a work of art in which the Absolute manifests itself as phenomenon, expressing its freedom. Evidently, as noted, Schelling’s thought characterized a reaction to mechanism and necessitarianism. Natural beauty is an expression of freedom that originated from the Absolute, and art, like Nature as a work of art, is the expression of the infinite in the finite. What that means from a logical point of view we will see later on. For Schelling there is, in the aesthetic experience, a stronger sense of divinization of what appears as originally poetic, constituting the ground of all that derives as existence, temporality, and science. In Schelling, there is no polarization of genesis between subject and object. It is not existence, in its congenital duality, that is the starting point, but something that is in it—and in it the spirit identifies what is similar to it by nature. It should also be stressed that Schelling conceives matter as effete mind, which, as noted, is a thesis adopted by Peirce. In the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) one finds the following: Matter is indeed, nothing else than mind viewed in an equilibrium of its activities. There is no need to demonstrate at length how, by means of this elimination of all dualism, or all real opposition between mind and matter, whereby the latter is regarded merely as mind under a condition of dullness, or the former, conversely, as matter merely in becoming.18

It is important to remark that Peirce explicitly declares: “The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws”.19 Two other passages clearly show the inspiration of the Peircean concept of effete mind: I have begun by showing that tychism must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology, in which all the regularities of nature and of mind are regarded as products of growth, and to a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds matter to be mere specialized and partially deadened mind.20 I carefully recorded my opposition to all philosophies which deny the reality of the Absolute, and asserted that the one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind. This is as much as to say that I am a Schellingian, of some stripe.21

A critic of Spinoza, Schelling could not accept a pantheism whereby, in passing from the internal world to the constitution of the external world, the Absolute appears submissive to all constraints of existence and to the inexorable determination of necessity. Freedom must be preserved and it represents the reason for the diversity, for the multiplicity, for the vitality that resists causality, of the organism which, previously, structures itself more in correlations than in a logical are defined in the sphere of feelings and immediacy. Let us remember that despite the abundant use of the concept of intuition by Kant, this fact was not an obstacle for an intense philosophical dialogue between the Peircean and Kantian philosophies. 18  Schelling, 1978, p. 92. 19  CP 6.25. 20  CP 6.102. 21  CP 6.605; my italics.

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antecedent-consequent mechanism. Thus, to him, strict causality is no more than reductionism, a requirement for an understanding that does not venture toward that which, despite appearing under some order, shows levels of freedom that characterize the singularities of existence. Also, according to Schelling, to experience freedom is to desire taking it to all places frequented by philosophy: “Only those who savored freedom can feel the desire of making everything its equal, and make the entire Universe take part”.22 So, Schelling is faithful to what appears,23 despite not proceeding from this starting point to the construction of a consistently conceived system, nor, as is common knowledge, did he possess the logical repertoire and clarity of language to accomplish it. Nevertheless, highly creative insights derive from his philosophy and it seems to us that history, perhaps overly influenced by Hegel’s critique of his works, has not done justice to this quality of his. Our hypothesis in this chapter is that a hypothesis of symmetry, that is to say, the conception of theories structured with a logical symmetry between subjective and objective worlds, arises in Peirce’s work, under the influence of Emerson’s works,24 among others, and from an inspiration derived from contact with Schelling’s ideas. There is, in favor of this hypothesis, a constitutive similarity between aesthetic intuition in Schelling and the experience of Firstness in Peirce,25 considering that Peirce’s Objective Idealism is based on the Idealism of Schelling primarily in its consideration of matter as effete mind, as just noted. Starting philosophy through unity evidently cannot be imposed as a rule. Further, it seems plausible to us to say that every beginning occurs due to a choice that depends on each author’s sensitivity, and also, I must stress, on the problems that the philosophy to be constructed proposes to solve. It is certainly true that the development of a philosophy often encounters unforeseen problems. But, in principle, it is important to consider that problems of genesis are the object of few philosophical systems. Starting with a unity of a poetic nature probably requires a sort of poetic soul. A principle of unity, i.e., an original unity that can only be provided independently of theoretical models, consists in a pure experience not of reaction in the face of otherness, nor of mediation of judgment, but of an aesthetic nature. On this point, precisely on this point, Schelling seems, in our view, to penetrate Peirce’s spirit.

 Schelling, 1992, § 351, p. 25.  Let me observe that, in Peirce’s phenomenology, a poetical way for seeing the world in its firstness is very important in order to realize what is frequently disdained by an extremely mediated and rational relationship with the phenomena. 24  Emerson, Ralph W. Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems. New  York: Classical Books International, 2010. 25  AA I, 2 266 (Fichte, 1964). 22 23

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2.3 Unity as a Starting Point in Peirce’s Philosophy By having initiated his classification of sciences with Mathematics, Peirce, a logician, chemist, and physicist, creates the expectation that he will produce an extremely rationalistic philosophical system, focusing exclusively on a theory of rationality in general and a theory of science in particular. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that though Peirce’s philosophy has a profile strongly focused on epistemology, it remains clearly distant from a rationality that is exclusively based on deduction. On this view, Peirce’s most original point is, unquestionably, his theory of abduction as a necessary and generative stage of investigation, which deductive systems put aside or ignore. It is interesting to ask: does the theory of abduction have any link with that primary unity that I affirm as the poetic ground of Peirce’s philosophy? Leaving this question unanswered for the time being, it should be noted that, at this original point of Peirce’s Logic, there is a striking feature of his philosophy, the intention of replying to questions of genesis, i.e., concerning an archeology not only of knowledge but also of the objects of knowledge. His philosophy unfolds as a fundamentally genetic one, and also, as prefigured by Schelling,26 as the kind that avoids all and every sort of dogmatism. In his phenomenology, Peirce could have conceived his category of Firstness solely as a support for his epistemological indeterminism, strongly associated with his metaphysical theory of Chance (Tychism). However, it seems to us, he needed to go farther. More than a category of spontaneity, of deviation in relation to law, of the diversity and multiplicity present in phenomena, Firstness genuinely houses the classical ideas of freedom and unconditionality, thanks to its appearing both on the internal and the external side of the mind. And the great predicate of unity is its being, essentially, internal.27 But, by affirming this and, at the same time, by knowing that the experience that typifies Firstness in its pure state is one of nondifferentiation between subjective and objective aspects of phenomena, one must conjecture that such unity does not differentiate two interiorities, making its nature essentially eidetic. The dissolution of self-consciousness in that experience is, simultaneously, the loss of the notion of exteriority, and, therefore, everything is experienced as purely internal. Certainly, this experience is no longer of an interiority confined to a subject, but an innerness as the substratum of a unity, of a continuum which is eidetic in nature. It could be said that there is an amalgam between the subjective innerness and Nature’s objective innerness and, in this experience, all temporality vanishes, all discontinuity is subverted, and all dichotomy between object and representation is undone. However, it is not the same as Fichte’s solitude of a self-identity empty of intuition, but is analogous to communion, as it is given in Schelling’s aesthetic experience. 26 27

 Schelling, 1988, p. 30.  CP 6.231 and 6.236.

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Firstness characterizes the absolute freedom of the mind, free from the constraints of existence. It could now be said that such freedom embodies a continuum of possibilities, that possible existences may be engendered.28 Contemplation assumes the status of a genetically silent starting point, full of an intense potential meaning. This experience, however, can be interpreted as if such unity constitutes nothing more than a set of qualities that can only be grounded on subjective innerness and, therefore, would have its origin exclusively in it. Here, again, a subjectivist, constitutive approach is adopted, and the hypothesis of symmetry does not fit: only the subjective realm generates qualities and therefore they have no origin in Nature, but in human innerness. Evidently, there are no overriding rules to adopt this or that approach. It depends, once more, on what one desires of a philosophy; it depends, again, I would say, on one’s taking a realist or nominalist approach to the world. From each one of them, I think, distinct philosophical systems emerge. Supposing that the forms of science are provided exclusively by reason in its encounter with amorphous phenomena reveals a philosophical approach similar to that one which considers that the beauty and the enchantment of aesthetic experience can only be originated in the human mind. In Hegel, let us recall, for example, beauty only reaches its spiritual heights as a work of art, never as natural beauty. To him, aesthetic experience never represented a communion reflecting an identity that could hold, in our terms, a hypothesis of symmetry. The night in which all cows are black appears as such only to those who, by valuing the determination, seem to disregard the fact that this derives from the indetermination in which it is inscribed as free possibility. Thus, according to Peirce, it is interesting to learn that Scholastic realism, later perfected in his Synechism, tacitly emerges as a choice, even, perhaps, as a kind of feeling of the world. In the light of this realist choice, that unity of feeling is a quale-­ consciousness or, semiotically speaking, a qualisign. But why, as I have said, would Peirce need these concepts? Would it not suffice, as we have seen, to confine Firstness to the recognition of Nature’s asymmetries and to our congenital tendency to error at the phenomenological level and to chance at the metaphysical one? Would these admissions not suffice to systematically constitute its indeterminism, either epistemologically expressed in his fallibilism or ontologically, in his doctrine of tychism? In the light of a purely rationalist epistemology, perhaps the unity of the qualisign could be disposed of, and quale-consciousness would not have to be a philosophical object, and having to deal with this inconvenient vagueness of the mere possibilities embodied in the continuum of unity could be logically avoided. It seems, however, that this unity is of utmost importance in Peirce’s system. On the one hand, it is axial for his theory of abduction. On the other hand, it is a kind of fulcrum for the author’s cosmology. Moreover, in our hypothesis, it is poetic by nature.

 This is, by the way, what is shown in Peirce’s cosmogenesis—see, exemplarily, NEM IV, p. 133–140. 28

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This brief chapter is not the proper place for developing a theory of art or of beauty, notwithstanding their being, it seems clear to us, extractable from Peirce’s philosophical system, in addition to his theory of the Admirable. However, it may suffice to affirm here that poetic language characterizes itself by a deconstruction of logical language, which, because of its very nature, seeks a univocality of meaning with its objects, maintaining with them a relationship of otherness. Poetry, like Mathematics, constructs possible worlds, from, precisely, the absence of duality, of otherness, between its language and its objects. If we admit that poetic consciousness, the spiritual state primary to creation, is characterized by a noncommitment to theories that previously established formally relevant criteria for the selective apprehension of phenomena, we must suppose that such original unity is poetic by nature, since it embodies in its indetermination possibilities of existence and requires that we construct something to say about it from its ineffability. Inversely, when one moves from an intentionally cognitive discourse to a poetic one, a deconstruction of the logical or mediating language is necessary for the subsequent conquering of the poetic language. Thus, the original unity is already poetic in natura. And here poetry, poetic unity, and everything that is of the nature of art, is logically associated, as noted earlier, with the universe of possibilities. If the original unity is the expression of freedom, of being first, then it has nothing to do with any conditionality that could be derived from logical necessity. Insofar as there is any enchantment in the unity of Firstness, an enchantment full of the atemporality of the nature of poetry, Peirce does not draw from this experience a meaning associated with the sensual pleasure that it may eventually provide but eschews aesthetic theories that confine such experience to the sensations of pleasure and pain.29 There is much more for him in this experience, and this is revealed in the theoretical monument that he builds, probably celebrating his world feeling with an admirable philosophical world construction. What is the philosophical meaning that Peirce gives to such experience when mentioning it as possessing those qualities that are first, of a suchness that is unable to integrate classes, generalities, universals, or laws, precisely that which would interest science? What interest would such a First have other than being poetic in its nature? Notwithstanding all such questions, it seems to us that Peirce attempts to show that the entire theoretical construction of his philosophy maintains a commitment to this unity. The realist hypothesis of symmetry is kept in a kind of fidelity to a love of genesis. By loving the enchantment of aesthetic experience before Nature and conceiving this love as transitive, that is, as involving a feeling of certainty that the enchantment does not derive from itself, one sees clearly that it is more than a self-love grounded on a pole that presumptuously attributes to itself a power to constitute everything. But this experience will reveal that otherness must derive from unity, together with the need to establish a dialogue with it, symmetric in form, a need which will require a semiotics to consummate it.

29

 CP 5.112 and 5.552.

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2.4 The Theoretical System For our purposes, it is not fitting to introduce here an exhaustive Peircean classification of the sciences but only to make use of a macroscopic classification that places philosophy in relation to Mathematics and the Special Sciences. Thus, it suffices to consider the triad Mathematics, Philosophy—the latter comprising Phenomenology, the Normative Sciences (Aesthetics, Ethics, and Logic or Semiotics), and Metaphysics—and the Special Sciences.30

2.4.1 Mathematics Mathematics emerges in the system of sciences as the first science, a position which makes it difficult to understand the hierarchy established between itself and Phenomenology. How can Mathematics come before phenomenology, when the latter is a science without categorical affirmations, a science that has as its main task a mere inventory of appearances? Indeed, Mathematics is a science of forms produced by our subjective world, where the perception of generality is essentially trained. Here, both geometry and algebra, and even arithmetic, deal with structures of order, created independently of any realities. The transcendental temptation always seems to be lurking around reflections on the nature of Mathematics, leading thinkers toward a kind of agreement, if not an explicit one, at least a tacit one, with Kant. Peirce, however, rejects the transcendentalism of Mathematics, regarding it as a science which, albeit not empirical, depends on a heuristic experimentation with diagrams and signs despite its absence of commitment to the facticity of any world that may appear to reason. Thus, although rejecting Mathematics as an a priori ground of rationality, Peirce acknowledges the importance of Kant’s schematism from which he draws a major part of his concept of diagram.31 In his Transcendental Analytic, Kant had already proposed the concept of a transcendental scheme, which plays a mediating role between the categories and the phenomena, having both intellectual and sensible characteristics.32 In light of what Kant suggests in his schematism, it seems to me that this view of the diagram as an image of time in which, in fact, time is absent from consciousness, enabling us to think synthetically all the predicates exhibited in a unity of vision, is an important step to understand the heuristic relevance of this unity, particularly as a support for the diagrammatic structures of the hypotheses in the abductive stage of an investigation.  Evidently, this classification is rather more thorough. To account for this, one can recommend, for example, the excellent work of Parker (2003). 31  CP 3.560. 32  Kant, 1978, A 138–141/B 177–180; A 145/B 184. 30

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On the other hand, it is also interesting to bear in mind that, in a science such as Mathematics, and certainly, as in all the Special Sciences that rely on it, there is an important atemporality of thought present in the heuristic processes, one provided by the general diagrams or general icons of relations. The relationship between iconic signs and creative processes that is often commented on, is due, so it seems to me, to this kind of time paralysis for consciousness. Thus, it could be said that if diagrams are fundamental for heuristic operations, and certainly for the structuring of abductive arguments, insofar as consequences are deductively drawn from abduction, it can also be said that under the realm of Thirdness, the state of consciousness found in Firstness is fundamental. Here then, in Mathematics, reason appears as contemplating itself, creating new world possibilities. This view of Mathematics appears to bring it closer to poetry and more generally to Art. Is art not also a builder of worlds, and for this reason, totally iconic, to the extent that it does not depend on any reality to assume the possibility of signifying? It could be argued that both Math and Art have their own objects internal to their respective discourses; in this much, Mathematics and Art are formed as languages. And here, a new path can be foreshadowed for the analysis of art as a semiotic object, although this essay does not afford the required space to pursue this point further. Let us return, then, to the question at hand: how can the operating manner of Mathematics condition phenomenological research? Is not Phenomenology, also defined by Peirce as Phaneroscopy, that science which, almost naively, only makes an inventory of appearances, without aiming at arriving at true affirmations? After all, its mission is to study phenomena in their Firstness. Why, then, would it depend on Mathematics? Let us see, then, in general outline, how Peirce designed his Phenomenology.

2.4.2 Phenomenology and Categorial Genetic Symmetry: The Roots of a Theory of World What are the requirements for the practice of this science defined by Peirce as Phenomenology? To quote the author: The faculties which we must endeavor to gather for this work are three. The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation […]. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear […]. The second faculty we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all it distinguishes. The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixtures of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments.33

33

 CP 5.42.

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Here, Peirce calls for the eye of the artist, namely, that we open our eyes and simply see things as they appear, divesting the mind of all forms of conceptual mediation which, surely, would place those things under a temporal cognitive framework. Here, unity is not the logical form of judgment but a kind of fusion between qualities and feeling, comprising qualities of feeling present in a depersonalized subject as such. Here, Mathematics shares with Phenomenology an art of contemplation, in which it is disinterested in Art, as Kant had already pointed out.34 However, in Mathematics, as conceptualized here, contemplation is the heuristic recourse for operating on diagrams and, therefore, is committed to the solution of a problem. In both, temporality is absent, whether in Phenomenology, by the totality of qualities present in the phenomenon and absence of mediation, or in Mathematics, by the simultaneous presence of the predicates of a possible relation. It is also required, as a second rule for the practice of Phenomenology, that one give attention to some privileged aspect of the phenomenon, that which is notable in its way of appearing. A separation of qualities is initiated in this perceptual operation; perception is focused on some aspect of the object that insists against consciousness for its recognition. This requirement for attention to outstanding points is manifestly, also, a characteristic of the operations of Mathematics. Finally, Peirce recommends that we have the capacity of generalization of the mathematician, since the science of Phenomenology involves the author’s three categories, each one of them being the designation of a generalized class of phenomena. Perhaps, here, Mathematics more decisively affects the practice of Phenomenology. But it should be observed that such impact does not so much occur as science, but rather as expertise and training. The task of Phenomenology is, truly, to form classes, and it is in this task that such mathematical expertise emerges in support of the observation of similarities as well as in generalization acceptable to reason. However, one must emphasize the independence of Phenomenology in relation to Logic, since the former is a mere inventory of phenomena, not a system of categorial claims concerning the data of experience. It is also important to stress that Peirce seeks to expand his concept of experience within Phenomenology, considering not only that which affects our senses, providing us with a consciousness of outwardness, but also by introducing the idea of an inner experience, where objects may be equally inventoried. Thus, categories become homogeneous in the sense of characterizing external and internal experiences, although, I must stress, this consideration is a distinction, not a separation. Firstness is the category of the qualities of feeling in its internal aspect and in the aspects of diversity and variety observed in external objects. Here emerges one of the crucial points for the grounding of the poetry latent in Peirce’s thought: the categorial unity between external diversity and quality of feeling already suggests the cosmic-metaphysical grounding of feeling. The unity of the quality of feeling drawing consciousness from time, creating for it a kind a hiatus in temporality, since it is

34

 Kant, 1952, §210–20.

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an experience of pure presentness, leads us to conjecture that there may be a similar hiatus in objective time, corresponding to the diversity and asymmetry of Nature, considering that bothphenomena, feeling and diversity, fall under the same category. The phenomenological range of the category of Firstness, embodying unity of consciousness and an apparent aspect of Nature, namely, its diversity, is infused with the possibilities of a poetic dialogue, a silent dialogue in which there is a sea of signs constituted by the merging of that which originally presents itself as interior and exterior worlds, already joyfully announcing the end of the dualism between mind and matter, making the sea of signs a continuum whose only nature is ideality.35 This correspondence between diversity and unity of the qualities of feeling also seems to suggest, already, that such a continuum is, by nature, heuristic, grounded on the freedom of the possibilities of aesthetic experience. It is here that Schiller’s spieltrieb—an author who so strongly influenced Peirce in his youth—ostensibly appears. This correspondence promises new views of art and of the metaphysical nature of aesthetic experience, views which, as a matter of fact, were not developed by Peirce. Here I am again highlighting that there are consequences from the concept of Firstness much beyond the epistemological ones, and I claim that a brand new theory of art shall arise from it, certainly deserving further study. Further, and even more so, the correspondence presents a most interesting problem, which is to show that objective time is really disrupted in the present, as there is a hiatus of time in consciousness that does not experience the otherness of the world nor mediating thought, but only qualities in its unity. What is important to stress here is that quale-consciousness is a continuous quality of feeling that does not set itself apart from consciousness as such. Moreover, such consciousness is absolutely separated from time, and, for this reason, it is a consciousness of complete presentness, with no links to the flow of temporality due to its unconditionality; it does not generate itself from the past, nor does it have any future intentions: “The Now is one, and but one”.36 Thus, this state of consciousness is a continuum of possibilities; from it nothing necessary can be derived. It is, then, a feeling of undefined freedom that occurs in an internal hiatus of time. Peirce explicitly claims that the ontological expression of this phenomenon of interiority is exactly that principle of fortuitousness in exteriority that he denominated Absolute Chance, responsible for the variety and spontaneity of Nature: […] that very same logical element of experience, the quale-element, which appears upon the inside as unity, when viewed from the outside is seen as variety.37 Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there is feeling in the same proportion. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling.38

 Reinforcing this idea, the homogeneity of firstness, subsuming inner and outer experiences of spontaneity, provides a common ground where signs can dialogue freely in a play of musement, by the way, an expression created by Peirce to highlight this kind of experience, which to him is essentially heuristic. 36  CP 6.231. 37  CP 6.236; my italics. 38  CP 6.265. 35

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Phenomenology as conceived by Peirce is a suggestive science, from which many conjectures may arise. From what appears phenomenologically, namely, in an experimental sphere where the subject is involved, metaphysical hypotheses are suggested. But Peirce starts his philosophy from Phenomenology already committed to his three categories, and every such hypothesis is indeed preformed by them. However, no necessity is imposed on this preformation. Peirce adopts the categories as a kind of mold for every theory inspired by Phenomenology associated with a science of general forms—that is, Mathematics. And when a theory has reality as its object, being thus ontological, then what I have called symmetry between subjective and objective worlds is somehow established by Peirce. This non-necessary procedure is the ground of my own conjecture in this chapter, i.e., that Peirce pays tribute to a poetical feeling before a vast universe of phenomena by conceiving it realistically, with the same logical rights—rights that nominalistic philosophies only recognize in the subjectivity. I consider a good example of this Peircean procedure, which is purely abductive, the following passage where there is a brilliant conjecture by Peirce about a possible rupture of the objective time continuum precisely in the present: “[…] time has a point of discontinuity at the present […] the past is broken off from the future as it is in our consciousness”.39 From this point of analysis, let us see how such categorial symmetry is extended to Secondness and Thirdness. The second class of phenomenological experience, that of the reaction of the facts against consciousness, the experience of duality, introducing the consciousness of individuality in the ego/non-ego distinction, has its internal correlate in the conflict of the past ego with present consciousness. There is a kind of inner non-ego comprised by the lived past that possesses the same otherness characteristics of an external world, thus phenomenologically highlighting these internal and external aspects of this experience. From this realm of appearance, Peirce formulates a metaphysical hypothesis, in the same way that the hypothesis of chance was related to Firstness. This is the hypothesis of existence as the locus of reaction and duality not only between subject and object but also of reaction and reciprocal space-time reaction of the objects of the world. So declares the author: Although in all direct experience of reaction, an ego, a something within, is one member of the pair, yet we attribute reactions to objects outside of us. When we say that a thing exists, what we mean is that it reacts upon other things. That we are transferring to it our direct experience of reaction is shown by our saying that one thing acts upon another. It is our hypothesis to explain the phenomena—a hypothesis which, like the working hypothesis of a scientific inquiry, we may not believe to be altogether true, but which is useful in enabling us to conceive of what takes place.40

On the other hand, the experience of mediating thought is for Peirce also a phenomenon, and its external correlate is the apparent and partial ordering of the facts of the world, through which that mediating activity seems to find support. This

39 40

 CP 6.86.  CP 7.534, italics from the original.

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generates the metaphysical hypothesis of realism,41 i.e., that such ordering has a real grounding in the generality of the laws of Nature. But a philosophy that intends to be genetic will have a lot to explain. What is the origin of the unity of the experience of Firstness? Where does the duality of existence come from? What is the origin of this apparent order of the world and, furthermore, what is the origin of the laws of Nature?

2.4.3 The Fabric of Ontology Peirce’s concept of reality has three primary predicates that significantly enrich it. The first one is the essential one of otherness, viz., the radical independence of the real in relation to thought, language, or human will. The second is the acknowledgment that there is real generality which is independent of the generality of language, as is the case in Scholastic realism: We understand by the Real that which possesses such attributes as it does possess, independently of any person or definite existent group of persons thinking that it possesses them. Thus, Hamlet is not Real, since his sanity depends on whether or not Shakespeare thought him sane.42

In his maturity, Peirce perfected this realism with the logic of relatives, where he replaces the notion of class with system.43 This was something that was to better represent his realism as one no longer of genera44 but of continua. His question was no longer about the reality of general classes: The continuum is that which the logic of relatives shows the true universal to be. I say the true universal; for no realist is so foolish as to maintain that no universal is a fiction. Thus, the question of nominalism and realism has taken this shape: Are any continua real?45

The third predicate is that of the intelligibility of laws. Evidently, the admission of the realism of laws or of continua should enable their representation and this possibility only occurs if there is a connaturality between thought and the object of thought, as declared by Peirce: “[…] What we think cannot possibly be of a different nature from thought itself”.46 And “That which the truth represents is a reality. This reality being cognizable and comprehensible is of the nature of thought”.47  Nevertheless, the posture of constructing symmetries is in itself already realistic, or, in other words, it is tacitly the adoption of realism. 42  NEM III 2, p. 881. 43  Cf. CP 1.69. 44  A realism of genders doesn’t imply general logical connections among them, as provided by continuous space-temporal systems. So, Peirce’s Synechism is a way for breaking the insulation of genders, putting them under general relations, as well. 45  NEM IV, p. 343. 46  CP 6.339. 47  CP 8.153. 41

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The admission of this connaturality in the sphere of reason already was preceded by the nondifferentiation between subjective and objective worlds in the experience of Firstness. Both this connaturality and the admission of continuity between mind and matter, considering mind as the fundamental substance of the Universe, constitute the core content of Peirce’s Objective Idealism. This idealism, when misunderstood as subjective idealism, leads to a kind of incompatibility with realism, for how could reality, grounded on subjectivity, as proclaimed by Berkeley and Fichte, for example, be considered to be independent of thought and language? Nevertheless, here, Peirce’s realism and idealism are doctrines that interlock and complement each other. A good project of philosophy should see to it that a doctrine, which resolves any given problem, does not conflict with other theories within the same system. On this issue, Peirce was an extremely careful designer. However, it must also be stressed that Idealism derives its strongest support from a question about the origin of the laws of Nature. After denying necessitarian48 doctrines and philosophies that admit a determinism without a logical foundation, Peirce argues49 that the explanation for this origin can only be an evolutionary one, and that the laws must have resulted from an evolutionary process, which is still going on. This explanation, in turn, prompts another: if there is a process of evolution, it must be due to a principle in the form of a law that can develop from itself. Continuing his argument, Peirce states that such a law must be a tendency toward generalization, a generalizing tendency, and that such tendency is the major law of mind, the law of association and of the acquisition of habits. To state that Nature has a tendency toward the acquisition of habits is to reaffirm the mental substratum of ideality that permeates reality. In fact, this argument interlocks harmoniously with the theory that matter is effete mind and with the predicate of intelligibility of natural processes, i.e., the connaturality between these processes and the reasoning processes. The poetic joy of Firstness, in which consciousness moves, anonymous to itself, in the universe of qualities, in pure ideality, now seems to be extended to the logical sphere, suggesting that the inward and outward worlds are no strangers to one another. The possibility of a commerce of signs also seems to be announced between these worlds, and Semiotics has to be sufficiently powerful to deal with it.50 Excluding Mathematics, which is a science independent of the empirical world, it seems that no original thinkers construct a theoretical framework without first designing its size, thinking about what questions they want to answer, just as a fisherman cannot foresee the size of his net without first considering what type of fish he wants to catch. Incidentally, the historical tracking of the paths followed by a  CP 6.39; 6.48; 1.144.  CP 7.514–515. 50  Actually, this semiotic power can be understood as a logic structure able to deal with Peirce’s realism-idealism. His consideration of a dynamic object inside Semiotics is the acknowledgment of an independent world regarding the universe of human signs that composes thought and language. Peirce’s dynamic object is indeed a realistic concept that, besides its proper semiotic function, plays an important role against nominalistic reduction of object as mere reference of language. 48 49

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thinker in the construction of his or her philosophy shows that he or she progresses to finely edged problems and returns to basic theories in order to develop sufficient power to solve those problems. Returning to the question of mind and matter, and their common matrix, ideality, let us deal, once more, with the theory of Synechism. This theory stands in support of Objective Idealism, affirming the continuity between mind and matter. It must be noted that this continuity occurs between what is continuous (mind) and what is discontinuous (matter). This will only be possible if matter is under a system of relations in which its conduct appears as logical relations that will make matter logically representable. This will require a time continuum with its hiatus in the present, through which the action of the principle of Chance is possible.51 Time, like any real continuum, is in evolution and, therefore, is not a perfect continuum, having, thus, that discontinuity point in the present.52 The possibility of knowledge and representation depends on the continuum of the laws. This is one of the crucial points for the necessity of realism. A world without laws, i.e., without a system of relations that allows individuals to be represented, is not cognizable. Again, once mediative thought is introduced as a phenomenon, it requires a real explanation of its possibility, as with any other appearance inventoried by Phenomenology. And its possibility finds support in the reality of laws. This seems to be the greatest mistake of nominalism: to suppose the possibility of thinking individual things while imposing on them general relations whose genesis is in language. The absence of real general relations characterizes a state of absolute freedom, the exclusive action of absolute Chance over things, or, in other words, a state of chaos. Peirce, on this view, will claim that “Chaos is pure nothing”,53 and such nothing means the impossibility of any Thirdness. The tacit intention in composing a genetic philosophy makes Peirce give utmost importance to evolutionism, to the point of adopting it radically: “It is doubtful whether any consistent philosophical position other than an evolutionist position is possible”.54 The development of laws from Chance, and the need to explain the harmony between a principle of order and one of freedom—responsible for two modes of being of phenomena—occurs under an evolutionary vector. Here, the stage is set for cosmology, where Peirce builds a theory to explain the emergence of the categories. In it, he reconstructs the origin of Firstness and its passage to Secondness, though it is not possible to develop it here even briefly.55 The passage from the latter to Thirdness already had an explanatory framework in the tendency of the world toward the acquisition of habits within the fabric of ideality that is founded on Firstness. What I am interested in emphasizing here is that Peirce, in his account of cosmogenesis, shows that the original unity which configures Firstness,

 Chance cannot be dependent on time continuity, as its events are not linked either with the past or with the future. 52  See CP 6.86. 53  CP 5.431. 54  NEM IV, p. 140. 55  In Ibri (2017b), there is a detailed presentation of Peirce’s cosmology. 51

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under the cosmic viewpoint, is metaphysical in nature. From it, in the same way that there is a silent echo from the original freedom through Chance, we have the remnants of the qualities of the world experienced as qualities of feeling, experienced outside temporality. Here, I think, Peirce seems to recover, through other means, the feeling of nostalgia that is found in Schelling’s aesthetic experience. There is a kind of timeless return to a beginning from where everything is born. This is the deepest poetic ground in Peirce’s philosophy. In it, everything begins; from it duality is generated; in it the synthesis of reason finds support. However, it is necessary to guarantee an evolutionary force, which, leaving that first unity, sets the world in motion and possesses the same initial poetic charm. And Peirce finds it in the doctrine of Agapism, or “evolutionary love”,56 which is the seminal force of evolution, joining two other principles and constituting the triad of Tychism, Ananchism, and Agapism,57 associated, in this order, with the three categories. Thus, Agapism is linked to Thirdness, which, I must recall, plays the role of mediator, generalizer, and reducer of the brute force of the particular to the unity of a cosmic continuum that does not differentiate inner and outward worlds. In its congealing and continuous nature, agapism is not a principle that would require reconciling oppositions of genesis, since they, quite on the contrary, possess a unity that endows them with a connaturality similar to the ideal-real unity within Schelling’s philosophy: “love cannot have a contrary, but must embrace what is most opposed to it”.58 Agapism is the doctrine that proclaims the presence of a synthesizing force of ideas enabling them to group together and grow through a power of sympathy. This conjecture by Peirce harmonizes with his theory of abduction. See how such a conjecture depends semiotically on the theory of abduction itself and harmonizes with it. Our capacity to form hypotheses must, somehow, be correlated with a theory of world, which, in turn, is also a metaphysical conjecture, although derived from experience. However, this apparent circle has, I suppose, a reason: doctrines are so logically interlocked that they seem to support one another in an undifferentiated and reciprocal manner. The same occurs with the epistemological and metaphysical theories. There is an evident logical consistency between Fallibilism and Tychism. By acknowledging the freedom of Nature as a phenomenon which has a seminal principle, Chance, and the consequent deviations from laws, one must refrain from representing in the sign that which the object does not contain, i.e., precision and full determination of conduct. Fallibilism, somehow, attenuates the classical anxiety for epistemological determinism, by removing a certain theological weight that has always accompanied the concept of Truth. The logical circularity of theories is solved by an evolutionary philosophy that establishes a hierarchy in temporality and that places the human mind as emerging

 See the essay Evolutionary Love (CP 6.272–317) published in 1893  in The Monist (Vol. 3, p. 176–200). 57  CP 6.302. 58  CP 6.304. 56

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long after the formation of the Universe, making the structure of Nature a conditioner of our faculties. This is one of the central reasons why Peirce’s philosophy cannot start from a transcendental subject. It must emerge naturally from this simple and genetic being in the world and, if this primary relationship is one of love, must allow the theories to grow from it.

2.4.4 The Normative Sciences Peirce’s Aesthetics is one of the least developed sciences within his system. This was not because he declared himself ignorant of Art,59 since this was never the object of Peircean aesthetics. He intended to give it a primary role in the hierarchy of the Normative Sciences, making both Ethics and Logic, or Semiotics, dependent on it. I believe its ground was contained in the primary aesthetic experience of the admirableness of Nature. Thus, the concept of the admirable was born, that which must surely integrate in the mind not only all the faculties in a single unity but also the objects of reason and behavior. Thus, it is not a science of Beauty, which, by the way, behind its appearance, does not always portray something admirable. Beauty, however, can be the bridge to the admirable and here, within the small space of this chapter, I propose only to show that art, when the metaphysical nature of aesthetic experience under Peirce’s philosophy is recovered, can assume a special charm and open a new universe of meaning, which will certainly transcend the mere satisfaction of the senses. Evolution moves toward a summum bonum, a coagulating tendency point of beauty, goodness, and intelligence, which in itself already requires a conduct in which the universal predominates over the individual. On the other hand, the vector of the mind in its growth tending to generalization seems to bring an ethical aspect of conduct. But, as Normative Sciences, both Aesthetics and Ethics contain a must-be that after all, together with Semiotics, constitute part of the theoretical framework of Peirce’s philosophy, such as a fisherman’s net that catches the fish that constitute a theory of world. Semiotics, in particular, would not need to have its emphasis on the determination of the sign by the object that appears in many expressions of sign definition,60 if only it purported to be a philosophy of language or an instrument for the analysis of signs in culture in general. In this emphasis, the roots of realism already reappear, as they had already appeared in Phenomenology, requiring, out of fidelity to this definition, an effective triadic approach, considering the realistic presence of the object and, when the ambience of reflection is not the real, to be aware of the object as something built within the sign. I believe that the first step toward a better understanding of what fiction is begins by understanding  See CP 5.113.  Among several signs definitions, see, for example, in PW, p. 80–81, this one which is characteristically realist: “I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, whose effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.” 59 60

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what reality is. The analysis of the nature of Art, in our view, must start from this point, and here Semiotics may offer a very original contribution. The complexification of Semiotics that goes beyond mere verbal representation, surpassing the logocentric tradition of the history of western philosophy, reveals that the world conception already foreseen in Phenomenology, through the homology of the categories, within what I have called the hypothesis of symmetry, required for its acknowledgment a theoretically dialogical structure, in which the natural signs had a meaning and in which the processes of Nature could be dialogically represented. Thus, science is not an invention of theories, although it could be so in the abductive stage of the investigation. It rather has the task of discovering laws. Between these two terms, invention and discovery, lies the distinction of the nominalistic and the realistic presuppositions. Within the stages of semiotic inquiry—abduction, deduction, and induction— abduction emerges as the mode of argument that holds the entire new content of knowledge, and Peirce is emphatic when he declares that deduction and induction have no heuristic power.61 It is abduction, then, which, under Firstness, within Thirdness, embodies the entire new content of knowledge; to use an expression from Kant, only it is synthetic. The synthesis is no longer found in a constituting ego, in the transcendentality of the I think, but in the freedom of a pure play of musement or of articulating new signs in theories which, despite having a high degree of randomness, show an amazing rate of correctness. Peirce compares this capacity for guessing the paths of Nature to the skill animals have to find their ways to survive, attributing to the human being the faculty of instinct: “Our faculty of guessing corresponds to a bird’s musical and aeronautical powers; that is, it is to us, as those are to them, the loftiest of our merely instinctive powers”.62 Peirce, at times, allows himself an explicit moment of poetry when he says that in the abductive moment the researcher must sit down and listen to the voice of nature until you catch the tune […] The invention of the right hypothesis requires genius—an inward garden of ideas that will furnish the true pollen for the flowers of observation”.63 This apprehension of the tonality also enables him to say that “man’s mind must have been attuned to the truth of things in order to discover what he has discovered. It is the very bedrock of logical truth”.64 Evidently, for a logician with a classical education, these statements must sound out of character. But Peirce starts from that original aesthetic unity and introduces the logical value of the qualities of feeling, giving it an ontological meaning under the category of Firstness. It comes from his appreciation of the freedom of the mind as heuristically fundamental for the discovery of theories. Everything that is original in Peirce develops, first of all, under this mantle of freedom characteristic of poetic play. And this concept of play is fundamental for an understanding of the poetic basis in Peirce’s philosophy.

 Analyze, for example, CP 5.171, CP 6.475, and HP II, p. 899–900. See, also, Chap. 6 of this book.  CP 7.48. 63  N II, p. 222. 64  CP 6.476. 61 62

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2.4.5 The Concept of Play There is a certain agreeable occupation of mind which, from its having no distinctive name, I infer is not as commonly practiced as it deserves to be; for indulged in moderately—say through some five to six per cent of one’s waking time, perhaps during a stroll—it’s refreshing enough more than to repay the expenditure. Because it involves no purpose save that of casting aside all serious purpose, I have sometimes been half-inclined to call it reverie with some qualification; but for a frame of mind so antipodal to vacancy and dreaminess such a designation would be too excruciating a misfit. In fact it is Pure Play. Now, Play, we all know, is a lively exercise of one’s powers. Pure Play has no rules, except this very law of liberty. It bloweth where it listeth.65

In the concept of Pure Play, Peirce reveals in the letter of his mature work the spirit of Schiller’s (1759–1805) thought,66 which he had already absorbed in his youth. In Aesthetic Education67 the idea of play, in which the human spirit experiences its freedom, whether by the unconditional passing of the mind through ideas without any purpose, or as aesthetic contemplation, totally giving in to a playful impulse (Spieltrieb) that is the full synthesis between the formal and sensitive universes. Whether in Schiller, or in Schelling, or in Peirce, we find contemplation in the form of an experience marked by freedom,68 in which the mind simply muses in an absolute state of Firstness. It is in the famous essay “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God”,69 where Peirce develops this play of musement, under which the three universes of experience parade before the eyes: the enchantment of the unity experience as qualities of feeling, the strong presence of the existence of things before consciousness, and the observation of a certain order and regularity, whose deepening requires the reintroduction of consciousness in time:

 CP 6.458.  In CP 2.197, Peirce writes: “It is now forty-seven years ago that I undertook to expound Schiller’s Aesthetische Briefe to my dear friend Horatio Paine. We spent every afternoon for long months upon it, picking the matter to pieces as well as we boys knew how to do. In those days I read various works on esthetics; but on the whole, I must confess that, like most logicians, I have pondered that subject far too little […] And then esthetics and logic seem, at first blush, to belong to different universes. It is only very recently that I have become persuaded that that seeming is illusory, and that, on the contrary, logic needs the help of esthetics”. In 1857, Peirce, not yet eighteen, wrote a small essay on Schiller’s Letters, commenting on the concept of play (W.1, p.  10–12). On the published work of Peirce, as we have commented concerning Schelling, there are only short references to Schiller; nevertheless, in PW, p. 77, we find: “As to the word ‘play’, the first book of philosophy I ever read […] was Schiller’s Aesthetische Briefe, where he has so much to say about the Spiel-Trieb; and it made so much impression upon me as to have thoroughly soaked my notion of ‘play’ to this day.” 67  Schiller, 1967, letters XIV and XV. 68  “Contemplation (or reflection) is the first liberal relation which man establishes with the universe around him” (Schiller, 1990, Letter XXV, p.  129). Relations between Peirce and Schiller are explored by Barnouw (1988), who sees in the German thinker one of the possible origins of pragmatism. 69  CP 6.452–493. 65 66

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2  Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy The dawn and the gloaming most invite one to Musement […] It begins passively enough with drinking in the impression of some nook in one of the three universes. But impression soon passes into attentive observation, observation into musing, musing into a lively give and take of communion between self and self. If one’s observations and reflections are allowed to specialize themselves too much, the Play will be converted into scientific study; and that cannot be pursued in odd half hours.70

Divested from mediation before the spectacle of Nature, the mind is absorbed by that Schellingian spirit of the primary experience of aesthetic intuition and becomes a stage for a play free of feelings and ideas, opening itself to a continuum of possibilities. It is in this environment of a deep aesthetic experience that Peirce grounds his hypothesis of the reality of God, revealing how that experience, slowly, becomes heuristic. There is evidence here of a primary element of admirableness that is the genesis of the work of intelligence where Peirce shows, I suppose, the root of the original inspiration of his work, the poetic ground of his philosophy, of a poetry unconstrained not only by qualities, but also by forms, in an integration of all our human faculties: Let the Muser, for example, after well appreciating, in its breadth and depth, the unspeakable variety of each Universe, turn to those phenomena that are of the nature of homogeneities of connectedness in each; and what a spectacle will unroll itself! As a mere hint of them I may point out that every smart part of space, however remote, is bounded by just such neighboring parts of every other, without a single exception throughout immensity. The matter of Nature is in every star of the same elementary kinds, and (or except for variations of circumstance), what is more wonderful still, throughout the whole visible universe, about the same proportions of the different chemical elements prevail.71

The spectacle of Nature seems in Peirce also to generate the beginning of all knowledge, as it was in primeval philosophy, as Schelling well observed. That original presentiment that enables Schiller to say: “In a word, there can no longer be any question of how he (man) passes from Beauty to Truth, since the latter is potentially contained in the former”.72

2.5 Thematic Overview Peirce’s tacit poetry, which I have endeavored to show herein, is deeply influenced, in our view, by his religiousness. It is common knowledge that Peirce was a religious man, and I believe that Firstness is the backdrop where that primary poetry meets a feeling of religiousness, bestowing to aesthetic experience its metaphysical  CP 6.459. The reflexive aspect of musement also appears in another passage in which Peirce reveals having absorbed the spirit of the beautiful images of romanticism: “Enter your skiff of Musement, push off into the lake of thought, and leave the breathe of heaven to swell your sail. With your eyes open, awake to what is about or within you, and open conversation with yourself; for such is all meditation” (CP 6.461). 71  CP 6.464. 72  Schiller, 1967, Letter XXV, p. 189. 70

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dimension. If there is an idea of God in Peirce’s work, this doubtlessly originates in that experience of the play of musement in which the mind converses freely with Nature, contemplating and apprehending it in the totality of the faculties. By exteriorizing itself as Nature, Schelling’s Absolute introduces itself in time as a work of art, Nature, thus becoming a visible mind.73 Would not Peirce’s Absolute also be given in this experience of contemplation and enthrallment?74 If there is this starting point that is of aesthetic nature in his philosophy, Peirce is faithful to it in the construction of his theories: there is, in our view, another aesthetic quality in his thought, i.e., the logical consistency in the entire system, the way in which doctrines interlock and support themselves reciprocally. Subjecting itself to the honing stone of Pragmatism, which ensures meaning75 to theories, the system reveals a kind of harmony that recovers a Greek beauty grounded in the elegance of its forms. A third aesthetic quality can be found in the idea of universe that his ontology presents. There are in Peirce, then, at least three expressions of a poetic nature: that which is given genetically in Firstness and which will expand through the other two categories; the architecture itself of his theoretical system; and finally the Universe revealed by the system. The conception of a beautiful Universe, permeated with intelligibility, by intelligence and freedom, an evolutionary universe that grows simultaneously in diversification and order, under the continuum of ideality, is a universe that can hold a divinity, where a God may be philosophically thought of. Indeed, a universe of dichotomies, led by necessity, full of inexplicable facts and logical inconsistencies, cannot contain a divinity:76 We suppose that what we haven’t examined is like what we have examined, and that these laws are absolute, and the whole universe is a boundless machine working by the blind laws of mechanics. This is a philosophy which leaves no room for a God! No, indeed! It leaves even human consciousness, which cannot well be denied to exist, as a perfectly idle and functionless flâneur in the world, with no possible influence upon anything—not even upon itself.77

The dearest, most precious and, for some, most sacred experience, that of unity, of connaturality between man and Nature, seems to be celebrated in Peirce’s philosophical system, much beyond any epistemological problems. He leads us to the radical commitment to such unity. Poetic by nature, the ground of all heuristics, it comes about in the silence of contemplation, later inviting one to the joy of thinking creatively.

 In Schelling (1988, p. 42), it reads: “Nature would be Mind made visible, and Mind invisible Nature.” 74  In CP 6.493, it reads: “as to God, open your eyes—and your heart, which is also a perceptive organ—and you see Him”. 75  See Ibri (2017b), Chapter 6. 76  It’s quite probable that Peirce’s conception of the universe was thought in such a way to be favorable to an understandable idea of Absolute. This is certainly a good theme for a new essay. 77  CP 1.162. 73

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Even if Peirce’s works contained poems or any works of art conceived by him, it seems to me that these would not be the manifestations through which he would have genuinely celebrated his poetic feeling of the world. His homage to his own deep feeling of musement was to conceive a philosophical system wherein the doctrines would interlock in a logically exemplary way, allowing for enchantment in the sensible sphere to then acquire the shape of intelligence. And this might have been his greatest poem. Poetry qua poetry he left to those who could write it as such. Undoubtedly we can tend our gardens,78 but perhaps, closer to the flowers, we can also find a new poetic ground to continue our philosophical reflections.

78

 See Nathan Houser’s brilliant paper (2003).

Chapter 3

Peircean Seeds for a Philosophy of Art

Keywords  Peirce · Philosophy of art · Semiotics · Metaphysics Scholars of Peirce’s work know, as I said, that he did not bequeath a reflection on Art. In this essay, I infer that he could have done it, since, in his mature work, he had already built a vast and complex theoretical system in light of which a philosophy of art could have been envisaged. Such philosophy, I believe, would be directed more toward an ontology of art than to an analysis of its historic content, in view of the characteristics pertaining to Peircean thought. I also infer that Peirce would consider a reflection on the various forms of artistic expression, distinguishing each one according to their semiotic specificity, their semantic potential, and their metaphysical meaning. Evidently, such a philosophy of art would have to be harmoniously inserted in his theoretical system. In this chapter, I seek to specify some of the seeds that Peirce left for reflection on a philosophy of art that I surmise he could have written had he lived a few more years. Peirce bequeathed us a non-anthropocentric philosophy, something extremely rare in a contemporaneity dominated by a pattern of thought that either elects the epistemic subject as a constitutive axis of meaning, or centers on its linguistic version: language, in either case, becoming the focus of philosophical analysis. Both alternatives are totally non-Peircean— certainly, following the critical vector that had always guided his analyses of the history of thought, he would classify them as nominalists. Peirce’s choices for the constitution of a philosophy follow other paths. And, I dare say, the seeds he left for a reflection on an original philosophy of art are very much substantiated by such choices. His anti-nominalism was not gratuitously critical, rather offering, in fact, realistic alternatives for a reading of man and the world in which we live. We must also bear in mind that Peirce combines his realism with idealism, doctrines that can be antagonistic and mutually exclusionary according to readings that do not revert to historically genuine roots of the quarrel of universals nor reflect on idealisms which have objective content, such as Plato’s, This chapter is based on a published text I authored: Sementes peircianas para uma filosofia da arte. Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia. São Paulo: Centro de Estudos de Pragmatismo, v.12, n.2, p. 205–219, 2011a. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_3

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Aristotle’s, and Schelling’s. I here think it is important to draw the attention of those who have recently acquainted themselves with Peircean thought, or intend doing so. Peirce is an erudite reader in the history of philosophy, but not only that. His philosophy seeks to solve the most classical issues that permeate the tradition of Western thought, and, for this reason, he dialogues with the major philosophies inscribed in history. To penetrate deeply into his theoretical system will, thus, require a careful study of his interlocutors, and only such a thorough study of the history of philosophy will enable access to the major edifice of Peircean philosophy. One thing is to think in light of a doctrine, quite another to erect a complex system of interlacing doctrines. Only through a systemic strategy can the seeds focused in this essay be recognized as such, assuming what I suppose is their widest meaning.

3.1 First Seed: The Role of Mathematics I think that the hierarchy of the sciences in Peirce’s classification, to a certain extent, already outlines the paths of his philosophy. For the sake of reflection, let us take the great triad: Mathematics, Philosophy, and Special Sciences. Mathematics, although at the top of Peirce’s classification of the sciences, is not, to him, the ideal model for a clear and distinct philosophy, avid for precision and exactness, guarantor of strict universality and necessity, as it occurs in the tradition of the history of ideas. To place Mathematics first is, according to the definition he borrowed from his father, Benjamin Peirce, to start everything by a “science of possible worlds.” In that position, it will simply train the human mind in the art of seeing relations, separating what is relational from what is not, clearly distinguishing the general from the particular. It will also seek logical consistency and structural harmony, making the eye work heuristically with thought in the construction of diagrams, exercising creativity in the discovery of paths to demonstrate a hypothesis. Peirce’s theory of diagrams, strongly inspired by Kant’s1 schematism, emphasizes mathematics in its task to create general forms that will endow human perception with such capability. Thus, Mathematics, along with teaching in perceiving and generalizing the predicates of objects, also constitutes a ludic exercise of creation and imagination, not in any merely dilettante meaning, but actually indispensable for its own practice. To start philosophy through Phenomenology is, to my mind, to refuse commencement by any abstract exercise of rationality. This is emphasized by the fact that Phenomenology is a science that affirms nothing categorically, only inventorying the ways in which our experience of the world develops. The tacit presence of Mathematics in Phenomenology is evidenced by the education of the human mind to regard phenomena in their presentness as a totality, by observing the notable characteristics that can be potentially generalized, and by the effective generalization of predicates common to all phenomena. Generalizing, in this sense,

 See Chap. 6 of this book.

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is to find universal forms under which all phenomena occur. Incidentally, phenomenological practice could not adopt any other procedure, since human experience, full of idiosyncrasies, would repudiate generalizations according to their contingency. Peirce found three general forms, which he described as modes of being or categories. These three categories constitute a kind of central axis around which all the other sciences evolve. This formulation of Peircean Phenomenology as a purely conjectural science of appearances makes it differ from other conceptions of phenomenology, such as Kant’s, Hegel’s, and Husserl’s. In Kant, phenomena appear as pure secondness; they do not display a regularity in itself, for which reason they cannot be raised to a metaphysical thirdness, having to submit to a transcendental thirdness imposed by the subject. Hegel, in turn, sees in his phenomenology a dialectics of history as human saga, directed to the growth of the immanent concept, to a thirdness solely confined to the sign, but denied to the object as Nature. According to Hegel, natural processes would enter the dialectic limited by the way in which human reason must know the world. But the world as such does not take part in the final cause that is the revelation of the Absolute. It is merely a stage on which the history of mankind performs. For his part, Husserl proposes the important process of divesting the mind of the concept,2 by the practice of epoché, through a kind of detoxification of the mind in the face of the phenomenon by suspending the action of judging, aiming to see it exactly in its pure appearance in itself, in such a way that the concept could be renewed through this depiction of the phenomenological truth of the objects. Although beyond the scope of this essay, it is evidently interesting to examine these distinctions regarding Peirce’s Phenomenology,3 sufficing here to point out that the entire architecture that follows Peirce’s Phenomenology is committed to these distinctions, and in such wise that the necessary symmetry of categories4 derived from the Peircean hypothesis of a reality constituted by an idealism-realism will be already foreshadowed. The concept of the phenomenon will be considered, indifferentially and isomorphically, as belonging both to experiences associated with objects external to the mind and to those related to the internal human world, requiring, in the formulation of Metaphysics, that the same categorial forms take both worlds into account.5 In fact, Peirce’s initiating philosophy through Phenomenology already implies starting from a world in which one is inexorably inserted. Although necessarily enabling the course that Peirce’s philosophy will

 In Peirce, this process is also required for the acknowledgment of the phenomena of firstness.  See, for instance, Spiegelberg (1956). 4  I am proposing the expression “symmetry of categories” as their indifferent application to both subjectivity and objectivity. 5  Here, I associated the term human to the predicate internal, since deriving from Peirce’s realism, also evidenced in Phenomenology, I suggest reserve the term subjectivity to denote human interiority, in order to extend the concept of interiority to all the real, heeding the development, as well, of Peirce’s cosmology. 2 3

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take, this issue, by itself, does not suffice. These routes will depend on choices,6 the latter, I believe, depending on what the philosopher intends in order to constitute a philosophy. Peirce’s mature works consolidate his choices. I hold that there is no theoretical deductive context that obliged Peirce to constitute a philosophical system structured on the realism-idealism synthesized in his synechism or theory of continuity. It could be said that such a structure is strongly favorable to the justifications of his heuristic theory or abduction, which had become a near obsession for him. Indeed, it is; however, to my mind, it involves much more, namely, a poetic view of the world equally favorable to the development of a philosophy of art. In this regard, it seems to me that it is Peirce who consummates a theoretical system that includes Schelling’s romantic ideal of conceiving Nature, on the one hand, as a living being with the same logical rights7 of man, and, on the other hand, as a work of art in its inexhaustible display of creative spontaneity. Peirce undertakes this task by virtue not only of his acute repertoire in Logic and scientific training, but equally of his extreme sensitivity to perceive the fresh face of the world that has no place in a logic of necessity and, thus, in a merely deductive rationality. Incidentally, as is well known, the expression spontaneity is associated with the first category, that which, among the three, attracts the attention of those who think of the most sensitive aspect of phenomena, their qualities qua coisa, like colors, sounds, etc. Other scholars see it as a source of the ontological indeterminism of Peirce—the mode of being of Chance. Few, however, in the latter case, consider the fact that Chance, according to Peirce’s definition, is a metaphysical principle for the distribution of qualities in things and that it can only act to the extent that there is an external world of existing individuals, knowingly associated with secondness. Only the study of the author’s cosmology teaches that firstness precedes secondness as a kind of qualitative world of an internal nature that would antecede an external world. Peirce explicitly cites this antecedence in his cosmology: “[...] the internal world was first, and its unity derives from that firstness. The external world was second [...].”8 Peirce’s philosophy requires the adoption of such a concept of interiority distinct from subjectivity—indeed, the latter is a special case of the former. I shall return to this theme further along. However, here I seek to affirm this aspect of firstness as a category of an internal nature, in order to emphasize that it is originally a unity, and that such a unity, as a classical expression in philosophy, has the logical property of being continuous. The whole conceptual fabric of this character of the continuity of firstness that provides its internal nature is grounded on Peirce’s cosmology.

 I approach this aspect of the choices made by Peirce also in Chap. 2 of this book.  Here, I call “logical rights” the consequence of realist—idealist admission of the symmetry of categories. 8  NEM, p. 141.

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3.2  Second Seed: A Hiatus in Time

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3.2 Second Seed: A Hiatus in Time One of the key points of what in Peirce could be defined as aesthetic experience is in the phenomenon of contemplation, in which the whole judicative apparatus of the mind disperses as a result of the needlessness of mediation. When the world does not react, does not objectify in the sense of not appearing as otherness, language is no longer a mediator and then it becomes, as the sole logical space that remains for it, possibly descriptive.9 However, even this description implies recognition and, thus, a flow of temporality in consciousness extends from the past into the future, in the extent that to such a future, at least, we associate an expectation of permanence of something that we saw as regular in the past. In the absence of otherness, consciousness may enjoy phenomena in their pure qualities, sharing with them a relation of unity in which the duality of ego/non-ego is undone. Phenomenally, then, contradicting the major trend of the interpretations of Peircean works, the categories are not omnipresent but can characterize themselves in their main principles, namely, unity of consciousness as pure firstness and raw reaction as pure secondness. Both, in their characteristic aspect of experience, are immediate and thus do not involve time. Only thirdness brings temporality to consciousness, and it is in this category that the other two cohabit. In my view, Peirce is perfectly clear when he refers to the absence of time that characterizes the internal experience of firstness: Go out under the blue dome of heaven and look at what is present as it appears to the artist’s eye. The poetic mood approaches the state in which the present appears as it is present [...] the present is just what it is regardless of the absent, regardless of past and future [...] The quality of feeling is the true psychical representative of the first category of the immediate as it is in its immediacy, of the present in its direct positive presentness [...]. The first category, then, is Quality of Feeling, or whatever is such as it is positively and regardless of aught else.10

This pendulum of consciousness between time and non-time is important not only under the viewpoint of epistemology in Peircean works11 but also sows seeds for the consideration of a disinterested experience12 with regard to its object. To simply regard the world in its appearance as pure presentness, accomplishing what Peirce calls the first necessary faculty for the practice of Phenomenology—very common, as he says, among artists—makes it unnecessary to develop mediations that would be indispensable in the case of the experience of secondness, thus, before some form of otherness. Indeed, when we are interested in some specific object, we  The term description has been used by nominalist schools uncommitted to a possible role of truth present in language, namely, its representative character vis-à-vis the object. A description does not seem to contain the essential requirement of predictability implied in cognitive concepts, rather simply giving rise to a merely narrative phatic sense of what is and was before the senses. 10  CP 5.44; EP 2, p. 149. 11  This is fundamental for an understanding of the concept of perceptive reason and the heuristic advantages of the diagrams. 12  This “disinterested” character of aesthetic experience appears as such both in Kant’s The Critique of Judgment (1980) and in Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1969), book 3. 9

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lose a kind of totality provided by a qualisign that is constituted from mere contemplation, since time takes consciousness and inserts it in the universe of cognitive representation. In the cognitive effort, or in the recognitive habit, consciousness is separated from the object to observe it according to some form of mediation, some symbolic form. To wish a purpose and, with it, establish a conduct, we must mobilize our will; and whenever it interposes itself in our relation with phenomena, both time and our separation in respect to the world are concomitantly interposed. On this point, Fichte and Schopenhauer were partially correct: the reaction of the world, secondness in Peirce’s vocabulary, always appears whenever we want something. We say partially because the Enlightenment determinism that accompanied German idealism, of which Schelling is the sole exception, could not conceptualize the fortuitousness of the fact independent of will: we not only act on the world provoking its reaction, but it also acts on us, insolently invading human life, breaking the peace of affections or denouncing as absurd our pretense of mediating everything rationally. But this acknowledgment of Chance as a living force in phenomena would require a realism as ontological presupposition, something that—again excepting Schelling—is not present in German idealism, from Kant to Schopenhauer, a historical period with which Peirce dialogued intensely. We will develop this point further along, dealing with Peirce’s indeterminism as one of his seeds for a philosophy of art. The seed of the time hiatus is thus characterized by the experience of presentness. It subtracts consciousness from time and turns it into the unity of a quale-­ consciousness, or semiotically, a qualisign. The interesting point here is what provides Peirce’s realism or what I called the symmetry of categories, namely, that this time hiatus in the consciousness of firstness is, in light of that categorial symmetry, in the reality of the object: real time has a discontinuity in the present.13 Indeed, under a simple justification, the action of Chance in phenomena cannot occur through its insertion in the flow of time, since, by itself, it produces independent events in time and, thus, independent of any antecedent-consequent relation in general. Therefore, time must contain a discontinuity in the present, wherein this principle called Chance enters the existence in which it distributes qualities. This consequence of Peirce’s metaphysics causes two hiatuses in time, namely, what the ancient Greek called kairos, internal time, and kronos, external time. More than that, categorial symmetry establishes that to the internal unity of pure experience of firstness correspond both diversity and asymmetry in the external world, as products of Chance. Peirce’s words on this point are clear: “And thus it is that that very same logical element of experience, the quale-element, which appears upon the inside as unity, when viewed from the outside is seen as variety.”14  See CP 6.86 where Peirce says “[...] time has a point of discontinuity at the present. This discontinuity appears in one form in conservative actions where the actual instant differs from all other instants absolutely, while those others only differ in degree; and the same discontinuity appears in another form in all non-conservative action, where the past is broken off from the future as it is in our consciousness [...].” 14  CP 6.236; my italics. 13

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3.3 Third Seed: Chance and Creativity The difference in the conditions of cognoscibility of reality between nominalistic and realistic schools certainly does not occur solely in the fact that such reality presents itself as a phenomenon, that is, appearing as an object of experience. While this condition of appearing, albeit necessary, satisfies Kant’s transcendentalism, for example, it does not suffice for Peirce. His realism will require that phenomena appear according to some real law in order to be cognitively thought. The representative competence of the sign in its generality will depend on a real generality that submits the phenomenon to an order endowed with otherness. Kant cannot admit this. For Kant all order of phenomena derives from logical structures a priori; this is the solution that his transcendental philosophy provides to Hume’s skepticism. Had Kant passed from the acknowledgment that the unconditioned is not in itself cognoscible, to the alternative conclusion that the conditioned in itself is, he would have saved the realism of classical science, which was indeed the inspiring muse of his 1st Critique. He would not have, then, established his complex nominalism that introduces definitively the figure of a constitutive subject and, with it, imparted a strong influence to the nominalism that is ubiquitously disseminated in contemporary philosophy. Faithful to his realism, Peirce considers the absolutely unconditioned as inept to represent any reality that makes any sense.15 To him, however, a reality that may mean something would just have to be partially conditioned—this is, ultimately, his ontological indeterminism. Some general and continuous order is required for cognitive thought to be possible—thus, he did what Kant also could not have done: introduce the notion of real Chance occurring in phenomena. Kant was, indeed, committed to his time, with the Enlightenment determinism from which derives the model of universal and necessary science. So important and differentiating is this introduction by Peirce of the concept of Chance in philosophy, which it is worthwhile to conjecture on the reasons that he probably had for it. I propose three fundamental reasons, namely: (a) His education and effective practice in experimental sciences16 Everyone who had this experience will note the evidence of the deviations of the conclusions of an experiment in relation to predictions. We are not referring to exceptions,17 but actually to dispersions in relation to an average value. There are two reasons for such deviations, and Peirce was capable of grasping them well, in  In CP 5.431, we read: “Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality: for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.” 16  Read What Pragmatism Is (CP 411–437). 17  It is worth noting that to say that some results are exceptions is, ultimately, to affirm that there is a set of identical results and that some of them are not. On the other hand, to consider that there is an average around which there are different degrees of dispersion is to say that chance is acting in this phenomenon. The former clearly is a deterministic approach. The latter, an indeterministic one. 15

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my view: errors of measurement are not eliminated by perfecting the instruments used—lucidly, Peirce would rather insist that the more refined our measuring devices and procedures, the more precisely will we detect those deviations.18 This is one of the experimental corroborations of the hypothesis of a principle of fortuitousness operative in Nature, whose actions create asymmetries and differences. (b) His mature phenomenology His phenomenology will enshrine the importance of an experience of regarding the world without mediations and perceive how much asymmetry, irregularities, and differences it contains, in such a way that it is reasonable to suppose the impossibility of some form of law that could justify such characteristics. After all, Peirce would say, law creates redundancies and similarities, on which our attention is normally focused, without realizing this irregular character: “But will not somebody kindly tell the rest of the audience what is the most marked and obtrusive character of nature? Of course, I mean the variety of nature [...].”19 This is another phenomenological basis for the supposition of a principle that runs counter to law in the deterministic sense: while the latter produces uniformity, Chance produces diversity. (c) The Reading on Schelling Schelling’s deep influence in the spirit of his thought. Indeed, the German author pioneered the idea of Nature endowed with freedom, where growing diversity became a creative principle that he called Absolute, in light of his pantheism. Schelling was the most expressive philosophical spokesman of German romanticism, a movement that called for a new view of Nature, distinct from the Enlightenment mechanism—a Nature concomitantly alive20 and creative, a work of art. Such is, I believe, Peirce’s view of Nature. Such a cohabiting view will enable saying that the semiotic dialogue between man and Nature will not only occur through logical, cognitive and thus temporal mediation, but from a silent intensity in which a possible pragmatic sense may develop, grounded on aesthetic experience.

 In CP 6.46 we read: “Try to verify any law of nature and you will find that the more precise your observations, the more certain they will be to show irregular departures from law.” 19  CP 1.159. As can be seen, this is an excerpt from a conference. 20  See in CP 5.119: “The Universe as an argument is necessarily a great work of art, a great poem [...].” 18

3.4  Fourth Seed: The Ontological Limits of Science and the Nameless Things

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3.4 Fourth Seed: The Ontological Limits of Science and the Nameless Things All our cognitive language is comprised of general concepts and, these, in turn, in light of Peirce’s realist vocabulary, have their condition of possibility in the habits of conduct of objects. The naming of the objects of the world is, in fact, the naming of the class of general predicates to which they belong, predicates that they share through similarity of conduct, comprising those symbols that mediate our relationship with reality. This mediation constituted by the concepts developed by generalization of experience, conditions our perception of reality. “We perceive what we are adjusted for interpreting [...],”21 says Peirce, but we do so because our rationality acts as a problem solver in the face of the reactive otherness to our acts endowed with ends. Mediations work cognitively, namely, predicting the future conduct of the object in such a way that we may thus plan what conduct to adopt to attain our objectives. Evidently, this role of mediations is, most of the time, simply recognitive, so that our habits of action may be confirmed with regard to their efficiency. This existential routine, analyzed thus in its link not only with language, but also with what, in fact, enables it as mediation, brings to our consciousness that we relate to a portion of the world submissive to thirdness, namely, to the regularities of law—a world constituted by general objects that have names. But, then, if phenomena reveal irregularity and asymmetry, precisely an aspect of fortuitousness that does not permit generalizations and, consequently, logical mediations, one may say that there is a kind of world residue that does not concern reason in its cognitive role, predictive of the future course of facts. This extension of the predicate of freedom to Nature that Kant could not have dared, Schelling conceived, extracting from his general concept the grounding of art. In Peirce, who consolidates this symmetry of freedom with regard to man and Nature through his firstness, both phenomenologically and ontologically valid, the association between spontaneity and creativity is also frequent and especially strongly focused in his theory of abduction.22 This is one the most interesting theoretical vectors of Peircean philosophy, i.e., the passage from immediacy to mediation, provided the former enables the latter, that is, provided that in immediacy an order apprehensible by a symbol is tendentially inscribed. But, in a great, and perhaps more frequent, number of times immediacy does not offer a logical order because it does not have it in itself—it is the hypothesis of Chance that validates this expectation. This is the world of nameless phenomena, which logical language cannot reach, since what is first, asymmetric, irregular, is averse to any generalization, and the names are those of concepts that, as already said, feed on regularities and similarities or on whatever submits to any law. One could say then, in a world wherein a principle of fortuitousness is recognized, there is a furniture of facts that have no connection with each other, of  CP 5.185.  Peirce holds that there is a trend for ideas to associate themselves, forming more general ideas. On this, he comments in his essay The Law of Mind. 21 22

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which logical language has nothing to say, and on which our positive science, structured on concepts that describe laws, must keep silent. It could be said, therefore, that there is a set of phenomena whose unity cannot be conceptual, as pertaining to the category of thirdness, but only possible through quale-consciousness, as firstness. To this set cannot be applied a language whose logical relations between its terms represent real relations between phenomena. The terms that constitute such language are committed to redundancies, similarities, reiterative phenomenological habits and all that is likened to them. This commitment defines its semantic field, its more direct sense. This is evidently a correspondential view of language—that is, based on a realistic conception. However, I do not believe that an alternatively contextualist view, such as exemplified by the confrontation between the first and the second Wittgenstein, would pragmatically alter what we here intend to say, which is that, objectively, the logically mediating language leads us to a relation of thirdness with the world, destined to conceptually guide our future actions. Consequently, it seems that, if we wish to say something about what does not follow the laws, we have to use a language also devoid of rules, not only by a partial break of syntax but also mainly by semantic rupture, emphasizing in poetic words that which no longer mobilizes reason, and rather our capacity for synthesis in the sphere of sensitivity. This is the space of poetry, the deconstructing say of metaphor,23 where words are led to environments foreign to their logical meaning, endeavoring to apprehend a meaning for which they lack competence when in their original universe. By being thus demobilized from their habitat, the words can, then, freely place in a possible relation that which does not have a necessary relation. And possible relations constitute a fabric whose texture is woven by artistic imagination. I limit myself here to poetry not only because of the reduced space of this chapter but also because it is a depository of the words that free themselves from the logical web of language to become interpretant signs of mere possibility, challenging the comprehension of a meaning outside the logical world, relegated to that residue of nameless world. But it seems evident that not only a poetry made of words but also a poetics expressed in the signs of other arts constitute the deconstructing language of metaphors that endeavor to capture that residual meaning that mobilizes not the mediative reason, but the human heart, as if returning to a primitive origin whence all thirdness may have possibly come. The following passage shows what William James considered Peirce’s most brilliant hypothesis, namely, his explanation for the emergence of the laws of Nature: But if the laws of nature are the result of evolution, this evolution must proceed according to some principle; and this principle will itself be of the nature of a law. But it must be such a law that it can evolve or develop itself [...] Evidently it must be a tendency toward generalization—a generalizing tendency […] Now the generalizing tendency is the great law of mind, the law of association, the law of habit-taking […] Hence I was led to the hypothesis

23

 Theme, incidentally, of the magnificent study contained in Hausman (1989).

3.5  Fifth Seed: Idealism and Cosmology

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that the laws of universe have been formed under a universal tendency of all things toward generalization and habit-taking.24

Apart from evolutionism as the core point of Peirce’s ontology, this confirms what we may call, in his philosophy, an equivalence of logical rights between Man and Nature, since the tendency to habit-taking becomes a property no longer confined solely to subjectivity, but equally extensive to the sphere of the object. This is one of the clearer roots of Peirce’s Objective Idealism, which supposes that ideality is the only substance constitutive of the Universe.25 Let us see what the seeds of this hypothesis bequeathed to a philosophy of art.

3.5 Fifth Seed: Idealism and Cosmology I will be brief in this item, and I will avail myself of it only to point out once again that Peirce’s idealism is harmonious with his realism, and the synthesis of both doctrines, I believe, is expressed in his theory of the continuum, or Synechism. There being insufficient space for a full justification of this point of view, I will just point out that to suppose a reality interwoven with ideality, without the mind-matter duality whose success still continues, if not explicitly, at least tacitly, in many philosophies that followed Cartesianism, implies a new world view as well as a new view of Man-Nature relations. I would say that idealism is really necessary in Peirce’s philosophy: the deepest ground of his pragmatism establishes that the semiotic dialogue between internal and external worlds, whether on the sphere of Man or of Nature, must be granted by a connaturality between both, and this common nature of both worlds is constituted by ideality. Now, just as on the plane of thirdness, relations between inner and outer worlds are fulfilled in the relations between thought and action and between law and fact—sources of all meaning in the logical, meditative and cognitive sphere—one could ask what kind of meaning could contain the relation between external diversity and internal unity in the sphere of firstness? This question should be answered through a reflection on the nature of Art, since, as I have attempted to show, that is the proper language, in its many forms and manifestations, to refer to what I have here called nameless world. Here, idealism prepares the bed where the river of this reflection can flow. A genetic philosophy—an expression borrowed from Schelling that so well fits Peirce when one studies his cosmology—will evidence that the whole origin of the universe occurs through the unity of a continuum of qualities, whose rupture generates an external world of chaotic beginning. Such a world, because of its eidetic tendency, will originate relations of thirdness. The three categories, in Peirce’s cosmology, are evidenced in their emergence as a logical sequence. The study of this

 CP 7.515.  Recall, as well, the adoption by Peirce of the Schellingean hypothesis for his idealism, namely, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. 24 25

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cosmology ultimately sows the near inevitable idea of associating the quale-­ consciousness that typifies aesthetic experience to a cosmically originary state. The history of philosophy already has this metaphysical association between feeling of unity—i.e., between the continuum of quale-consciousness that depersonalizes, in Schopenhauer’s words, by undoing our notion of ego—and something cosmically originary. In Plato, this association occurs through the feeling that precedes reminiscence, a kind of unutterable internal call for entry into the world of intelligibility through the help of Socratic maieutics. In Schelling, through the feeling of nostalgia, an intransitive longing that suggests a return to the originary ocean of the Absolute. Peirce’s metaphysics provides countless correlates for the meaning of an experience of unity that characterizes aesthetic experience, and the idealism derived from his cosmology is an invitation to reflect on the deeper meaning of the semiotic role of Art.

3.6 Sixth Seed: Polysemy and the World of Icons As a sixth and final major seed for a philosophy of art in Peirce, it is proper to raise the issue of the meaning of a work of art after a few conjectures on the meaning of aesthetic experience. We could start by asking whether a work of art should, or should not, be scrutinized for its truth or falsehood, the same as a scientific theory, or in the same way as our more common assertions of common sense. To say that the heating of a material substance occurs through the linear relation between the amount of heat supplied and the rise in temperature, or to say that it is raining outside, constitute propositions whose meaning relates to the possibility of an experience that corroborates what is stated. In short, the last word of the meaning of a theory that enunciates a state of phatic things is in the observable conduct of the real object that is placed as otherness with regard to the theory. None other, incidentally, is the definition of reality adopted by Peirce and admittedly borrowed from Duns Scotus: the real is that which does not depend on any representation made of it. Thus, it seems legitimate to say that true theories, that is, attested by facts, are those endowed with meaning. In light of Pragmatism, by being true, it could be said that they are capable of shaping human conduct. It is obvious that a proven false theory does not have this power. Nevertheless, would the work of art grant to the otherness of the fact the last word for its meaning? Should it be so, how do we distinguish Art from science? To accuse Kafka of having written a false work, since men normally do not turn into cockroaches, seems totally pathetic. This independence of art in relation to the world of secondness typifies it as an exercise in creative freedom, inventing possible worlds and creating meanings. While it could be said that sciences are unisemic, because of the commitment of the theories to the facts that ultimately provide meaning only to what is admittedly true, would it be legitimate to impose the same conditions of meaning on the work of art? It seems that the answer to this question is an

3.7  Thematic Overview

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emphatic no, in view of the stated noncommitment of the work of art with regard to the real world. Well, then, what anchors its meaning once free of the univocal otherness of an external world? There appears for Art a universe of possibilities of meaning, a polysemy that is in the very core of its nature. Much could be said of this, but in view of the limited space of this chapter, I will confine myself to consider that in Peirce’s semiotic we find a type of sign that, by definition, applies to this polysemy of art, namely, the icon. Contrary to the focus of some aesthetic theories, I do not wish here to emphasize the icons by their powers of analogy, nor bring out the qualities of the object by their similarity, but by their potential for independent meaning, independently of the existence of their object, by their character of producing the object from within, and thus constituting self-representation. In this sense, all art is primarily iconic, even that which is not eminently verbal, as is literature and poetry, owing to the ontology of its object, wholly devoid of otherness with regard to the sign.

3.7 Thematic Overview I have chosen six topics that in this chapter I have called seeds for a possible philosophy of art in Peirce. I do not rule out finding others, which certainly must exist. After all, having studied chemistry Peirce seems to have bequeathed a philosophical system with open valences, namely, associative potentialities for themes that he could not explore in his lifetime. Exemplarily, if we reflect on the radicalness of the deconstruction of the anthropocentric nature of philosophy, such as Peirce accomplished, building solid theoretical bridges between the human and the natural, we are moved to think not only of sharing our rationality with the world by virtue of the symmetry of the categories but also of sharing our subjectively imaginary universe. Now, would not the natural correlate of this imaginary be in the universe of possibilities of firstness? Is not this universe the depository of the creative freedom of Nature, the hub from which all diversity that renounces the incompetence of logical language in describing it irradiates? Does our human heart, then, not contain its object in such a correlated universe of freedom? Is not the thought of this symmetry of the imaginary a radical acknowledgment of idealism-realism or of its synthesis, Synechism, faithful to Peirce’s mature work? If this conjecture is plausible, then a seventh seed emerges, accompanied by the joy in proposing it, notwithstanding our having already conceived the symmetry of firstness in terms of unity and diversity. On the other hand, in light of Pragmatism, would Art thus potentially thought, in light of Peirce’s philosophy, not have a pragmatic sense given by the reflexive collection that it makes of that residue of nameless world where there is a meaning not apprehensible by our logical nets of thirdness? How can we discover this meaning? It will surely be in the question: how could aesthetic experience affect our conduct?

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On the other hand, another gigantic task insinuates itself in the sphere of this reflection: what role would Art perform in the achievement of an aesthetics that, to Peirce, aims at the Admirable? To think through a philosophy of art in Peirce will also doubtless imply the investigation of the influence of authors such as Schiller, with his Aesthetic Letters,26 the metaphysical poetics of Emerson and, inevitably, a return to the philosophy of art of Schelling. A long journey, worthy of a future community of investigation, to which we hope to leave, already cultivated at least some of the seeds we have listed here.

 Published in its English version as Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetics Education of Man. Translated with an Introduction by Reginald Snell. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2004. 26

Chapter 4

The Poetics of Nameless Things

Keywords  Charles Sanders Peirce · Philosophy of art · Ontology · Epistemology · Phenomenology · Cosmology This text develops some points of the previous chapter entitled Peircean Seeds for a Philosophy of Art,1 where I cited six theoretical themes extracted from Peirce’s philosophy, which I referred to as “seeds,” to set out a philosophy of art that the author did not develop. These are: 1st Seed—The Role of Mathematics 2nd Seed—A Hiatus in Time 3rd Seed—Chance and Creativity 4th Seed—The ontological limits of science and the nameless things 5th Seed—Idealism and Cosmology 6th Seed—Polysemy and the world of icons. In the present chapter, I will endeavor specifically to develop the 4th seed, referring to the ontological limits of science and relating them to what I call nameless things. First of all, however, we must consider that many may question whether Peirce was actually interested in a reflection on art, a theme to which he seldom referred, being more renowned for his work as a logician, with strong thinking on epistemology and the sciences in particular, as well as being acknowledged as the father of pragmatism and semiotics.2 Nevertheless, I think that he would have done so if he

 This chapter is based on a published text I authored: Sementes peircianas para uma filosofia da arte. Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia. São Paulo: Centro de Estudos de Pragmatismo, v.12, n.2, p. 205–219, 2011a. 2  Some reflections on a possible philosophy of art in Peirce were already done. For example, see the interesting paper written by Lefebvre (2007). 1

This text, previously published in Rodrigues, C.  T. (org.) Arley Morenum Liber Amicorum: Homenagem a Arley Ramos Moreno in memoriam. São Paulo: FiloCzar, p. 233–248, 2020e, is reproduced here with due authorization from the editors. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_4

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had had more time to live, as I consider that he bequeathed a theoretical system of philosophy from which a theory of art could not be absent. I have intentionally referred to the focus of this chapter as philosophy of art and not aesthetics. According to Peirce, aesthetics is a normative science, and although, to my mind, unsatisfactorily developed by him, it plays a particular role in the classification of the author’s sciences, having as its goal something that he called the Admirable. So, as scholars of his work know, under the name of Aesthetics Peirce did not mean a study on beauty or beautifulness. Nor, I believe, would it be a doctrine on art. It is also interesting to point out that even a philosophy of art based on the seeds that Peirce bequeathed also would not have beautifulness as object. I suppose that something more complex than beauty would stand as the focus of reflection on art, once it developed as an outgrowth of the whole of Peircean philosophy, mainly of his metaphysics. I used a metaphor from the vocabulary of Chemistry in the abovementioned chapter that seemed to me to illustrate what I think Peirce’s philosophy is all about, namely, a theoretical corpus with open valences, ready for combinations with other ideas, forming more complex and systematically connected ideas.3 This viewpoint leads me to suppose that a philosophy of art could then be combined with the open system of ideas that comprise his philosophy. But after all, what then would be the object of a philosophy of art inspired by Peirce’s philosophy? An analysis of artistic expressions? An analysis of its objects? A reflection on its role in culture in general? The answers to these questions end up becoming extremely complex and they could only be plausible within the context of his mature philosophy, in which, in my view, Peirce’s thought is consolidated as a system. Associated with this question is one that would reflect, one could say, an endogenous aspect, i.e., what role would art play within Peirce’s theoretical system, considering that he conceived an end to each field of knowledge within his classification of the sciences? These questions, if they cannot be satisfactorily answered in the space of a short chapter, can at least be contextualized through an exposition of the theoretical guidelines that underlie Peirce’s thought, as we will try to do next.

4.1 Thoughts on Peirce’s Philosophy: Some Boundary Conditions for a Theory of Art Peirce’s mature work outlines a radically non-anthropocentric philosophy, guided, one could say, by a mater principle that is the consideration of the concept of meaning, both on the logical and ethical spheres, strictly focused on the notion of universal, or general. This vector pointing to the general implies, on the logical sphere, the

 Actually, this idea of a combinatorial complexity of ideas appears in the essay The Law of Mind (W 8, p. 135–157; CP 6.102–163; EP 1, p. 312–333). 3

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acquisition of mediations in relation to the brute force of any world in which existence can be defined, namely, in which there is a cohabitation of definite spatial-­ temporal particulars. On the other hand, from an ethical point of view, such a vector focused on the general implies the overcoming of the individual or of a group of individuals as center of power and interest in detriment of values that are affirmed as such because they can be shared as universally common goods. The philosophical question that must be highlighted, in its fullest sense, eventually becomes a question on the nature and origin of these generals that, according to Peircean philosophy, guide both our logical and ethical rationality, as well as the reason why the vectorial sense of meaning should be defined from the particular to the general and not the other way around. Questions such as these, while legitimate in the context of Peirce’s philosophy, also cannot be answered within the scope of a mere chapter such as this, without invalidating the task of at least referring to them. At any rate, we can emphasize that when we refer here to the general as an end that carries meaning, we are dealing with something that contains a structure of its own, defined by some system of relations, by some type of rule or law. As scholars know, the acknowledgment of the reality of these generals is part of the realistic context of Peirce’s philosophy. As I have insisted in previous papers,4 this realism makes a significant difference compared to philosophical systems that do not adopt it. Peirce was correct in asserting that the vast majority of systems of ideas were nominalist, and his unwillingness against this stance remained virtually ubiquitous throughout his intellectual life. It is also worth noting that in Peirce’s philosophy generals appear modally considered in the form of possibilities and, for this reason, it seems convenient to use the vocabulary of synechism, or theory of continuity, thus replacing the concept of generality with that of continuity, which can refer to either the possible or the necessary. This change in terminology is important in order to understand the difference between the continuum of possibilities and of logical relations. Ultimately, they are logical modes of addressing an old couple of concepts that appear remarkably often in the history of philosophy, namely, freedom and necessity. It is equally important to point out that this vector of the particular to the continuous of the system of relations is one of the reasons why Peirce rebutted James’ view of pragmatism, to whom the meaning of conceptions was essentially centered on the action they could produce. Peirce emphasized that the particular should never be an end in itself, whether on the logical or the ethical sphere. When it comes to the logical sphere, what should matter is what can have future extensionality and be useful as mediation equipped with continuity, in a process that may be called learning, since this continuity would be subject to the corrective flow of experience. From the standpoint of ethics, this refusal of the particular as an end is nothing more than adherence to a traditional principle that, permeating almost all systems of morality, condemns the sin of selfishness. From this perspective, one could say then that the purpose of art, by analogy, should not be something particular. But what would be

 See, for instance, Ibri (2006b).

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the general or the continuous related to art making? A new question and a new difficulty in providing a fitting answer. I believe, however, that it may be possible to provide one further ahead. I have to stress that I am convinced that the key in Peirce’s philosophy is found in the full understanding of his categories—they structure all the doctrines that constitute the author’s theoretical system. In them, incidentally, there is this duet of the continua of possibilities and relations, both related to a world of existences populated with particular things.5 Those continua are characterized by the categories of firstness and thirdness, in this order, while the world of existence is characterized by secondness. A long interaction with these categories enables them to be introjected in the mind of the Peircean scholar in an indelible and deeply heuristic way: one comes to understand the author’s doctrines through categories and is compelled to consider them with ever-renewed reading. Exemplarily, the categories associated with the notion of continuum provide a more ontological reading of Peirce’s entire theoretical system, as, indeed, he intended it to be in the maturity of his work.6 It should be also noted how the history of philosophy after Aristotle—to take a great name as a landmark—could no longer deal with a cohabitation between freedom and necessity on the metaphysical level, even though some systems still held them exclusively within the human scope, in the forms of free will and moral duty. Peirce is a pioneer in rediscovering, in contemporary times, the logical place of that cohabitation: conceiving a world in which Chance and Law act as simultaneous principles of spontaneity and order—and in fact he is right that this duet had a long life only in ancient times, in the correlated forms of Chaos and Cosmos in mythology, as well as in the distinction between Accident and Essence in Aristotle, for example. This rediscovery of old principles, carried out by Peirce, was accompanied by a logical refinement provided by the theory of continuity and the logic of relations, filtering from them the mythical-religious elements that always accompanied them throughout history. What is important to highlight here about the categories is that they are the fulcrum of a logical symmetry between Man and Nature—modes of appearing and being assume the same three categorial forms. In other words, the categories that emerge in Peirce’s Phenomenology as modes of experiencing what appears to the human mind end up becoming modes of being that comprise reality. This categorial symmetry between consciousness of world and real world accentuates his realistic adoption of philosophy: firstness, secondness, and thirdness are not only modes by which we experience phenomena, but how a reality that appears phenomenologically is in itself. Of course, this conception of reality is formed abductively, namely, it is a hypothesis, in light of Peirce’s fallibilism, of how the outside world can be from its inside. This play between both sides provides a very heuristic reading of  I am here applying the concept of existence in its scholastic sense adopted by Peirce, namely, a state of things that shelter individuals potentially reactive to each other. 6  Peirce refers specifically to the theory of continuity, whose deepest understanding would provide a sharper view of the concept of reality. In CP 4.62, he states: “When we come to study the principle of continuity, we will gain a more ontological conception of knowledge and of reality.” 5

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Peirce’s realism and will also provide a rather original view, I suppose, of the very nature of Art. Ultimately, this play is the pivot of a classic problem in philosophy, mentioned before as the duet formed by the general and the particular. It is commonly said in history that we cannot attribute any general character to reality—perhaps it is better to say continuous character of reality, returning in time to Peirce’s vocabulary. We had already pointed out in other texts7 that Hume had caused the collapse of faith in real continuities. Despite Kant’s efforts, the scars of Humean skepticism never completely healed—philosophers, rightly one could say, always renew in their minds the deep disturbance they initially felt when faced with the question: what necessary proof do we have that the sun will rise tomorrow? Kant, in fact, did not take up the realism of the universals that the modern science of Galileo and Newton presupposed. He only offered transcendentalism as a solution to the continuous character of the theories, no longer based on any real continuity. Evidently, this solution is unsatisfactory when one intends to make a genetic philosophy, that is, a philosophy that could answer, beyond psychology, about the origin of transcendental forms, as well as why phenomena should agree with them; more than that, and this seems to me to be the central question, why phenomena would have the strange power of the last word in the choice of transcendent forms that, in the end, will consolidate the theories admitted as true? All this belongs to the complexity of epistemology, and it is important to point out here that contemporaneity has preferred to retreat to the safe haven of nominalism, where the world is only that which immediately appears to the eye, a world of things, facts, and objects which in their individuality would await men’s condescension to be given names and theories that would after all save their appearances. Within this nominalism, it already seems to be a risky ontological step to admit at least an external world of things independent of us. There are contemporary philosophical controversies over whether this can be so admitted, and whether, in the end, we would not be safer by saying that we experience no more than our own ideas. In philosophy there are numerous problems that can be classified as fascinating and still unsolved. But honestly I cannot see in this nominalist controversy anything other than a nostalgic return of philosophy to Thales’ well, remaining there oblivious to the course of life and the justifications for common sense beliefs that it at least should seriously concern itself with, without turning them over, as Hume did, to Psychology. Nevertheless, to discuss about real continua becomes to do metaphysics, this word that has become, in a certain way, obscene in contemporaneity. However, Peirce’s philosophy suggests, as is well known, what he calls scientific metaphysics, which should be understood as an attempt to conceive a theory of reality based on experience. This reality is thus, within his system of ideas, conceived according to its three categories: to the firstness corresponds the principle of Chance, to the secondness that of Existence, and to the thirdness that of the Laws or Habits of Nature.

 See, for example, Ibri (2011b).

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4.2 On Things That Have Names Peirce’s realism has its roots in the nominalism versus realism quarrel of scholasticism and is unrelated to the contemporary realism versus idealism controversy that develops in the wake of the problem of whether or not there is a world independent of the human mind and its representations. The Peircean question refers to the admission or not of real continuities in the world, which corresponds isomorphically to the question about the reality of universals in scholasticism. His realism will then recognize that continuities are real, whether of possibilities or of relations. It is important to emphasize that a world that did not contain at least some real general relations between its events, endowed with some future permanence, thus constituting continuities, would prevent the exercise of cognitive thought. Such a world in disorder, without any relations between its phenomena, would not support any form of cognition. It is nothing less than a serious epistemological mistake to say that thought and language organize phenomena. Besides failing to recognize the main characteristic of a real world, namely, its otherness, the above statement confuses real order with criterion of relevance, insofar as such a criterion is a way of choosing from phenomena that which can acquire meaning for us by means of the guidelines of some investigative hypothesis. It is essential to point out that in a world in evolution, as it properly is in the Peircean conception of reality, one could not claim a definitive idea of real order, crystallized in some form of ontological determinism that is difficult to defend in contemporary times. Peirce will, through his evolutionism, conceive a world in formation, in which natural laws would be in progress, in parallel to the permanent and growing action of Chance. Firstness and thirdness interact cosmically, inserting, respectively, on one side, diversity and asymmetry; on the other side, relations of order between its phenomena, constituting what Peirce calls Laws or natural Habits. Therefore, parallel to a certain order in the universe, which gives it symmetry of space-time conduct, disorder and asymmetry coexist, given by the action of Chance. Note that, in this conception, firstness and thirdness interact in secondness, which is the category that properly embraces the things that definitely exist as individuals, as particulars. Thus, some phenomena in the world maintain relations of order, albeit approximate, and others—in fact the vast majority—do not. For the focus of this chapter it is important to point out that our knowledge is entirely based on these relations of order, insofar as they are what sustain concepts, and it is the latter that are given names. Our logical language, cognitively oriented toward real phenomena, is structured exclusively on general objects, whose spatiotemporal continuity enables all our judgments about the world. In turn, the asymmetries individualize existences, highlighting what we could, appropriately, call singularities in particularities—countless singularities in particulars that, on the one hand, make them unique and, on the other hand, sharers of predicates with other particulars. Trivial as it may be, it is worth remembering, exemplarily, that rose is not the name of any particular rose, but rather of a class of objects that share predicates. Thus are the names of objects of the world, grounded on concepts derived

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from generalizations allowed by real and general predicates—this permission comes from the belief in a realistic ontology, such as Peirce’s. It seems legitimate to say that, from this point of view of realism, our science, our cognitive actions, depend definitively on this permission of a world that enables our logical language as mediation. The adjustments to which cognitive theories have to submit are fundamentally guided by two real criteria, namely, the otherness of phenomena, making their conducts independent of how they are represented, and the future course of these phenomena with which the theories’ predictions will be confronted. For realism, the best plausible explanation for the possible adherence between theoretical prediction and the course of phenomena is an isomorphism that structures both. Our rationality, then, seeks in the phenomena what can give support to the concepts, that is, what can be generalized and, therefore, be given a name, integrate itself into the language of men, and fulfill its role of reading the unenlightened region of time, the future. This is why we need to know how to act within the real that is to come—for this purpose we need to know how the world in which we exist will behave. This is the reason why Peirce attributed to the future the locus of all signification of a logical nature. But, evidently, the construction of this language committed to concepts that, in turn, are structured on things that have names, distances us from the presentness of these same things that are only inserted in our perception insofar as they provide elements that participate in classes of predicates. This distance occurs because each particular is only referred to by means of the predicative class of which it is a part. To think logically about something, in its existence as a particular, is to insert it in the conceptual network that makes it continuous for us. The price we pay for this is to have our consciousness taken by kronos, by the necessary objective flow of time that puts in continuous relation the past with the present inserted in the concept, and with the future that reason has the mission of illuminating in order to choose what conduct will be reasonable to adopt to achieve our purposes. There is, however, in every thing in the world something that the reason must disdain, namely, the differences, the singularities, that which cannot be generalized: these are the nameless things.

4.3 On Nameless Things We cannot approach nameless things by mediating language, which is completely structured in the logic of the concept. They require, for this approach, a certain abandonment of the kronos that allows us to insert the consciousness in a hiatus of time, in a presentness that, as such, is able to show the phenomenon in what is asymmetrical, unique, singular. For them—the nameless things—language based on concepts is unfair, either to the extent that it refers to them by means of names that genuinely do not belong to them or to the extent that it attempts to approach them by a combinatory of names in the illusion of a greater proximity. The failure of this endeavor of language is logical: the general cannot represent the singular in its

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singularity. Logical language is invited to be silent, and other semiotic forms must be summoned to this encounter with what repudiates the concept. Would art, then, be a generator of signs, in all its manifestations, capable of giving man back ways of saying what can no longer be said through logical language? Evidently, here a question is proposed about the possible objects of art, those that logical and mediating language cannot say, trying to relate them to an ontology of the real, in which it is supposed that there is a kind of residue of the world that requires that semiotic forms approach it that no longer feed on universal relations, laws, habits, in short, on everything that sustains the construction of concepts. But why could art be founded on such a residue of a world consisting of objects that are singular, asymmetrical, irregular and that would satisfy a fair reading of what Duns Scotus’ concept of haecceitas8 is? What is there in it that relates to our aesthetic experience? What do literature, the visual arts, music possibly have to do with nameless things?

4.4 A Passage Through Peirce’s Cosmology I consider Peirce‘s Cosmology, especially his cosmogenesis, a heuristic source for reading his entire work. It is, I recognize, an audacity to approach this topic in the reduced space of this chapter, but I will try to say something that at least does not betray the rigor with which he conceived it, limiting myself to the logical structure of his argument, his abduction about how this universe could have arisen. The vector of this abduction posits the logical principle according to which “everything that is pure possibility must cease to be” as the only movement that gives logical meaning to the concept of the possible. The possible is only possible if it ceases to be, annihilating itself; otherwise, it does not absolutely contain the character of possibility. It is interesting that this principle of transformation of the indeterminate into determination often appears in the history of philosophy under mythical-religious, and even, one might say, mythical anthropomorphic guises, such as the concept of Will in Schopenhauer. In any case, what matters here is that the universe as we know it—as existence—is a set of particular, determined objects, a world under the category of secondness that shelters the outer manifestations of the other two categories of inner nature, firstness and thirdness. I call these categories interior because they embrace general, continuous objects, while secondness is the category of the discontinuous, of individuals existing as their determination. Chance and Law converge to an existence of objects that are partly ordered and partly not. It may seem surprising, but there seems to be much more disorder than order in this universe. There are a number of passages in Peirce’s work that summarize many of the points mentioned so far:  I think Peirce himself misunderstood Scotus’ concept of haecceitas, relating it to the category of secondness, as a reactive characteristic of an object for being individual, when I believe Scotus was referring to what in each particular is its singularity, namely, its firstness as difference. 8

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Nature is not regular. No disorder would be less orderly than the existing arrangement. It is true that the special laws and regularities are innumerable; but nobody thinks of the irregularities, which are infinitely more frequent. Every fact true of any one thing in the universe is related to every fact true of every other. But the immense majority of these relations are fortuitous and irregular. A man in China bought a cow three days and five minutes after a Greenlander had sneezed. Is that abstract circumstance connected with any regularity whatsoever? And are not such relations infinitely more frequent than those which are regular?9 [Further:] From this point of view, uniformity is seen to be really a highly exceptional phenomenon. But we pay no attention to irregular relationships, as having no interest for us,10 [and] nobody is surprised that the trees in a forest do not form a regular pattern, or asks for any explanation of such a fact. […] mere irregularity, where no definite regularity is expected, creates no surprise nor excites any curiosity.11

All of the above refers to the real world. However, Peirce’s Cosmology will conjecture about a pre-world where no reality even existed yet. A disturbing, though quite logical, theory about the Nothing as the origin of anything else that, in turn, could engender a universe. Following the vector mentioned, namely, the passage from the vague to the definite, intermediate stages will graduate an evolution in this logical direction. Thus, the first step after the embrionary Nothing is a continuum of qualities, which will determine itself into more specific continua until a fragmentation of qualities begins to acquire habits. Cosmology is also a history of the emergence of categories, firstness as unity of the original continuum, secondness as individuation of fragmentary continua, and thirdness as formation of logical continua of relational structures giving rise to laws, habits, and an objective time. This brief passage through the complex Peircean Cosmology is important only for the possibility of saying, subsidiary to the theme of this chapter, that a continuum of qualities originates from its unity and is, as any continuum, of an inner nature. I insist that we must distinguish, for the sake of clarity of Peirce’s realist ontology, interiority from subjectivity, where the latter, of human scope, is a special case of the former, of cosmic, objective scope. I restate that two categories, firstness and thirdness, are of an inner nature while secondness is of an outer nature.

4.5 Returning to Some Aspects of Peirce’s Phenomenology The phenomenological experience of firstness is given by contemplation, whether subjective or objective, constituting a consciousness of unity, continuous in its quality, which Peirce calls quality of feelings. This experience of firstness is the only one we can have as a pure category, independent of the others. In it there is no sense of otherness, no consciousness of self as a subject distinct from an external world. Likewise, there is no mediation-judgmental thinking, unnecessary in the face of the  CP 5.342; EP 1, p. 75–76; W 2, p. 264–265.  CP 1.406; EP 1, p. 276; W 6, p. 206–207. 11  CP 7.189. 9

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absence of a reactive world; also absent is any temporality as a continuous nexus between past and future. Essentially associated with the experience of pure contemplation, the experience of firstness is, one should remember, very well described by Schopenhauer as of an aesthetic nature.12 In this experience, due to its characteristics, there is absence of the world, absolute presence of firstness, complete absence of secondness and thirdness. With it, we abandon concept-structured language and start to simply feel, elementally, the unity of a quale-element, according to Peirce’s vocabulary. This is also an experience of unity with the object of contemplation that takes place in an absolute present, through a hiatus in time. Incidentally, Peirce will affirm that time has a point of discontinuity in the present. This is one of the most important topics for an art theory in Peirce, one of the seeds that I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter and that I will not have the opportunity to develop here. In Peirce there is always a correspondence between external and internal worlds, and it is, in my view, the deepest root of pragmatism—an exclusive essay on this subject will be worth writing in the near future. The spontaneity and unconditionality of the quale-element, which invades the consciousness that contemplates, appears from the inside, while from the outside what corresponds to it is something of its nature. On this point, Peirce will state: “And thus it is that that very same logical element of experience, the quale-element, which appears upon the inside as unity, when viewed from the outside is seen as variety.”13 To approach nameless things, one must first contemplate them. They are the logical sisters of the qualities of feeling, the external side of these, inhabiting a world of discontinuities that is abandoned by reason. Once again, Peirce is explicit in saying: “Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling.”14 This is, I think, the most radical consequence of Peircean realism. Symmetrizing cognitive theoretical structures with real structures given by general laws is the correspondingly logical expression of this realism—always, somehow, expected from realist stances is this relationship of interactive dependence between epistemology and ontology. However, it is now possible to conclude that this symmetry goes further, finding connaturality between sentiment and the objects of the world that do not follow rules, the nameless things. In them there is an original unity that outwardly is seen as diversity, which we experience as unity, quale-consciousness.

 See Schopenhauer, 1969, Vol. I, Book III.  CP 6.236. 14  W 8, p. 180–181; CP 6.265; EP 1, p. 348. 12 13

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4.6 Finally Art It is time to explicitly address Art. First, it is worth clarifying that the scheme of categories states that firstness is present in Secondness—there is an element of spontaneity in every relation of duality. In the thirdness, in turn, the first and second categories are implicated—there is an element of spontaneity and duality within every triadic logical relation. I mention this briefly to affirm that the quality of feeling as a unity of consciousness is only possible in the pure experience of firstness, without the presence of the other categories. However, phenomenologically, there is also feeling in every experience of otherness, of duality in the second category, just as there is also feeling in judicative experiences, cognitive experiences. It is for no other reason that in Peirce’s philosophy feeling and reason are not dualized as opposites—qualities of feeling are present in all three categories. I had stated that things without names require, in order to be said, logically deconstructed sign structures, as metaphors exemplarily are. Rather, we need to approach them, nameless things, to contemplate them in the time hiatus of the pure present as present. Then, only then, will we face the challenge of saying them—this challenge is that of every genuine artist. I think it is interesting to briefly go through the various artistic forms, trying to associate them with the theoretical background that has been developed so far. First of all, there is literature. In its narrative form, one cannot refrain from the theater of some world where existential relationships are simulated, highlighting precisely the myriad of feelings that accompany factual accidentality. The quality of literature as art, its very value, will be in the break from the merely descriptive narrative linearity (as found in journalistic literature). The element of firstness is its essence in its freedom to promote the pain of the unfair, the hidden, the joy of encounter, the illusion of permanence of the ephemeral, the irony within the pathetic. In this sense, narrative literature guides the spirit into possible worlds, as a mathematician does by constructing alternative intelligible universes. A moral world is drawn in this art form—as each reader judges in each story their characters, simulating within themselves what they would do if they were one of them. The nameless things appear in the succession of accidents that contradicts all logical causality, in the chance game that disables or promotes human passions, in the brute otherness of unsuccessful choice. Poetry is possibly the most acute deconstructor of logical language. Its play with metaphors, its appeal to the sound of words, its most incisive power to touch the immediacy of the qualities of feeling and, from their vagueness, extract the greatest predicate of the very nature of Art, namely, its polysemy. In the game of many meanings, poetry is made in the environment of firstness that weaves nameless things, approaching them as if it intended to celebrate with them the sharing of the same origin. The visual arts, in their articulation of qualisigns, come closest to nameless things when they lose figurative representation, deconstructing it in favor of

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highlighting qualities as such, offering themselves to depersonalizing contemplation that phenomenically returns subjectivity to the genetic interiority of the world. Finally, it is worth mentioning music, which can be considered the most intransitive of the arts. This independence in relation to the world is sui generis—it comes from its essentially interior nature and from its power of presentification of the consciousness, essential for the pure experience of firstness. Schopenhauer was right to consider music the highest form of art, because it provides access to the original interiority of the Will, this motor and blind dimension of a world of phenomena to which all science is confined. In Schopenhauer, the impotence of reason bows to the power of the arts, in particular that of music. To call Will, however, the unconditioned which occultly decides what determined form it will give to the world is still to maintain the tragic of unknowability from which the subsumption of the human soul to a natural pessimism seems to derive. This is a consequence, it seems to me, of the exclusively deterministic vision predominant in the Enlightenment. In the late nineteenth century, Peirce’s Cosmology unveils this heuristic origin from which many worlds could be born, by taking up the concept of possibility as an objective logical property. The fallible knowledge undoes the pessimism of an impotent reason in face of what is always hidden. Music seems to Schopenhauer to be a refuge from reality and an access to that which despairs human existence, but which, once attained, imposes the silence of what cannot be said. Much of Bach and Mozart, exemplarily, not to mention my beloved Mahler, invite us to celebrate the originary continuum of possibilities, from which all nameless things are their outer side—their practical, though not useful, consequences, to be true to the broader spirit of Peirce’s pragmatism.

4.7 A Very Brief Conclusion, Out of the Many Possible Ones In this chapter, I sought an objectual meaning for art, beyond its confinement to mere human creativity, as if creating were not a cosmic predicate spread throughout Nature—as the German Romantics tried to show, in particular Schelling, this genius who inspired Peirce’s multifaceted and radical realism. Based on this view, art would then rescue the original continuum where possible worlds are inscribed and from where the existing world derives, like a roll of the dice. Far from necessity and near, by nature, to what is designed as possibility, it promotes a knowledge that dares to be conceptualized, because it is not characterized by an agreement of opinions anchored in a reality that is external to the language of the sciences. This challenge remains here, but it can be said that, from the point of view of pragmatism, a genuine knowledge is one that is capable of affecting our conduct of life. One could then ask: what worldview, what possible conduct would remain indifferent to the reading of a Dostoyevsky, to the sonnets of a Rilke, to the 2nd symphony of a Mahler? Wouldn’t this be the essential role of art that goes far beyond reducing it to mere entertainment, namely, to take us to everything that indelibly touches and

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moves us? Would it not be in these feelings what genuinely shapes that which is admirable for itself, without any ulterior reason, just as Peirce wanted as the foundation of his Aesthetics? I believe there is a long way to go here, accepting the invitation of the open valences of Peirce’s philosophy for the most valuable reward of the spirit: the discovery of new ideas.

Chapter 5

The Meaning of Firstness in Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Peirce

Keywords  Firstness · Freedom · Contemplation · Chance · Determinism · Absolute

5.1 On Firstness as Freedom in Schelling The legacy of the view of a mechanistic world originating from the success of reason in its relative autonomy in the Renaissance and Enlightenment was shunned by the poets and artists of German Romanticism. Weak and reductionist, according to them, this world model could not handle the vital phenomena in their organicity, dynamic explosion, teleological nature, and systemic character endowed with an intentionality from which intelligence seemed to gush forth. The Cartesian machine adopted by so many systems that followed could only produce blind redundancies, pure logical necessity applied to the past for a design of the future. Something should handle not only such a vitalist aspect of natural processes but also that which most affected them as a phenomenon, that is, natural beauty—a beauty regenerating day after day, seemingly intending nothing more than enchantment—on the one hand, then, life’s spectacle in its intelligence, apprehensible by an intentionality ever desirous of an end; on the other hand, a beauty that permeated all corners of Nature and that seemed to celebrate only its own creative freedom. Poetic moving, aesthetic experience in its most profound expression, that which engraves its indelible signature in the spirit, the same whose meanings are only expressible in the form of art which it experiences in its natural or human This chapter is based on two published texts of my own: (1) O Significado de Primeiridade em Schelling, Schopenhauer e Peirce. Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia. São Paulo: Centro de Estudos de Pragmatismo, v. 9, n. 2, p.  217–227, 2008, excerpts reproduced with permission; and (2) Reflections on the Presence of Peirce’s Category of Firstness in Schelling’ and Schopenhauer’s Philosophy. In: Gvozdiak, Vít; Svantner, Martin. (Org.). How to Make Our Signs Clear: C. S. Peirce and Semiotics. Leiden; Boston: BRILL, v. 305, p. 59–71, 2017c, excerpts reproduced with permission by Brill, permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_5

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manifestation, would not find its place in any necessitarian philosophy. This ontological injustice, this epistemic disdain contained in a mechanical and determinist world view, had to be abolished. The world, conceived as a stage of pure expiation of human sin in the Middle Ages, a space for ethical redemption subject to the inscrutable designs of divine will, is transformed in modern rationalism into a concrete accomplishment of God’s intelligence. Such a world is designed endowed with laws and an autonomy conferred by a God who no longer interferes in the natural processes—the Nature’s machine is the necessary expression of a thought-out whole, where an unfeasible freedom would confront divine omniscience. As a space for the incognizable divine design, or as a perfect determination of His Reason, the conception of Nature from the Middle Ages to modern times did not free itself of its condition as a mere stage of human history, a scenario of a saga imposing an asymmetry of rights, whether of a logical or substantial nature. Would not the awe of the great Renaissance geniuses before the laws that they discovered, parallel to the creature’s ability to comprehend them, be but reverence for divine intelligence? Would Nature not constitute solely a means for admiration of the project of the thought-out whole? Where, then, would something of itself be placed? The utmost bliss of the Romantics’ contemplation of Nature, the merging of the subject into the natural object, the rupture of the frontiers of a conscience forever imprisoned in the finitude of all that is introduced in spatio-temporality, was nothing more than an experience in freedom, in transcendence, in accomplishment of poetic sensitivity, the very same that some authors in the history of philosophy recommended as essential to apprehend a way of being left aside by reason: to contemplate things in their presentness, without the distancing mist of theoretical mediation that excludes difference from its own essence and focuses on similitude—representing solely what fits within the concept. In the eyes of Schelling—the philosophical exponent of German Romanticism— this contemplative experience in its subject-object indifferentiation was simply the evidence of the presence of the infinite in the finite, something that would primarily transgress particularity and the contingency of experience, both of which were foundations of the Kantian search for universality exclusively in the transcendental forms of thought. In contrast to this, Schelling seemed to be committed to his poet contemporaries—notwithstanding the fact that he did not credit himself as an artist, he required from his readers an aesthetic sensitivity1 without which an understanding of his writings would be virtually impossible. This Schellingian requirement was not due to his poetic writing, but to the need of acknowledging a new spirit of human experience, in which the foundations of a new ontology could be found. Such an intense presence of the universal in the particular, of the infinite in the finite in Schellingian terms, and of the immediacy given in aesthetic experience already heralded the presence of ideality in matter—in an identity that would later find his Objective Idealism. All this, in fact, was based on prizing something scorned

 Schelling, 1978, p. 14.

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as experience for its supposedly noncognitive nature. However, aesthetic experience would become the starting point for a new philosophy: not as an ineffective indifference that, in Hegel’s view, could not originate a world and a history, but a beginning for the creative freedom that is potentially capable of generating all form from itself and that, already in itself, celebrates what it is right to create: the beauty that stirs, the drama that life internalizes and cries for reflection of, that which appeals to art as a genuine way of saying what cannot, in any way whatsoever, be said by other forms of knowing. What other idea of divinity could Schelling have when starting a philosophy from enchantment by Nature? It seems determinative that out of this experience should emerge a creative principle, associated with Nature itself, evidencing its infinite creative power by continuously regenerating—at least to those who laid bare the senses of the recognitive forms of the past, natural beauty in an always surprising way—as a Being who indulges in an inexhaustibly fruitful prodigality for its own sake. Not without reason, therefore, Shelling could no longer maintain his philosophical beginnings in the wake of Fichte’s idealism-subjectivism: objective ideality was within reach, in the touch of the plants, in the communicative silence of the animals, in the vastness of a superhuman time condensed in grains of sand. The Absolute was there as the generating form of freedom, accessible through a marginalized experience, through an unconscious rationalism of its incompetence to intellectually apprehend the totality of the real. In Schelling, as in Peirce, what is first indifferentially permeates both that which is of an interior nature and that which is placed as exteriority. In its interior presentness, it introduces itself as that which transgresses the bounds of space-temporality, as an infinite and originary ideality where aesthetic enchantment spurs many commitments: not only to a making of Art that celebrates a dialogue of freedom with itself, aware of its genetic being, but also, and equally so, to the adoption of a human conduct that never abdicates from admirability as the ultimate guide and criterion of an ethicality. An ethicality that will in its turn call on Logic and Science for a marriage of genesis with truth—such commitment preceding all strategy conceived to seek it. In Schelling, the taste of freedom as innerness invites its sharing with objectivity, acknowledging in the latter its legitimate origin: “Only those who have tasted freedom can feel the desire of making everything similar to it, and making it a part of the whole Universe.”2 Starting his philosophy with freedom and acknowledging Nature as a work of art permeated by intelligence, namely, acting teleologically, leads Schelling to the conception of a creative and infinite force that expresses the divinity of the Absolute. A God who never hides, who is, indeed, the first to appear through the most primal human experience, that of simply contemplating the world and losing oneself in it. Indeed, this beginning is a radical rupture from extreme rationalism in all its deterministic forms of strict causality, which seems to propose a realism of universals in  Schelling, 1992, §351, p. 25.

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which the generality of the sign finds its logical symmetry in the generality of the law, but that, by pretending to be a mere expression of a deductivist reason, cannot explain the phenomena of genesis. To forgo the issues of genesis is to either intersperse the specter of the incognizable or to abdicate from responding to them, not only for a lack of theoretical resources but also due to being content with an attenuated philosophy destined solely to resolve problems within its limited scale.

5.2 On Firstness as Liberation in Schopenhauer The emphasis placed by Schopenhauer on the concept of world as a representation could be very well considered a very orthodox interpretation of Kantian philosophy. In fact, Kant had never reduced the objective world to a mere representation. Despite acknowledging the transcendental origin of all universality, Kant recognized the otherness of phenomena for the final establishment of positive theories. The form of the world, certainly, was contained in subjective transcendentality. In light of this detail, Schopenhauer should perhaps have affirmed the form of the world as representation. An interesting line of analysis of the Schopenhauerian interpretation of Kant’s philosophy could come out of this role of experience in the formation of theories. The fundamental question would be: how can experience without form have the last word on the form? Alternatively, in other words: what gives experience, in its contingency, the power of choosing theories transcendentally available? Indeed, this question transgresses the bounds of the Kantian sphere, pointing to a more general epistemological-ontological problem, namely, that of the legitimization of the reciprocal relations between the particular and the general. As interesting as it may be, it is irrelevant, considering our specific theme, to proceed along this line of speculation, although I will point out that it comes naturally in view of the initial focus of the major work of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s World as Will, however, is already on the track that we intend to follow here. How would this concept cohere with that of freedom? We will here sum up briefly, as befits the space of this chapter, its Kantian origin. By excluding from the sphere of scientificity the ravings of a metaphysics foreign to the anchor of phenomena, and by reinstating the possibility of knowledge that has been undermined by Hume’s skepticism, Kant bestowed to the history of philosophy that followed him the specter of the thing in itself as something unresolved, at times contradictory in its ambiguous relations with the phenomena, a kind of a hidden world on whose innerness nothing could be done. Fichte, for instance, attempts to unravel this seemingly difficult legacy of Kant’s by affirming that subjectivity would be all-encompassing, reducing the world’s totality to a mere reagent to the action of the subject—the latter brings the former into existence—without which the world would not exist. Schelling, in turn, proclaimed that the Absolute was the first and the last unit of the Universe, and that its saga was the transformation of its pure power into action, toward an infinite process of self-knowledge. In both authors, the thing in itself lost all meaning.

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Nevertheless, Schopenhauer, perhaps the closest to Kant in the so-called German Idealism, maintains this concept,3 albeit criticizing him: “in Kant’s philosophy, a notion called a ‘thing in itself’, an obscure and paradoxical notion that was considered—primarily because of the manner by which Kant introduced it (that is, concluding from effect to cause)—as the most difficult point, the weakest side of his philosophy.”4 However, Schopenhauer makes use of it to identify the thing in itself with the concept of Will: “The will as a thing in itself is quite different from its phenomenal appearance, and entirely free from all the forms of the phenomenal, into which it first passes when it manifests itself, and which therefore only concern its objectivity, and are foreign to the will itself.”5 Schopenhauer turns the thing in itself into a vital principle, a blind force that subjects the world to an infinite phenomenal process, outlined in spatio-temporality. The thing in itself becomes a kind of an all-moving blind cosmic will, coming out of itself to take part in the vital cycle. Will, as a mere longing cosmic force, requires a world of forms through which it inserts itself in a temporality and, in it, accomplishes infinite existential sequences. It is in Plato that Schopenhauer sought the world of forms, archetypes that, as primary objectivity of will, shape all real objects. Here is outlined the deep root of the entire Schopenhauerian concept of existence, based on this relationship between Will and Temporality: both are correlated and concomitant—a blind impulse toward an infinite longing search—a world of longed-for ends never available in the present. Time, in Schopenhauer, always seems to postpone an end that is never revealed, but attractively hidden. It must be pointed out that it is only in this inexorable relationship between temporality and will that humans behold suffering and illusion. The suffering of being possessed by a desire never satisfied that makes the individual its instrument. The illusion of possessing what, effectively, is always beyond any reach. Between reason that provides self-control and will, lies a difficult compromise. However, it is in the experience of aesthetic contemplation that Schopenhauer finds the space in which the spirit frees itself, stepping out of this play of forces characteristic of existence. Existence for Schopenhauer is a form of slavery: freedom is an illusion of an action for oneself; in fact, it acts according to the blind force of Will. Contemplation emerges as a tense dissolution of the bounds of space and time and, by its own essence, it is that which also dissolves the subject-object separation intrinsic to all cognitive processes. Schopenhauer writes beautiful passages on this experience in which there is a loss of individuality in contemplation, in which those original forms of the Will let themselves be known:

 Incidentally, Peirce rejects the thing in itself as a concept. According to him, it would be a contradictory concept, since it proposes a hypothesis that something is incognizable, when the function of all hypotheses is precisely to start a process of knowledge. 4  Schopenhauer, 1969, III § 31. 5  Schopenhauer, 1969, III § 23. 3

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5  The Meaning of Firstness in Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Peirce When we sink ourselves completely therein, and let our whole consciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object actually present [...] We lose ourselves entirely in this object, to use a pregnant expression; in other words, we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only [...] as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as though the object alone existed without anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception. If, therefore, the object has to such an extent passed out of all relation to something outside it, and the subject has passed out of all relation to the will, what is thus known is no longer the individual thing as such, but the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will at this grade. Thus at the same time, the person who is involved in this perception is no longer an individual, for in such perception the individual has lost himself; he is pure will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge.6

Schopenhauer will affirm that such contemplative experience, as a form of knowledge, is Art and is a work of genius.7 Art “stops the wheel of time, to it all relations disappear; its object is just the essential, just the Idea.” Among the arts, Schopenhauer will distinguish music as a form of special contemplation “that reaches beyond the Ideas”: “But music [...] is quite independent of the phenomenal world, positively ignores it [...]. Music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will [...].”8 Since Plato, music has been considered the most intransitive of the arts. In Schopenhauer, it directly expresses the thing in itself: “It expresses what there is of metaphysical in the physical world, the thing in itself of each phenomenon [...]. Music provides that which precedes all form, the intimate core, the heart of things.”9 Experience of contemplation in music leads to the essence of things, that which is hidden as Will, as pure innerness, where world possibilities may newly form. Schopenhauer thus turns the thing in itself into an instance of freedom of the human through art in general and, more deeply, through music in particular. Through this communion in which all particularity dissolves, existence, the stage of unachieved desire turned into everlasting pain, vanishes as well.

5.3 Firstness in Peirce Peirce apparently had little contact with Schopenhauer’s philosophy, considering the dearth of references to this author. In addition, despite the scarcity of references to Schelling in Peircean writings, there are decidedly emphatic references where he confesses his admiration for him, embracing a philosophy whose environment of ideas is very similar to that of the German author. Strongly metaphysical, and aligned with the Schellingian thought, Peirce’s theoretical system emerges as a  Schopenhauer, 1969, III. §34.  Schopenhauer, 1969, III. §36. 8  Schopenhauer, 1969, III. §52. 9  Schopenhauer, 1969, III. §52. 6 7

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genetic philosophy, albeit far from any geneses with polarized or polarizing grounds, much like other thinkers who start from a constitutive subjectivity or substantial estrangement, whether or not explicit,10 between mind and matter. Schelling and Peirce share the recognition of a whole genesis in unity. Schopenhauer, in turn, takes unity as a way of accessing the genesis of the thing in itself, namely, Will, distinguishing himself from Peirce and Schelling, however, by his pronounced nominalism.11 The concept of firstness emerges as a category in Peirce’s philosophy, a phenomenological form of appearing characterized by the experience of unity between subject and object, indistinguishing internal and external worlds. In fact, this is an experience of an internal nature—observing, however, that to Peirce, the internal world is not reduced to a subjective world—or, in other words: innerness and subjectivity have no relation of equivalence. It must be stressed that this consequence derives from his metaphysical realism, his objective idealism, and his symmetrization of categories, namely, from their substantiation as phenomenological and simultaneously metaphysical categories. In Peirce, also, there is a losing of oneself in contemplation, a plunge into the qualities that appear in the factual secondness of objects, qualities that represent an internal side that merges with the innerness of whoever experiences them, in a continuum of possibilities due to its nature of being first. Here, it is once again emphasized that innerness cannot be claimed as a polarized predicate, but rather as a sharing, endowed with continuity that transgresses every attempt at appropriation by any particular. This continuum will require an extension of the notion of feeling toward the whole of Nature: what arouses feeling in us must be connatural. To Peirce, the entire natural world, to a greater or lesser degree, contains feeling, the capacity to feel—this is the presence of firstness in distinct proportions in the various natural kingdoms: from inorganic matter to the human mind, there is a grading of diverse sensitivities. Peirce was, indeed, seeking an explanation for the differentiated sensitivity of the various world players to a change of habits, albeit having acknowledged, in light of his Objective Idealism, that all of them would have the ability to acquire habits. It is this characteristic that would, effectively, ensure a monism between mind and matter, making the latter a special case of the former. Peirce’s Objective Idealism is grounded on the hypothesis that the laws of Nature originated from a propensity of all things for generalization, an inductive process

 It seems to us, incidentally, that many philosophical systems are tacitly Cartesian, not only due to the significant split between mind and matter but also due to a genetic estrangement between man and Nature that, albeit not explicit, are implied in their presuppositions. 11  Both Peirce and Schelling, in their mature thought, would hardly accept, for instance, the Schopenhauerian assertion that “Absolutely there are no objects without a subject: such is the principle that condemns materialism forever. Suns and planets, eyeless to see them, without an intelligence to know them are words that can be said, but lack intelligibility [...] the world is mere representation and, therefore, requires knowing subject as that which grounds its existence” (Schopenhauer, 1969, I, §7). 10

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that, ultimately, means a propensity for acquiring habits. According to Peirce, this is a primordial law of the mind, a law that develops itself in an evolutionary process.12 It is obvious that, here, law is to be understood as a form of habit, considering both as action-guiding rules. Thus, thought is not a polarizing human privilege either. On the one hand, the Peircean metaphysical realism correlates real general structures to the generality of what we consider thought, within the sphere of subjectivity. On the other hand, Peirce, like Schelling, recognizes that similar processes, connatural to thought, are widespread in Nature in the form of intelligently teleological actions. There are, according to Peirce, forms that are similar to human reasoning that reveal, in the deliberate action of natural processes, the logical forms of hypothesis, deduction and induction. Asserting that the operation of a law of Nature is deductive,13 as it imposes a necessary behavior by the objects under its scope, Peirce regretted not being well understood in his identification of the other logical forms of Nature: I have not succeeded in persuading my contemporaries to believe that Nature also makes inductions and retroductions. They seem to think that her mind is in the infantile stage of the Aristotelians and Stoic philosophers. I point out that Evolution, wherever it takes place, is one vast succession of generalizations, by which matter is becoming subjected to ever higher and higher laws; and I point to the infinite variety of nature as testifying to her Originality or power of Retroduction. But so far, the old ideas are too ingrained. Very few accept my message.14

In Peirce’s philosophy, I emphasize, this thought-sharing on a cosmic scale allows us to consider its exclusive appropriation by any form whatsoever of subjectivity as illegitimate. Thirdness, the category that encompasses thought and all that belongs to its nature, is also symmetrized accordingly. No duality can stand still as such: it is the necessary instance that introduces temporality and self-consciousness to enable cognition of the object—we must let it be, appear as a phenomenon and, thus, display its form—a requirement of realism. What is of a general and continuous nature cannot appear as individual, as a mere topical ipseity—the general only appears as a relationship between individuals. The nominalist challenge to realism to denote the universal as a particular fact is, thus, nothing more than a logical misunderstanding of principle. Generality can only display its form in temporality—it is for no other reason that time falls under the third category in Peirce’s conception. Again, it seems plausible to propose the extensionality of the concept of innerness toward a wider plane than what has been considered here of the nature of thought, bearing in mind the symmetrization—or depolarization—of thirdness. In the innerness of thirdness, then, all reflexive operations would occur, both in the human and natural spheres, grounded on the gathered matter of external experience,  CP 7.512–7.514.  See CP 2.713. Although this passage dates from 1883, prior to the foundation of his maturity doctrines, Peirce, with the introduction of the logic of relatives and the theory of continuity (Synechism) emphasizes this position toward an increasingly pronounced realism. 14  NEM IV, p. 344. 12 13

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in its factual and indexical aspect. This gathering, thus, feeds a retro-analytically reflexive process, namely, that of a perfecting of habits and conceptions implying, at times, a radical rupture with these general instances and hypothetically proposing new mediations to be launched for testing in the theater of reactions of secondness. This is nothing more than the pragmatic method as we understand it in its deepest expression, that is, valid both on the plane of subjectivity and objectivity, without being restricted to a rule of a semantic nature, applicable to the relationship between concept and conduct. The implications of pragmatism, thus, transcend a mere process of validation of meaning: in fact, it is a rule of growth and apprenticeship, based on a vast semiotic dialogue, a trade of signs facilitated by the indifferentiation between internal and external worlds. Lacking space to discuss here this amplified view of pragmatism at length, a topic worthy of a separate essay, let us return to the conceptualization of firstness in Peirce’s work. Peirce asserted that this experience reveals the presence of unity in diversity— the latter seems to be the external side of the former: “In effect, chance is nothing more than the external aspect of what is, internally in itself, feeling.”15 Thus, the experience of firstness appears through an internal side, as contemplation, as pure qualisign, as a continuum in which subject and object distinguish themselves. Through its external face this experience, in turn, becomes viable when a gaze, striving to divest itself of concepts and memories, can discern all that is singular in the world, all that cannot integrate classes, does not share common predicates with possible objects, supposedly similar to it, and that, for all these reasons, is first. Peirce insists that although these world asymmetries are not commonly perceived, they are ubiquitous and much more frequent than symmetries or regularities.16 This undoubtedly occurs because mediating reason always feeds on the concept, and the latter in turn on that which, in world objects, constitutes classes of predicates. As they structure the perception of functional relations or similarities, or because they apply themselves as hypotheses that require a posteriori observations, all judicative forms involve an awareness of time. Even when time is minimized by habits, when the latter cause the interaction of thought and action, or when such habits are present in recognitive operations, there remains in consciousness a type of rule whose ultimate structure is also conceptual, and which, somehow, implies temporality. Thus, there is a sort of world residue, something that cannot be assimilated by language in its logical expression, something that it scorns because it is foreign to its own structure and interest: it always seeks what can be attributed a name. However, names require apportionment, and what is first shares nothing but itself. The perception of these anonymous aspects of Nature, of this diversity and variety, requires a consciousness that is necessarily subtracted from time. By doing so, it makes every judicative operation impracticable: reason stifles without the air of temporality. Logical language, supported by concepts constructed in

15 16

 CP 6.265.  CP 1.406.

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spatio-temporality, must also be silent before the irregular, or submit to metaphor, deconstruct itself semantically by shifting its terms to foreign environments of meaning, in an effort to approach what repels all generalization and what, for this reason, is first. It is evident, at this point, that there is an affinity of Peircean thought with the context of Schelling’s philosophy. To contemplate what the creative freedom of some principle suggests—in Schelling, the Absolute; in Peirce, Firstness—brings the identity between the internal and external within the sphere of that for which there is no ready language: freedom is not cognizable because it does not submit to the concept. It—freedom, firstness—will however challenge the construction of languages whose generality will no longer occur by force of law, through an agreement of meaning between practitioners. Its generality will be that of a possibility pointing toward a multiplicity of meanings, toward a ludic practice of the hypothesis that will not require passing through a certain theater of reactions for its validation as truth, but which, due to its intrinsic freedom, points to many possible worlds and truths. At this point, reason is simply a servant of the imaginary as, incidentally, Kant demanded.17 While world regularities require a unidimensionality of the temporal flow in order that they be evidenced as such, dialoguing with their internal side, namely, law and thought or, in a word, thirdness, the irregularities, unaware of all similarity, appear in immediate self-confrontation and, because of their own nature as singularities, display their difference solely in the presentness of time. What is spontaneous, free, and singular is a mere brute force to a reason that attempts to subject them to the concept—nothing can be told of the latter by them. It seems fair to say that this telling will be in the hands of Art. Here, perhaps, Schelling and Schopenhauer may have provided to firstness a sense of the poetry that it always claimed to deserve.

5.4 Thematic Overview Peirce’s concept of firstness as a principle of freedom is adumbrated in Schelling as that which freed German Romanticism from the exemplary haplessness of mechanism. This philosophy affirmed itself as a pure expression of limitless creativeness of an Absolute that draws from itself another, to be returned to as an accomplished form, self-cognitive. The Absolute proceeds from an originary unity to the diversity of Nature, and thence returns to itself in the accomplished forms in existence. The prize for existing is self-cognition. A pragmatic reflexive cycle is its ontological expression: that which provides deep meaning to the link between the particular and the general.

17

 Kant, 1980, §242.

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In Schopenhauer, freedom is an internal achievement that alludes to an ultimate world innerness—the thing in itself. Art is made a medium through which that freedom occurs, and music is raised to the highest form of primary expression of contemplation as the only recourse for a human world imprisoned by a Will, which keeps alive an infinite desire that inevitably results in pain. Faithful to Kant, Schopenhauer could not symmetrize freedom and nature; before it, the concept remains silent: it cannot be expressed other than through Art. Like Schelling, Peirce makes his genetic world out of firstness—whether on the cosmic plane or in the human sphere. In them, music would certainly not be just an instance that relieves the pain of existing, but rather a just celebration of a freedom that spreads through Man and Nature.

Part II

On Heuristic Logic

Chapter 6

The Heuristic Exclusivity of Abduction in Peirce’s Philosophy

Keywords  Logic of inquiry · Abduction · Realism · Peirce

6.1 Section I In 1868,1 Peirce stated: According to Kant, the central question of philosophy is “How are synthetical judgments a priori possible?” But antecedently to this comes the question how synthetical judgments in general, and still more generally, how synthetical reasoning is possible at all. When the answer to the general problem has been obtained, the particular one will be comparatively simple. This is the lock upon the door of philosophy.

Here, the author, still in his philosophical youth, questions the possibility of synthesis in general, beyond an a priori synthesis. Peirce was driven, very early on, in quest of a solution to this question, probably because it was implied in his rebuttal of transcendentalism and in his overall critique of an underlying nominalism in Kant’s work. In fact, Peirce moves toward a gradual and increasingly vigorous adoption of ontological realism, which is deeply grounded, one can say, on the condition of possibility for all mediative thought, in the respect that it has syntax and sense and is structured on positive concepts that are full of phenomenological

 CP 5.348, italics from the original. This refers to a section of the essay Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four Incapacities published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol.2, p.  193–208. Although it is an early article, it was reviewed and corrected in 1893. See also, CP 2.690 (1878). In various passages of his mature work, however, the author actually refuses the division of judgments between analytical and synthetical, in view of his logic of relatives. On this point, see CP 3.560 (1898) and CP 4.85 (1893). 1

This text is based on a published text I authored: The Heuristic Exclusivity of Abduction in Peirce’s Philosophy. In: Fabbrichesi Leo, Rossella; Marietti, Susana (Eds.). Semiotics and Philosophy in C.  S. Peirce. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p.  90–112, 2006b. Republished with permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_6

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content. Such a realism appears, essentially, as a continuum of real relations that give shape to the object. This shape is ultimately a spatiotemporal order of the world that ideally has permanence as a condition for the possibility of any grammar and, thus, for any positive knowledge. Indeed, in our view, the realism of the universals is a basic hypothesis in Peirce’s philosophy. A shapeless world would require the human mind to assume itself in the face of the absolutely chaotic, and would substantiate its cognitive impotence, though still admitting, through a negative bias, the necessity of realism. The necessary character of permanence implied by the realism of generals does not solely refer to the discursive category of substance, as, for example, is adopted by Kant. This permanence, in fact, is much more than what could be materialized in particular objects enabling the term in language; it pertains to the order of general real relations among these objects, enabling the possibility of enunciation in general. Indeed, the adoption of realism as a starting point is basic to enable all and every general representation and operation of semiosis. Realism, in short, makes thought2 possible. In categorial terms, we may say, real thirdness makes possible the thirdness of human reason. It is also necessary to bring to the fore the Peircean evolutionism, which considers the issues of genesis within space-time. Thus, while realism provides the conditions for mediative thought to be, evolutionism can propose an answer to its origin. In this way, one may presume with a high degree of plausibility that all our cognitive faculties stem from natural processes. Given their obviously mental and live character, consequent upon an evolutionary process, we participate in an ancestry of an equal nature, occurring in a mind-matter monism in which the former is, necessarily, primordial. This complex of metaphysical ideas issues in Peirce’s doctrine of Objective Idealism, very strongly inspired by Schelling’s Absolute Idealism, although this is not the space to properly detail this relation. For our purposes, it will suffice here to consider that this idealism, indifferentiating the natures of subject and object, produces a synthetic substratum, derived from an originary unity between the internal and external worlds. In such unity, incidentally, on the phenomenological sphere, the category of firstness is defined. On the one hand, Peirce’s adoption of synechism—his realism of continua instead of a mere realism of genders or classes of objects3—and, on the other hand, his claim of Objective Idealism, go to explain the fact that everything that is cognoscible is of the nature of the human mind, as, incidentally, Kant also claimed. However, under the prism of realism, it is necessary to consider the object of knowledge as fundamentally a second for the mind, though without it meaning a genetic relation of strangeness between subject and object. It must be stressed that Peirce’s entire philosophy distinguishes itself by the search for a logical symmetry between subject and object,  In Ibri (2017b, p. 84–85), I commented on this point, that Peirce possibly would not refuse a modification of the Cartesian cogito to “I think, therefore the universals are real,” concluding that the phenomenon of mediative thought reveals the order of the world. More radically, in fact, and prior to language itself, the subject as an organism must be possible. 3  The formulation of the logic of relatives made the author, in our view, radicalize his realism. 2

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which, in fact, is already born in his Phenomenology through the categorial indifferentiation between the external and internal worlds of experience. This genetic symmetry embedded in Peirce’s Phenomenology is, in fact, the roots for his considering a logically alternative path to the assumptions of transcendental epistemology; it allows him to posit a substantial connaturality between representation and object not requiring a constitutive subjectivity. We maintain that other ontological doctrines complement the support provided by realism and evolutionism, smoothing the logical rough edges of an investigation of the origin of the human capacity of conjecturing and creating theories—in Kantian terms, of effecting syntheses—or reflecting, finally, on a logic of discovery or heuristic logic within the Peircean philosophy. These doctrines appear in two famous and virtually contemporary texts, i.e., The Law of Mind4 (1892) and Evolutionary Love5 (1893), where the former considers the tendency to generalization as the fundamental law of the mind, in its widest sense, and the latter proposes the evolutionary mode of Agapism, which appears as a cosmic agglutinating force, particularly of ideas, under the wide-ranging spectrum of realism and idealism.6 Our understanding of the logic of discovery in Peirce requires presupposing that the ideas that intertwine a heuristic concept associate themselves in an ambiance of freedom, typical of firstness. No rule as principle intervenes as a conditioning factor in the formation of a new idea. It is also interesting observe that in another famous text, A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,7 Peirce develops Schiller’s idea of musement as that state of mind subtracted from time, creating a hiatus in the consciousness between past and future, where the three universes of experience,8 subsuming the three phenomenological categories, parade before the eyes. The first shows mere qualities in its diversity; the second, the existence of things in their particularity; and the third, that aspect of ordering, permanence, and regularity of the qualities in things, through the relation between the first two universes. The lack of purpose of this first universe enables the contemplation and the free flow of other ideas to occur unconditionally, where a purely aesthetic quality is initially distinguished. It is totally absorbed by that Schellingian spirit of valuing an immediate feeling that provides the most primary experience—one in which the spirit divests itself of mediation before the spectacle of nature and becomes, in its genetic unity, a stage for play, free of sentiments and ideas, opening itself to a continuum of possibilities. On this, Peirce founds his hypothesis of the reality of God. However, he does not make this an

 CP 6.102–163. Ochs (1991) provides an interesting historical retrospective about the emergence of this essay. 5  CP 6.272–317. 6  We can find a brilliant approach of Peirce’s evolutionary metaphysics in Hausman (1993), mainly his consideration of the importance of realism, in the same way as this doctrine is highlighted here. 7  CP 6.452–493. 8  CP 6.455. Sebeok (1991), starting from the concept of play of musement, semiotically analyses verbal and non-verbal systems of communication. 4

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argument for the Absolute, but rather refers to the way in which that initial musement can, slowly, become heuristic: The dawn and the gloaming most invite one to Musement; but I have found no watch of the nychthemeron that has not its own advantages for the pursuit. It begins passively enough with drinking in the impression of some nook in one of the three Universes. But impression soon passes into attentive observation, observation into musing, musing into a lively give and take of communion between self and self. If one’s observations and reflections are allowed to specialize themselves too much, the Play will be converted into scientific study; and that cannot be pursued in odd half hours.9

In other words, the heuristic valorization of this play also means that there are no rules to govern synthesis. However, this principle of freedom will not suffice for an assimilation of new ideas. It is on this point that an agglutinating principle provided by the doctrine of Agapism ensures the association of ideas in a continuum. We are aware that we have invoked, within the limited space of this chapter, Peircean doctrines that, by themselves, are worth profound investigation. However, our aim is to draw from them some basic guidelines that may, in an original way, provide support to the explanation of how synthesis in general is possible according to Peirce and, more than this, to demonstrate, within its system, the interaction between ontology and epistemology.

6.2 Section II What, after all, is the logic of investigation within Peirce’s philosophy? And, more specifically, how does the development of a hypothesis occur? The author will provide the answer, establishing three types of reasoning: These three kinds of reasoning are Abduction, Induction, and Deduction. Deduction is the only necessary reasoning. It is the reasoning of mathematics. It starts from a hypothesis, the truth or falsity of which has nothing to do with the reasoning; and of course its conclusions are equally ideal. The ordinary use of the doctrine of chances is necessary reasoning, although it is reasoning concerning probabilities. Induction is the experimental testing of a theory. The justification of it is that, although the conclusion at any stage of the investigation may be more or less erroneous, yet the further application of the same method must correct the error. The only thing that induction accomplishes is to determine the value of a quantity. It sets out with a theory and it measures the degree of concordance of that theory with fact. It never can originate any idea whatever. No more can deduction. All the ideas of science come to it by the way of Abduction.10

 CP 6.459. The reflexive aspect of musement also appears in another passage where Peirce demonstrates how much he has absorbed the spirit of the beautiful images of romanticism: “Enter your skiff of Musement, push off into the lake of thought, and leave the breath of heaven to swell your sail. With your eyes open, awake to what is about or within you, and open conversation with yourself; for such is all meditation” (CP 6.461). 10  CP 5.145 e 161; HP II, p. 895–896. 9

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In order to ascribe heuristic power originating solely from abduction, in various passages of his mature work Peirce engages in a criticism of his ideas of abduction as a form of induction.11 The heuristic exclusivity of abduction also appears in: Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea; for induction does nothing but determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of a pure hypothesis.12

Let us first take induction. The self-correction of possible errors in the inductive process implies that, in the long run, there will be established a genuine representative relation between sample and sampled universe. According to the doctrine of fallibilism we know that Peirce banned the unjustifiable pretense of exactness and final truths in science,13 notably when one considers his ontologically based indeterminism. Thus, this correction of errors is never effectively complete within what, in Peirce, can be termed a vector of approximation of truth, manifest in an evolutionary process of theories, and associated with his conception of final interpretant.14 Within the thematic spectrum of this paper, we shall limit ourselves to that evolutionary dimension at the level of mere referral, proceeding with the understanding of induction in the sense of experimental substantiation of theories. Inductive experimentation, in general, can lead to three situations: “the hypothesis is sensibly correct, or requires some inessential modification, or must be entirely rejected.”15 As a third stage of investigation, the one that precisely confronts theory with experience, induction16 is decisive for acceptance, parametric correction, or rejection of the system of signs that constitutes a model of predictive representation of phenomena. Let us now go to Abduction,17 which, we already know, is the form of logical argument originating from a new mediative idea. It is important to stress that its formulation as hypothetical inference should occur after some state of mind wherein that idea is in a condition of vagueness. To explain what is the content of this idea

 The essay where this point is subjected to self-criticism is A Theory of Probable Inference of 1873 (SL, p.  126–181 and in CP 2.694–754). The correction made by the author is in HP II, p. 1031–1032 and RLT, p. 141. 12  CP 5.171. 13  In a letter addressed to J.H. Kehler, dated June 22, 1911 (L 231), Peirce appears to have become aware that the then recent theory of relativity had forced Newtonian mechanics to review its reach: “All scientific reasoning, outside of mathematics and the Arabian Nights, is provisional. Every scientific man knows it. It was only the other day that the second law of motion was exploded. The same force that would accelerate a slowly moving body very much will have hardly any effect if the body affected is moving nearly as fast as light” (NEM III 1, p. 197). 14  See, for example, CP 4.536 and 4.572. 15  CP 6.472. 16  Outside the scope of interest of this chapter, Peirce classifies induction in three parts. The reader may examine this classification of the author continuing on the last and subsequent paragraph referred to CP 6.473, and further, in NEM III 1, p. 189–210. 17  The author often uses the equivalent term retroduction, from which invention is attributed (see NEM III 1, p. 178). 11

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and its experimental consequences will be the subsequent roles of deduction and induction: “Observe that neither Deduction nor Induction contributes the smallest positive item to the final conclusion of the inquiry. They render the indefinite definite; Deduction explicates; Induction evaluates: that is all.”18 The author’s emphasis is, once more, evident as to the exclusive heuristic power of abduction, since he adds that the conclusion was already contained in that indefinite condition of the idea. In our view, there is nothing to contest as regards the genetic indefinition of abduction prior to its argumentative form. We must keep in mind the freedom of the play of musement, under which ideas are associated within a new synthesis.19 In order for such a state of mind to be formed, Peirce suggests to the investigator “to sit down and listen to the voice of nature until you catch the tune […] The invention of the right hypothesis requires genius–an inward garden of ideas that will furnish the true pollen for observation’s flowers.”20 To catch the tune can also mean “[…] that man’s mind must have been attuned to the truth of things in order to discover what he has discovered. It is the very bedrock of logical truth.”21 Evidently, to say that the human mind is “tuned to the voice” of nature and ascribe to it the grounds for the possibility of logical truth is once again, to pull away the safe rug of deductive certainty from under the necessitarian’s feet. But, Peirce does not need any magical internal power of an unknowable, psychology-­ driven mind;22 his evolutionary philosophy will allow him to resort to a genetic theory of subjective faculties: […] if the universe conforms, with any approach to accuracy, to certain highly pervasive laws, and if man’s mind has been developed under the influence of those laws, it is to be expected that he should have a natural light, or light of nature, or instinctive insight, or genius, tending to make him guess those laws aright, or nearly aright. This conclusion is confirmed when we find that every species of animal is endowed with a similar genius.23

Peirce, in this passage, mentions the ideas of “insight,” “instinct,” and “guessing.” In fact, these terms are almost ubiquitous in his work when Abduction is referred to. The ascription of an instinctive aptitude for guessing truths—apparently an exotic line of argument—is nothing more than referring to an evolutionary consequence of a kind of attunement of the human mind with Nature that enables man,

 CP 6.475. See, also, HP II, p. 899–900.  In CP 5.171, Peirce clearly excludes logical necessity from Abduction: “Deduction proves that something must be; Induction shows that something actually is operative; Abduction merely suggests that something may be.” 20  N II, p. 222. 21  CP 6.476. 22  Psychology is, to the author, a special science and, as such, must be based on logic. See, for example, CP 2.51. According to Peirce, some logicians “continually confound psychical truths with psychological truths” (CP 5.485). 23  CP 5.604, italics from the original; see, also, CP 1.81, 5.47, 6.417, 7.39, and RLT, p. 110–111. The mention of the “natural light” is an explicit reference to Galileo’s lume naturale as shall be seen later. 18 19

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amid an infinity of possible conjectures, to select a given few, among which one proves to be true: How is it that man ever came by any correct theories about nature? We know by Induction that man has correct theories; for they produce predictions that are fulfilled. But by what process of thought were they ever brought to his mind? A chemist notices a surprising phenomenon. Now if he has a high admiration of Mill’s Logic, as many chemists have, he will remember that Mill tells him that he must work on the principle that, under precisely the same circumstances, like phenomena are produced. Why does he then not note that this phenomenon was produced on such a day of the week, the planets presenting a certain configuration, his daughter having on a blue dress, he having dreamed of a white horse the night before, the milkman having been late that morning, and so on? The answer will be that in early days chemists did use to attend to some such circumstances, but that they have learned better. How have they learned this? By an induction. Very well, that induction must have been based upon a theory which the induction verified. How was it that man was ever led to entertain that true theory? You cannot say that it happened by chance, because the possible theories, if not strictly innumerable, at any rate exceed a trillion–or the third power of a million; and therefore the chances are too overwhelmingly against the single true theory in the twenty or thirty thousand years during which man has been a thinking animal, ever having come into any man’s head. Besides, you cannot seriously think that every little chicken, that is hatched, has to rummage through all possible theories until it lights upon the good idea of picking up something and eating it. On the contrary, you think the chicken has an innate idea of doing this; that is to say, that it can think of this, but has no faculty of thinking anything else. The chicken you say pecks by instinct. But if you are going to think every poor chicken endowed with an innate tendency toward a positive truth, why should you think that to man alone this gift is denied?24

Another passage, along this line of argument, is: “Our faculty of guessing corresponds to a bird’s musical and aeronautic powers; that is, it is to us, as those are to them, the loftiest of our merely instinctive powers.”25 This primary element deriving from evolution becomes, within Peirce’s logic of investigation, the central point, the “sheet-anchor of science.”26 Coached as we have been by experience, we have a tendency to have faith in what we believe because this fact contains the revelation that our behavioral habits serve our purposes and have the general nature of successful predictive concepts. Thus, whenever this tendency toward belief manifests itself in any way as regards the choice of a path, among the many that appear for a hypothesis, there is an instinctive indicator that must be considered: It is a rule of the logic of hypothesis that whatever one finds an impulse to believe one should develop into so definite a form that experiment and observation may have a fair opportunity to refute it, if it be not true. The proposition so developed should thereupon be

 CP 5.591. In 1883, another passage expounds on this probability of choice of a correct hypothesis: “Nature is a far vaster and less clearly arranged repertory of facts than a census report; and if men had not come to it with special aptitudes for guessing right, it may well be doubted whether in the ten or twenty thousand years that they may have existed their greatest mind would have attained the amount of knowledge which is actually possessed by the lowest idiot” (CP 2.753). 25  CP 7.48. 26  CP 7.220. 24

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There is clearly here an enhancement of logica utens for the development of a logica docens; such enhancement being, coincidentally, an indicator of the force of Nature28 over the mind of man, reflecting on his behavioral adjustment to life. For no other reason, Peirce advocates that the start of a philosophy should occur from an analysis of our set of beliefs that translate into our behavioral habits, and not from theoretical doubts incapable of deterring them and rupturing a correspondence between the worlds of reflection and conduct.29 The “impulse to believe” and to act accordingly is an indicator of the action of our instinctive faculty that, according to the author, is a powerful rudder that guides toward the correct path, noting that those animals we regard as “inferior” hardly ever err in their actions.30 This is how the author stresses the force of this faculty among the major discoveries of modern science: In examining the reasoning of those physicists who gave to modern science the initial propulsion which has insured its healthful life ever since, we are struck with the great, though not absolutely decisive, weight they allowed to instinctive judgments. Galileo appeals to il lume naturale at the most critical stages of his reasoning. Kepler, Gilbert, and Harvey–not to speak of Copernicus–substantially rely upon an inward power, not sufficient to reach the truth by itself, but yet supplying an essential factor to the influences carrying their minds to the truth.31

Apart from the support to his thesis of “instinctive insight” in the genesis of abductive argument, which Peirce finds in Galileo’s “lume naturale,”32 the author displays his great admiration for Kepler, notably as to the way in which he conjectures on the observations he had received from Tycho Brahe on the orbit of Mars:33

 NEM III 2, p. 892.  To which, incidentally, Hume himself surrenders: “Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour’s amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther” (Hume, 1978, book I, part IV, section II, p. 269). On Hume’s skepticism, Schelling has an interesting opinion: “Hume [faithful to his principles] […] has to assume that the succession of appearances takes place only in our ideas; but that we take just this particular succession as necessary he declares to be pure illustration. But what one can justly demand of Hume is that he at least explain the source of the illusion” (Schelling 1988, p. 26; my italics). 29  In Ibri (2017b, p. 80–82), I analyze the belief-doubt duality in light of Peirce’s pragmatism. 30  See, for example, RLT, p. 110. 31  CP 1.80, italics from the original. 32  On Galileo’s influence on the author, see the excellent essay by Eisele (1979, p. 169–176). 33  Hanson (1977) makes an in-depth analysis of this Peircean reflection on Kepler’s works. 27 28

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The business of a man of science is to guess, and disprove guess after guess, being guided by the particular way the last guess failed in forming the next one. A scientific genius has seldom had to guess as many times as Kepler did.34

The formulation of a hypotheses, as we have said before, does not depend on some rule over which we may have some control, i.e., our deductive rationality contributes nothing whatsoever to that instinctive insight: However man may have acquired his faculty of divining the ways of Nature, it has certainly not been by a self-controlled and critical logic;35 [and further,] Concerning that quite uncontrolled part of the mind, logical maxims have as little to do as with the growth of hair and nails.36

While abductive inference37 is not under the control of a critical logic, Peirce proposes its formula as an argument that at the same time explains how a hypothesis restores the possibly thinkable character of the coarse fact without, however, becoming a rule for the formulation of abduction itself. Such formula, according to the author, is: The surprising fact, C, is observed; But if A were true, C would be a matter of course, Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.38

Vis-à-vis what has been so far analyzed, we now delve into the issue of the limits between a critical logic and that heuristically spontaneous behavior of the mind: Where then in the process of cognition does the possibility of controlling it begin? Certainly not before the percept is formed. Even after the percept is formed there is an operation which seems to me to be quite uncontrollable. It is that of judging what it is that the person perceives. A judgment is an act of formation of a mental proposition combined with an adoption of it or act of assent to it. A percept on the other hand is an image or moving picture or other exhibition.39

Thus, it seems that there is a perceptive moment, a relationship between the cognoscent mind and the object investigated that occurs in a time space wherein no self-control exists. Peirce now sets the stage for his theory of judicative perception,  NEM III 2, p.  893; see also NEM III 1. p.  169–171, where Peirce analyzes Kepler’s discoveries. 35  CP 5.173. 36  CP 5.212. In CP 5.109 (1903), Peirce reinforces this position: “To criticize as logically sound or unsound an operation of thought that cannot be controlled is not less ridiculous than it would be to pronounce the growth of your hair to be morally good or bad. The ridiculousness in both cases consists in the fact that such a critical judgment may be pretended but cannot really be performed in clear thought, for on analysis it will be found absurd.” 37  Peirce does not hesitate in classifying Abduction as a legitimate inference: “Any novice in logic may well be surprised at my calling a guess an inference. It is equally easy to define inference so as to exclude or include abduction. But all the objects of logical study have to be classified; and it is found that there is no other good class in which to put abduction but that of inferences” (HP II, p. 899). 38  CP 5.189; my italics. 39  CP 5.115, italics from the original. 34

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introducing the perceptual judgment, that is, the first judgment of a person as to what is before his senses: I do not see that it is possible to exercise any control over that operation or to subject it to criticism. If we can criticize it at all, as far as I can see, that criticism would be limited to performing it again and seeing whether, with closer attention, we get the same result. But when we so perform it again, paying now closer attention, the percept is presumably not such as it was before. I do not see what other means we have of knowing whether it is the same as it was before or not, except by comparing the former perceptual judgment and the later one. I should utterly distrust any other method of ascertaining what the character of the percept was. Consequently, until I am better advised, I shall consider the perceptual judgment to be utterly beyond control. Should I be wrong in this, the Percept, at all events, would seem to be so.40

According to Peirce, “our perceptual judgments are the first premises of all our reasonings and that they cannot be called in question,”41 since they are totally beyond self-control. Thus, it follows that the initial assumptions of our positive arguments are not subject to criticism, provided they derive from perception. Nevertheless, this perception may contain hallucinatory elements; but, in this case, what would be the criterion to distill a sane perception from one that could easily be an illusion, if no critical logic is possible, per se? Peirce answers this question,42 stating that it would not be difficult to distinguish a perception that more than one person could similarly have, from another full of idiosyncrasies. According to Peirce, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the senses, affirming that future physics will discover that they are more real than the current state of knowledge permits verifying.43 Notable among the conferences given by him in Harvard (1903) on pragmatism is Pragmatism and Abduction,44 where he presents his theory of judicative perception associated with abduction. In it, Peirce submits what he calls the three cotary propositions, with which he intends honing45 the maxim of pragmatism. The first is “nihil est in intellectus quod non prius fuerit in sensu,” meaning, by intellectus, “the meaning of any representation in any kind of cognition, virtual, symbolic, or whatever it may be,” and, by in sensu, as being “in a perceptual judgment, the starting point or first premise of all critical and controlled thinking.”46 His second proposition is […] perceptual judgments contain general elements, so that universal propositions are deducible from them in the manner in which the logic of relations shows that particular

 CP 5.115, italics from the original.  CP 5.116. 42  CP 5.117–118. 43  CP 5.118. In CP 5.402, n. 2, Peirce comments: “It is not ‘my’ experience, but ‘our’ experience that has to be thought of; and this ‘us’ has indefinite possibilities.” 44  CP 5.180–212. 45  According to the author, the term cotary derives from cos, cotis, which is a grinding stone (CP 5.180). 46  CP 5.181. 40 41

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propositions usually, not to say invariably, allow universal propositions to be necessarily inferred from them […]47

The third proposition, in turn, enunciates that […] abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them; or, in other words, our first premises, the perceptual judgments, are to be regarded as an extreme case of abductive inferences, from which they differ in being absolutely beyond criticism.48

Evidently, Peirce asserts here a bold theory, mainly as regards perceptive judgment containing general elements. On the other hand, that question of a limit between controlled inference and the instance of the percept or set of percepts associated with judgments seems to lead to a continuity between perception and Abduction. Although we are in the field of indeterminacy for a critical logic, Peirce is careful not to turn the theme into an object of psychology: In saying that perceptual judgments involve general elements I certainly never intended to be understood as enunciating any proposition in psychology. For my principles absolutely debar me from making the least use of psychology in logic. I am confined entirely to the unquestionable facts of everyday experience, together with what can be deduced from them. All that I can mean by a perceptual judgment is a judgment absolutely forced upon my acceptance, and that by a process which I am utterly unable to control and consequently am unable to criticize. Nor can I pretend to absolute certainty about any matter of fact. If with the closest scrutiny I am able to give, a judgment appears to have the characters I have described, I must reckon it among perceptual judgments until I am better advised.49

In light of the realism of the continuum in Peircean philosophy, it seems incongruous to suppose that perceptive experience can, on its own, acquire a semblance of generality in the human mind. Let us consider the necessity of a unity of consciousness in the face of the object that, in time, gathers all percepts in a continuum and that also brings past ideas to presentness for a heuristic suggestion in the form of a hypothesis. Obviously, in this case, let us recall, we are simulating a state of things different from a mere habitual recognition. If, to the spatiotemporal order of percepts, a possible and correlated order of sensed objects does not correspond, we will be committed to nominalism, which, as we know, is not Peirce’s position. So, perceptive judgment should effectively contain general elements, in that undefined border between the descriptive and the interpretative, which, alternatively, transfers itself to the relations between perception and abduction, not precluding saying that “perception is interpretative.”50 In this way, the doctrines of Synechism51 and the theory of judicative perception are associated, provided a continuum is required  CP 5.181 and 186.  CP 5.186. 49  CP 5.157. 50  CP 5.184. In CP 2.148–149 Peirce emphatically states that actual laws govern percepts, otherwise theories would be arbitrary. 51  Hookway (1992, p. 163) devotes the chapter “Perception and the Outward Clash” to this theme, observing correctly, in our view, that “unless the generality expressed in the perceptual judgment is also present in the percept, there seems to be an unbridgeable epistemological gap between them.” 47 48

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between the instances of experience, in the sense of a system of percepts and the critical and controlled preparation of a theory. This genetic indeterminacy of heuristic insights is also one of the essential sources of Fallibilism. The world’s eidetic fabric is insinuated into the approaching mind: The abductive suggestion comes to us like a flash. It is an act of insight, although of extremely fallible insight. It is true that the different elements of the hypothesis were in our minds before; but it is the idea of putting together what we had never before dreamed of putting together which flashes the new suggestion before our contemplation.52

It should be observed, in this passage, that our author states that “the different elements of the hypothesis were in our minds before”; indeed, there is no doubt that the subject should possess a repertoire of signs capable of being associated with the system of percepts for a judgment, as it is a fact that “we perceive what we are adjusted for interpreting.”53 Under a categorial point of view, as thirdness has an ontological statute characterized by the system of relations between the phenomena that have spatiotemporal continuity, generality perceptively grasped is, in fact, an insight of that system. In a passage of his work, Peirce confirms this viewpoint while also manifesting his admiration for the human faculty of guessing: […] man has a certain Insight, not strong enough to be oftener right than wrong, but strong enough not to be overwhelmingly more often wrong than right, into the Thirdnesses, the general elements, of Nature. An Insight, I call it, because it is to be referred to the same general class of operations to which Perceptive Judgments belong. This Faculty is at the same time of the general nature of Instinct, resembling the instincts of the animals in its so far surpassing the general powers of our reason and for its directing us as if we were in possession of facts that are entirely beyond the reach of our senses. It resembles instinct too in its small liability to error; for though it goes wrong oftener than right, yet the relative frequency with which it is right is on the whole the most wonderful thing in our constitution.54

There is no longer that division between reason and senses that inaugurated so many nominalistic systems; by splitting interiority, we separate our rationality from the world, since the gateway to the latter would be more like a contingency and accidentality. Nevertheless, […] there is a Thirdness in experience, an element of Reasonableness to which we can train our own reason to conform more and more. If this were not the case, there could be no such thing as logical goodness or badness; and therefore we need not wait until it is proved that there is a reason operative in experience to which our own can approximate. We should at once hope that it is so, since in that hope lies the only possibility of any knowledge.55

 CP 5.181, italics are from the original text.  CP 5.185. 54  CP 5.173. The generality contained in the level of sensitivity is, according to Apel (1981, p. 117), the “final bracket of Peirce’s conception of his system”, seeing, in the theory of perceptual judgments of the author, a sort of “immediacy of mediation” or a “firstness of thirdness.” Murphey (1993, p. 376–377) lucidly analyses the necessary presence of thirdness in perception, based on the homology of orders in the object and in the senses. 55  CP 5.160. 52 53

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Recognizing that our knowledge of the world occurs evolutionarily, it may also be said that such a gateway of experience is considerably wider, impregnated with the “undefined possibilities” of the continuum formed by the common ideality of Nature and the human mind. The terms ideality and mind here imply, once again, a unity, since “Thirdness pours in upon us through every avenue of sense.”56

6.3 Section III We still have to expound on the deductive type of argument in light of Peirce’s logic of investigation. We already know that the heuristic content of a theory is contained in the abductive instance. We must emphasize that in the light of Peirce’s realism this heuristic content is necessarily judicative and general; otherwise, it would disrupt the continuum of generality between world and consciousness. In the abductive process, there is that indefinability typical of a fabric of possibilities that results from the lack of a constrictive rule57 for the formation of a hypothesis that leads to a propositional form. Peirce, as we already know, claims that deduction is a reasoning of a mathematical nature that draws the necessary consequences from the state of things contained in the hypothesis, without questioning whether it is linked or not with reality.58 According to Peirce, the deductive phase of the logic of investigation is developed through diagrams. A diagram is […] a representamen which is predominantly an icon of relations and is aided to be so by conventions […] It should be carried out upon a perfectly consistent system of representation, founded upon a simple and easily intelligible basic idea.59

Still according to the author, geometry and algebra corroborate this diagrammatic character,60 where a system of relations is “helped” by conventions, such as operating signs, letters, etc. In this sense, a geographic map is also a diagram, an icon of spatial relations, which, to be comprehended, requires verbal symbols,

 CP 5.157. It is because of this unity of mind, in its evolutionary sense, that the understanding of Abduction as a dialectical process, as detected in Corrington’s reading (1993, p. 67), does not fit. 57  Reinforcing this point which we had already defined as such, we can resort to the following passage of the author’s work: “What are to be the logical rules to which we are to conform in taking this step (the Abduction)? There would be no logic in imposing rules, and saying that they ought to be followed, until it is made out that the purpose of hypothesis requires them” (CP 7.202). 58  “Deduction, of course, relates exclusively to an ideal state of things” (CP 7.205). 59  CP 4.418. The definition of icon can be found in CP 2.276. We can understand it as a sign that has with its object a relation of similitude or similarity, not requiring the actual reality of such object for its possible meaning. 60  “Of all the sciences – at least of those whose reality no one disputes – mathematics is the one which deals with relations in the abstractest form; and it never deals with them except as embodied in a diagram or construction, geometrical or algebraical” (N I, p.  73). See also CP 2.279 and CP 5.148. 56

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geometric scale, and other necessary referential signs.61 Peirce also considers verbal language a type of algebra and, as such, diagrammatic.62 Indeed, Chomsky’s recent generative grammar shows that the deep syntactic structure of language is, in this sense, an icon of relations or a diagram. Such a diagram, of course, must be available in the human mind as a linguistic capability.63 There are, nevertheless, serious differences between the verbal spoken or written language and mathematical language as regards their respective heuristic capabilities. On this point, we shall expound later. The primary quality of a diagram, in Peirce’s view, is to allow those relations to be observed: “All necessary reasoning without exception is diagrammatic. That is, we construct an icon of our hypothetical state of things and proceed to observe it”;64 and further: “A diagram has the advantage of appealing to the eye.”65 This “appeal to the eye” is confirmed in the exemplary case of Mathematics, whose truth “[…] is derived from observation of creations of our own visual imagination, which we may set down on paper in form of diagrams.”66 But, what effectively provides this observation, and what is its importance? Let us recall very simple examples, such as auxiliary constructions in geometry that allow the visualization of relations and properties that lead to the demonstration of a theorem, or, even, in algebraic systems with more than one variable, where relations of similarity determine their solution. Evidently these, as well as those unrelated with mathematical language, are trivial cases that are illustratively experienced. Under a conceptual viewpoint, it seems to us that the author says exactly the same thing regarding the method that […] consists in studying constructions, or diagrams. That such is its method is unquestionably correct; for, even in algebra, the great purpose which the symbolism subserves is to bring a skeleton representation of the relations concerned in the problem before the mind’s eye in a schematic shape, which can be studied much as a geometrical figure is studied.67

What power of our vision is this that enables the solution of a problem, whether in the imagination, through the “eyes of the mind,” or in the contemplation of the diagram graphically materialized on a sheet of paper? This question is the heuristic core of deduction; however, on placing it there is an apparent contradiction: was not the entire content of discovery contained in the abductive inference? How, then, can we conciliate what we already know with this heuristic facet of the necessary argument? That it effectively exists, the author’s words leave no doubt whatsoever: The act of interference consists […] in constructing in the imagination a sort of diagram or skeleton image of the essentials of the state of things represented in the premises, in which,

 CP 3.419.  CP 3.419. 63  Chomsky 1969, Chapters 3 and 4. 64  CP 5.162. 65  NEM III 2, p. 1120. 66  CP 2.77. 67  CP 3.556. 61 62

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by mental manipulation and contemplation, relations which had not been noticed in constructing it are discovered.68

In order to seek the solution of this question, let us start by pointing out that the use of the term construction refers to the Kantian constructivism present in the Transcendental Doctrine of Method.69 Indeed, Peirce makes countless references70 to the theme, of which we quote: Kant is entirely right in saying that, in drawing those consequences, the mathematician uses what, in geometry, is called a ‘construction’, or in general a diagram, or visual array of characters or lines. Such a construction is formed according to a precept furnished by the hypothesis. Being formed, the construction is submitted to the scrutiny of observation, and new relations are discovered among its parts, not stated in the precept by which it was formed […].71

However, in the Transcendental Analytics, Kant proposes the concept of transcendental scheme, having simultaneously intellectual and sensible characteristics which perform a mediating role between the categories and phenomena. He also defines it as the “product of the capacity of imagination” and as a “rule of synthesis” for such capacity,72 in such a way that schemata are […] nothing but a priori determinations of time in accordance with rules. These rules relate in the order of the categories to the time-series, the time-content, the time-order, and lastly to the scope of time in respect of all possible objects.73

Ascribing a predicate of generality to schemata, Kant distinguishes it from image: Indeed it is the schemata, not images of objects, which underlie our pure sensible concepts. No image could ever be adequate to the concept of a triangle in general […]. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere but in thought.74

In the Transcendental Doctrine of Method,75 Kant distinguishes philosophical and mathematical knowledge, the first for being discursive through concepts and the other for the construction of concepts.76 Comparing these two forms of knowledge, Kant simulates a situation in which a philosopher and a geometrician confront the development of a demonstration that the sum of the internal angles of a given triangle is two right angles. The former, conceptually reflecting on angles, straight  N I, p. 149.  Kant, 1978, A713–738/B741–766. 70  See, for example, CP 4.2, CP 4.86 and CP 5.178. 71  CP 3.560 (1898). 72  Kant, 1978, A138–141/B177–180. Paton (1965, Vol. 2, p. 39–40) accuses Kant of “obscurity” on this point, given the difficulty of conciliating the ideas of product and rule of synthesis of imagination, as concepts of scheme. 73  Kant, 1978, A145/B184. 74  Kant, 1978, A141/B180. In A714/B742, Kant apparently contradicts himself, stating that in drawing a triangle on paper “the singular figure I have drawn is empirical and lends itself to express the concept without reducing its universality.” 75  Kant, 1978, A705–728/B733–756. 76  Kant, 1978, A713/B741; A719/B747. 68 69

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lines or the number three “will produce nothing new”. The geometrician, in turn, “starts building a triangle” and, through other auxiliary constructions, “sees” the solution.77 To which Kant adds […] thus in algebra by means of symbolic construction, just as in geometry by means of an ostensive construction (the geometrical construction of the objects themselves), we succeed in arriving at results which discursive knowledge could never have reached by means of mere concepts.78

It is thus that the constructive method of mathematics “[…] together with its heuristic advantages, protects all inferences against error by placing each one of them before our eyes […].”79 Notwithstanding the differences in principle between the philosophies of Peirce and Kant, the latter, as is known, had a great influence on the formation of the former’s thought.80 It is true that Peirce had full knowledge of the “constructions” of ancient Greek geometry used in theorematic demonstrations, and thus one cannot say that he drew this concept from Kant. However, in our view, Kant seems to have been the first to differentiate, in the context of epistemology, verbal, and mathematical discourses. Nevertheless, Peirce generalizes the idea of diagram to an extreme that results in its correlation with the logic of relatives and theory of logical graphs.81 This deepening of the notion of diagram made him interpret transcendental logic as an uncalled for pretense of Kant to reduce all necessary reasoning to the syllogism in Barbara;82 Peirce sees, for example, diagrammatic deductivity in the operations of predictive thought, in a kind or internal dialogue in which the mind draws a plan of conduct for a presumed course of future experience.83 According to Peirce, even in the simplest syllogism, a diagrammatic structure is present,84 and he says, also, that ancient syllogistic logic, reviewed under the logic of relatives, leads arguments to a multiplicity of possible conclusions.85  Kant, 1978, A716/B744. Here, Kant proposes that, exemplarily in an ABC triangle, the geometrician would extend the BC side of the triangle and draw a parallel line to AC by vertex B. The external angles thus formed would be, respectively, equal to α and β, which, with γ, would add to two straight angles. 78  Kant, 1978, A717/B745. 79  Kant, 1978, A734/B762. 80  In a letter to his friend William James (April 1897), Peirce says: “The Critique of Pure Reason, as you know, was my wet nurse in philosophy.” 81  This theory is, intrinsically, a radical display of the possible universe of logical relations in the form of diagrams. Roberts (1973) is a profound “classical” interpreter of Peirce’s theory of graphs. 82  In CP 4.37, Peirce extends his critique to Kant’s supposition that logic had reached a definitive point, with no space for further advances. 83  See, exemplarily, CP 2.169. 84  CP 1.35. 85  See an explicit pertinent passage in HP II, p. 1123. In RLT, p. 156, Peirce, apart from the technical details of the logic of relatives, explains it conceptually: “where ordinary logic considers only a single, special kind of relation, that of similarity—a relation, too, of a particularly featureless and insignificant kind the logic of relatives images a relation in general to be placed. Consequently, in place of the class – which is composed of a number of their relation of similarity, the logic of relatives considers the system, which is composed of objects brought together by any kind of relations 77

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We now propose to reflect, firstly, on that heuristic power of our human vision that, as shown, whether in Peirce or Kant, appears as an effective resource of discovery of relations and systemic understanding of a state of things contained in a diagram. Let us take the Kantian concept of rule of synthesis for the whole of time, as valid for his idea of a schema.86 If we consider a diagram as an icon of relations evident to vision, there shall be before it the presentness of all those relational predicates. We believe that this is the idea of time contained in the Kantian concept of schemata, in which time is, in fact, abolished from intuition. Those qualities are absolutely simultaneous to the mind, being already a first synthesis and perceptively facilitating the association of others to correlated ideas. The synthesis of time would, in these terms, imply its own exclusion from consciousness; the importance of time87 in a diagram is, in fact, its vital absence, by gathering, simultaneously, all predicates of relations in a single system. Let us recall that this presentness of ideas for the mind is the fundamentally heuristic condition, despite the fact that the diagram, as an icon, shows the object in a structurally analogous form. For this observing mind there is no recurrent need for mnemonic operations; the diagram’s presentness enables a contemplation free of any constraints: this is the state of creative ideality that will discover new relations, in which the eye for the diagram’s exteriority and the eye for the interiority of the imaginary join in the unity of a heuristically perceptive consciousness. This is the way that a deductive diagram causes “surprises.” It is in this sense that Peirce criticizes those who are “utterly overlooking the construction of a diagram, the mental experimentation, and the surprising novelty of many deductive discoveries.”88 In light of this approach, verbal language does not have the visual resource that avails itself of a kind of “time paralysis” in ostensive predicates, which require, in both spoken or written expressions, temporality for the intellection of the whole of conceptual relations. Add to this line of argument the fact that the verbal sign, in its atomicity or even, in its expressive system, depends exclusively on conventional rules, unable to resort to that relation of formal similarity between the iconic structures and their objects. Not without reason, the scientific revolution that occurred in the Renaissance also coincides with a revolution in the sciences of Nature, to the detriment of medieval verbalism, through the systematic and heuristically

whatsoever.” In our view, this replacement of class for system, provided by the logic of relatives, is, under an ontological prism, a radicalization of his realism. 86  According to Peirce: “Kant holds that all the general metaphysical conceptions applicable to experience are capable of being represented as in a diagram, by means of the image of time. Such diagrams he calls ‘schemata’” (CP 2.385). 87  We believe this to be the reading of this issue that makes Findlay’s mistaken (1981, p. 159) when he affirms not to understand why Kant gives such privilege to time in the schematism. 88  CP 4.91; a similar content can be found in CP 3.363. Murphey (1993, p. 231) comments on this “surprising” aspect of the diagrams, pointing out that “in constructing the icon, we do not construct one particular case under the hypothesis, we rather construct any particular case under the hypothesis.”

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advantageous use of geometry and Mathematics, in the preparation of its theoretical body.89 It is now opportune to return to the question of the heuristic possibility of deduction, in view of having ascribed to Abduction the exclusive power of discovery of new theories or truths in science. We presume this is a solvable question, if we recall that deduction draws necessary consequences from a hypothesis. This operation is, in Peirce’s words, one of the stages of the definition of that typically conjecturable indetermination of Abduction.90 If we restrict ourselves to a positive science, i.e., one that has as object some cut from reality, we must conceptually distinguish creation and discovery.91 The latter, within a realistic philosophy, should acknowledge that reality investigated is a system of relations endowed with absolute otherness in relation to the mind, and, thus, is not an arbitrary creation of a nominalism that can, only, save appearances. In this sense, to call a theory discovery is to explicitly confess that it did not constitute or construct its object. Thus, deduction, within the realm of an ideal state of things,92 requires a creative act of the mind over its diagrams as a way of revealing what of the world was already genetically contained in Abduction.93 If we may use a metaphor, the deductive stage of the logic of investigation has the lapidary function of a rough stone covered by the impurities of reason; the surprises of the diagrams are nothing more than the luster of reality on the faces of that original prism that gradually reflects the light of the world when revealing itself as a precious discovery, through the creation of man over the diagrams. Such diagrams, if inductively true, would suggest a continuity between Peirce’s cosmic intelligence and Schelling’s poetic soul: Visible mind of visible Nature.94

 Contemporarily, there is an interesting example of the heuristic power of diagrams in the work of Paul Dirac (1978, p. 11–20). Conjecturing on Einstein’s quadratic equation referring to the energy of atomic particles, it was asked whether the negative root of this equation could have a physical meaning. Shortly after, this conjecture led to the discovery of the positron. 90  Regarding the linking of the three arguments to Peirce’s three categories, not discussed in this chapter, please consult Staat (1993). It should be noted that Peirce himself admits hesitating on the solution to this question (see CP 5.146). 91  Mathematics, as such, is always a science of the imaginary, and its hypotheses, under the terms of the analysis that follows, are uncommitted to an empiric reality. See, for example, CP 2.240 and CP 4.176. 92  In 1911 (NEM III 1, p. 177) Peirce states: “Deduction, or necessary reasoning, is only one, and certainly not the highest one, of three absolutely disparate ways of reasoning. I believe I was the first to prove this, perhaps the first even to assert it.” 93  In our view, the necessary distinction between creation and discovery in the realm of Peirce’s philosophy is required by its realism. Concerning the abductive argument, our point of view is that we must consider Peirce’s complex theoretical and markedly ontological framework, which certainly hampers nominalistic approaches. 94  See Schelling (1988, p. 42): “Nature should be Mind made visible, Mind the invisible Nature.” 89

Chapter 7

The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce’s Philosophy

Keywords  Mind-matter · Evolutionism · Idealism-realism · Heuristics · Abduction · Ontology

7.1 On the Relation Between Ideality and Reality in Peirce In the Introduction to his Philosophie der Natur,1 Friedrich Schelling already warned about the illusion that Kant’s critical philosophy had, finally and effectively, buried empiric realism, notwithstanding having replaced it by an empiric idealism. This comment of Schelling, somewhat surprising, does not seem to acknowledge a radical inflexion intended by the transcendental Kantian philosophy as regards a naïve realism associated with a “crude empirism,”2 an expression, incidentally, he himself coined. Indeed, I consider that Schelling’s critique becomes understandable when we perceive it under the horizon of his philosophy of identity that seeks to dissolve all kinds of dichotomies between subjectivity and objectivity. Similar to Peirce and, on all accounts under this aspect, an inspirer of the starting point of Peircean philosophy, Schelling proclaims a genetic principle of unity for his philosophy, antecedent to any beginning of a polarization between subject and object. This principle will be consummated in his doctrine of Objective Idealism that, deriving from a principle of unity, is based on the substantial undifferentiation of reality and ideality. Then it is through the prism of Schellingian Idealism that the  Schelling (1988).  This naive realism, associated with a crude empiricism, was defended by Hume’s skepticism and, according to Schelling’s reading of Kant, constitutes the main object of analysis by Kantian philosophy. 1 2

This chapter was originally published as The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce’s Philosophy. Nóema, v. 4–2, p. 02–21, 2013a. Republished with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_7

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common territory between empiric realism and empiric idealism appears, and this becomes Schelling’s object of critique. In fact, Schelling recognizes that both doctrines have something in common, namely, the inevitable polarization present in the subject-object relationship that, ultimately, Kant’s Copernican revolution had simply inverted: from the incognizability of das Ding an sich to the transcendental forms that constitute the subject. In both, the common matrix of a strict nominalism can be discerned. And Schelling is, in light of his philosophies of Identity and Nature, a realistic thinker and, above that, the one who first wholly reconciled realism and idealist, even before Peirce had done in a more clearly logical manner.3 Indeed, we emphasize that Peirce appreciatively credits Schelling with the foundations of his Objective Idealism;4 this doctrine plays the role of genetically depolarizing the subject-object relationship, at first in light of a substantial monism—i.e., affirming that ideality constitutes the ultimate ontological fabric of both subjectivity and the reality of a world that, for such subjectivity, places itself fundamentally as an other or, in Peircean terminology, as second. Peirce, however, goes further: the genetic subject-object depolarization in his philosophy is not solely substantial, but also favors a symmetrization of logical rights5 between both. This Herculean task will be performed by his three categories that, undifferentiatedly, will be valid both on the plain of the subjectivity taken logically and on its objective expression: in other words, on the spheres of representation and of reality as such.

7.1.1 Reflections on Peirce’s Realism The vigorous defense of a realism of scholastic extraction that opposes any form of nominalism is a recurrent theme in Peirce’s writings.6 A deeper understanding of this realism involves redeeming the ancient dispute of the universals that Peirce brings back. Peirce finds in Duns Scotus the paternity of his defense of the reality of generals. I consider this historic recovery of the issue fundamentally important when mentioning, within Peirce’s philosophy, the concept of realism. This is not an empirical realism7 in the sense criticized by Schelling, and which is designated by the term today, namely, a mere acknowledgment of the existence of an external world of things. Realism of a Scotist extraction affirms the reality of universals that relate to things in their individuality.8 Thus, when today we affirm a realism of mere acknowledgment of a world external to mind or language, we are, in light of the

 Letter to W. James of January 28, 1894. See footnote 16, Chap. 2 of this book.  CP 6.605. 5  I created this expression to characterize the generalization power of Peirce’s categories, applied indifferently to man and Nature. 6  See Boler (1963). 7  See Buchler (1939). 8  For an interesting approach to this theme, see Dileo (1991). 3 4

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dispute of the universals as it was proposed by the scholastics, in effect solely adopting a nominalist position. Indeed, the question of the existence of an external world was never an issue for either nominalists or realists: they were interested in another problem, namely, whether universals are real or just a figure of speech.9 Peirce, incidentally, having provided a clear foundation of his Phenomenology, expounds in this science the experimental base of the belief in an external world, and he does so without polemicizing the issue by exposing the external world in terms of a universal reaction against consciousness: it essentially contains the concept of otherness implicit in its category of secondness. Also in his mature thought, Peirce improves his realism, deeming insufficient a realism of classes10 that, ultimately, only considers the correspondence between terms and their real generalities. In fact, in his endeavor of bringing the issue of universals back to the forefront, Peirce aims at a realism where real generality is represented by natural laws, taken as wide systems of real relations that can no longer be represented by mere concepts in their atomicity, but that requires correspondence with theories that seek to describe the general conduct of complex objects, when taken as continuous phenomenical systems, and not just individual events. It is thus that the study of the logic of relations makes Peirce reformulate more widely the question of universals, which then assumes the propositional form: “Are any continua real?”11 It is important to emphasize again that the final formulation of his system of Categories and the definitive introduction of Phenomenology in his Classification of Sciences12 provide consistency to the Peircean project of conceiving a wide-ranging theory of the Real, a theory of the Object, which he calls scientific metaphysics.13 This consistency comprises two fundamental axes, namely, Realism and Objective Idealism as totally correlate and mutually necessary doctrines.

7.1.2 Reality and Ideality in Peirce’s Categories Peirce’s realism is already effectively described in the phenomenological sphere. His proposal to simultaneously include the diversity of Nature and the unity of the qualities of feeling under the first category already conceives them in a relation of categorial symmetry; i.e., as identical modes of appearing that heuristically

 See also Forster (2011).  Indeed, a realism of classes only would consider closed sets of predicates. Peirce’s latter synechistic realism will take into account the possible logic-ontological relations among such classes, considering these relations as continuous systems. 11  NEM IV, p. 343. 12  Kent’s excellent work (1987) on Peirce’s classification of sciences is already a classic. 13  See Delaney (2002). 9

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suggest14 that they are under the same mode of being. The attempt of logical conciliation between appearing and being is already a realistic attitude, in my view. This conciliation will imply admitting a substantial connaturality, namely, a common substantial ideality. Indeed, what links diversity and unity is logical possibility. This common logic character permeates external and internal world alike. By doing so, Peirce brings something new to philosophy, something that is found only in Schelling: the explicit attribution of the classical concept of freedom to both objectivity and subjectivity, which will solve, with a plausible solution, aporias that plagued us for centuries. Indeed, only the sharing of logical possibilities could promote it. How is this symmetry outlined in the second Peircean category? How can one find this experience of reaction both in the external and internal world? How can the particularity of reaction be interior? In other words, how can this supposed symmetry be maintained in the realm of secondness?15 Indeed, Peirce affirms that the phenomenon of reaction against our consciousness is also ubiquitous, perhaps the most universal among them. It is the source of our entire notion of otherness and polarity, where one of these poles comprises the subject in determining its individuality: the consciousness of oneself derives immediately from the consciousness of another. This conceptual consideration has precedents in the history of philosophy, for example, in the second principle of Fichte’s Doctrine of Science, where this determination of individuality occurs through the experience of the reaction of a non-ego to an ego.16 It is interesting to see how Peirce, notwithstanding his realism, does not seem to realize that it implies what I will call categorial symmetry—the undifferentiated validity of the three categories to the subjective and the objective world. Peirce’s analysis of an internal non-ego as a kind of otherness resident in the interior world represented by the past that contains our experienced facticity provides this internal non-ego with the same property that the external objects have, namely, to react against consciousness.17 Thus, secondness symmetrizes a class of phenomena that permeate external and internal worlds, undifferentiatedly, in their form. 18 This symmetry is only logically feasible through the admission of the connaturality of the objects belonging to the internal and external worlds.

 “Suggest” here is to be taken as an adequate term in the realm of Phenomenology. Peirce insists that this science is not categorical in its propositions. But its conjectural nature that characterizes it as “the first science of philosophy” makes it abductively suggestive for a later theory of the Real. 15  See, for other perspectives, Jacques (1992) and also Mayorga (2007). 16  See AA I, 2 262 and AA 1, 2 266 (Fichte 1964). 17  See CP 2.84, 2.148, and 5.459 and EP 2, p. 357. 18  This subject indeed suggests a future discussion that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. This internal facticity and its generalization of conscious and mainly unconscious symbolic structure constitute the dynamic object of psychoanalysis, whose specificity is evidenced in each subject-patient. 14

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Finally, and perhaps more easily understandable, the symmetry inherent in the third category comes in the form of the laws of Nature in the external world and of positively judicative thought in the inner world. In fact, this notion of internal and external worlds has two prisms through which they can be seen, namely, having as reference the subject of experience or having in mind the categorial nature of these worlds. In other words, natural law is external to consciousness, while thought is internal. However, under the second prism, natural laws are of an interior nature, without necessarily implying that this interior belongs to some transcendence. It is only of a logical nature and, evidently, metaphysical. One could, also, logically define internal nature as that which can only be known when it becomes external, namely, by the way in which it becomes a phenomenon. Internal nature, under this logical approach, always possesses modal generality, containing both Firstness and Thirdness: the former as possibility and the latter as necessity. Under this approach, then, the logical nature of Secondness is being external. It reveals what is naturally internal, as freedom and order. All phenomena are governed by Chance and by Law and, thus appear partially ordered or, to put it differently, partially random. This viewpoint, which refuses the splitting between external and internal worlds and that, contrarily, places them in a continuum, nevertheless, does not impede them from being distinguished without, however, separating them substantially as strangers to each other. On the contrary, such perspective constitutes a gateway to a more general approach to the Peircean realism-idealism. As long as Metaphysics is grounded in Logic, the clouds of dogmatism are dispelled and one can navigate heuristically through the theoretical possibilities of the explanation of phenomena. It must also be stressed that the deepest understanding of Peirce’s categories, the reason for introducing them, their consequences, their ontological overlapping, in short, their meaning vis-à-vis the totality of the theoretical system of Peirce’s philosophy, can only be gained when one considers his cosmology. In his cosmology, particularly in cosmogenesis, the sequencing from which the Universe emerges is the birth of the categories, which occurs in the logical sequence of first, second, and third. This Peircean proposition enables us to see how the category of secondness arose from Firstness and how Thirdness arose from secondness. In turn, Firstness has genesis in a germinal Nothing, perhaps one of the most interesting points of Peircean writings, spurring speculation on the nature itself of this Nothing.19

7.1.3 Concerning a Synthesis of the Categories From the point of view of Metaphysics, the third category of the triad, Thirdness, constitutes the mode of being of the Laws of nature represented, under these terms, as real mediation between Chance and Existence and comprising, in this order, the real modes of being of Firstness and Secondness. The proposition of the categories

19

 For other perspectives, see Turley (1977) and also Esposito (1980).

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within Phenomenology, by describing the modes of being of our human experience, already proclaims, as mentioned, the rupture of the subject-object dualism, since thought and natural law are formal correlates in the realm of Thirdness, similar to freedom, unity of consciousness and Chance, under Firstness, and otherness and existence under Secondness. To make logically possible the categorically homogeneous subsumption of subjectivity and objectivity, the starting point of Peirce’s philosophy will have to refute, as emphasized, a mind-matter dualism, opting for a monism, on which I will comment later. Nevertheless, it is important to show how, from the point of view of categorical homogeneity, such monism is necessary, rejecting interpretations that, from a tacit viewpoint of a Cartesian dualism, seek unsuccessfully some kind of consistency between realist and idealist positions, both understood in a contemporary way, namely, as opposite doctrines. Distinguishing reality from existence, like the scholastics, Peirce conceptualizes reality as the locus of ontological generality or, more precisely, of ontologically continuous systems in the form of the laws of nature.20 While reality is subsumed in the third category, existence is that mode of being of the particular, of the individual, characterized by the interacting duality of forces, situated under secondness. The individual materializes, or actualizes, the generality of the law under the form of a temporally ordered behavior, which is the condition of possibility of the predictive character of thought in general and of science in particular. Law, under this consideration, contains an esse in futuro to which continuity is justly conferred.21 The Peircean doctrine of Synechism or theory of the continuum, which under its formal aspect is the thesis of the continuity of reality, thus becomes a correlate of the author’s Realism.22 It is from within this Realism that Peirce will extract one of the supporting points for his Idealism.

7.1.4 Enhancing Objective Idealism Some points on Peirce’s Objective Idealism merit further consideration. Let us recall that I consider a mind-matter monism a logical consequence of the categorial homogeneity of subject and object. Indeed, Peirce refuses, as mentioned before, the substantial duality between mind and matter as found in Cartesian philosophy, analyzing both alternatives of that monism. On the one hand, a materialist monism leads to insoluble questions as regards the category of Firstness. As we know, Firstness encompasses the mode of being of the unconditioned in the external forms of Chance, and internal forms of the qualities of feeling, which require a point of discontinuity in the continuum of time, represented by the present. The complex

 For another approach, see Michael (1988).  See also Moore (1968). 22  In this respect, in a passage of his work, Peirce states: “When we come to study the principle of continuity we will gain a more ontological conception of knowledge and reality” (CP 4.62). 20 21

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systemic aspect23 of the relation between feeling and unity of consciousness as characteristics of genetic heuristic is also fundamental for the understanding and development of his theory of Abduction.24 Under the aspect of Pragmatism, on the other hand, materialist monism, through an analysis of its practical consequences, will be also an ontological determinism, unacceptable in Peirce’s epistemological system, as this system requires the admissibility of an ontological principle of chance that calls for an indeterminism, whether as to reality or as regards the theories that seek to represent them.25 Peirce, then, embraces a monism in which mind, in the sense of a primarily genealogic eidos, subsumes matter as mental substance exhausted by inveterate habits.26 This idea, extracted in full from Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature,27 proposes a grading of life to the conception of mind. In fact, mind, conceived monistically by incorporating matter as one specialized phenomenon, will be permeated at its higher stages by more intense grades of randomness, due to the marked presence of Firstness in it. This randomness, which appears as a variety in phenomena, will continuously and vectorially decrease from mind to matter, i.e., from the generic eidetic character of mind to a condition of specialized matter. Thus, the equivalence between reality and ideality proposed by Schelling is fully adopted in Peirce’s philosophy. I refer, evidently, to an Objective Idealism that, in this way, is not confined solely to the ideality of the subject, once the Cartesian mind-matter dichotomy is overcome.28

7.1.5 Further Observations on the Overlapping of Reality and Ideality in Peirce’s Philosophy Emphasis must, once more, be placed on the fact that Peirce’s Idealism has already presented its credentials in the formulation of his Realism. Indeed, to assume the symmetry of the category of Thirdness for thought and law presumes an eidetic connaturality for both or, in other words, that the texture of thought is possibly the same from the logically objective way of ordering of individuals in secondness. Here, again, there is a cosmological evolutionism whose intrinsic temporality places the human mind, gradually formed in light of a logic inherent in Nature, harmonizing a formal homology between Nature and thought. Peirce also insists that the phenomenon of intelligibility of Nature by science deserves serious consideration as support to the idealist thesis. Idealism, thus, to my mind, has substantiality in the  See Ibri (2017b), Chapter 3.  See Chap. 6 of this book. 25  See, for other perspectives, Cosculluela (1992) and also Brakel (1994). 26  CP 6.24–25. 27  Schelling, 1988, p. 22. 28  For an entirely different perspective, see Short (2010a). 23 24

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mind-matter monism and formality in realism, with substantiality as the genealogic backdrop of formality, as the author’s Cosmogenesis will reveal through ontology.29 This is none other than the background of the genetic vagueness of form in the realm of innerness. The growth of the representative form follows the vaguely defined vector that, according to Peirce, is the very sense of all the logic in his positivity. It must also be stressed that the substantial identity between ideality and reality is the adequate theoretical environment for a correct interpretation not only of ontology but also of Peirce’s epistemology. This identity, as we here already stressed, ensures annulment of the polarities that generate estrangement between subject and object. In my view, when taken in their sense of existence or not of “external things,” realism and idealism are, in effect, irreconcilable.30 Exemplarily, a radical subjective idealism in the style of Fichte or Berkeley denies the existence of an external world independently of consciousness. The realism of “external things,” in turn, assumes, when seen in the light of the realism of Peirce’s continua, the same antagonistic stance of a nominalism that confines, similarly, generality only as property of language. This bipolar dichotomy between idealism and realism, already classical in post-Cartesian philosophy, is characterized by a duality between nominalist doctrines of different garbs from a Peircian point of view, and this focus has steered the interpretation of the majority of commentaries on the works of Peirce. The lack of focus on the real context of the author’s idealism-realism often leads to unjust accusations of obscurantism and inconsistency.31

7.1.6 Some Important Consequences of Peirce’s Realism-Idealism There are countless epistemological consequences resulting from Peirce’s realism-­ idealism. On the one hand, induction is confirmed as a logical figure, without the encumbrances caused by the indemonstrability of the reality of the laws. Indeed, Peirce does not seek a full demonstration of this reality: he assumes it as a condition of possibility for positive thought in general and predictive thought in particular, under his Fallibilism and Evolutionism. On the other hand, the homogeneity of the categories concerning interiority and exteriority prevents one from setting a residue of incognizable world epistemologically against any representation. Under this viewpoint, the limits of cognizability are rightfully replaced by the limits of

 I seek to elaborate in Ibri (2017b, Chapter 5) Peirce’s Cosmogenesis, which, by totally initiating on the sphere of an eidetic unity, is considered an extravagant line of thought by some commentators, such as Apel (1981, p. 156–157) and Gallie (1975, p. 216). 30  This kind of consideration on the issue appears in classic commentators of Peirce, such as Almeder (1980). 31  See also Guardiano (2011) and Dilworth (2011). 29

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certainty—this clause derives, first of all, from the combination of its objective idealism with its ontological indeterminism. Still in the realm of a heuristic logic of discovery, there are notable consequences from the conception of Firstness, where the connatural eidetic substantiality between subject and object, assured by Objective Idealism, elicits thinking a philosophy that conjectures on the genesis of the theories, a genesis that occurs against a backdrop of an absolute freedom of a non-time that is evolutionarily incorporated in temporality for the growth of form. With a firm reference to the heuristics of Kantian schematism present in the Doctrine of the Method of the 1st Critique, the Peircean analysis of the heuristic power of the diagrams,32 whose iconicity is not solely confined to the level of representation, being capable of being sanctioned as homology in relation to the reality of positive objects, leads to the unveiling of the form potentially present in the original argument of Abduction.33 It is equally noteworthy that, within Peircean metaphysics, the human faculties of thought, imagination, and feeling can display their ontological genesis without resorting to a proscribed theology or to a special science, such as psychology that, according to Peirce, has nothing to add to questions placed by Logic.34 Nor, within the core Peircean thought, the non-answer will be acceptable for questions of genesis: such incognizability proclaims an epistemic silence foreign to the author’s realism-idealism. The essay “The Law of Mind” supplements, in my view, a theoretical picture that seeks to explain how ideas merge to shape new ideas. What is in the very nature of ideas that make them blend to reply heuristically to phenomena that have no credible representation in available theories? The answer to this lies, it seems to me, rather in considerations on Peirce’s realism-idealism as the basic metaphysical environment of his philosophy, in which, I presume, an understanding of “The Law of Mind” can be deepened.

 On this specific topic see, also, Chap. 6 of this book.  See Thibaud (1975). 34  See, for example, CP 2.51. Peirce affirms that some scholars “confound psychic truths with psychological truths” (CP 5.486). I understand, from the author’s thinking, that psychic truth is that taken on the logical plane from phenomena of a psychic nature that may categorically support ontological hypotheses. In turn, psychological truth is situated on the semantic sphere of available theoretical models in Psychology, which is knowingly a special science that recounts aspects of phenomena subject to investigation. 32 33

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7.2 Reflections on The Law of Mind In 1892, Peirce published in The Monist the essay “The Law of Mind,”35 investigating the basic guidelines of the conduct of the mind and of the ideas developed in it. The author, in fact, sought elements for his cosmology,36 linking his research to his doctrine of Synechism and using the concept of continuum in the flow of ideas that group to form more general ideas. According to Peirce, the Law of Mind is fundamentally designed as follows: Logical analysis applied to mental phenomena shows that there is but one law of mind, namely, that ideas tend to spread continuously and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectability. In this spreading they lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others, but gain generality and become welded with the other ideas.37

We have here a near-inevitable invitation to reflect on the dual sense of the word affect, which, on the one hand, means to influence, but also to love. I call your attention to this dual meaning leaving, for the time being, the analysis of its possible consequences to be discussed further along this chapter. Let us see the development of Peirce’s thought in that essay. As regards the continuum of ideas, he places the following question: We have here before us a question of difficulty, analogous to the question of nominalism and realism. But when once it has been clearly formulated, logic leaves room for one answer only. How can a past idea be present? Can it be present vicariously? To a certain extent, perhaps; but not merely so; for then the question would arise how the past idea can be related to its vicarious representation. The relation, being between Ideas, can only exist in some consciousness: now that past idea was in no consciousness but that past consciousness that alone contained it; and that did not embrace the vicarious idea. Some minds will here jump to the conclusion that a past idea cannot in any sense be present. But that is hasty and illogical. How extravagant, too, to pronounce our whole knowledge of the past to be mere delusion! Yet it would seem that the past is as completely beyond the bonds of possible experience as a Kantian thing-in-itself.38

Evidently Peirce is making a question with clear reference to Synechism, namely, his doctrine of the continuum.39 In other words, he affirms that the link between ideas is under a continuum in consciousness. A past idea will not be in this consciousness by means of a substitution operation, but by actual occurrence, i.e., this idea is present and must be ipso facto present.40 Thus, time, which underlies consciousness, must ensure that the present is linked to the past by a series of real  Vol. II, p. 533–559; CP 6.102–163. Ochs (1991) draws an interesting historical retrospect on the emergence of this essay. 36  EP 1, p. 313. 37  EP 1, p. 313; my italics. 38  EP 1, p. 314. See, also, the excellent analysis of the stages of consciousness in Peircean philosophy in Houser (1983). 39  See Zalamea (2012) and also Buckley (2012). 40  EP 1, p. 314. 35

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i­nfinitesimal steps.41 The continuum of consciousness must cover a lapse of time in which we are immediately conscious. It is not only continuous in the subjective sense, but, because it is immediate during that infinitesimal interval of time, its object is also continuous.42 The feeling of continuity of consciousness is, simultaneously, the direct perception43 of the continuity of its content. In other words, Peirce tries to relate the propagation or expansion of consciousness in an interval of time during which it remains as such, with a systemic expansion or propagation of the ideas that make up its object within that consciousness. According to the author’s idealist realism, 44 not only time but also space is continuous in itself as a real entity,45 and the objective relations that occur in both are of the nature of ideas within subjectivity. The continuum of consciousness, during a time period that does not exclusively have the dimension of interior sense, or state of possibility of apperception, as Kant makes of it, correlates to the continuity of ideas that have in the real object the assurance of this continuum. The question placed by the author, therefore, seems to go beyond an exclusive condition of time; if the real object is present before the mind, it is present with its relations that may be perceived by a consciousness. However, being before a mind is a spatial simultaneity between subject and object, since real relation is only revealed in an objective succession of instances, whose duration is the same for the consciousness that perceives. The ideas of an immediately past instant link themselves with the present idea in a natural succession. It is at this point that the mind must possess a criterion of relevance to identify the objective relations in representation; without it, there is no doubt that the apprehension of empiria is blind. However, it is when this spatial coincidence between subject and object occurs partially or, even, does not occur, that present ideas—in the face of a particular real object that relates to others that are not there, or in the face of the content of past experiences—associate themselves and amplify themselves in a system that holds not only the continuity of time but also the continuum itself of its real reference. The Peircean question is, above all, how this occurs: what underlies the connection of ideas that is implemented as new knowledge? It is quite true that this question may have acceptable answers within idealist realism, which derives the human mind from the mind of Nature; for this very reason, that question of genesis is also a question of heuristics. According to Peirce, the connection of ideas produces more general ideas, in an amplificatory process that consummates in an immediately present live feeling.46 In this idea of live feeling there is, in fact, a referral to the Peircean concept of  EP 1, p. 314.  EP 1, p. 315. Alborn (1989) provides an interesting approach to Peirce’s ontological Synechism through the solution that he gives to Zenon’s paradox. 43  Peirce has a complex theory of perception. The use of the word perception and its derivatives here refers only to its common-language meaning. For a study of the theme, see Santaella (1993) and Hausman (2006). 44  On Peirce’s reconciliation of idealism and realism, see Ibri (2000b). 45  See Ibri, 2017b, p. 54–56. 46  EP 1, p. 325. 41 42

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quale-­consciousness, which is fundamentally a single quality, and this unity is basic for the development of conceptual thought. This is not the Kantian unity of apperception; it relates much more to the consciousness of the Schellingian infinite where the self is an absolute indetermination, that is, a depersonalization of consciousness that follows the feeling of unity. Under a Peircean viewpoint, quale-consciousness, as he calls it,47 is a consciousness absolutely present in its unity. The feeling, then, of this unity is a live feeling; it is what accompanies the unity of an idea complexified by the addition of others. This more general idea does not break that primary unity of quale-consciousness, since all component ideas are absolutely present in an interval of time in which such consciousness occurs. In this complex idea, there is also, in fact, a system of correlated ideas, an individual quality that derives from its systemic unity shown in the simultaneousness of that consciousness. This idea, therefore, cannot be perceived as mediation when it presents itself to the mind; the idea as such would require the presence of a second, its object, which would be distinct from it for that consciousness. Heuristically, however, as it is a new idea that arouses a live feeling of unity,48 it must be, in itself, mediation, whether for a real object or for an object that it, itself, built; in this latter case, the object is only a referent for it.49 In any case, that new idea does not have its liveliness because of its own independent quality, but because it presents itself as a solution for a novel problem; its unity and quality are due to its lack of differentiation with the object that is no longer other for consciousness. In the realm of eidetic connaturality of the object with the mind, this lack of differentiation, on the one hand, cannot be considered strange and, on the other hand, mediation as such plays the role of breaking the brute force of mere secondness, which appears thus when thought has not extracted from it the ideality that makes it reducible to a predictive concept. To the questions placed by Peirce in “The Law of Mind,” these considerations do not yet provide an answer, but they add that a new concept, under the tendency of growth of the mind, requires a focus on the object in its spatiotemporal relationship with consciousness and that the presence of the former in the latter does not break its intrinsic primary unity. I borrow Schelling’s concept of eidetic unity temporarily, although Peirce has his own conceptualization, which, incidentally, does not conflict with Schelling’s; nevertheless, new elements can be perceived in this concept, deriving from Peircean cosmology. However, before resuming Peirce’s essay, let us recall some points of this idea of unity of consciousness already expounded in a previous work.50 What we have to stress is that quale-consciousness is a continuous quality of feeling that is  See, for example, CP 6.222–230.  It is based on this idea of life present in feeling that we assume that it is not of the nature of a habit. Habit, in the form of a concept, either conscious or unconscious, does not arouse this quality of liveliness in consciousness. 49  Incidentally, the word mediation applies, for the sake of conceptual strictness, as third in face of real otherness. Thus, when the object is built inside representation, there is no objective mediation, but only a subjective one, making the word a mere extension of the concept. 50  Ibri, 2017b, p. 63–66. 47 48

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undifferentiated from consciousness in itself. Besides this central aspect of its characterization, it is absolutely separated from time and, for this reason, it is a consciousness of full presentness, unconnected with the flow of temporality, due to its unconditionality; it neither originates from the past nor intends something for the future: “the now is one and but one.”51 Thus, this state of consciousness is a continuum of possibilities; from it nothing necessary can be derived. It is, then, an indefinite feeling of freedom that occurs in an interior hiatus of time. But, the ontological expression of this phenomenon of interiority is precisely that principle of randomness in exteriority that Peirce calls Absolute Chance, responsible for the variety and spontaneity of nature: That very same logical element of experience, the quale-element, which appears upon the inside as unity, when viewed from the outside is seen as variety […]52 [and] Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there, in the same proportion, feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling.53

In the Peircean cosmogenesis, the beginning of the universe occurred with a chaos of depersonalized feelings derived from the unity of a continuum of unlimited possibilities, of the nature of a quale-consciousness.54 In the context of Peirce’s objective idealism, the beginning of the universe is absolutely eidetic, in which that quale-consciousness assumes an ontological status. Within the realm of his philosophy, therefore, the objective identity flows naturally between the spontaneities of chance and feeling, as evidenced in this last passage of his work. Let us, at this point, recall Schelling, to whom the very substance of aesthetic intuition is that multiplicity and variety that immediately reflect life in Nature. It is, in fact, the vision of “relative idealism,”55 that restricts the eidetic nature of feeling within subjective interiority, and certainly has no clear answer for the fact of strange and dead matter arousing live feelings in that interiority. As regards this point, Objective Idealism seems comfortably positioned for an answer: I am bound to maintain that an idea can only be affected by an idea in continuous connection with it. By anything but an idea, it cannot be affected at all. This obliges me to say, as I do say, on other grounds, that what we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hide-bound with habits. It still retains the element of diversification; and in that diversification there is life […].56

or else:

 CP 6.231.  CP 6.236, italics from the original. 53  EP 1, p. 348. 54  See Ibri, 2017b, p. 69. 55  This Schellingean expression, relative idealism, is characterized by “only one of the sides which, without the other, is unthinkable” [Schelling (1988), p. 51]. 56  EP 1, p. 331; my italics. 51 52

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7  The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce’s Philosophy People wonder, too, how dead matter can excite feelings in the mind […] I prefer to guess that it is a psychic feeling of red without us which arouses a sympathetic feeling of red in our senses.57

This blend of spontaneity, quality, diversity, chance, unity of feeling, life, and growth occurs as a predication of the primordial eidos, which is the all-pervading cosmic substratum, not differentiating, in this context, between exteriority and interiority. Within the realm of these considerations, Peirce discards any physical origin for the unity of consciousness: The brain shows no central cell. The unity of consciousness is therefore not of physiological origin. It can only be metaphysical. So far as feelings have any continuity, it is the metaphysical nature of feeling to have a unity.58

The homogenesis between chance and unity of consciousness, as a redemption of cosmology, becomes elemental to the law of mind. To admit that ideas gather, forming more general ideas through a necessary rule, characterizes a mechanical determinism inadequate for Peircean philosophy. Thus, there should be some element of freedom and spontaneity responsible for bringing the ideas together in the mind. Let us see this further passage of “The Law of Mind”: Certainly, I cannot see how anyone can deny that the infinite diversity of the universe, which we call chance, may bring ideas into proximity which are not associated in one general idea. It may do this many times. But then the law of continuous spreading will produce a mental association; and this I suppose is an abridged statement of the way the universe has been evolved.59

Clearly, we must understand this law of expansion in the light of the concepts of continuity and growth. As yet, however, there is no solution for the dual meaning of the word affect. In short, how does that law promote this interaction between ideas? Although the mode of growth and continuity that weaves ideas in the human mind and in the universe as a whole is the same under an evolutionary trend, there still seems to be lacking an element that can encourage that generalizing interaction. So far, we know that an element of objective freedom brings ideas closer and that they get together because that is the law of evolution that permeates the interior and exterior worlds. However, how this association occurs requires, in my view, a study of the modes of evolution in Peirce’s thought.

 CP 1.311. Here the term sympathetic does not mean a quality of feeling itself, but the idea of cosmic sympathy contained in the original Greek sympátheia. 58  CP 6.229, italics from the original. In Eccles (1977, p. 361–370), there is an exposition of some theories on possible neurological causes of the unity of consciousness, totally rejected by the author for lack of scientific evidence. His own hypothesis rejects a physiological origin: “the experience of unity of consciousness is provided by a self-conscious mind (sic) and not by the neural machinery of the liaison areas of the cerebral hemisphere” (p. 362). 59  EP 1, p. 327. The evolution of the universe, in Peirce’s view, occurs in the direction of the growth of thirdness, the category of the general ideas, considered, however, as a mode of being of ontological ground. 57

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7.2.1 Peirce’s Evolutionism: Agapism as Heuristic Principle In the essay “Evolutionary Love,” Peirce examines the evolutionary theories that prevailed until then and, while not refuting them, affirms that none effectively accounts for the wholeness of the evolution of the universe. His analysis focuses on the scheme of his three categories finding, in fact, that those theories do not meet his requirements, which are basically the same as those of his cosmology. Let us then move on to the study that the author makes of the evolutionary theories, starting with his view of Darwinism: Let us try to define the logical affinities of the different theories of evolution. Natural selection, as conceived by Darwin, is a mode of evolution in which the only positive agent of change in the whole passage from moner to man is fortuitous variation. To secure advance in a definite direction chance has to be seconded by some action that shall hinder the propagation of some varieties or stimulate that of others. In natural selection, strictly so called, it is the crowding out of the weak.60

Apropos of this passage, it should be noted that Peirce criticized the unwarranted generalizations of Darwin’s theory during the nineteenth century, to the extent of saying that that the then emerging political economy,61 wrongfully inspired by the notion of natural selection, legitimized the spirit of individual competition, in which the strongest is better adapted to the contingencies of reality and so overwhelms the weakest. Absolutely opposed to all forms of individualism, Peirce gave the epithet of “gospel of greed”62 to the science that proclaimed this type of conduct. On the Darwin theory the author adds: The Origin of Species was published toward the end of the year 1859. The preceding years since 1846 had been one of the most productive seasons, —or if extended so as to cover the great book we are considering, the most productive period of equal length in the entire history of science from its beginnings until now. The idea that chance begets order, which is one of the corner-stones of modern physics (although Dr. Carus considers it “the weakest point in Mr. Peirce’s system”) was at that time put into its clearest light.63

Peirce equally comments on the favorable reception Darwin’s work met owing to its ideas being those toward which the age—in the midst of the great discoveries of nineteenth-century statistical physics—was favorably disposed.64 The author then examines the necessitarian theory of evolution.

 EP 1, p. 358.  EP 1, p. 354. 62  EP 1, p. 357. Peirce is ironic when commenting on the acceptance of the hardness of theories, such as utilitarianism, allied to individualism: “anaesthetics had been in use for thirteen years. Already, people’s acquaintance with suffering had dropped off very much; and as a consequence, that unlovely hardness, by which our times are so contrasted with those that immediately preceded them, had already set it, and inclined people to relish a ruthless theory” (CP 6.297). 63  EP 1, p. 357; my italics. The reference is to Paul Carus, then editor of The Monist and opponent of Peirce on this issue. 64  EP 1, p. 358. 60 61

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Diametrically opposed to evolution by chance, are those theories which attribute all progress to an inward necessary principle, or other forms of necessity. Many naturalists have thought that if an egg is destined to go through a certain series of embryological transformations, from which it is perfectly certain not to deviate, and if in geological time almost exactly the same forms appear successively, one replacing another in the same order, the strong presumption is that this latter succession was as predeterminate and certain to take place as the former.65

Peirce goes on to show that even the geosciences had supporters along this line of evolution: “Those geologists who think that the variation of species is due to cataclysmic alterations of climate or of the chemical constitution of the air and water are also making mechanical necessity chief factor of evolution.”66 Clearly antagonistic, the necessitarian theory and the Darwinist doctrine are confronted with Lamarck’s evolutionary theory, which, according to Peirce, consists in evolution by the force of habit.67 Habit, however, is essentially an attribute of the mind that involves the idea of growth and generalization and reveals, in Peirce’s view, a dual aspect: on the one hand, it establishes new structural features of conduct and, on the other hand, brings them in harmony with the general morphology and function of the animals and plants to which they belong.68 Peirce saw in Lamarckian theory an idea of endeavor toward the development of growth and “endeavor, since it is directed toward an end, is essentially psychical, even though it be sometimes unconscious; and the growth due to exercise […] follows a law of a character quite contrary to that of mechanics.”69 It is from the analysis of these theories and from the idea of a tendency toward the expansion of that basic substratum of a mental nature, blending their elements in a continuum, that the author recognizes the need for three forms of evolution, which must admit the Darwinist and necessitarian theories and, simultaneously, amplify aspects of the Lamarckian theory. Bearing in mind the concept of harmony, Peirce seeks a higher, solidifying principle of evolution in order to gather analogous elements, stimulating that continuous expansion toward growth. As extraordinary as it may seem to the author’s readers, it is from St. John’s Gospel that the author sought this evolutionary principle, substantiated in the idea of Love: Everybody can see that the statement of St. John is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth comes only from love, from – I will not say self-sacrifice, but from the ardent impulse to fulfill another's highest impulse. Suppose, for example, that I have an idea that interests me. It is my creation. It is my creature; for as shown in last July's Monist, it is a little person. I love it; and I will sink myself in perfecting it. It is not by dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I would the flowers in my garden. The philosophy we draw from John's gospel is that this is the way mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution. Love, recognizing germs of

 EP 1, p. 359.  EP 1, p. 359. 67  EP 1, p. 360. 68  EP 1, p. 360. 69  EP 1, p. 354. 65 66

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l­ oveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. That is the sort of evolution which every careful student of my essay “The Law of Mind” must see that synechism calls for.70

As a philosophical matter of the ancient Greeks and of theological metaphysics, a contemporary resumption of the cosmic principle of Love could be predicated as exotic by offering, again, the unstable ground for a possible anthropomorphism. Totally immune to the accusations of being an anthropomorphist,71 the legitimate Peircean philosophy, like that of Schelling, explores all the attributes of the universe of the mind under its primordiality, which is established by Objective Idealism: matter is nothing more than a form of mind exhausted by inverated habits.72 Indeed, the view of Love as a greater substratum of evolution is due to a systemic theoretical structure that permeates not only the author’s ontology but also his entire philosophy. The only way this structure can be apprehended is by avoiding fragmented readings of his work. Further, it must be considered that such concept, in the realm of Peircean philosophy, is nevertheless the key for the solution of the semantic duality of the word affect, which, as we have said, has in love a possible sense. Therefore, three modes of evolution must, somehow, harmonize with the three Peircean categories: Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us; evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. We may term them tychastic evolution, or tychasm, anancastic evolution, or anancasm, and agapastic evolution, or agapasm. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term tychasticism, anancasticism, and agapasticism. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism, ananchism, and agapism.73

Thus, Tychism is associated with the first Peircean category of firstness; Ananchism, as rule of mechanical necessity, to secondness, leaving Agapism linked to thirdness, which, as we recall, plays the role of mediator, generalizer, and reducer of the brute force of the particular to the unity of a cosmic continuum that does not differentiate between interiority and exteriority in the modes of law and thought. In its agglutinative and continuous nature, Agapism is not a principle that conciliates oppositions that have an inherent basic unity ensuring its connaturality, like the ideal-real unity in Schelling’s philosophy: “love cannot have a contrary, but must embrace what is most opposed to it.”74 Strictly on the plan that concerns us, represented by how ideas associate themselves, we already know that the act of chance plays the role of freely bringing them closer up. It seems, however, that there is also, in Ananchism, another dimension of the word affect, not only that of affection enclosed in the idea of Agapism but also

 EP 1, p. 354.  See, for example, CP 1.316 and 6.189. 72  See Ibri, 2017b, Chapter 4. 73  EP 1, p. 362. 74  EP 1, p. 362. 70 71

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that of necessary interaction, whether by affinity or logical opposition. In this case, the meaning of that word could be to affect by linking an antecedent to a consequent or, even, denying a consequent by logical opposition. It should be stressed that logical necessity is in the interior of the third category as a mode of operation of the law in secondness. It should be emphasized, however, that association of ideas has a genealogical sense, i.e., it refers to a mode of formation. As such, it is not surprising that the mode of evolutionary formation out of necessity, defined by the author as Ananchism, is linked to the second and not to the third category. That dual semantic dimension of the word affect, thus, seems to satisfy Agapism and Ananchism from the freedom and spontaneity with which Tychism brings ideas closer. It is from this approximation that the other two modes of eidetic association act, in which the principle of love effectively plays a heuristic role which, according to the author, presents itself in three aspects: The agapastic development of thought is the adoption of certain mental tendencies, not altogether heedlessly, as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the mere force of circumstances or of logic, as in ananchasm, but by an immediate attraction for the idea itself, whose nature is divined before the mind possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is, by virtue of the continuity of mind; and this mental tendency may be of three varieties, as follows. First, it may affect a whole people or community in its collective personality, and be thence communicated to such individuals as are in powerfully sympathetic connection with the collective people, although they may be intellectually incapable of attaining the idea by their private understandings or even perhaps of consciously apprehending it.75

This passage highlights the ideas of sympathy, which we have already emphasized, and of community, which, incidentally, are associated to the concepts of reality and truth within Peircean philosophy.76 Continuing this paragraph, Peirce states: Second, it may affect a private person directly, yet so that he is only enabled to apprehend the idea, or to appreciate its attractiveness, by virtue of his sympathy with his neighbors, under the influence of a striking experience or development of thought. The conversion of St. Paul may be taken as an example of what is meant. Third, it may affect an individual, independently of his human affections, by virtue of an attraction it exercises upon his mind, even before he has comprehended it. This is the phenomenon which has been well called the divination of genius; for it is due to the continuity between the man’s mind and the Most High.77

Evidently, in these three modes analyzed by Peirce, there is a tacit reference to ideas that represent a development of the mind, an advance of its production, a growth of its knowledge. There is, first of all, freedom permeating this heuristic activity of the mind, in an evident denial that there can genetically occur some rule of deductive structure that could provide the emergence of that which is actually new in the universe of ideality. Despite this genealogical freedom, the evolution of

 EP 1, p. 364; my italics.  Since the intertwining of these last three concepts is not the object of this work, the reader will be able to check it out, exemplarily in the author’s original work: W 2, p. 238–239; 241; 251–252 and 271. 77  EP 1, p. 364. 75 76

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human thought cannot be attributed solely to random factors, as in the interior of Tychism. According to Peirce, the proofs of Agapism and Synechism are engraved in history as spirits of an age78 in which an entire community blends to boost human culture.79

7.3 Thematic Overview The agapism that I try to show here represents a fundamental principle on the structure of the universe, which correlates with Peirce’s heuristics. This heuristics not only runs parallel with our modes of conjecture, of finding true representations, but also with its more general plan, namely, the formation and growth of thirdness as a whole, as a tendency of the Universe. This consequence is associated with a doctrine rarely mentioned by commentators on Peirce’s work, namely, his Objective Idealism, which affirms that there is only one primordial substance in the universe— ideality—an eidetic substratum that makes matter a form of special eidos, turning its laws of physical nature into special cases of mental laws, that is, observable in the psychic realm. Associated with this idealism is the author’s Synequism, certifying that one must fundamentally suppose continuities in Nature and, additionally, continuity between mind and matter, an essential thesis of that same idealism. These doctrines thus create a backdrop for an understanding of the author’s realism in its true conception and dimension, without any theoretical opposition to idealism—as, incidentally, some commentators of the author’s work suppose. Both claim that something of the nature of ideality is essential in the universe: realism affirms the reality of the continua, or ultimately, the reality of thirdness; idealism ensures the eidetic nature of all continuity and creates the substantial environment where realism can be. The transit of the signs between subject and object is now legitimized within this ambiance, providing a realistic and idealistic range for Semiotics. To try grounding it solely as a science of forms that precedes all possible ontology is, to my mind, to resort to an illicit resource within the Peircean philosophical system, in a kind of tacit transcendentalism80 that disregards that, in the relationship between sign and interpretant, the Object is triadically interspersed, which is, doubtlessly, more than a mere referent of representation, if not its most important determination. Apart from this aspect of determinability, deriving from the point of real otherness of the object in relation to the sign, one must consider that in the hierarchy of Peircean sciences, Phenomenology precedes Semiotics: the science of signs presupposes a being in the world that can no longer be ignored by a transcendent consciousness  EP 1, p. 365 and 369.  Other approaches to the issues discussed in this chapter can be found in Christiansen (2002), Finkelstein (1994), Hookway (1997), Reynolds (2002), Short (2010b), Ventimiglia (2008), and Turley (1977). 80  As advocated by Apel (1981 and 1982). 78 79

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that seeks in itself a formal ground for a shapeless world: such a search would represent a theoretical heresy in the face of the Peirce’s realism and of the foretold phenomenological hypothesis of the symmetry of the categories on the sphere of the interior and exterior worlds. With these considerations, the doctrine of Agapism adds to the myriad reasons that create the theoretical context in which Abduction would be justified.81 This is the challenge of reading Peirce’s work: the eyes and intelligence of his scholar should rest simultaneously on subject and object, not differentiating them under the prism of forms. Another requirement is something not readily available in everyone’s spirit: a sense of poetry,82 an aesthetic sensitivity that will, ultimately, become the sharpest and strongest tool to penetrate the deepest meaning of his philosophy.

81 82

 See also Paavola (2012).  On this point, see also Chap. 2 of this book.

Chapter 8

On Uncertainty

Keywords  Peirce · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Chance The title of this chapter—it should not have escaped anyone’s attention—parodies a famous late work by Wittgenstein. However, I will not discuss this author. The theme is Peirce’s doctrine of Fallibilism.1 This doctrine states that our knowledge is essentially fallible, not merely because of the truth of the maxim errare humanum est but also because of a whole world construction that recognizes an ontological Chance principle at work in Nature. Evidently, it requires then a concomitant development, within Peircean philosophy, of two research fields: Epistemology, the proper sphere of Fallibilism, and Metaphysics, as the construction of a theory of the Real.

8.1 Chance and Uncertainty In 1897, Peirce stated: All positive reasoning is of the nature of judging the proportion of something in a whole collection by the proportion found in a sample. Accordingly, there are three things to which we can never hope to attain by reasoning, namely, absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality.2

Evidently, Peirce is referring here to the figure of inductive knowledge, which, in the author’s view, is logically intertwined with two other forms of argument, namely,

 In this regard, see an interesting article by Johanson (1994), which seeks to establish parallels between the two authors’ concepts of certainty. 2  CP 1.141. 1

This chapter is based on a published article I authored: Sobre a Incerteza. Trans/Form/Ação, Marília, UNESP, v. 23, n. 1, 2000c. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_8

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Abduction and deduction. Also according to the author, Abduction is the process of formation of a hypothesis, which holds the heuristic exclusivity of knowledge: all new scientific information comes from this logical form. One of the most original points in his work, Abduction3 sets up the importance that Peirce attributed to conjectural arguments. According to him, it is extraordinary how the human spirit possesses a kind of disposition toward truth,4 whose foundations also pass through his cosmology and mainly through his realism and Objective Idealism of Schellinguian extraction.5 The figure of deduction, on the other hand, fulfills the role of obtaining from the hypothesis, once abductively formed, logically necessary consequences, experientially observable by induction. Now, if the verification of the veracity of the hypothesis depends exclusively on induction, and this, in the author’s opinion, never leads to absolute certainty, the entire body of science, where new theories are progressively incorporated, coexists with a certain degree of uncertainty that nevertheless does not make it inoperable. On the contrary, the Natural sciences, it is a fact of universal recognition, have evolved continuously even though they lack absolute certainty in their system of representing the laws of Nature, despite known historical periods of stagnation, not attributable exclusively to the method of science. Three questions arise here regarding, on the one hand, the validity of induction as the ultimate instance of legitimization of a theory, and, on the other hand, the meaning of the previously used concepts of veracity and laws of Nature. In fact, the legitimization of induction, in Peircean philosophy, fundamentally depends on a complex discussion about the ontological validity of the concept of law. As for the concept of truth, no less complex than that of law, one lacks at least the development of the idea of evolutionism present in the author’s system. This intimate intermingling of diverse theories makes the term system legitimately usable when referring to the theoretical body that constitutes Peirce’s philosophy. The concept of law must first be addressed. Here, Peirce will bring, as the root of his ideas, the quarrel of universals present in ancient scholasticism, having as initial paradigm the realism of Duns Scotus. To the general question of that time—“are universals real?”—Peirce offers his contemporary equivalent: “are the laws of Nature real, or mere fictions of the mind?” By adopting a positive answer to this question, the author declares himself a realist, departing from a nominalist tradition of philosophy which, if not adopting its negative, at least assumes it to be undecidable, as a good legacy of Hume’s skepticism. This realist character of Peirce, in my view, makes all the difference in the understanding of his philosophical positions, and this aspect somehow has not been properly considered by many commentators on his work. According to the author, it is the assumption of the reality of laws that allows the predictive function of theories  There are several interesting studies on Abduction in Peirce. An approach that takes into account the author’s realism can be found in Graybosh (1993). 4  This expression is ours and not from the author. 5  It should only be mentioned here that Schelling’s Metaphysics was highly inspiring in the construction of Peircean cosmology. 3

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to be understood; they require an ontological correlated endowed with an esse in futuro that justifies the success of scientific predictions and the correlated legitimacy of induction. Nevertheless, this requirement entails, as a necessary theoretical coherence, a hypothesis whose plausibility is extremely strong, and never a deductively necessary certainty. Toward the maturity of his thought, Peirce becomes more and more radically realist. His study of the logic of relatives and continuum theory causes him to modify that question to “are there any real continua?” denying his earlier archetype of realism, Duns Scotus, by the transformation from a realism of genders to a realism of systems. Peirce will also borrow the meaning of a word invented by Scotus—realitas— defining reality as “that which remains unaffected by our ways of representing it,”6 in an explicit recognition of the otherness that permeates everything that can be considered Real. It is also from scholasticism that Peirce brings to contemporaneity the distinction between reality and existence, with the latter defined as the locus of the individual, while the former is understood as the ontological expression of the generality of the continua. From this distinction, Peirce extracts two of his categories, initially phenomenologically founded, namely, thirdness, the real mode of being of the generality of Law, and secondness, the real mode of being of the individual or particular as concretion of the ontological generality. Triadically completes his categories the so-called firstness, which metaphysically subsumes the mode of being of the unconditioned, of that which appears phenomenologically as diversity, asymmetry, and spontaneity in Nature, and which, in its genetic condition of freedom, contradicts the mode of being of the law, based on uniformity, order, and symmetry. By having these three modes of being as structuring the World or, semiotically speaking, the object in its reality, Peirce founds his doctrine of Fallibilism, now not only anchored in the proverbiality of our human errors but also in a degree of indeterminacy of the object, subordinated, on the one hand, to the order of the law that allows the representation to have a predictive power, although fallible, and, on the other hand, to the randomness of Chance, as an ontological principle responsible for deviations from the order. Our knowledge of the world is, for this reason, clothed in an uncertainty made up of two instances of erraticity, namely, that of the representation and that of the object represented. However, such erraticity will not prevent the growth and improvement of our human knowing. These questions of growth and improvement suggest, at the epistemological level, the idea that our sign system is evolving, a fact that is historically undeniable: our knowledge of Nature is today extraordinarily broader and more detailed than at any time in the past. But is the object also in evolution?

 For example, see CP 5.565.

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8.2 Evolutionism and the Origin of Laws To the previous question, the Peircean answer is also positive. Studying the theories of Spencer, Lamarck, and Darwin, and living in the nineteenth century with the intellectual climate of evolutionism, Peirce conducts his philosophy more and more along genealogical paths, building a genetic philosophy, as, it is worth saying, advocated Schelling, for whom the author had great admiration.7 Far from any dogmatism, his Metaphysics, confined—after Kant—to the universe of possible experience, always seeks to raise genetic hypotheses, rescuing the ancient Greek way of doing philosophy, in search of the Arché. It is thus that Peirce will be able to receive within his system the question: “What is the origin of the laws of nature?”8 Evidently, in the case of a healthy metaphysics, it would not fit an answer that conjectures about an ordered and ready-made world as the work of some divinity. Also, to affirm the unknowability as an answer, according to the author, leads, on the one hand, to the specter of the thing in itself, banned from Peircean philosophy as a heretical element—as it will be commented on later—and, on the other hand, constitutes a contradictory position in itself, because, as a hypothesis, it discards, by definition, its primary function, which is to explain. Therefore, Peirce is led to adopt an evolutionist hypothesis for the laws of Nature, stating that they were formed from a state of things where there were no modes of ordering the individuals: it was, indeed, a world ruled by blind Chance. This idea has no originality per se, since it is present in the cosmology of the ancient Greeks. However, the consequences that Peirce draws from it are absolutely new, such as: (a) To admit the Universe in evolution and the formation of laws as a natural tendency to order from Chance leads to the conclusion that those laws do not meet at any definite end point. We observe, in fact, a only partially ordered world, where diversity grows by the action of Chance. Therefore, Chance and Law coexist in the constitution of existence or, according to Peircean categories, it is permissible to say that the modes of being of firstness and thirdness converge to the mode of being of secondness. (b) However, why are laws formed? Since there is no doubt about the fact that they are formed, since we can now say something about them, Peirce will consider that laws are habits of conduct of Nature, and that their formation is due to a tendency of the Universe to acquire habits, and such a tendency, according to him, is a law of law formation,9 observable, for us, in the human mind.10 As a  Intriguingly, the philosophical literature does not record any substantial research on the relationship between these authors. However, mention should be made of Esposito (1977, 1980); this author, although a researcher of both philosophers, does not explore the deep links between them. 8  CP 7.512–514. 9  CP 7.515. In this book, see the citation associated with footnote 11 in Chap. 4. 10  This line of argument, in its unusual appearance, is nevertheless the consequence of a realist conception that brings subject and object together at a categorial level, allowing homologies often accused by some commentators of being anthropomorphic. 7

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consequence, Peirce will conjecture about a mind-matter monism, in which “matter is a form of mind blunted by inveterate habits,”11 a statement, by the way, taken entirely from Schelling’s Naturphilosophie. This is the root of his Objective Idealism, which advocates the idea of a Universe whose ultimate substratum is eidetic, thus rupturing with doctrines that, according to the author, are logically untenable, among them being Cartesian mind-matter dualism and materialist monism, which, one can show from his Pragmatism,12 is equivalent to a determinist mechanicism that does not display its phenomenological credentials. In semiotic language, both the sign, in its representative function, and the object are evolving, in a continuum that does not allow the pretension of absolute certainty and final truths. In this regard, truth is conceptualized, within the Peircean system, as the end toward which the representation of the research community tends indefinitely, in an unshakeable fixation of its belief system. Ontological evolutionism, complemented by Peircean cosmology13—which could not be explained here in all its complexity—along with a familiar and acceptable idea of the historical evolution of signs, is what provides the complete and deep understanding of a concept that has created controversy among commentators, namely, that of Final Interpretant, that is, the ultimate meaning of the representations about the Universe of Being. This theme, certainly fascinating as a research topic, can only be briefly mentioned in the restricted space of this text. Meanwhile, our decisions have to be made under the uncertainty that characterizes, not only for epistemological but also for genetically ontological reasons, our actions, our language, and our theories.

8.3 Thematic Overview In conclusion, we must emphasize Peirce’s complete rejection of the uncognizable, establishing its semantic emptiness, because [...] can neither be indicated nor found. Consequently, no proposition can refer to it, and nothing true or false can be predicated of it. Therefore, all references to it must be thrown out as meaningless surplusage.14

Moreover, according to the author, completing his refusal, “what is absolutely beyond discovery, whether direct and specific or indirect and general, may be

 CP 6.25.  I examine this issue in Ibri, 2017b, chapter 6. 13  I examine this issue in Ibri, 2017b, chapter 5. 14  CP 5.525. 11 12

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considered to be non-existent.”15 This stance is an immediate consequence of his Pragmatism, also considered in its ontological hue. From this angle, either the potentiality of what is modally possible or necessary is exhibited as an act, characterizing its phenomenological exteriorization and reducing itself to cognoscibility, or its reality is compromised by being mere possibility that never enters the theater of reactions of existence. In taking this position, Peirce replaces the limits of knowledge for the limits of certainty. To that which cannot be represented belongs only the silence proclaimed by Wittgenstein. Perhaps we are only absolutely certain of the inexorability of death. And its precise instant is certainly written in one of the infinite faces of Chance.

15

 CP 6.101.

Chapter 9

Vital Ends and Practical Otherness: On Applied Sciences in Peirce’s Philosophy

Keywords  Practical otherness · Vital ends · Applied sciences · Chance By practical otherness I mean a special case of the Peircean category of Secondness given in the realm of phenomena of applied sciences, the kind of science that, according to Peirce, have practical ends. In general terms, the experience of otherness is one of the most important for the growth of knowledge being, at the same time, the phenomenological basis for a criterion of relevance for the choice of the theory that can better represent some sort of phenomena. An applied science like engineering, particularly when dealing with design and monitoring of physical objects, shows in its activities how practical consequences— the famous expression of the Pragmatist maxim—can be understood, totally based on the possibility of practical otherness. Furthermore, Pragmatism is a way not only for reading the connection between theory and experience but also, above all, for demanding an essential commitment between both. Peirce’s theoretical system also furnishes the ground for reading indeterminacy as much in theories as in real objects. This conceptual symmetry—let me here adopt the expression—is in fact a consequence of the symmetry of Peircean categories, established epistemologically by Fallibilism and instituted ontologically by Tychism. This indeterminacy can be estimated with experimental data, and decisions can be taken despite the congenital uncertainty that rules all sciences. Regarding the experiential ambience, it is important to remark that applied science has some advantages over theoretical sciences: its experimental field is entirely open to observation, as its objects need to work anyway. They are practical objects with practical ends and, being so, they continuously are tested by their users. Despite being designed by men under well-known theories and technology, they potentially keep, nevertheless, their practical otherness: the theory prediction must be This chapter is based on a published text I authored: Fins vitais e alteridade prática: sobre ciências aplicadas na filosofia de Peirce. In: Aiub, Monica; Gonzalez, Maria E.  Q.; Broens, Mariana. Filosofia da Mente, Ciência Cognitiva e o pós-humano: para onde vamos? São Paulo: FiloCzar, p. 29–37, 2015b. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_9

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harmonious with their observable performance or, otherwise, be denied by it. Their performance affects theories, and even normal technology, as extended from normal science, here and there deals with surprising facts, demanding an effort to guess what is going on with the possible disagreement between prediction and experimental data. Under the point of view of Semiotics, the practical scientist keeps a dialogue with the objects of design through the analysis of its performances. To call the interaction between theory and experience a dialogue is possible mainly due to Peirce’s realism, reflected, of course, in Pragmatism as a spreading rule for meaning, that is, surpassing the domain of mere subjectivity. Let us take for granted that all the assumptions of Peirce’s epistemology are deeply connected with his conception of science. This conception brings somehow an ethical commitment that cannot be surprising to anyone who is aware of his classification of sciences. The three steps of inquiry, namely, Abduction, Deduction, and Induction, will be effective as if they could work by themselves, if some ideal condition could be filled out. The main condition will be a sincere search for truth, free from other interests potentially strange to this aim. Science taken generally, therefore and consequently, shall have one basic aim, namely, to represent the best it can the universe of a dynamical and evolutionary reality. This being the case, no other goal should interfere in the science path throughout its main end, that is, to achieve truth.

9.1 Reflecting on Peirce’s Considerations of Applied Sciences My concern here is to reflect on the following questions: would the epistemological dimension of science be free of that ethical commitment just mentioned in the latter item, as the three steps of inquiry seem to be indistinctly applied to any kind of object? In this case, could this application of the method of inquiry not be called a science? In other words, science would be such if only it really follows a sound ethical end? These interesting questions seem to require, first of all, what distinctions could be made between pure and applied sciences, as the latter, given its own nature, could not obey that demand of being only a disinterested search for truth. Other subsidiary questions will also appear along this investigation, such as “could applied science be equivalent to technology?”, or even “what is the difference between technology and technique?”. Such questions, considered secondary when compared to the main ones, will deserve clarification in order to refer our reflection to a univocal terminology, despite the fact that they are far from a conceptual agreement among researchers.

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9.1.1 The Nexus with Peirce’s Pragmatism On the one hand, Pragmatism, in its function of clarifying concepts, could be, we believe, the proper criterion to make the retro-mentioned concepts clear and distinct. On the other hand, the inquiring steps, exactly as formulated by Peirce,1 also seem to be an interesting base for reflection. We know the complexity of the concept of science in Peirce, not only for its conceptual scope but also for its ethical dimension, for its bond with Aesthetics, for the means through which it outlines itself under the logical forms of reasoning; in sum, for its dependence on the Normative Sciences, besides its interlacing with the Categories and with the fundamental concept of community in his philosophy. Conversely, given this complexity, which has certainly required much of Peirce’s attention, it seems to me that he concentrated less on the clear formulation of the concept of applied science and even of technique. Only exemplarily, it’s worth remembering that the word technique appears only twice in the eight volumes of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. The word technology, not even once.2 Certainly it had no highlighted meaning in his time, nor the same power and importance it acquired later or today. The rapid pace of post-war industrialization was a historical phenomenon Peirce did not experience, nor was the mass production of objects a subject of his reflection, directly linked to technological development. However, it was quite clear to him that the applied sciences’ goal was to serve human needs. In Beverley Kent’s classic work, there are interesting passages on the practical sciences in Peirce: While the practical sciences do seek to discover truth, they differ from the heuretic sciences because their investigations are directed towards satisfying some definite human want.3

and Practical sciences seek to satisfy human desires. They take the systematic statement of discovery, supplement it where necessary, and make it available for application to areas in which it is expected to have some utility [...] Although he formulated a very considerable classification of the practical sciences, he regarded it as one of his failures.4

Kent5 furnishes a good synthesis of Peirce’s considerations concerning the applied or practical Sciences:  As already mentioned: Abduction, Deduction, and Induction.  According to Harper (2001), the term “technology” was coined in 1615, and it means “discourse or treatise on an art or the arts,” from the greek tekhnologia, “systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique,” originally referring to the term “making,” from TEKHNO + logia. The meaning “science of the mechanical and industrial arts” was first recorded in 1859. “High technology” began to be used from 1964 on, and its abbreviated form, “high tech,” began in 1972. “Tech,” as a shortened form of “Technical College,” comes from American English and came into use starting in 1906. 3  Kent, 1987, p. 82. 4  Kent, 1987, p. 131. 5  Kent, 1987, p. 189. 1 2

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The task of the third major division of the sciences is to discover truth for some defined human need, although the researchers themselves may not be involved in the practical application of their investigations. Peirce noted that this group of sciences attracts significantly more scholars than the previous groups. While these disciplines primarily involve reasoning and related operations, an enormous number of facts not previously assembled, must be collected also. These facts concern either the want that is waiting to be satisfied or the physical means for its implementation. Although they are bound to make their own observations and amass their own data, the practical scientists are quite dependent on the discoveries of the heuretic science.

There is, in Peirce’s thought, a care for distinguishing heuristic sciences from applied or practical ones, and, on certain occasions, he seems to cherish a kind of disdain for the latter, in such a manner that their vital ends characterize a channeling of the research for the solution of man’s current problems.6 Unlike these interests, pure science ought to be based, according to Peirce, on the instinctive impulse toward the truth, freed from the practical character of its results. Concerning this aspect, we will comment on it in the conclusion of this chapter. From an epistemological point of view, we will point out further on the utmost importance of these practical purposes in applied sciences for human needs, especially regarding the speed of incorporation of new theoretical models and diffusion of knowledge. It is important that we give here a more accurate and detailed definition of applied sciences, technology and technique, for these concepts are oftentimes deemed alike. It seems proper to say that practical or applied sciences, doubtlessly directed to human needs, involve the research of theoretical models and the retro-analysis of experimental data, and, for this very reason, they constitute reflexive intellectual urging in the Peircean pragmatic sense, which, as we know, cannot be confined merely to the realm of particular objects. Concerning this issue, it is worth referring to two classical passages of Peirce’s Pragmatism: Action wants an end, and that the end must be something of a general description, then the spirit of the maxim itself, which is that we must look to the upshot of our concepts in order rightly to apprehend them, would direct us towards something different from practical facts, namely, to general ideas, as the true interpreters of our thought.7

and Pragmatism is a correct doctrine only in so far as it is recognized that material action is the mere husk of ideas [...] But the end of thought is action only in so far as the end of action is another thought.8

The expression practical consequences, present in the Pragmatism maxim, embodies, in light of this reflexivity concept, the need for the continuum to configure itself as discontinuity for a subsequent return to its genuine eidetic realm. Well then, seen from this vertex, practical will mean passing through the discontinuous,

 See Hookway, 2002, p. 21–22, 228.  CP 5.3. 8  CP 8.272. 6 7

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where the otherness required for the improvement and growth of the representation effectively lies.9 It is also interesting to point out that this passage through the discontinuous is the manner through which the theoretical sphere appears, that is, has phenomenologically experienceable consequences. The semiotic dialogue, needed for the establishment of semiosis—i.e., of the cognitive function—requires the practical as experienceable aiming at the universal validation of the theoretical instance. Technology, in turn, can be considered, parodying the Kuhnian concept of normal science, as an applied common science, i.e., that activity that, through a technique, puts into practice theoretical models that have already been tested or parametrically reformulated in a reflexive manner from experience.10 Lastly, technique would comprise all practical proceedings that enable technological knowledge in the form of the creation of objects. Technology and technique differ: while the former is theoretical-practical knowledge, the latter is confined solely to practical knowledge. Technological activity possesses theoretical models for the reading of experience and, thus, can always see it under a more general view, shaping its conduct in light of these models. Technical activity is the upshot of successful practices and, for this very reason, possesses a reduced power of generalization. When its habits are broken by failure, it can hardly mobilize resources for a reflexive analysis; all it can do is simply exclude that failed case from the list of successful samples it has and which it always seeks to imitate. Technique accomplishes; technology plans such accomplishment and knows how to justify it in light of already tested theoretical-practical models. Applied science solves the problems brought by technological practice in its normal activity, proposing new interpretants to be tested.

9.1.2 What, After All, Is Experience in Applied Sciences? According to Peirce, as we know, applied sciences have practical ends, which are to produce objects for human utilization. Its ground, according to him, is in the heuristic sciences, or sciences of discovery. In civil engineering, for example, the last theoretical basis of part of its models is to be found in Rational Mechanics, the general science of the equilibrium of solid systems. As applied sciences, such as engineering particularly, aim at producing objects for human purposes, and since such objects once built are submitted, not to the experience imposed by those who have conceived it, but by those who will use them, we may say that the experimental field of these sciences is constituted by the performance of the objects it creates. The verification of the truth of its theories is

 In Ibri (2000a), I considered this point in a detailed way.  It is left for us to know with clarity what constitutes experience in technology. We will see it further on. 9

10

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not constituted by experimental results only, but by performances. The objects will speak for themselves, when inquired by a technological activity to monitor their performance. However, not only so: those who utilize them will tell whether they do or do not serve their purpose. It is worth mentioning that this objectual field is, due to its very nature, public. Nevertheless, it must be highlighted that it will not be of any interest for the retro-analysis of the practical sciences all that, out of this human testimony, refer solely to variables that effectively concern market sciences. This retro-analysis, of an exclusively epistemological nature, aims at proposing new theoretical-practical models—or reparameterizing old ones—thus endowing technology with new efficient procedures. We may say that applied sciences are, for the reasons stated, intensely dialoguing, evidently semiotic, demarcating its growth, and learning in this circulation of signs that causes the intense and pragmatically reflexive interaction among its particular and general instances. We ought to bear in mind that the truth of the theories that are practical in character is made patent in a much faster pace than that of the merely speculative sciences or those without practical purposes: in the latter, many often the experimental field is extremely complex and burdensome, and many theories remain, for years, strongly hypothetical, due to the difficulty of their experimental verification. In the realm of technology, the conception of a new object will begin with a project. But what is a project? It is, in fact, the most genuine semiotic kind of knowledge in its esse in futuro, namely, in its predictive expression. We could say that a project is a virtual object described according to laws that will rule the real object in the future. Keeping its general symbolic character, it bears the icon of its replica as Secondness in the form of a hypoicon. The designer has high hopes for his project and knows that it will only be possible if the laws provided in it according to the best theories, represent, in an approximately true manner, on the one hand, the laws that rule the behavior of the material components, and, on the other, those that rule the performance of the object that will be built. Incidentally, one must decide, many times during project design, which theories must be chosen among those available for each case. There is here, evidently, a tacit realism adopted by the designer. From this Realism depends all the possible justification of the prediction success. This is a key point among Peirce’s arguments in favor of his realism: the conditions for the future representability of the sign in relation to its object lie simply on the reality of the continua of Thirdness, i.e., on the hypothesis of a realism of the laws. It is not only the case of adopting a theoretical stance here, but to answer factually for such stance, once the objects of the applied sciences are right here and will be, in their most genuine Secondness, in their practical otherness, as a consequence of how it has been represented. Furthermore, we believe such conditions to be valid not only for the project of a bridge but also for a piece of furniture, for a machine or for medicines. We must consider then this potential continuum of the insistence of the object against the set of presuppositions with which we conceived it. The generalized and generalizing evidence of Thirdness that rules it, typical of applied sciences, is in fact

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the most plausible justification of the naturally regulating realism of the scientists’ expectations. The object, once made, though it might have been according to the project, will be judged in light of three basic parameters: its structural performance—directly related to its safety—its durability and its functionality. Such parameters constitute the continuity of the phenomenical field, according to laws in applied sciences, and will be, according to their performance, permanently defying a theoretical retro-­ analysis. In contrast, in a science of Nature, especially those whose objects are difficult to access experimentally, it is important to notice that such objects are not apt to directly affect our human conduct. There is a field of pragmatic meaning in applied sciences within which a semiotic dialogue is drawn between the interpretants of the scientist, of the users of the object, and of the objects themselves—these interpret the actions they will be submitted to, according to the laws that rule them. The users are, in turn, those who will interpret the efficacy of the purposes those objects ought to serve. Both, objects and users, constitute the practical otherness with which the scientist will have to permanently confront himself. Practical otherness is forcibly experimented as the upshot of the applied sciences activity. In non-applied sciences it is presupposed as the necessary theoretical requirement for the logical truth of theories—the otherness of its objects will only be able to manifest itself as the investigation proceeds. We do not deem it proper to consider this tacit realism assumed by applied sciences as naive. It is not the case of a scientist who, unconscious of the vicissitudes of philosophical skepticism, would assume a metaphysics of the universals without any criticism, since, while inquiring on a natural object, he would not even think how impossible it is to infer the need of the space-time continuum for the properties he has discovered. On the contrary, he believes that he will be submitted to the semiotic criticism of a future practical otherness coming from the performance of the object and the judgment of its users, concerning the efficacy of the ends. One may think that, once the objects have been devised by means of projects, they somehow impose their form, along with their behavior and according to laws and targets, such that the general instance is only in the sphere of language, characterizing the most common kind of nominalism. Much to the contrary, since practical otherness imposes, as we have mentioned before, a constant dialogue with the object of these sciences, characterized by the continuous reflexive activity of retro-­ analysis, the scientist expects his actions—through technology and technique—to be efficient according to laws which rule the conduct of the objects. Tense Secondness, so to speak, needs to be represented so that its impending brute force is overcome by mediation. Such tension is immediately reflected in the Thirdness of science: a mistake in the diagnosis, be it, for instance, medical in nature, or concerning the real safety state of a civil engineering structure, may cause the most undesirable consequences. Here, the telling has an ethical commitment with the doing. And such responsibility can only be undertaken in light of a realism that allows the efficiency of the semiotic dialogue of the physician with the symptoms of the body of the patient, or of the engineer with the symptoms of a structure. In both, behind the indexes of factuality, there must be real symbols that mediate the conduct of the

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object, making that dialogue possible. The hope of the scientist is, always, that the object of his investigation also speaks his language. In fact, such hope only seems to consummate itself under the hypothesis of realism.

9.1.3 The Implicit Fallibilism in Applied Sciences Besides the mistaken supposition that the practice of the Applied Sciences is nominalistic, it would be natural, also, to think that the objects must behave without deviation in relation to what a project proclaims. Let us not forget, however, the tense practical otherness constituted by the performance of the objects, many times far removed from what was thought of it. In civil engineering, for example, the theoretical models for design are probabilistic or semi-probabilistic, owing to the probabilistic behavior of the materials, structure and actions that affect it. Structures are designed by adopting the so-called safety ratios whose purpose is to minimize the risks of a possible, although scarcely probable, incidence of random variables in simultaneous combination with rare events. Besides this evident admission of Chance acting in the sphere of the object, there is, in these models, the implicit acceptance that human action—be it during the project design, or in the making of the objects envisaged—may fail, due to the inadequacy of the immediate object to the dynamic one, characterizing the project, thus, as a bad representamen of the real object. For this very reason, many of these structures, after having been built, are permanently monitored, in a manner of confrontation of the theoretical premises that have guided the design with the real behavior of the object. Exemplarily, it can be mentioned that large structures conceived with new theoretical premises are frequently monitored through highly precise electronic and mechanical instrumentation. The theoretical curves of the predicted structure behavior, based on the premises adopted by the project, are confronted with the experimental data of displacements and deformations obtained through the instruments. In an applied way, this is what Peirce means by the esse in futuro of the theories: the confrontation of the prediction with experience as a validation criterion of these very theories. As an analysis criterion, when the theoretical curves are very close to the experimental ones, one may conclude that the structure was correctly built, according to the project, and, mainly, that the theoretical premises represent the real behavior parameters. What is worth noticing is that the differences between the theoretical and experimental curves, despite the fact that they indicate the same tendency of behavior, and this is enough to support the interpretants of the monitoring process, are due to chance factors that affect the real object, thus undeterminable in the ideality of the theoretical model. The awareness of scientific fallibility is able to accept the natural and expected dispersion of experimental results. For no other reason, Fallibilism, from an epistemic perspective, and Chance, from an ontological one, are correlated concepts.

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9.2 Thematic Overview The semiotic dialogue with an object designed by men is only possible if general logical structures guide its performance, as Peirce claims for sciences whose objects are not exactly practical. In this case, the common language between sign and object is constituted by general systems of relations: on the one hand, theories; on the other, laws, in a form of necessary acknowledgment of Peirce’s realism, as mentioned before. Thirdness needs to be symmetrical, and under this hypothesis, it is feasible to explain the reason for the affection of theoretical symbols by experimental indexes. I believe that realism finds itself in a more comfortable logical situation to justify why the last word is given to the particular when it comes to validate, or not, the general. As aforementioned, the fact that an object has the geometrical form predicted in the design does not mean that it possesses the same logical form of that project. Parametric variables associated to a proper dispersion of the used material will influence the structure behavior as well. Major discrepancies can and often occur. The performance of the object will show its practical otherness, its Secondness, which will allow the recalibration of the parameters or refinement of the models. The continuum of the future performance will show, or not, the correction of the new adopted model, in a process of improvement of the interpretants of that science. Like all sciences, those called applied grow and assimilate new knowledge thanks to the anomalies of behavior. In the occurrence of unexpected behavior of the object, and even in accidents with harmful consequences, opportunities for great learning arise. Scientists in the field seek plausible explanations in processes involving the raising of hypotheses, which must be tested for confirmation. All kinds of research need a theoretical model as a criterion of relevance. That is why every research ought to start with Abduction.11 Applied sciences evolve under the same reasoning processes that guide heuristic sciences, according to the nomenclature bequeathed by Peirce, and, as abductions are abundant and extremely necessary in applied sciences, it seems to us that they should also be reconsidered under their tremendous heuristic power. For this reason, some questions that demand reflection posit themselves. All the supposed inferiority of applied sciences, in relation to heuristic sciences, lies, it seems to us, on the meaning of the word practical, still carrying the stigma of useful—a practical end would be a utilitarian end—while, as a matter of fact, practical ought to mean experienceable, in such a manner that one may consider the maxim of Pragmatism as a valid rule for meaning also within applied sciences, in tune with Peirce’s criticism of the improper appropriation of this maxim by the utilitarianism. Yet, to us, the question seems to be an ethical and not an epistemological one. What to do with knowledge and how to be faithful to the truth of the facts to the  Abduction is highlighted in Chap. 6 of this book as the starting point of any investigation in connection with deduction and induction. 11

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detriment of interests foreign to science itself, whether practical or not, is a problem concerning what conduct to adopt in light of certain values one considers communitarily admirable, free from sectarian interests. From this point of view, it seems false to us to impose a connate distance between heuristic and practical [or applied] sciences, regarding its logical structure and the sound ethnicity of its ends. To condition scientific investigation, regardless of its nature, whether theoretical or practical, to the purposes intended, reveals an interference of power instances foreign to scientific procedures, misrepresenting them as such. Under this prism, the philosophy of Peirce enhances a rereading of the misunderstandings of our culture, of our relation with Nature, of our anthropocentric tradition, which stimulates asymmetric, dualistic stances, whether from the point of view of knowledge or from an ethical vertex. Reforming our worldview should imply, pragmatically speaking, reforming our conduct, and, thus, judging practical sciences under their potential nature for epistemic discovery, distilling from scientific activity those decisions that are ethical in character. The recent awareness in the community of man concerning the need to save our planet, as a vital undeferrable goal, has provoked, along with it, reflections on the aggression of our civilization to Nature, an awareness of this asymmetry of rights to which, for centuries, we have related. Would not this asymmetry have a conceptual debt with anthropocentric philosophies, and with what Peirce named an Ethics of Greed? In this vital mission, it is clear that one cannot do without applied sciences and their twin sisters, technology and technique. I believe that philosophy owes them better epistemic justice, aware, also, of the necessary separation between knowledge and uses of knowledge and between the meaning of power as a verb and the meaning of power as a noun.

Part III

On the Theory of Beliefs

Chapter 10

Additional Reflections on Choices, Dogmatisms, and Bets: Justifying Peirce’s Realism

Keywords  Realism · Dogmatism · Semiotic dialogue · Mediation · Representation The conceptual axis of this chapter is a reflection on Charles Peirce’s realism, trying to show it as the ground from which many others of his philosophical doctrines are derived. In its first part, the chapter analyzes the problems posed by the classical Peircean essay Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man, proposing to extract from the consequences of this analysis the guidelines of a realism that gradually become more radical in Peirce’s mature work. Such consequences will be consolidated in his Phenomenology, a science that will ground Semiotics and a conception of symmetry related to Peirce’s categories. This symmetry regarding his epistemology and ontology will be, by the way, omnipresent in Peirce’s entire philosophical system. The second part of the chapter discusses the concepts of mediation and representation, also under a realistic background, concluding that these concepts cannot be coherently interlaced in nominalistic philosophies, in which are often found theoretical consequences somehow committed with dogmatic and no dialogic postures, in the sense of a meaning analysis proposed by the classical Peircean pragmatism. An approach to one of Peirce’s rare published essays, The Fixation of Belief,1 allows me here to classify three of the four types of beliefs as dogmatic, namely, tenacity, authority, and a priori, with the fourth type, called scientific by the author, being the only one that keeps alive a semiotic dialogue based on the experience of otherness. Such a dialogue introduces, in a strong sense, the Peircean notion of reality, a beacon for representations endowed with verisimilitude with their objects. Dogmatic beliefs are, in fact, those that rely preponderantly on emotional interpretants,  W 3, p. 242–257; CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p. 109–123.

1

This chapter is based on a published text I authored: Reflexões Adicionais sobre Escolhas, dogmatismos e apostas? Justificando o realismo de Peirce. In: Alves, Marcos Antonio (Org.). Cognição, emoções e ação. 1ªed. Marília: Cultura Acadêmica UNESP; CLE UNICAMP; FAPESP, 2019b, v. 01, p. 91–106. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_10

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overriding the logical interpretants2 that, on the contrary, predominate in the universal nature of scientific beliefs. Without the space reserved for this chapter allowing it, we should at least point out that emotional interpretants are not absent from semiotic processes, that is, those of a cognitive nature. However, in such processes, they participate in an interactive way with the logical interpretants. The formation of cognitions in discovery processes and in recognitive processes of identification of experimental cases in which current theoretical models would apply count on the presence of the holistic character of introvisions, formed mainly of qualities of feeling that are components of emotional interpretants. I emphasize that the core of this text, after all, seeks to legitimize the conditions of possibility of the predictive nature of our rationality—we are interested in how to conduct ourselves in the future in the face of a phenomenological and therefore pragmatic contextualization of life. Trivial as this statement may seem, we want to be more right than wrong in our future plans, and therefore we want to adjust our representations to something that is independent of them, as a basic requirement that usually distinguishes reality from fiction. Choosing and not betting is what a rationality based on experience should aim for, albeit in an approximate way and with a certain measurable degree of uncertainty, but enough so that the intended ends are not achieved by mere chance. The gods are bored, it seems, with a permanent and constant call to guide our human wagers—blind experiences, an expression that in Kant’s words has an epistemological meaning, but that I use here with a strongly ontological meaning. Peircean realism is a metaphysical hypothesis that would justify why our rationality is allowed to make choices, leaving the gods alone, busy as they would be inspiring the minds that seek to gather from the real what the cognitively logical networks must forcefully abandon.3

10.1 The Path of Peirce’s Thoughts on Realism Still in his youth, when he was 29  years old in 1868, Peirce wrote two articles entitled Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man4 and Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,5 both related and sequential, basically addressing epistemological guidelines that characterized his subsequent philosophy. To my mind, these two texts blend harmoniously with Peirce’s realistic stance, which has always permeated his thought. Notwithstanding his self-criticism for nominalistic slips6 in the beginning of his philosophical career, when he made use of a language  See the concept and types of interpretants in Peirce’s Semiotics in Silveira, 2007, p. 47–59.  See Chap. 4 of this book. 4  CP 5.213–263. 5  CP 5.264–317. 6  The quarrel between realists and nominalists is known from scholasticism. The former affirmed the reality of universals, while the latter argued that reality was only made up of particulars, individuals, with language and thought being responsible for the exclusive constitution of universality. 2 3

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yielding to the psychology vocabulary, which he would later eschew, I hold that the roots and implications of realism were already present in his work, even in his most premature formulation. The subsequent development of his realism occurred through an enhancement of logical resources, such as the proposition of the theory of continuity (Synechism) and the logic of relations, causing the notion of continuum to replace that of the universal, resulting in his conception of the major scholastic question on the reality of the generals, in this way: Are any continua real?7 In Some Consequences of Four Incapacities, Peirce analyzes the following four key propositions: I We have no power of introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world derives from our knowledge of external facts. II We have no power of intuition, but every cognition is logically determined by previous cognitions. III We have no power to think without signs. IV We have no conception whatsoever of the absolutely incognizable. Peirce reanalyzes these four propositions from their origin in the essay “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,” where he characterizes his strong anti-Cartesian position, outlined by the refusal to start a philosophy by proposing a universal doubt, as well as by advocating an intuition with cognitive power, and by the substantial separation, in a Cartesian sense, between spirit and matter. It must be borne in mind, yet again, that Peirce’s mature work offers a theoretical framework enriched not only with Logic, as, for example, his existential graphs with which he grounded an iconic logic, but also, and mainly, with regard to a solid ontology, based on his Phenomenology and his Semiotics. This allows for a rereading of the abovementioned four incapacities in light of a new vocabulary, resulting from the definitive and vigorous introduction of an idea of world that, if never absent from his philosophy even in his youthful work, it definitely entered his final theoretical system, differentiating the author from lines of epistemological reflection grounded solely on an analysis of language or of the faculties of a cognizant subject. There are grounds to say that Peirce’s mature philosophy is definitely dialogical, semiotically interactive between the worlds of the real object, of the signs that seek to represent it, and the evolutionary history of the interpretations of such representations. The conceptual axis of this philosophy is outlined in the extensive consideration of his three categories that, arising from an inventory of the ways in which we experience phenomena, conclude that they are also modes of being of reality. This amplification of the scope of the categories, permeating both subject and world, conveys a relation of fundamental formal symmetry for the justification of the dialogue between language and experience.

Peirce, in his philosophical maturity, adopts a realism of the continua, namely, that reality would be formed by continuities of universal character. 7  NEM IV, p. 343. In this book, see the quote referenced in footnote 45, Chap. 2 of this book.

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One may ask whether the introduction of a theory of world that ultimately interacts with Peircean epistemology would not be an undue inflationary measure, when the contemporary philosophical trend has evolved in the opposite direction, i.e., toward deflation, particularly when some ontology would seem to emerge interactively with variables of a cognitive nature. Indeed, Peirce’s mature philosophy, by starting with a Phenomenology, already introduces the subject into the world, and this man-world cohabitation would never be undone throughout the entire development of the other theories. Such man-world cohabitation will imply—in a reading that considers Peirce’s realism—the establishment of a correlation between both, which will be guaranteed by the validity, likewise, of the categories to the ways of being of the consciousness that experiences and the ways of being of the reality experienced. This categorial symmetry between subject and world becomes the pivot of the understanding of Semiotics as a dialoguing science between the universes of sign and object. I call symmetrical, then, both the phenomenological and ontological validity of the categories— appearing and being—are given by the same categorial modes, namely, Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. What enables us to say that we learn from experience in Peirce’s philosophy is not at all a concession to coarse empiricism, whose philosophical incompetence extends from an epistemological naivety to a nominalistic skepticism, namely, grounded on the possibility of a discontinuity of Nature without, however, reflecting on the resulting radical discontinuity of the possibility of any language prior to any cognition. Learning from experience will, first of all, require the logical justification of its possibility. Here, the symmetry of the categories will show its efficiency, by validating a substantial connaturality between the object of experience and the experiencing mind. This connaturality will ultimately be the stage where the semiotic dialogue becomes possible—we must emphasize, not a merely intersubjective dialogue, but between subjectivity and objectivity, both represented as realms of signs and meaning in Peirce’s mature philosophy. The semiotic dialogue between sign and object, between language and reality, will be provided, as mentioned, by a connaturality between both that is consummated in Peirce’s doctrine of Objective Idealism, namely, an acknowledgment that both, object and sign, are substantially ideality.8 The adoption of a categorial symmetry will also provide a reading of the world in a non-anthropocentric way: Logical correlates of human faculties will always be found in Nature, a theoretical aspect that, to those unfamiliar with Peirce’s philosophy, would perhaps be most surprising, even disturbing, since it is based on a scholastically inspired realism that breaks with a nominalist tradition that has predominated and continues to predominate in a strongly anthropocentric way in the history of philosophy. From these introductory comments, it seems interesting to analyze the aspects of the aforementioned four incapacities. Let us begin with the first one, according to

 See Ibri, 2017b, Chapter 4.

8

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which we have no power of introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world derives from our knowledge of external facts. This explicitly marks the mature approach of the author to this theme. Peirce refuses to appeal to psychology to reflect on the phenomenon of introspection. Indeed, his view on the theme will focus on the interaction of the categories and on pragmatism. To say that knowledge of the external world is what determines knowledge of the internal world is equivalent to saying that our interiority is merely of a potential nature or modally possible, and only concrete action can determine the internal indetermination as an effective choice. On the other hand, action, as part of an objective history, opens itself cognitively to public experience, reflexively providing its semiotic, dialogic analysis. To lack the power of introspection also means not “knowing what we know” of us and of “other minds,” except by the way how such knowledge reflects in the external world, appearing in a defined way as particular, as Secondness. If we were also to avail ourselves of Heidegger’s vocabulary, notwithstanding its usual lack of clarity, we would say that the external world is that which, effectively, reveals itself as a phenomenon in its cognitive determination. In a categorial manner, the external world is characterized by Secondness, the locus of the type of experience that offers itself to the visit of interpretative minds. The hypothesis of connaturality between fact and thought seems necessary as it justifies that the absorption of the former into the latter is done in a semiotic and dialogical manner. It is in the external universe that the possibility of knowledge over other minds is consummated: we have no access to internal worlds, unless they manifest themselves through some external side, in such a way that they are, thus, semiotically foreshadowed. In turn, its second incapacity, according to which we have no power of intuition, but every cognition is logically determined by previous cognitions, is clearly an anti-­ Cartesian statement, as commented before. Indeed, to Peirce, all cognition is built within a temporal continuum, in which there is a logical interlacing among the signs, and the mind that operates these relations has no power to act simultaneously in the universe of mediation and in intuitive immediacy, as if it intended, contradictorily, to be in time and concomitantly out of it. However, a deeper analysis of Peircean epistemology will lead to the question of the synthesis proposed by Kant: what is the condition of possibility of the unity of consciousness, that is, the unity under which signs are cognitively associated? While, in order to justify such unity, Kant reverts to the Cartesian I think, Peirce holds that the unity of consciousness is immediate feeling, defined by him as quale-consciousness. A kind of immediacy of a non-time as foundation turns into the possibility of the consciousness of synthesis or apprenticeship, which only develops in time. No doubt, this is a complex enough theme, allowing us to just mention it here, albeit very interesting for an investigation on epistemological heuristics, or what used to be called the logic of discovery. Let us now turn to the third incapacity: we have no power to think without signs. In a way, its consideration derives from the previous analysis of the second incapacity. All thought occurs in signs, namely, in logical representations, in a continuously temporal process in which past memory is always active for the recognition and insertion of phenomena in conceptual signs that analyze a state of things present for

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some future prediction. In this simple description, time is evidenced as fundamental for thought. In addition, to think an object is to think the predicates that define its conduct, and conduct can only be apprehended through signs that represent relations between temporal phenomenic states. The fourth and last incapacity states that we have no conception whatsoever of the absolutely incognizable. Although apparently raising a question that may not be of direct interest to the cognitive sciences, it has a close link to all the previous considerations. Being incognizable, according to Peirce, is being unable to possess known predicates, meaning that such an object does not appear from its external side, empowering itself as a phenomenon. Up to this point, this analysis is nothing but Kantian. However, in light of Peirce’s categories, anything that does not manifest itself as external phenomenon, open to the general universe of experience, simply does not exist, not passing from a state of internal indetermination to a state of external determination, namely, from a potential state to an actual state. Incognizableness, then, occurs from the nonexistence of the object, transferring the problem from the sphere of epistemology to that of ontology. In this brief rereading of a text of the young Peirce, it can be said that there is a common trait between those incapacities, namely, they all relate to the presupposition that our cognition always occurs realistically. It develops from the need of a world that is a stage for the characterization of signs in an exteriorization that defines them, that takes them out of a state of concealment to one of exposure, providing a universality of experience, where a community of inquiry becomes possible. This is the ground of Peirce’s pragmatism seen in the light of a realistic ontology, providing the possibility of a semiotic dialogue between internal and external worlds, without a significant estrangement between them. This non-estrangement justifies a doctrine such as Objective Idealism, insofar as it claims there is no substantial dichotomy between external and internal worlds, making a semiotic dialogue between them feasible. In the light of the previous considerations, a consequently interesting reflection on the consequences of Peircean realism is drawn in an analysis of the relations between the concepts of representation and mediation, as I try to delineate in the sequence of this chapter.

10.2 Representation and Mediation Under a Realistic Approach9 Questions that might be interesting to the connections between Peirce’s Semiotics and the realistic approach of his philosophy are as follows: Are processes of mediation also processes of representation? Or, in an alternative way: Is representation a

 I owe the motivation for this second part of the chapter to Colapietro (2010), with whom I was able to discuss the topic of “mediation and representation” in Peirce. 9

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specific form of mediation? Since I suppose this distinction between mediation and representation is considered pivotal to a philosophy of a realistic approach such as Peirce’s, it seems interesting to reflect on what has been understood by both terms, in order to better understand such conceptual distinction. One important point to highlight is to bring into light some recent postures concerning what representation is, along with the criticism of some so-called anti-­ representationalist schools. Consider, for instance, Richard Rorty’s concept of representation10 as an exact mirror of some object, an old-fashioned Enlightenment view that holds, according to him, an unjustifiable hope for catching up the essence of reality. Besides this way of conceptualizing representation, there are also other anti-representationalist theories, which consider that representation is something that creates a sort of distance between man and phenomenon in itself, and then our apprehension of a true sensitive world would be impossible and blocked by it. Beginning with this last view of representation, it is clear to Peircean scholars that firstness is the proper mode of being to a straight experience of world, an experience of presentness where time—always implied in conceptual signs—is absent. However, to admit such an experience will not imply a rejection of an experience where men’s mind looks to the world through any kind of mediation. Rationality cannot be developed without signs, as well stated by Peirce in his youth. Both experiences, mediated and immediate, are considered as such in Peirce’s philosophy, as we all well know. It is worth considering that Rorty’s concept of representation11 is quite unsuitable not only to Peirce’s philosophy, but also to the contemporary conception of positive theories in general. The latter are, at least among the most epistemologically updated fields of knowledge, straightly linked with an indeterminist view of the world. At this point, it’s interesting to remember that Peirce’s Fallibilism, on one hand, and the distinction between immediate and dynamical objects, on the other, are enough to refuse such a view of representation as an exact mirror of any reality. With these preliminary remarks, it seems worth asking if it would not be possible to conciliate representation and mediation within Peirce’s philosophy, according to a typical thirdness vocabulary? This conciliation, I suppose, would require the understanding of representation as the way through which mediation acts or is somehow efficient. Now, is it important to reflect on what it is to mediate? Is not mediation a kind of media by which two opposites relate to each other with the explicit function of conciliating one conduct to the other? Is not Thirdness, ultimately, this media that incorporates secondness in it, breaking its character of brute force by reasonably representing the habitual way it acts? Here, incidentally, I used the word representing as the way through which the conduct of the otherness can be simulated; to simulate would mean here to predict future conduct. If we take the relationship between man and reality, two interactive beings, we could say that our knowledge of any real object is the way we represent its future behavior. If this

10 11

 See PMN.  See PMN.

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representation is true, namely, if we can efficiently simulate the way this object acts, in other words, its laws, then we are able to predict its conduct and so we also can plan our own conduct before it. According to this line of thought, a true representation will allow an efficient mediation by which every sort of conflict potentially might be reduced to intelligibility and future reasonableness. To act between requires truly representing the opposite poles, breaking down their opposition by finding a common way in which both can act together. Additionally, let me propose the following question: if mediation can do without representation, as an alternative to it, then we could imagine some situation where mediation is plausible, but not necessarily through a true representation. Would not this case be a sort of mediation without the true knowledge of the otherness, i.e., without incorporating secondness in thirdness, which would violate the character of thirdness as thirdness? Let’s remember that in the history of ideas we can find schools like the Sophists, to whom language was only an exercise of pure rhetoric, an instrument of seduction that worked as mediation among the Greeks for a long historical period. There was no truth in their speeches, mainly because the skepticism of the genesis of this school did not allow admitting the possibility of something true. To support this line of argument, I suppose it may be helpful to bring into reflection Peirce’s well-known essay The Fixation of Belief.12 Besides the dialogical scientific method for fixing beliefs, three others are presented there, namely, tenacity, authority, and a priori. Are not these latter three methods mediations? Are they not means by which human conduct can be ruled? Can we say that any of them involves inquiry in a Peircean sense, and therefore knowledge? All scholars who are fully familiar with this Peircean essay would say no. The evident reason is that in all three cases, we could say that secondness brutality would be kept latent, being dominated by force or dogmatically. Regarding the dogmatic way to fix belief, we could call, for example, the historical period of the Middle Ages, where all mediation to understand Nature was constituted by saving appearances, a sort of allowed rationality that had no relation with truth because all natural processes were governed by God’s will. To save appearances, in this case, was mediation without any representational character. Aren’t these three cases good examples of mediation without representation? Is it not the case of scientific method for fixing beliefs the only one where both representation and mediation would work together? Maybe it would be useful, in order to support this line of reasoning, to quote Peirce’s work passages where representation and mediation seem to be tightly connected. They could be exemplified by: Category the Third is the Idea of that which is such as it is a being a Third, or Medium, between a Second and its First. That is to say, it is Representation as an element of the phenomenon13 [Further] Thirdness is nothing but the character of an object which embodies Betweeness or Mediation in its simplest and most rudimentary form; and I use it as the name of that element of the phenomenon which is predominant wherever Mediation is 12 13

 W 3, p. 242–257; CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p. 109–123.  CP 5.66.

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predominant, and which reaches its fullness in Representation;14 [and] Thirdness, as I use the term, is only a synonym for Representation […].15

It is not without reason that Peirce affirms, in the very definition of sign, its character of representation of the object, and for that it is necessary that there is the possibility of a phenomenic experience capable, in a continuum, of feeding the continuous flow of interpretants. It is also worth noting that this is the reason why Phenomenology is a science that is presupposed to support Semiotics. The scientific method must thus be semiotically dialogic with the object, aiming to represent it truthfully. Only in this case it seems legitimate to say that mediations are representations. However, it is interesting to see that mediations without representations, namely, those that do not take into account a Phenomenology of the object to be conceived, nor a semiotic process of construction of logical interpretants, can nevertheless affect conduct, as required by the main criterion of pragmatic meaning. In this case, once again, the realistic presupposition seems vital to distinguish actions governed by dogmatisms, whether tenacious, authoritarian, or transcendent (a priori), from others that are in a permanent semiotic dialogue with experience. Realism presupposes systems of real thirdness, whose reference in factual secondness follows a semiotic path of particular replicas of general signs, namely, sinsigns that point to legisigns. The representation of these legisigns is what enables the construction of scientific theories, insofar as they clearly hold a dialogue with experience. For no other reason, Peirce acknowledges that the search for truth through continuous investigation, that is, through the application of a method of inference phenomenologically sustained, was the only effectively genuine form of scientificity.16 The other constituting forms of mediation fail by moving in the direction of some particular interest, distant from a careful and impartial observation of phenomena. Thus, one may suppose that Peirce’s reasons to sustain this position were that such mediations would not be representations with the power of predicting the conduct of objects, since they did not fulfill the requirements for a thirdness in the light of a realism, that is, a realism that ultimately sustains the undifferentiated substantiation of the categories, both for semiosis operations and for the reality of those objects.

10.3 Thematic Overview In the title of this chapter, I endeavored to reflect on the possibility of a Pragmatism that advocates the meaning of a concept as the set of its practical consequences, considering presuppositions from realist and nominalist philosophies. Realistic

 CP 5.104.  CP 5.105. 16  See Chap. 9 of this book. 14 15

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approaches can be authorized to make choices, insofar as their mediations are representations of the conduct of the object, implying that rationality may fulfill its role of simulating what could occur with phenomena, in an attempt to present them divested of brute force, an expression that Peirce reserved for a secondness not yet represented, that is, not yet reducible to thought. On the other hand, resorting to Peirce’s classification in his essay The Fixation of Belief,17 dogmatic mediations would be those that sustain beliefs through tenacity, authority or a priori. All of these could not truly influence conduct that takes into account the observation of objects, and must, in some way, obstruct or obscure the reality of phenomena, so as to assert a set of interests that would stipulate ways of action, whether individual or collective. Finally, I will briefly mention equally nominalist philosophies that presuppose a completely accidental reality of phenomena, namely, totally dependent on some order that would be imposed by a language that provides meaning to reality, since any arrangement of the facts that preceded such human constitution of possible meaning would be an inexplicable essentialization of the world and an intolerable occurrence of an undesirable metaphysics. Now, since the predicate of otherness is, one supposes, the main feature of what can be called real in Peirce, given by the category of secondness, then the course of facts would be independent of any mediation that pretends to give it meaning and, in fact, would end up failing in any mission of representation it may propose. Genuinely, in terms of Pragmatism, a philosophy that does not acknowledge some form of real thirdness, even on an approximate, evolutionary and incomplete basis as in Peirce, could not make choices, even if recognizing in them some inevitable existential source of anguish. In the face of a world without real order, it would only be possible to place bets on the future course of phenomena, where the brutality of facts would only be overcome by luck, however contingent this game could be. Evidently, a philosophy designed in this way has much in common with a tenacious, authoritarian, or transcendent dogmatism, because it disregards the conduct of phenomena as the true referential method of its representation. In short, we could say that Peirce’s realism is nothing more than an in-depth presupposition that makes logically consistent all claims for dealing with the otherness of the world through mediations that are genuine representations of an order, which is proper and intrinsic to phenomena. A reasonable capacity to guess the future course of the facts that have the power to affect our conduct is what enables us to make choices. Our rationality allows us to participate in existence inserted in the Chronos, where the conduct of the otherness with which we are compelled to semiotically dialogue is situated. There is no

17

 W 3, p. 242–257; CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p. 109–123.

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alternative but to trust that we can predictively represent the conduct of the Other, this omnipresent second with whom we cohabit. We could say that it is legitimately distressing to know the paths we have not chosen and that are no longer possible. But it is certain that we must spare the gods the tedium of hearing a ubiquitous plea to get it right about what will happen in the future, arising from the practice of a philosophy that only legitimizes making bets.

Chapter 11

The Twilight of Reality and the Melancholic Irony of Brilliant, Unlasting Success: Reflecting on Emotional and Logical Interpretants in Peirce’s Modes for Fixation of Beliefs Keywords  Peirce · Pragmatic beliefs · Interpretants · Semiotic dialogy

In the classic essay The Fixation of Belief,1 Peirce lists four types of beliefs that seem intended to exhaust the modes through which they are humanely fixed, and by being so, they pragmatically shape the way how an individual or even an entire community are willing or predisposed to act. In his essay, Peirce makes a kind of inventory of the conditions under which one or other mode is fixed, and it is worth here to clarify the meaning of the term “fixation.” I believe it is justified by resorting to the conceptualization of what is a belief according to Peirce, namely, that it is conceived as a habit of action,2 a way of acting that reveals a redundancy of conduct. It seems reasonable to think of the idea of habit as a rule of action, which is fixed in the mind of the agent, whether individual or collective, as it is of its very essence to promote redundant actions, that is, similar conducts under similar conditions. Here, then, accepting this conceptualization as clear, the following questions seem to be appropriate: Why does the human mind3 need beliefs? Is the answer to this question [a] also capable of justifying why men develop habits?

 W 3, p. 242–257; CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p. 109–123.  See W 3.247; EP 1, p. 114. “The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions.” 3  Temporarily, I will confine the idea of mind to the human universe, notwithstanding the extensiveness it assumes in Peirce’s philosophy, as proposed in his Objective Idealism. 1 2

This chapter is based on a published text I authored: O Crepúsculo da Realidade e a Ironia Melancólica do Sucesso Brilhante e Duradouro: Reflexões sobre os Interpretantes Emocionais e Lógicos nos Modos peircianos de Fixação das Crenças. Veritas, Porto Alegre, v. 63, p. 921–932, 2018. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_11

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In Peirce’s works, there are very well-known passages that confront the mental states of belief with those of doubt, stating, on the one hand, the psychological discomfort generated by doubt and, contrarily, we could say, the relative serene routine provided by the state of belief. These states, evidently, are associated with what Peirce calls real beliefs and doubts, namely, those that cause consequences to conduct—they are those that, in other words, have a pragmatic sense. It is also known how Peirce refuses all types of skepticisms that arise and remain only on the theoretical and speculative levels, without causing practical consequences, that is, without possibly affecting conduct. In light of his Pragmatism, such skeptic currents are devoid of meaning. It is interesting to highlight how the condition of meaning, already in Peirce’s young philosophy, is established as a kind of appearing of the concept under the form of action. For no other reason, the access to other minds is provided by the way they manifest themselves publicly, considering as public all the set of objects that can provide a direct communitarian experience. In other words, the concept of action becomes ontologically significant by defining the relationship between the internal world, configured by beliefs, habits, concepts, and the external one, public, world to which any mind has a potential and circumstantial direct access. By saying that “all knowledge of the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts,”4 Peirce confirms what was already announced in his youth: the demand for a pragmatic meaning that, according to him, was not fulfilled by most of the “false skepticisms.” To the question [a] mentioned above, Peirce somehow answers by contrasting the psychological states of the doubting and the believing mind, as already emphasized. In his mature stage of reflection, he makes a self-criticism of his work, accusing it as nominalist. In fact, I think that it seems more correct to acknowledge that realism was always embryonic, genetic in its work, and that its theoretical development gradually required not only a change of vocabulary, but its expansion as a result of the emergence of new philosophical doctrines, notably those of a metaphysical nature. This movement entailed the total abandonment of terms of a psychological nature, concomitantly with his insistence on the need to discern between Psychology and Logic. In fact, better than affirming a possibly universal “discomfort” created by the state of doubt, would be to justify the need to establish beliefs through a phenomenological and semiotic perspective. This is also a pragmatic task, as genuine beliefs are guides of conduct. And why not say, in a strong ontological sense, that to adopt a conduct is, generally, to decide to exist, to participate in a theater of reactions—a Peircean term—together with other existing beings? To adopt a behavior implies some exercise of rationality that builds mediations in relation to a reactive world, inhabited fundamentally by the otherness whose nature does not submit to representations that we may make of it, whether by concepts or by projections of will. We are now not only in the phenomenological and semiotic environment of Peirce’s philosophy, but also included in the scheme of his categories. We need to build mediations that represent otherness as well as permanently

 Some consequences of four incapacities (CP 5.264–317).

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interpret their actions. Phenomenologically, we have to know what may happen in the future in order to adjust our conduct to the facts. It seems clear to me that beliefs are already justified here—they are habits of action associated with a redundant conduct because they reach the ends desired—and here it seems to me that question [b] is somehow considered. In stating this, however, a more complex question arises, which, one might assume, would be closely linked to the proposal of this chapter: what ends would those be, and how would they be linked to the nature of the two most important interpretants of Peirce’s Semiotics—the logical interpretant and the emotional one? I emphasize two of them here, because I suppose that the other types of interpretants are somehow closely associated with them, namely, the immediate, the dynamic, the energetic, and the final. Generally speaking, under the viewpoint of Pragmatism, the interpretants must be potentially accessible to the cognition of other minds, which somehow ultimately involve both the energetic and final interpretants insofar as the action derived from them is revealed as intelligent, that is, teleological. The so-called immediate and dynamic involve specific relations with time, as do the emotional and the logical one, in the form of immediacy and mediation. What is important in this chapter is to distinguish interpretants that give rise to actions derived from purely qualitative continuity, such as emotions, the universe of feelings—the continuum of the qualisigns, to be more faithful to the semiotic vocabulary—of interpretants associated with actions derived from logical continuity, that is, constituted by general relations among spatiotemporal variables. At the margin of the complexity that involves this classification, a possible synthesis of the interpretants would be based on the predictive power of each one of them. Thus, emotional and immediate interpretants are signs uncommitted to Chronos.5 The energetic interpretant includes the interpretant in its existential dimension— i.e., as sinsign—enabling some form of action. The dynamic, final and logical interpretants are those that, according to their respective natures, take part in temporality. The dynamic interpretant must be phenomenologically dialogic in order to support the formation of logical interpretants that orient themselves in a supposedly true way to final interpretants. With these considerations, although we must recognize that they are brief due to the space limitations of this chapter, I seek to justify, in general terms, my focus on emotional and logical interpretants, stressing here their immediate and mediated characters, respectively. This makes them diversely committed to the Chronos time for its more or less acute subjectivity to the Kairos6 time. Logical interpretants lead pragmatically to conducts directed under hypotheses of a conduct of otherness in future or under habits that are successful for being conducive to desired ends. Emotional interpretants lead pragmatically to actions that do not consider the future and, therefore, are typically actions marked by their presentness. The continua of qualities that characterize emotional interpretants do not bear projective rules directed to the future conduct of facts, of otherness. It is not by chance that these

 I use this term in the sense of objective time, under the third category.  On the other hand, Kairos is here taken as subjective time, such as it may be psychologically felt.

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continua are logically associated with possibilities and do not contain a logical form. Their external side appears only as existence, as secondness, without being a replica or a sinsign capable of being inserted as an instance of a legisign. Contrarily, it is assumed that the logical interpretant pragmatically causes actions that are part of a defining rule of conduct, provided with some logical form. They intend to have predictive power, being thus deliberative for a future conduct that becomes mediated by them. It is opportune from now on—I presume—to reflect more closely on the forms of fixation of beliefs, such as proposed by Peirce.

11.1 Interpretants in the Forms of Belief As scholars are well aware, Peirce elects four methods of fixation of beliefs, namely, tenacity, authority, a priori, and scientific, listed in the same sequence of exposure that they appear in the original article. Let us begin by reflecting on scientific belief, followed by the method of authority, the a priori method, and finally that of tenacity. I modify the original sequence with the hypothesis of gradual closure of the semiotic dialogue of each of them with the dynamic object. This type of belief emerges through the continuous semiotic dialogue of the theories with experience, and the theories adopted as true are those that have good adherence7 to the facts. It is this good adherence between signs and their objects that enable the anchoring of common logical interpretants to the entire community of investigators. It should be observed that the sciences of nature, where this community is wider than in the so-­ called human sciences,8 produce interpretants that do not depend on cultural or ideological idiosyncrasies—one could have studied Physics, for example, in ideologically diverse countries, a fact that was even more evident during the cold war of the 1960s, and the same theories will be accepted as credible. As far as is known, there are no records of ideological leftist or rightist sciences of nature. The reason for this universality is the full acknowledgment of the distinction between immediate and dynamic objects that occurs in the scientific practice itself. The theories embedded in the former incessantly seek the latter. The external side of the objects under investigation is the genuine expression of their internal side, in terms of what sustains its logical structure, for it is this what determines the logical structure of the interpretants. However, it must be said that there is a hidden side of reality that is not shown at all. This would be the case of Kant’s thing in itself that, according to

 I have dealt with the concept of adherence in a sense very common in physical sciences, as in Ibri (2015a). This approach of the term is different from the way Peirce uses it, namely, as to join or to adopt some general opinion (see CP 2.427, 4.63, 5.382, 6.492). 8  Many reasons can be attributed to this different universality of sciences in both areas. There are, for example, problems of inquiring methods and non-uniformity of terminology (see Peirce’s Ethics of Terminology in CP 2.219–226; EP 2, p. 263–266), alongside the historical experience that differentiates the very young humanities from the much more mature so-called natural sciences. 7

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Peirce’s philosophy, lacks a possible meaning: what never enters into a theater of reactions cannot be considered real. To be real and to be cognoscible are, in Peirce’s philosophy, equivalent expressions.9 This condition needs no other legitimation than that of the interaction of Peircean categories. Firstness and thirdness should appear from the external side, namely, as secondness, the category where the indeterminations of unformed (firstness) and formed (thirdness) continua are determined as particular facts hic et nunc, revealing themselves to any mind open to their interpretation. Scientific beliefs, thus, cannot crystallize their habits by the theories that determine the reading of phenomena. These phenomena are manifestations of dynamic objects that challenge their representation, as immediate objects, to be genuine, or, in other words, to be under the permanent stress of the necessary adherence between the course of facts and theoretical predictions. One could say that scientific beliefs are living beliefs, insofar as they survive supported by the interpretable dialogue between the signs and their objects. For such sort of beliefs, otherness has always the last word, since it is what imposes the logical form that mediations must have, so that the latter may efficiently determine the conduct to be adopted in the theater of reactions. It should be emphasized that by defining scientific beliefs as living beliefs, one can extend a characteristic feature of the practice of sciences to all beings that, one way or another, keep a living dialogue with the phenomena in which they are inserted. Animals and plants cannot crystallize their conducts, lest they die. Their dynamic object, life, determines the mediations that enable action toward survival, adopted by the species in the form of logical interpretants of the signs produced by the environment. Tenacity, in this case, can mean death, as we will see further on. Thus, we can say that living beings that survived along the evolution developed successful mediations to determine their conducts. To study the habits of a species is to represent the interpretants that it has adopted to cohabitate with the other beings that constitute its environment. The evolutionary process as a whole can be understood as a complex logical network developed by the generalization of effective procedures for vital ends. It is a semiotic process of pragmatic learning, that is, a reflective movement incorporating, in the symbolic universe of the species, generalizations of conducts conducive to growth, diversification, and maintenance of life. Learning is the verb that is shared by scientific beliefs and natural species. In both cases, we have to deal with the secondness of facts, interpreting them and incorporating them pragmatically in the mode of action. In both cases, the last word is given by the facts—the dynamic object imposes itself on the immediate object contained in the logical interpretants. Let us now see the second type of belief, in the sequence we adopted differently from Peirce’s essay, as mentioned. It is the belief of authority. As Peirce stresses, it is very efficient in promoting collective actions focused on the aims established by the authority. Expressive examples of this type of fixation are found in the

 For instance, see CP 5.310: “[…] whatever is meant by any term as ‘the real’ is cognizable in some degree, and so is of the nature of a cognition, in the objective sense of that term.” 9

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institutions governed under a strict hierarchy, as in military organizations. In these there is a semiotic dialogue with experience to determine conduct, whose final interpretation of the facts is established by authority. The success or failure of actions generally implies merit or demerit of those who command. The personages follow an action plan imposed by the authority—conjecturing abductively, placing strategies into practice, and interpreting their results are prerogatives of those who command. The executors are responsible only for the empiric generalization of the actions in their secondness. In a way, strategic theories are determined by practical results, and the dialogue with experience, in case of wars, for example, is exacerbated by the cruelly possible game between victory and defeat, between life and death. The need for efficiency is, in these cases, vital, and there is no place for any emotional interpretant in view of the need to predict a future fact through the best possible logical analysis.10 The centralized scheme of interpretations of the method of authority found in military institutions is arguably mitigated in the cases of business corporations, where there is a hierarchy of command that is not necessarily characterized by authority, but rather by schemes of leadership. In these latter cases, we may suppose that in various levels of hierarchy there is a production of logical interpretants based on factual experience, and that they circulate in a communicative network that promotes a trade of signs and meanings. The characters of a corporation, depending on the degrees of freedom that they enjoy, participate in the preparation of action plans and in the interpretation of results, suggesting hypotheses and alternative plans. However, even in these cases, final decisions can be taken unilaterally by the authority. In these two examples, logical interpretants predominate, I suppose, in view of the urgent need to success in the actions taken. Nevertheless, it is interesting to observe that, in the cases described, emotional interpretants can be associated with the purposes of the action, insofar as they can be subject to moral judgments. Wars, it seems obvious to say, not always have a libertarian purpose. Human history abounds with those that entail domination by force, and their results evidently are subjected to value judgments involving emotional interpretants. In turn, companies endeavor to sell their products in a market that is often seduced by emotional interpretants carefully thought by marketing strategies. However, this ethical dimension, as complex as it has to be, cannot be satisfactorily analyzed here, although it should be mentioned for its importance and for the suggestion to deepen reflection that it evokes. Let us now take the a priori belief to analyze. These beliefs are fixed not by a dialogue with dynamic objects, which are barred from experience—they are not

 Peirce stresses the effectiveness of the method of authority, underlining its social role in authoritarian states: “The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, then uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval. Following the method of authority is the path of peace” (CP 5.386). 10

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phenomenological, as Kant would say. Peirce states11 that this kind of belief is fixed by the human tendency to believe in what may be convenient to one’s own interests, fulfilling a certain role of bringing spiritual comfort to believers. However, this method is far from reaching a universal agreement of opinions, being fixed through doctrines that affirm the reality of objects whose external side cannot be experienced, remaining only interior to what is said about them in theory. Among these cases are all the metaphysics that affirm a priori the reality of objects that fulfill the role of providing meaning to human finitude, by the promises of timelessness in a life transcendent to it, where the ungodly also would be finally brought to justice. Kant’s work was not only profuse in alerting the lack of scientificity of these metaphysics but also of tacitly showing the risks of exercising the power of authority that could make its objects be born from the sign,12 as the writer’s imaginary in literature does. Without the anchor of reality, one could say, men lurk in the possible yoke imposed by those who arbitrate what is true. The belief in objects excluded from possible experience13 causes its acceptance as reality to occur only through emotional interpretants, since pragmatic logical interpretants are feasible when determined by dynamic objects, namely, real objects. It can be said that from the scientific method to the a priori, passing through that of authority, emotional interpretants gradually prevail over logical ones, as the former anchors the beliefs. In my view, if I may be allowed this metaphor, this is due to a kind of a gradual twilight of reality as something radically independent of our opinions. This movement, we must point out here, rips the universal agreement of opinions promoted by the determination of the sign by the object, leading it to relativisms derived from the arbitrariness of the objects only created within the sign. Arbitrariness, it may be said, is what runs through the veins of whoever simply wields power. What should be a hypothesis in a sane argument becomes, without credentials, a true theory. What should be cognitively constructed mediation becomes regulatory of the conduct of otherness. Would the ultimate method of fixation of beliefs, tenacity, be the most intense representative of the gradual twilight of reality brought by the two previous methods? We are led to believe that it is, in view of the concept that Peirce attributes to this method: tenacious is every method that fixes beliefs by keeping immutable opinions about the objects, no matter what new phenomena may bring, since the tenacious mind ignores them in favor of a higher value, namely, the stability of a world conception that is not intimidated by experience. In effect, this method seeks to seal off the mind from dynamic objects that could affect the immediate objects within the opinions. It is, in light of what we have been conceptualizing, a dead belief, notwithstanding the fact that it possibly acts as a living belief for those who  In CP 5.386, we read: “The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief we are inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.” 12  See Kant’s The Metaphysics of Morals (1996, p. 320): “the most unbearable abuse of supreme authority.” 13  This is, as is well known, a universal Kantian expression. 11

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hold it. There is here, I suppose, an intense predominance of emotional interpretants supported by the immutable certainties of propositions that represent their opinions on the world. I think that a person or group of people who so believe survive in a world of their own, private, but that by interacting with a mind or minds that practice living beliefs, they inevitably conflict with them. Phenomenologically, their emotional safety is based on avoiding the risks of reviewing their beliefs by giving voice to the dynamic object in its manifestations in experience. The tenacious mind thus never conjectures. By creating stability and emotional comfort for itself—the major reason of its way of being—it creates around it irreconcilable conflicts of relationship, within its social network. There are some people, I think, that once belonging to a social environment, act as physical force fields, such as magnetic and electric, generating from them the price that their tenacity ultimately charges from others, a tridimensional and severe unhappiness. All that remains for them, alternatively, is to isolate themselves from the semiotic network that challenges them to conjecture, an unthinkable logical figure for the tenacious mind, and live their fiction as if it were reality. Psychoanalysis has its space assured within this description, enumerating the possible psychic anomalies that tenacity may cause. In dealing with this method, it seems to me that Peirce does not adequately criticize the possible consequences that it may bring, as I here endeavor to do. He, I may conjecture, seems to be tacitly ironic about those consequences. In Peirce we read: But most of all I admire the method of tenacity for its strength, simplicity, and directness. Men who pursue it are distinguished for their decision of character, which becomes very easy with such a mental rule. They do not waste time in trying to make up their minds what they want, but, fastening like lightning upon whatever alternative comes first, they hold to it to the end, whatever happens, without an instant's irresolution. This is one of the splendid qualities which generally accompany brilliant, unlasting success. It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.14

I cannot avoid thinking that only a melancholic irony from a very bitter emotional interpretant enhances a success of the tenacious mind without explaining what it would be. Perhaps we can think of the authoritarian personalities that would submit other minds to their power. However, we can legitimately leave here a meaningful question: for how long would truth, in its markedly realistic version, just as it is present in the very heart of Peirce’s philosophy, remain silent? Let us allow his creator to answer: Deceive yourself as you may, you have a direct experience of something reacting against you. You may suppose that there is some substance in which ego and non-ego have alike the roots of their being; but that is beside the question. The fact of the reaction remains. There is the proposition which is so, whatever you may opine about it. The essence of truth lies in its resistance to being ignored.15

14 15

 CP 5.386.  CP 2.139; my italics.

Part IV

Historical Context of Pragmatism in Brazil

Chapter 12

Topics on the Studies of Peirce’s Pragmatism and North American Philosophy in Brazil

Keywords  Peirce · Pragmatism · North American philosophy · Center for Pragmatism Studies

12.1 Overview of North American Philosophy Studies in Brazil I must initially say that the more in-depth studies of North American philosophy in my country relate to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). Comparatively, the volume of research dedicated to Dewey is considerably less and fewer still in the case of James. Dewey has been studied in the field of philosophy of education, in a graduate course which is independent of the philosophy course in my university.1 There are great scholars in this area of education in my country, all of them specializing in Dewey’s pedagogy. Also, there are innumerable scholars of the works of Rorty. Peirce was brought to Brazil mainly by semioticians, in the late 1970s. I had semiotician friends in the university, in the field of communication theory, who were interested in my mathematical skills, since I have a degree in civil engineering and, at the time, worked in the prestigious São Paulo Technological Research Institute, where I developed countless works on experimental research associated with the study of mathematical models for structures, mainly bridges, in parallel with my self-taught studies in philosophy. At the time, the connection between

 Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP).

1

This chapter was originally published in CÁRDENAS, Paniel Reys; HERBERT, Daniel R. (Orgs.) The Reception of Peirce and Pragmatism in Latin-America: A Trilingual Collection. Col. Ajusco Delegación Coyoacán: Editorial Torres Associados, 2020a. Republished with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_12

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Semiotics and information theory, whose development depended on mathematical language, was of interest. This is how I was drawn to Peirce’s work and, having some background in philosophy, I soon realized that it contained much more than a theory of signs and that a justification of Semiotics as a science should be sought within what appeared to me then to be a huge set of ideas. I immediately identified myself with Peirce’s thoughts—his scientific education, his love for Logic and investigative research, along with his vast dialogue with philosophical tradition, appeared to me as a theoretical system whose study could provide a possibly novel contribution to a deeper understanding of Semiotics. The meaning of this science seemed to extend beyond the constitution of a merely taxonomic science of the signs. On the other hand, to bring an absolutely new author in the field of philosophy in Brazil also seemed a challenging task. After a few years of self-taught studies in Peirce, I was invited to deliver a course at PUC-SP, followed by my work for a master’s degree in 1986 and PhD in 1994, both on Peircean thought. In 1998 I founded the Center for Pragmatism Studies at PUC-SP, comprising various thematic study groups on Peirce and authors dear to him, such as Kant and Schelling, for example. In that same year, we held the 1st International Meeting on Pragmatism (IMP), which in 2019 completed its nineteenth edition. These meetings have greatly encouraged studies in pragmatism in my country, chiefly because, in parallel with senior lectures by invited international scholars, we have created a space for communications, comprising of short talks by Brazilian and foreign graduate students to an audience of invited senior professors, whose interventions in these sessions are always of great value to the young researchers. In 2018, we celebrated 20 years of the International Meetings on Pragmatism, which has been consecrated as an event that has grown in size, interest, and, for our satisfaction, in international prestige. In 2000, we launched the journal Cognitio, which specialized in Pragmatism and aimed to publish the senior conferences of the IMPs and receive philosophical texts not only on Pragmatism but those at least related to it. Two years later, in 2004, I founded the journal Cognitio-Estudos, with a similar scope, although aimed at young researchers. Both have punctually published two volumes per year. As a result, for the first time, we saw the start of a systematic effort to develop the classical, so-called North American philosophy at a graduate level, for master’s and doctorate degrees. Under my orientation, eighty specific works for master’s and PhD degrees in American philosophy have been concluded or are ongoing,2 with a significant majority of them on Peirce’s works, as well as themes on Peirce’s dialogue with classics in the history of philosophy, such as Scotus, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, etc. I must also point out the pioneering work of scholars of Peirce’s work in my country, within the scope of Semiotics and Communication, as well as in Philosophy: Professors Lauro Silveira, Lúcia

 By the year 2021.

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Santaella, Lucrécia Ferrara, Décio Pignatari, and many others who have been intellectually shaped by them. In our Center, we have welcomed students from all parts of Brazil interested in studying Pragmatism, as well as some young foreign PhDs for a period of postdoc research, mostly as a result of the range and publicity of the International Meetings on Pragmatism, and of the journal Cognitio. It is worthy of note that studies in North American philosophy in Brazil, in their inception at the end of the 1970s, were regarded with suspicion and prejudice by the philosophy departments of the more traditional universities in the country. It seemed somehow to them that the United States could not have produced philosophies whose depth equaled that of the classical Europeans. Only time and persistence on the part of Brazilian scholars, publicizing their works and gaining academic spaces for discussion, were able to overcome these prejudices. Today we can say that North American philosophy is acknowledged with great respect in the Brazilian philosophical milieu. In part, this acknowledgment occurred because we insisted on evidencing that within North American philosophy there were novel arguments for dealing with classical issues of philosophy. This line of work established a dialogical opening with those authors who, for a much longer period, have traditionally frequented the philosophy departments. In particular, the classical German school, extensively studied in Brazil, had in Peirce, for example, an influential debater who brought original proposals for reflection on the deeper problems posited by German idealism. As is widely known, Peirce stands out in North American philosophy as a major and important logician. In this particular regard, Brazilian logicians have studied the works of Peirce more thoroughly over the last few years. Incidentally, Cognitio has dedicated some of its issues to Logic studies, some of them inspired by Peircean themes. Also, previous issues of Cognitio published works on the logic of graphs and the exceedingly innovative logic of Abduction.

12.2 Reflecting on the Specific Reception of Peirce’s Philosophy in Brazil As I have commented before, among the authors of the so-called North American philosophy, there is a more marked interest in the works of Peirce. Peirce dialogued with many authors of the history of philosophy, as I have said, proposing original solutions to old and traditional philosophical problems. Especially, his dialogue with German idealism, whose thought has been greatly acknowledged for a long time in Brazil, drew the interest of scholars of this specialty to the works of Peirce, beginning a debate with the insertion of a North American thinker previously eyed with reservations by the departments. Such reservations, as mentioned before, were based, on the one hand, on mere prejudice, considering that North American philosophy, not having the same tradition and long history as European thought, would not possess the conceptual range to debate with

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major names in philosophy of the level of Kant and Hegel. On the other hand, to a certain extent, a kind of ideological aversion that, in my view, dogmatically ruins— whenever it appears in the world of culture—all possibilities of holding an intelligent debate. Thus, the response to Peirce came about not because there was anything notably “North American” in his philosophy, but rather because, thematically, his thought enabled a dialogue with other schools of philosophy already established in Brazil. In this regard, the path of Peirce’s thought in Brazil took the form of universalism, without a content that evidenced him as culturally “North American,” strictly speaking. The study of Peirce in Brazil occurred not only through the more well-known routes of his works, namely, Semiotics, Pragmatism, his theory of science, and his Logic, but more especially through his Metaphysics. I suppose this was so because of the influence of my own interest in this area of his thought, which made me publish a book a while back, bringing all the author’s metaphysical doctrines, including, I would say, his so rarely studied, if not so little understood, cosmology. The study of Schelling’s work has long been of great interest to me, starting with Peirce’s statement that the German author had influenced him markedly. This interface with Schellingian thought, which I have long been emphasizing in my writings, has opened up a very interesting conceptual territory in the Brazilian philosophical milieu. This territory focuses on the dialogue between these two realistic philosophers, in the scholastic meaning of the word realism, who share an extremely prolific ontology, suggesting lines of inquiry inspired by both and which have not yet been properly explored, namely, the development of a semiotic theory of art that takes into account a metaphysics of the object. This line of study should not be unfamiliar even for those who study Peirce solely focused on the logic of inquiry. These scholars, when studying Peirce’s theory of Abduction, surely had to deal with such concepts as instinct, guessing, introvision, and cognitive feeling, which cause a certain astonishment among those who for the first time come into contact with them, astonishment that possibly turns into deep discomfort in the more markedly deductivist minds. Minds that are possibly more open, and with a variety of wider interests, do not tend to remain in the mere epistemological sphere of Peirce’s Fallibilism, but also enter into the ontology associated with this Fallibilism, namely, the presence of the category of firstness that confers to real objects grades of freedom and dispersion in relation to natural laws. We have learned that Peirce’s realism makes us think symmetrically, that is, in accordance with the symmetry of the categories,3 which not only determine the classes of our human experience but also constitute modes of being of reality. Peirce conceives that the real contains general elements, continuities, and mainly otherness: a fundamental independence in relation to all of their forms of representation. This categorial symmetry, that is, this dual validity of categories, both in regard to the human sphere and to the natural  I use the expression “categorial symmetry” because of the undifferentiated validity of Peirce’s three categories in the subjective and objective spheres. The reader can find details on the approach to this important concept in the present work, in Chaps. 3 and 10. 3

12.2  Reflecting on the Specific Reception of Peirce’s Philosophy in Brazil

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world, compels us to study Peirce’s epistemology in relation to his ontology: between sign and object there must be a semiotic dialogue. For there to be a “two-­ way circulation of signs,” any relations of estrangement of nature between Man and Nature must be ended. This was Peirce’s intellectual effort when he conceived a philosophy that would cease to be anthropocentric. Anthropocentrism leads to a constitutive subjectivity of general forms—this is the path through which the estrangement of the Man-Nature relationship emerges. According to Peirce’s critique, this has been the tradition of Western philosophy in general, a nominalist tradition. By developing this critique, he provides an original contribution to philosophy, as almost all systems can be viewed in light of the question of the universals. Bringing Peirce’s realism to students of philosophy gives rise to the perception that he is an author distinguished from all nominalist systems that are part of the tradition of the history of ideas, and with which they obligatorily come into contact in their courses. The rupture with the estrangement, such as considered here, provides new and heuristic paths toward an original philosophical reflection, of which, I presume, Peirce was not aware or, alternatively, had no time to include in his already huge work. Among these new paths, new justifications emerge on the possibility of knowledge, in view of the substantially connatural signical transit between representation and reality, between thought and world. The doctrine that consolidates this substantial connaturality was defined by Peirce as Objective Idealism, whose roots, he acknowledged, came from Schelling. However, there are much more than just epistemological consequences derived from Peirce’s philosophical system. I do not believe that there can be a philosophical system more adequate for providing a clear view of the limits of human rationality and scientificity in the apprehension of reality. Rather than condemn this rationality as wicked for scorning the universe of art, human feelings and all that is not contained in cognitively logical reasoning, as many European philosophical systems do, the Peircean system opens the doors to the analysis of elements of indetermination and vagueness as constitutive of reality by introducing the concept of firstness. With such elements, one may reflect on a continuum between science and art that involves relations between, on the one hand, mediation and temporality, and also, on the other hand, between immediateness and nontime. I suppose, for the sake of illustration, that what Heidegger, for example, could not clarify with his obscure concept of Being, could be better clarified by Peirce’s system by proposing the present as a point of discontinuity in the continuum of time. This analysis of the imperfection of the continuity in time, which Peirce masterfully explores in his cosmology, has unexplored consequences, for example, for art theory. The realism of the universals or of the continuum in Peirce, also provides the establishment of the limits of representation of conceptual language, forcing us to become aware that the great majority of world objects are nameless, and that the logical-conceptual network of language has nothing to do in relation to them. Again, the heuristic presence of firstness introduced new philosophical problems that lead to the investigation of conceptual connections in many ancient authors for a very interesting dialogue, such as Duns Scotus’ idea of haecceitas. Despite his acutely

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critical sense in relation to the various philosophical systems with which he came into contact, Peirce maintains a relation of profound respect toward philosophical tradition, which he studied in depth. He teaches us that, contrary to some contemporary lines of philosophy, we must consider all metaphysical speculation within this tradition, where there surely are precious philosophical insights. The a priori rejection of the study of tradition, as if it contained a horde of delirious thinkers, incurs the serious mistake of stimulating an intellectual indolence in young philosophy students who ignorantly scorn some thinkers with misbegotten irony, confining themselves to narrow philosophical systems that, for this reason, do not admit any given problems for absolute lack of the theoretical tools to solve them. Thus, in this brief space I have come to justify the warm welcome given to Peirce in Brazil. I have attempted to describe that it is supported by the wide spectrum of problems that his philosophy provides, dialoguing in an extremely novel manner with the majority of European thinkers who have, for a long time, occupied a space in the departments of philosophy in my country.

12.3 A Latin Element in Peirce’s Philosophy? Notwithstanding the differences that may be pointed out between the works of North American pragmatist thinkers, some in their principles, others in their objectives, it seems to me that they share something typical of their country, whose tradition, to my mind, cannot be compared with any other in the world, namely, a genetic love for freedom. This love did not have to be consolidated by negative historical processes, that is, by the hard experience of living under tyrannical systems that, after collapsing, valued periods of freedom and individual rights, as occurred in almost all parts of the world, including in my country, Brazil. Despite Peirce not having developed a political philosophy, as can be found in the reflections of Dewey and Rorty, for example, as well as in James’ concept of pluralism, he introduces the concept of freedom in an extensive way in his system of ideas, so as not to confine it solely to the consideration of human freedom, but also to conceive it ontologically as a property of the real through his category of firstness. Thus, he establishes his metaphysical indeterminism, his notion of Chance, pioneeringly revived by him at the end of the nineteenth century, when the determinism inherited from the Enlightenment still prevailed. This conceptual openness of the notion of freedom, of symmetrical incidence in the semiotic sphere of the sign and the object, has significant consequences for philosophy, which, I insist, as far as I know, are still unexplored. By developing the concept of a community of investigation extended toward the future, Peirce seems to have invited us to continue his philosophy. In Brazil, we are immodestly determined to accept this invitation and develop a small part of what he could not do in his lifetime, within the spirit of the doctrine of Synechism that he has bequeathed us.

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We see Pragmatism, for example, in its possible metaphysical dimension, beyond its role of discerning the meaning of concepts that are present in language. We have also sought to understand it as an extensive relationship between the general and the particular, as recommended by Peirce himself, and, from this viewpoint, approach it as an interaction between the three categories, whether in the epistemological or the ontological sphere. Through this approach, Pragmatism can be regarded as a general relationship between the inner and outer worlds, without this affirmation of “innerness” as being merely confined to the human universe. Moreover, according to Peirce’s thinking, the idea of “meaning” cannot, as a consequence of his realism, be restricted to the world of human language. Here is the science of Semiotics available to account for natural signs and find their pragmatic meaning in them, that is, the evidence on how such signs affect the conduct of beings that inhabit the universe in which we all live. On the other hand, I must say that we are fascinated by the extraordinary idea, suggested by Peirce’s cosmology, that the beginning of our universe came about through a state of things of the nature of a feeling or, borrowing from the semiotic vocabulary, of the nature of a qualisign. We also believe that a possible anthropomorphic trait in Peirce’s philosophy derives from a philosophy that is determined to overcome that Man-Nature estrangement mentioned before, besides being convinced by Peirce himself that “all” theories that we accept as true are somehow anthropomorphic: we tell of a world such as it is contained in our human language. I have dealt here with a few of the points on which we have been working in our Center for Pragmatism Studies, inspired by the philosophy of Peirce. According to a scholar from the US, who participated in our 12th International Meeting on Pragmatism, there is something in our approach that only a Latin sensitivity can bring to the surface. Believing immodestly in this hypothesis, it would allow me, despite the North American origin of Peirce’s thinking, to make use of that sensitivity to investigate “what might possibly be Latin in Peircean philosophy.” My first personal contribution to this line of research is in Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy,4 among others that followed. In this essay, I seek to show how Peirce’s work constitutes a system of ideas whose structure might be based on a poetic feeling of the world, reflected in the beauty of the logical entanglement of his theories. I believe that Peirce’s thought can add this line of research among its study topics, beyond the approaches that usually focus on hermeneutical details without having as a background curtain the beautiful theoretical structure that shapes the whole philosophy of the author.

 This is an essay originally published in Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society, Vol. 45, No. 3, p. 273–307, 2009. This text is also found in the present book (see Chap. 2). 4

Part V

On the Theory of Habits

Chapter 13

The Formation of Habits and the Origin of Laws in Ch. S. Peirce’s Cambridge Conference VII

Keywords  Peirce · Habit · Conservation of energy · Chance · Origin of laws of Nature Cambridge Conference VII, entitled Habit, delivered by Peirce in 1898, is undoubtedly a rich starting point for the discussion of interesting facets of his thought. In this chapter, I will try to highlight the most important conceptual elements of the conference, with emphasis on those that can be grouped together by referring to the author’s philosophical system, who states, already in the first pages of the conference, his seminal theme, that “causation, as distinct from the action of conservative force, is a real, fundamental and vital element, both in the external and internal world.”1 In fact, the conference is structured to explain and substantiate the most acute meaning expressed by this proposition, moving through conceptual expositions with appeal to sciences, such as physics and mathematics, and the ­disciplines of philosophy, such as Phenomenology and Metaphysics. His objective was to explain the origin of the laws of the universe through the tendency to form habits. Thus, I will address, synthetically, the fundamental arguments used by the author in this text, and at the end, I will propose questions for reflection that I believe give speculative continuity to the concept of habit, so relevant to scholars of Peirce’s work.

 RLT, p. 218.

1

This chapter is an integral version of a paper of mine entitled: A formação de Hábitos e a Origem das Leis na VII Confererência de Cambridge de Ch. S. Peirce, originally published in: Veritas, Porto Alegre, v. 60, n.3, p. 619–630, 2015d. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_13

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13.1 A Fundamental Question In Cambridge Conference VII,2 Peirce formulates a fundamental question, the answer to which will become essential to what he intends to put forward as an explanatory hypothesis about the origin of the laws of nature: “whether or not there is any ratiocinative method by which we can assure ourselves that which we may discover by the observation of nature … represent a real and living action?”3 For scholars of the Peircean work and, more especially, for those endowed with a systemic vision of his philosophy, from which his ontology of maturity could not be absent, the answer to this question would be clearly positive. The conference proceeds, in its conceptual outlines, in the direction of showing why such an answer would then be positive. Without a doubt, when one reads the text of the conference, the logical and pragmatic method employed by the author becomes explicit, always examining the consequences of the concepts and hypotheses with which he works on this general problem.4 This is the method that, on another occasion, I sought to highlight in the conception of the author’s metaphysical edifice.5

13.2 On the Law of the Conservation of Energy and Nonconservative Actions Peirce uses the explanations proposed by the physicists of his time for irreversible phenomena, namely, those that employ the doctrine of chance applied to trillions of molecules. However, his focus will be on the realism of the continua, as he adopts in his mature work, and this philosophical stance will have, as a consequence, a theory of reality that conceives laws as real facts and not as mere theoretical formulas derived from the abstraction of particular facts, as advocated by nominalist philosophies.6 In the light of this philosophical stance, Peirce states that nonconservative actions, which seem to violate the law of conservation of energy, are marked by two characteristics: (a) they act in a certain direction and thus tend, asymptotically, toward bringing about an ultimate state of things, a characteristic that may be called “teleological” or “finious”; (b) they are irreversible.7 The reflection on this theme proceeds by considering the mode of being of nonconservative actions, which, in conjunction with conservative laws, constitute evidence that the laws are not to be taken as perfectly general, in their ultimate stage of  RLT, p. 218.  RLT, p. 219. 4  RLT, p. 219. 5  See Ibri (2017b), Chapter 6. 6  See Ibri (2017b), Chapter 2, and also Mayorga (2007), p. 5–7. 7  RLT, p. 220. 2 3

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evolution, but that they also involve certain violations, however small, associated with the appearance of discrete elements in the continuum of the law. In this line of analysis, Peirce states If such an event can happen then it follows as a necessary consequence that there is such a thing as an absolutely chance event.8

According to him, only the recognition of the interference of a real principle of Chance, introducing discrete elements outside the continuum of law, can explain the irreversibility of phenomena. Chance, taken as mere probability, therefore, in a nominalist conception, fails, for this reason, to explain such reversibility. In fact, according to Peirce, nonconservative phenomena are real evidence of the presence and not of the absence of real Chance, for “even an infinitesimal variation in the conditions will produce a finite difference in the result.”9

13.3 Reality and Deviation Within Laws In the context of the theme of Conference VII, the question arises whether or not there would be, objectively, deviations within laws. This question can only be decided, according to Peirce, by the consideration that “there must have been some logical process in nature by whereby the laws of nature have been brought about”10 Peirce’s logical maxim that we cannot suppose a hypothesis that “blocks the path of inquiry”11 is well known; and such would be the case if one were to simply assert laws as given and inexplicable facts, present from the beginning of the cosmos, in the exact manner in which they act today. Neither would it be acceptable to adopt creationist solutions, under the penalty of unduly superimposing metaphysics over logic, a procedure definitively banned by Kant’s philosophy.12 Therefore, the reflection on the origin of laws leads, necessarily, to the assumption of an evolutionary process through which they became constituted. At this point, the genetic vocation of Peirce’s philosophy is fulfilled, namely, to be able to offer logical hypotheses not only for the genesis of aspects of reality but also of theories of it. Recall the considerations on the origin of the hypotheses, of how new ideas arise in the direction of finding true theories, outlining what is referred to as the logic of discovery or heuristic logic, better known as the logic of abduction.13

 RLT, p. 223.  RLT, p. 223. 10  RLT, p. 223. 11  RLT, p. 223. See also CP 1.135. 12  Kant’s first Critique, in line with his negative epistemology, demonstrates nearly ubiquitously the errors of inverting the dependence between logic and metaphysics (see Kant (1998)). 13  See Chap. 7 of this book. 8 9

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13.4 Types of Associations of Ideas In the continuation of Conference VII, a brief hiatus in the resolution of the question about the origin of laws allows us to reflect on the ways in which associations of ideas take place. According to Peirce,14 these associations are of two kinds: 1. There is a natural disposition of the mind toward what might be called “associations by similarity.” This kind of association of ideas can be called a “general idea.” A general idea is the mark of a habit; the repetition of this general idea and the experience of its practical efficiency result in the formation or strengthening of its corresponding habit, which, in this sense, becomes a conception. 2. Through a habit acquired by the mind, in the sense that similar ideas are conjoined in experience until they become associated, this kind of association of ideas is tantamount to “association by contiguity.” In light of these modes of association of ideas, Peirce speculates about what constitutes a mental action. He considers it plausible to suppose that mental actions operate through the association of ideas and that there are five important characteristics to be observed regarding such actions, namely: (i) An idea considered in itself does not temporally retain its vividness, tending to become gradually more faded, obscure.15 (ii) Associated ideas in consciousness undergo changes in vividness.16 (iii) The action of associative suggestion does not occur instantaneously, that is, as soon as two ideas are associated; it is only when Chance acts as an accidental connection of two ideas that one can act upon the other.17 (iv) The variation in vividness is accompanied by another event that occurs in conjunction, as an external experience, although there is a sign of it in consciousness.18 In other terms, the association between two ideas is strengthened by the occurrence of such an experience, so that a more vivid idea becomes more likely to bring up less vivid ideas on other occasions.19 (v) While some ideas are revived by experience, certain other associations are weakened by the absence of this reviving process.20 Based on these considerations, Peirce poses the crucial question: would mental or psychic actions, as described above, be conservative or nonconservative? In answer, he states that it is evident that there is no reversibility in mental actions, as they exhibit two essential characteristics, namely, that of being teleological and  RLT, p. 234.  RLT, p. 236. 16  RLT, p. 236. 17  RLT, p. 236. 18  RLT, p. 237. 19  RLT, p. 237. 20  RLT, p. 237. 14 15

13.5  On the Origin of the Laws of Nature

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irreversible.21 We will see what these characteristics will imply for the thematic sequence of this conference, starting with the genetic question, the answer to which will be an explanatory hypothesis about the origin of the laws of nature.

13.5 On the Origin of the Laws of Nature Our scientific curiosity is stimulated to the highest degree by the remarkable relationships that we discover within the different laws of nature. These relationships clamor, in Peirce's view, for a rational explanation.22 In order to find this explanation, according to the strict principles of logic, one must deduce the fundamental laws of the physical universe as necessary consequences of some hypothesis.23 If, however, this question referred only to the form of the laws, one should aim at a purely formal explanation, such as the one adopted by Hegel, for example. Peirce, however, is emphatic in asserting that a mere formal explanation is not enough since the laws of Nature involve and are affected by purely empirical constants.24 This line of reasoning that rules out the sufficiency of a merely theoretical deduction ultimately leads the answer to the question to a hypothesis of an ontological nature, namely, assuming a process by which laws emerged from an evolutionary process.25 It is interesting to note that the observation that the constants of laws are not, in fact, constant, but encompass variations that denote that they have not reached ultimate values precludes the assumption that the question is merely one of form, in which case one could hope to seek more complex formal solutions that would account for the real form acting on the phenomena. For example, and taking a case that is formally simple, suppose a linear variation between two physical quantities, such as occurred elementarily between heat supplied to a substance and the resulting temperature variations. From a formal point of view, it is evident that the ideality of a line is only achieved by a set of measurements around it, provided that it is the result of statistical fitting, say, by the method of least squares, for example. An attempt to find a curve of a complex polynomial of defined degree, which would contain all the points resulting from the measurements, would eventually be frustrated. The fitted straight line would prove to be the best solution, and its slope, given by the empirical constant multiplier of the heat supplied, would have a variation that could not be deduced from any theoretical model, generalizing this conclusion to any polynomial function of a degree greater than one, as is the case of the linear example that was adopted.

 RLT, p. 237–238.  RLT, p. 239. 23  RLT, p. 239. 24  RLT, p. 240. 25  RLT, p. 240. 21 22

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It is also important to note that deviations are not exceptions to an exact rule, as in a kind of deterministic expectation about phenomena. They are, in fact, the ontological expression of the way in which the law is approximated to the replicas derived from observations and measurements. Although these observations do not appear in the conference in question, it is worth mentioning them in order to help understand what Peirce claimed about the constants of laws. Resuming Peirce’s argument, consider, then, that the laws of nature are still in an evolutionary process; having as their origin a state of things in the infinitely distant past in which there were no laws, it follows that events are not, even now, absolutely regulated by law.26 The ontological nature of the deviations from laws cannot be reduced to a purely epistemological question, the basis of which would be the consideration that a refinement and deepening of the methods of research would eliminate those deviations, reducing them, therefore, to mere errors of observation. This line of argument is based on a kind of deterministic hope that, phenomenologically, has no support—one needs only to observe the degree of irregularity and asymmetry of natural facts.27 The adoption of an ontological indeterminism, with the admission of a real principle of Chance, eliminates this hope and is more consistent with what is observed in Nature. As an epistemological consequence of this admission of a principle of randomness operating in phenomena, we have the Peircean doctrine called Fallibilism, which states that all our factual theories are fallible28 and that we cannot claim ultimate degrees of certainty about objects that are not strictly within finished laws. Laws, interacting with Chance, endow the world with an order that is partial, incomplete. The argument in favor of Chance finds support beyond the immediately phenomenological realm, where the asymmetry of facts coexists with their partial symmetry. The observation that natural phenomena are irreversible serves as a conclusive support for the admission of the hypothesis of an intervening principle of randomness. In fact, it is not difficult to imagine that an exact law, strictly regulating all replicas subject to it, would constitute a precise form by which the return to the point of origin of the phenomenon would be possible, in a sort of path of return. However, the interaction with Chance “opens up” this ideal form by creating many paths of no return. Aside from the technicalities of the theme and its argumentation, it can be visualized through a fantastical imaginary painting made up of a temporally inverted sequence, like a movie played backward, in which we could see a tree, for example, with all the asymmetry that constitutes its crown and the shape of its trunk and its roots, which cannot, by the way, be the fruit of law, going back to the seed state from which it originated. If its history were a spatiotemporal flow through the channels of a perfect form, such a return should be thought of as possible. Along with irreversibility, there is also the nonconservation of energy.

 RLT, p.240.  See, for example, CP 6.660 and 7.189. 28  See Ibri, 2017b, chapter 1. 26 27

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13.6 Habits as the Origin of the Physical and Psychical Laws From the conclusion that the laws of Nature are the result of evolution, Peirce conjectures that this evolution must proceed according to some principle: “This principle must be of the nature of a Law”.29 He continues: “it must be a law that can evolve by itself.”30 The problem then becomes that of finding out whether there is any law or tendency that possesses the power of reinforcing itself, that is, a tendency toward generalization that is manifested in Nature to the point of permitting us to know it objectively. Where should we look for this tendency? Certainly, nowhere where there is nothing irregular, like gravity, for example, but rather where plasticity and evolution are still at work.31 And Peirce concludes The most plastic of all things is the human mind, after which would be the organic world, the world of protoplasm. It follows that the tendency to generalization is the great law of mind, the law of association, the law of acquiring habits. [...] Therefore, I am led to the hypothesis that the laws of the universe have been formed by a universal tendency of all things to generalization, to the acquisition of habits.32

In truth, this argument draws the human mind closer to Nature. Both share the tendency for generalization, for the acquisition of habits, and this conclusion is simply pragmatic, insofar as it is sustained by the way they behave. The irreversible mental actions, and, therefore, not mechanical in a deterministic sense, correspond the natural processes that, through their tendency to acquire habits, constitute the laws that shape them. These laws are rules of conduct whose plasticity in the organic world causes certain habits to be broken when faced with the action of Chance. Thus, it becomes plausible to suppose a connaturality between the human mind and Nature that should not be foreign to those scholars of Peirce’s metaphysics who have noted the universality of the author’s categories, their undifferentiated phenomenological, epistemological, and ontological validity.

13.7 For Future Reflection Conference VII of the so-called Cambridge Conferences of 1898, entitled Habit, raises many conceptual points for further reflection and theoretical development, correlating them to the other doctrines of the author’s maturity. By way of conclusion, here are some of them: (a) The irreversible processes of all things, which are relative to life and growth, cannot be explained by reversible mechanical laws, and thus no absolute law  RLT, p. 241.  RLT, p. 241. 31  RLT, p 241. 32  RLT, p. 241. 29 30

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could be operative in Nature. This is one way in which, in an original way, Peirce introduces the concept of Chance as a necessary principle that makes the universe ontologically indeterminate and, consequently, all of science somehow fallible.33 (b) The universal tendency to acquire habits establishes and sustains an anti-­ Cartesian thesis, namely, that, at genesis, there is no ontological duality between mind and matter. The sharing of this tendency makes it possible to affirm a connaturality between mind and matter, through pragmatic analysis that gives meaning to this affirmation, based on the similarities of their conduct. This is the core line of thought that will enable the Peircean doctrine of Objective Idealism has to be sustained. This doctrine will affirm that this shared nature is eidetic and not material—materialism would lead to a physicalist determinism,34 and its refusal leads to the adoption of an Objective Idealism as an ontological theory. (c) It is possible to formulate questions that are provocative enough, although without answers in the short space of this chapter, for the continuation of the reflection prompted by the theme of the Conference VII: why is there tendency to acquire habits? In the end, what is its function? We can at least affirm that such questions have a possible answer within Peirce’s theoretical system and that Conference VII brings new elements that enrich its resolution. (d) We can see that there are consequences resulting from Objective Idealism as formulated here, whose further exploration is also precluded in the present text. The ontological extensionality of the concept of man’s mind to Nature imposes the development of a philosophy that is no longer anthropocentric. A universally mental character, in all its manifestations, is to be found in natural processes. The astonishment of scientists at the intelligence of natural beings in their various kingdoms will no longer be surprising to scholars of this philosophy nor the heuristic capacity of such beings to semiotically dialogue with their environment and, whenever necessary, to modify their habits, as abundantly shown by Natural History and Evolution.35 These same scholars will better understand, perhaps, the artists, who throughout history have recognized in the sensitive qualities present in the spectacle of Nature, a mobile of feelings, on the basis of which they produced the most refined art.36 Finally, the rupture with mind-matter dualism breaks once and for all an estrangement between man and Nature from their genesis that has long been present in our culture and, one can conjecture, is also responsible for the radical transformation of the natural world and its indiscriminate exploitation. One might ask whether anthropocentric philosophies, many of which, despite formulating brilliant insights and

 For a different perspective on the author’s Fallibilism, see Margolis (2007, p. 229–249).  See Ibri (2017b), Chapters 3 and 4. 35  See Chap. 17 of this book. 36  See Chap. 2 of this book. 33 34

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positioning themselves as humanistic, have not obliquely justified that estrangement and the dangerous unviability of the natural environment for human life. A theoretically rich and heuristic philosophy such as Peirce’s allows us to rethink many questions while maintaining a common underlying element: the evolutionary character present in the theoretical core of his thought.37 On this basis, all beings in the universe share the same origin, and this fact upholds the construction of a genetic philosophy, as proposed by Schelling,38 conditioning explanatory hypotheses that will propose complex systems of relations, rendered plausible by the semiotic commerce provided by the ontological connaturality of its protagonists.

37 38

 For other and also interesting perspectives on this point, see Hausman (1993) and Esposito (1980).  Schelling (1988, p. 30).

Chapter 14

The Double Face of Habits: Time and Timeless in Pragmatic Experience

Keywords  Peirce · Habits · Phenomenology · Mediations · Semiotics · Art

14.1 The Heuristic Nature of Peircean Phenomenology In 1903, after introducing Phenomenology1 as the first-ranking science of philosophy, Peirce seems to have invited scholars of his work to experience pragmatically all the doctrines that would comprise his theoretical system. Indeed, starting with the categories grounded within Phenomenology, Peirce invites readers to test the irreducibility and sufficiency of the triad that comprise them.2 The scholar who hereby initiates the study of the author is introduced to a pragmatic practice that is interesting to observe. It is pragmatic because Phenomenology, as an experiential science of phenomena, summons those involved to observe its own conduct in the face of its ubiquitous facticity. The conceptual core of pragmatism is, in fact, this relationship between conduct and experience that Phenomenology tacitly and prematurely announces. Exemplarily, let us see how the second category is grounded on Phenomenology. To this end, Peirce invites readers to observe how in our daily lives we are “conflicting with hard facts.”3 What would that be? Anyone, for example, can acknowledge that at some point in their lives, a plan of action did not work out. What would this “not work out” be? A plan of action implies a way of predicting the future course of facts, thus allowing outlining which conduct would be best in this regard, in order to reach a given purpose desired. This description of a plan is very general and, certainly, applies to many experiential situations, from the most complex to the  EP 2, p. 145–159; CP 5.41–65.  CP 5.82–92. 3  CP 1.324. 1 2

This chapter is based on the text I authored: The Double Face of Habits: Time and Timeless in Pragmatic Experience. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, v. 3, p. 455–474, 2017a. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_14

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most trivial. It may be said that when it does not work out, it means that the facts followed a path or presented themselves to experience in dissonance with what was predicted. This is a lived and very frequent experience of reaction and sense of independence of facts in relation to how we were representing them. We do not require more than common sense to endeavor, pragmatically, to change our plan4 and adjust it to the object, a genuine term to be attributed in respect of what we experience objection. Reaction and independence from its representation are predicates that genuinely define a second in relation to a first.5 Such a first in this case would be no more than a conjecturing mind, that is, that tries to guess which path the state of things that are under some criterion of relevance would follow in time. This hypothetical state of a conjecturing mind involves possibilities of theoretical adherence6 to future facticity. In its cognitive saga, it will have to interpret the signs that such criterion of relevance selects for perception, focused on the search for meaning. A plan in its hypothetical nature that does not evidence adherence to facts will lack a positive meaning, while the contrary will follow its course as an action guide. The totality of the practical consequences of a concept, as it is classically expressed in Peirce’s pragmatism, and which determines its meaning, requires a semiotic dialogue, a semiosis process of a signic cognition that, therefore, strives to promote adherence between theories related to positive facts and the facts themselves, as a matter of phenomenological experience.7 It is true that Peirce explains his concept of experience under a semantic perspective,8 namely, as something that provides the emergence of interpretants—signs potentially capable of affecting conduct. Thus, a cognitive mind, subjected to a phenomenical environment, experiences what may be object of reflection and may affect its own existential insertion or, in other words, the way it is willing to act. It is not difficult to realize that, in the example on outlining a plan of action, the “not work out” should incur in some form of interpretation that seeks the reasons for the “error.” It is also interesting to explore this experience of “error” as a good example of the object otherness, which should lead9 to the genesis of a realistic stance of philosophy: our theories do not have the power of imposing adherence to facts—they frequently reveal themselves as proverbially other than what we say they are.

 The capacity of learning and changing conduct is pivotal in Peirce’s Pragmatism. See, in this regard, the reflections of Nöth (2016). 5  See also Hausman’s shrewd analysis (1993, Chapter 3) on the role of the second category in Peirce’s phenomenology. 6  Here I call adherence the harmonic correspondence between theoretical prediction and the course of events. In the present work, see footnotes 684 and 732. 7  See Fabbrichesi’s analysis (2008, p. 217) regarding the relationship between rule and action in Peirce’s Pragmatism. 8  See, exemplarily, CP 1.335–342 and EP 2, p. 492–502. 9  I say “should” as it is frequently observed how many philosophical currents ontologically favor language as a guide for conduct, forgetting that it is only corroborated as such when grounded on facticity. 4

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Scholars of Peircean philosophy know that the radical realism present in his mature work is more complex than the mere acknowledgment of the objectual power of phenomena, despite the notion of reality to which Peirce also draws attention, doubtlessly originating from it. To Peirce, reality, beyond the evident topical reaction of facts, involves relations of a real order between the facts. These relations appear in their replicas, the facts in their spatiotemporal determination. It is to the latter, the facts, that we have direct access. They genuinely appear as objects when they object. Realism implies stating that in many cases they are under general relations. I say “many cases” because the reactive fact may not repeat itself. The absence of redundancy, under similar phenomenological conditions, is indicative of the absence of a general relation that would generate such redundant character. All our hopes of being successful in our plans or, in more cognitively complex spheres as in our scientific theories, lie in the appearance of redundancy. No physician prescribes a therapy without this tacit hope, implied in a general continuity associated with facts. Isolated facts, unrepeated under similar circumstances, do not indicate those alleged general relations. We will comment on them further on. The history of philosophy, however, contains discussions on the “uniformities of Nature”10 to which Peirce refers as versions of a nominalism that does not acknowledge the possibility of being instances or replicas of natural laws.11 As a good realist, for him, all “uniformity” is a symptom or an index that there are real general relations that produce them. After all, theories are not ways of “saving appearances,” as old scholastics used to say, but representations, regardless of how imperfect they may be, of these general relations that can be inferred from what we have direct access to, their replicas. Ultimately, the realist will argue that such relations are, indeed, the true object of cognition. To think of any world clipping that becomes a human cognitive focus is to represent logical relations that create predictions with good adherence to the future course of facts. This adherence, to the realist, can only be explained by way of a corresponding relation between real and represented logical relations, however imperfect or approximate, I repeat, they may be. None other, it may be said, is the role of a rationality that seeks to mitigate the rough reaction of reality to our actions. Its task is to represent the reactive element, as a possible fact, within a network of logical relations that makes it conceivable.12 This representation, commonly called concept, has the seductive power of suggesting itself as self-generative, in a more common path to nominalism. However, the exclusive retention of the general instance on the sphere of theories, denying therefore the otherness of reality, cannot explain why the future course of facts adheres to theoretical predictions. It is this adherence that presupposes a reasonable

 On Mill, for example, see CP 1.92, 2.633–635, 2.733-778, and 6.100–101, and EP 2, p. 67–74.  On Peirce’s answer to nominalism, based on his semiotic and realist ontology, see Parker (1994, p. 51–76). 12  In CP 7.535, Peirce states “[…] if generals have a being independent of actual thought, their being consists in their being possible objects of thought whereby particulars can be thought.” 10 11

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homology of logical forms between theory and reality.13 Such an alleged homology may certainly undergo future corrections—all our knowledge is fallible,14 but pragmatically, it guides our modes of action. All these preliminary considerations already hold, supposedly, all that Phenomenology offers as the first science of Philosophy, as Peirce classifies it. The experience of otherness is ubiquitous to all beings that are incorporated in a phenomenological world and, because of its universal character not dependent on the particular way in which a reaction is experienced, grounds the category that Peirce called secondness. Under this category, there is such experience that creates the need of mediating our future actions. It seems licit to say, based on what has been explained hitherto, that secondness is, as a mode of being of experience, the most efficient origin of the development of human rationality as a faculty capable of devising mediations.15 Admitting this, then the third category, thirdness, also becomes conceivable. It houses this building of mediations, equally phenomenologically ubiquitous and, for this reason, deserving of being considered a universal mode of being of experience. Its genuine character is extensive in time and should have a predictive power in order to allow the actions of each being to reach the desired goals. I here use the term genuine to designate the necessarily reflected character of mediations taken in this sense—they strive to represent,16 with good adherence, the future of that part of reality relevant to them. In this construction of mediations, there lies the hope of making reasonable the future reading of the world, thus enabling us to make choices. Where future facts subjected to a disconnected randomness, rationality would definitely not be exercised in its role of making experience conceivable and, being so, projective in time. A world of mere chances would turn all beings that inhabit it into players, betting in their urge to guess what hidden decisions Chance would take. That it takes some, and does often disconcert us, can also be considered a ubiquitous experience. Here, then, is one of the doors through which emotional interpretants often enter. We will reflect further on this point. Thus, we return to our plans. We need them because we want to make good choices, namely, those whose probability of correctness we presume is maximized, notwithstanding being aware of fallibility and some degree of uncertainty implied in every plan. Secondness, then, is represented and, being so, loses its reactive power by becoming a replica of logical conceivable structures. Represented

 On the close connection between theory and reality within Peirce’s Pragmatism, see Hookway (2002, p. 44–107). 14  See, particularly, CP 1.141–175 and 2.192. 15  It will be seen that Peirce’s radical realism ultimately generalizes the concept of rationality as a faculty spread over Nature (see, for example, CP 5.289, 1.216, and 7.364), understanding it as creator of mediations that endeavor to be successful in its predictive power of the facts that involve all beings who survive within a phenomenological environment. Likewise, the notion of thought, in Peirce’s philosophy, appears spread over Nature and, thus, not consisting in an exclusively human phenomenon. See Dilworth (2010, p. 31). 16  In Chap. 10 of the present work, I comment on the relationships between mediation and representation. 13

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otherness is, consequently, a genuine mediation. A genuine mediation is what allows the insertion of an efficient rationality in time, that is, in its predictive function as an existential guide or, what may be a synonym, as an action guide, to the same extent that it may pragmatically understand an ontology of action as an ontology of existence of beings in general.17 Efficient mediations that remain as such for being successful, that is, for fulfilling their roles of guides of future actions, minimizing the possibility of significant mistakes and deviations of adherence, will become habits of action, constituting beliefs, as Peirce defines them.18 In fact, Peirce defines four types of beliefs19 that depend on the degree of semiotic dialogue that each one establishes with otherness. While secondness and thirdness are, supposedly, easily apprehended by scholars of Phenomenology, for their strong presence in the life experience in which we become players who exist amid an ocean of events that call on us to act rationally, under self-control,20 the so-called firstness, the first category of experience, on the other hand, requires a more complex understanding. The more cogent reason for this difficulty lies in the fact that we should pay attention to what usually goes unnoticed, namely, phenomena that do not actually nurture concepts in not showing redundancy and regularity, preventing us from exercising our tendency to notice similar predicates and generalize them. As actors in a theater of secondness that we should mitigate, making use of our cognitive faculty, what mainly draws our attention in phenomena is what lends itself to the constitution and feedback of mediations. We certainly want to maintain habits that, once their predictive success is confirmed, continue operating as efficient guides of conduct. Under them, we can act in a state of mind that could be considered of low energy, as opposed to the high energy that the inquiring effort to know objects not yet represented requires from us. The construction of habits is a cognitive operation; it should investigate the conduct of the object and endeavor to represent it with good adherence, enabling the establishment of mediations. Habit, operating as a conduct guide, in turn, acts recognitively.21 It is important, and I suppose interesting to realize, this distinction between cognition and recognition. They constitute two semiotic stages that can be considered to be in dialogue with experience, in which one is affirmative, to the extent of its construction of logical interpretants, and the other confirmative, for

 In Chap. 20 of the present work, I try to show how Peirce’s philosophy allows us to think about an ontology of action. 18  On this point, see Ibri (2017b). On the other hand, see also the complementary concept of imperative for nonrational beliefs within Peircean Pragmatism in Houser (2015, p. 273–290). 19  On the four types of belief advocated by Peirce, see EP 1, p.  109–123, CP 5.358-387; W 3, p. 242–257. See also the analysis by Hausman (1993, p. 21–36) on the relationship between the concept of belief and the logic of investigation in Peirce. 20  See, exemplarily, CP 5.427, 5.433, 5.440, and 5.533–534. As regards self-control and its crucial role in the process of changing habits, see Calcaterra (2010, p. 17). 21  Regarding the important role of self-controlled habits in the formation of reinterpretative language, see Pietarinen (2008, p. 251). 17

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gathering feedback from the signs that continue in supporting the operability of mediations.22 Let us return to firstness. Why, then, would its comprehension be more complex? Peirce himself acknowledged this difficulty when he stated: […] uniformity is seen to be really a highly exceptional phenomenon. But we pay no attention to irregularities, as having no interest for us23. […] nobody is surprised that the trees in a forest do not form a regular pattern, or asks for any explanation of such a fact. [...] a mere irregularity, where no definite regularity is expected, creates no surprise; it excites no curiosity.24

Indeed, irregular phenomena do not draw our attention because they do not nurture concepts, whose condition of possibility originates in regularities—they are the ones that allow and validate generalizations. It is also interesting to see that irregularities do not allow predictions and, being so, cannot constitute mediations, habits as action guides,25 whose logical essence is to act as instances for anticipation of experiences. In the realm of these considerations, we may call on Peirce’s important concept of continuity, which constitutes the doctrine that he called Synechism. This doctrine, generated from the theory of mathematical continuity, reveals its connections in Phenomenology, in the universe of experience, since the focus of mediations is a continuous reading of the future course of facts that, ultimately, lies within a temporal continuity. In a passage where he describes the relationship between continuity and regularity, making use of the continuity of a geometric line, Peirce defined irregularities as discontinuities: […] continuity is only a variation of regularity, or, if we please so to regard it, that regularity is only a special case of continuity, will appear below, when we come to analyze the conception of continuity. It is already quite plain that any continuum we can think of is perfectly regular in its way as far as its continuity extends. No doubt, a line may be say an arc of a circle up to a certain point and beyond that point it may be straight. Then it is in one sense continuous and without a break, while in another sense, it does not all follow one law. But in so far as it is continuous, it everywhere follows a law; that is, the same thing is true of every portion of it; while in the sense in which it is irregular its continuity is broken. In short, the idea of continuity is the idea of a homogeneity, or sameness, which is a regularity.26

There are noteworthy points in this passage that merit comments. The first one is that regularities are associated with continuities, while a singularity, of whatever nature, breaks the flow of this continuity. This singularity is an irregularity that is

 See, incidentally, the analysis of the relationship between the concept of habit and experience in Peirce’s philosophy in Colapietro (2009, p. 353). 23  CP 1.406; EP 1, p. 276; W 6, p. 206–207. 24  CP 7.189. 25  Regarding the notion of habit as a guide of action in Peirce’s philosophy, see Santaella (2004, p.  80). For a detailed analysis on the role and relevance of the Peircean concept of habit, see Santaella (2016). 26  CP 7.535. 22

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detached from the regularity related to a continuum. How would this concept apply to the phenomenological root of the development of a predictive rationality, as exposed here? It seems fair to say that the cognitive activity is always contained in time.27 The mind taken by mediations is continuously in the flow of time that, in turn, is a continuum.28 Past experience, reflected in the form of a repertoire that constitutes criteria of relevance, undertakes the selection of the signs that are important to interpret in a current experience. In this approach to an interpretation of what appears as hic et nunc to the mind, in light of a past repertoire, there is already the predictive aspect of judgments resulting from it. After all, the present instance announces, in a continuum, the inexorable flow of future instances. This is a common scenario of a cognitive mind; it is inserted in the temporality of a network of general relations: “Continuity is nothing but perfect generality of a law of relationship.”29 It is fitting now to reflect on how the mind would operate in the face of irregularity, that is, before what is exactly devoid of signical continuity and, therefore, temporal. On the one hand, we know that irregularities do not call our attention; see how Peirce reaffirms this idea: “the degree to which nature seems to present a general regularity depends upon the fact that the regularities in it are of interest and importance to us, while the irregularities are without practical use or significance.”30 Exemplarily, it is interesting to think, despite its finite possibilities, of a dice game, where the mind is faced with irregular events that do not follow a rule that would allow one to anticipate the result of a future throw. There is here a clear interest in irregularity, typical of the game, which, certainly, could not be naively cognitive. The unpredictability in this case, albeit limited, is the reason for the merely playful interest in the game. However, it is not this nature of interest that would oppose the disinterest we often show in the face of the phenomenological irregularity when we are concentrated on the facts of life, on the states of choice and action. Such an opposition would be possible in situations where the mind could, or decided to, abandon its cognitive or recognitive function, turned to some rational prediction of future events. Would it, then, be fair to say that the temporal continuum of thought that seeks a kind of harmony with the temporal continuum of acts, both comprising logical relations, as rightly surmised by Peirce’s realism, would obstruct a merely playful interest in phenomena? This is a matter that mobilizes the very theme of this chapter.

 On the consciousness of process in the cognitive realm, see Innis (2013, p. 37).  See, for example, CP 6.182 for Peirce’s comments on the continuity between consciousness and time. 29  CP 6.172. 30  CP 8.146. 27 28

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14.1.1 The External Face of Firstness Peirce’s first category, as grounded on Phenomenology, appears dually to the mind as external and internal phenomena. Externals are associated with phenomenical irregularities that do not draw our attention. To notice them, despite our immediate disinterest in them, is important in order that they be considered within a Peircean concept of reality, based on what appears to experience. While the idea of existence is related to the second category and the concept of natural law to the third, Peirce attributed the irregularity of phenomena to a principle of Chance. Chance, existence, and law thus make up, in the order of categories, the triad that ontologically constitutes the modes of being of reality. This triad derives from the modes of being of experience and, therefore, from Phenomenology. It should be emphasized that finding these three modes in the universe of experience requires the capacity provided by the practice of mathematical science. According to Peirce, mathematics trains the mind in its relationship with the world of forms, diagrams, and iconic structures. Mathematical practice requires the mind to be mostly in a heuristic state, calling on the faculties of contemplating, noticing notable aspects, and generalizing.31 It is through these three faculties applied to the world of phenomena that the three categories of experience can be discovered. Back to the first category, it then reveals this irregular mode of being of external phenomena. Their perception will reveal that irregularities cannot be generated by a logical rule that links them in time. For example, the format of the canopy of forest trees32 does not show a uniform pattern. Each has its own, unique singularity. Duns Scott proposed the word haecceity33 to this singularity that typifies each individual and is unique to them. Not being the product of the spatiotemporal continuum of a law, the singularities should relate to a principle of spontaneity that creates multiple qualities and diversities, distant from any logical necessity. Chance is such a principle that, under a logical point of view, constitutes a continuum of possibilities through its internal side, whose external side and its replicas appear phenomenologically as irregularities or discontinuities. It is interesting to see that, taking the concept of Chance as absolute, it would potentially be a continuum of unlimited possibilities of creating an infinite variety in a theater of reactions,34 producing replicas unrelated between themselves and, thus, disconnected from a spatiotemporal continuum.

 See CP 5.42.  See CP 7.189 and 7.195. 33  Scott (1987, p. 166). Incidentally, in my view, Peirce erroneously associates this Scotist concept to the second category, when it is typically connected with the spontaneity associated with firstness. See CP 1.405. 34  In CP 6.195, Peirce uses the expression theater of reactions to designate the environment characterized by secondness, where particulars affirm themselves positively in the face of others that are negativities to them. This is a typical theater of what, in Peircean philosophy, is called existence. 31 32

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Contrary to a continuum constituted by some rule that compares the replica it produces, an absolute Chance would act in a totally opposite manner. However, reality, comprised by the three categories, encompasses the action of Chance together with the laws that order, even if only approximately, the facts of its theater of relations. Therefore, as a class of phenomena, the joint action of Chance and Law constitutes an ontological indeterminism, which legitimizes the use of signs of a probabilistic nature to represent them. Phenomena, therefore, would not be subjected to a strict necessity that would define an ontological determinism. However, they appear under laws that, despite being probabilistic, allow them to be thought of and known. Under a logical point of view, these laws, thus conceived, would be associated with a quasi-necessity due to the presence of Chance in phenomena, composing, as a consequence, a picture of indetermination of reality. The real world is neither cloud nor clock, paraphrasing Popper’s metaphor35 to characterize ontological indeterminism. A reflection to which these considerations lead would focus on the fact that each element of a statistical distribution—for example, Gaussian—would always have a categorial triple face: the one that characterizes it as a participant of secondness for being an existent; the one that makes it participate in the third category for sharing predicates with the other individuals of its class; and, finally, its haecceity face, namely, the one that is singularly pertinent to it and that differentiates it from all the others of its class. It does not seem innocuous, illustratively, to make use of the example given by a set of trees and no longer now by a natural forest. Endeavoring to sharpen this example, let us imagine a carefully planned orange plantation, all of the same species, geometrically organized in line and columns, grown under the same climate, same soil, and same husbandry by the farmer. Surely, they will reveal a series of remarkable quality similarities, such as shape, color, smell, and behavior—time of growth, setting, fructification, foliation, and defoliation, according to the season of the year. None of these regularities, however, would be precisely symmetrical in space and time. Nonetheless, their characteristics could be the object of statistical treatment, and certainly, parametric distribution curves would possibly be constituted. Formal relations could emerge from these taxonomical operations, enabling us to consider such an exemplary phenomenon as a logical object. This procedure of discovery of forms is essential for any science, whether applied or not. Without them, any such science would be impracticable. No language would be applicable to a chaotic universe wherein the only possible form would be that of continuous equiprobability, as, incidentally, that of a dice game would illustrate, despite a finite and discontinuous scale. In addition, when we state here the impossibility of language, we mean that the operations of nomination, judgments, and inferences would become impracticable—in the semiotic vocabulary, the formation of rhemes, dicisigns, and arguments would not be feasible. We can say, therefore, that our judgments are grounded on the similarities between the individuals—quite properly, we should say. Nominalist schools would

35

 See Popper (1972).

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promptly agree with this statement, adding that the mind removes the quality of things and generalizes them, forming names of kinds of predicates. Again, Peircean realism would oppose this exclusive reduction of the origin of the general signs to thought and language. He would affirm the external ontological origin of generality as a good explanatory hypothesis of the potential predictive power of the theories, which often show an excellent adherence to the course of facts. A homology between the general forms of the sign and the object, however approximate and fallible they may be, grounding a realism such as Peirce’s, is the best justified hypothesis of the success of correctly anticipating the future course of phenomena. Certainly, this homology could not be contingent, namely, almost immediately breaking away from the continuity of the factual flow. Only the continuity of adherence, an indicator of this homology, will have the power of establishing habits grounded on logical interpretants, that is, destined to be efficient guides of conduct.

14.1.2 The Inner Face of Firstness We have seen how the asymmetry and irregularity of real objects are considered by Peirce as pertinent to the category of firstness. We might say that this is the external side of the category. There is, however, an internal side that is given by the phenomena that he calls quality of feelings. They appear phenomenologically in an infinite multiplicity, like colors, smells, sounds, shapes, etc., in short, like qualisigns that assume a consciousness and constitute it.36 What matters here is to conceptually establish that these experiences are, as already stated, of an internal phenomenical nature. What Peirce’s realism proposes is that this experience is not a mere product of the senses, namely, derived from them, but that such qualities of feelings correspond to the qualities that are in phenomena and that they constitute real continua of qualities. However, what would these continua be? One of the most original aspects of the Peircean work, also one of the most controversial, is his cosmogenesis that speculates on the ontological origin of the categories and makes them emerge sequentially from firstness to thirdness, passing through the second category. In this part of his Metaphysics, there would be a genetics of forms: thirdness would hold the logical relations of the non-forms of firstness, which, in turn, appear from their external side in a theater of reactions proper to secondness. In the Synechism vocabulary, the continua of relations, of forms, would originate from the continua of qualities that are, under a modally logical viewpoint, continua of possibilities. In Peirce’s philosophy, it would not be difficult to answer the question “why is there a world of existences?” due to the many meanings that may be attributed to the fact that the logical forms of thirdness, which we may call intelligent forms,

36

 See CP 1.306–311.

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originated from a theater of reactions where the indetermination of the possible, of firstness, is determined as existence, pertinent to secondness. We can say that extraordinary consequences can be extracted from this genetic philosophy, borrowing the expression from Schelling. In fact, instead of consequences, it would be more correct to say that this philosophy harmonizes with a Phenomenology that, in its simple appearance, reveals itself powerfully heuristic by the questions it raises. This preferential use of the idea of harmony is best applied to refer to the Peircean philosophy as a system of doctrines that does not make use of fundamentals as premises for genesis, namely, it is not a foundationalist system. Returning to the internal side of firstness, it corresponds, therefore, to the qualities of feeling, while on the external side, this category is characterized by something of its nature, namely, diversity. Evidently, all alleged continuum of possibilities can only appear in a theater of existence as particulars, fragments that ostensibly reveal spontaneity by their asymmetry and irregularity. So, would it not be natural, for what has no rule to condition its mode of being, to appear as phenomenon? A consequence of what we have hitherto expounded on the categories, and can already be affirmed, would be their relationship with the continuum of time. It seems fair to say that time, as a continuum, is associated only with the third category. The experience of secondness is that sort of reaction of the facts against a consciousness and, being so, is immediate, in its brute force that compels the mind—along the lines of what is being argued—to seek mediations that insert this reactive character into a logical relationship with others of a similar possible phenomenical class. This procedure is typically cognitive and, consequently, temporal. It must be stressed that there is no observation of a class of relations other than in time. Here, incidentally, we have one of the misapprehensions of nominalism, so to speak. General instances cannot be pointed out as a fact pertinent to secondness. Therefore, all thirdness, for its general character, is only cognitively accessible through inference. It is also interesting to realize that the first category, in the sense of its reality constituted by continua of possibilities, is also, through this view, of a general nature.37 There is no direct access to continuities, whether of logical relations or of qualities. Law and Chance are alleged realities, only cognoscible through inference. This is the core of synechistic realism in Peirce’s early philosophy, which, it must be said, has its true origin in the scholastic quarrel of the universals.38 To reduce reality to mere secondness, to a mere world of particulars, as nominalist philosophies do, does not enable, on the one hand, answering how the facts appear ordered, regular, allowing them to be thought. On the other hand, still under nominalist principles, the reason for the appearance of a class of facts that denotes irregularity and asymmetry would remain unanswered. Thus, by leaving these questions without a plausible solution, as they require hypotheses of a real genesis, they ultimately reveal a dogmatic face outlined by an epistemic silence or

37 38

 See CP 4.172 and 6.185.  See EP 1, p. 83–105; CP 8.7–38.

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incognoscibility.39 Dogmatism, therefore, is not a term applicable only to metaphysical constructions without support in experience but also to philosophical stances that refuse to consider questions of genesis in the name of a theoretical disinflationism that, in effect, only seems to reveal its own conceptual anorexia. Let us revert to the relationship of time with the categories. There seems to be no doubt that thirdness relates to the continuum of time. In addition, because of its own nature, secondness does not show temporal relations—reactions are immediate events. When time is introduced into the facticity of secondness, it then appears regular, thus becoming replicas of the continua of quasi-necessity of the law. Regular secondness indicates possible thirdness. It has to be acknowledged that it becomes more complex to consider time in the first category. The irregular facts may show similarities in the class of predicates that insert them into probabilistic functions, that is, in parametric intervals that allow them to be considered as forms with levels of indetermination. However, its haecceity remains in these facts that which in each one is a unique brand, something first—which, incidentally, justifies the name of the category. Haecceities are, so to speak, discontinuities and, as such, are not in a temporal relation, which is always exclusive of similarities or regularities. Equally, a consciousness that feels and only does so, let us say, taken by qualities of feeling that, in effect, form an immediate unit, would exclusively be under the first category. In this type of consciousness that only feels, time is also absent. It is an immediate consciousness, since a continuum of quality does not encompass any rules that act as mediations. This constitutes what can be called the inner experience of firstness. Then, the external and internal sides of the first category, because of their own nature, are disconnected with time. On this kinship between the internal and external sides of firstness, much could still be considered. However, the conceptual axis of such internal-external relation occurs through the absence of time: the singular of haecceity in each particular, unconnected with each other, and the continuum without rules of the qualisigns. It was not casually that Peirce said: Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling. 40

Here, we address feeling and the act of sensing as an exclusive experience, proper of firstness and unrelated to the other two categories. However, we must remember that the categories are inclusive from the third to the first, namely, that thirdness implies secondness and firstness; that secondness implies firstness; and that firstness implies only itself. Therefore, there is a content of secondness in the third category: it would not make sense for a universe of laws to not possess a theater of reactions where they can exist. In turn, there is also nothing strange in saying that firstness fits into the third category. After all, it has been affirmed that the logical fabric of this category is the quasi-necessity, and this quasi is due to the content of spontaneity that the instances under the law show as phenomena, making them be 39 40

 CP 1.135: “Do not block the way of inquiry!”  CP 6.265; EP 1, p. 348; W 8, p. 180–181.

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of a probabilistic nature. On the sphere of language, it is simple to acknowledge the content of feeling that words carry. The clash between the logical and the emotional, effectively between the mediate and the immediate, is well represented in our natural languages. All factual reaction, in turn, brings something peculiar to it, its quality of feeling. Real facts are proverbially hard,41 and this hardness brings with it a myriad of possible emotional interpretants. This point alone is a reminder of the complex saga of men to understand themselves: the difficult conflict between what has a logical form and what has absolutely none—feelings that, in their immediacy, subvert a desired plan, often unachievable, of a future conduct. Let us say, just marginally, what a difficult science psychoanalysis is! We should now, I think, proceed to the central theme of this chapter, based on the comments made heretofore.

14.2 On Chronos and Kairós We begin this part of the chapter with a comment I deem relevant. Peirce’s philosophy does not seem to make a distinction between the nature of the two temporalities that, doubtlessly, share a relationship on many points but may be distinguished on some of them. Peircean realism acknowledges the otherness of ontological thirdness, whose replicas point to a real logical quasi-necessity. The continuum of time follows the continuum of natural laws, where the former is a condition of the possibility of the latter. This time flows independently of any representation that is made of it—we could redeem the Greek term Chronos to designate it. Its reality comes from its otherness in relation to any mind that may represent it. Again, we may call on Phenomenology to attest that human experience is a powerful witness of this otherness. The possible future flows with its own cosmic rhythm into the irrevocable past, leaving its mark of existence on it. The signs that Chronos validates as good representations are only so for having its last word on itself. Aware of this Chronos, it is permissible to think of a temporality internal to the human mind, beyond a merely psychological dimension. It would be supposedly universal, to the extent that it is grounded on the connections we make, whether or not consciously, between memory, presentified reflection, and future action plans. However, unfaithful it might be, grasping only the nuance of subjectivity that the term brings in its references in tradition, to designate this internal time as Kairós,42 will enrich the vocabulary for its distinction with regard to Chronos.  See CP 1.419.  Kairós, in Greek antiquity, as mentioned above, has metaphysical meanings associated with moment, opportunity, and opportune moment and, thus, denotes a subjective feature. Kinneavy and Eskin (2000, p.  433) say in synthesis: “Kairos involves qualitative time whereas Chronos describes quantitative time.” 41 42

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Signifying moment and opportunity, when each mind should pay attention to signs of a metaphysical nature in a kind of intimate, personal dialogue with some deified volition, Kairós, employed here analogically in our theoretical context, despite being divested of its originally mystical character, would define the moment or opportunity when a mind would decide to act, which, in a realist ontology, would mean to decide to exist,43 when we have a desired goal within a theater ruled by Chronos. It would thus appear in consciousness by the insertion of the continuous link of memory, once reflected in concepts, in the reading of the signs present in such consciousness, aiming at some future purpose. Here, I suppose I can say that there would be, in this case, a universality of the judicative process of the mind, intentionally predictive, and evidently adapted to its idiosyncrasy, linked to the will of each subject and each specific nuance of experience that pragmatically turns thought into action. We may say that not always the opportune moment evidenced by logical interpretants becomes effective in an existential insertion—the emotional interpretants that also mobilize the will, essential to trigger the action, may predominate and block the action, letting the moment and the opportunity pass by. Instead of an obscure will of a divinity, a rationality that emerges with a possibly good adherence to future facts would encourage factual action, introducing itself in the theater of existence with a high probability of being successful in its purpose. I use Kairós, then, as this internal time that is the defining bond of the opportune moment, in which every being should act rationally and whose flow in consciousness would occur universally, regardless of individual, idiosyncratic intensity. There is no doubt that there are more agile minds in inferential reasoning operations, although in many cases, they will reveal that such agility does not necessarily imply quality and judicative depth. This is a question that, under a pragmatic view, could be resolved: how would these judgments appear from their external side, and what level of success would they achieve to reach their objectives, revealing their effective adherence to the flow of facts? One of the most instigating points in Peirce’s Metaphysics is exactly the one referring to time. According to him, time possesses continuity, but, as all continuum, it is not perfect—it must contain some discontinuous aspect in itself. The denial of the predicate of perfection to the continuum of time is coherent with the ontological indeterminism of Peircean philosophy—no law is complete and final, and time would thus be of the nature of the law, appropriately under the third category. Indeed, as we saw, Chance acts in existence veering the facts from a perfect uniformity. It does seem difficult, therefore, to suppose that, in order that Chance act likewise, it should enter the temporality of the law through some point in which there is some discontinuity, since the events that it produces do not derive from the past, nor is it at least logically linked to the future. Thus, this dissociation of the past in relation to the future, creating a discreet element in the continuum of time, should

43

 See Chap. 23 of the present work.

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be situated in the present: it would be the entrance door of Chance in existence, leaving its mark on it. In this connection, Peirce expounds on the discontinuity of Chronos in the present, thus justifying the possibility of the participation of Chance in facts, in which it leaves a permanent inscription: When we ask why chance produces permanent effects, the natural answer which escapes from our lips is that it is because of the independence of different instants of time. A change having been made, there is no particular reason why it should ever be unmade. If a man has won a napoleon at a gaming table he is no more likely to lose it than he was to lose a napoleon at the outset. But we have no sooner let slip the remark about the independence of the instants of time than we are shocked by it […] And although it may be said that continuity consists in a binding together of things that are different and remain different, so that they are in a measure dependent on one another and yet in a measure independent, yet this is only true of finite parts of the continuum, not of the ultimate elements nor even of the infinitesimal parts. Yet it undoubtedly is true that the permanence of chance effects is due to the independence of the instants of time. How are we to resolve this puzzle? The solution of it lies in this, that time has a point of discontinuity at the present. This discontinuity appears in one form in conservative actions where the actual instant differs from all other instants absolutely, while those others only differ in degree; and the same discontinuity appears in another form in all non-conservative action, where the past is broken off from the future as it is in our consciousness.44

This passage doubtlessly raises many questions that cannot be addressed here. However, let us focus on the point we have been discussing, namely, the discontinuity of time Chronos in the present. Observe, however, that Peirce also mentions the rupture of time, similarly, in our consciousness. A kind of symmetry is confirmed between external and internal time, Chronos and Kairós in our vocabulary, regarding a gap in the present instant. Nevertheless, what would be this rupture of time in consciousness? How would this happen?

14.3 The Double Face of Habits We have been structuring the idea of habit as a successful rule of conduct in its mediating role in relation to the hard facts of secondness. Evidently, this idea only refers to those habits that semiotically dialogue with experience, namely, which are actively willing to be altered or even abandoned by the mind when its inefficiency as guides of conduct becomes flagrant.45 The types of habits that crystallize and remain as such, despite losing adherence with the course of facts, were left aside from this consideration.46 The mind that acts in this manner ceases to learn, and here

 CP 6.86; my italics.  On the relation of Semiotics particularly with the concept of symbol and habit change in Peirce, see Nöth (2010, pp. 85–86). 46  Once again, note The Fixation of Belief by Peirce, where habits are associated with beliefs that install themselves dogmatically. See Chaps. 10 and 11 of this work. 44 45

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learning is taken in the pragmatic sense of the term, that is, as a capacity to change conduct when experience so requires. Hard facts are, ultimately, that which promotes learning, providing the acquisition of new habits: That habit alone can produce development I do not believe. It is catastrophe, accident, reaction which brings habit into an active condition and creates a habit of changing habits. To learn is to acquire a habit. What makes men learn? Not merely the sight of what they are accustomed to, but perpetual new experiences which throws them into a habit of tossing aside old ideas and forming new ones.47

This, we may say, is the logical function of habits. They are generalizations made by the mind from redundant experience, which authorizes them to install themselves as a rule of teleologically directed action.48 This seems to be legitimate both for ordinary, everyday cognitive situations and for more complex cognitive contexts, such as those of the positive, factual sciences. This equivalence would only be valid, we reiterate, for remaining habits in the extent that they are predictive mediations with a satisfactory adherence content in relation to the facts it represents. Let us now endeavor to characterize what would be one of the faces of habits, as described, concentrating on the way they effectively act. We can say that they contain within themselves criteria of relevance that select, from the multiplicity of signs that constitute experience, those that the habit is prepared to interpret. Through habit, the mind measures its perceptive capacity before the myriad of signs where it is inserted. The predictive success of habit, in its role of leading the mind to its goals, feeds back and strengthens its own logical structure. This is its positive face, important for the mind to work in low energy, feasible for well representing otherness and thus breaking out its potential brute force. It is also evident that every habit operates in time, synchronizing Chronos and Kairós—it is supported by the flow of the signs of conceptual reflected memory, for reading what is routinely revealed in the chronological flow. The mind inserted in temporality only perceives what appears regular to it as experience—in effect, habit is a logical structure grounded on regularities, on factual redundancy. It may be said, in light of what Peirce’s realism holds, that only what is under the quasi-necessity of the law receives designating names for concepts and provides logical judgments. The language that describes the world of experience under the logical gaze of habits would, thus, be definitely committed to the continuum of the law and, consequently, to the continuum of Chronos. Let us, then, outline what could be called the negative face of habits. Grounded on criteria of relevance, habits make perception disdain what does not need to be interpreted, namely, what would have no possibility whatsoever of influencing conduct directed toward a given end. Let us return to the previous statement on the facts that do not call the mind’s attention, those that, by their irregularity and asymmetry, do not constitute concepts

 NEM IV, p. 142.  See Pietarinen’s (2005, p. 357–372) analysis of the relationship between logic and the deliberate cultivation of good habits of conduct. 47 48

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and, for this reason, do not receive names. Concepts are fed by laws, while nameless things,49 certainly more frequent, are the product of Chance in its most ostensive action, that is, in the production of haecceity. We follow the same daily paths with our habits, reading the signs that confirm their correction as guides. In these paths, there is a myriad of signs, facts that we do not notice, even though they saturate our senses, remaining, despite this, with no possible meaning for us. To see them, we would have to refrain from practical ends that insert us daily in a temporality committed to and dependent on Chronos. To see them, we should seek a gap in Kairós, through which what is produced in Chronos’ gap could appear. One other face of the world would develop that which is unfit to feed logical structures but that demands to be expressed through other forms of language, refusing to be confined to an ineffability to which a language grounded on concepts would condemn it. What forms would these take? They would have to be those that subvert the order imposed by the corresponding logic of adherence, which is so vital for the mediations that, in true representations, dilute the otherness of reality, enabling us to guess what awaits us in the future. An immense world residue that does not fit in the conceptual networks that shape our perception always inserted in Chronos awaits its representation and meaning. Peirce shows us a way by saying that where there is asymmetry and irregularity, there is feeling in the same extent—both sharing their nature without continuities of form and of time. This would be, we are almost compelled to recognize, the semiotic space of Art. It is Art that could give voice, under different forms, to the apparently ineffable, acting as mediation of another nature, different from the one that habits provide us. It is this different mediation, conceived in the innerness of artists and poets, that will be responsible for the qualisigns that encompass our emotional interpretants. In an explicit way, Peirce reaffirms the idea that the perceptions of artists are mainly turned to what do not call attention of minds only interested in regular facts: In fact, the great characteristic of nature is its diversity. For every uniformity known, there would be no difficulty in pointing out thousands of non-uniformities; but the diversities are usually of small use to us, and attract the attention of poets mainly, while the uniformities are the very staff of life. Hence, the higher and wider are our desires the greater will be the general impression of uniformity produced upon us by the contemplation of nature as it interests us.50

From the restful and disinterested contemplation of the world, capable of seeing its abundant haecceity, to the tragedy that is the loss of what is most loved, little is offered as a task for conceptual language. It should silently move aside, to be replaced by what is simply first, whether under the internal form of the continuum of feelings or under the infinite external diversity that seems to celebrate its genetic freedom. In light of these considerations, it seems licit to say that it is in the most

49 50

 On “nameless things” in Peirce’s philosophy, see Chap. 4 of the present work.  CP 6.100; my italics.

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original forms of art that it would be possible to find the multiple meanings51 of what both forms, internal and external, are saying. That which was logically unimportant would thus possibly hold, in essence, the ontologically poetic core capable of unveiling values able to bring an ampler sense than that which is often suggested as a frugal and passing reward to our role as characters in permanent temporal confrontation with otherness. By leaving here the question about what values Art could bring us, it gives us the opportunity to continue this reflection in the good ground of the essentially inviting nature to the future constituted by the very core of Peircean Synechism.

51

 On the intrinsic polysemy of works of art, see Chap. 3 of the present work.

Chapter 15

Habits Formation and Self-Organization: A Peircean Approach

Keywords  Habit formation · Self-organization · Objective idealism This chapter aims to reflect on the conceptual connection between habit formation and self-organization, using Peirce’s philosophy as its conceptual ground, approaching specifically his genetic ontology. By genetic, I mean a set of hypotheses intended to explain the origin of all phenomena, and by ontology, the set of hypotheses about the reality of such phenomena. A Peircean approach to this subject primarily calls on an awareness of Peirce’s system of interlaced doctrines that refuses every anthropocentric core for conceiving philosophy. Instead of such a core, he proposes a monistic approach that not only ruptures with all genetic dualism but also semiotically extends the properties of the human mind to all natural phenomena. With this basic ground, it will be feasible to think of the phenomena of habit formation in every cosmic being and of self-organization as the building of mediations to successfully guide actions toward any deliberated ends, connecting both under the monistic hypothesis of a genetic tendency of mind. On the other hand, Peirce has considered three kinds of induction called by him as crude, quantitative, and qualitative, where the latter covers cases of experiences strictly focused on scientific investigation. However, it seems that many phenomenological cases besides scientific inquiry should be also considered, namely, those that constitute the ground of habit formation, taking the notion of habit as a rule of conduct formed by generalization or, in general lines, by induction. Under this approach, I propose to reflect on the set of semiotic interpretants proposed by Peirce with the aim of exploring their habitual facet, as they are not simply theoretical hermeneutic signs but, under a pragmatic point of view, should be taken as directly connected with the way some interpreting mind is able or tending to act. With such an approach, scientific inquiry is mainly connected with logical interpretants, whose This chapter is based on a text I authored: Habit Formation and Self-Organization: A Peircean Approach, originally published in Pereira Jr., Alfredo; Pickering, William A.; Gudwin, Ricardo R. (Org.). Systems, Self-Organization and Information: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. New  York: Routledge, v. 1, p.  192–204, 2019a. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_15

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objective is to provide habits of interpreting specific phenomena under some correlated theoretical frame taken as being true. Nevertheless, there are some other five types of interpretants we may consider as habits of action. Emotional interpretants, for example, are connected with habits of feeling, similarly inductively formed, which may predominate in some experiential life situations, far from scientific experimental fields. They mainly feed that other sort of three kinds of beliefs that constitute the range of Peirce’s fixation of belief method, namely, authority, a priori, and tenacity.1 With such a line of analysis, I intend to show that induction is the most generalized mind operation, many times outside the range of the kinds of induction proposed by Peirce, despite trying to be more faithful to his very ample philosophical concepts than maybe he himself intended to be.

15.1 On Logical and Emotional Interpretants My focus in this chapter came from a reflection on Peirce’s classic Fixation of Belief.2 Given that beliefs are habits of action resulting from inductive generalization, it is appropriate to ask which types of induction apply to each one of the four classes of fixation of belief, namely, scientific, authority, a priori, and tenacity. One can foresee that the scientific fixation of belief flows from the process Peirce calls inquiry, that is, in consequence of the triad: hypothesis, deduction, and induction. In this case, the validation of belief happens through the verisimilitude of the hypothesis, from whence the experientially observable consequences are thus validated through induction. This type of induction that legitimates a scientific argument and establishes a habit of interpretation of the phenomena that are pertinent to it, Peirce calls, is a statistical induction: Statistical Induction […] assigns a definite value to a quantity. It draws a sample of a class, finds a numerical expression for a predesignate character of that sample and extends this evaluation, under proper qualification, to the entire class, by the aid of the doctrine of chances.3

Statistical induction has, in fact, well-defined mathematical models from the theory of probabilities that allow one to estimate average parameters and those of general distributive dispersion of possible results, as are, exemplarily, Gaussian functions. Thus, the propositions of probabilistic nature generally take into account, based on the estimation of basic parameters such as mean and standard deviation, the evaluation of probable error associated with any other possible evaluations of parameters and results. It is worthwhile to note that in Peircean epistemology, probabilistic models applicable to phenomenological objects are signs that incorporate  According to Peirce’s specific essay on the theme, which is also the object of analysis in the following item. 2  CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p. 109–123; W 3, p. 242–257. 3  CP 7.120. 1

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degrees of uncertainty stemming from the admission of the reality of Chance. This principle, combined with that of law, produces events that define the ontological indeterminism typical of Peirce’s realist philosophy.4 Scientific beliefs are nourished through a permanent and necessary semiotic dialogue between theory and experience, in the form of constant verification of the adherence of the theoretical predictions of results and the actual results obtained in a determined class of experimental observations. New hypothesis will come forth every time that such adherence is broken, not contingently, but significantly, that is, temporally redundant, accusing the inadequacy of the theoretical model in the face of new data or new experimental amplitude. Scientific beliefs cannot abstain from this adherence of theoretical predictions to experimental results. This very adherence anchors the constitution of what Peirce calls the community of inquiry, since it is this community that experiences the intrinsic otherness of the real facts that are being investigated, beyond the idiosyncrasy of the possible particular interests of the researchers involved. The signs and their general meanings circulate within this community in such a way that leads to the collective recognition of the validity of the theories in question. A semiotic network that sustains the community will always be, in ultimate analysis, weighted by facts observed by the community itself. Peirce also defines a second class of induction, called by him as qualitative. Beforehand, and in order to be better understood, he mentions crude induction. Crude induction always produces universal propositions, totally inclusive or exclusive, based on the presumption that situations and facts that happened in the past will be repeated without exceptions in the future. Let us consider what Peirce says in the passage to this end: The first and weakest kind of inductive reasoning is that which goes on the presumption that future experience as to the matter in hand will not be utterly at variance with all past experience.5 I call this Crude Induction. It is the only Induction which concludes a logically Universal Proposition.6

By qualitative induction, Peirce conceives a logical form situated between statistics, used in scientific inquiry, and crude induction. The validation of a hypothesis by qualitative induction is not given by the statistical calculation of cases, whose method defines a probability and parameters associated with degrees of certainty of the propositions. This validation is configured by the examination of experience under certain qualities of similar cases already available in the repertoire of the inquirer. It seems that there is here a possible association with perceptive judgments based on habits, as occur in medical diagnostics, for example. Let us consider a passage about this type of induction: The remaining kind of induction, which I shall call Qualitative Induction, is of more general utility than either of the others, while it is intermediate between them, alike in respect

 For more details, see Ibri (2017b, Chapter 3).  CP 2.756. 6  CP 6.473. 4 5

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to security and to the scientific value of its conclusions. In both these respects, it is well separated from each of the other kinds. It consists of those inductions which are neither founded upon experience in one mass, as Crude Induction is, nor upon a collection of numerable instances of equal evidential values, but upon a stream of experience in which the relative evidential values of different parts of it have to be estimated according to our sense of the impressions they make upon us.7

The fallible character of scientific propositions seems to be partially maintained in qualitative induction. This is the very property that it shares with statistical induction. Nonetheless, as it is based on certain impressions that experience mobilizes in the inquirer, it shares this aspect with crude induction. The absence of any example in the Peircean text makes his idea about this type of induction somewhat vague, inducing those who study Peirce to make a conjecture about how this would be in practice. That is why it seems plausible to suppose, just as mentioned before, that it can be associated with habitual perceptive judgments. Once again, I turn my attention to crude induction. It seems of special interest if associated with three of the four types of belief enumerated by Peirce in his classic Fixation of Belief.8 I mention only three of the four types in order to keep aside scientific belief from the practice of crude induction that, according to Peirce, is always conducive to universal propositions. Scientific propositions, in the light of the ontological indeterminism and the epistemological Fallibilism of Peircean philosophy, should incorporate a margin of error and of deviation in relation to parameters of higher frequency. Thus, my main hypothesis here is that the remaining beliefs, namely, authority, a priori, and tenacity, are in some way associated with crude induction and, consequently, produce universal propositions. In light of the vocabulary of semiotics,9 it is important, for the scope of this chapter, to address logical and emotional interpretants, inasmuch as we are able to consider them as more sharply distinct in nature, both in their relation to time and in their roles as mediations. Both of these interpretants, it can be said, are related to energetic interpretants, since they can incur in some form of action, albeit to different ends. Nonetheless, only logical interpretants can be associated with dynamic and final ends, because they are often related to temporal continuity and may be rationally predictive and teleological. Emotional interpretants, when merely qualisigns, are continuities without any logical form and, in this way, constitute genuine possibilities under pure firstness. Associated with some factual event, and therefore under an experience of secondness, they can predominate, clouding that essential categorial otherness able to create a state of doubt which, as we know in Peirce’s philosophy, is potentially instaurator of a new inquiry. It is also feasible to think that the emotional interpretants may, in the face of some state of doubt and to the extent that they predominate in judgments, lead to universal conclusions without a

 CP 2.759, italics from the original.  CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p. 109–123; W 3, p. 242–257. 9  For a detailed account of Peirce’s semiotics, see PW. 7 8

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semiotic dialogue with the temporal conduct of the object. Both cases will be considered below.

15.2 The Phenomenology of Qualisigns and Sinsigns Phenomenologically, we can have pure experiences under the two categories that do not involve objective time, namely, firstness and secondness.10 The pure experience of firstness is consummated in the form of free contemplation of the qualities of an object, be it natural or not.11 A beautiful and serene landscape or a beautiful work of art, or even an engaging piece of music, can grant an experience of unity of conscience defined by a quality of feeling endowed with continuity. In the conception of this experience, there is no notion of finitude or of self-consciousness arising from a separation, typical of secondness, between the mind that feels and the object of feeling. Schopenhauer12 calls this an aesthetic experience, characterized as a losing of oneself in the contemplated object, to the point of forgetting oneself. Unity or totality, or even continuity, is what this experience contains as a predicate. Peirce, in this passage in which he reflects on the aesthetic goodness, affirms In the light of the doctrine of categories I and whatever does this is, in so far, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the total may be. If that quality be such as to nauseate us, to scare us, or otherwise to disturb us to the point of throwing us out of the mood of esthetic enjoyment, out of the mood of simply contemplating the embodiment of the quality – just, for example, as the Alps affected the people of old times, when the state of civilization was such that an impression of great power was inseparably associated with lively apprehension and terror – then the object remains none the less esthetically good, although people in our condition are incapacitated from a calm esthetic contemplation of it.13

This totality or unity of the quality of feelings, which is, indeed, a continuum of qualities, may be considered pure qualisign. Signs of this nature do not contain a logical form and thus have no teleological characteristics that would make them linked to objective time, which we could call here Chronos.14 This link with time, which makes signs thinkable, is typical of signs of thirdness, or legisigns. Maintaining unity as their essential characteristic, their whole integrated by qualities in a continuum, the qualisigns are not associated with any values that could designate them as good or bad: I am seriously inclined to doubt there being any distinction of pure esthetic betterness and worseness. My notion would be that there are innumerable varieties of esthetic quality, but no purely esthetic grade of excellence.15  For more details, see Ibri (2017b, Chapter 1).  See Chaps. 2 and 3 of this work. 12  See Schopenhauer (1969, book 3). 13  CP 5.132; my italics. 14  See Chap. 23 of the present work. 15  CP 5.132. 10 11

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It is worthwhile to mention that, associated with what may be considered the most complex theme within Peirce’s normative sciences, the aesthetic goodness could not, then, be grounded only by the nature of qualisigns, which leads us to think that it must contain, given its intrinsic quality of feeling, some logical form that enables it to be thought of as an end in itself. Nevertheless, this is not my focus here. We are merely passing through the normative sciences to conceive the qualisigns as continua of qualities, thus phenomenologically experiencible possibilities without logical form. As such, they also constitute one of the foundations of Peirce’s cosmology, within his realist ontology. Let us remember that the logical forms of the universe, its habits, its laws, and its real thirdness all originate from continua of qualities, which constitute the interior side of the first category.16 This is the richest heuristic hypothesis, in my view, of Peirce’s philosophy which, for example, has implications for the synthetic character of abduction, passing originally through the unity of the perceptive judgment, in which it would be a mixture of qualisign and legisign. The logical form and the unity of feeling are associated in the processes of discovery and invention. On the other hand, a combination of qualisigns and legisigns also forms the masterpieces of art. In light of this Peircean heuristic, the perception of the new form in science and art, whether as discovery or creation still in the abductive stage, happens through a feeling of unity that announces a new form. This Phenomenology of discovery, I suppose, seems to have inspired the cosmogenesis of Peirce’s categories—from the generality of possibilities to the generality of logical forms. The laws of Nature spring from a tendency toward generalization, the principle law of the mind: But if the laws of nature are the result of evolution, this evolution must proceed according to some principle; and this principle will itself be of the nature of a law. But it must be such a law that it can evolve or develop itself [...] Evidently it must be a tendency toward generalization – a generalizing tendency [...] Now the generalizing tendency is the great law of mind, the law of association, the law of habit-taking [...] Hence, I was led to the hypothesis that the laws of universe have been formed under a universal tendency of all things toward generalization and habit-taking.17

Laws are habits of conduct composed of logical forms that are continuous in time. In this abduction of Peirce, they are in fact the evolutionary result of thirdness from firstness, passing through the theater of reactions of secondness. In this vector of evolution according to Peirce, there is already a direction toward the logical forms of thirdness, where the first category as a continuum of possibilities cohabits with the second category as a mode of being of those existents represented in the relations of law. Peirce’s cosmology, whose conjectural configuration is quite harmonious with the whole of his philosophy’s system of doctrines, shows that the logical process of

16 17

 For more details about Peirce’s cosmology, see Ibri (2017b, Chapter 5).  CP 7.515; passage, incidentally, also cited in Chapter 17 of the present work.

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scientific induction happens in reality. Moreover, it is none other than this argument that sustains Peirce’s objective idealism—mind constitutes the very nature of the whole universe, for the tendency to generalization as its principal law is the driving axis of evolution.18 Legisigns contain qualisigns in their agency in sinsigns. They make up the interactivity of the three categories. Qualities and logical forms operate in conjunction with the third category. The legisigns constitute continua of both. One could say that logical interpretants are always associated with emotional interpretants and that this synthesis of both constitutes a thinkable unity of time in the form of Kant’s schemas, valid, one could affirm, in the form of diagrams, as Peirce himself conceived them. Perceptive judgments are good examples of this synthesis of time that abductive insights allow.19 The conjunction of logical and emotional interpretants in judicative diagrams operates in the development of what could be called sensitivity, in contrast to pure emotionality, as I will discuss later. Conjectural judgments should not result in universal sentences. Regarding this feature, there is, we could say, an ontological abyss between Popperian falsificationism and Peircean Fallibilism. While the former searches for exceptions to universal sentences capable of invalidating them, the latter considers deviations that are consequences of probabilistic laws. Such laws are expressed by the distribution of probabilities that harbor a multitude of possible results with varying degrees of uncertainty. The very nature of conjectural judgments is investigative and thus genetically committed with its own observational character with respect to the otherness of their objects. They establish a semiotic dialogue with experience in order to constitute genuine and reasonably verisimilar representations. Let us consider these consequences for the kinds of beliefs that are not scientific.

15.3 Emotional Interpretants and Crude Induction It is understood from Peirce’s realist philosophy that mediations20 are logical forms that represent the general conduct of the objects represented, whose function is to make reasonable the cohabitation of individuals that are involved in some sort of relation. By cohabitation, we mean the forms of relation that combine common ends endowed with continuity, eliminating binary relationships that stanch themselves. This is, in general lines, what Peirce’s third category promotes; thirdness, which contains secondness, extends the binary relationships into ternary and systemic ones. Mediations should have a logical form that is capable of semiotic dialogue, committed to a necessary epistemological Fallibilism, in order to incorporate

 For more details about Peirce’s Objective Idealism, see Chap. 17 of the present work, as well as Ibri (2017b, Chapter 4). 19  See Chaps. 5 and 7 of the present work. 20  See Chap. 10 of the present work. 18

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changes in conduct, habit breaking, and phenomenological diversity that disqualifies universal final propositions of dogmatic nature. Carrying out these requisites imposes a permanent distinction between immediate object and dynamic object, in the recognition of otherness that should guide the form of the possible sayings about itself.21 When a language destined for the construction of mediations has no anchor in real objects, it always runs the risk of getting lost in judicative arbitrariness, in which fiction and reality are no longer distinguished. Power, in this case, can only be a term worshiped in its noun sense, overlapping its possible meaning as a verb, which is provided by the circulation of signs that aim at the joint and potentially communal decipherment of the future course of experience. Well beyond the mere practice of the sciences, scientific belief means a disposition to learn22 in a pragmatic sense. This disposition supposes that one maintains the ability to influence conduct in a distinct way, whenever experience demands so. The three remaining kinds of belief (authority, a priori, and tenacity), as Peirce proposes them, have in common, to a greater or lesser degree, what I have called in another paper the twilight of reality,23 namely, a gradual concealment of the dynamic objects that would anchor the judgments about reality. Peirce mentions,24 as an example of belief by authority, the action of the State in some tyrannical manner, imposing their values and ideology on their citizens. This is a typical case in which truth, in its sense of a correspondence with real things, is arbitrarily imposed through discourse in its role of exercising substantive power. Language, in this instance, serves secondness only through the exercise of force, being reduced to a mere degenerative thirdness. A priori belief, as a disposition to believe in that which one is inclined to do so, is also sealed off to dialogue with experience, making it so that language is reduced to a mere rhetoric that seeks to justify the validity of the belief. When Kant limited scientific discourses to those situated in the realm of possible experience, he was doing no less than maintaining the necessary dialogue with the otherness of phenomena. He clearly distinguished cognitive theories from dogmatic ones—the latter refer to some type of exterior world to which all phenomenological access is sealed. One could say, then, that the gradual concealment of reality in the kinds of beliefs increases in similar proportion to the dogmatism that typifies them. A priori beliefs encompass a considerable amplitude of kinds, intersecting with belief by authority. Another illustrative example can be drawn from religious beliefs, which, notwithstanding their non-dialogue with experience, institute diverse communities based on distinct interpretations of the so-called sacred texts. They almost all share a moral meaning of existence, consoling the spirits in the face of the torment of finitude, and promise a transcendent correction of earthly injustices.

 See Chap. 9 of the present work.  CP 1.43 and 5.582. 23  See Chap. 11 of the present work. 24  CP 5.379–382; EP 1, p. 117–119; W 3, p. 250–252. 21 22

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The most acute concealment of reality, we may say, occurs in the beliefs by tenacity. Tenacious is the individual or even the collective mind that maintains its opinion unshaken by completely sealing off the access to experiences that, by force of their otherness, might be able to provoke ruptures in habits of conduct. Here, once again, language has the inglorious task of justifying what possibly has no mirroring in the world, since, due to tenacity, the immediate objects are distanced absolutely from the dynamic objects. Allow me here to adopt the term sensitivity as a faculty that would operate through mediative perception, notwithstanding its quasi-immediate character, resulting from the harmonious junction of emotional and logical interpretants. I distinguish this faculty from that which could be called emotionality, which would operate judicatively by simple apparent factual similarity, separated from the logical forms that have temporal extension, namely, that preserve their predictive function of future phenomena. It seems noteworthy, in relation to those three kinds of belief with their respective degrees of dogmatism, to identify a distancing between the logical and emotional interpretants, breaking up their mutual work. In this work, the logical interpretants confer rational direction to the judgments, while the emotional interpretants give the unity of the quality of feeling that accompanies the good logical form. The continued exercise of this mutual work is supposed to train what I have suggested here be called sensibility. On the other hand, emotionality overemphasizes emotional interpretants, elevating them above logical interpretants and confining the latter to rhetorical exercises of language. Separated from their logical counterparts, because of their immediacy and unity, emotional interpretants identify in the facts only the similarities of qualities of feeling and tend to construe judgments by mere crude induction, incidents, as Peirce called them, in universal propositions. This would be an explanatory hypothesis, it seems, for the diverse forms of degenerative thirdness, since judgments solidify in forms of emotional induction that operate by mere analogy of qualities of feeling associated with the secondness of facts. The immediacy of judgments by mere emotional interpretation is not anchored in the temporal conduct of objects, but only in what their immediate appearance suggests to be similar to the immediate qualities of previous cases. Evidently, judgments that come from emotional interpretants with no connection to logical interpretants cannot be conjectural; neither can they incorporate any fallible character. Closed within their universality, they do not arouse interest in the future course of the object in the mind that conceives them, which would be feasible if some logical diagram would provide the possible inquiry with semiotic ways capable of representing the conduct of these objects.

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15.4 Self-Organization and Habits of Interpretation By self-organization, we mean a system of relationships that generate actions teleologically directed toward the interest of the elements that participate in it, consummating a tendency toward order based on an active interaction of the signs that circulate among those same elements. In light of this concept, we can say that habits of action are self-organized systems arising from the generalization of successful experiences in relation to the desired ends, formed by a natural tendency toward the construction of mediations in relation to any environment with which the system must cohabit. In essence, it seems legitimate to say that success in the collimation of ends establishes habits of action originating from logical induction, that is, of a statistical content, as we conceived in light of Peirce’s philosophy. This logical character is justified by the predictive efficiency of the habit—indeed, it constitutes the feedback that guarantees its permanence as mediation. The successful character of prediction implies, it seems sufficiently clear, that habit is inserted in a logical network of temporal nature. This makes it a genuine mediation. It is true that mediations of other nonlogical nature, such as emotional interpretants, are not inserted in the flux of objective time, Chronos, since they do not dialogue with the otherness that participates in real continua, of the nature of law. Emotional interpretants are also immediate, and if they persistently predominate in judgment, they are not capable of overcoming the mere secondness in which they are immersed in order to reach the third category—it is not in their nature to do so. This passage from secondness to thirdness would be a form of the discreet particular to become generalized as a logical continuum. The judgments that solidify or become fixed on mere secondness are, according to Peirce, degenerated. Degenerateness, in this sense, is nothing more than the inability to reach the generality of the third category by means of a statistical induction, the logical fabric to which logical interpretants are associated. Thus, we may say that self-organized systems necessarily have a logical nature and their interpretive power over the environment in which they are immersed implies a joint labor of the logical and emotional interpretants that constitute them. The first ones give rational direction of the ends that the system seeks to attain. The second ones confer unity to the judgments, capable of making them quasi-­immediate modes of perception of the signs of the environment in which the system is immersed. I mention here the expression quasi-immediate, since the perceptions are mediated by repertorial signs and not mere sense intuitions. Therefore, there is in these systems the association of two continua, those of emotional nature and those of logical nature. It is interesting to reflect on natural self-organizing systems, bringing one to conclude that the ecological equilibrium happens, supposedly, through a very broad communicative network of a logical-emotional nature, namely, to which belongs the commercialization of vital signs in temporally efficient habitual processes. Would it not be licit, then, to consider the faculty of instinct, for example, in the animal

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kingdom, as a quasi-immediate perceptive-judicative capability, in which the logical repertory is constituted by efficient habits acquired by the species? In this sense, would not such faculty be framed by legisigns and qualisigns forming logical-­ emotional interpretants whose interactive network constitutes the natural self-­ organizing system? It is possible to say that natural beings, except for man, could not adopt crude inductions in order to consolidate habits of conduct that, by nature, do not dialogue with environmental otherness. Their inefficiency as mediations would be vitally fatal. Nonetheless, there should be some margin of error in the action of natural beings, even though they constitute, it is known, only a minimal fraction of the totality of their respective existences. In this regard, it is also interesting to think about how we human beings are, quite frequently, submitted to a high degree of dispersion in relation to the correct action toward the desired ends. Could we not then conjecture that this characteristic be a consequence of excessive noncommitment between emotional and logical interpretants, making the former distance themselves from the latter and, by this, promoting a predominance of crude inductions with no predictive power? It is true that human civilization and culture have brought about a myriad of mediations that offer vital protection and partial neutralization of this erratic wandering of ours based on continua with no logical direction, non-dialoguing, apart from the Chronos. A natural being acting tenaciously, for example, would succumb to the secondness of its surrounding environment. It is important here, however, in the face of the amplitude and even the allure of this theme, to at least suppose that self-organized systems are constituted by the harmonic labor of a judicative competence that acts as its mediation with regard to the environment, formed by the equilibrium of emotional and logical interpretants that constitute efficiently predictive habits of conduct.

15.5 Thematic Overview In conclusion, I intend to propose a distinction between sensitive and emotional minds. The first ones have epistemological abilities that are essential for inquiry, since they provide perceptive judgments that give origin to hypotheses. Therefore, they are immersed in objective time and build mediations through semiotic dialogue with factuality. Emotional minds, on the other hand, extract from the contingency of facts those qualities of feeling that seem analogous to them, tending to adopt conduct originated by crude induction. The universal propositions that flow from this type of induction come from the very nature of the continua of qualities, which, once made discreet by factual secondness, maintain their original tendency toward totalization. In this chapter, I have also considered the distinction between emotionality and sensitivity in the realm of self-organized systems, human and natural, in the face of the legitimate realist extension of the concept of mind to both domains.

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Sensitivity, as a faculty of the mind, is associated with a continuous growth, in the measure in which it is immersed in a semiotic network that engages in dialogue with the otherness of dynamic objects. The faculty of emotionality is unable to dialogue with otherness because it is not nourished by logical forms capable of representing it with verisimilitude. When emotional interpretants are isolated from logical structures, they incur in crude induction and, as already shown, produce universal propositions. They do not seem to be able to distinguish any possible diversity in the unity, taking into account that unity, as Peirce affirms, is the proper and essential feature of the quality of feeling that constitutes them. A myriad of variables of psychoanalytic nature seem to arise based on this distinctive conjecture between sensitivity and emotionality. What could justify maintaining tenacious beliefs, for example? What could justify adopting power games? What emotional interpretants are connected to the consciousness of finitude and to the risks of a future that could denounce the powerlessness of our mediations? Crude induction would then not only be the generalization of absent cases, in the form: what has not occurred, it is concluded that it will never occur.25 Merely emotional induction generalizes affirmatively the cases that contain qualities of feeling similar in the facts, inducing the formation of habits mainly associated with tenacious beliefs. Concrete reasonableness, the final interpretant of Peircean ethics, should rely, I suppose, on those minds endowed with sensitivity so as to be inserted in a semiotic network of agapic evolution. The practice of solitude should not be anchored in the impotence to overcome forms of suffering but rather in the necessary recollection of sensitivity that prepares itself to insert into the world its contribution to make that reasonableness feasible.

25

 As, by the way, is the exemplary case mentioned by Peirce.

Part VI

On Pragmatism and Objective Idealism

Chapter 16

The Schellingian Roots of Peirce’s Idealism

Keywords  Schelling · Objective idealism · Realism · Indeterminism · Peirce The German philosophy that immediately followed Kant inherited from him its main ideas and problems, initiating the era of idealism. Nevertheless, the generality of the expression German Idealism is completely dispelled when comparing, for example, the thoughts of Fichte and Schelling. The former is the latter’s starting point, who in his youth adopts the main lines of Fichtean philosophy. However, endowed with a profoundly poetic spirit that appears in many passages of his text, Schelling could not stand for long a total lack of the clear aesthetic quality inherent to German romanticism that colored Fiche’s Doctrine of Science. Indeed, the principles of Fichtean philosophy evolve in the grounding of a subject that, starting from Kant, is increasingly internalized, acquiring a legislatorial character that takes the problem of the subjective constitution of the world to a radical extreme. During this period, the question of the necessity-freedom dichotomy was actively resumed under a dual trend. On one hand, causality as a fundamental rule of knowledge ensnaring the phenomenon in an antecedent-consequent web is inherited from the Kantian solution of Hume’s skepticism, and, on the other hand, the libertarian winds of the French revolution, which brought about the reassertion of the subject’s innate unconditionality. The figure of the constitutive subject owes much to this necessary reassertion of freedom. This reassertion is the vertex from which emanate the ethical-libertarian edge engraved in the enlightenment, as well as the epistemological-­constitutive edge which marks the apology of rationality in the face of a supposedly definite deciphering of the principles of Nature in the three laws of the Newtonian dynamics. The specter of the Kantian thing-in-itself, however, remained in the center of the questions of idealism. Fichte keeps it in innerness, resolving, by principle, this Kantian residue of the real world which remained uncomfortably loose in Nature, uncomfortably external to the self. An extreme solution was thus called for. This chapter is based on a text I authored: Schellingian Roots of Peirce’s Idealism, originally published in: Noema, v. 6, p. 1–25, 2015c. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_16

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Radically, innerness takes over the world to domesticate it in light of a self that emerges as an eminently practical being: the grounding act is no longer solely theoretical; it is the action of that without which no reality is possible; and, on this stage built by an act of the subject, all moral acts are also played out. In a daring step that overcomes the Kantian dichotomy between the theoretical and practical spheres, Fichte merges them in a single world. Just for this reason that unknowable specter should also be ensnared in the self. The moral purpose of the subject legitimizes its establishment as cognitive and active being, disseminating to the non-self and shaping it in its image—in other words, creating it in accordance with its spirit. On this point, Neuhouser adds Thus, Fichte will endeavor to prove the existence of practical reason by showing that such a faculty is a necessary condition for the possibility of theoretical reason […] Although the account of theoretical reason will precede that of practical reason in order of exposition, this strategy actually implies a primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason in the sense that the latter is shown to be grounded in, or conditioned by, the former.1

It is on the three principles of his Science of Knowledge of 17942 that Fichte achieves the basis of his project. The first one is a self-founding of the self as the active apprehension of a consciousness of itself that posits itself: it is self-identical and so constitutes a sole and indissoluble unit in its genesis, stage of all the reactions that it will necessarily have to posit itself and also to oppose to itself. An absolute subjectivity, modeled on the logical principle of identity A = A and grounded in the form of I = I, establishes itself and, as such, is absolute. This self-positing is, above all, practical. In the words of Hartmann, […] neither the “I am” nor the “I think” of Descartes; but solely the “I act”. Kant’s transcendental perception, to which Fichte here consciously links himself, is not exhausted for him in being the supreme principle of cognitive consciousness; it also represents the supreme principle of practical consciousness.3

This self-identical I that senses its absolute freedom and posits itself as innately practical is, for this reason, genetically productive; there shall no longer be an equivalence of rights between subject and object; the latter will be the product of the former. That intellectual intuition which, according to Kant, is the source of all metaphysical errors now becomes the ground of all possible realities.4 The work and result of this primary action productive of a self, exteriority is while also posited as non-self and antithetically as a resistance to that absolute freedom. By opposing, then, a non-self to the original self, a duality is established that must be resolved at the level of reason. This reduction of the object to an integral function of the subject

 Neuhouser, 1990, p. 47.  Fichte, 1965, p. 173–478. 3  Hartmann, 1983, p. 60. 4  In Torres Filho (1975, p.  67), it reads “he finds intellectual intuition as the ‘absolute form of knowledge, the pure form of ‘egoity’. To say, then, from his viewpoint, that: ‘only freedom is the first immediate object of a knowledge’ may be correctly translated as: ‘knowledge only starts with self-consciousness.’”. 1 2

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translates into the formulation of the second principle of the Doctrine of Science: the self posits the non-self as its opposite; and this active, practical act of positing is what grounds the reality of the entire exteriority; without the subject and its act, it is nothing. The solution of this dichotomy is synthetically given in the third principle at the consummation of a dialectical process that has both its genesis and end in innerness. A possible conciliation is only accomplished by the constraint of that consciousness that, initially absolute, is cut and limited to contain that which is foreign to its freedom, but which was posited by itself. On the other hand, this cut and limitation cannot be restricted to consciousness; the other posited must be a limited other for the conscious substratum to contain the opposition of two finitudes.5 Thus self and non-self are conciliated, mutually limited in a process of synthesis that distinguishes the similarities and differences, but united under the same consciousness that, ultimately, requires the other as resistance to its unlimited action, even though initially it is solely a self-contemplation of its absolute freedom. Hartmann expresses well this fundamental trait of the Doctrine of Science: If the practical behavior of the Self simply consists in pure activity that, without resistance, would be infinite, the practical I would coincide with the absolute I and, thus, there would be no need to explain self-constraint. But this is not the case. Conduct, action and act are not an unlimited production, but rather an act on anything. Its activity is aspiration and to aspire is to conquer. One can only conquer where there is resistance, one can only aspire to something where there is something that resists aspiration, that is, an obstacle; in a word, where there is an object to which one can, in some way, aspire. However, the object emerges for the theoretical I in its action of positing the non-Self as determinant and real. Opposition, thus, is a condition of aspiration. The absolute I has to become theoretical to be practical; it first has to create the world of objects in whose resistance it shall become active.6

In fact, this reality posited by the subject in its own innerness to perform the necessary role of opposition is the means by which moral action becomes possible. In the standpoint of resolvable antithesis, the subject’s innately grounding freedom must be redeemed, not only as a predicate of itself but as a predicate of an entire cognitive history of such a self/non-self dialectical relationship. For this reason, Fichte cannot admit the thing in itself outside of the subject; its ensnarement in innerness is, simultaneously, the basic condition for its overcoming. While the external and demarcatory thing in itself remained in Kant, in Fichte, everything was radically internalized under the yoke of the active subject, whose mission is to recover a freedom experienced as self-contemplation, creating a realm for itself where Nature is mere resistance that must be overcome. To posit the non-self within the absolute subject is to draw away from an infinite freedom toward an existence that also reacts as finite in a reciprocal determination of absolute opposites. Primarily, however, the absolute self is the ground where the

 Fichte (1988, p. 136; my italics) is explicit regarding this concept of limitation: “The Self cannot posit the non-Self without limiting itself. For the non-Self is totally opposed to the Self; what the non-Self is, the Self is not […] The expressions posit a non-Self and limit the Self are wholly equivalent.”. 6  Hartmann, 1983, p. 78. 5

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world is fulfilled: “The source of all reality is the Self, since it is the immediate and the pure and simply posited. Only through the Self and with the Self is the concept of reality given.”7 While being the instance where the world acquires its condition of possibility, the self actively posits its own opposition to determine itself in finitude and, by doing so, posits something foreign to its absoluteness, which, inherently, has no opposites: But man, insofar as the predicate of freedom may be applied, i.e., insofar as he is the absolute subject, neither represented nor representable, has nothing in common with natural beings and, therefore, is also not their opposite.8

Torres Filho refers to Fichte’s statement in which he calls himself acosmist while affirming the nullity of the empirical world: the given world – whether taken as a system of thing or as a system of determinations of consciousness – absolutely does not exist in any strong sense of the word, and in its base and ground is nothing.9

It is obvious that between the self and the non-self, there can be no form of continuum, which, in itself, would only be the fundamental trace of that absolute consciousness filled by nothing but itself: “It is thus that, between nature and intelligence, there cannot be any kind of continuity.”10 Schelling, for his part, in search of an idealism in which Nature is not solely this obstacle to moral action, and after moving away from Fichtean thought, from which he absorbed the basic principles11 still in his youth, replaced that genealogical intellectual intuition by an eminently empirical intuition, where the aesthetic qualities of the world point toward a unity between consciousness and Nature quite distinct from an empty and unlimited unity that is free but without a world where this infinitude can also be immediately apprehended. The Schellingian eye does not turn on itself as Fichte’s does; it opens to a Nature whose verbal silence is not indicative of a radical lack of language but is rather a challenge to see it in time as a teleological process intelligently articulated by it.12

 Fichte, 1988, p. 69; my italics.  Fichte, 1988, p. 59. 9  Fichte apud Torres Filho, 1975, p. 76. 10  Torres Filho, 1975, p. 80. 11  On this point, see Schelling (1994, p. 22–57), Thomas Pfau’s Introduction to Three Essays by Schelling. 12  In Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797, 2nd ed. 1803), Schelling mentions the aura that the philosophy of Nature inherited since the beginning of Greek cosmological philosophy, which is not redeemable by reflexive philosophy, in an obvious reference to Fichte, stressing this utterable natural language: “Hence the peculiar aura which surrounds this problem, an aura which the philosophy of mere reflection, which sets out only to separate, can never develop, whereas the pure intuition, or rather, the creative imagination, long since discovered symbolic language, which one has only to construe in order to discover that Nature speaks to us the more intelligibly the less we think of her in a merely reflective way” (Schelling, 1988, p. 35; my italics). 7 8

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Schelling’s reconciliation of ideality and reality will not be accomplished by conceiving the latter as a product of subjectivity, as a consequence of a complete interiorization of the world, but rather by the extensionality of the former to a subject-­object relationship consummated in an ontological idea of Nature and identity. The experience of infinitude that Fichte confined in the void of intellectual intuition becomes objectified in Schelling13 as aesthetic experience: This universally acknowledged and altogether incontestable objectivity of intellectual intuition is art itself. For the aesthetic intuition simply is the intellectual intuition becoming objective.

This objectified infinitude must, in turn, be the starting point of philosophy; art is the factual source of this merger of the finite and the infinite. The artist starts from this contradiction of expressing, in the finite work, the infinite that becomes the identity of the ideal and the real. Art is the primary document of this identity; its production, albeit conscious, is extravasated by the product: Just as the man of destiny does not execute what he wishes or intends, but rather what he is obliged to execute by an inscrutable fate which governs him, so the artist, however deliberate he may be, seems nonetheless to be governed, in regard to what is truly objective in his creation, by a power which separates him from all other men, and compels him to say or depict things which he does not fully understand himself, and whose meaning is infinite.14

The undeniable polysemy of the work of art, Schelling’s original concept that contemporaneity seems to ignore by proposing, as new, the idea of an open work, assumes full importance in that author in the philosophical sphere, since the artistic product is a form of documentation of the absolute and a means for the ideality-­ reality-­ideality transference in a continuum of possibilities where the central idea of freedom is engraved. This unruliness of the senses of the artist that overcomes his or her initial or even final intentionality, Schelling calls an unconscious activity transgressing consciousness; it is the work of art that consummates the identity between them.15 There is an unconscious poetics permeating ideality and reality that, as a universe of heuristic possibilities, overcomes merely conscious activity, which is the metamorphosing and necessary ability to achieve the artistic object: If we are to seek in one of the two activities, namely, the conscious, for what is ordinarily called art, though it is only one part thereof, namely, that aspect of it which is exercised with consciousness, thought and reflection, and can be taught and learnt and achieved through tradition and practice, we shall have, on the other hand, to seek in the unconscious factor which enters into art for that about it which cannot be learned, nor attained by practice, nor in any other way, but can only be inborn through the free bounty of nature; and this is what we may call, in a word, the element of poetry in art.16

 Schelling, 1978, p. 229; my italics.  Schelling, 1993, p. 223. 15  Schelling, 1993, p. 225. This point is reaffirmed in “Hence, that which appears to us outside the sphere of consciousness, as real, and that which appears within it, as ideal, or as the world of art, are also products of one and the same activity” (Schelling, 1978, p. 230). 16  Schelling, 1993, p. 222–223; my italics. 13 14

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Aesthetic experience reveals the One, the Absolute; this must be the primary point of all philosophy, hence the importance of art for it. The Absolute now is no longer excluded from the sphere of possible experience; on the contrary, it is the original immediate experience in which there is this exclusion of time in the full consciousness of infinite. Schelling sees in a primary experience of world an entirety that does not oppose itself, that does not resist, and that interiorizes itself as an aesthetic feeling. Fichte, on the other hand, in order to banish resistance, requires that genetic grounding innerness of self-identity that leads him to experience the empty freedom of the empirical. However, for Fichte, this spirit is a gift from a divinity that remains hidden: God remains absolutely Other as infinitude; Nature is absolutely other as finitude. The absolute self is primarily alone, and this solitude can never be broken by the presence of the non-self in consciousness: they are as antagonistic as spirit and stone. In Bruno (1802),17 Schelling seems to invite Fichte to abdicate from that innate solitude: Thou shalt abandon this strait in which thou hast remained previously by restricting supreme unity to consciousness, and thou shalt obtain with me the free ocean of the Absolute where we shall not only move more vividly but also know the infinite depths and heights of reason.

To place the Absolute as genesis in the cognitive realm would legitimately turn Schellingian philosophy into a precritical regression, as some scholars might suspect? As a faithful heir of Kant, Schelling could not make an epistemological discourse on the Absolute without first preparing a suitable space in the universe of possible experience. In this aspect, the Absolute is primarily given as an aesthetic experience which, in turn, is the sensitive expression of absolute freedom: no longer the self, but the whole of the subject-Nature identity. This experience of the very order of the ineffable is absolutely consummated as a contemplation that, ultimately, is the aesthetic transgression of the possibility of the concept: Thus, to know the eternal is to contemplate, in things, being and thinking solely unified by their essence, but not to place, be it the concept as effect of things, or things as effect of the concept. Nothing is more distant from truth than this. For thing and concept are not one through a linkage of cause and effect, but through the Absolute and, truly considered, are solely the different perspectives of one and the same; for nothing exists that had not been finitely and infinitely expressed in the eternal. […] Nevertheless, the nature of that eternal in itself and for itself is difficult to express in mortal words.18

From that original experience of infinite, Schelling brings the Absolute to the interior of the Universe, turning the latter into the exterior and finite expression of the Former. This is one of the points of Schelling’s criticism of the philosophies that

 Schelling, 1989, 293, p. 129.  Schelling, 1989, 302, p. 136; my italics. In System of Philosophy in General and of the Philosophy of Nature in Particular (1804), one finds: “the mode of cognition of the Absolute, if indeed He is, is contemplative” (Schelling, 1994, 6. 153–154, p. 151). 17 18

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consider God outside of Nature and of Man, perpetuating the opposition between finite and infinite: Through this opposition, men have learned to see nature outside of God, and God outside of nature and, insofar as they have divested the former of the sacred need, they subordinated it to the profane that they call mechanical, but for this very reason, made of the ideal world the stage of a lawless freedom. At the same time, insofar as they have determined the former as a merely passive being, they believed they have acquired for themselves the right to determine God, who they raise above nature, as pure activity, pure activeness, as if one of these concepts had not remained and perished with the other, and had truth by itself. […] But if they are told that nature is not outside of God, but in God, they understand by it this nature that was killed by the separation from God, as if this, generally, were something in itself or, generally, something more that the creature created by they themselves.19

This text highlights Schelling’s critique of Kant and Fichte—of the former, in the reference to the concept of Nature as a thing in itself; of the latter, in the considerations of subjective ideality as a stage of a lawless freedom, and of Nature as a mere creature of subjectivity. Even Spinoza, whom he genuinely admired as “the first who, with a complete clarity, saw mind and matter as one,”20 made the mistake of placing the identity of the ideal and the real outside the human, in an Infinite Substance.21 Nevertheless, what concept joins this primary Schellingian intuition of infinity, clarifying the way Nature is in the Absolute, and reciprocally? What would legitimize, in the universe of what can be said, that experience of totality, genetically ineffable? Schelling conceived Nature as the finite aspect of the infinite, that is, the external expression of the divinity that, from potency, becomes actuality and makes itself known. However, as this exteriority is the finite form of the infinite, such makes itself known cannot be to an other, for “the Absolute does not create from itself nothing more than itself, hence, once more, the Absolute.”22 Therefore The Absolute is an eternal act of cognition, which in itself is matter and form, a creating in which, eternally, it makes of itself in its wholeness as idea, as pure identity, realm form and inversely, but equally eternally, dissolves itself as form, to this extent as object in essence or in subject.23

The reflectivity of the Fichtean subject migrates, in Schelling, to the Absolute. As eternal act of cognition, subjectivity is a kind of innerness in the exteriority of the Absolute; one could say that contemplation is nothing more than self-­ contemplation of an infinite process of exteriorization as Nature. Ideal and real

 Bruno, 306–307, p. 138 (In Schelling, 1989, p. 138).  Schelling, 1988, p. 15. 21  Schelling, 1988, p. 28. This paper does not intend to discuss Espinosa’s position on this issue but solely to present the reading that Schelling makes of that author. 22  Schelling, 1989, p. 50. 23  Schelling, 1989, p. 50. This original unity is also explicated in: “to the same extent that the infinite figures in a finite, the latter is also, in turn, in the infinite as finite, and these two units, because of all essence, are again a sole unit” (Schelling, 1989, p. 51). 19 20

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merge, in that unity of the Absolute, as connaturality. The divinity permeates everything, engraving in the finite a symbolic character: In eternal nature the Absolute becomes for itself, in its absoluteness (which is pure identity), a particular, a being, but also in this it is absolutely ideal, absolute act of cognition; in the nature that appears the particular form is only known as particular, and in this the Absolute hides in an other that it, itself, is in its absoluteness, in a finite, a being, which is its symbol and which, as such, acquires, as every symbol, a life independent from that that it means. In an ideal world, strips away as it were the cover and also appears as that which it is, as ideal, as act of cognition, but in a way that, conversely, leaves behind the other side keeping only one of them: the side of the re-dissolution of finitude in infinitude, of particular in essence. 24

In the Stuttgart Seminars (1810), Schelling proposes the formula A/(B=C) to express that the Real (B) keeps a relation of original identity with the Ideal (C), under the Absolute (A), affirming that “it is not to say that the Real and the Ideal are numerically or logically the same, but rather that they designate an essential unity.”25 In this work, he writes further: We are frequently questioned over how, if philosophy conceives of God as its ground, we can arrive at any knowledge of God or the Absolute. There is no answer to this question. The existence of what is unconditional cannot be proven as the existence of something finite. The unconditional is the element on which any demonstration becomes possible […] Philosophy is occupied with the progressive demonstration of the Absolute, which cannot be required as a principle of philosophy.26

Thus, it is a fact that there is no definitely deductive proof of the Absolute or, as Kant well demonstrated, there is no call to venture in the game of antinomies in this respect. However, this passage in Schelling’s work tacitly suggests an idea of the task of philosophy in progressive demonstration as well as the author’s consciousness that his thought is not a regression to a precritical metaphysics. In what concerns that role of philosophical activity, there is a concept of progressiveness that is not only confined to the evolution of philosophical work over time but also to the gradual exteriorization of the Absolute as Nature. Knowledge, in other words, does not objectify something lifeless, already accomplished as a process. This is an evolutionary view of Nature and of its representation, which, in the analysis of the conception of the Absolute in Schelling, was well characterized by Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being: But true philosophy and truly objective science are not a chanting of tautologies. Their object is always a concrete and living thing; and their progress and evolution is a progress and evolution of the object itself.27

 Schelling, 1989, p. 52; my italics.  Schelling, 1994, p. 198. 26  Schelling, 1994, p. 199. 27  Lovejoy, 1982, p. 324. The author is emphatic in stressing the importance of this idea of evolution present in Schelling’s work: “It is – as has too little been noted by historians – in this introduction of a radical evolutionism into metaphysics and theology, and in the attempt to revise even the principles of logic to make them harmonize with an evolutional conception of reality, that the historical significance of Schelling chiefly consists” (Lovejoy, 1982, p. 325). 24 25

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This concept of the exteriorization of the Absolute’s atemporality in time, as Lovejoy comments further, is original in the face of emanationist and creationist ideas: God himself was temporalized ⎯ was indeed identified with the process by which the whole creation slowly and painfully ascends the scale of possibility; or, if the name is to be reserved for the summit of the scale, God was conceived as the not yet realized final term of the process. Thus for emanationism and creationism came to be substituted what may best be called radical or absolute evolutionism ⎯ the typically Romantic evolutionism of which Bergson’s L’Évolution créatice is in great part re-editing.28

It is in the idea of an eternally processive Nature that Schelling sees this living symbol of the Absolute as the gradual transposition of the infinite to the finite; life in Nature, observable as a phenomenon, places the Schellingian philosophy before all those that have as a concept of exteriority an inexorable other that, lifeless in itself, merely obstructs the freedom of the Absolute: No wonder that language, used dogmatically, soon lost sense and meaning. So long as I myself am identical with Nature, I understand what a living nature is as well as I understand my own life; I apprehend how this universal life of Nature reveals itself in manifold forms, in progressive developments, in gradual approximations to freedom. As soon, however, as I separate myself and with me everything ideal, from Nature, nothing remains to me but a dead object, and I have ceased to comprehend how a life outside me can be possible.29

To Schelling, it is certainly credible that where there is freedom there is life. And the knowledge of life is no longer acquired in the immediateness of aesthetic intuition but rather through temporal observation of the processes of Nature that reveal organisms endowed with purpose: Only in organized beings are they (the objects) real; they exist without my participation, because there is an objective relationship between them and the whole. Thus, a concept lies at the base of every organization, for where there is a necessary relation of the whole to the part and of the part to the whole, there is concept. But this concept dwells in the organization itself, and can by no means be separated from it; it organizes itself, and is not simply, say, a work of art whose concept is to be found outside it in the understanding of the artist. Not only its form but its existence is purposive […]. In the organic product, for this very reason, form and matter are inseparable; this particular matter could only arise and come to be along with this particular form, and vice-versa. Every organization is therefore a whole; its unity lies in itself; it does not depend on our choice whether we think of it as one or as many.30

Although Schelling refers to the real as simply that which is outside of us, be it particular or general, contrary to scholastic realism that distinguishes real from existent, there emerges in this last passage, in the idea of organism, in which lies a concept responsible for its systemic behavior, the reality of the universal as law,

 Lovejoy, 1982 p. 317.  Schelling, 1988, p. 36; my italics. 30  Schelling, 1988, p. 31; my italics. 28 29

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whose fabric is of an intellectual nature.31 Further, two points of this passage must be stressed: on the one hand, it affirms this law in itself32 and, on the other hand, defines it as independent of our thought. This realistic stance that deals unrestrainedly with the thing in itself, and with an otherness that ultimately derives from an utter repudiation of subjective constitution, is legitimized by the Schellingian Absolute Idealism. In fact, the idea of living organism as a teleological conduct originating in experience is a proof of it. Only a mental nature, unified in the concept of matter, can attribute this telos to life. Also according to the author, the mere mechanical scheme of causality cannot explain this living and purposeful character of natural organizations: Cause and effect is something evanescent, transitory, mere appearance (in the usual sense of the word). So, if the purposiveness of the organic product is to be explained, the dogmatist finds himself completely deserted by his system. Here it no longer avails to separate concept and object, form and matter, as it pleases us. For here, at least, both are originally and necessarily united, not in our idea, but in the object itself. I would like one of those who take playing with concepts for philosophy, and fantasies of things for real things, to venture with us into this field.33

Opposing, in a fictitious dialogue, someone advocating a subjectivist idealism,34 Schelling states Hence the first thing that you grant is this: Any conception of purpose can arise only in an intelligence, and only in relation to such intelligence can anything be called purposive […] When you think of each plant as an individual in which everything concurs together for one purpose, you must seek the reason for that in the thing outside you: you feel yourself constrained in your judgment; you must therefore confess that the unity with which you think it is not merely logical (in your thoughts) but real (actually outside you).35

It is interesting to see that the so-called German Idealism manifests a certain conceptual affinity between its members; it houses both the radical realism of an author like Schelling, along with the critical idealism of Kant, and the subjective idealism of Fichte. However, while the latter authors are the starting point for Schelling, he clearly and surgically distances himself from their idealisms grounded on the constitutive subject. His fundamental critique of the viewpoint of subjective  Peirce, incidentally, comments on this presence of thought in Nature: “Thought is not necessarily connected to a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there. Consistently adhere to that unwarrantable denial, and you will be driven to some form of idealistic nominalism akin to Fichte’s” (CP 4. 551). 32  For Schelling (1988, p. 16), the concept of a thing in itself is absolutely meaningless, calling it a speculative chimera, extracted from Leibniz and taken to an extreme by Kantian transcendentalism. 33  Schelling, 1988, p. 31; my italics. To this viewpoint of Schelling, Andrew Bowie (1993, p. 38) adds “Schelling’s fundamental idea in Naturphilosophie is that the organized character of the mind (Geist) and the organized character of nature, absolutely, cannot be separated.” 34  Which, incidentally, Schelling (1989, p. 53) defines as “relative idealism,” featured by “only one of the sides which, without the other, is unthinkable.” 35  Schelling, 1988, p. 32; my italics. 31

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constitution, as regards the empirical evidence of natural law, is centered on the assumption of giving form to the phenomenon: That which is form in the things, [some philosophers] say, we initially imposed on the things. But I have long sought to know just how you could be acquainted with what the things are, without the form which you first impose on them, or what the form is, without the things on which you impose it. You would have to concede that, here at least, the form is absolutely inseparable from the matter, and the concept from the object. Or, if it rests with your choice whether or not to impose the idea of purposiveness on things outside you, how does it come about that you impose this idea only on certain things, and not on all?36

There is clearly, in Schelling’s realistic view, this otherness that hinders the judgment of the subjective constitution. It seems fitting to consider that the vector of ontological determination is from the object to representation. On the other hand, it is evident that in the mind-matter unity as professed by Schelling, there must be gradual stages of life, that is, from less free and determined forms to freer and more undetermined ones: “there is a hierarchy of life in Nature. Even in mere organized matter there is life, but a life of a more restricted kind.”37 By contrast, by not conceiving in the phenomenon, this autonomy of the law that confers order to exteriority, Kant, like Fichte, cannot attribute life to matter in the sense of acknowledging in it an organized substratum of an intellectual nature. Thus, for example, in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences (1786), Kant38 relates the inertia of matter to an absence of life, whereas in the evolutionary prism of Schellingian philosophy, the question of the genesis of subjectivity almost naturally emerges. We purposefully stress the naturalness of the question because it can have an unencumbered treatment within a realistic and evolutionary philosophy, contrary to the hindrances that it provokes within nominalism. Andrew Bowie stresses this aspect in the following passage: Kant’s theoretical philosophy has no way of explaining this genesis. For the Kant of the theoretical philosophy, answers to such questions of genesis depend upon the cognitive functioning of the already constituted subject, which means that one has no right to ask how such subject itself becomes constituted. Schelling justifiably thinks that this is insufficient to account for our ability to understanding the nature of which we are a part.39

This question in Schelling is clear in the following passage of Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, in which he states that the rule of causality, fundamental for a mechanical worldview, does not apply to that which is endowed with growth and life: […] the concepts of cause and effect are altogether inapplicable to a mind. It is, therefore, absolutely self-explanatory of its being and knowing, and just because it exists at all, is also what it is, i.e., a being to whose nature this particular system of ideas of external things also belongs. […] Philosophy, accordingly, is nothing other than a natural history of our mind.

 Schelling, 1988, p. 33; my italics.  Schelling, 1988, p. 35. 38  Kant, 1970, p. 105. 39  Bowie, 1993, p. 34; my italics. 36 37

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From now on all dogmatism40 […] is overturned from its foundations. We consider the system of our ideas not in its being, but in its becoming. Philosophy becomes genetic; that is, it allows the whole necessary series of our ideas to arise and take its course, as it were, before our eyes. From now on there is no longer any separation between experience and speculation. The system of Nature is at the same time the system of our mind, and only now, once the great synthesis has been accomplished, does our knowledge return to analysis (to research and experiment).41

To let the mind flow just as it is, is equivalent to saying that its natural form will force itself experientially upon its representation, in the formation of all its nuances. There is now an origin for the mind-matter affinity and a radical rupture of the estrangement between interiority and exteriority or, in other words, between subject and object. As a method, the Schellingian philosophy is primarily synthetic42; analysis finds its legitimacy in that essential unity. Thus, there is in Schelling no characterization of a dialectic of opposites whose synthesis occurs within subjectivity through a priori forms, an operation that, by not revealing its genesis, dichotomizes the necessary link between representation and world.43 It is thus that intuition, as originary locus of all knowledge, is no longer the sole primary organizing instance of the phenomenon, conferring to it only a spatiotemporal structure but also the faculty that legitimately apprehends the must-be external to the conditions of truth of representation: […] From this it is clear why intuition is not – as many pretended philosophers have imagined – the lowest level of knowledge, but the primary one, the highest in the human mind, that which truly constitutes its mental nature.44

Experience becomes the central vertex where the form penetrates subjectivity, constituting not a path for substantially estranged matter but matter that is innate and exclusively mental: […] we are required to know not how such a Nature arose outside us, but how even the very Idea of such a Nature has got into us […] What we want is not that Nature should coincide with the laws of our mind by chance (as if through some third intermediary), but that she herself, necessarily and originally, should not only express, but even realize, the laws of our mind, and that she is, and is called, Nature insofar as she does so.45

 It should be remembered that Schelling considers dogmatic all philosophies that ground their reading of Nature exclusively on causality. 41  Schelling, 1988, p. 30; my italics. 42  Another passage that reaffirms this point is: “It is safer, therefore, to allow the concept to arise, as it were, before our eyes, and thus to find the ground of its necessity in its own origin, This is the synthetic procedure” (Schelling, 1988, p. 172). 43  In Schelling (1988, p. 26), it reads: “this mind contains within itself certain a priori forms […]. In representing things, we apprehend them in these forms. Thus, amorphous objects acquire structure; empty forms, content. As it happens that things become represented, there is the deepest silence about it.” 44  Schelling, 1988, p. 177; my italics. 45  Schelling, 1988, p. 41–42. 40

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Philosophy as the natural history of our mind is legitimized as also being a Philosophy of Nature and of the Identity of the ideal and the real, enabling Schelling to state that “Nature would be the Mind made visible, and the Mind the invisible Nature.”46 By refusing deterministic causality as an exclusive method of inquiry, Schelling, although not having lived in the environment of indeterminism that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, predicts, through his ideas of freedom and systemic organization of the products of Nature, a science that addresses the partial indetermination of objects. This tacit indeterminism of Schelling is grounded in this triple relationship between life, freedom, and mind: So here again, we meet that absolute unification of Nature and Freedom in one and the same being. The living organism is to be a product of Nature: but in this natural product an ordering and coordinating Mind is to rule.47

It seems adequate to state that Schelling redeems God, soul, and freedom to the sphere of the cognoscible, by being primary grounds of all experience. Freedom is revealed not only temporally in the intuition that provides the observation of life in Nature, whether in conscious innerness or unconscious exteriority,48 but also in that non-time of aesthetic, primary intuition of the Absolute. This is what transpires in the following passage of Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809)49: “Only those who savored freedom can feel the desire of making everything similar to it, and making the entire Universe a part of it.”50 Although adjusted to the idea of progress in the romanticism of that era, Schelling did not experience the atmosphere of evolutionism typical of the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the idea of evolution is patently present in his philosophy, redeeming a chaos-cosmos vector of ancient philosophy: After the eternal act of Self-revelation, everything in the world is as appears to us now: law, order and form; but there remains, however, in the background, that which has no rule, as if it could, one day, erupt once more; and nowhere is it shown that order and form represent that which is primitive; it seems, on the contrary, that out of an initial disorder order was implanted.51

Hartmann,52 in turn, synthesizes Schellingian thought on the issue:

 Schelling, 1988, p. 42.  Schelling, 1988, p. 36; my italics. 48  According to Schelling, Nature, while manifesting itself in exteriority, in the process of forming its organization is unconscious because it is absolutely free, though the acts of freedom are not endowed with intentionality. The purpose found in organisms, in turn, makes them endowed with consciousness. In the human instance, artistic production starts consciously, but the open meaning of the product is associated with a form of unconsciousness (see Schelling, 1993, p. 204–228). 49  Schelling, 1992. 50  Schelling, 1992, p. 45. 51  Schelling, 1992, p. 58. 52  Hartmann, 1983, p. 139. 46 47

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Nature’s evolutionary process follows a principle of progressive differentiation in whose beginnings is absolute “indifference”, but, at the same time, also follows a principle of progressive production of the superior in which the original trend of the unity of the whole is exemplified […]. This thought casts a decisive light on the essence of nature as totality, for a primary force that, constantly growing, creates from itself its own opposition and is reduced to the reciprocal action of polar forces, can clearly only be a living force.

It is in that non-time of initial chaos and its unity that aesthetic intuition penetrates, transgressing Nature’s forms of time and order and finding that infinite and original freedom. Likewise, it is in this immediacy that art refers to its indefinable source, which science can only know through the way this source is exteriorized in finitude and temporality. These forms of cognition, art, and science, in the Schellingian universe, have distinct paths but the same object: As to the particular relationship between art and science, these are opposites in trend, since if science were to fulfill its full task, as art has always done, both would coincide and merge into one – which is the proof of the opposing directions that both have. For science, at its highest level, though having the same objective as art, such objective, due to the way in which it is reached, is endless for it, and where art is, science is yet to be.53

Moving with total freedom through the ideality of the external and internal worlds, art becomes a heuristic expression that is raw material for philosophical reflection on a cosmic poetics: The objective world is simply the original, as yet unconscious, poetry of the spirit; the universal organon of philosophy  – and the keystone of its entire arch  – is the philosophy of art.54

Science and art are thus, based on Schelling’s philosophy, genetically synthetic. The task of both is congenitally heuristic and must, in an infinite time, as a tendency, converge in the same end. According to the author, “a system is only complete when it is driven back to its starting point.”55 For this reason, Philosophy was born and fed by poetry in the infancy of knowledge and, with it, all those sciences that were guided toward perfection; thus, we must wait for them, on completion, to flow back, as many individual streams to the ocean of poetry whence they originated.56

Not without reason Schelling returns to mythology, as a rescue from this lost origin of philosophy.57 This entire heuristic challenge of recovering an ultimately original philosophy, such as Schelling’s, requires for its acceptance, according to  Schelling, 1994, p. 227; my italics. In Bowie’s reading (1993, p. 52) of Schelling, there is a negation of the possibility of an aesthetic science: “A work of art is not art because it shares the same attributes as other objects, or because it may be defined in relation to them, but because it reveals the world in its own particular way. There cannot be, therefore, any science of art.” 54  Schelling, 1994, p. 12. 55  Schelling, 1994, p. 232. 56  Schelling, 1994, p. 232; my italics. 57  In this regard, Schelling (1994, p. 232–233) conjectures “But the way in which a new mythology can emerge, such that it should be the creation not of some individual author, but of a new race, personified as if it were a sole poet – is a problem whose solution can only be visualized in the world’s future destinies and in the course of the history that is to come into being.”. 53

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the author himself, an aesthetic sense58 essential for a look that, turned either to interiority or exteriority, does not discern two opposing worlds where life is solely confined in a subjectivity intended as origin of unity, as if there could be a prophylaxis capable of ensuring an arsenal of faculties independent of experience, but which, in fact, dogmatically does not show its primary credentials. Thus, the original ideal-real indifferentiation, for Schelling, assures heuristic grounds not only for science but also for the arts, making them related as activities of the spirit. In short, while the temporality of history traces a long and enduring path for science, necessary for the attainment of identity between the logical forms of human thought and Nature, in the atemporality of poetry everything is already virtually written as a loving and playful invitation to decipher the Absolute. Not surprisingly, Schiller’s thought seems to have full acceptance in Schellingian philosophy when he says: “The way to the intellect must be opened by the heart.”59

16.1 A Synthesis: On Peirce’s Idealism and Its Schellingian Roots To compare Schelling’ and Peirce’s ontologies would require not a simple chapter but certainly a whole book. Notwithstanding such limitation, the present chapter is destined to scholars who reasonably know the grounds of Peirce’s ontology, to which I hope it could show the theoretical closeness between him and Schelling. Regarding Peirce’s Metaphysics, particularly his theory of reality or ontology, it is worth remembering that it was firstly influenced by Duns Scott’s realism, which affirmed the reality of universals, namely, real generalities as a true acting part of Nature. In his mature thinking, Peirce improved his realism through his Theory of Continuity, proposing his realism in a new formula, expressed in the question that follows in this passage: The continuum is that which the logic of relations shows the true universal to be. I say the true universal; for no realist is so foolish as to maintain that no universal is a fiction. Thus, the question of nominalism and realism has taken this shape: Are any continua real?60

Then, ontological generality was reconceptualized as real continuities. It is interesting to highlight that Peirce and Schelling have theoretic axial similarities that can be found in their writings under different vocabularies. By the way, it can be mentioned, for example, their common admission of a realism of continuities, which in Peirce corresponds to two of his three categories, namely, firstness and thirdness. Firstness is cosmically grounded on its internal sphere as a continuum of possibilities, continuum of qualities of feeling, while its external manifestation in secondness is ruled by Chance.

 Schelling, 1994, p. 14; see also Torres Filho, 1987, p. 142.  Schiller (2004, Letter VIII). 60  NEM IV, p. 343; my italics. 58 59

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Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling.61

The third category is the mode of being of continuities of forms—logical forms of necessity. In fact, to be fair to Peirce’s indeterminism, quasi-necessity forms, performed by laws of Nature. Both continuities can be found in Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature. Firstness is the mode of being of the phenomenological aesthetic experience of infinite, provided by a sort of unconscious contemplation of Nature or a work of art in its many manifestations. The qualia that are a part of Nature are the immediate presence of the Absolute that may be experienced as unity, in fact, as originary unity. Schelling abundantly mentions natural logical form, as I suppose this chapter endeavored to show. It seems quite licit to consider him a realist in the same way Peirce is, surely under different vocabulary. I think that it is licit to say that the reader somewhat acquainted with Peirce’s ontology will realize a similar philosophical environment that sometimes explicitly, sometimes tacitly, promotes the closeness between the two thinkers: a sort of poetic ground that rules the stage where both philosophies develop their main ideas. It is worth stressing again, on one hand, the realism shared by both, rejecting all philosophy of an anthropocentric nature. On the other hand, the essential indeterminism in both is evident: in Schelling, the real being of the Absolute as Nature prevents it from being regarded as a mechanism ruled by necessity; it is innately pure freedom, and its passage from the infinite to the finite cannot imply abdication from it. In Peirce, freedom is also revealed in the most primary experience: that of firstness. That experience of the unconditionality of the phenomenon, of a rupture with objective time, is connected with the reality of Chance, on a journey promoted by the arrow of hypothesis in its search for final conciliation between appearing and being.62 In both thinkers, one no longer finds a polarizing subject, founder and creator of a formal asymmetry with Nature. On the contrary, in these authors, one may visualize an effort to decentralize the subject from ontology, creating symmetries with the object that enable a natural transition between interiority and exteriority. In Peirce, this transition relates, fundamentally, to the possibility of a semiotic trade between the human and the natural; the intelligibility of Nature confirms the experience of aesthetic unity with it—both experiences derive from the understanding that, between subject and object, there must not be a genetic relation of estrangement. It is in this unity and intelligibility that Peirce and Schelling see a more compact and genetic presence of philosophy. They are experiences of enchantment and awe, not surprisingly conducive, in both authors, to the conception of the idea of divine.63

61  CP 6.265; EP 1, p. 348; W 8, p.180–181. This passage, incidentally, is also quoted in Chaps. 14 and 23 of this work, in the texts referenced in footnotes 479 and 798. Its redundancy here fulfills the role of emphasis in the argument. 62  See Chap. 2 of the present work. 63  See Peirce’s famous essay, A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (CP 6.452–493).

Chapter 17

The Continuity of Life: On Peirce’s Objective Idealism

Keywords  Peirce · Objective idealism · Synechism · Metaphysics · Schelling Peirce’s Metaphysics is a complex system of concepts constitutive of a theory of world. Among them, there is one of continuity, or Synechism as Peirce called it, and another of Objective Idealism. Both are interconnected doctrines, as the former claims that all reality is somehow continuous, notwithstanding an imperfect or incomplete continuity, and the latter refutes all ontological splitting between matter and mind, affirming that both are manifestations of one and the same substance, namely, ideality. Synechism is, in fact, a synthesis of Peirce’s idealism and realism, in the way that it is possible to conceive a reality constituted by general relations and possibilities under only one substance, namely, eidos or ideality. Reader of German Romanticism authors, mainly Schiller and Schelling, Peirce was also committed to the conception of life, so dear to that philosophical movement. With his own Metaphysics, he achieved the Romantic targets, namely, highlighting Nature as a living organism, in which, from the stone to the human being, life was scaled in degrees of vivacity measured by its capacity of spontaneity. In this regard, this chapter will show how Peirce’s conception of different degrees of life interacts dialogically by interchanging signs that require the new and important science of biosemiotics for taking into account the grounds and meaning of that dialogue.

This chapter is based on the following text that I authored: The Continuity of Life: On Peirce’s Objective Idealism, originally published in: Romanini, Vinicius; Fernándes, Eliseo (Eds.). Peirce and Biosemiotics: A Guess at the Riddle of Life. Dordrecht; Heidelberg; New  York; London: Springer, p. 33–49, 2014. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_17

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17.1 On Philosophical Terminology: Setting the Stage for a Better Understanding of Some Peircean Concepts A long acquaintance with a great author of the history of philosophy whom we admire allows us to develop, along with an absorption of his concepts and vocabulary, a kind of instinct for guessing,1 that not only tries to decipher what there is of spirit behind the letter, hence something that hovers beyond the text as unsaid, but also that which the author said, but did not make sufficiently clear. Peirce is one of these authors, and certain peculiarities of his work spur the emergence of that guessing instinct, given the fact that it is comprised mainly of manuscripts that he never saw published in his lifetime nor was able to review, suppress, and, I suppose, add passages that the imminence of a publication stimulates for the sake of quality and precision. Clear terminology, however, was always a cause of worry for him,2 nearly obsessed with giving new names, often unprecedented, to the new concepts he created during the development of his work, many rooted in tradition, but which received from him an original approach, coherent with the theoretical edifice of his philosophy. This concern with a biunivocal terminology of concepts probably derives—and here is an example of guessing—from his education and practice in natural sciences.3 Indeed, the so-called sciences of Nature, and even their derivatives such as the applied sciences, enabled the practice of a biunivocal terminology between terms and their objects, which supposedly contributed very much to the advancement of knowledge in these fields. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said, for various reasons, of the so-called human sciences, especially philosophy. Among the causes of the illness of language of which some contemporary authors accuse philosophy, there has rarely been primarily the virus of bad terminology that infected doctrines with the vagueness and polysemy that preclude the clarity of concepts—indeed, it seems that the focus of such accusation would lie in the metaphysical intentions inherent in the use of philosophical language. It must be acknowledged that the insistence in an indispensable analysis of the logical soundness of the arguments, to which philosophical theories ought to be subjected, should be, of course, preserved from this criticism. It is not uncommon to say that the objects of human sciences in general and of philosophy in particular are of greater complexity than those of the sciences of Nature, thus requiring the renouncing of terminological biuniqueness in favor of a language that expresses such complexity, justifying a certain and permitted semantic vagueness. However, if this line of argument, on the one hand, errs in ignoring  Incidentally, an expression from Peirce, as a necessary faculty for the success of a heuristic logic, defined by him, as we all know, as Abduction. 2  See his Ethics of Terminology (CP 2.219–226). 3  On Peirce’s education in Natural Sciences and how such education participates, in a special manner, in his Philosophy, interesting approaches may be found in Fisch (1986, p.  376–383) and Lenzen (1964, p. 33–50). 1

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the complexity of the objects of the countless fields of knowledge of natural sciences, on the other hand, it seems to want to preserve the right to use philosophical language in such a way as to maintain, to an unsuspecting reader, the dangerous ambiguity between conceptual difficulty and linguistic obscurity, in which a terminologically confusing discourse often takes on a sham guise of profundity. The history of philosophy shows that each author, and one could rarely generalize for a whole period, keeps his own vocabulary, which, if it cannot be agreed in favor of a biunivocal terminology, should be at least respected in its own context. This is a way of being fair to philosophical concepts, namely, to seek in each theoretical system the clearest sense that an author wished to give to a concept, since a similar term may appear under distinct meanings in distinct authors. Without a doubt, this respect for a terminological context entails a nontrivial study of the history of philosophy that will be beneficial in many ways. A first benefit would allow one to become terminologically acquainted with the respective author concerned. A second one would be to understand the concepts in their historical context. It is not uncommon to fall into a kind of historical parallax—if I may be allowed this metaphor—when judging concepts in light of contemporary knowledge. Finally, a third benefit of this study would be to avoid the proposition of pseudo-new concepts that had been already formulated, often with admirable depth, by an author or school of a much earlier period. Justifying a claim of originality in philosophy involves, undoubtedly, an honest examination of the history of ideas. In exact sciences, knowledge is cumulative, and past knowledge always appears updated, somehow, in current theories. Human sciences have areas in which knowledge with difficulty is increasingly acquired, on a step-by-step basis, in a historical process. Philosophy is one of them and a terminological nonagreement would require constant remission to the history of ideas and only then become aware that something new is being proposed. Let us then pass on to the specific issue of terminology that gave rise to these initial considerations. It relates to the terms realism and idealism, as they appear in Peirce’s vocabulary. Contemporaneously, as we know, these terms are considered as meaning opposing philosophical positions: realists would be those who admit the existence of an external world, independent of the mind that represents it; idealists, in turn, state that the world is constituted by mind and its perceptive capacity, in such a way that there would not be anything like a reality independent of its representation. This question, thus posed, one can say, does not belong to the theoretical context of Peircean works. Nevertheless, many uninformed scholars ask themselves how Peirce could be considered, simultaneously, a realist and an idealist. I previously touched on the necessary study of the history of philosophy because it would be the only resource capable of resolving this question, by becoming aware that realism, such as proclaimed by Peirce, is of a Scholastic extraction4 and, so, it is not solely confined to the predicate of otherness in relation to its representation

 Interested readers may consult Ibri (2017b, Chapter 2). Other perspectives can be found in Boler (1963), Dileo (1991), Almeder (1975), and Michael (1988). 4

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but rather that this reality is also organized in general relations, which, in the Peircean vocabulary, are called laws or natural habits. In the case of idealism, it should be distinguished historically in its two nuances, viz., subjective and objective. Generally, the former is associated with the conception of a reality confined to subjectivity, while the latter refers to a substantial predication of reality, affirming it as of an ideal nature. In accordance with this conceptualization, Berkeley and Fichte can exemplarily be distinguished as subjective idealists, while both Plato’s and Schelling’s positions, as well as Peirce’s, can be considered under an objective idealism.5 This is a clear case where unfamiliarity with the historical context of philosophical terms seriously jeopardizes the understanding of the conceptual position of some authors. Surprisingly, there are scholars focused on philosophical language analysis who get entangled in issues that, ultimately, are of a linguistic nature, notwithstanding being dependent on knowledge of the history of philosophy, often disdained by schools that preach that such a history is nothing more than a delirious parade of metaphysical doctrines. These considerations certainly do not resolve satisfactorily the possible conceptual interlacing between realism and objective idealism, which we shall address in the course of this chapter.

17.2 Why Realism and Idealism in Peirce? Genesis Conjectures The study of the sciences of Nature and, chiefly, its practice in the investigation of phenomena in light of theories so as to confront them with experimental results can teach a lot from a philosophical viewpoint. It is not by chance that Peirce mentions in his famous What Pragmatism Is6 how his mind was trained in a laboratory and how this distinguished him from other philosophical thinkers. The fact that he admits this distinction stimulates, somehow, our efforts at guessing what that text does not explicitly say. In this guessing activity, there is nothing that does not meet the principles that Peirce formulated in his logic of abduction, namely, that we must be stimulated to conjecture, if we are to advance in any research intended to explain facts.7 Indeed, scientific research places theoretical representations in contact with their objects through phenomena derived from experiments, which are nothing more than a direct contact with the otherness of such phenomena. Objects can, genuinely,

 Details on this topic may be found in Ibri (2017b, Chapter 4). For other approaches, see Guardiano (2011), McCarthy (1984), and Tiercelin (1998). 6  CP 5.411–437; EP 2, p. 331–359. 7  Readers may wish to consult, as examples, the texts The Nature of Meaning (EP 2, p. 208–225) and Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction (EP 2, p. 226–241). 5

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object to theoretical predictions through their experimental replicas, or indexes, in the Semiotic vocabulary—that is to say, the symbols, represented by the general character of the theories, confront them, namely, the indicative signs of the objects. To a mind trained in such practice, it is trivial to say that the process of theory validation occurs through some level of adherence with experimental results, and when they do not, they should be parametrically readjusted or even be radically changed. For this reason, it must also sound trivial to say to a man of science that the last word that justifies a theory belongs to the object.8 So, in the final analysis, this practice is, one may say, a lesson in otherness, in its philosophical meaning. From another angle, the obligation to intervene in the structure of theories, adjusting forms and parameters when predictions derived from them do not adhere to experimental data, leads to this question: what strange power does the contingency of the experiment have, in its particularity and finitude, to disallow a general theory? Would not these data necessarily be replicas of something equally general that would manifest itself through its indexing, or, in other words, would not such manifestation reveal itself as a sequence of indexes that organize themselves according to some general rule? Without delving here in what would be a good induction, suffice it is to say that some redundancy of the sequence of indexes—its continuance in similar sequential experiments—reinforces the idea that there is some possible order present in the phenomena, which would not be merely contingent, but suggest the hypothesis that it has a possible continuity typically of a law. This would be a second lesson, namely, that of the awakening of the belief that investigation is, indeed, of the nature of a dialogue with general objects endowed with logical rules, with syntactic structures that belong to them. This presupposition is, admittedly, that there is some corresponding form between an investigated object and its theoretical representation, and that this object is definitely not a particular, but something of the nature of a symbol,9 as much as the theories that seem to represent it. Science is science of the universal, as Plato and Aristotle affirmed—one seeks the symbols and not merely the indexes that existentialize them. From these considerations, it seems inappropriate to support a theory of mirrors.10 According to this theory, every investigation supposedly seeks a genuine picture of the phenomenon, its perfect image. Now, we know very well that this expectation belongs to a period in history when, justifiably, in face of the success of the scientific revolution in the Renaissance, the thinkers of that time formulated the idea of a universe similar to a clock, whose mechanism could be discovered and represented in its perfection. But one must revert to history, to again do justice to the ideas of each era, and not simply condemn them as metaphysical nonsense. Reasons of a theological nature, among others, evident in the culture of that time, stimulated  As Peirce himself (CP 5.116) said, “If the facts won’t agree with the Theory, so much the worse for them. They are bad facts. This sounds to me childish, I confess.” 9  To further explore the ontological conception that Peirce developed regarding the symbol, see his New Elements (EP 2, p. 300–324), particularly the last pages. Different approaches and perspectives can be found in Parker (1994) and Nöth (2010). 10  As Rorty does in PMN. 8

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this deterministic worldview that was continuously propagated through the first half of the nineteenth century.11 But this determinism was abandoned in philosophy in the second half of that same century and in science in the second decade of the twentieth century. Darwin set a milestone when he resorted to the principle of Chance for his Theory of Evolution. However, he was not exactly a philosopher. This principle was, in the late nineteenth century, pioneered by Peirce in philosophy, as Popper explicitly recognized.12 Renouncing the theory of mirrors was never a problem to Peirce. World images in the plane of knowledge, if required to represent it, should, in his philosophy, always be considered somewhat faded, often out of focus, showing its object in an approximate way, albeit under a predictive viewpoint—an essential purpose of knowledge—sufficiently clear to show what future conduct could reasonably be expected of such object. The mythological search for an absolutely certain knowledge was, fortunately, abandoned, and in this task, Peirce was definitely a pioneer.13 His theory of Chance, introducing indetermination in terms of the ontology of the object, was epistemologically accompanied by the doctrine of Fallibilism,14 namely, that our knowledge is fallible, approximated, subject to a permanent correction process. The mirror and the mirrored object are indeterminate in various degrees. Uncertainty would definitely shape human rationality, and the entire task of knowledge is to reduce, to an ontologically feasible point, the fadedness of the images. They are the ones that substantiate thought in the form of signs, and through them, we try to adjust the focus of immediate objects in relation to dynamic ones.15 Here, we continue to use the Rorty’s metaphor of the mirror only to show how, contrary to the use that Rorty makes of it, it would be feasible in relation to Peirce’s philosophy. Returning to the possibility of conjecturing on the spirit of a philosophical work, a hypothesis seems to suggest itself, from the long acquaintance with Peirce’s work, namely, about how his educational background in science and his experimental

 Incidentally, this determinism remained as a belief for some contemporary scientists, such as Einstein. 12  As Popper (1972, p. 199) acknowledges, “Thus Peirce conjectured that the world was not only ruled by the strict Newtonian laws, but that it was also at the same time ruled by laws of chance, or of randomness, or of disorder: by laws of statistical probability. This made the world an interlocking system of clouds and clocks, so that even the best clock would, in its molecular structure, show some degree of cloudiness. So far as I know, Peirce was the first post-Newtonian physicist and philosopher who thus dared to adopt the view that to some degree all clocks are clouds, or in other words, that only clouds exist, though clouds of very different degree of cloudiness.” 13  In the essay mentioned above, Popper (1972) labels deterministic hope as a nightmare. 14  For example, see CP 1.13–14 and also, particularly, CP 1.141–175. 15  In the conceptualization proposed by Peirce, the immediate object is that which appears in the representation, while the dynamic one is the real object, possessing otherness in relation to its representations. One of the best Peircean descriptions of the different types of interpretants can be found in a letter from Peirce dated March 14, 1909 (PW, p. 108–119). In its entirety, this letter also touches on points that we have addressed throughout these pages, such as Peirce’s education in natural sciences and his determined realistic position. See also CP 4.536 and 8.315. 11

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practice must have possibly inspired Peirce to defend a realism, not only of the existence of an external world of particulars but also constituted of relations of order between them. Would he be so vividly interested in the work of Scotus as he was in his youth, if the seeds of realism had not been already instilled in his mind by the precocious practice of an experimental science?16 It seems plausible to think that scientific practice, the search for an adjustment of theories in terms of the otherness of phenomena and the relation of order they display, suggests, for those who turn this practice into an object of philosophical reflection, as Peirce did, a realism of a Scotist nature, that is, the acknowledgment that some universals are real. Now as we continue this reflection, asking ourselves about the nature of these universals, which Peirce called laws17 and, later, real continuities,18 we enter the domain of Objective Idealism.19 I conjecture that Peirce’s idea of idealism would not have originated from his practice in science—from it, it would seem plausible to say—and originated a realism constituted by the predicates of otherness and generality. The history of philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century had already paraded many idealist schools, whether of a subjective or objective nature. Peirce was a serious reader of the history of ideas, and his Objective Idealism, as he explicitly confessed, was drawn from Schelling,20 whence derives the complexity of speculating not only on the nature of the universals but also on the substantial relations between matter and ideality, a topic which we will address further along. The nature of sense qualities, such as colors, sounds, odors, etc., should be also added to his reflection on idealism and not only on the fabric of the general relations recognized as part of the object. The practice of a science that deals with phenomena and has a specific field of experimentation, by instilling in the mind of the investigator the notion of objective reality constituted by a generalized otherness, does not, I suppose, induce subjective attitudes toward philosophy. The act of constantly dealing with the object, with that which can always, potentially, object to its representation, must lead to the admission of an objective reality, indifferent to any constituting appropriation of a subjective nature. Under this hypothesis, realism, as a philosophical posture, seems to harmonize with objective predications. In this regard, although at the present stage of this reflection the development of the possible relations between realism and idealism in Peirce’s philosophy is still incipient, it should be noted that this idealism, if simultaneously viable with a realism, must be of an objective nature.21 It would be strange indeed to accept a realism of the universals, necessarily of an objective nature, simultaneously with an idealism centered on a constituting  Further analyses on the relation between realism and experimental practice in science in Peirce can be found in Forster (2011) and Delaney (1993, particularly Chapters 1 and 2). 17  EP 2, p. 67–74. 18  NEM IV, p. 343–344. 19  See Ibri (2017b, Chapter 4) for details. 20  See Chap. 16 of the present work. 21  I have also discussed this theme in its interfaces with Semiotics, in Ibri (2006a and Chapter 24 of the present work). 16

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subject. The acceptance of a universe of real symbols, that is, of natural laws that are formed by themselves, regardless of how they may be represented, means accepting concurrently that such laws have the same eidetic nature22—such universe of real symbols is potentially representable in a theoretical universe of symbols, which immediately suggests a connaturality between object and sign.23 The acknowledgment of this connaturality, as suggested here, derives only from a philosophical conjecture on the consequences of scientific practice. In fact, the concept of connaturality is harmoniously present in what I call the symmetry of categories, notwithstanding its formulation from the conception of this symmetry. I consider connaturality an important concept. It opens many doors for ontological reflection, which we can no longer avoid if we truly wish to understand what Peirce intended with his philosophy. But, as a scholar of Kant, Peirce would not propose a bad metaphysics but rather one that, in the Kantian style, is strictly grounded on a phenomenology, with the precaution of bearing in mind the broad concept of the phenomenon proposed by Peirce. Ultimately, both these authors agree on what would be a sound metaphysics, but they would certainly differ on what, after all, can be considered a phenomenon. According to Peirce, dreams are phenomena, no less than the irregularity of a tree canopy.24 Kant would hardly admit these examples, especially because it would not be of theoretical interest to his epistemology, in which the condition of semantic possibility of a phenomenon should be in its submission to a strict rule of understanding, that is, that of causality. It is known, however, that phenomena which possess a high degree of spontaneity and refuse to be subjected to causal rules are fundamental to Peirce’s epistemology as well as to his always correlated ontology. These are, ultimately, consequences of two distinct philosophical presuppositions, namely, determinism and indeterminism.25 Questions gradually arise in this heuristic process of possible reconstruction of Peirce’s realism-idealism, which has no other purpose than to show that these doctrines do not necessarily emerge from metaphysical nonsense but from a reflection on the ontological nature of the objects of scientific investigation. It will be seen that such ontology will not ask an innocuous question about what is the being of things, but rather it will conjecture on what constitutes it, in view of its practical consequences.26 Here, pragmatism is called upon not only as a rule for the meaning of theories but also as a logical rule capable of entering the universe of meaning of an ontological nature, namely, the plane of real objects.  We use the term eidetic in the Greek meaning of eidos, designating something of the nature of ideality. 23  For example, see CP 5.549–573, where Peirce explains the relationship between sign and object, within the context of the theory of truth provided by Pragmatism. 24  See CP 1.284. For more details, see Chapter 7 of the present work. For other approaches and perspectives, see, for example, Anderson (1995), Blachowicz (1972), and De Tienne (1993). 25  For further details, see Ibri (2017b, Chapter 3; 2007). For other approaches, see Forster (1997) and Cosculluela (1992). 26  I addressed the issue of practical consequences in Pragmatism in Ibri (2000a). 22

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However, this aspect will be addressed further along, and I now return to a concept that is precious to Semiotics, that of the dialogue, to emphasize the importance of the notion of connaturality, deeply related to Objective Idealism.

17.3 Connaturality, Semiotic Dialogy, and Pragmatism Earlier I said that scientific investigation may be understood as a dialogue derived from the adaptation of theories to phenomena, in which the objects reveal what they are by the way they appear. Here, appear and being are logical correlates, and not aspects that possibly contradict each other, as in ancient metaphysics. A proposal to reflect on the notion of dialogue implies considering the possibility of modifying conduct through experience. This would mean some sort of interpretation of the phenomenal world in which one is inserted. In turn, interpreting requires an extraction of pragmatic meaning, namely, one that possibly determines future conduct. To be sure, the planning of future conduct is nothing more than to nourish the hope that a new form of action, guided by the reformulation of concepts, may perform the role of an efficient mediation in relation to the otherness of phenomena, that is, to the reality of the objects. In a universe of existents, this circulation of meanings capable of modifying conduct, or even of strengthening preestablished conducts in the form of habits, involves a signic, or semiotic, dialogue in which the notion of language27 extends to a realistic context of philosophy. Meaning, here, it transcends its mere consideration as a property of languages practiced by men but extends to the whole universe of phenomena, acquiring its pragmatic legitimacy. I refer to this latter expression for the purpose of establishing that meaning, for Pragmatism, implies a necessary stage of existential interaction, an insertion into a theater of reactions—according to Peirce’s vocabulary, of transformation of the indeterminate into a determination that involves a possible contradiction in a spatiotemporal context. I mention the word stage to stress that the meaning will be always consummated in a general instance, that is, involving a reflexive return of experience to the plane of the concept. From the point of view of the categories, secondness of experience is a necessary phase for general meaning on the plane of thirdness. When admitting a realism of the universals, we must accept its objective ideality as a consequence. On this point, idealism is nothing more than an acknowledgment of the very nature of what constitutes real thirdness. Connaturality, on the plane of ideality, also derives from the acknowledgment that the object is of the same nature of its representations.28 Logical structures equally permeate sign and object. An idealism of this kind is only a backgrounding doctrine, namely, a mere acknowledgment of a substantial connaturality between the cognoscible objects in their generality and the theories that represent them. In the language of Semiotics,

 See Ibri (2011b).  Nevertheless, any mirroring relation to the object is ruled out.

27 28

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sign and object are connatural, and this philosophical acknowledgment simply justifies how a dialogue of theories with experience can be possible. Backgrounding doctrine, an expression I propose here, thus represents a condition of epistemological possibility, and not an efficient instrument (either direct or explicit) for research, albeit it must be admitted that it establishes a worldview whose consequences will transcend the mere effectiveness of the consolidation of knowledge. I will endeavor to enunciate some of these consequences at the end of this chapter.

17.4 Mind and Matter: Idealism in Light of Pragmatism Peirce’s reflection on the relations between mind and matter29 already appears in some of his essays on this theme.30 In them, he speculates on the possible relations between both, ruling out, first of all, Cartesianism as a dualism that does not fit into philosophies that seek to overcome it in general by unifying concepts in light of the simplification recommended by Ockham’s razor. On the other hand, a relationship between matter and mind in which the former is taken as genetically primordial and the latter as its special case would incur in a materialism. A pragmatic analysis of the concept of materialism would, however, lead to mistakenly characterize it as ontological determinism,31 which would mean reducing phenomena of a psychic nature to a physicalism ascertainable by laws of matter. Peirce emphatically rejects this alternative of a relation between matter and mind, imagining, exemplarily, how absurd it would be to conceive a mechanism capable of feeling.32 It would be, in other words, reducing feelings to the mechanical laws that created them, which, according to Peirce, would be an inexplicable ultimate regularity. As a consequence, this would mean reducing firstness to thirdness, breaking the independence of the former in relation to the latter.33 There remains, therefore, as a possible relation between matter and mind, the subsumption of the former in relation to the latter, characterizing what he called idealism. But what kind of idealism would this be, derived from a logical analysis of the Cartesian substantial dualism? Without a doubt, given the ontological content of the issue, Peirce refers to an Objective Idealism, which would claim that physical laws are of an eidetic nature. However, we must remember that this consequence had already been extracted from his adoption of realism, by his conclusion that

 CP 6.24–25; EP 1, p. 292–293; W 8, p. 105–106.  See CP 6.102-163; EP 1, p. p.  312–333; W 8, p.  135–157, and also CP 6.238-271; EP 1, p. 334–351; W 8, p. 165–183. 31  See Ibri (2017b, p. 48–50). 32  See Ibri (2017b, p. 55–56 and p. 84–85). 33  This independence is phenomenologically and cosmologically justified. I have addressed this theme in Chapters 3 and 9 of the present work. 29 30

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natural law must be understood as a system of logical relations of the nature of semiotic symbols, and thus eidetic.34 However, we must reflect more deeply on the ever disturbing, not to say unprecedented to many scholars, sentence enunciated by Peirce on what is matter. Summarizing his arguments in favor of an idealism, the following passage ends with such a sentence: The materialistic doctrine seems to me quite as repugnant to scientific logic as to common sense; since it requires us to suppose that a certain kind of mechanism will feel which would be a hypothesis absolutely irreducible to reason - an ultimate, inexplicable regularity; while the only possible justification of any theory is that it should make things clear and reasonable. Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known as Ockham’s razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a par, it seems to render both primordial. The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.35

It is a well-known fact that Peirce’s idealism derives from Schelling,36 as he himself confesses, including the sentence that states that matter is mind exhausted by inveterate habits. The most significant passage of the Schellingian work that bears similarity to the passage from Peirce’s work quoted above is as follows: Matter is, indeed, nothing else than mind viewed in an equilibrium of its activities. There is no need to demonstrate at length how, by means of this elimination of all dualism, or all real opposition between mind and matter, whereby the latter is regarded merely as mind under a condition of dullness, or the former, conversely, as matter merely in becoming […].37

Under the light of Pragmatism, to say what matter is, is to say how it behaves phenomenologically, or, in other words, what are the practical consequences of the concept of matter, considering such consequences as the experimentally verifiable predicates of matter, capable of affecting not only the human conduct but also the interactive conduct of the very universe of material events. I am here evidently proposing to use the expression practical consequences also in a radically realistic and ontological sense, extending the notion of conduct to all beings that cohabit a given real universe, albeit respecting the logical genesis of the doctrine that, in the most general way possible, is a necessary passage from indetermination to determination, from the general to the particular, implying the existence of some theater of reactions that can become the condition of possibility of such determination.38 Keeping to this amplified line of understanding of the idea of Pragmatism, the passage of the indeterminate general to the determinate particular and, as such, reactive to other  See Ibri (2000a).  CP 6.24-5; my italics. 36  I described the influence of Schelling on Peirce in Chapters 3 and 16 of the present work. See also Dilworth (2011). 37  Schelling (1993, p. 92). 38  This condition arises from a logic of possibilities where something generically possible should cease to be so, in order for the term possibility assumes some significance. For example, see CP 6.219. 34 35

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particulars is the necessary correlative passage of an internal39 to an external world, in which the former comprises continuity and the latter, in turn, discontinuities. A vocabulary of the theory of continuity40 is shown here almost naturally to provide support to a better understanding of the necessary relations between the general and the particular. I avail myself of it not only as an alternative for the general/particular terms but also in a context explained further on, relative to the ontological meaning of the Peircean categories. Although these considerations seem to be transcending the limits of Pragmatism41 beyond its purpose of constituting a semantic rule associated with human conduct, the aim here is to interface the vocabularies of logic and ontology, endeavoring to create, in light of the background of realism, more powerful heuristic tools for an understanding of what we have defined as symmetry of the categories.42 Indeed, these relations between the particular and the general, internal and external worlds, and continuities and discontinuities are consummated in the interrelations between Peirce’s three categories. While the first and third categories are of a continuous nature or, in other words, harbor the mode of being of what is continuous, general and internal, secondness is the mode of being of the theater of reactions that harbor the discontinuous, the particular, the external side of the other two categories. These considerations on the three Peircean categories should apply—resorting again to the background of the author’s realism-idealism—both phenomenologically and ontologically and, for this reason, justify the use of the expression symmetry of the categories, meaning three modes of being that indifferentiate or symmetrize logical rights between subject and object and man and Nature, radically breaking dualisms of genesis and proposing the abandonment of anthropocentric postures of philosophy.

17.5 Evolutionarily Grounded Idealism One of the features of Peirce’s Objective Idealism, according to my previous comments, is to break the mind-matter dualism in order to consider the material universe as a special form of mind, whose conduct would be driven by ingrained habits. An

 I here use the word “internal” in a general sense, in which interiority would be distinguished from subjectivity, thus acquiring a realistic logical meaning. Subjectivity would be a special case of interiority. In this sense, interior objects are those that can only be known or represented indirectly, by logical inference. Outside world, in turn, is the only one that can be directly observed— under the categorial point of view, it is under the secondness. 40  See Ibri (2017b, Chapter 4). Other approaches regarding the concept of continuity in Peirce can be consulted in Havenel (2008), Lane (2011a, b), Moore (2007), Potter and Shields (1977), and Rosa (2003). 41  For a very interesting approach on Pragmatism, see Houser (2003). 42  The reader can check details on the approach to this important concept in Ibri (Chapter 3 of the present work; 2011b; 2017b, Chapter 1). 39

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awareness of this proposition implies understanding natural laws as habits of conduct of matter, and the use of this terminology gains significance by enabling a reflection on how these habits were acquired, opening a conceptual door for an overlapping of idealism with some form of evolutionism. Peirce’s hypothesis on the formation of habits of Nature, that is, on the origin of the natural laws, is, incidentally, one of his most brilliant ideas, according to William James.43 On the one hand, Peirce proposed an evolutionism that would permeate his entire philosophy44 [PA]. On the other hand, in the same line of argumentation, he conjectures on the formation of the laws of Nature. Here is a crucial passage of his work on this topic: What kind of explanation can there be then? I answer, we may still hope for an evolutionary explanation. We may suppose that the laws of nature are the result of an evolutionary process.45 […] But if the laws of nature are the result of evolution, this evolutionary process must be still in progress. For it cannot be complete as long as the constants of the laws have reached no ultimate possible limit. But if the laws of nature are still in process of evolution from a state of things in the indefinitely distant past in which there were no laws, it must be that events are not even now absolutely regulated by law.46

Continuing, Peirce speculates on an objective tendency for the acquisition of habits: But if the laws of nature are the result of evolution, this evolution must proceed according to some principle; and this principle will itself be of the nature of a law. But it must be such a law that it can evolve or develop itself […] Evidently it must be a tendency toward generalization — a generalizing tendency […] Now the generalizing tendency is the great law of mind, the law of association, the law of habit-taking […] Hence I was led to the hypothesis that the laws of universe have been formed under a universal tendency of all things toward generalization and habit-taking.47

This always seemed to me to be the strongest argument for his Objective Idealism. Indeed, questions of genesis, such as the one that Peirce formulated on natural laws, can only be made if the theoretical system of philosophy bears a sound metaphysics, that is, one grounded on phenomenology and logic, as it occurs in the Peircean philosophical system. Natural laws, then, are habits acquired by a typical tendency of the mental universe. This argument evidently proposes an Objective Idealism, as it conjectures on Nature’s capacity to generalize, viz., an inductive capacity. Indeed, the more radical evolution of Peirce’s realism-idealism shows that two logical forms meet objectively in natural processes, namely, abduction and deduction. Although there is no space here for a deeper presentation of this point, briefly it can be said—just to satisfy the curiosity of those who had no contact with this part of Peirce’s works— that natural abductions are evidenced by the insertion of diversity and growing

 NEM III 2, p. 872–874.  See Ibri (2017b, Chapter 3). 45  CP 7.512. 46  CP 7.514. 47  CP 7.515; incidentally, this is a passage quoted in Chapter 15 of the present work. 43 44

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complexity of the universe,48 while the laws of nature act deductively on its pertinent events, that is, causing them to occur, by necessity, from the rules that constitute them. Thus, there is a substantial eidetic monism associated with realism, which is, indeed, its condition of possibility in light of the evolutionary argument on the origin of the natural laws. Laws emerge as acquired habits, which can only occur through a tendency of an eidetic nature. Idealism remains as a backgrounding doctrine, enabling the reality of the continuities which constitute the first and third categories. The universe of discontinuities of the second category should not, in turn, be substantially foreign to ideality, since, in the grounding of the categories, it is the locus for appearing as an exteriority of firstness and thirdness. Upon acknowledging this condition of substantial harmony between the categories as modes of being of reality, matter should be thus considered as possessing an eidetic nature, as it is that which constitutes the existence of the objects in their particularity. It is interesting to recall, under this line of evolution in Peirce’s ontology, how he states that Pragmatism is a correct doctrine only insofar as it is recognized that material action is the mere husk of ideas […] But the end of thought is action only insofar as the end of action is another thought.49

Peirce highlights how thought and action are connatural and interactive, as relations that establish themselves between the general and the particular or between interiority and exteriority. Thus, deliberate action would be nothing more than thought endowed with purpose that enters a universe of existential reactivity.

17.6 Idealism and the Peircean Notion of Life Matter, as explained, is then a form of mind ruled by inveterate habits, meaning that its predicates have a high degree of stability and that its conduct has a high degree of redundancy. However, these habits are not fully crystallized and determinant of an exact behavior that would constitute a universe of strict laws, conducive to a deterministic conception of the world. Peirce affirmed that the presence of firstness in the conduct of matter, acting on it through Chance, promotes a certain level of erraticity, making those laws or habits of a probabilistic nature. The regularities of the universe are thus merely approximate, and natural events reveal, on the one hand, the presence of the firstness that inserts, always, through the principle of Chance, dispersion, irregularities, and asymmetries, while thirdness, in turn, acts on existence, making it redundant and habitual, albeit not in a strict way. It is the presence of real thirdness, incidentally, that provides all and any cognitive operation, which, to be possible, always depends on the condition that its 48 49

 See Ibri (2006a).  CP 8.272; my italics.

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objects appear phenomenologically organized in a spatiotemporal form. A chaotic world would be absolutely incognoscible—such a need for a real order as a condition of epistemological possibility is perhaps the most vigorous proof of realism.50 Resorting to the vocabulary of Synechism, cognition requires real continuities that can be represented in the continuum of thought. In Peirce’s philosophy, we may say, epistemology and ontology interlace in such a way that one would hardly be able to consider one without the other. In light of these considerations, we may define, between what is called mind and matter, a gradation of vivacity, or of life, associating a greater degree to mind and a lesser one to matter, which would be the most important criterion for distinguishing both, after undoing the substantial dualism responsible for a split concerning their nature. But what would define that vivacity? What would be its most important predicates? It seems reasonable to say that the ability to break inefficient habits that should act as mediations regarding the otherness, with which it cohabits, is an adequate way of measuring these degrees of vivacity. A certain capacity thus considered involves purposes, and therefore, when the achievement of such purposes is obstructed by an inadequate existential interaction or conduct, it is justifiable to break the correspondent habits that should work as guides of action. Based on this, it would seem right to call upon the concept of learning, in the sense of deliberate change of habits, forsaking those that no longer serve as efficient mediations for the purpose of conduct. Inefficient habits for the intended purposes, if remaining as such, wind up interrupting the semiotic dialogue of the mind with its existentially interactive environment, a dialogue that is the very mainstay of what can be called learning. To learn, therefore, is to be potentially capable of changing conduct, and the capacity for doing so defines the main determining parameter of the degree of mental vivacity. A living mind must keep that dialogue, and by doing so, in the light of Fallibilism, it can frequently incur in errors that will require mobilizing with even more agility resources for correcting conduct, until new habits can be installed with the predicate, always, of efficient mediations in the face of otherness. The use of the word mind in a realistic sense, as we do here, is not exclusively confined to being human but extends to all beings that cohabit some semiotic universe, that is, in which there is circulation, commerce of signs and pragmatic meanings, capable of affecting conduct. Under such a broad meaning, then, not only the human universe is considered but also the animal and vegetable, each one distinctly inserted into the gradation of vivacity defined by its respective competence of learning.

50

 See Ibri (2017b) for details.

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17.7 The Continuity of Life The Peircean concept of universe emerges as something essentially dynamic, an unfinished reality in which an eidetic nature is all-pervading, and as one which, under a background of substantial ideality; the actors who cohabit in it share the modes of being of the three categories. Yet again, it must be repeated that idealism is not an operating doctrine in the sense of being essential to the successful course of scientific investigation—once grounded and acknowledged, it no longer needs to be called upon to solve problems that imply choices of mediations and conduct. After formulating it, I suppose that for this reason, Peirce did not need to refer to it as a support to other doctrines.51 It remained in the background, as the scenario of a vital theater of a semiotic and pragmatic nature. This nature emerges in Peirce’s universe as the continuous production of signs, of interpretants that precede the adoption of a conduct, and in it are consummated as their external side, in the form of deliberate and purposeful action. The special sciences, in Peirce’s classification of sciences, depend on philosophy. In a more directly evident way, this dependency occurs with regard to Phenomenology and logic or semiotic, but it is less evident with respect to the other normative sciences, namely, aesthetics, ethics, and perhaps even less so with respect to Metaphysics as ontology. However, awareness and recognition of this nonevident dependency eventually lead the investigations of a special science to a higher heuristic level, not only by the introduction of an enriching vocabulary which will enable the perception of new aspects of phenomena but also by affording the philosophical acknowledgment of the equality of logical rights introduced by the symmetry of categories. A science such as biosemiotics will have its horizons expanded not only for the reasons mentioned but also for the possibility of considering its primordial object, life, in light of an Objective Idealism conditioning a realism. Reality seen under the lens of these doctrines enables the justification of natural procedures that have purpose and are necessarily interpretative, showing intelligence in the creation of mediations concerning the surrounding environment and involving cognition processes that seek to represent the conduct of otherness in order to better suit its own conduct. If one considers as intelligent every procedure that, in some way, involves deliberate purpose and conduct, one will find that Nature is full of them,52 and the beings that cohabit it share a general and common purpose, namely, the continuity of life. Knowing this enables us, along with the acknowledgment of the substantial ideality of Nature, to look at it with admiration, the ultimate purpose of an aesthetic nature that will determine a desirable ethics of investigation.

51 52

 For an opposite perspective, see Short (2010a).  See CP 4.551; CP 6.17.

Chapter 18

The Semiotic Resilient Mind: Conflictual and Agapic Relationship Between Logical and Emotional Interpretants

Keywords  Peirce · Mind · Resilience · Kinds of interpretants · Habits · Beliefs

18.1 Choosing an Entrance in the Peircean Edifice Peirce’s philosophy is perhaps the last to exhibit a system, namely, he conceived an almost complete philosophical edifice, consisting of doctrines that range from a refined Phenomenology, notwithstanding its apparent simplicity, to a sophisticated realist ontology, in fine scholastic style. I say here almost, since he wrote practically nothing about art, concentrating his focus in aesthetics on the predicate of admirability, committed to the ends of semiotics and ethics. I have reflected on a possible philosophy of art that could be extracted from his philosophical system,1 and one can say that he seems to bring new and original ideas to this area of knowledge.2 I proposed a reconstruction of this system in an earlier work,3 during which I perceived this edifice that, in my opinion, offers many entrances, although it should be recognized that everything starts with a being in the world, in which a necessarily cognitive mind must strive to comprehend the ocean of signs about which and with which it needs to dialogue for its very survival. From this viewpoint, it seems legitimate to say that vital matters, as they are called by Peirce, provide an environment more immediately phenomenological, where representing the conduct of the other, as otherness in general, allows our cognitive capacity to develop in a more consistent way. Here, the concept of mind is at once introduced as being also a teleological figure, that is, committed to the construction of mediations in order to maintain itself

 I worked on this topic in Chaps. 2, 3, and 4 of the present work but also in Ibri (2011b).  See also Innis (2013). 3  This is Kósmos Noetós, namely, Ibri (2017b). 1 2

A preliminary draft of this paper was presented as a keynote lecture at the Semiotic Society of America: 43rd Annual Meeting—Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, USA—October 3–7, 2018. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_18

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viable in its environment—despite all of our human culture that has a cast of possible mediations at the disposal of our survival. As much as this cast of mediations may alleviate some basic problems of life, others inexorably take their place: we continue to be thrust into a Chronos that is not the fruit of our imagination4 and which imposes on us the irreversibility of the past and a future that our fallible rationality seeks to foretell. In this Chronos, we are subjected to carry an ego that, many times, one’s whole lifetime is insufficient to fully understand. We also have to deal with other egos that we think we know but which seem to contradict what is expected of them. We must also not forget the facts, proverbially brute, in Peirce’s words, to which I have reserved the predicate of insolent, since they invade our lives without being invited. They exemplify, with the randomness and indifference that characterizes them, the phenomenological accidentality that sustains one of the facets of Peirce’s category of firstness, providing, at the same time, an experience that is typical of the second category—in which the most immediate mark of what we call reality is situated. This whole frame, in my opinion, already requires that the mind, in its broader conception as I will put forth subsequently, must be resilient. Let us return to that philosophical edifice of many entry doors, and here, as I have already mentioned, I choose the concept of mind as a possible entrance. According to Peirce, mind is something that possesses the basic capacity of generalizing, that is, of extracting from experience those elements that are noteworthy, detectable through their permanence and redundancy, and which, by phenomenically presenting themselves in this way, point toward a possible rule that would explain them but also toward a rule that produces such facts, according to a realism that will be considered in the sequence of this chapter. Those facts are generated by some form of logical rule independent of their possible representation already seems to suggest an ontology of universals. Let us leave aside for the moment this seemingly complex but essential step in Peirce’s philosophy—his realism, which is in fact quite distinct from how contemporarily the question is considered.5 There is a passage in Peirce’s work on the origin of the laws of Nature that assimilates the idea of law to that of habit,6 affirming that Nature is endowed with habits that appear in redundant replicas; the question of the origin of laws becomes the question about how Nature acquired such habits, observing the fact that this ability to acquire habits is typical and observable in the human mind. This line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that there is in Nature a principle that is of a mental nature, since it can be characterized precisely by its ability to generalize, taking here the concept of habit as a result of a generalization. In this argument, two  I have proposed a distinction between Chronos and Kairos, as objective and subjective forms of time. For example, see Chap. 23 of the present work. 5  Contemporarily, there is an opposition of realism versus idealism, in the form of the recognition of the world exterior to the mind and interior to it, while, in its scholastic origin, the question was drawn between realism and nominalism, that is, in the recognition of the reality of universals instead of their admission exclusively within the bounds of language. 6  The argument on this theme was developed in Chap. 17, item 5, of the present work. 4

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Peircean doctrines are outlined, that is, evolutionism and his Objective Idealism, of which I will speak further on. There are many notable consequences of this line of argument, of both epistemological and ontological nature. Epistemologically, the notion that laws are products of an evolutionary process makes one suppose them to still be in formation, making room for the principle of Chance to act in Nature. While Chance falls under the first category, laws fall under the third category. Both these principles are active in the facticity characteristic of the second category, where each thing is defined by its particular, individual and determined nature. An important epistemological doctrine that is grounded here in this evolutionary saga is Fallibilism. Once more, we give him the floor: In those sciences of measurement which are the least subject to error – metrology, geodesy, and metrical astronomy – no man of self-respect ever now states his result, without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is not followed in other sciences it is because in those the probable errors are too vast to be estimated [and] […] infallibility in scientific matters seems to me irresistibly comical.7

Getting rid of the myth of certainty pursued for centuries in the history of philosophy is no trivial task. This dismissal does not mean renouncing certainty because of an epistemological incompetence but because of an ontological conviction that to hold onto certainty as a cognitive goal is equivalent to seeking a semiotic illusion, namely, the conception of interpretant signs that ignores the very nature of their object. This staunch abandonment of the certainty of our positive representations will have epistemological consequences that require us to deal with probabilistic models as being genuinely adequate for their objects. More than this, the idea of deviation from theoretical expectations should be incorporated into the normality of factual observation, and an even more acute consequence will be the permanent specter of possible error, which will introduce the tense necessity of a continued observation of the represented object, of a constant semiotic dialogue with it, giving it the last word about itself, its properties, its conduct, and so forth. This characteristic of Fallibilism results in an evident ethical hue: the otherness of an object cannot be substituted by any descriptive judgment of theories, discourses, or language, reinforcing a clear position on semiotic truth, that is, that which is nourished by a permanent dialogue with its object and that, by doing so, becomes capable of maintaining adherence with it,8 uncovering the future path of the facts and, in light of these, making it possible for the mind that represents them to make choices about its own conduct. In Peirce’s philosophy, it is possible to ascertain a theoretical effort that orbits around the concept of connaturality between the human and the natural. It is important to bear in mind that Phenomenology is the first of the sciences of philosophy, as Peirce proposes in his classification of the sciences in the mature phase of his

 CP 1.9.  Here I call adherence the harmonic correspondence between theoretical prediction and the course of facts. 7 8

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thought, in such a way that the universe of human experience becomes the ground from whence the normative sciences are raised up, among which is also semiotics, and a theory about reality, his ontology. This hierarchy of origin that he proposes does not fall into an anthropocentric philosophy that supposes the human universe to be the foundational and molding instance of reality. On the contrary, the categories of experience that are proposed in Phenomenology will give general form also to the concept of reality, as principles effectively acting on it, drawing a symmetry between ways of appearing—Phenomenology—and ways of being—ontology. This categorial symmetry is associated with the idea of connaturality, allowing it to be understood as pertaining to the common nature between sign and object in semiotics. The theoretical consequence of this reflection on the origin of laws turns out to be one of the pillars that sustains the doctrine, oftentimes misunderstood9 by scholars of the Peircean work, namely, Objective Idealism. If the laws of nature are indeed acquired habits, observable even in that which we call inorganic matter, then the dichotomy between the nature of mind and matter disappears, breaking with a very old dualism and proposing an ideality of all that constitutes that which we call reality.10 Objective Idealism is what will justify a flux of signs in an environment of connaturality, which will prevent the instance of human subjectivity from being considered the origin of all ideality,11 as if it were possible to lend this predicate to the rest of the objects in the world, configuring the most common and most frequent incarnation of a nominalism that tacitly perpetuates the duality of the genesis between mind and matter.

18.2 The Pragmatic Realism of the Internal and External Worlds Peirce’s Objective Idealism is not an operational theory, in the sense of containing in itself a rule that produces facts or that organizes or diversifies them. This operativity of the modes by which semiotic objects will phenomenically appear will be subsumed in the three Peircean categories. Idealism, as Peirce conceives it, is nothing more than a backdrop, a platform of continuous connaturality that will legitimize the extensive use of a vocabulary traditionally applied only to universal subjectivity to all semiotic objects, whether they be human or natural.12  One of the reasons for this misunderstanding comes from the nonrecognition of the origin of this doctrine in Schelling and from the reduction of idealism to a foundational subjectivity in opposition to a realism of the admission of things external to the mind. This contemporary approach has almost no relation to the question of realism-idealism that we address in this chapter. 10  On the role of habit in Peirce’s Pragmatism, see Chap. 14 of the present work. 11  Therefore, due care must be taken in addressing the subject of human subjectivity within Peirce’s philosophy. For the reader interested in delving deeper into this subject, see Colapietro (1989). 12  On this instigating theme of Peircean thought, see also Houser (2014). 9

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Thus, feeling, internal and external worlds, logical possibility, generalization, habits, interpretation, etc. are terms that idealism will allow to be used in the realm of the realism of Peirce’s philosophy, so that one can affirm his system to be a realism-idealism, however strange this may sound to the ears of other philosophies, notably those who propose an anthropocentrism whose consequent tacit nominalism remains dogmatically connected to ontologically dualist schools of philosophy. It seems legitimate to say that philosophical dogmatisms arise by proposing phenomenologically nonobservable genesis of the world and its representations, or by simply ignoring such question, discrediting it as nonphilosophical. This seems to occur within philosophies that lack the resources for an answer and uncritically navigate in some form of Ptolemaic anthropocentrism. Peirce’s Objective Idealism is already in genesis in his Cosmology, whose exposition does not fit into this short chapter, but which at least allows us to extract from it that the genesis of the Universe occurs logically with the passage from the possible to the necessary, using terms analogous to those of Aristotelian modal logic, in a saga that conjectures on the origin of the categories, from firstness to thirdness— in this, the emergence of Chronos, still in the realm of a pure ideality long before the emergence of matter. In any case, if we wish to conceptualize habit beyond a strictly human domain, as Peirce in fact does, then Objective Idealism should be considered, along with its genesis, namely, Cosmology, in its genetic aspect—as a cosmogenesis. In fact, always in the light of Fallibilism, Peirce’s ontological hypotheses provide a good number of new doorways in his edifice, none of them, as someone who studies Peirce can affirm, dogmatic. On the contrary, in my opinion, they suggest a good deal of heuristic consequences, some of which he himself did not foresee or write about. Two of Peirce’s affirmations that we borrow from his cosmology already encourage the practice of a new and extensive philosophical vocabulary, now legitimized by the entrance into his edifice through objective idealism. Let us first hear this passage: Every attempt to understand anything – every research – supposes, or at least hopes that the very objects of study themselves are subject to a logic more or less identical with that which we employ.13

Supposing a logic in the object similar to the one we employ in signs gives rise, explicitly, to Peirce’s hypothesis of realism, a thirdness that is not confined only to human thought but that also encompasses real objects. On the other hand, the ideality of logical forms also forges a symmetry between sign and object, ensuring the representational character of the interpretants in their saga of seeking adherence to reality.

13

 CP 6.189.

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Peirce’s cosmogenesis presupposes that the origin of the universe was once an absolutely potential nothing.14 In fact, any other hypothesis would imply an origin that was either dogmatic or that succumbed to incognoscibility. Let us now observe Peirce’s articulation on the logical principle of possibility, noteworthy for its consequences: I say that nothing “necessarily” resulted from the Nothing of boundless freedom. That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is not the logic of freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or potentiality, is that it shall annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it remains a completely idle and do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle potentiality is annulled by its complete idleness.15

There is indeed much to reflect about this origin. Firstly, it is pure ideality and could be described in an apparently paradoxical manner: possible is that which, in order to be possible, must no longer be possible. It is, in my opinion, an absolutely remarkable heuristic principle. It implies the necessary transition from vague to definite, from general to particular, with possible intermediate stages of a progressive decrease of generality. Here, there is a foreshadowing of the duality between continuous and discreet, typical of the theory of mathematical continuity that inspires Peirce’s ontological theory of synechism. From here, it is possible to extract the very essence of the categories and, one could even say, extract the very core of pragmatism from this principle.16 It is from here that I now wish to advance this series of suggestions that, in the space reserved for this chapter, cannot go into a full theoretical development, although it is susceptible of being briefly elaborated.17 Perhaps, we can take another passage from Peirce’s cosmology that will provide us a line to follow up on these suggestions. Let us consider the apparently surprising affirmation: The distinction between the inner and the outer worlds antedates Time […] The inner world that I mean is something very primitive. The original quality in itself with its immediate unity belonged to that inner world, a world of possibilities, Plato’s world. The accidental reaction awoke it into a consciousness of duality, of struggle and therefore of antagonism between an inner and an outer. Thus, the inner world was first, and its unity comes from that firstness. The outer world as second […]18. That is why I make bold to go to the human mind to learn the nature of a great cosmical element.19

In this passage, the retro-announced new vocabulary provided by Peirce’s realism-­idealism is evidenced, and here it is shown in a radical way. How strange it seems to claim the existence of an interior world preceding an exterior world in a cosmic sense, without any human instance! How bold to suppose the predicate of  The affinity declared by Peirce in regard to Schelling’s work suggests that this concept of Nothing in his cosmology is associated with the notion of Absolute held by the German author. On Peirce’s Schellingian inspiration, see also Dilworth (2016). 15  CP 6.219; my italics. 16  On the origins and importance of Pragmatism, see Fabbrichesi (2008) and Houser (2003). 17  In Ibri (2017b, Chapter 5), the reader may find an extensive exposition of Peirce’s cosmology. 18  NEM IV, p. 141. 19  NEM IV, p. 141. 14

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interiority as pertaining to a reality independent of us and, moreover, much prior to our own existence! And to seek in the human mind something of a cosmic nature! Yes, it is in this very way that Peirce’s philosophy structures itself as a system within an environment of connaturality of the ideality that colors and permeates everything. Peirce propounds to seek within the human mind the experimental foundation for a proper and more ample conception of mind, namely, one founded on the capacity to generalize, forming habits of conduct, and that within the environment of connatural reality constitutes itself into what is usually called laws. The idea that the internal world cannot be reduced to the strictly human realm is extremely fertile in the understanding of an epistemology of universals or of real continuities. The question, crucial for realism, could be formulated as follows: how is it possible to know that which is not given directly through the senses? And here the associated question will arise, that is, of the logical relations between exteriority and interiority, now ontologically proposed. Let us consider this passage: But even from the human mind we only collect external information about habit. Our knowledge of its inner nature must come to us from logic. For habit is generalization.20

In fact, only the category of secondness definitively exhibits objects in their individual, particular character. It possesses that property of subsuming everything that is exterior to the mind and thus becomes endowed with the most evident otherness. Peircian realism, however, claims that reality is not only constituted by objects under secondness but that the real is composed of the other two categories, namely, firstness and thirdness, which contain within themselves logical possibility and necessity, in that order. Both these two categories, it may be said, comprise everything that is of a general or continuous nature, and thus realism is distinguished from nominalism by recognizing them as important components of what is called reality. Therefore, habits can only be known by the way they manifest themselves factually, in the form of the conduct that they condition. Firstness and thirdness would thus be of an interior nature, while secondness is of an exterior nature. In a general manner, then, it is reaffirmed that interior objects are knowable only by the way they appear exteriorly. Secondness is the category where beings show themselves publicly to every and any mind, while the other two categories are knowable only by inference that is based on the way they condition this exterior manifestation. This seems to be the greatest difficulty of philosophies in adopting realism as their ontological axis, since possibility and necessity—the essence, respectively, of firstness and thirdness—are accessible only indirectly, while the objects in their defined and individual existence are available to direct cognition. Nonetheless, in the line of Peirce’s philosophy, the rupture of the mind-matter dualism and of the genetic estrangement between man and Nature will imply in admitting that the internal world is not only confined to the human mind and that the extension of the concept of mind to all real beings capable of acquiring habits 20

 NEM IV, p. 142.

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endows them with an interiority which encompasses the first and third categories. It seems legitimate to propose a distinction between interiority, a more general term designating the continuous universals of the possible and necessary, and subjectivity, which would denote the exclusively human interior world.

18.3 Knowing Habits: Prospecting the Future The broader concept of mind held by objective idealism is based on the universal phenomenon of the acquisition of habits, assimilating the notion of habit to that of law. However, one could ask: why do beings in general tend to acquire habits? What function do these habits perform? The natural answer to these questions is that habits are guides of conduct in the face of factual otherness. Thus, they constitute mediations, although it can be said, not always genuine representations of their objects.21 At this point, let us anticipate what will be the object of a more detailed reflection in a sequel of this chapter. I take to be genuine representations those mediations that are able to foresee the future conduct of the object, thus associated with the logical role of habits. In this case, such habits are, semiotically, logical interpretants. These are necessarily continuous in time, because of their predictive function, having been, in general, conceived through temporal observation of the object’s conduct, generalizing it. However, it should be noted that there are also habits of feeling that constitute emotional interpretants which, when predominating over logical interpretants, rising above them and distancing themselves from the latter,22 result in a relation of secondness with their object whose conduct they cannot predict, given their character of immediacy, unconnected to time. Despite this characteristic, emotional interpretants, acting autonomously in the secondness of experience, play the role of guides for conduct, although without predictive power. Peirce coined the term degenerate to designate a type of sign truncation that does not reach thirdness, remaining in the second category. A degenerate sign of the second category cannot be predictive because it does not enter the temporality of thirdness, and the behavior that results from it would thus be purely reactive—as such, it does not have the virtue of suggesting a new habit, that is, it does not constitute a learning process of the mind. Here, it is evident, I am seeking to be faithful to the Peircean concept of learning as a process of changing habits. Results of generalizations, therefore of an inductive process, habits are, nevertheless, of different natures because they originate from different inductions, as Peirce classifies them. I will summarize them briefly as follows: statistical

 See Chap. 10 of the present work.  It will be shown that this is a case of dissociation between these two types of interpretants, when an efficient association between the two is possible in a genuine thirdness representation. 21 22

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induction,23 which is configured by defined theoretical probabilistic models. This type of induction applies to the method of investigation as advocated by Peirce, preceded by the logical steps called abduction and deduction. The second class of induction he calls is qualitative induction,24 which seems to me applicable in experimental situations where the inquirer is identifying similar cases, based on his previous knowledge. I suppose it is also possible to think of it as constituting perceptual judgments that are based on habits, such as, for example, the formulation of medical diagnoses. However, for the scope of this chapter, it is my interest to examine the concept of crude induction,25 whose characteristic is always to result in universal propositions, on the assumption that the predicates of the object in the past will not change in the future. I highlight this type of induction since, in my opinion, it is typical of cases in which there is a prevalence of emotional interpretants, leaving no space for logical ones. The latter, in turn, have a profile committed to some form of epistemological Fallibilism, which makes them take the form of propositions of a conjectural nature. One could say that logical interpretants are associated with statistical induction and that their conjectural nature is given by the form of a proposition that affirms predicates with varying degrees of probability of occurrence. This conjectural character I suppose can also be admitted in qualitative inductions, as long as they avoid universal propositions, resisting the assumption of a rigid conservation of past characteristics of the object in the future, as occurred in crude induction. In the light of Peircean realism, to know is to seek to represent the habits of the investigated object. There is, however, an increase in the presence of the spontaneity of the first category in the spectrum of Peirce’s objective idealism. There is, however, a growing presence of the spontaneity of the first category which goes from the habits of matter – which Peirce’s objective idealism recognizes as an aged mind that has reached a state of almost definite equilibrium, being unavailable for changes – up to the most unstable, living mind, such as the human mind. It can be said that crystal geology is not a simple science, but its complexity and difficulty of investigation cannot be compared to that of psychoanalysis, which deals with objects permeated by the emotionality of the qualities of feelings, investigating them based on patients’ reports, with no direct phenomenological access to the reported facts; nevertheless, one can also make use of the semiotic reading of the many indicial signs that accompany such reports.26 All that is wanted by the right act of knowing is to delineate the probable future conduct of the object. And it can be said that an object without habits does not allow us to do so.

 CP 7.120.  CP 2.759. 25  CP 2.757. 26  On this point, see the analysis by Guimarães Filho (2017). 23 24

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18.3.1 The Water and the Fishing Net I will permit myself to use a metaphor here that I believe will be helpful to think about the difference between logical and emotional interpretants. It concerns the images of water and the fishing net. Water suggests the idea of a continuum without form, of which even its finite portions are indistinguishable from the continuous whole of the fluid to which it belongs. The idea of a part referring immediately to a whole is reminiscent of crude induction. The fishing net, on the other hand, has a frame designed to catch a few determined objects, in this case fish of some kind, while letting others escape, which are possibly not its goal. The net selects a few elements from this universe through a previous plan, given by its previously projected configuration. This consequent selection of intentionally foreseen individuals is reminiscent, I suppose, of statistical induction, which generalizes based on a sample, and therefore is able to be predictive. While statistical induction generalizes based on a theory that is taken to be modifiable in case facts appear to contradict it, crude induction cannot do the same. It does not possess a theory that plays the role of a rule of reflection on an eventual presence of surprising elements of experience that could suggest its revision or even resetting its parameters. Crude induction, as a formless liquid, always tends to operate in an immediate manner, referring the part to the whole, with no criteria of distinction. Therefore, what sustains its always universal propositions is merely a repetition by apparent similarity between the facts and a factual state of things to which it refers. Universal generalizations by mere analogy end up mobilizing only indexical icons without elevating them to a genuinely symbolic state, that is, they never leave their phenomenological environment of secondness to reach the third category, where the otherness of the fact can be understood in the light of a theory. Many judgments of a purely emotional background are made in this way, and this is not simply a logical problem. They end up creating a conflict between the minds that seek to guide themselves by what can be said, aware of the fallibility of what is said, and the minds that refuse to navigate through any degree of uncertainty, since they are immersed in the necessity of universal statements.

18.4 The Resilient Mind: A Synthesis I call once again on Objective Idealism, through which in this chapter I entered Peirce’s philosophical edifice, as the doctrine that justifies the conaturality of genesis between continua of qualities of feeling, under firstness, and continua of logical structure, under thirdness. In a vocabulary of common sense, one could simply say, in the restricted realm of human faculties, connaturality between feeling and reason. In fact, this common genesis takes place in the author’s cosmology, where from a

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formless continuum, of mere possibilities, arise continua with form, of quasi-necessity. One could then understand a sort of cosmic lesson that not only suggests this connaturality but also that the disjunction between logical possibility and necessity constitutes a misconception that can only generate an unfair, as it is groundless, duality. Many examples could be listed of emotional and logical interpretants working together. One could mention Peirce’s heuristic theory of abduction, where he will suggest thinking about the birth of new logical mediations, new theories in science, by means of a kind of intelligent sensibility, or, in other words, a sensitive intelligence present in his exemplary concepts of perceptual judgment, insight of thirdness, not forgetting his defense of the almost unusual presence of an instinctive capacity of evolutionary origin in the human mind.27 Although Peirce did not concentrate, in the realm of artistic creation, on the direction of the joint work between the emotional and the logical, which could be called agapic, as I suggest in the title of this chapter, it seems fair to say that an idea of an aesthetic nature is accomplished as a work of art through the knowledge of some theory that guides its conception. I also propose to think about the distinction between sensitivity and emotionality, where the former translates the interactive work between feeling and logical form, while the latter is confined to the immediate unity of its own nature. Let us return to the theme of the dissention between emotional and logical interpretants. While the emotional has no rule for constructing its judgments, except by universalizing predicates and identifying objects in the light of an apparent similarity between them, the logical interpretant has in itself some criterion of relevance that distinguishes in its objects the characters that can be interpreted in the light of this criterion. Pure emotionality would thus act as an interpretant confined to the second category, without overcoming its characteristic duality. Mediations by means of these interpretants consequently lead to energetic interpretants that disregard the conduct of the minds with which they interact. Inevitable conflicts arise from these forms of human relations, due to the impossibility of thinking of otherness in a fair way, one could say, the other, as psychoanalysts usually say, submissive to the universalizing immediacy of emotional signs that feed exclusively on the habits of feeling.28 How much suffering tenacious minds—recalling the term from Peirce’s theory of beliefs—entail around them, requiring an almost superhuman resilience29 from those who cohabit with them. It is not for nothing that the otherness in Peirce is called brute by him. Facing it we have the resource of cognitive mediations, which can represent the conduct of otherness, diluting its brutality by being able to think it inserted in the Chronos. However, when the genetic brutality of otherness, called as  In order to deepen this theme, see Anderson (1987) and, from a different perspective, Dilworth (2015). 28  On the influence of Peirce’s semiotics on psychoanalytic thinking, see Guimarães Filho (2016). 29  No wonder the concept of resilience has been the subject of studies in several areas of the human sciences. For example, see Norris, Tracy, and Galea (2009) and Southwick and Charney (2018). 27

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such for ignoring what we would like it to be or what we can imagine it to be, remains in this phenomenologically existential state before our mind, conflictual relations inexorably confined to secondness are announced. Therefore, let us think that the agapic work between emotional and logical interpretants, endowing the mind with sensitivity and not just emotionality, will require of the mind a special kind of resilience, defined by the flexibility it can exhibit to recognize its mistakes in the face of what always has the last word—the facts. But then the mind will be immersed in that which renews its vital force and fulfills its most genuine nature, namely, its saga of growth and continuous learning. I believe that the resilient mind, mobilized by the harshness of secondness where it is required to exist, deserves moments of a fair rest where the agapic constitution of our sensibility can enjoy what it has created for itself: the highest human art of music, of fine arts, of poetry, and what Nature has to offer from its most refined art to our contemplation.

Part VII

On Pragmatism and Pragmaticism

Chapter 19

Neopragmatism Viewed by Pragmaticism: A Redescription

Nominalists see language merely as signs and sounds used by human beings. One of the things we want to do with language is to get food, another is to get sex, and yet another is to understand the origin of the universe. Rorty – EHO, p. 127 Nominalism is a deadly poison to any living thought. Peirce, NEM III, p. 201

Keywords  Pragmaticism · Neopragmatism · Richard Rorty · Charles S. Peirce Those who are familiar with Peirce’s philosophy will be sure, after a few moments of reading some of Richard Rorty’s best-known texts, that they have entered into a universe, as far as its premises are concerned, completely opposite to those that Peircean philosophy adopts. This universe is outlined in several conceptual points that I will call “neopragmatist theses,” namely: A] refutation of the concept of representation for its alleged association to “non-human fixed essences”; B] denial of the possibility of truth as correspondence, for which he uses the “mirror of Nature” metaphor1. This thesis is evidently closely linked to the previous one; C] replacement of the concept of discovery by that of invention; D] defense of Nominalism in the face of a metaphysical realism;

1   As appeared, exemplarily, in Rorty’s well-known Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (PMN, p. 10).

This chapter is based on the text I authored: Neopragmatism Viewed by Pragmaticism: A Redescription, originally published in: European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, v. V, p. 01–13, 2013b. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_19

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E] denial of the role of language as a medium between subject and object; F] introduction of the term “redescription” in lieu of fixed truths, contemplating the factual contingency of human life; G] attribution to language of the essential role of tool with which solidarity is forged within a democratic society  – constituted, as such, of citizens who freely express their ideas  – seeking to mitigate human pain and cruelty; H] replacement of philosophy by literature, as a more efficient tool for the development of people for the exercise of their solidarity-creating language; I] proposition of the term “irony”, to define an anti-essentialist, desacralized philosophical attitude that abdicates from argumentations based on truth in favor of a more efficient vocabulary for the discussion of ideas – Rortyan pragmatists are self-defined “ironists.”2

To all who adopt these viewpoints, notwithstanding their rather summarized presentation, Rorty called pragmatists, declaring himself a particular follower of the tradition of the pragmatist thought of Dewey and James. Rorty also lists some other traditional names for support, albeit partial, of his theses, such as Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, and Wittgenstein. References to Peirce are very topical, evidencing a poor reading of Peircean works, restricted to a few texts of his youth. That collection of Rortyan theses would suffice, I guess, for a serious scholar of Peircean works to suggest his exclusion from the roster of those who agree to take part in the group that Rorty calls frequently in his writings, “we pragmatists.” In addressing some of the points of discord between Peirce and Rorty, I will endeavor to justify the reason for this exclusion. I will examine, in general, some of these theses and try to explain what a critical position would be, based on Peirce’s philosophy. It must be pointed out, however, that none of the Rortyan theses, as detailed above, are admissible within the context of Peirce’s system of ideas, and for this reason, to continue using the term “pragmatism” to designate two, wholly antagonistic, theoretical standpoints will cause, at least, confusion. Accepting Peirce’s exemplary suggestion that the designation of concepts should be the object of an Ethics,3 it is well worth retrieving his term “pragmaticism,”4 which he once adopted,

 CIS, p. 136–145.  See Ethics of Terminology in CP 2.219–226; EP 2, p. 263–266. 4  CP 5.414; EP 2, p. 334–335. In this paragraph, Peirce did write: “So then, the writer, finding his bantling “pragmatism” so promoted, feels that it is time to kiss his child good-by and relinquish it to its higher destiny; while to serve the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he begs to announce the birth of the word “pragmaticism”, which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers. To show how recent the general use of the word “pragmatism” is, the writer may mention that, to the best of his belief, he never used it in copy for the press before today, except by particular request, in Baldwin’s Dictionary. […] Toward the end of 1890, when this part of the Century Dictionary appeared, he did not deem that the word had sufficient status to appear in that work. […] But he has used it continually in philosophical conversation since, perhaps, the mid-seventies.” 2 3

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to distinguish his conception of Pragmatism from those that followed his creation in 1878.5 In fact, the term “pragmaticism” emerges well after the creation of the doctrine in Peirce’s youth. The later development of Peirce’s philosophy, which became increasingly realistic and strongly metaphysical, incorporated additional meanings to Pragmatism, turning it into a consequence of the relationship between his three categories, definitively formulated after 1902, when he expounded his Phenomenology in final form. Peirce’s Pragmatism becomes a generalized relationship between the general and the particular,6 in which the expression practical consequences, stated in original proposition of the maxim in 1878, assumes an increasingly ontological meaning, necessarily extending the sphere of human conduct to the conduct of all real objects.7 This extensionality of the concept of Pragmatism derives, in fact, from the categorial symmetry between the phenomenological and ontological spheres, fundamental for the conception of Semiotics as a science that conceives meanings beyond human language. Peirce’s mature philosophy is constituted by a system of interlacing ideas, suggesting a non-foundationalistic hierarchy between its diverse disciplines, notwithstanding such system being concerned with genetic issues, such as his conception of cosmogenesis.8 Rorty shares the tradition dating back to Nietzsche, as well as the majority of philosophers who strongly refute metaphysics—anti-essentialists, as they call themselves.9 However, among the many possible questions, it should be asked of an instrumentalist or utilitarianist pragmatist whether theological metaphysics, for instance, as a source of beliefs of common sense, should be the object of such radical rebuttal. Should not these beliefs be somehow considered, for its utility to human life, comforting men in their inexorable finitude before the hard impact of facts, bringing some hope of life to the destitute? Would this consideration not suffice to admit a sense of religiousness as something “pragmatic”? Is there not, deep down in the radical rebuttal of theological metaphysics, not so much an epistemic issue as Kant put it, but rather a reaction against religious institutions that imposed to an extremely human tendency—that is, an attraction to transcendence—social habits and a morality associated with the exercise of power? Why are the two ­features, namely, the utilitarian experience and the metaphysical refutation, not set aside here, rather than tossing both out, the bath water and the baby, as popularly said?

 Peirce, 1878, p. 286–302; CP 5.388–410; EP 1, p. 124–141.  In CP 5.170, Peirce claimed: “[...] the validity of induction depends upon the necessary relation between the general and the singular. It is precisely this which is the support of Pragmatism.” For other interpretations of Pragmatism, see Altshuler (1978), Forster (2003), Hookway (2005), and Liszka (2009). 7  I address this ontological consequence of Pragmatism, for example, in Chap. 10 of the present work. 8  See on this subject Turley (1977). 9  An example of Rorty’s anti-essentialism can be found in his A World without Substances and Essences (PSH). 5 6

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Seemingly, this issue brings a specter of reproach: some things are useful; others do not seem allowed to be. Could this propensity toward transcendence not also be merely poetic? Is conduct not pragmatically characterized on seeing Nature sacralized by a pantheistic conception of divinity—an opening for a silent and transcendental dialogue with each natural being? Why should this potentially poetic baby be tossed together with the dirty water of the moral dogmatism that restrains the human erotic impulse? Are not “redescriptions,” understood as a deeper rereading of the diversity of facets that human experience undergoes, applicable here?10 In my view, questions such as those are well worth asking. Deflating philosophy to the extreme may involve suppressing from it vital components that keep it alive. Perhaps this is Rorty’s strategy: once anorexic, it can be replaced by literature.

19.1 On the Concepts of Representation and Truth (Theses A and B) Rorty sees the concept of representation invariably associated with an external world endowed with ultimate essences, which it should mirror. He does not acknowledge any utility of that concept for human purposes. I believe, however, that this concept requires—and I here apply again an expression dear to neopragmatists— redescription. This redescription would seek precisely to understand “representation” within a criterion of meaning acknowledged by neopragmatism, namely, through its utilitarist-instrumentalist angle. Primarily, it is necessary to “redescribe” the world,11 of which the alleged “representation” would be the mirror. Rorty invariably refers to a near pathetic intent of representationists toward a precision derived from a determinist world view, such as that outlined in the Enlightenment. This view, however, has long broken away from contemporary science and the philosophies more apprised with its history. For a long time, ontological determinism has ceased to be the hope not only of those who make science but also of those who make it a metalanguage, namely, the epistemologists. Nevertheless, in various passages of his works,12 Rorty insists in attributing such a determinist view to representationists, as if wishing to adopt a convenient general strategy to discredit his adversary, who would be nurturing a world view derived from a belief in an all-foreseeing mathematical God in his project, remaining for man to discover what final laws, with a status of divine essences, were thought by Him. It would be fitting to ask why the right of vocabulary change is not  My claim is that poetic experience can be considered from the point of view of Peirce’s Pragmatism, nevertheless fully connected with his ontology. See Chaps. 2 and 3 of the present work. 11  Notwithstanding “world” being what is most lacking in the neopragmatism discourse. 12  See, for instance, his insistence on the concept of “exact representation” in ORT, p.  99; PMN, p. 377. 10

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granted to representationists. They would say that no respectable science would expect a determinist behavior from its objects,13 finding it natural to obtain a dispersion of results capable of being dealt with statistically through probability functions. Why then would the term representation be justified for a theory? If, on the one hand, representation means an exact, mirroring, image of particular objects, human knowledge would have no utility, according to the valuation criterion adopted by neopragmatism. Alternatively, on the other hand, if representation is associated with final, fixed essences, it must also be agreed that no utilitarian function would be found in it. However, let us reformulate the concept of representation as a theoretical prediction of future conduct of its objects.14 I believe that this function of representations, namely, to anticipate the future conduct of its objects, characterizes what Peirce meant with he claimed that the meaning of a positive theory lies in its esse in futuro,15 namely, in its capacity of foreseeing the future course of facts. Here, incidentally, when we refer to “objects” or “facts,” we are faced with Rorty’s suggestions that we should avoid these expressions, altering our vocabulary. Notwithstanding his acknowledgment of the utilitarian function of the predictability of theories, he forbids philosophy to speculate on the reason for the success or failure of such predictions, as if such speculation were ultimately guided by the pretense of discovery of concealed essences or realities. Here, I believe, lies the crux of the matter of representation and truth, as viewed by neopragmatism. To Peirce’s Pragmaticism, to represent means the primary function of our rationality in predicting what may occur in the future course of facts and to guide our own behavior by the unveiling of the theories on what has not yet happened. To neopragmatism, representation embodies in its concept a static world view, permeated with nonhuman entities, concealed metaphysical essences and other ghosts more commonly associated with a theological determinism. Applying the vocabulary used by neopragmatism, if we deflate the objects of representations from this anachronistic view of a theological determinism, incidentally suggested by Rorty for the sake of argumentative strategy, I suppose, then representation would be simply associated with objects

 In CP 1.9, we read: “In those sciences of measurement which are the least subject to error— metrology, geodesy, and metrical astronomy—no man of self-respect ever now states his result, without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is not followed in other sciences it is because in those the probable errors are too vast to be estimated.” See also NEM III 2, p. 897. 14  In CIS, p.  5–7, Rorty criticizes the conception of language as mediation between subject and object. 15  In CP 5.427; EP 2, p. 340, Peirce said “The rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future. How so? The meaning of a proposition is itself a proposition. Indeed, it is no other than the very proposition of which it is the meaning: it is a translation of it. But of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to be called its very meaning? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances, nor when one entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most directly applicable to self-control under every situation, and to every purpose. This is why he locates the meaning in the future time; for future conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control.” 13

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endowed with habits of conduct,16 the knowledge of which is of extreme utility to us to plan how we should act to accomplish our purposes. But, viewed under an indeterminist light, a world endowed with randomness would emerge from that alleged Rortyan mirror as extremely clouded, incorporating this metaphor to another formulated by Popper in his brilliant work Of Clouds and Clocks,17 and such a world image could not be associated with any precise theory. I believe, however, that instead of trying to save this metaphor about the mirror, it would be much better to break it once and for all, fearless of what tragedy could befall philosophy in the next seven years, considering that Rorty always seems to keep mystics and believers of a reality essentialized by something nonhuman18 under the focus of his criticisms. The conceptual inutility of the mirror metaphor is distinguished by the fact that no clear image can be seen in it, given the indeterminate nature of the object. In spite of this indetermination, the positive theories may be perfectly classified by their adherence capacity between the course of facts and the predictions of those theories. This concept of adherence, common in sciences, would be justified by a conception of structural correspondence between the rule of conduct that subsumes facts in its phenomenological manifestation and its theoretical representation, notwithstanding how fallible19 all our affirmations on the world might be. We refer here to the Peircean conception that all our positive theories are fallible, not only associated with an indeterministic conception of world but also linked to the randomness seen in human actions. Clearly, then, theories that show good adherence to the course of facts may be considered true, without being a definite truth or associated with anachronically metaphysical determinisms. I would suppose that a highly cultured scientist would certainly refuse to acknowledge his theories as mere useful tools but would rather say that many of them are true, albeit admitting that better theories—meaning more adherent20—could emerge, and that those regarded today as possessing good adherence could lose this quality, as a result of the discovery of new phenomena. Obviously, there is a radical difference between what Pragmaticism sees as a true theory and what Rorty states as a useful theory. Pragmaticism possesses a necessary realistic presupposition rooted in scholasticism, that is, which admits the reality of general instances associated with the otherness of particular objects—not a realism that is so called for admitting the existence of an external world of objects independently of what we say about them, thus contrary to a subjectivist idealism. A

 In many passages, Rorty encourages the adoption of creative vocabularies. See, for example, CIS, p. 20. 17  See Popper (1972). 18  See, exemplarily, TP, p. 226. 19  Margolis (2007) and Forster (1997) are good examples of interesting discussion on Peirce’s Fallibilism. 20  I would suggest that adherence actually is a better term to use instead of truth, as the latter somehow induce minds not acquainted with the concepts of indeterminism and fallible knowledge, as claimed by Peirce, to think on fixed essences, like Rorty insistently does. Truth, then, should be only used under the consideration that theories are fallible and, consequently, they must be changed whenever experience imposes such changing in any demanded degree. 16

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pragmaticist realism proposes the hypothesis that the world contains habits of conduct, namely, general rules associated with the regularity seen in particular events. This hypothesis is useful to explain the reason why some theories are adherent and others are not, thus redeeming the concept of fallible truth. There are historical reasons that induce us to suppose the existence of an evolution of human knowledge, a growth in our repertoire of adherent theories. Peirce adopts, concomitantly, an evolutionist cosmology in which real thirdness grows in the universe, in tandem with a constant insertion of the diversity that complexifies it. The pragmaticist hypothesis that investigation tends toward a final agreement of opinions is solely based on that evolutionist conception, representing an asymptotic growth tendency of the Peircean category of thirdness. This brief synthesis of the evolutionary intertwinement that both epistemology and ontology have in Peirce’s philosophy seeks only to refute Rorty’s affirmation that Peirce would have claimed that investigation tends to find a finished reality of essences that would constitute its purpose.21 Similar to many other opinions of Rorty about the history of philosophy, this point of Peirce’s philosophy would require a redescription whose target would be to eliminate this ubiquitous mystical-theological nature that Rorty attributes to all those who speak of some reality beyond the language practiced by mankind.

19.2 On Discovery and Invention (Theses C and D) Scientific theories, according to neopragmatists, are inventions that scientists create in order to have problem-solving “tools” at their disposal. It stands to reason that, although theories regarded as true are useful, it does not necessarily follow that “utility” is the guiding criterion for the establishment of a theory for which there is a catholic consensus on its truthfulness. Also, if a general structure that regulates the conduct of objects—their habits, to use an expression employed by pragmaticists— is not discovered, then there is no way of explaining why some theories are adherent and others are not. True theories are, in general, adapted to empirical data, under the presupposition that its predictive form retains the adherence verified experimentally. Ultimately, the issue refers to the nominalist or realist stance before the world. Peirce’s scholastic realism22 presupposes that there are laws that act on the objects that we endeavor to know, albeit being laws with varying degrees of cloudiness, according to Popper’s metaphor. Evidently, based on a nominalist approach, Rorty will not consider any differentiation between invention and discovery, since language has the status of tools that must work. Should we, however, wish to reflect why they work, we will be in touch with “things greater and more powerful than everyday human existence.”23

 ORT, p. 131.  At this point, scholars should remember the classical and pioneer work by Boler (1963). 23  EHO, p. 28. 21 22

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Indeed, to confuse discovery with invention elicits, tacitly, in my view, two ominous aspects for philosophy, namely, non-acknowledgment of the otherness of the world, which leads to an indistinction between reality and fiction. For no other reason, Rorty proposes matter-of-factly the replacement of philosophy by literature, after suppressing from the former all contact with world otherness.

19.3 Mediation and Redescription (Theses E and F) Rorty also does not admit that language is mediation between subject and object, due to the fact that, to him, language has an autonomy that turns his neopragmatism, according to some commentators, into a type of “linguistic idealism.”24 In fact, it seems that Rorty considers the role of mediation as less noble for language, seeing that it would have a role of representation of the characteristics of the object, having to submit to it in order to acquire meaning. In actual fact, this denial of the mediating role of language derives, to my mind, from the early theses based on the nominalism that characterizes neopragmatism. Description and redescription are Rortyan concepts that replace the concepts of truth and representation, as they are seen, of course, by neopragmatism. There are, however, serious problems that neopragmatism would encounter when one resorts to the pragmaticist thesis that the meaning of a positive theory is its esse in futuro or, as mentioned before, its predictive power. How, then, to describe the future? Can description and inference, here, be considered equals? The word “describe,” consistent with nominalism, could not be applied to general objects but solely to particular objects. Therefore, under this “vocabulary,” how does the predictive function of theories work? How, in this case, can “redescription” be understood? Would it be the formulation of ad hoc hypotheses on what did not work out? Here, I see the deepest contradiction in the neopragmatist claims. They defend language as a tool but not at all connected with any representation of a real world. On the other hand, representation of reality, in the sense of being constituted by positive theories, is the only available way we have to predict its future course— without this, language would be a worthless tool and therefore its required role of being only a useful instrument to deal with human experience would inexorably fail. In any sense that language is successfully predictive of the course of experience, then it is somehow committed with the representation of the conduct of the real object. And such representation has nothing to do with mirrors—indeed a metaphor that could be useful if understood as related to reflection, whose ancient root, the Latin refletire, would fairly describe the hard work of human mind to correct theories based on the external images formed by the human actions they have induced. In fact, this would be a rich metaphor, namely, the idea of mirror as to refer to the reflexive dialogue between the inner side of our thoughts and the external side of our

24

 Such as mentioned by Brandon (2000, p. 160).

19.4  On Community and Solidarity (Thesis G)

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actions, in a self-corrective process. This, by the way, is the true core of Peirce’s Pragmatism,25 from which neopragmatism passes quite far away.

19.4 On Community and Solidarity (Thesis G) I recall when, still an engineering student during the late 60s, a professor of the physics of relativity suggested to lower-income students to purchase the Russian edition of a book on the theme of the course, which cost a fifth of the American price. Obviously subsidized by the Soviet Government, the book dealt with the same Physics as the considerably more expensive book published in the United States. Even at that time, this made me wonder why two ideologically dissimilar societies that were then competing for who would have the greatest power to destroy the world,26 promoting a frightening and tense Cold War, could produce the same Physics? Could there not be a leftist, revolutionary Physics, with descriptions and redescriptions invented by soviet physicists, seeking to distinguish themselves from a bourgeois, capitalist, and decadent science? Nevertheless, the truth was that physicists from the western and eastern blocs constituted a community of researchers above ideological, cultural, and historical idiosyncrasies. Is this fact not proof that this community had a common base reaching beyond a mere sharing of opinions derived from conversation and creative use of language? Were theories not guided by a similar dialogue with world otherness constituted by the objects of common experience, which imposed an equal set of theories accepted as true? In this case, if language could confer form to the world, why societies, who affirmed themselves by establishing among them all kinds of distinctions, could not simply create a radically different physical science? The force of the otherness of facts, I hold, is the only basis on which a community can be settled, whether scientific or comprising citizens of some society. To reduce the possibility of a community to free democratic conversation, as the neopragmatist school does, is to presuppose, on the one hand, that agreements supposedly aimed at achieving a common good will spontaneously extend to the whole of society and, on the other hand, that they will be effectively complied with. Various counterarguments may be raised against this neopragmatist position. As far as the extendibility of an accord to the totality of mankind is concerned, one may ask whether, in defense of the power of language to constitute communities, there is not an indispensable, albeit tacit, admission of an ethics of good feelings, sufficiently fragile I suppose, on which to lay the hope of human solidarity. On the other hand, a presupposition that solidary agreements are honored requires of men an

 In CP 8.272, we can read such reflexive aspect of Peirce’s Pragmatism: “Pragmatism is correct doctrine only in so far as it is recognized that material action is the mere husk of ideas… But the end of thought is action only in so far as the end of action is another thought.” 26  I recall that the soviets showed their concern for their inferiority in being capable of destroying the planet only 20 times (!) over, while the Americans were capable of doing it 22 times (!). 25

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inability to lie and a capacity to forgo self-interests, in order that such compliance does not deviate from its course. Pragmatism, in its Peircean inception, had as its golden rule a logical commitment between thought and action, a commitment of coherence that would finally confer meaning to discourse, to language. For this reason, it had, along with its logical-semantic dimension, an ethical dimension: action would materialize in the outer plane open to common experience, by which the truth of statements is either affirmed or denied. Under this conception, language lies solely within the dimension of the inner world of men, namely, the world of possibilities that can influence their actions. As mentioned before, I hold that Pragmaticism, ultimately, is a relationship of commitment between inner and outer worlds, in which acting is how an indeterminate generality of concept is determined, within a theater of reactions open to common experience. To base humanity’s shortcomings on democratic conversation is to scorn the instance where language, which has facticity as reference, may appear as fact, namely, human action that, in the pragmaticist view, is the way in which language emerges from its inner world and enters the outer world. While not doing so, basing its accords only on itself, on its inventions of world, on the sophistic power of persuasion through rhetorical seduction, I fear then the possibility of a reign of terror, of domination, as history often shows, following thus an opposite path to that presupposed by neopragmatists. Naive and uninformed is, at best, the supposition that the model of American democracy is ideally exportable to other societies of deeply distinct historical backgrounds, culturally dissimilar to it. One must, however, acknowledge that democracy is a necessary condition for a society that theoretically respects individual citizen’s rights. However, it does not follow that democracy is sufficient for having a solidary society, as required by Rorty. We agree that Rorty’s project of a solidary society is utopian, according to his own words. This project, however, would not be utopian because it partakes a common ideality with other social utopias that the history of ideas records but rather because it is indeed based on the naive hypothesis that the solidarity and good will of American society would be disseminated throughout the planet, by the freedom provided by democracy. Would it suffice for men to talk and exchange vocabulary when it lost its utility? Could one also ask why would men be sympathetic, forming a community of common interests solely because they are free and share a language? If American society reveals an appearance of solidary community, would it not be derived from a specific culture, from a historical contingency that is not the same in other societies? There are many democracies in emerging nations in which the political class is really solidary, but only among its members, promoting and practicing a cronyism that cloaks privileges, corruption, nepotism, and other illicit acts. Solidarity, as such, can be found in any society, nevertheless mostly confined to groups of interests. Solidarity sustained on an idea of common good would require, on the one hand, the effective individual will of each of its members toward this idea and, on the

19.5  Thematic Overview

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other hand, a culture in which the acknowledgment of ethical values placed in its practice represented a community habit. A society judges its politicians pragmatically, namely, by the degree of logical consistency between discourse and conduct. The philosopher’s abilities would not be required here: the common citizen is not satisfied with what a public figure declares. Having voted for him, for his promises, this citizen will demand such consistency: effective conduct will have the final word—the manifest form of language, open to the factual experience of everyone.

19.5 Thematic Overview I recall a creative passage, attributed to Einstein: Theory is when you know all and nothing works. Practice is when all works and nobody knows why. In this case we have put together theory and practice: nothing works and nobody knows why!

Notwithstanding the hilarious nature of his conclusion, which pessimistically associates the negative aspects of theory and practice, it holds some truth in its premises, already mentioned by Kant in a more refined way, in the Introduction to his first Critique, when he says that while reason without experience is empty, experience without reason is blind, criticizing, in one fell swoop, both rationalism and empiricism. Reducing theories to mere tools that represent nothing seems only to serve a blind practicalism, on the one hand, or a practicalism whose eventual success or failure cannot be explained, on the other. We cannot simply consider failures as instances that give rise to “redescriptions” or “exchange of vocabularies.” We must understand what caused them, searching for the general rule that governs the path of otherness in relation to which our actions were ill-fated. Language and theories as mere tools do not grant this status of generalization that we seek: we want to learn beyond a mere empiricism that allows for contingent solutions, as if we were strolling through a stretch of an exponential function and had taken it as linear: soon a gamut of new experiences would denounce this redescription as a naive illusion. Failure and error force us to a more wide-­ ranging dialogue, beyond our own language: toward objects taken in their integrity, namely, in their unveiling as existence open to experience and in their habit of being that surpasses the contingency of mere particular existence. There are many profound ideas that the history of philosophy has discussed and which Rorty seems to ignore: they orbit in this interaction between theory and experience, involving the interplay between the general and the particular; in the conditions of apprehension and perception of generality in contingency; and in language as a network that captures aspects of the real, turning them into objects of reflection, with the necessary consideration of their otherness.

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I cannot see why, in Rorty’s words, “the mysterious and concealed reality of the world, much greater than us humans” can be more barred to us than that which conceals the innerness of men. On the contrary, world facticity conceals nothing in an immediate manner other than what appears mediately, cognizable through inference. However, if we consider that, pragmatically, language is only revealed in action as its unveiled aspect, without that instance in which it is exteriorized as determination, it is meaningless. This is a requirement of Pragmaticism, which sees in the action the outer aspect of thought and, consequently, of language. The conversation of men is, no doubt, necessary, but for pragmaticists, it is insufficient for something as important as human solidarity to support itself. The realistic conversation of pragmaticists goes beyond human language. Semiotics is the science that considers that men not only converse among themselves but also reflexively with their actions and with the facts of the world they interact with, which, incidentally, is also endowed with a language constituted by an interchange of signs and meanings present in Nature. Nominalism could only lead to an anthropocentrism, and this philosophical approach has been responsible for us to consider Nature as something foreign to humankind, something devoid of language.27 More than ever, had Peirce had a close relationship with Rorty, he would resume his proposal to change the name of Pragmatism to Pragmaticism, leaving the former to a doctrine that has nothing to do with his philosophy. Under these circumstances, he would surely say: “we pragmaticists absolutely refute what you neopragmatists have been saying.”

27

 “The world does not speak. Only we do” (CIS, p. 6).

Chapter 20

The Ontology of Action in Peirce’s Philosophy

Keywords  Ontology of action · Pragmatism · Realism · Peirce The concept of action is central to several currents of Pragmatism, notably those that consider it as an end that is justified in producing practical effects, that is, effects that, in the end, matter for the meaning of the theories, whose semantic universe is focused on the solution of human or, in other words, vital problems. On several occasions, Peirce made restrictions to this conception of action that, having originated in his contemporaries James and Dewey, and as we know today extendable to Rortyan Neopragmatism, regarded it as an end in itself, in an erroneous and nominalist understanding of the concept of practical effects.1 According to Peirce, this conception neglected the necessary and constitutive generalization of conceptual growth that action provides, that is, it disregarded the semantic core of Pragmatism, in its reflexive aspect concerning the semiotic dialogue between action as a particular and thought as a general.2 On the other hand, by taking the categories of Peirce’s philosophy as the axis of reflection, the concept of action takes on an ontological aspect, linked to the metaphysical ideas of existence and the external world. This approach provides a differentiated concept of meaning that expands and harmonizes with a realist, nonanthropocentric philosophy, as is Peirce’s. This text will therefore seek to demonstrate Peirce’s critique of reductionist views of the concept of action and, sequentially, an ontological approach to the concept in light of the author’s categories.  See also Hausman (1993, Chapter 5; 1991).  See Houser (2003) and also his excellent Introduction to volume 8 of the Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce (Houser 2010a). 1 2

This chapter is a reviewed version of one of my texts called: A Dimensão Ontológica do Conceito de Ação na Filosofia de Peirce, originally published in Broens, M. et  al. Informação, Auto-­ Organização e Complexidade: Estudos Interdisciplinares, Campinas, CLE  – Unicamp, 2015e. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_20

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20.1 On Peirce’s Categories 20.1.1 Phenomenology of Pragmatic Reason I have stated in other papers that Charles S. Peirce’s (1839–1914) thought is structured in his three categories. Understanding them distinctly, within two philosophical realms, namely, the phenomenological and ontological planes, provides a master key to consider the entire system of doctrines that shapes Peircean philosophy.3 Within the sphere of phenomenology, Peirce affirms that the categories are the modes that exhaust the forms in which our human experience plays out. Following on the classification of the sciences, the three categories are associated with the normative sciences, entitled aesthetics, ethics, and logic. Firstness, secondness, and thirdness are related to them, in this order.4 It is interesting to see that in phenomenology and within the normative sciences, the categories are associated with the human sphere, whether as related to phenomenological experience or to what in the normative sciences dictate as how the ideals of reasoning and conduct should be and what should be admired as the self-justified purpose of human action.5 In these philosophical contexts, these are, one could say, anthropocentric. The whole difference of a non-anthropocentric philosophy, as is Peirce’s, will only appear when one studies his Metaphysics, where the idea of a real world will configure the reasons for which our forms of representation are frequently contested by experience. This is certainly the greatest evidence of why we cannot simply assume the constitution of our language as the constitution of the phenomenal world in which we are immersed, for fear of not being able to justify why factual contingency, in its particularity, would be authorized to refute the theories that seek to represent it as stable and continuous space-temporal processes, that is, as general instances of phenomena.6 Much of Peirce’s work is directed to show that, in order to justify the adjustment of our theories to facts, we need an ontology that generates a symmetry for the correspondence between theoretical generality and factual generality. In this effort by the author, which he himself calls realism of continua, in a modernization of the old scholastic issue of universals, we find the key for the transposition of anthropocentrism to a non-anthropocentric philosophy. It is thus my emphatic opinion that Peirce’s true philosophy, in its most genuinely distinctive aspect, can only be apprehended through the study of his metaphysics. It is also evident that this area of Peircean philosophy cannot be studied without a necessary passage through Phenomenology and Semiotics. The former because this philosophy begins by  Other insightful approaches about the role of the categories in Peirce’s philosophy can be found in De Tienne (1989, 1993) e Hausman (1993, Chapter 3). 4  See for an interesting analysis of Peirce’s Classification of Sciences in Anderson (1995, Chapter 2). See also Parker (2003). 5  About this point, see Calcaterra (2010). 6  See also Ibri (2012). 3

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being in a world that interacts with otherness, with the omnipresence of non-egos from which we distinguish our own ego in an immediate manner, under a genuine experience of secondness. To inhabit this world of otherness is to undergo the strongest feature of reality evidenced by this experience of the reaction of facts against our consciousness. Dream and imagination do not reveal this reactive characteristic, and this distinction between real and dreamlike worlds, that is, first of all, experientially constituted, is also a significant feature of Peirce’s philosophy. In Phenomenology, we find the enunciation of the potential presence of what reality is, whose concept will be complexified in metaphysics, maintaining, nevertheless, the notion of otherness as a central fulcrum. In Peirce’s philosophy, this notion assumes an ever more general statute, beyond its reduction to intersubjective relations, as commonly occurs in philosophies that center on the idea of subject and, in a way, are exclusively interested in phenomena of a psychological nature. Otherness is a generalized property in Peircean philosophy, namely, it is implicated in the possibility of factual reaction of all that, notwithstanding its immediate presence, can be an object of cognitive representation, or, to use the Semiotic vocabulary, of semiosis.7 In pronouncing this word—semiosis—we now touch on an equally ubiquitous experience considered by Phenomenology, namely, that of the concept of mediations, or the third element that embodies the temporality of thirdness in the nontemporality of secondness. This must be observed in order to corroborate some degree of redundancy that allows its inclusion in representations endowed with continuity8—indeed, those that will enable us to think of experience through its predicates. The conduct of the other has to be represented in light of some rule, some supposed habit attributable to it, so that we can predict how it will act in the future—in fact, it is the only opportunity we have to adjust our own conduct to a supposed factual situation that may occur. This is all that reason can do in its pragmatic sense, that is, to produce semiosis that allow us to make choices9—and choices are only established by the possibility of illuminating through reason the dark region of time—the future. It is there that we can exert our self-control, that is, act toward some desired purpose, in the face of a potentially reactive context, and therefore, of otherness. It does not seem inappropriate to affirm that we have the experience of making choices—in fact, we experience the exercise of rationality in forming mediations in the face of otherness. In principle, we are, in this context, problem-solvers, insofar as we are part of a potentially reactive world in relation to the ends we may seek. The impossibility of making choices is characterized by the experience that Peirce called brute force, which cannot be reduced to any continuity. This is the case where we know absolutely nothing about the fact in which we are involved, leaving  It is important to remark that this epistemology and Semiotics date back to the so-called Peircean cognition series, written between 1868 and 1869, particularly “Some consequences of four incapacities”—W 2, p. 211–242. 8  About Peirce’s concept of continuity, see Ibri (2017b, Chapter 4). See also Calcaterra (2011) and Moore (2007, 2010). 9  See Ibri (2012). 7

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to us only the alternative of formulating a hypothesis to begin a semiotic process that will enable us to choose what conduct to adopt. This is the hope of reason: the possibility of finding a system of signs that helps to think otherness and, thereby, propose a mediation that allows subject and object to coinhabit.10 Pure brute force is not reducible to thought because, by not demonstrating the redundancy of phenomenological conduct, it prevents the construction of any concept with which its future path could be foretold. Alternatively, it may occur that this fact is completely fortuitous and contingent, not subjected to any rule whatsoever and, thus, devoid of factual redundancy—its replicas do not indicate any form of habit or law. Any hypothesis that can be made about such a fact is doomed to failure, since no logical form will adjust to it—any adjustment is simply illusory due to its contingency, since any forecasts of the conduct of the object of cognition are implausible, devoid of any adherence11 between theory and the course of phenomena. This experience is not one of brute force imposed by some form of uncognoscibility, as one might think, but rather one with no regularity that, consequently, displays no future continuity of conduct. As far as random phenomena are concerned, we may often find some form of statistic distribution, albeit with a high level of deviation, such as Gaussian functions with a high standard deviation, which would allow for some form of prediction heavily affected by an intense level of uncertainty. Predictive functions of this type, however, in the practice of applied sciences, for instance, have methods of compensation for uncertainty through what is called safety coefficients, widely used in various fields of technology and engineering. These coefficients express the adoption of preventive procedures in face of the uncertainty associated with the possibility of fortuitousness. From the point of view of the categories, the presence of firstness in phenomena occurs in various manners,12 generating its most characteristic trait, that is, deviation from rules, erraticism, and resistance to generalizations. This incidence of irregularity in phenomena provides an important epistemological lesson: the models of representation should abdicate from absolute precision, total adherence to phenomena, coexisting with a level of unpredictability that definitely introduces the notion of uncertainty. The last word lays with the facts, not only as a fundamental issue of what may be considered reality in its metaphysical formulation, namely, as an inference of general structure, independent of all representation or opinion of it, but also as to the level of deviations in relation to a supposedly logical relation of a deterministic nature. In this sense, all theoretical models are, consequently, considered as being of a probabilistic nature, in light of a convincing indeterminism that characterizes Peirce’s epistemology. It is interesting to note the extent to which these experiences remain phenomenological or, in other words, how they remain in the background in every operation of

 An excellent approach about this point can be found in Colapietro (1989).  See, for instance, Ibri (2013a). 12  I have discussed the role of firstness in Peirce’s philosophy, for example, in Ibri (2009, 2010a). 10 11

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the construction of mediations. Although all investigation that implies inferential knowledge beyond the mere categorial taxonomy, as intended by Phenomenology, requires appealing to Semiotics, all semiosis so produced always has a phenomenological background that justifies and motivates it. This conception of reason argumented here as an efficient form and which can, first of all, be experienced as generator of mediations in the face of phenomena also falls within the scope of common sense, escaping from a merely theoretical-­ speculative exclusivity. As a faculty associated with the life choices that shape our human conduct, such reason is nothing more than pragmatic reason, permanently willing to learn from experience. Reason thus conceived has a commitment to remain semiotically dialogical, so as not to yield to dogmatisms, in the sense that the latter impose principles that shun the dynamic of the flow of phenomena in their otherness, and become crystallized as truths distant from any dialogue.13 The hope of knowing is, ultimately, from the view of pragmatism, the very hope of reaching general ends that sustain a permanent dialogue with experience. Since these ends are constituted in this way, we must reject the crystallization of representations that become distant from the dynamics of their objects. Again, recalling the vocabulary of Semiotics, the immediate object cannot sever its phenomenological relations with the dynamic object, under penalty of handing over reason to dogmatisms in their nuances of installations of belief by authority or sustained by any modes of transcendence.14 It is important also to consider how, in the realm of factuality, totally random occurrences can intrude as phenomena devoid of any regularity and, thus, be unable to sustain the formulation of predictive concepts. In this case of complete fortuitousness, possibly exemplifiable through equiprobable distributions that could be characterized, exemplarily, by a game comprising a finite number of dice, logical mediations can only evaluate the possibility of an occurrence of a given combination of results. Equiprobable distributions do not allow for distinguishing probabilities, and thus, the results of their moves are unpredictable. We know, however, that the rules of some games provide distinct probabilities of results, as, for example, the game of poker. In the former case, equiprobable games, any result would be subject to pure secondness, pure otherness irreducible to any predictive concept. Evidently, the ludic nature of games is precisely in the risk that it involves, and for this reason, certain games only deal with bets and never choices. Choice is confined to the decision of playing or not playing, and not of predicting results, which would indeed deprive the game of its characterization as such, notwithstanding our being conscious of the levels of risk that can be calculated for non-equiprobable games.15  See also Fabbrichesi (1992).  See “The Fixation of Belief”: W 3, p.  242–257; CP 5.358–387; EP 1, p.  109–123. See also Peirce’s essential texts about Semiotics in PW. 15  It is interesting to highlight here, albeit briefly, that the consideration of the ludic character of games somehow brings to mind the concept of Spieltrieb, the ludic impulse, present in Schiller’s Esthetic Letters, which exerted strong influence in Peirce’s work, inspiring him to formulate his idea of play of musement. 13 14

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Let us transfer the environment of these games to phenomenological life situations. Indeed, we can acknowledge fortuitous events, whose unpredictability is not due to the ignorance of some form of law that may lie behind the facts, but because these facts do not allow for the formation of predictive concepts in a way that their occurrence could be foreseen and, thus, afford an adjustment of conduct according to them. This is an interesting point that, due to the refusal of incognoscible instances in Peirce’s philosophy, would require the consideration of alternative forms of mediation other than those that incorporate experience in the usual interpretant signs. What kind of mediations would these be? It is reasonable to speculate that those human experiences derived from a factual fortuitousness can have meanings conditioned to variable degrees of influence in conduct that, being so, could be somehow considered as having a pragmatic nature. Evidently, randomness may signify nothing in the face of its ephemeral effect, or it may cause some consequence in conduct that has some duration or, even and finally, cause a brute shock that may significantly alter one’s life path. The two former cases may perhaps waive mediations in view of their weak influence on conduct. However, the third case generates emotional interpretants, whose transposition to logical interpretants is not feasible, in view of the factual fortuitousness that does not logically support the construction of a concept. It is also interesting to observe that this stronger presence of firstness in these experiences correlates feeling phenomenologically with the factual spontaneity of Chance, this being one of the Peircean theses that only assume explanatory consistency through his cosmology, hampering, unfortunately in this short reflective space, a further development of this idea. In any case, Peirce’s refusal of the incognoscible, one of his strongest anti-­ Kantian theses, as a consequence, must also admit forms of mediation of a texture that may not be logical-predictive in view of the lack of phenomenological support that would be provided by factual redundancy, absent in the case of fortuitousness.16 Therefore, we may suppose that emotional interpretants, non-transposable to logical interpretants, must dialogue semiotically with mediations provided by signical forms that fundamentally represent the firstness of phenomena, which, to my mind, are provided by the various expressions of art, in the production of a poetry that seeks to translate meaning unreachable through mediations of a logical nature that depend, by their nature, on facts subject to laws or habits of conduct. This thesis of mediations of a poetic nature calls for additional reflections incompatible with this text; it is solely mentioned to express the emphatic refusal of incognoscible instances in Peirce’s philosophy.

16

 See Ibri (2011b).

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20.1.2 On the Ontology of Action The symmetrical passage of the phenomenological categories to the realm of ontology, that is, as ways of being of reality, is not a matter of an unjustified predication of the things in themselves that would express some form of interiority to which any access is impossible. On the contrary, it is an inferential operation that seeks to find the general principles responsible for an appearance that is reducible to the three categories and, therefore, cannot refrain from Semiotics, which, let us remind ourselves, is another name that Peirce attributes to logic.17 In any event, in Peirce’s philosophy, the forms of appearance by themselves do not constitute realities, as occurs in Husserlian phenomenology, for example, in an attempt to avoid a metaphysics that speculates on what would lie behind phenomena. However, by attributing to phenomena the sole instance of reality, relinquishing the discovery of a reality constituted of general ontological principles responsible for appearance, one must initiate philosophy through a nominalism that has to find those forms in the instance of language and thought. This is not the Peircean way, as is known.18 Peirce’s route will be traced through a realism of the universals that, in the maturity of his thought, generalizes to a realism of continua, consummated in the doctrine he called Synechism. In fact, the concept of reality is supported by the three categories, as forms of potentiality, determination, and order, given by the principles of Chance, existence, and law that, respectively, correspond to firstness, secondness, and thirdness. In Peirce’s philosophy, there is a very strong meaning as to what is the real world, why it is, what its role would be. His metaphysics correlates not only with his epistemology but also with a general sense wherein we even find the logical form of pragmatism, as a principle of learning, in the relationships between internal and external worlds, beyond merely subjective or intersubjective relations. In this configuring of Peircean philosophy, we undoubtedly feel Kant’s influence, perhaps more so in regard to an epistemology that surpasses empiricism and rationalism, conciliating them, and in the formulation of a heuristics based on diagrams’ power of discovery, notwithstanding an emphatic refusal of the notion of uncognoscibility, as mentioned before. Nevertheless, we can observe very intense aspects of the philosophies of both Schelling and Hegel in the final form of his metaphysics. From Schelling, the idea of a cosmic history of an absolute that in its origin is pure possibility. From Hegel, the idea that human history assumes meaning when it is consummated as community, by revealing an absolute that is pure reason. Schelling surpasses Hegel in this influence, however, and the study of Peircean cosmology corroborates the affinity between the two authors. Philosophy, if genetic,

 See Ibri (2017b, Chapter 2).  See, for instance, Nathan Houser’s brilliant analyses on the Introductions of The Essential Peirce, EP1 and EP 2 (1992a, b, 1998). 17 18

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must be based on some principle of possibility and not on some ready-made form as in Hegelian reason.19 Thus, Peircean cosmology is a logical saga from possibility to necessity, in which infinite possible forms are transformed into real general forms. The condition for the possibility of such a saga is the existence of a theater of reactions, which consummates a passage from a world of indeterminate interiority to a world of an exteriority of determinations. In the latter, there is a confrontation of alterities whose conciliation will occur through forms of mediation generated from an eidetic tendency to generalize. The permanent duet between the general and the particular constituting an evolutionary philosophy is ubiquitous throughout all aspects of Peirce’s thought. Generality, in this framework, is modal: possibility and necessity interrelate cosmically and compose a history of the categories in their reality. This is the trajectory of a radical realism that is enhanced in the maturity of Peirce’s work, the backdrop of which is his Objective Idealism, a metaphysical doctrine required to explain the possibility of this realism. In fact, its sole function is to propose a necessary pragmatic monism between mind and matter in order to explain why cosmic motion is vectorial to forms that mediate, by representation in laws, the purely brute force of the determination of particulars.20 We seem to be going very far to justify an ontological concept of action. But this is the systemic context of Peircean thought, where its diverse areas interrelate and support one another reciprocally. In light of Peirce’s categorial structure, action implies the passage from the general to the particular, entering an external world of otherness, a theater of reactions, and a factual theater of secondnesses. This may occur as bets or choices, but every possibility of form’s improvement and learning requires a passage from potentiality in an internal world that, on the human plane, is predominantly comprised of feelings or rational thought, in which both merge in variable levels in the forms of emotional and logical interpretants, to an external world where it will confront the other. The world of actions, through which one exercises the ends desired, becomes the external side, subsumed in the category of secondness; on the internal side, the association with the categories of firstness and thirdness. The external is the revelation that grants cognition, and this is the substratum of what will constitute the semiotic community, namely, a community comprised of forms’ reflection in experience, thus consummating what Peirce meant by pragmatic meaning.

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 Insightful approaches about these themes can be found in Dilworth (2010, 2011).  See Ibri (2017b, Chapter 5).

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20.2 A Final Word Much more could be said to better dilute the density of this chapter. However, we are left with at least one path and one proposed task to perform in the context of Peirce’s philosophy. To act can bring anguish, no doubt because we do not want to make mistakes. Therefore, we should strive to transform our bets into choices, doing what transparently seems to us to be best. To act is agonizing because every action will become visible history, external, if not contingently to other interpreting minds, at least to ourselves—it will become the irrevocable past and can be made present again in the semiotic form of reflection. In acting, we abandon countless other ways of proceeding. They will remain as unrealized possibilities in that contingency. In all of this, along with the logical forms implicated in Peircean ontology, there is an evidently ethical aspect and, we may say, also a human psychoanalytical one. Choices, more than bets, lead us to regard our actions with a greater possibility of forgiving our mistakes, the paths that, perchance, we did not follow. There is no avoiding the anguish: we can only lessen it by making choices that seem more reasonable to us. To exist always implies some form of action, following the logical saga that, fundamentally, explains the maxim of pragmatism: the internal world has to be outside itself to collimate some form of meaning when it returns to itself as a form improved by learning.

Chapter 21

Considerations on the Statute of Ethics in Charles S. Peirce’s Pragmatism

Keywords  Pragmatism · Peirce · Ethics · Logic · Semiotics The maxim of Pragmatism, first enunciated by Peirce in January 1878 in Popular Science Monthly,1 according to which the “totality of the meaning of a conception is constituted by the totality of its conceivable practical consequences,” entailed a series of misunderstandings, as we tried to show, in a previous work,2 through an analysis that encompassed a systematic theoretical framework. Within this framework, we tried to show that that maxim could be understood without the semantic reductionism to which it was subjected by contemporary readers of the author, notably William James. The Peircean critique of James,3 in summary, centered frontally against the confining of the expression “practical consequences” to a recommendation that the meaning of a proposition or of a theoretical body of a positive doctrine could be reduced to the set of singular actions or experiments eventually engendered by them. Considering Peirce’s three categories, which he calls firstness, secondness, and thirdness, roughly corresponding to quality, otherness, and thought at the phenomenological level, and chance, existence, and law at the metaphysical level, the reduction of the general instance of meaning to the finite series of actions or experiments correlated to it would correspond to advocating the reduction of the triadic categorical structure to an unjustifiable dualism within the author’s system. In fact, Peirce aimed to conciliate all his doctrines in the light of Pragmatism, and therefore, it is essential to reread its broader meaning subsumed by the three categories. Under this prism, the question of meaning, if not reducible to the instance of the particular, correspondent to secondness, should be referred to the third category  Peirce (1878).  See Ibri (2017b, Chapter 6). 3  CP 5.3. 1 2

This chapter is an integral version of a text I wrote: Considerações sobre o Estatuto da Ética no Pragmatismo de Charles S. Peirce, originally published in Síntese  – Revista de Filosofia, Belo Horizonte v. 29, n. 93, p. 117–123, 2002. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_21

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or thirdness, where we find the general and continuous plane of ideality, be it of thought or of reality, the latter being related to the ontological realism of scholastic origin adopted by the author.4 From these considerations, which are evidently put here in a perhaps unsatisfactorily synthetic way, we can understand the following passage from Peirce’s work: If it be admitted, […] that action wants an end, and that that end must be something of a general description, then the spirit of the maxim itself, which is that we must look to the upshot of our concepts in order rightly to apprehend them, would direct us towards something different from practical facts, namely, to general ideas, as the true interpreters of our thought.5

These excerpts of Peirce’s thought show the correlation of the maxim of Pragmatism not only with the third category but also in a direct way to his doctrine of Synechism, that is, of the continuum of general systems, which, as could not be otherwise, is implicated in that category. In 1905, Peirce proposes the maxim in another form, although, in my opinion, it does not clarify the points that initially caused its misunderstanding: In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception.6

It should be noted that the word sum associated with consequences, in this passage, seems to have contributed to the misunderstanding of the maxim, eventually leading the reader unacquainted with the Peircean system to an erroneous equivalence of meaning with a finite plurality of singulars. Nevertheless, Peirce tries to elucidate the intended meaning of the expression “practical consequences” as follows: By “practical” I mean apt to affect conduct; and by conduct, voluntary action that is self-­ controlled, i.e., controlled by adequate deliberation.7

In the light of Synechism, we may conclude that thought becomes discrete as an instance of intentional action—which is, according to Peirce, its factual expression and must generate its general continuity. On the other hand, the maxim links meaning to an affection of conduct, certainly not as an individualized series of actions but in its intellectual interwovenness, imparted by rational purpose. At this point, it isn’t too much to ask, turning once more to the author’s own words,

 On this realism, there are interesting studies by commentators, among which it is worth citing Michael (1988) and Margolis (1993). 5  CP 5.3. See also CP 5.429 and CP 8.272 (in this case, see the passages referenced in footnotes 629, 630, and 689 of this work). Due to misinterpretations, Peirce changed the name of the doctrine to Pragmaticism in 1905. 6  CP 5.9. 7  CP 8.322. 4

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Now in what does the intellectual character of conduct consist? Clearly in its harmony to the eye of reason; that is in the fact that the mind in contemplating it shall find a harmony of purposes in it. In other words it must be capable of rational interpretation to a future thought. Thus thought is rational only so far as it recommends itself to a possible future thought. Or in other words the rationality of thought lies in its reference to a possible future.8

Insofar as the meaning of a conception is the way it affects conduct, and conduct is “voluntary action that is self-controlled,” it follows that the pragmatist, in Peirce’s words, “locates meaning in a future time; for future conduct is the only conduct capable of being subjected to self-control.” As we shall see, this idea of self-control mediates the approximation between logic and ethics in Peirce’s philosophy. In any case, it is possible to anticipate that the logical character that the author attributes to the maxim, which leads it to be implied in the three forms of argument that he calls abduction, deduction, and induction,9 is in tangent with, if not deeply imbricated in, a philosophy of conduct, whose character, in turn, is found within the realm of ethics. In the early twentieth century, after several years of research, Peirce proposed a classification of sciences,10 placing philosophy between mathematics and the so-­ called special sciences, such as the natural sciences, for example, physics, chemistry, etc., and the so-called social sciences, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics, etc. Philosophy, meanwhile, according to Peirce, is made up of three sciences, namely, phenomenology, normative sciences, and Metaphysics. For the purposes of this article, let us examine what he called normative sciences, formed, in turn, by aesthetics, ethics and logic or Semiotics. This classification has not only a cartographic purpose regarding knowledge but also establishes a hierarchy among its various departments. Within the thematic perspective proposed here, the author propounded an interdependency among the normative sciences, in such a way that logic depends on ethics and, the latter, on aesthetics. Evidently, this is a contemporary recovery of the relations, already present in ancient philosophy, between the beautiful, the good, and the true. As complex as these relations may be, not only because of the almost necessary endeavor of recovering their historical character, but also, and mainly, because of the truly necessary endeavor of referring to the whole of Peirce’s philosophical system, it is important to show, for the purposes of this paper, that the dependence between logic and ethics was already found within the maxim of Pragmatism. In fact, in the first of seven lectures given by Peirce in 1903  in Cambridge, Massachusetts, entitled Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences, Peirce states:

 CP 7.361; my italics.  I addressed this implication in Ibri (2017b, p. 91–94). 10  On Peirce’s classification of the sciences, see these works by Pape (1993) and Kent (1987). 8 9

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[...] if, as pragmatism teaches us, what we think is to be interpreted in terms of what we are prepared to do, then surely logic, or the doctrine of what we ought to think, must be an application of the doctrine of what we deliberately choose to do, which is Ethics.11

Three years later, in 1906, Peirce confirmed this position in the following passage: […] the control of thinking with a view to its conformity to a standard or ideal is a special case of the control of action to make it conform to a standard; and the theory of the former must be a special determination of the theory of the latter.12

In another series of lectures, called the Lowell Lectures, also from 1903, Peirce delivered Ideals of Conduct, perhaps his most accomplished mature work regarding the interrelationship between the normative sciences, clarifying the mediation of self-control by establishing logic’s dependence on ethics: The phenomena of reasoning are, in their general features, parallel to those of moral conduct. For reasoning is essentially thought that is under self-control, just as moral conduct is conduct under self-control. Indeed reasoning is a species of controlled conduct and as such necessarily partakes of the essential features of controlled conduct.13

As the normative sciences, according to Peirce, are those of the laws of conformity of things with their ultimate ends, it is necessary to know what those ultimate ends are, or, in Peirce’s words, what the summum bonum effectively is for each of the sciences that comprise them. If we admit, with the author, that the end of logic is to represent the truth of a general state of affairs, affecting conduct, this in turn must, on the level of ethics, seek the action that expresses it with respect to a purpose. Nevertheless, an ultimate purpose must contain a quality or a complex of qualities that is justified without ulterior reason. This complex, in Peirce’s view, is the very choice of what is admirable, placing it, from his point of view, in the realm of aesthetics. The rejection of singular ends had already taken shape in the broader sense of Pragmatism. Thus, an ultimate end must be a general end, and as it is situated within the framework of aesthetics, it must unconditionally bring together qualities that are admirable in themselves. The ideality of this end must be pursued evolutionarily, reconciling the continuum of representing with the continuum of doing, understood existentially, with both having, as their ultimate end, a general and temporal constructs. The understanding of this construct, however, requires a dissection of Peircean cosmology. His realist and evolutionary ontology is what will allow us to visualize, with some clarity, a vector of growth of the third category, configured by thought and law in their statutes of subjective mediation, on the one hand, and natural mediation, on the other. This is, according to the author, the very development of

 CP 5.35, italics from the original.  CP 1.573. 13  CP 1.606. 11 12

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concrete reasonability, a vector of generalization that defines, in itself, an admirable final ideality.14 Notwithstanding the complexity of how this theme is woven into Peircean philosophy, it is worth noting that the aesthetic quality that defines an ultimate end, not for nothing, does Peirce choose not to call beautiful, but admirable. I think that the reason for this choice has to do with the nature of an aesthetic quality that only reveals itself as summum bonum at the ideal end of an evolutionary process and, due to this important aspect, is distinct from the seduction of mere appearance, entrapped in the contingent finitude of temporality.15 Even though the theme of the admirable is still extremely ill resolved among scholars of Peircean work, it is nevertheless necessary to refer it to the whole of the author’s philosophical system, especially his Metaphysics and to the work of the German Romantics, particularly Schelling,16 an author who exerted an enormous influence on the spirit of Peirce’s work, that, in our understanding, is not revealed in the letter. There is no doubt, also, that the theme must traverse Plato’s work, in a recovery of the roots of the relationship between the beautiful, the good, and the true, at least through an approach that considers the integrity and a form of continuum of this triad, which Peirce also claims for the component sciences of the sciences he calls normative. It is in this way that, not by chance, the complexity of the status of ethics in Peirce’s thought still remains open to future research, commending, to those who venture into the author’s intricate thought, that they consider the difficulty of tackling a realist and deeply critical stance to every form of nominalism that, in the Peircean view, prevailed among the doctrines that immediately followed the beginning of modern philosophy.

 CP 1.615.  I introduce this point in Chap. 1 of this book. 16  A theme that is the object of Chap. 16 of this work. 14 15

Chapter 22

Ethical Aspects of Fake News and Alternative Facts: A Semiotic-­Pragmatic Approach

Keywords  Fake news · Alternative facts · Ethics · Semiotics · Pragmatism

22.1 Considerations on the Theme My intention here is to bring forth an analysis of the socially recent phenomenon of fake news and alternative facts in light of the concepts brought by Peirce’s Semiotics and Pragmatism, reflecting on their possible consequences of an ethical nature, namely, how their occurrence can affect the conduct of a society and to what ends this conduct would be directed.1 In the title of this text, I maintain the term fake news in English, even in its Portuguese version, not only because it is justified by having originated in the English language but essentially because even internationally it has been popularized as such. Moreover, this reflection includes a distinction between what amounts to fake and true news and alternative facts from simply facts, since this last term would naturally dispense an adjectivization that might remove it from its proper environment, namely, that of genuine otherness, that which is characterized as being other than any representation that may be made of it. Thus, facts, in this sense, result from the way that not only we humans act and engage in the social theater but also as diverse historical circumstances that flow together defining the hard side of that which we call otherness. Facts and representations of facts would be, in this context, distinguishable in a context of reality.  I must cite here Houser’s (2019) excellent paper that deals with a similar subject using a different approach. 1

This chapter is an integral version of one of my articles entitled, Aspectos Éticos das Fake News e Fatos Alternativos, originally published in Souza, Edna A. de; Broens, Mariana C.; Gonzalez, Maria Eunice Q. (Org.). Big Data: implicações epistemológicas e éticas. Campinas: UNICAMP, Centro de Lógica, Epistemologia e História da Ciência; FiloCzar, 2020b. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_22

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This distinction between representation and reality can make use of the vocabulary of Semiotics and, in this prism, affirm that representations of facts, when there is a reasonable correspondence to the way that they present themselves to experience, itself capable of being objectively shared, are considered true. Semiotically, one could say that truth would be a condition of correspondence2 between signs and their objects, and this condition could also be expressed as adherence between the two. It is important to highlight that the notion of truth in Peirce’s philosophy implies, therefore, a certain capacity of concepts, theories, or sign systems that represent a sequencing of facts to foresee their future course with some success. Would not the expression post-truth,3 a term contemporary to the concepts of fake news and alternative facts,4 denote simply the abandonment of this adherence, assuming, consequentially, an arbitrary autonomy of discourse, of independence from a possible course of facts that would legitimize truth? In addition to the rejection of this predictive character that true representations of reality should provide, is it not the case that post-truth carries, in its core, a type of supersession of a historical stage of human culture in which the concept of truth was supposedly adopted as an unassailable value? Would it be possible, therefore, to discard it as something necessary not only as a logical resource of a rationality that carries out its function of anticipating possible experience but also fundamental to social coexistence between human beings, extensive to personal relationships and privately? In this area, questions arise about what ethical consequences, or more widely, which ethical nuances are involved in abandoning the commitment to the possibility of truth understood as correspondence to facts. Why would truth be a convergent quest for monosemy, while polysemy be ethically viable only in the realms of the arts and the hypothetical stages of scientific research? Still in this line of inquiry, one could consider what ethical consequences an unwarranted appropriation of the possibility of the polysemy of signs could have, employed for the interests of groups, in this era of digital media and big data, associated with a vertiginous public circulation of information.

22.2 Some Historical Topics Here I intend to enumerate some historical examples that demonstrate that the phenomenon of fake news is not exclusively contemporary.

 I use the term correspondence here, sometimes epistemologically controversial, only under the strict sense of being able to predict the course of facts by their possible theoretical representation. For this reason, I propose, also and alternatively, the term adherence, which, in my view, brings this idea more clearly. Certainly, in the light of Peirce’s philosophy, the idea of correspondence must be free of any pretensions to express final or exact truths. 3  On this theme, see McIntyre (2018), Santaella (2018), and Farkas J. and Schou J. (2019). 4  Cooke (2018) seeks to expose the conceptual connection between these two concepts. 2

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In history, there are abundant examples, such as Nazi Propaganda during the second great war, carefully articulated in order to circulate and validate the values of the Hitlerist party’s national socialism. One may also cite, and in a manner proven by historical artifacts, the production of fake news, associated with the version of facts alternatively elaborated by totalitarian states and political systems. This practice of an official version of facts is not exclusive to the historical moment that we live in but rather a manipulation of it according to conveniences of political nature. It is interesting to note that this predicate of alternativity can create a competition between rival interpretations of facts or, simply, render them opaque to an interpretation that could be potentially verisimilar and thus monosemic. In this case, alternative facts are those that simply turned the attention of their receptors from ones that are evident and open to a truthful interpretation. If we go back in history further beyond modernity, we might consider Athenian society in the era that sophist philosophy held sway in the midst of the birth of Platonism. The epistemological skepticism of the sophist school, exemplarily expressed in the thought of Protagoras and Gorgias, discredited the possibility of universal sharing of experience—its subjective contingency made language a mere exercise of rhetoric, of which, indeed, the sophists were professors, teaching the art of convincing listeners of a discourse through the apparent logical plausibility expressed therein. The relativism that singularized the worldviews of each individual evidently could not facilitate universal access to phenomenological experience and, consequently, to a recognition of truths beyond mere doxa. Moreover, it becomes clear that the community values that ground and regulate a society cannot pass through the sieve of an agreement of opinions, because once the statute of truth as the sharing of experiences is discredited, it also follows that the social recognition of the common good is impossible. This skeptic environment of communal indistinction between false and true and, consequently, of the infactibility of socially recognizable values in light of the concept of the common good were major factors, as is known, for the rise of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Platonism can be read as a reaction to this skepticism that, in a certain way, had been leading the Athenian society to a fraying of social values by transforming them into privative ends in the service of interest groups. In this period, Athens would pass through one of its most difficult historical periods, full of conflicts between the class of aristocrats and the poorest of the population5 and through a harmful, deleterious, air of discredit and relativism of an ethical nature among the youth of Athenian citizens. It is worth mentioning that, although the epistemological relativism of the sophist school had implied in practical consequences for the society of the time, what could be called, for this very reason, a relativism in the pragmatic sense did not originate in a philosophy morally committed to falsehood; in other words, it was not genuinely6 a producer of fake news. It is quite true, too, that the term fake news—literally false news—does not apply to the historical situation invoked here.

 See vol. 3, The Sophists, in Guthrie (1977).  I will discuss this genuine character further on.

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Nevertheless, the dissemination of an ideology in the sense of a political theory that contains social values or a set of ideas that guide the conduct of a social group was in effect and carried out through language—then the media socially was active and available to Athenian citizens. In this sense and with this caveat, we cannot affirm in this period that the use of language as a mere instrument of rhetoric and not as a mediation for the truth had some form of venality, based as it was on the belief that a truth of an objectively based character was impossible. There is an important distinction here to be appreciated between the production and use of fake news, which is dealt with in greater detail ahead, due to its importance of an ethical nature.7

22.3 Classes of Fake News I will consider in this short essay only two classes of fake news from the perspective of an analysis of an ethical nature: (a) False news resulting from errors in production, that is, that did not originally have the intention to deceive the receiver with a supposedly false state of things; (b) The false news that, on the contrary, was produced as such, with the explicit purpose of making its recipient believe in a state of things without factual grounding or, more subtly, obscuring that grounding through a vagueness provided by language that is conducive to an interpretation directed towards the ends of the producer’s interest. Here, alternative facts appear in the form of their invention or an interpretation of facts that, although evident, undergo an operation of rendering their meaning opaque through many ways in which this can be done. One of them would be to subjectify them, assigning them ideological intentionality or to associate them with values rejected by the class of recipient subjects. In regard to the first class of fake news, no form of ill will or intention to generate something false can be attributed. In an exemplary way, we point to cases of procedural errors in social media. Such procedural errors can be and are often corrected by the agent in question. Media that has a commitment to the truth, understood under the simple prism of a reasonable correspondence with the facts, makes a point of adopting mechanisms for correcting accidental errors in the dissemination of false news. Therefore, despite the fact that it is possible to foresee that news that is not intentionally false may even contingently also lead to misguided conduct, they may be revised at some point, anchored by a factual framework that must be corrected. In this class of fake news devoid of the intention of deceiving its recipients, one could list types that use different media, such as, for example, journalistic texts and/

 See Bett (2010, p. 181–194).

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or videotexts of political nature that use irony, sarcasm, and different forms of humor and that can give rise to different interpretations, not infrequently guided by ideological contexts that obstruct access to the facts that are under the critical focus of those forms of expression. But here, we presume that the social conduct and/or conduct of a social group is not intentionally led to believe in nonexistent facts or denigrated by narratives created for this purpose. Regardless of the recent phenomenon brought about by the extraordinary mediatic expansion, there will always be conflicts of interpretation and of conduct previously guided by former beliefs, as can be abundantly verified throughout history. It does not seem useful to reread these conflicts of opinions, beliefs, and interpretations, typical of the historicity of human culture, in the light of the concept of fake news, to the end of renaming them in classes of different types of false news, despite the differentiated intensity and amplitude that social networks contemporarily8 make use of. Thus, considering that mistaken conduct is part of our long cultural history, let us focus our interest on the topic of fake news in its markedly ethical aspect.

22.4 On the Semiotic Distinction Between Immediate and Dynamic Objects: Reality and Fiction Utilizing a few concepts from Peirce’s Semiotics, it is worth bringing to the fore the distinction between immediate and dynamic objects.9 For the purposes that we intend to achieve here, let us understand the first as being that which is configured as a represented object. In other words, the immediate object would be the reference contained in the signs, in the different languages that express it. In turn, the dynamic object is the one that remains independent of its being represented and, thus, meets the criteria of the definition of what is real according to Peirce.10 Within the framework of these concepts, although in an approximate and fallible way, a correspondence between both of these objects could be considered as a concept of truth, verifiable not simply as an apparent similarity between them but through the observation of how both behave over time. This is the Peircean criteria of the pragmatic significance of a concept, always dependent on the future

 In this sense, see in Santaella (2018, p. 34–36) an interesting inventory of the possible types of fake news. 9  See these concepts in Silveira (2007). 10  The dynamic object, according to Peirce, determines its immediate object, having some form of connection with it. I deal here only with those that are associated with the reality of facts, leaving out the possibly fictional ones, which bring other problems about how this determination would take place exclusively within the plane of the imaginary, dispensing with the predicate of otherness, which in the first case is ontologically objective in contrast to the way fiction is created. Considering, for example, the intentionality of creating fake news as a type of dynamic object would introduce a complicating factor outside the scope of this short essay. 8

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observation of its consequences: The value of a symbol is that it serves to make thought and conduct rational and enables us to predict the future.11 Utilizing this vocabulary, we can affirm that false representations of facts distance the immediate from the dynamic object. In the first case in which there is no deliberate plan of intentional falsification of the news, rendering it fake, its generating source will supposedly be directed to reapproximate both objects. Consequently, there would be no intentionally premeditated venality in this situation. To call generically fake news, those mistakes and misinterpretations typical of human Fallibilism result in the dilution of a concept of which a more interesting analysis, in my view, should be subject to an ethics indicative of its deleterious consequences for a society. However, the reasons why fake news is intentionally created must be associated with private purposes of interest groups. Within this concept of interest, several situations could also be listed, of an economic, ideological nature and, perhaps, might also include factors of psychoanalytical character that could possibly be behind such conduct. In any case, it is important to realize that the concept of the interest group is closely connected to that of the privative and, in so far as it also dictates its ends, it fragments and particularizes that which in a society should be a shareable good. Attention to this point brings, alongside the idea of the common good, older concepts of democracy and social justice. Not by chance, it can be seen that these concepts have come up in recent discussions involving the analysis of fake news, in the form of how certain social values of a collective nature might be threatened by a mediatic manipulation of false news, which make full use of language’s potential for conveying logical and emotional sense, however distant from those facts that could validate it as being committed to its dynamic object. Why would that be so? It seems legitimate to list reasons that, by one path, are designed to garner support and approval from the strata of society prone to identify themselves with the ends implied in the discourse thus produced, in its various mediatic forms. Another path, that of creating a parallel reality—alternative facts— that make no distinction between reality and fiction,12 aimed at inducing conduct that should result in mistaken ends, but that temporarily will provide support for purely private purposes of the groups generating this fake news. Both cases are identified in terms of their results: factionalizing society by directing groups of opinions and conduct to their own private interests.

11 12

 CP 4.448.  I expose further on the deleterious aspect of this indistinction.

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22.5 A Passage Through Peirce’s Theory of Belief We consider it possible to recognize a distinction between the types of beliefs as proposed by Peirce in the fixation of belief as either scientific or dogmatic.13 Scientific beliefs are characterized by the sign interaction between the immediate and dynamic objects. This interaction is guided by a constant dialogue with experience as determined by some criterion of relevance resulting from a theory of some part of the world. It is important to highlight that this scientificity of belief is not confined to the scope of scientific practices exclusively but, in light of Peirce’s philosophy, extends to every mind that is inclined to learn from experience and is willing to change its habits of conduct whenever experience so indicates. In turn, dogmatic beliefs would be those that are established without access to the objects of experience. I propose that they could be classified as transcendent and coerced. The former definitely do not have access to their supposedly dynamic objects—supposedly because their reality cannot be asserted and, as a result, they do not leave the plane of their concept, thus contradicting their own nature of otherness in relation to the immediate object. Peirce calls them a priori beliefs. I call coerced beliefs those imposed by authority. They often occur in hierarchical social organizations, determining conduct that is closed off from the reasons that determined it. These organizations, on the other hand, can, at the level of authority, interact with experience and thus determine their actions—take, for example, how this occurs in an army. However, transcendent beliefs, without recourse to experience, make more explicit use of authority to impose conduct subjected to them. Finally, let us consider dogmatic beliefs of a tenacious nature. They strive for their confinement to the immediate object, rendering it radically separated from the dynamic object, avoiding a direction in which the latter could eventually influence the former. It is not an exaggeration to say that tenacious beliefs cling to their own worldviews and disqualify any factual influence that might fracture them. It seems evident that those who adopt this type of belief are more inclined to believe narratives that come to harmonize with their own worldview and the values implicit in it. To a greater or lesser extent, it could be said that beliefs of a dogmatic nature are more likely to receive fake news uncritically, in view of their distance from a reality that, in the end, would be the only anchor capable of correcting mistaken conduct induced by them. To a greater degree, tenacious beliefs are not willing to mobilize a correction of their concepts and, consequently, of conduct. They only re-intake what is already conceptually crystallized in them. One might ask: are not the citizens devoted to this class of beliefs a primary target for fake news?

13

 I comment on Peirce’s theory of beliefs in Ibri (2018).

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22.6 The Deleterious Fiction of Fake News: The Indistinction Between Imaginary and Real One of the most important aspects of the theory of signification is the one brought by the Pragmatic maxim of Peircean kind. Pragmatic meaning requires something beyond linguistic semantics, namely, the requirement that something of a factual nature must influence conduct. This question, in fact, boils down to a relationship between Peirce’s categories, in which the action under the second category, secondness, must exhibit the concept, under thirdness, in its defined form. This is to say that the potential indeterminacy, the generality of the concept, becomes a particular phenomenological replica, directly open to the experience of any cognitive mind. Conduct, as the mode of being of actions, must exhibit the concept that shaped it by developing its guidelines, definitively providing an inference about its ends. It is in this way that the realism of Peircean philosophy is manifested in its pragmatism—signification simply on the plane of language is not enough but rather must be linked to the way one is willing to act under its influence. Far from being a “theory of action,” pragmatism finds in acting the instance in which the general appears in its particular form and, in so doing, integrates the objectual characters exposed to the observation of other minds capable of cognition. One could then ask what kind of conduct does fake news lead to? We suppose that it would be aimed at those whose practical consequences—a term dear to pragmatism—could be of two natures, namely: (a) In a state of conflict with the facts, since it was generated by fictional narratives, distant from an observable factuality. Within this class, we can include conduct without base in concepts reasonably reflected in experience that end up affecting purposes distinct from those promised by the narrative from which they originated. It is important to emphasize how in Peirce’s philosophy this distinction between fiction and reality is always present. See this passage: The reality of things consists in their persistent forcing themselves upon our recognition. If a thing has no such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then, is persistence, is regularity. In the original chaos, where there was no regularity, here was no existence. It was all a confused dream. This we may suppose was in the infinitely distant past. But as things are getting more regular, more persistent, they are getting less dreamy and more real.14

We can affirm that fiction does not have the power to generate factual replicas that could supposedly harmonize with the replicas, actions, that they would induce. On the contrary, the scenario where individual or partially collective actions take place must be at odds with what the fictional narrative created. Let us remember that the meaning of a concept lies not only in the conduct that it can influence but also in its ability to predict the future course of events with which that conduct should cohabit. In the case of fiction, its predictive power of reality is simply nil, and, thus,

14

 CP 1.175.

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the conduct generated by it will be embedded in a factuality that is alien to that contained in the narrative. (b) Indifferent to the facts and prone to accept what the narrative brings in accord with its own worldview, certainly closed to experience. Dogmatic beliefs, as previously exposed, tend to adhere to their ends, immune to observation and, therefore, to corrective retro analysis, to ends that a narrative entails and that seem to harmonize with them. While conduct of class “a,” despite being temporarily conflictual with the factuality in which they are cast by a false description of reality, can be corrected, and thus seek their logical consistency with experience, those of class “b” are closed within language, within representations of the world and tend to be satisfied with them. The reasons why this is the case are multiple and seem to go beyond the purely ideological sphere. One of them, it can be pointed out, would be of a psychological nature. In the context of psychoanalysis, for example, we could enumerate conflicts of human nature originating from an indistinction between reality and fiction. Disappointments with the future course of experience certainly result from the adoption of concepts devoid of any grounding in reality to purport them to be predictive. But, here, let us stay exclusively within the ethical scope of analysis of the harmful effects of fake news, despite their consequences extending to different spheres of human life.

22.7 Thematic Overview We recall that the analysis herein of fake news focused exclusively on its ethical core, leaving aside other prisms that, in my opinion, are associated with errors of representation and conduct, since they are, in fact, spread throughout human history, and do not exactly imply what can be considered a falsification of reality, intentionally produced and vectored to create bubbles of political support or, more generally, of conduct, aimed at particular interests of interest groups. At the beginning, we mentioned the polysemy proper to the very nature of art and scientific investigation in its hypothetical stage, associating it with what could be predicated as ethically sound. In fact, under the prism of analysis adopted here, a deliberately alternative fact producing polysemy would be inspired by the intention to obnubilate a genuine fact capable of being recognized as independent from any representations that might be made of it. This hidden fact is, in essence, the simplest core of the realism that sets the tone of Peirce’s philosophy, unlike other nominalist philosophical stances that claim reality to be something that is not distinct from its representations. One could plausibly say that a philosophical position of this sort would have a hard time expressing a clear pragmatic distinction between fiction and reality. For no other reason, the category of secondness in Peirce holds the fundamental predicate of otherness, as that which will potentially react to any form of

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appropriation of its ontological condition, characterized by its independence from any representation that can be made of it. A discourse without an anchor in an ontologically public reality weakens a social fabric that should be directed to the common good and fragments it in the service of particular ends. It is also true that contemporary societies, subject to an avalanche of information in the context of big data and subjected to an unrestrained circulation of signs of the most diverse natures, including, mainly, fake news, are constituted by individuals and groups into which that variety of beliefs exposed here is distributed. And in each one of them, the reception of signs will take place in different manners, and, possibly, some of them will be more affected by the damages caused by the falsification of the truth of the facts. Included in this list of damage is an intensely mediatized publicity, not only in its often-deceptive aspect but also in its role of stimulating superfluous consumption at the root of which are values that mask others that could, in fact, genuinely lead to action toward what would be a common good. It is therefore interesting to reflect that fake news, from the point of view of their deleteriously ethical affection on the fraying of the social fabric,15 should be confronted by the mobilization of society in defense of its most precious values, in the form of the legal and institutional resources available to it. Along with these measures, it is necessary to recover the importance of the education of individuals, focused not only on technological qualification, important in its own right, rather, and especially, on a broad cultural formation that would provide the recognition and the adoption of necessary values to a social fabric aimed at the common good. It should provide both an ethically critical vision of the mechanisms that drive social history and the ability to confront superfluous values with others that in fact deserve the seal of being genuinely human. Wrong paths upon which a society is contingently led by the intentional falsification of reality result in the retardation of history, in the same proportion that the common good, the genuine search for the meaning of life, and the development of the potential of each human being are achievable values as long as of what it is called truth remains sovereign in its power to support a possible agreement of opinions. It is no exaggeration to say that wrong paths, when they give rise to a revision of concepts, habits of conduct, and, consequently, learning, are cognitively and ethically welcome. However, intentionally induced errors, once subjected to critical scrutiny, become only wasteful ways of dealing with time. It seems legitimate to use our imagination to experience necessary hiatus amid the omnipresent otherness of existence. In this sense, art, when producing fiction with its different languages, extracts from the real a broader sense than the merely logical, complementing its truest content, without, contradictorily, ever being false.

 A possible prospective on the stage of post-fake news is drawn out by McBrayer (2020), principally in Chapters 8 and 9. 15

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However, fictional practices of language that claim to be true, describing worlds as if anchored in facts, conceal only the shameful intention of subjecting the community’s intelligence to dogmatic beliefs, making them, as already noted, servants of their interests. It is only fair to hope that the sometimes long short legs of lies do not overly delay the saga of a true narrative, so important to the ethical grounding of a community.

Chapter 23

The Aesthetic Face of Peirce’s Pragmaticist Epistemology

In one word, we cannot anymore ask how he (the man) passes from beauty to truth, as the latter is potentially in the former. Schiller [Letter XXV]

Keywords  Peirce · Epistemology · Pragmaticism · Aesthetics · Ethics

23.1 A Philosophy to Be Continued Peirce never could finalize a book or publish it, especially any book on the aesthetic foundation of his Pragmaticism.1 This is not only a historical note, but I suppose it has a deeper meaning. When an author is involved with the process of publishing a book, it is his privilege and right to review his writings, modify terms, suppress or change words, and add clarifying sentences, footnotes, etc. It must be recognized that Peirce did not have this opportunity, which, had it occurred, it is possible that he may have elucidated some parts of his writings, thus avoiding interpretations that adhere more to the letter than to the spirit of the work. This practice of apprehending the spirit is successful, I believe, when, on the one hand, we become familiarized with the author’s text and, on the other, perhaps more important and what initiates this apprehension, when the text arouses a feeling of affinity in those who study it. This has been my approach to Peirce’s thought, for a long time now, both for intellectual and personal reasons. Comprising an enormous quantity of manuscripts and a small part of published essays, Peirce’s work still shows a cohesion that gradually consolidates with his  On this distinction between Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, see Chap. 19 of this book.

1

This chapter is an integral version of one of my articles entitled, A Face Estética da Epistemologia Pragmaticista de Peirce, originally published in Veritas, Porto Alegre, v. 65, n. 3, p. 1–16, set./dez. 2020d. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_23

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mature texts. I dare say that to suppose having found such radical changes of opinion revealing an earlier Peirce and other theoretical facets that followed is to be excessively attached to the letter, perhaps imbued with deductive strategies in the search for contradictions, fragmenting a work that, in my view, was driven by the effort of building a system of theories that could dialogue with all the problems of philosophy. If some dialogues were not established by Peirce, despite, ironically, his immense work, it was only for the lack of time in his life to do so. Therefore, those who are desirous of finding a system of theories that overlap in a logically harmonious manner should adopt the attitude of a Peircean scholar endowed with critical good will. In some passages, this will be accomplished when they realize what should have been said, and not just what, under a structuralist view of philosophical analysis, is solely concerned with the letter. To me, the emergence of this critical good will seems to follow the apprehension of the spirit of the work, a concept that, incidentally, is classic in philosophy. Without, of course, forsaking a critical spirit of analysis, such good will derives, partly, from the awareness of reading an author who could not review the greater part of his work. It is also clear that these considerations arise from my own personal experience with Peirce’s work and a long relationship with someone’s ideas, with the semiotic symbol that, pragmatically, means what could be called soul, can give rise to agapic relations that ultimately heighten that which I call good will. The expression good will should be understood as something devoid of a moral attitude in principle, but which is awakened by a few promises of rich rewards, namely, of repaying this attitude with a myriad new ideas that give rise to original discoveries in philosophy. In this respect, in an essay on ontology of art,2 I used a metaphor that seemed quite suitable to characterize Peirce’s work in general lines: a theoretical system that, considering my own scientific and engineering background, using the example of the theory of chemical compatibilities, shows “open valences,” that is, a willingness to combine ideas in wider theoretical networks, developing a new capability for a fresh approach to old and new problems. I also proposed the term “seeds” to characterize precisely what Peirce’s theoretical system bequeathed to its continuity in the form of heuristic suggestions to develop new visions of diverse areas of culture, and not only in respect of the introduction of a new vocabulary, as that of Semiotics, for example, but also introducing more in-depth approaches to the specific problems of each one of them. I mention, exemplarily, areas that are still open to this approach, such as art and psychoanalysis where, albeit few, interesting works are already being developed.3 To develop a first awareness of a philosophical system in Peirce, one must, at least, consider the triad of the sciences that comprise Philosophy, bearing in mind its hierarchy of dependencies that, ultimately, express the relationship of dependence within the Peircean categories. I suppose that a more faithful reading of the author is accomplished by seriously considering that philosophy begins with a

 Ibri (2010a).  I mention, for example, Colapietro’s (1989, 2006) and Santaella’s (2006) reflections.

2 3

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Phenomenology, which is a starting point that should avoid transcendentalized interpretations of the normative sciences that follow this science. Nothing warrants seeking, whether in logic or Semiotics, ethics, and aesthetics, transcendent grounds that may constitute them. Starting from a “being in the world,” as I have mentioned in other essays, provided by the ocean of experience that surrounds our genetically phenomenological human condition, determines, by what it may entail to the sciences that follow, a line of philosophy. It is not, as is well known, a phenomenological reduction, as is Husserl’s project for his Phenomenology. What constitutes reality cannot be reduced to what appears, leaving to subjectivity the significant articulation of empirical data, replicating, in its form, a project of a Kantian nature that, tacitly or explicitly, through its nominalism, assymetrizes, from their origin, man and nature.4 Such asymmetry is of Form, a concept of which I will use and define along this essay. Peirce’s Phenomenology establishes his three categories, which shaped his entire philosophy, as scholars of the author know too well.5 Incidentally, I have referred the universal presence of the categories in all the concepts developed by Peirce as categorial symmetry for its indistinct validity, whether for cognitive representative minds or for represented objects, endeavoring to avoid, for reasons of vocabularic inadequacy, attributing such symmetry to the subject-object relationship, often used in nominalist philosophies where the figure of a constitutive subject predominates. However, the implications that this universal validity of the categories represent do not seem to me, so far, to have been deeply explored by the analysis of Peirce’s work. Its most significant consequence is that no nominalist appropriation of his philosophy could be legitimized—in my view, this symmetry is a good term to characterize the realism that is the differentiating characteristic of Peircean philosophy.6 It is not merely a contemporary realism that polemicizes on whether a world external to the human mind exists or not, but, faithful to its scholastic origin,7 later generalized by Peirce through the logic of relatives, it proposes that phenomena occur as subject to real general relations associated with them, independently of being represented as such. Incidentally, the idea of this independence originates from the phenomenological experience of secondness, in which the reaction of the world to our arbitrary conceptions of it, or to acts of will that dictate our actions, is practically ubiquitous. This is the experience that requires the consideration of a facticity that occurs independently of us and which, moreover, provides the core of the definition of reality adopted by Peirce.8

 In this respect, see Haack (2007).  See exemplarily Houser (2010a, b) and Innis (2013). 6  Readers may consult excellent approaches to Peircean realism in Mayorga (2007, 2012) and Lane (2004). 7  See, also, Moore (2010). 8  CP 1.325. 4 5

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The belief in a world that is indifferent to our conceptions of it is sustained by our occasionally erroneous predictions, characterizing what Peirce called reaction of brute facts. This is a simple issue, if one takes Phenomenology seriously as a starting point for doing philosophy. Indeed, it is easy to admit that we are continually thinking about the future course of events: Five minutes of our waking life will hardly pass without our making some kind of prediction [CP 1.26]. Often, facts follow a direction while our predictions indicate another totally different. When both paths coincide and have a reasonable degree of redundancy, we develop habits of action and the resulting beliefs in the procedures that the habit provides the opportunity to put into practice. At this stage, Phenomenology, by highlighting the importance of this class of experience, which is one of the chief elements of the second category, reveals the basis for a reflection on that issue of otherness that characterizes the core of the concept of reality. Not only in wrongful predictions do we experience this reaction of phenomena. They often enter our daily lives without being invited, revealing, beyond the reactive otherness to our actions, their proverbial insolence. In both cases, however, we also have the experience of seeking mediations that are the result of the interpretations that we make of this experience of secondness. These mediations are the most immediate use of our rationality for minimizing the brute shock of facts. Dynamic mediations, or dynamic interpretants, consider a living dialogue with experience, which they cannot ignore under penalty of losing their mediating efficiency. The best mediations are those that are effectively achieved through the effort of representing the spatial-temporal conduct of the object of experience. Until then, all this simple description is linked merely to practical life, indeed, the most genuine ground and where Peirce’s philosophy begins. Beliefs are necessary for everyday life and, for this reason, are not fictitiously weakened by doubts raised by theoretical speculations. To prove phenomenologically that beliefs are not broken by mere theories, since the external side of such beliefs, the conduct, is not modified and, thus, demonstrates the permanence and functionality of belief in determinate forms of action, already announces Pragmaticism’s principle of semantic nature.9 The apparently unpretentious Phenomenology is proposed as an inventory of the classes of experience, generalizing them as to their mode of being, and not their content—which, of course, would be unthinkable in view of the immeasurable diversity of the factual history of individual experiences. Thus, it is remarkable that those modes of being are synthesized in only three classes or categories; akin to secondness, the experience of building mediations in the face of otherness involves cognitive forms concerned with the conduct of the object, inductive procedures that generate habits and that, as mentioned previously, act as mediations, characterizing the category of thirdness. The act of thinking, judging logically, seems a very easy experience to be recognized—perhaps the most familiar to philosophers. In turn, although secondness, in

 See, in this respect, the approach taken by Liszka (2009).

9

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its phenomenological simplicity, is apparently trivial, I can affirm that there are systems of philosophy that, once subjected to a deeper analysis, would disregard the otherness of objects of cognition, as is the case, exemplarily, of systems that propose the constitution of the reality of the object through the theories about it. Yet harder still, in these cases, would be the acknowledgment of logical forms specific to the object that would, in effect, constitute it independently of any cognition. Such a consideration would characterize that philosophy as realist, in the manner of Peircean philosophy, notwithstanding the difficulty of finding them, particularly nowadays.10 I believe most of Peirce’s scholars would agree that firstness is the most original of his categories, by its genetically phenomenological formulation described as disinterested experiences that initially demobilize the will and, with it, the need for intentional action toward a given purpose. To observe the world without wanting something is to refrain from reacting to what it offers every time we act, thus enabling one to forgo mediations. This relationship with the world allows us to see it without the generality of the concept that only selects what can be interpreted conceptually. There is, then, this relaxing possibility of leaving aside the classes of experience associated with secondness and thirdness. This mental state that, somehow, refrains from judging what it sees and only sensitively experiences, as it demobilizes the feeling of desire and, thus, the need for intentional action, enables an escape from concept’s implicit temporality. Concepts mobilize the memory of generalized knowledge and propose a predictive view of future facts derived from the state of things placed before the mind. Time is always implied in our experiences of thirdness, while brute secondness is here and now; to experience them, as such, occurs at a point in time, at a given moment, and its occasional redundancy and temporal regularity provide the opportunity to consider them as being under some law, thus implying thirdness.11 The mediation of concepts makes us perceive objects only inasmuch as they are part of classes of predicates. But a class of predicates underscores, in the particulars they possess, that which they have in common with others of the same species. Names are ascribed to these classes, which is how the language of concepts is sustained from the similarities that constitute the generalized predicates. Language established by concepts in this way, which, in turn, act as mediations in the face of reality, shapes our perception of objects, seeing them according to what they share in similarity with other counterparts. However, Peirce draws our attention to one aspect of phenomena that remains outside of this mediating process that our cognitive rationality builds as a way of guiding our future actions, minimizing the possibility of failing to achieve our purposes. We want to make choices, not just bets,12 and, to this end, our reading of the world must apprehend from it what has continuity of form, enabling us to make predictions on the future course of facts. Therefore,

 See Haack (2006b).  CP 7.532. 12  Ibri (2012). 10 11

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the expression of our rationality is genetically practical, since it is immersed in the ocean of phenomena from whence philosophical reflection should originate.13 This beginning of philosophy proposed by Peirce takes shape genetically, enabling pragmaticism to emanate from it almost naturally. The practical consequences of its maxim are nothing more than the relationship between the way in which we interpret our human experience and the existential incorporations in the form of actions that those interpretations suggest.14 I refer to interpretations more generically, rather than, strictly, conceptions, to encompass, semiotically, interpretant signs that are not restricted to those of a logical nature, bearing in mind, for example, how emotional interpretants also affect modes of action. I judge that there is a good deal of philosophy up to this point and we have yet to return to the most original Peircean category, firstness. Within it, we find that class of experience that frees us from the yoke of Chronos, whose inexorable flow we know we cannot alter. Phenomenologically, we are aware, as common sense dictates, that the past is irrevocable and that the future holds the possibility of reaffirming our successes or correcting our errors. This near omnipresence of Chronos in our experience of existing, and here I refer, again, to existence in its sense of secondness, occurs simultaneously with our practically daily interaction with thirdness, whether in the form of successful habits as guidelines or as cognitive inquiries that seek to represent the state of real things and predict their future conduct. To simply contemplate the world, in a disinterested experience since it has no practical purpose, allows for the demobilization of the conceptual forms that mediate our mundane actions. This category of experience is able to alienate itself from Chronos because it does not require the continuity of the logical forms that represent the logical forms of reality.15 It is an experience that can be purely sensitive, where consciousness is only composed of qualities of feeling. In this experience, we can relive the absence of a reaction from the world, the world as otherness, perceiving in it only its shapes, colors, smells, sounds, and, mainly, its diversity and asymmetry. It must be stressed that, among Peircean scholars, the omnipresence of the categories has been affirmed, a way of considering that firstness, secondness, and thirdness never appear in isolation, but as a triad. This is true, I believe, while they are seen as constitutive of reality, but not necessarily while phenomenologically experienced. In other words, this omnipresence occurs in the dynamic object, but not necessarily in the realm of the immediate object. Peirce is clear when describing experiences of pure firstness and, also, of pure secondness.16 To free ourselves of form, at times in our lives, is a privilege that allows us to experience a consciousness of unity. This, incidentally, is the essential

 See also Liszka (2013).  For other interesting approaches on this aspect of pragmatism, please consult Houser (2003) and Hookway (2012). 15  This symmetry in terminology is provided by the realism of Peirce’s philosophy. 16  See, for example, CP 1.304–324. 13 14

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characteristic of the aesthetic experience.17 To simply feel this unity, typical of what Peirce calls quale-consciousness, without experiencing the reaction of the world is, indeed, to abdicate from thirdness whose mediation in all its forms becomes unnecessary, whether as inquiring thought or as habits of conduct—both involving self-­ control in the face of otherness and, consequently, an awareness of the flow of Chronos. Many philosophies that do not distinguish objective reality, as brute otherness, independent of us, from its representations or from the ways in which we feel the world, will find it difficult to distinguish the otherness of Chronos from what Greek wisdom had already called Kairós, a subjective temporality that was, in the Stoics, for example, related to the notion of destiny and moments of life. In fact, a simple mirror may reveal the illusion of a time that apparently does not flow, often nurtured by the tediousness of beclouded habits. The realism of a continuum of forms in Peirce’s philosophy requires Chronos as an inherent part of the reality of thirdness. In this realism, there is an acknowledgment of a dynamic Cosmos, the flow of an objective order that is radically independent of our subjectivity.18 The apparent poetic loss of this desubjectification of time, as perhaps, markedly anthropocentric philosophies might claim, has instead, to my mind, a gain in aesthetic quality. On one hand, we can retreat within the interiority of a Kairós that alludes to a continuous universe of qualities, pure firstness, a fundamental constituent of the concept of consciousness in Peirce, turning us away from the will of a desire that puts in motion a reaction from the world. It is an experience that requires, for its objective and not merely psychological consideration, a logic of possibilities that will lead, in the Peircean work, to a genetic philosophy, one that should gather sufficient theoretical power to allow it to formulate matters of origin, not only related to an archeology of knowledge19 but also to a cosmogenetic ontology. No few number of passages in Peirce’s work that attribute to this experience the originating character of all heuristics.20 In this sense, I feel that the disregard of Peirce’s cosmology, or even to deny that it is an important chapter of his work, ultimately results in a refusal to consider the genesis of his categories, incurring in the high price of assuming them dogmatically within a philosophy that could receive many labels, except, I believe, of being dogmatic. To my mind, in order to study Peirce’s cosmology, one must forgo the safe comfort of deductive logic,21 accepting the challenge of thinking, conjecturally, a logic of possibilities.22 In reward, therein

 See, for example, Ibri (2009, 2010a). See, also, Anderson (1987) and Sebeok (1991) for other approaches on this theme. 18  See, also, Houser (2014). 19  Curiously, a frequent expression in nominalist philosophies 20  See in CP 6.452-491/EP 2.434-449 many corresponding passages. 21  See a very interesting perspective in Kaag (2013). 22  See CP 6.219. 17

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Kairós Past

Future Present

Chronos

Fig. 23.1  Chronos and Kairós: Subjective time as vertical to the horizontality of objective time

will be found the most radical demonstration of what a genetic philosophy is, incidentally, as Schelling,23 who Peirce greatly admired, also desired.24 Let me again return to the poetic gain of the distinction between Chronos and Kairós, pointing out that in order to perceive qualities in the objects of the world, we have to abandon the conceptual mediations that always select from them that which is named, leaving aside precisely what cannot be generalized for being idiosyncratic, singular and, therefore, unable to incorporate a class of predicates that substantially sustain our language. To abstain from mediations of thirdness is to abstain from the perception of Chronos, enabling the perception of nameless things,25 which truly constitute the most genuine object of artistic creation. This perception of what is outside the concern of concepts can be attained through an awareness of presentness, in which Kairós is a kind of vertical flow through the discontinuity of the presence of a Chronos that, indifferent to the representations of its qualities, flows horizontally from the past to the future. The sensitivity of the poet should be grateful, I suppose, for the generosity of a Chronos that, in possessing the hiatus of the present, allows for the principle of Chance to participate in existence, providing at the same time the objective space where Kairós can redeem that residue of non-generalizable reality that the logical web of mediations necessarily has to set aside in order to enact its role of predictively enlightening the future. I believe that this representation of subjective time as vertical to the horizontality of objective time, as plainly shown in Fig. 23.1, is useful for reconciling the concept of presentness, on which Peirce insisted, with this introduction I make here of the distinctions between Chronos and Kairós. In spite of the fact that Peirce’s philosophy does not possess any reflections on art even close to the level to which he addressed his other doctrines, I consider his theoretical system extremely fruitful for this thematic development, particularly as regards an ontology of art,26 since this reflection would have, as a starting point, the ontological nature of nameless things.27 What role does art play in the construction of mediations that cannot be conceived under logical forms typical of thirdness, considering they originate from elements of the real that disavow any generality? This question raises artistic

 See the concept of genetic philosophy in Schelling (1988, p. 30).  See, also, Dilworth (2011). 25  See Ibri (2010a). 26  For other perspectives, see, for example, Parret (1994) and Dilworth (2010). 27  I prepared a draft along these lines in Ibri (2010a). 23 24

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activity beyond the production of signs conducive to a mere playful fruition, which would be, as I have mentioned on other occasions, a kind of warrior’s rest, a breaking point in our exhaustive mission of problem-solvers.28 Could there be, in this supposedly mediating role of firstness, a moral connotation that could affect conduct? I will leave these considerations, for now, and address the ethical character of Peirce’s Pragmaticism.

23.2 The Ethical Vein of Pragmaticism The beginning of Peirce’s mature philosophy through a Phenomenology, as mentioned in the beginning of this text, starts with a being in the world, committing it to an entire universe of experience. This genesis does not imply any concessions to empiricism, as formulated in the eighteenth century and properly criticized by Kant. According to Peirce, we should note, all interpretation already involves the phenomic forms of experience.29 Thus, distant from any sensationalistic school and empiricist interpretation of his phenomenology, the original character of Peircean thought, insofar as it involves interpreted experience that becomes the course of life itself, already emerges as a philosophy of conduct, that is, it becomes pragmatic in its very genesis. It is natural that this commitment to the course of life should, as it actually does, refute all forms of skepticism that neglect the way how human actions occur. Acting, here, occurs in light of reflected interpretants, namely, those that return to the potentially public arena, observable by any mind engaged in the experiential universe. Action, thus conceived, becomes the external side that existentially determines the interpretant associated with it. Conduct, in its generalizable form that allows for cognitive interpretation, fulfils the notion of meaning implied in the maxim of Pragmatism.30 Therefore, the meaning of concepts or, to use the vocabulary of Semiotics, of logical interpretants, determines action. This semantic commitment of the concept’s external appearances, distinctly public as secondness, to its internal side, its thirdness, realizing what the Pragmatic maxim recommends, possesses an underlying ethical character,31 for it establishes a bond between language, cognition, positive theory, and factual intents, with their external appearance in the form of conduct. There is, here, a necessary rule of harmony between intentioned language and its resulting action, which the simplest common sense recognizes and requires in human relationships.

 See, also, Mayorga (2013) and Maddalena (2010).  CP 7.527; CP 1.426. 30  See, in this respect, Houser (1998). 31  See, also, Liszka, (2012) and Parker (2003). 28 29

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It is also interesting to highlight that the Pragmatic maxim suggests a link between cognizability and ethicality.32 The internal side must appear externally and, in doing so, loses its indeterminate generality to become determination within a theater of reactions. This condition is crucial to constituting a sound metaphysics in which real thirdness can be and be represented. Now, this condition of cognizability becomes a condition of ethicality, since conduct, insofar as it occurs within the sphere that is potentially accessible to any cognoscitive mind, should indicate the true form that promotes the action. False theories, on any aspect of reality, and discourses that dissimulate intentionally veiled purposes, all have in common the violation of the semantic rule of harmony between secondness and thirdness required by Pragmatism, insofar as its consequences enter a universe open to all possible experience and interpretation.33 It is worth noting, for the sake of Peirce’s realistic ontology, that this issue of harmony extrapolates what is commonly called verificationism of theories. Most often, this expression is devoid of any ontology, exempting those who employ it from justifying why the last word should be given to facts. This, in effect, and to my view, is one of the crucial logical dilemmas of nominalist epistemologies. Pragmatism, on the other hand, understood through the categories, and extending its logical validity to an ontology legitimized by the symmetry of the categories, can affirm this necessary relationship between the internal and external realms of phenomena and corroborate this relationship through predictions of the future conduct of objects. Logical forms, considered in their realist symmetry and, therefore, valid both as to signs and as to their objects, must have permanence in the future, appearing determinedly as factual history accessible to every experiencing mind. This pragmatic commitment between being and appearing, the internal side comprised of continuities and the external side forming discreet elements produced by them, fulfills, as I mentioned before, a necessary requisite of ethicality, alongside its epistemological condition. However, the ethical character of conduct must be associated with its end, toward which this conduct is aimed. So, it seems right to say that the condition of pragmatic harmony satisfies a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition, namely, the well-known question among scholars of ethics, and in particular of Peirce’s normative sciences:34 what is the moral value of the end to which conduct is directed? Before trying to answer this question according to Peirce’s philosophy, a few comments are still in order on the relationships between cognizability and ethicality. It is known that the question of practical consequences, present in the maxim of pragmaticism, means influence on conduct, and conduct should be understood as a set of actions directed toward a given purpose. From this perspective, the maxim can be understood in a very wide sense, as it satisfies not only the appearance of what pertains to the logical forms of thirdness but also to that of the continuum of

 See, incidentally, Stuhr (1994).  See Boero (2013). 34  CP 5,257. 32 33

23.3  Pragmatic Ethicality in the Forms of Beliefs

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possibility that constitutes firstness. From the former emerges a facticity that must denote some habit in the object and enable the constitution of habits in the cognoscitive mind. From the continuum of firstness comes random facticity, which reveals the reality of a principle of freedom active in objects that Peirce calls tychism. This condition of meaning, simultaneous to that of cognizability, as a necessary passage from the internal to the external side, can be understood, within the realm of ethicality, using a Heideggerian term, as the movement of the unseen that unveils itself to other minds. This is the sense in which I have employed the expression potentially public. To be is to be cognizable35 is a Peircean equation that should be explored in the realm of ethics. The ethicality of the maxim lies in the internal side’s need to be revealed—the unseen form does not participate in the reflexive dialogue with the otherness of reality. To unveil, in the sense that the term is being used, is not a generous concession to otherness, but a need proper to being itself in a pragmatic sense, namely, the need to enter into a theater of reactions in which the concept of being is pragmatically defined through participation in the dialogical semiotic reflectivity between internal and external worlds. Physis kriptestai philei36—Nature loves to hide itself—is a famous maxim from Heraclitus. Its meaning is confined to a prescientific era, as it seems unfair to complain of the concealment of natural objects, in view of the growing success of the human effort to know them. Applying this maxim to human conduct, as some thinkers have done, makes it refer to the realm of ethics—unseen forms, notwithstanding, shape conduct, as Peirce’s article The Fixation of Belief shows. We will revisit this essay,37 briefly, to try to show its ethical character.

23.3 Pragmatic Ethicality in the Forms of Beliefs The Fixation of Belief,38 an article from Peirce’s youth, when analyzed in light of his mature system of doctrines, may afford a wider and, I believe, deeper view of its meaning. This fact seems to confirm the expectation that the study of specific texts by the author, after first having gone through the logical interweaving of his main doctrines, enriches the reading of his earliest writings. A possible reason for this is the acquisition of a richer vocabulary and a more acute awareness, which I consider very important, of Peirce’s realism.

 CP 5.257.  Fragment 123. 37  Peirce’s Theory of Belief is also addressed in Chap. 22 of this book. 38  W 3.242–257/CP 5.358-387/EP 1.109–123. 35 36

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Bearing in mind the four types of fixations of beliefs, namely, tenacity, authority, a priori, and scientific, I believe it is possible to classify the first three as dogmatic39 and the last as semiotically dialogical. I have employed the predicate dogmatic to express their type of thirdness that does not dialogue with experience, as in the cases of tenacity and a priori, or that does it privately, as in the method of authority. The method of tenacity establishes a belief that becomes crystalized by ignoring or moving away from any experience that contradicts it. A priori beliefs, in turn, cannot display the forms in which they believe, because they are outside of all possible experiences. In both these types of belief, there is a severance of semiotic dialogue with a reality capable of effecting the vivacity and revision of the logical form of belief. Neither modify conduct because they are unable to learn anything, considering here the concept of learning under the prism of pragmaticism. Evidently, a priori beliefs can create discourse whose presumed veracity is nurtured by the illusion expressed by Kant’s metaphor of the dove40—their inaccessible objects cannot react to what is said of them. It is interesting to notice that although they are beliefs that are not accredited by the semiotic dialogue that could potentially renew their forms, they continue to shape behavior, in an apparent compliance with the condition of pragmatic sense. However, a belief by tenacity will fall victim to its own experiential isolation, rendering it almost impossible to be shared beyond a small and closed group. A priori beliefs that sustain, for example, theological discourses, most often create a morality within their own framework based on transcendent rewards—there is an abundance of historical facts of the exercise of power and cruelty based on them. Kant’s critique of nonscientific metaphysics was not solely epistemological but also held in its core an illuminist warning against the possible terror of a self-qualified authority based on occult forms. Much more could be said of these two forms of beliefs, but, for the purpose of this essay, it suffices to consider how they do not dialogue with experience and that practical consequences imply their reflected revision by a dynamic and constant semiotic dialogue between internal and external worlds. The stagnation in either of these worlds implies the severance with the constant learning process required by Pragmaticism.41 The method of authority, when not resulting from a priori beliefs with which it shares a close relationship, makes its dialogue with experience private and does not share the interpretants that derive from it. While it can be efficient, as Peirce himself acknowledges,42 the community subjected to the dictates of authority becomes marginalized in relation to that dialogue. General ends43 required by a pragmatic ethics do not seem achievable by this method.

 I had already classified them as such in Ibri (2012).  Kant (1978, A5, B9). 41  CP 8.272 (in this case, see the passages referred to in footnotes 629, 630, and 689 of this book). 42  EP 1.117–118/W 3.251. 43  CP 1.613. 39 40

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Finally, scientific beliefs are accredited by their public character, whether in regard to the forms give structure their theories or to the objects to which they refer, open to common visitation. Their generation of mediations and interpretants is shared in such a way that beliefs are justified by their incessant dialogue with experience. In them, there is no room for the occult, the private, nor any type of authority, and, for this very reason, scientific activity constitutes a genuine community, which Peirce could legitimately call a community of investigation.44 This constitution of a community whose purpose is the incessant search for true representations of reality is one of the pillars of Peircean inspiration that sustains his idea of ethicality. As an end, truth already establishes conduct that is committed to it,45 and, in the case of the scientific community, the semiotic-dialogic process is the means through which this end can be attained.46

23.4 The Incessant Pursuit of Form A genetic philosophy cannot admit a form as an origin, under penalty of adopting a dogmatic starting point. We may conceptualize as being ontologically genetic all philosophy that can posit a zero state of absolute nothingness, as Peirce asserts in his cosmogenesis. In this context, it is historically interesting to revisit Hegel’s critique of Schelling in his Phenomenology of the Spirit, where the famous passage the night in which all cows are black47 rejects the genetic non-form of the absolute present in the Schellingian Philosophy of Identity. Hegel, however, presupposes the reality of divine reason that leads us to identify a return to the metaphysical dogmatism criticized by Kant. In this respect, Peirce is totally in favor of Schelling, as demonstrated in his cosmogenesis. The categories emerge evolutionarily in the direction of the form of thirdness, and here, based on this concept of form, it is fitting to admit that both firstness and secondness have no form and are only modes of being of what cosmically is freedom and existence. The entire course of evolution occurs in the direction of the constitution of thirdness, namely, of laws and habits that act as mediations ensuring the continuity of form as reality and, consequently, the intelligibility of the universe. It may seem strange to say that firstness is devoid of form, but taking the concept of form as a web of logical relations and structural of habits and laws, the logical character of the first category relates solely to possibility:

 See W 3.242-257/EP 1.109–123.  See Misak (1991, 2002). 46  This ethical understanding of scientificity does not seem to have been apprehended by Apel (1981) who accuses Peirce of practicing a scientificist philosophy. 47  Hegel (1976, § 16). 44 45

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Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject's being positively such as it is regardless of aught else. That can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others.48

Possibilities, generally, constitute formless continuities,49 in view of the absence of rules that might determine their replicas as secondness: pure Chance can only produce independent events. Phenomenologically, as mentioned before, quale-consciousness is an experience whose logical predicate is its unity as continuum of possibilities. Qualities of feeling, as pure experiences of firstness, possess a formless unity of a continuity. Simply compare the continuum of a plane and the continuum of all the triangles possible of being constructed on it. In the former case, the continuity is formless; in the latter, there is at least a general rule that imposes the condition of possibility for a geometric figure to be triangular.50 What is interesting is to advance through Peirce’s philosophy and, because of its genetic character, recognize the omnipresence of the vector from the non-form to the form. Ontologically, the direction of cosmogenesis is no different. Likewise, the abductive processes of semiosis, constitutive of the symbolic universe, whether human or natural, can be identified by the generalizations derived from a dialogue with otherness in the construction of mediations. There is commonality between them in the passage from a generality of feeling to a generality of intelligence to which they are incorporated, as is the case in the triadic character of thirdness. I also consider it important to associate, from their genesis, the two facets of firstness, namely, its internal way of being, as a unity of qualities of feeling, and its external appearance as diversity, as, incidentally, it should be, since this category applies solely to what Peirce calls the logic of freedom51 or of possibilities: Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling.52 Here, we recall how nameless things, irregular and rejecting any conceptualization, inspire particularly the artists, those who know how to devote themselves to Kairós because it generously offers unity in what appears as a fragment; not only the artists but all who, aesthetically, experience the recovery of a unity of an internal nature, in which the commotion brought about by, to use an example, Bach’s Air on the G String suggests a nostalgia for the beginning,53 to use an expression from Schelling. The  CP 1.25.  CP 4.172; my italics. See, also, CP 5.526-532 and 7.209. 50  Regarding the concept of continuity in Peirce, see, for example, Moore (2007) and, from a different perspective, Lane (2011b). 51  See Ibri (2017b, p. 60). 52  CP 6.265; EP 1, p. 348; W 8, p. 180–181. This passage, incidentally, is also quoted in Chaps. 14 and 16 of this work, in the texts referenced in footnotes 479 and 578. Its redundancy here serves the role of emphasis in the argument. 53  The concept of nostalgia appears in Schelling’s work as a sort of deep missing of the absolute, which is the origin of the universe. 48 49

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deepest understanding of this recovery is provided by having considered Peirce’s study of Cosmology with critical goodwill. The reflection on the vector that originates from formless spontaneity of firstness to the form of thirdness, going through the theater of existence provided by the category of secondness, leads to a heuristic principle whose full analysis is unviable in view of the limited space of this essay. Mentioning it, however, allows us to recall that we can attribute the predicate of being heuristic to Peircean philosophy ubiquitously, and the ways in which the continuums of possibility become continuums of quasi-necessity54 suggest a reflection on the distinct, albeit correlate, semiosis promoted by art and by science, seen with the focus on an ontology of their objects.

23.5 The Living Form of the Admirable Consider, as we know, that according to Peirce “Esthetics is the science of ideals, or of that which is objectively admirable without any ulterior reason.”55 Let us consider the following passages from his work: The object admirable that is admirable per se must, no doubt, be general. Every ideal is more or less general. It may be a complicated state of things. But it must be a single ideal; it must have unity, because it is an idea, and unity is essential to every idea and every ideal.56 Accordingly, the pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to consist in action, but makes it to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent comes more and more to embody those generals which were just now said to be destined, which is what we strive to express in calling them reasonable.57

In light of these passages, it seems legitimate to say that reasonableness, as an ultimate general end of ethics and as summum bonum, could be represented by a pragmatic diagram, namely, a dynamic semiotic form, directed toward its exteriority, as should be the case with forms that do not hide themselves, but achieve their potentiality in the direction of continuous growth. I believe that the admirability that Peirce attributes to this is in the character of its form, which provides not only the internal unity of an aesthetic experience when it is contemplated but also in its effectiveness as life practice, that is, in its pragmatic character, where the beings that have it as their end contribute communally to its growth. Communally because this is, ultimately, the social nature of the vector of the pursuit of forms of mediation. Growth, through the exercise of creative freedom – the effective exercise of the three categories, where firstness has a genetic role, without which, referring back to the scheme in The Fixation of Belief, forms tend to be tenacious, authoritarian, or transcendent, hidden in their dogmatism and sources of all possible cruelty that is  Cosmically, in action, Chance is always together with law.  CP 1.191. 56  CP 1.613; bold text as in the original. 57  CP 5.433. 54 55

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implied potentially in the nature of ever-private ends, even those enclothed in social dressings. I use the term cruelty, on the one hand, to define all action whose ultimate end is exclusively within secondness: therein conduct is subjected to all forms of brute force. On the other hand, the term defines the cruel final solitude of those that choose to be dogmatic, harvested from the inversion of the vector that would lead them to the wide semiotic dialogue that incorporates otherness in the growth of communally shared forms.

23.6 To Those Who Have Not Yet Experienced the Genetic Unity of Beauty There is a general sense in Schiller’s Letters,58 viewed more in spirit than in the letter, that proposes training the young in beauty, in the aesthetic experience that confers unity and, with it, the playful freedom of Spieltrieb. Along with closely associating creativity with freedom, an important aspect of this work is of an ethical nature: Man, when taught to love beauty, tends to adopt conduct that possesses this predicate. Love of beauty perhaps is nourished by the privilege that we often have of abandoning Chronos. In doing so, we move away from the daily fragmentary contact with otherness and can experience the internal unity of Kairós, the subjective time that only flows vertically through the hiatus present in real time. When Schopenhauer59 stated that music was art experienced exclusively in time, he forgot, I believe, to say to what time he referred. All unity comes from this formless interiority of the mere qualisign, manifesting its originating dimension of firstness. It is heuristic, generating creations and discoveries; and we must remember that, in Peircean philosophy, it replaces the synthetic unity of the Kantian I think, with the quale-consciousness that grants unity to perceptive judgments. To seek it within existence subject to Chronos implies in conceiving it necessarily as a form, as we would be obligated to break the brute force of secondness, making it more reasonable. The form that it will pragmatically take, in a generally efficient manner, integrating all the beings that it mediates, will have the predicate of beauty and be qualified as admirable. Perhaps we, as a community, are still far away from this ideal of conduct proclaimed by Peirce. While this ideal, for many reasons, is not existentially consummated, in spite of the fact that, as we believe in it, we strive to act in its direction, we can still live it in its internal expression through the unity of aesthetic experience. Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and Mahler will, always, be generously willing to show it to us.

58 59

 Schiller (1982).  Schopenhauer (1969, Book 3).

Chapter 24

Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces

Keywords  Semiotics · Pragmatism · Fallibilism · Metaphysics In the tradition of contemporary philosophy, Peirce stands out in several areas. One of them is certainly the markedly ontological character of his thought; his scholastic-­ tinged realism spreads over almost all the theories of his vast system of ideas. The questions this system addresses originate from Greek and medieval antiquity,1 many of them nuanced by the logical and metaphysical problem of duality between the general and the particular, repositioning, in light of modern science, the ancient dispute between nominalism and realism. Having died in 1914 and, thus, not being acquainted with the scientific and epistemological philosophies that followed him, he, nevertheless, highlighted the distinctive differences between his system and theirs, due especially, in our view, to this realist character of his philosophy. He would doubtless repudiate philosophical systems disincarnated from the world, confined to the realm of language and to the method of sciences, without the traces of an ontology wherein we find not only otherness but also the reality of universals. Indeed, we can say that in the sphere of the foundations of science, the wounds opened by Hume’s skepticism never healed. To us, it seems that the misinterpretation of Kant’s critical philosophy, in its recovery of the possibility of practicing science in the face of skepticism, generated nominalist exaggerations. Metaphysics effectively needed a cleansing of its method, which Kantian thought enabled. However, the theoretical reform of metaphysics advocated by Kant did not mean an abandonment of the world and a kind of confinement of philosophy to language.

 In NEM. III/1, p. 161, Peirce states: “I read every medieval scholastic work that I could procure, after I have read everything of a logical or philosophical nature that has been preserved of the Greeks.” 1

This chapter is a reviewed version of an article I wrote entitled, Semiótica e Pragmatismo: Interfaces Teóricas, originally published in Cognitio, São Paulo, v. 5, n.2, p.  168–179, 2004. Reproduced with permission. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_24

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According to Peirce, philosophy should distance itself from the idea of being an exercise in skepticism2; preferably, it should emerge from the cluster of beliefs common to the majority of people and reflect on its logical possibility and not solely, as does Hume, on its psychological possibility. In this context, its basic interest will focus on common sense and on the beliefs that guide actions. The whole meaning of the theoretical corpus of any doctrine is in the beliefs that it humanely implants and thus influencing behavior. This is the general meaning of Pragmatism, a philosophical principle created by the author who orients his entire thought. Under an epistemological viewpoint, theories held as true instill beliefs and guide possible actions within their domain. There is also here a match between Pragmatism and its scholastic Realism. It is believed that the rules implicated in world theories represent real rules, acting on the objects of experience. Ontological realism is implicated in beliefs, as Peirce states in the following passage: One of the prime doctrines of these men (i.e. the nominalists), for instance, a doctrine inherited from the pre-scientific ages, is that all generalization is a mere matter of convenience. The scientific man, on the other hand, without theorizing about generals, implicitly holds that laws are really operative in nature, and that the classification he is so painfully trying to find out is expressive of real facts.3

The explicit reference to nominalists as heirs to a prescientific thought places the critique that is ubiquitous in the author’s works on this philosophical stance, which predominated in the great majority of philosophical systems, from the Middle Ages to contemporaneity. His own realism was subjected to sharp self-criticisms, correcting nominalist lapses in his mature thought,4 submitting even his paradigm of philosophical realism, Duns Scotus,5 to critical analysis. This realism that becomes increasingly more radical6 intertwines with his work in logic of relatives,7 his final list of coenopythagoric categories, and his definitive classification of the sciences.8 Peircean realism, which we repute as central to his thought, is reflected in his concept of reality,9 wherein are expounded the predicates of otherness and generality: They (the modern philosophers) tell us that it is we who create the laws of nature! That is Real which is true just the same you and I or any collection of persons opine or otherwise think it true or not. The planets were always accelerated toward the sun for millions of years

 At least insofar as it refers to a methodological skepticism, such as the Cartesian.  N II, p.19; my italics. 4  See, for example, CP 5.457. 5  CP 1.560. On this point, see Raposa (1984). Relations between Peirce and Duns Scotus are the focus of Boler’s works (1963). 6  CP 5.470. 7  As per Thibaud, (1975, p. 84–85) 8  See Parker (2003) and Santaella (1992)—chapters 5 and 6. Within the domain of this classification, Hantzis (1987) approaches the constituent sciences of philosophy. 9  In an earlier paper, I analyzed in detail the Peircean concept of reality. See Ibri (2017b, chapter 2). 2 3

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before any finite mind was in being to have any opinion on the subject. (…) Therefore the law of gravitation is Reality.10

Further, Real [is] that which possesses such attributes as it does possess, independently of any person or definite existent group of persons thinking that it possesses them. Thus Hamlet is not real, since his sanity depends on whether or not Shakespeare thought him sane.11

And, finally, The physicist certainly holds that he reaches real facts, which no more depend upon anybody’s thought of them for their existence than the coach in the fable depended on the fly for its motion. For example, he holds this to be true of the laws of the mixture of colors. These laws are realities, which remain what they are whatever our opinions about them may be.12

There is in these three passages a clear assertion of independence of reality in relation to language, alternatively to a total dependence on fiction. Under a semiotic point of view, one could say: in one case, there is a relation of radical otherness between sign and object, while in the production of the imaginary, the being of the object is totally established by the sign. It is, in fact, a crucial point for the distinction between reality and the creation of the spirit: the former has permanence and otherness in the face of the mind; the latter has the evanescence of fantasy. Such distinction, according to the author, provides support for the possibility of the concept of truth, structured, as his realism well recommends, in a relationship of correspondence, imperfect as it may be,13 between representation and reality, or between sign and object.14 This truly other object for the mind, as a condition for the possibility of truth, associates itself with the evolutionary concept of the sign-object relation, characterized by a gradual asymptotic approximation of representation in relation to the real. This aspect of the author’s works, associating epistemological and ontological doctrines, must be viewed under a systemic aspect, not always present in reviewers’ commentaries.15 Within the constraints of this article, however, it suffices just to highlight this point of detachment of the object in relation to its representation as essential to the author’s realism: “[...] the essence of the realist’s opinion is that it is one thing to be and another thing to be represented.”16

 NEM III 1, p.165; my italics.  NEM III 2, p. 881; my italics. 12  N I, p. 73. See also CP 1.16, 1.26, and 8.12. 13  This imperfection in relation to correspondence is one of the central points of the Peircean doctrine of Fallibilism. 14  CP 5.549-573. To our mind, Singer (1985) errs when supposing an equivalence between fiction and reality because both are capable of establishing beliefs. To Peirce, only the true establishes beliefs and, stricto sensu, one cannot speak of truth in the universe of fiction. 15  Exemplarily, see Margolis (1993, p. 300–302). 16  N III, p. 86; my italics. 10 11

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The study of the logic of relatives associated with those of the theory of continuity17 led Peirce to identify generality and continuity under an ontological viewpoint. Indeed, the author is emphatic in his opinion that the statute of natural law as real generality is what allows correct predictions of the future course of phenomena. The law, to Peirce, like an esse in futuro18 has spatiotemporal continuity: continuity is an indispensable element of reality, and that continuity is simply what generality becomes in the logic of relatives, and thus, like generality, and more than generality, is an affair of thought, and is the essence of thought.19

The expansion of the concept of generality by the concept of continuity through the logic of relatives enables Peirce to reformulate, in light of this new focus, the question of the reality of the universals: […] the continuum is that which the logic of relations shows the true universal to be. I say the true universal; for no realist is so foolish as to maintain that no universal is a fiction. Thus, the question of nominalism and realism has taken this shape: Are any continua real?20

In this assertion of realism as continuity, the possibility of the continuum of cognitive and mediative thought, and its correlate, the continuum of the spatiotemporarility of the real, is effectively implicated. In this continuum lies the possibility (not an exclusive privilege of the sciences) of this human and ubiquitous trend toward the description of the future, even if it involves practically immediate facts: “Five minutes of our waking life will hardly pass without our making some kind of prediction.”21 The hypothesis of the reality of continua, however, does not make Peirce a determinist,22 in the ontological sense of the word. His doctrine of chance,23 as a real principle of randomness, proclaims that the events of Nature are not strictly under causal rules, coexisting between order and disorder and symmetry and asymmetry. Phenomenology, as an inventorying science of the classes of experience, demonstrates that Nature shows a level of spontaneity that accounts for its irregularities and deviations from the law, in view of the immense diversity that characterizes it. That principle of randomness, admitted at the turn of this century by atomistic

 In Ibri (2017b, p. 51–56), I analyze this theory that Peirce calls Synechism, from the Greek synechés, continuum. 18  CP 5.48. 19  CP 5.436. Armstrong (1980, volume 2, p. 80–81) with the realism-Synechism relationship in the author’s work classifies it as a dialectic positivism (sic). Peirce has always been a critic of Comtean positivism (see, for example, CP 5.597), and in his philosophy, there are no traces, explicit or not, of a Hegelian dialectics. 20  NEM IV, p. 343. 21  CP 1.26. 22  See Ibri (2001). 23  Defined by Peirce as tychism, from the Greek Tyché, chance. This doctrine, incidentally, has been the object of wrong interpretations, such as Cosculluela (1992) to whom chance may be subsumed into the crossing (sic) of two causal chains. 17

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physics,24 makes Peirce a pioneer of the doctrine, according to many testimonials.25 Among them, perhaps the most noteworthy in contemporaneity is Popper’s26: Thus Peirce conjectured that the world was not only ruled by the strict Newtonian laws, but that it was also at the same time ruled by laws of chance, or of randomness, or of disorder: by laws of statistical probability. This made the world an interlocking system of clouds and clocks, so that even the best clock would, in its molecular structure, show some degree of cloudiness. So far as I know, Peirce was the first post-Newtonian physicist and philosopher who thus dared to adopt the view that to some degree all clocks are clouds, or in other words, that only clouds exist, though clouds of very different degree of cloudiness.

Note, incidentally, this topically theoretical approximation between Peirce and Popper both self-acknowledged indeterminists, refuting strict causality as a kind of nightmare. In Peirce’s philosophy, indetermination on the sphere of representation harmonizes with its ontological correlate of indetermination, enabling the correspondence of a shared clouded nature between sign and object. Truth,27 certainly, cannot be expressed by a concept that inexplicably crystallizes it as a finished and final product, the result of the Peircean prism of bivalence on epistemological and ontological indetermination; on this point, it is relevant to note that deviations in relation to the symmetrical effects of the law are assimilated by Peirce as types of natural errors. From the sum total of errors of typical human actions to the imprecision in measuring experiences, derive what could be called errors of representation. This is the base of the doctrine of Fallibilism,28 which, in the author’s view, attempts to dismantle the exactness of scientific construction: The non-scientific mind has the most ridiculous ideas of the precision of laboratory work, and would be much surprised to learn that, excepting electrical measurements, the bulk of it does not exceed the precision of an upholsterer who comes to measure a window for a pair of curtains.29

 Max Born (1951, p. 19), one of the fathers of contemporary science, declared: “Indeed, the most recent developments in quantum physics have shown that we must abandon the idea of strict laws and that all laws of nature are in reality laws of chance.” 25  In Krüger (1990) we find: “In 1890 we found the first philosophically sound declaration of modern indeterminism. The author was the impertinent (sic) C. S. Peirce who, initially, hardly anybody took seriously” (p. 53, vol. 1); and also: “Some scientists and philosophers were converted into a worldview fundamentally indeterministic or probabilistic, well before and independently of the quantum theory (for example: mathematicians Emire Borel and Richard von Mises, physicists Franz Exner and Marian von Smoluchowski and philosophers Charles S.  Peirce and Hans Reichenbach, to mention just a few of the most prominent figures)” (p. 376, vol. 2). 26  Popper, 1972, p. 199. 27  See Ibri (1999). 28  See Ibri (2017b, p. 42–44). 29  NEM III 2, p. 897. Almeder (1982) assumes as incompatible the theories of correspondence of truth and Fallibilism. It should be stressed, however, that in this author’s writings, there is no explicit reference to correspondence as a mere approximation, as befits an indeterministic and evolutionistic philosophy such as Peirce’s. 24

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However, the errors of representation and the deviations from the clouding of the object do not, in any way, alter the character of reality as such: I do not say that Newton’s formulation of the law is quite right, because when Newcomb was at work on the inferior planets, Mercury and Venus, I wrote to him and called his attention to the fact that certain motions of Mercury go to show that the attraction is not precisely inversely as the 2nd power of the distance but is rather proportional to –2.01 power or thereabouts; and I see that in his tables not only of Mercury but also of Venus he had introduced such a correction. (…) No doubt all our other formulations of laws are merely approximate; but the laws, as they really are, are Real.30

Completing an ontological triad, Peirce acknowledges the distinction between existence and reality,31 in which the former is a special mode of the latter; in fact, the relationship between both is, generally, between the particular and the general, between the discreet and the continuous, between finite and infinite, or, to use an old-fashioned terminology, between act and potency.32 This distinction between reality and existence interlaces with the categorial triad of Peirce’s metaphysics: chance, existence, and law, associated, respectively, with firstness, secondness, and thirdness. It can never be overly emphasized that the linkage between the categories forces the generalities of chance and law to influence the particular determination of existence; in other words, the modes of being of firstness and thirdness equally influence the mode of being of secondness. In the first science of Philosophy, Phenomenology, the categories are evidenced not as world forms but as modes of being of appearance and consciousness.33 In turn, Peircean Pragmatism does not appear exclusively as a logical rule for discerning the meaning of concepts but, also, as a necessary relationship between the general and the particular34 becoming the logic-metaphysical core of its entire philosophical architecture. The lack of such ontological dimension of Pragmatism which, in other words, assumes that the indeterminate innerness of potency must, under penalty of being nothing, externalize on the act by appearing compromises the interpretation of the doctrine, making it appear as a a priori rule, true and absolute, discordant with Fallibilism.35

 NEM III 1, p. 165.  CP 5.503; CP 6.349; NEM III 1, p. 682. 32  With due reservations for the differences between the Aristotelian and Peircean concepts. Peirce often uses those terms solely in light of this particular-general relation. 33  As already considered in Ibri (2017b, chapter 1). 34  See Ibri (2017b, p. 89–90), where I propose three possible formulations of the maxim of pragmatism in the domain of metaphysics. 35  As stated by Michael (1988, p. 346): “This brings us into sight of an important conflict in Peirce’s philosophy. Peirce as a fallibilist, does not accept any principle as absolute. But the pragmatic maxim, interpreted as a criterion of meaning appears to be just that.” The principle of the maxim of pragmatism is, to our mind, the primary condition for the possibility of any reality and its cognition as positivity: interiority must become phenomenon as exteriority. Thence derives its possibility in the realm of meaning. 30 31

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Although Peirce recognizes that it is not his most original theory, favoring his researches in the logic of relatives and theory of graphs,36 the drift in the formation of natural laws from chance, as a trend of the universe toward the acquisition of habits of behavior, sets the stage for his evolutionist theory and for his Objective Idealism,37 crucial points for the development of his Cosmology.38 The ontological theory of the acquisition of habits, Objective Idealism, and his Cosmology are considered as the most anthropomorphic aspects of the author’s thought, for which he was heavily criticized. However, on various occasions, he was clearly convinced of the anthropomorphism contained in all theories accepted as true, and this characteristic was the inevitable consequence of the intelligibility of the world,39 whose structure is relative to the human mind, notwithstanding maintaining its absolute otherness in relation to it.40 Peircean evolutionism, a pivotal element of his thought, attunes here with the contemporaneity of the sciences of Nature, particularly with astronomy, biology, natural history, geosciences, etc. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the author questions the possibility of theoretical coherence in a philosophy that does not possess an evolutionary central element: “It is doubtful whether any consistent philosophical position other than an evolutionist position is possible.” 41 This evolutionism, who places chance and law under a genetic relationship, shows the growth of diversity and the complexification of the universe. Peirce states in a passage of his writings: “all the diversity and specificalness of events is attributable to chance.”42 Chance, this principle of spontaneity of Nature, accounts for the deviation of events in relation to the law, breaking the trend toward the symmetry that it provokes not only, as believed, in micro-matter but, also, in the behavior of cosmic matter, as verified by astronomers John Barrow and Joseph Silk: One of the most extraordinary features of our universe is the fact that, despite its seemingly symmetrical appearance, a more careful look will reveal its lack of exact symmetry. The large-scale Universe is almost uniform, but not totally; the elementary particles are almost equal to their opposites, but not exactly; the protons are almost stable, but not completely. Would it all have been assembled according to a design reminiscent of an ancient world, in which the artisans shunned creating perfectly symmetrical structures, lest the gods be offended?43

Which means that, according to Fallibilism, the asymmetries of the world must impose a form of representation that refuses any determinism. Thus, probabilistic  See letter from the author to William James dated December 25, 1909 (NEM III 2, p. 872–874). In the same book (NEM III 2, p.  885), Peirce declares that the theory of graphs is his “chef d’oeuvre.” 37  I have also analyzed these doctrines, in Ibri (2017b, p. 41–42 and p. 45–50). 38  See Ibri, 2017b, chapter 5. 39  CP 1.316; 5.47; 5.212. 40  CP 5.311. 41  NEM IV, p. 140. 42  CP 6.53; 1.160. 43  Barrow and Silk, 1988, p. XI. 36

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mathematical theories adequate themselves to the syntax of the sign, not as a measure of our ignorance on the determination of the object44 but, on the contrary, as a representation molded by what is evidenced through observation. Not without reason, the model of normal distribution or Gaussian model is considered as “ubiquitous in Nature.”45 Within this ambiance of indetermination provided by the presence of chance, the universe is to Peirce, however, evolutionarily teleological. Without, evidently, being able to demand of the classics an evolutionary stance, typical of nineteenth-century Darwinian inspiration, Peirce nevertheless criticizes Hegel’s determinism: The ‘Logik’ was intended to be a mirror of the whole development of mind; and Hegel with all that romanticism that was characteristic of his epoch, was far more essentially and determinedly a man who wished to be up to date in all his mental development. Now ninety years have paraded before us since the ‘Logik’ was written; and the result is that it now condemns itself. In the first place, the system, not in its deeper and truer spirit, but as it is worked out, (…) is anti-evolutionary, anti-progressive, because it represents thought as attaining perfect fulfillment. The ‘Logik’ is supposed to mirror the history of mind; and its first step is made to correspond to Thales, who ninety years ago seemed to stand at the threshold of thought. Thales, however, lived only twenty five centuries ago; and we now know that men read and wrote fifty centuries before him, while the development of mind began countless eons before man became man.46

On mentioning a prehuman mind, Peirce is not directly referring to a God creator, but to the mental and primordial character of the origin and structure of the Universe, which bases his monist Objective Idealism. The evolutionary antecedence of the Universe in relation to man, the available theories on the origin of language as a human acquisition within Nature itself, draws a picture of growth and learning that support and make logically comprehensible the opinions of the author, that is: I infer in the first place that man divines something of the secret principles of the universe because his mind has developed as a part of the universe and under the influence of these same secret principles.47

And further: It thus appears that all knowledge comes to us by observation. A part is forced upon us from without and seems to result from Nature's mind; a part comes from the depths of the mind as seen from within, which by an egotistical anacoluthon we call our mind.48

 In CP 6.612, Peirce states: “Chance, whether it be absolute or not, is not mere creature of our ignorance. It is that diversity and variety of things and events which law does not prevent.” 45  Barrow and Silk, 1988, p. 165. In Barrow and Silk (1988, p. 171) one further reads: “The rupture of the symmetries between the different fundamental forces is a manifestation of the so-called spontaneous rupture of the symmetry. What is intriguing in this phenomenon is the fact that it illustrates how symmetrical laws, incorporated in equations, can lead to asymmetrical results.” 46  N III, p. 124; my italics. 47  CP 7.46. 48  CP 2.444; my italics. 44

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Here, we can see how Peirce’s metaphysical construction, in terms of world concept, influences his diverse doctrines, outlining a rationale of our heuristic power, our human capacity to formulate true theories. The logic of abduction, as the author called it, designating the local space in which we develop our world conjectures reveals, in the author’s opinion, an intriguing achievement, that is, an extraordinary sequence of successes, notwithstanding an also high incidence of errors. This spectrum of successes in the formulation of true hypotheses calls for justification within philosophy itself. On this point, Peirce disagrees with Popper: a logic of discovery cannot be entrusted to psychology. In light of Peirce’s system, however, this seems to be a circular question, since all metaphysical construction, according to the author, is conjectural and, being distant from any dogmatism, fallible as befits any positive theory. Thus, this hypothetical construction cannot serve as fundament for a logic of hypothesis. Nevertheless, the question is not so much one of fundament, but rather of nonfundamental justification, which could be conceived as a systemic harmony. Thus, there is a naturalist and evolutionary concept of the mind that harmonizes with its heuristic task, namely, with the effort of seeking truths. To our mind, there is no other plausible path to study a heuristic logic. The origin of semiosis, that is, the genetics of cognitive procedures, should follow a non-­ transcendental path, namely, to seek in the interactivity of the mind, with its evolutionary ambiance, the justification for its competency for discovery. Indeed, by solely confining such justification to a kind of blind function of the soul, an expression that we can well borrow from Kant, one abdicates from an objective treatment that it might have to restrict it to a subjectivism pertinent to Psychology. In this way, this reintroduction of the world as proposed by Peirce means understanding it as the evolutional ambiance of intelligence. Without wishing here to demarcate the theoretical ground of a logic of discovery or of abduction, as Peirce calls it, one can, at least, outline under what network of doctrines it figures. Jointly with induction and deduction, abduction forms the three modes of logical argument that constitute, to Peirce, the logic of scientific investigation. Evidently, relinquishing all absolute certainty and final truths, and not to be reduced to crude empirism, induction does not suffer from a problem of fundamentation within the Peircean system, in view of the naturally fallible nature of its conclusions. The realism of the universals, or of the laws of Nature—notwithstanding its impediment as grounds for inductive argument lest it fasten logic to metaphysics—is, however, the strongest hypothesis of Peirce’s thought, from which derives a major part of his systemic harmony. A realism of the laws establishes this harmony when it also stresses, under the principle of pragmatism, that the meaning of the theories, to Peirce, is situated at a future time: all knowledge must be predictive—this is its true essence. Thus, one must admit a continuum between the states of thing of past and present experiences, and this continuum translates, basically, into a principle of order given by the laws or, in Peirce’s categorial terminology, in the reality of thirdness. Fallibilism is a doctrine, not a method. It derives from a theoretical system that embodies the Kantian lesson which requires a metaphysics supported in the logic,

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free, however, of Herculean task of the constitutive subject giving form to what is genetically alien to it; a solution, incidentally, which can be compared to an allopathic medicine that, although efficient, is aggressive in its collateral effects characterized by that residuum of an unknowable world, constituted by the thing in itself. Thus, a fundamental consequence results from Peirce’s Fallibilism when he argues for the limits of knowledge to be replaced by the limits of its precision. All knowledge is fallible because apart from containing the sum total of the possibilities of incidence of random variables, whether from human action or from semiotic procedures of construction of representations, it interacts with the intrinsic inconsistency of phenomena that imposes deviations in relation to the laws. If pragmatism takes as basis for the meaning of theories, their practical consequences, or, in other words, their experiential consequences,49 it proclaims that results that are approximate, but no less capable of demarcating future behavior, have, for this reason, their semiotic-cognitive character assured. Thus, the chain of interpretants in its flow of meaning has, thanks to its commitment to the continuum of thought, an interactivity with the consequences that pragmatically orient future behavior. Thus Pragmatism and Semiotics intertwine.50 Both possess this tension for the future proper to the sphere of meaning and behavior associated with it, which Peirce led to radicality inspired, we believe, in Kant’s concept of possible experience, leaving, however, a categorial space for the unconditioned, expanding the possible cognitive spectrum of phenomena. Firstness bears the nest where freedom may take refuge together with all that is associated with it: its presence as the substance of the predictive indetermination of the sign, as a risk that permeates the adoption of any human conduct, as an invitation to think of what is new and original, and as a challenging derivation from a non-time where reason is but a seed. Both sign and object must submit to the inexorable action of chance, abandoning any pretense of a mythological precision of theories, along with concepts of a world that is ready, determined and submissive to standards of logical necessity, away from what has grounded the historical path of our experience.

49 50

 See Chap. 8 of this book.  For this relationship, see also excellent chapter 2 in Hausman (1993).

References

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Charles Sanders Peirce’s Works Peirce, C. S. (1878). How to make your ideas clear. Popular Science Monthly, 12, 286–302. Peirce, C.  S. (1893). Evolutionary love. In The Monist (Vol. 3, pp.  176–200). Oxford University Press. Peirce, C. S. (1931–58). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vols. I–VIII, C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. Burks, Eds.). Harvard University Press. (Referred as CP, followed by the volume number and paragraph number). Peirce, C. S. (1967). Annotated catalogue of the papers of Charles S. Peirce (R. Robin, Org.). The University of Massachusetts Press. Peirce, C.  S. (1975–1987). Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to the Nation (4 vols, K. L. Ketner & J. E. Cook, Eds.). Texas Tech Press. (Referred as N, followed by the volume number and page number). Peirce, C. S. (1976). The new elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce (4 vols, C. Eisele, Ed.). Mouton. (Referred as NEM, followed by the volume number and page number). Peirce, C. S. (1977). Semiotic and significs – The correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby (C. S. Hardwick, Ed.). Indiana University Press. (Referred as PW, followed by the page number) Peirce, C. S. (1982–2010). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A chronological edition (1982–2010) (Vols. 1–8, M. H. Fisch et al., Eds.), Indiana University Press. (Referred as W, followed by the volume number and page number). Peirce, C.  S. (Ed.). (1983). Studies in logic by members of Johns Hopkins University. John Benjamins Publishing. Peirce, C. S. (1985). Historical perspectives on Peirce’s logic of science (2 vols, C. Eisele, Ed.). Mouton. (Referred as HP, followed by the volume number and page number). Peirce, C. S. (1992a). The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings (Vol. 1, N. Houser & C. Kloesel, Eds.). Indiana University Press. (Referred EP, followed by the volume and page number). Peirce, C. S. (1992b). Reasoning and the logic of things – The Cambridge conferences; Lectures of 1898 (K. L. Ketner, Ed.). Harvard University Press. (Referred as RLT, followed by the page number). Peirce, C.  S. (1998). The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings (Vol. 2, The Peirce Edition Project, Ed.). Indiana University Press. (Referred EP, followed by the volume and page number).

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Index

A Abduction, 19, 20, 23, 30, 32, 40, 45, 58, 83, 84, 87–89, 200, 228, 319 Act, ix, x, 3, 5, 14, 40, 42, 54, 57, 86, 87, 90, 92, 96, 113, 122, 139, 142, 147, 154, 168–170, 178, 181, 182, 185, 188, 190, 192, 195, 210, 211, 215, 216, 221, 231, 238, 239, 243, 249, 251, 260, 261, 269, 275, 283, 290, 298, 299, 307, 308, 310, 316 Action, xiii, xiv, xvi, xxv, 29, 39, 42, 45, 47, 53, 56, 68, 69, 72, 73, 86, 111, 120, 126, 130, 139, 144, 147–149, 151, 152, 167, 168, 170, 173, 177, 178, 180–183, 185, 189–193, 196, 198, 202, 204, 205, 210–212, 222, 233, 238–240, 263, 264, 266–268, 274, 275, 278–280, 290, 292, 298–300, 303, 304, 309, 310, 320 Adherence, xii, 53, 57, 150, 178–181, 186, 190–193, 197, 229, 243, 245, 260, 261, 270, 284 Admirability, 4, 67, 241, 309 Admirable, viii, 4, 21, 31, 63, 132, 227, 280, 281, 309, 310 Aesthetics, xi–xiii, xv, 31, 50, 52 Agapism, 30, 113, 115 Ananchism, 113 Appear, v, xxiv, xxvi, 13, 14, 22–24, 39, 43, 53, 61, 67, 71, 72, 74, 81, 85, 86, 101, 112, 124, 140, 150, 172, 179, 182, 184–187, 190, 193, 227, 233, 239, 242, 244, 247, 250, 256, 264, 268, 286, 300, 304, 316

A priori, vii, 22, 43, 79, 93, 135, 142–144, 150, 152, 153, 162, 196, 198, 202, 220, 289, 306 Aristotle, 38, 54, 229 Art, v, ix, xv, xxvii, 3, 4, 11, 17, 20, 21, 23–25, 31, 35–38, 40, 42, 44, 45, 47–53, 58, 60–62, 65, 67, 70, 125, 160, 161, 174, 194, 199, 200, 213, 214, 217, 222, 224, 241, 251, 252, 272, 285, 291, 292, 296, 302, 309, 310 Authority, 135, 142, 144, 150–153, 196, 198, 202, 271, 289, 306, 307 B Being, viii, xi, xvi, xxiv–xxvii, 3–6, 11, 15, 19, 21, 24, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 39, 40, 46–48, 51, 54, 58, 66–69, 71–73, 86–90, 93, 95, 100–102, 105–107, 110, 111, 113, 115, 119–124, 135–138, 140–142, 147, 149, 153, 154, 160, 163, 168, 170, 179–182, 184, 185, 187, 190, 195–197, 199, 200, 202, 205, 210, 212, 214–216, 219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228, 232, 233, 236, 238–244, 246, 249, 251, 257–263, 265, 268–273, 278, 279, 283, 284, 287, 288, 290–292, 296–299, 301–305, 307–309, 311–313, 316, 318, 319 Beliefs, xxvi, 55, 86, 135, 142, 144, 147, 148, 150–153, 181, 191, 196–198, 201–203, 206, 251, 257, 287, 289, 291–293, 298, 306, 307, 312, 313 Berkeley, 6, 28, 104, 158, 228

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. A. Ibri, Semiotics and Pragmatism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9

333

334 C Categorial, 24, 26, 39, 42, 54, 80, 90, 99–102, 120, 138, 139, 160, 185, 198, 236, 244, 257, 271, 274, 297, 316, 319, 320 Categories, vi, xi, xii, xxiv–xxvi, 6, 9, 11, 13–15, 19, 22, 24–26, 29, 30, 32, 35, 39–42, 46, 47, 49, 54–56, 58, 59, 61, 71, 72, 80, 81, 93, 96, 98–104, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 119, 120, 123, 135, 137–140, 143, 144, 148, 149, 151, 160, 162, 163, 173, 177, 178, 180, 181, 184–188, 190, 199–201, 204, 223, 224, 232, 233, 236, 238, 240, 242–251, 257, 261, 267, 268, 270, 273, 274, 277, 278, 280, 290, 291, 296–301, 304, 307–309, 312, 316 Certainty, 6, 21, 84, 89, 105, 117–119, 121, 122, 172, 197, 243, 319 Chance, xvi, 20, 25, 26, 43, 60, 61, 73, 85, 103, 109–113, 130, 136, 149, 168, 169, 188, 191, 220, 224, 228, 230, 281, 288, 308, 314, 315, 317 Cognoscibility, 6, 43, 122 Community, xiv, 50, 114, 115, 121, 125, 132, 140, 147, 150, 162, 197, 263–265, 273, 274, 285, 293, 306, 307, 310 Conduct, viii, x, xiii, xiv, xvi, xxv, xxvi, 6, 29–31, 42, 45, 48, 49, 56, 57, 62, 67, 73, 86, 94, 99, 106, 111, 112, 120, 127, 129, 132, 136, 140–144, 147–149, 151–153, 163, 173, 174, 177, 178, 181, 186, 189, 191, 192, 195, 199–203, 205, 218, 230, 233, 235, 236, 238–241, 243, 247–249, 251, 257–262, 265, 268–272, 278–280, 283, 286–292, 298, 300, 301, 303–307, 310, 320 Consciousness, xvi, 4, 12, 13, 15, 19–26, 28, 33, 35, 41, 42, 45, 48, 54, 57, 59–62, 70, 72, 73, 81, 89, 91, 95, 99–104, 106, 108–110, 115, 138, 139, 170, 183, 186–188, 190, 191, 199, 206, 210–214, 216, 221, 246, 269, 300, 301, 316 Contemplation, 6, 12, 24, 33, 35, 41, 42, 59, 62, 66, 69–71, 73, 75, 81, 90, 92, 93, 95, 193, 199, 211, 214, 215, 224, 252 Continuity, xxiv, xxvii, xxviii, 28, 29, 40, 53–56, 71, 72, 89, 90, 96, 102, 107,

Index 110, 114, 115, 129, 137, 149, 161, 167, 179, 182, 183, 186, 190, 191, 198, 199, 201, 212, 225, 229, 236, 240, 246, 269, 270, 278, 296, 299, 300, 307, 308, 314 Continuum, xiv–xvi, 15, 16, 19, 20, 25–27, 29, 30, 34, 35, 47, 53, 54, 59, 62, 71, 73, 79, 81, 82, 89, 91, 101, 102, 106, 109, 112, 113, 119, 121, 126, 128, 129, 131, 137, 139, 143, 149, 161, 169, 182–185, 187–193, 199, 200, 204, 212, 213, 223, 239, 250, 251, 278, 280, 281, 301, 304, 308, 314, 319, 320 Cosmology, xi, 14, 17, 20, 29, 39, 40, 47, 48, 101, 106, 108, 110, 111, 118, 120, 121, 160, 161, 163, 200, 246, 261, 272, 274, 280, 301 Culture, xxiv, xxvii, 31, 52, 115, 132, 160, 174, 205, 229, 242, 264, 265, 284, 287, 296 D Deduction, 19, 32, 72, 82–84, 91, 92, 96, 117, 118, 171, 319 Determination, xiii, 5, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30, 31, 58, 66, 100, 115, 139, 140, 153, 179, 211, 219, 233, 235, 266, 273, 274, 280, 287, 304, 316, 318 Diagram, 22, 91–95, 203, 309 Dialogue, xxiii, 3, 5, 6, 12, 13, 16, 21, 25, 44, 47, 67, 73, 94, 124, 127, 129, 131, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143, 144, 150–152, 158–161, 174, 178, 181, 190, 191, 197, 199, 201, 202, 204–206, 218, 225, 229, 233, 234, 239, 241, 243, 258, 262, 263, 265, 267, 271, 272, 289, 296, 298, 305–308, 310 Discovery, vii, viii, xxiv, xxvi, xxviii, 5, 6, 32, 38, 63, 81, 92, 95, 96, 105, 121, 125, 127, 132, 136, 139, 169, 185, 200, 255, 259–262, 273, 319 Dogmatic, vi, 135, 142, 144, 187, 202, 220, 245, 246, 289, 293, 301, 306, 307, 310 Doubt, xxv, 86, 88, 90, 92, 107, 120, 137, 139, 148, 168, 182, 188, 190, 198, 199, 227, 234, 266, 275, 281, 309, 316 Dream, 13, 153, 290

Index E Epistemological, 15, 19, 25, 30, 35, 56, 68, 89, 103, 104, 119, 121, 124, 126, 128, 131, 136–139, 160, 161, 163, 172, 173, 198, 201, 205, 209, 214, 234, 239, 243, 249, 270, 285, 304, 306, 311–313, 315 Ethics, xi–xiii, xv, 16, 53, 206, 263, 288 Evolutionism, 29, 47, 56, 80, 81, 103, 118, 120, 121, 216, 217, 221, 237, 317 Existence, xvi, xxv, 4, 6, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 21, 26, 27, 33, 42, 43, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58, 62, 68–71, 74, 81, 98, 102, 104, 119, 120, 122, 140, 144, 150, 181, 184, 187, 189, 190, 202, 210, 211, 216, 217, 227, 231, 235, 238, 246, 247, 260, 261, 265, 267, 274, 290, 292, 300, 302, 307, 309, 310, 313, 316 Experience, x, xi, xiii, xvi, xxiii–xxvi, xxviii, 4–6, 11–13, 15–21, 24–26, 28, 30, 31, 33–35, 38, 41–45, 48, 49, 53–55, 58–62, 65–73, 81, 83, 85, 88–91, 94, 95, 100–102, 106, 109, 110, 114, 120, 123–125, 127, 130, 135–141, 143, 148, 150, 152–154, 160, 162, 170, 177, 178, 180–184, 186–192, 197–199, 201, 202, 213–215, 218, 220, 221, 223, 224, 233, 234, 242, 244, 248, 250, 257, 258, 260, 262–265, 268–272, 274, 284, 285, 289–292, 296–301, 303, 304, 306–310, 312, 314, 320 Exteriority, 4, 12–15, 19, 25, 67, 95, 104, 109, 110, 113, 210, 215, 217, 219–221, 223, 224, 238, 247, 274, 309, 316 F Fallibilism, 11, 20, 54, 83, 198, 201, 249, 288, 313, 315–317, 320 False, 286, 304 Feeling, viii, xxvi, 5, 12, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24–26, 30, 32–34, 36, 41, 48, 60, 61, 71, 73, 81, 99, 102, 105, 107–110, 136, 139, 147, 160, 163, 187–189, 193, 196, 199, 200, 203, 205, 206, 214, 223, 224, 234, 245, 248, 250, 251, 272, 295, 299, 300, 308 Firstness, xi, xxvi, 15, 18, 25, 39–42, 45–47, 49, 54–56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 71, 73–75, 80, 81, 90, 113, 119, 120,

335 141, 151, 160–162, 182, 184, 186–188, 198–200, 223, 224, 234, 238, 242, 245–247, 250, 270, 272–274, 277, 299–301, 303, 305, 307–310 Form, vii, ix, xi, xiii, xxiv–xxvii, 6, 11, 21, 24, 28, 30, 33, 41, 42, 44, 53, 56, 59, 61, 62, 65, 67–72, 74, 75, 83–85, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, 98–102, 104–106, 108, 113, 115, 118, 121, 125, 127–129, 131, 141–144, 148–151, 160, 167, 171, 172, 178, 182, 183, 185, 188, 189, 191, 193, 197–201, 203, 204, 206, 210, 212, 213, 215–221, 224, 229, 230, 233, 236, 238–240, 242, 244, 245, 247, 249–251, 257, 259, 261, 263, 265, 270–275, 278, 281, 286–288, 290–292, 296, 297, 299, 300, 303–309, 317, 320 Future, v, xxiv, xxviii, 4–7, 12, 25, 26, 29, 41, 42, 45, 46, 50, 53, 56, 57, 60, 65, 81, 88, 94, 100, 109, 128, 129, 131, 136, 140, 141, 144, 149, 152, 162, 177, 179–183, 186, 189–191, 193, 194, 197, 202, 203, 206, 222, 230, 233, 242, 243, 248, 249, 259, 262, 269, 270, 279, 281, 284, 287, 290, 291, 298–300, 302, 304, 314, 319, 320 G Generality, 6, 22, 27, 43, 53, 68, 72, 74, 89–91, 93, 99, 101, 102, 104, 106, 119, 183, 186, 200, 204, 209, 223, 231, 233, 246, 264, 265, 268, 290, 299, 302, 304, 308, 312, 314 Generalization, xxv, 24, 28, 31, 38, 45, 46, 71, 74, 81, 98, 100, 112, 127, 151, 152, 173, 195, 196, 200, 201, 204, 206, 237, 242, 245, 247, 265, 267, 281, 312 H Habit, ix, xiii, xiv, xvi, 9, 42, 46, 47, 72, 108, 112, 147, 167, 170, 182, 191, 192, 195, 196, 200, 202, 204, 237, 242, 244, 245, 247, 248, 265, 269, 270, 296, 298, 305, 309, 310 Hegel, G.W.F., vi, vii, 18, 20, 39, 67, 158, 160, 171, 256, 273, 307, 318

336 Heuristic, vii, viii, x, xv, xvii, xxvi–xxviii, 22–25, 32, 34, 40, 41, 54, 58, 62, 81–84, 89, 91, 92, 94–96, 103, 105, 114, 118, 126, 127, 131, 132, 161, 169, 174, 175, 184, 187, 200, 213, 222, 226, 232, 236, 240, 245, 246, 251, 319 Hume, D., 43, 55, 68, 86, 97, 118, 158, 209, 311, 312 Hypoicon, 128 I Icon, 49, 91, 95, 128 Idealism, ix, xxxvii, 17, 28, 37, 39, 40, 42, 47–49, 56, 67, 71, 80, 81, 97, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109, 115, 159, 201, 209, 218, 225, 227, 228, 231–237, 240, 242, 244–246, 260, 262 Ideality, 6, 25, 28, 29, 35, 47, 66, 67, 91, 95, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 108, 114, 115, 130, 138, 171, 213, 215, 222, 225, 231–233, 238, 240, 244–247, 264, 278, 280, 281 Imaginary, 49, 74, 95, 96, 153, 172, 287, 313 Imagination, 3, 38, 46, 92, 93, 105, 212, 242, 269, 292 Induction, 32, 72, 82–85, 104, 118, 119, 195–198, 201, 203–206, 229, 248, 250, 257, 319 Inference, vi, xxv, 83, 87, 89, 92, 143, 187, 236, 247, 262, 266, 270, 290 Inferential, x, xxv, 190, 271, 273 Interiority, 3–7, 15, 19, 25, 39, 40, 59, 62, 90, 95, 104, 109, 110, 113, 139, 220, 223, 224, 236, 238, 247, 248, 273, 274, 301, 310, 316 Interpretant, xiii, xvi, 4, 5, 46, 83, 115, 149, 150, 152, 154, 206, 243, 251, 272, 300, 303 K Kairos, 42 Kant, I., vi, vii, xxiv, 10, 14, 16, 22, 24, 32, 38, 39, 41–43, 45, 55, 68, 69, 74, 75, 79, 80, 93–95, 97, 107, 120, 136, 139, 150, 153, 158, 160, 169, 201, 202, 209–211, 214–216, 218, 219, 232, 256, 257, 265, 273, 303, 306, 307, 311, 319, 320

Index L Language, xxiii–xxvii, 6, 7, 11, 14, 16, 18, 21, 27–29, 31, 37, 41, 45–47, 49, 56–58, 60–62, 73, 74, 80, 92, 95, 98, 104, 107, 121, 129, 131, 136–138, 142, 144, 158, 161, 163, 178, 181, 185, 186, 189, 192, 193, 202, 203, 212, 217, 226, 228, 233, 242, 243, 256, 257, 259, 261–266, 268, 273, 283, 285, 286, 288, 290, 291, 293, 299, 302, 303, 311, 313, 318 Law, 5, 9, 15, 19, 28, 33, 43–47, 53, 68, 72, 74, 81, 83, 101–103, 106, 110, 112–114, 118–120, 168, 169, 172, 173, 182–184, 188, 190, 192, 200, 201, 204, 217, 219, 221, 229, 235, 237, 242, 248, 270, 272, 280, 297, 299, 301, 308, 313–318 Legisign, xiv, 150, 200 Literature, 49, 58, 61, 120, 153, 256, 258, 262 Logic, vi, viii, xi–xiii, xv, 27, 28, 33, 40, 54, 57, 72, 79–82, 84, 85, 87–89, 91, 94, 96, 99, 100, 103, 105, 106, 114, 119, 137, 139, 159, 160, 169, 181, 193, 216, 223, 226, 228, 235, 245–247, 280, 314, 316, 317, 319 Love, x, 7, 21, 30, 31, 106, 112–114, 158, 162, 310 M Mathematics, 38, 82, 83, 91, 94, 279 Meaning, ix, xii, xiii, xvi, xxiv–xxvi, 5–7, 10, 20, 21, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38, 46–49, 52, 53, 56, 58, 62, 68, 73, 74, 80, 88, 91, 96, 101, 106, 107, 110, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 129, 131, 132, 135, 136, 138, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 151, 153, 158, 160, 163, 167, 174, 178, 193, 202, 213, 217, 221, 225, 227, 229, 232, 233, 236, 238, 239, 257–260, 262, 264, 267, 272–275, 277–279, 286, 290, 292, 295, 303, 305, 308, 312, 316, 319, 320 Mediations, xxvi, 5, 41, 44, 45, 53, 73, 142–144, 148, 151, 180–183, 187, 188, 192, 193, 195, 198, 201, 202, 204–206, 239–241, 248, 251, 269, 271, 272, 298, 299, 302, 307, 308

Index Metaphor, 3, 46, 52, 74, 96, 153, 185, 227, 230, 250, 255, 260–262, 296, 306 Metaphysics, xi, xii, xxiv, xxxvii, 42, 48, 52, 55, 68, 81, 99, 105, 113, 120, 129, 144, 153, 160, 216, 232, 233, 237, 257, 268, 269, 273, 304, 306, 311, 316, 319 Method, x–xii, xiv, 14, 73, 82, 88, 92, 94, 118, 124, 142–144, 150, 152–154, 168, 171, 196, 197, 220, 221, 249, 306, 311, 319 Mind, vi, vii, xii, xv, xxiv, 5, 6, 11, 17–20, 23–25, 28–35, 37–41, 46, 47, 52, 54, 56, 71, 72, 80, 81, 83–87, 89, 91, 92, 94–96, 98, 101–103, 106–110, 112–115, 118, 120, 121, 128, 136–139, 141, 147, 148, 151, 153, 154, 162, 170, 173, 174, 178, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189–192, 195, 199–201, 203, 205, 206, 215, 218–221, 225, 227–229, 231, 232, 234–239, 241–244, 246–249, 251, 252, 262, 271, 272, 274, 279, 289, 290, 296, 297, 299–301, 303–306, 313, 315–319 Music, xxvii, 58, 62, 70, 75, 199, 252, 310 N Nameless things, 51, 57, 58, 60–62, 193, 302, 308 Nature, v–viii, xi, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, 5, 6, 12–14, 17–23, 25, 27, 30–32, 34, 35, 40, 44, 46, 47, 49, 53, 55, 57–62, 65–67, 71, 72, 74, 75, 80, 81, 84–86, 90, 91, 100–102, 105, 107–110, 112–115, 117, 120, 124, 128, 129, 132, 136, 138, 139, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 161, 163, 168, 169, 171–174, 178, 182, 183, 185–190, 193, 194, 196, 198–202, 204–206, 212–220, 222, 224, 228, 229, 231–234, 236–240, 242–244, 246, 247, 249, 251, 252, 260, 261, 265, 269–272, 281, 283, 285–291, 297, 298, 300, 302, 308–312, 315, 319 Nominalism, xxvi, 14, 27, 29, 37, 43, 55, 56, 71, 79, 89, 96, 98, 104, 106, 129, 179, 187, 218, 219, 223, 244, 245, 262, 273, 281, 297, 311, 314

337 O Object, xxiv, 3–6, 12, 13, 15, 17–20, 23, 24, 26–28, 30, 31, 39, 41–43, 45, 47–49, 52, 58, 60, 66, 69–73, 80, 87, 89–91, 95–98, 100, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 114–116, 119–121, 124, 128–131, 137, 138, 140–144, 150, 151, 153, 154, 160, 162, 178, 179, 181, 185, 186, 196, 199, 202, 203, 210, 211, 213, 215–220, 222, 224, 229–234, 236, 240, 243–245, 248, 249, 256, 257, 259, 260, 262, 269–271, 281, 287–289, 297–300, 302, 305, 309, 313–316, 318, 320 Ontological, vi, x, xv, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, 11, 14, 25, 26, 32, 40, 42, 43, 51, 54–56, 66, 68, 74, 79, 81, 90, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101–103, 105, 107, 109, 110, 117–119, 121, 122, 130, 136, 138, 148, 163, 171–175, 185, 186, 189, 190, 197, 198, 201, 213, 219, 223, 225, 229, 232, 234, 235, 243, 245–247, 257, 258, 267, 268, 273, 274, 278, 292, 302, 311, 313–317 Ontology, xv, xxiv, xxv, 35, 37, 47, 49, 57–60, 66, 82, 104, 113, 115, 135, 137, 138, 140, 160, 168, 179, 181, 190, 195, 200, 223, 224, 230, 232, 236, 238–242, 244, 258, 261, 268, 273, 275, 280, 296, 301, 302, 304, 309, 311 Order, x, xi, xiii, xiv, xxvii, 3, 5–7, 12, 16, 18, 22, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 39, 40, 43, 45, 53, 54, 56–58, 61, 74, 80, 83, 84, 89, 93, 101, 111, 112, 119, 120, 124, 126, 139, 141, 142, 144, 149, 171, 172, 177, 179, 180, 184, 185, 190, 193, 197, 198, 201, 204, 205, 210, 212, 214, 219, 221, 222, 229, 231, 235, 236, 239–241, 246, 247, 251, 261, 262, 264, 268, 269, 273, 274, 278, 285, 301, 302, 304, 314, 319 Otherness, xxiv, xxvi, 3–5, 11–13, 15, 18, 21, 25–27, 41, 43, 45, 48, 56, 57, 59, 61, 68, 96, 99, 100, 102, 108, 115, 119, 123, 127–131, 135, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 151, 153, 160, 178–181, 189, 192–194, 197, 198, 201–206, 218, 219, 227, 228, 230, 231, 233, 239–241, 243, 247, 248, 250, 251, 260, 262, 263, 265, 269–271, 274, 277, 283, 287, 289, 291, 292, 298–301, 305, 308, 310–313, 317

338 P Pain, 5, 13, 21, 61, 70, 75, 256 Peirce, C.S., v–viii, x–xvi, xix, xx, xxiii– xxviii, xxxvii, 4–6, 9–62, 65–75, 79–132, 135–145, 147–154, 157–163, 167–175, 177–184, 186–193, 195–204, 206, 209–251, 255–261, 263, 266–275, 277–281, 283, 284, 287, 289–291, 295–320 Phenomenology, xi, xxiv, 18, 19, 22, 39, 44, 232, 268, 273, 303 Philosophical, vi, vii, x–xii, xiv, xxiv, xxvii, 5, 9, 11, 12, 16, 18–21, 29, 35–37, 40, 44, 49, 53, 55, 66, 67, 71, 79, 86, 93, 113, 115, 118, 120, 129, 135–138, 148, 158–161, 167, 168, 178, 188, 196, 213, 216, 222, 224–232, 234, 237, 240–242, 245, 250, 256, 266, 268, 279, 281, 291, 296, 300, 311, 312, 316, 317 Plato, 4, 37, 48, 69, 70, 228, 229, 246, 281, 285 Pleasure, viii, 10, 21 Poetics, 3–5, 46, 50, 213, 222 Poetry, xxvii, 12, 13, 21, 23, 24, 32, 34, 36, 46, 49, 61, 74, 116, 213, 222, 223, 252, 272 Possibility, vii, xxv, xxvi, 5–7, 12–16, 20, 23, 27–29, 45, 46, 48, 58, 59, 62, 68, 74, 79, 80, 84, 87, 90, 96, 100–102, 104, 107, 122, 123, 136, 138–140, 142, 143, 161, 179, 181, 182, 189, 191, 192, 210, 212, 214, 217, 222, 224, 230, 232–235, 238–240, 245–247, 251, 255, 263, 264, 269–271, 273–275, 284, 285, 299, 300, 305, 307–309, 311–314, 316, 317 Possible, x, xxiii, xxv–xxvii, 3–6, 20, 21, 24, 26, 29, 33, 35, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60–62, 73, 74, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 99, 102, 106, 110, 113, 115, 120, 122, 124, 128, 130, 131, 138–141, 144, 145, 149, 151–154, 163, 172, 174, 179, 183, 185, 187–189, 193, 194, 196, 197, 201–203, 205, 206, 210, 211, 214, 216, 217, 225, 228, 229, 231–235, 237, 238, 241–249, 257, 274, 279, 283, 284, 286, 287, 289, 292, 295, 304–306, 308, 312, 316, 317, 320 Practical, xxv, 6, 62, 103, 123, 125–132, 143, 148, 152, 170, 178, 183, 193, 210,

Index 211, 232, 235, 257, 267, 277, 278, 285, 290, 298, 300, 304, 306, 320 Pragmatic, xi–xiv, xvi, xxiv, xxv, 44, 49, 73, 74, 126, 129, 136, 143, 148, 151, 153, 163, 168, 173, 174, 177, 190, 192, 195, 202, 233, 234, 239, 240, 257, 269, 271, 272, 274, 285, 287, 291, 303–306, 309, 316 Pragmatism, ix, xii, xiii, xvi, xxv, xxvi, xxxvii, 33, 47, 51, 53, 60, 62, 73, 86, 88, 135, 139, 140, 158, 177, 256, 271, 273, 275, 280, 290, 300, 316, 319, 320 Predictions, 43, 57, 85, 119, 151, 179, 182, 197, 229, 259, 260, 298, 299, 304, 314 Present, v, xv, xxiii, xxv, 12, 19, 23–26, 29, 41, 42, 51, 57, 60, 61, 69, 70, 73, 89, 93, 94, 98, 102, 105–108, 118, 120, 126, 137, 139, 144, 154, 160, 161, 163, 169, 174, 175, 178–181, 183, 190, 191, 193, 194, 199–202, 215, 216, 221, 223, 224, 229, 231, 232, 234–237, 241, 242, 244, 248, 251, 257, 258, 266, 271, 275, 279, 284, 290, 302, 304, 307, 310, 313, 319 Presentness, xv, 5, 12, 25, 38, 41, 42, 57, 66, 67, 74, 89, 95, 109, 141, 149, 302 Project, 28, 66, 99, 128–131, 210, 258, 264, 297 Q Quale-consciousness, xv, 20, 25, 42, 46, 48, 60, 107–109, 139, 301, 308, 310 Qualisign, 15, 16, 20, 42, 73, 163, 199, 200, 310 R Real, x, xi, 4, 5, 13, 17, 27, 29–31, 39, 42, 43, 46, 48, 49, 54–60, 67, 69, 72, 79, 80, 88, 99, 101, 104, 106, 108, 113, 115, 118, 119, 123, 128–130, 136, 137, 141, 143, 144, 148, 151, 153, 160, 162, 167–169, 171, 172, 179, 185–187, 189, 197, 200, 202, 204, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 218, 221, 223, 224, 230–233, 235, 238, 245, 247, 257, 261, 262, 265, 268, 269, 273, 274, 287, 290, 292, 297, 300, 302, 304, 310, 312–314

Index Realism, xii, xxiv, xxvii, 6, 14, 20, 27–29, 31, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 47, 49, 53, 55–57, 60, 62, 67, 71, 72, 79–81, 89, 91, 95–101, 104–107, 115, 116, 118, 119, 124, 128, 129, 131, 135–138, 140, 143, 144, 148, 160, 161, 163, 168, 179, 180, 183, 186, 187, 189, 192, 217, 218, 223–225, 227, 228, 231–234, 236–238, 240, 242, 244–247, 255, 260, 261, 268, 273, 274, 278, 290, 291, 297, 300, 301, 305, 311–314, 319 Reality, x–xii, xv, xxv, xxvi, 6, 11, 17, 23, 26–29, 32, 34, 39, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 53–56, 59, 62, 81, 91, 96–98, 102–105, 111, 114, 115, 118, 119, 122, 124, 128, 135–138, 141, 143, 144, 150, 153, 160, 161, 168, 169, 179, 180, 184, 185, 187, 189, 193, 195, 197, 201–203, 210–213, 216, 217, 223–225, 227, 228, 231, 233, 238, 240, 242, 244, 245, 247, 260–262, 266, 269, 270, 273, 274, 278, 283, 284, 287–292, 297–302, 304–307, 311–316, 319 Reason, x, xv, xxvi, 4, 6, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22–25, 28, 30, 31, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 53, 57, 60–63, 65–69, 72–74, 80, 86–88, 90, 95, 96, 101, 107, 109, 119, 126, 127, 130, 131, 142, 143, 148, 150, 154, 162, 169, 180, 181, 183, 187, 191, 193, 210, 211, 214, 215, 217, 218, 222, 229, 235, 236, 240, 250, 256, 259, 261, 262, 264, 265, 269–271, 279–281, 284, 285, 291, 298, 305, 307, 309, 318, 320 Reasonableness, viii, xiv, xvi, 142, 206, 309 Relative, 65, 90, 109, 148, 173, 198, 218, 236, 317 Representation, xv, xvi, 4–6, 19, 27, 29, 32, 42, 48, 49, 61, 68, 71, 80, 81, 83, 88, 91, 92, 98, 104–108, 115, 119, 121, 127, 135, 140–144, 151, 160, 161, 178–180, 189, 193, 216, 219, 220, 227, 229–231, 242, 248, 255, 258–260, 262, 268–270, 274, 283, 284, 291, 292, 302, 313, 315–317 S Schelling, F.W.J., vi–viii, xxvi, xxvii, 4, 5, 10, 11, 15–19, 30, 33–35, 38, 40, 42,

339 44, 45, 47, 50, 62, 65–75, 86, 96–98, 100, 103, 108, 109, 113, 118, 120, 121, 158, 160, 161, 175, 187, 209, 212–225, 228, 231, 235, 244, 246, 273, 281, 302, 307, 308 Scholastic, xxiv, 10, 54, 98, 137, 160, 187, 217, 241, 242, 261, 268, 278, 297, 311, 312 Science, vi, xii, xv, 4–6, 17, 19–24, 26, 28, 31, 32, 38, 39, 43, 46, 48, 51, 52, 55, 57, 62, 82–87, 96, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 111, 115, 118, 123–127, 129, 131, 132, 135, 138, 143, 158, 160, 161, 163, 174, 177, 180, 184, 185, 189, 200, 216, 221–223, 225, 229–231, 240, 249, 251, 257, 258, 263, 266, 297, 309, 311, 314–316 Scientific, vi, xi, xxiv, 16, 26, 34, 40, 48, 55, 82, 83, 87, 95, 99, 110, 118, 119, 130, 132, 135, 142, 143, 150, 151, 153, 158, 171, 179, 195–198, 201, 202, 228, 229, 231–233, 235, 240, 243, 263, 284, 289, 291, 296, 305–307, 311, 312, 315, 319 Secondness, xi, xvi, xxv, xxvi, 39–41, 48, 54–56, 58–60, 71, 73, 99–103, 108, 113, 114, 119, 120, 141–144, 150–152, 181, 184–188, 191, 198–205, 223, 233, 236, 247, 248, 250, 252, 268, 269, 271, 273, 274, 277, 290, 291, 297–300, 303, 304, 307–310 Semantic, xxiv, 3, 37, 46, 73, 105, 113, 114, 121, 178, 226, 232, 236, 264, 267, 277, 298, 303, 304 Semiotics, xi–xiii, xvi, xxvii, xxxvii, 21, 51, 203, 251, 269 Sense, ix, xii, xiv, xxiv, xxviii, 12, 17, 24, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 53–55, 59, 61, 74, 79, 81, 83, 90, 91, 95, 96, 98, 103, 104, 106, 107, 113, 114, 116, 126, 135, 137, 142, 148–151, 162, 170, 173, 178, 180, 182, 187, 188, 192, 194, 198, 202, 204, 205, 210, 212, 217–219, 223, 227, 231, 235, 236, 239, 240, 244, 246, 250, 257, 262, 269–271, 273, 280, 283–288, 292, 300, 301, 303–306, 308, 310, 312, 314 Sensitivity, ix, xi, xiv, xxvii, 5, 11, 16, 18, 40, 46, 66, 71, 90, 116, 163, 201, 203, 205, 206, 251, 252, 302

340 Sign, xiii, xv, xxvi, 4–6, 30, 31, 39, 43, 49, 61, 68, 91, 95, 115, 119, 121, 128, 131, 138, 143, 153, 161, 162, 170, 186, 232–234, 244, 245, 248, 284, 289, 313, 315, 318, 320 Signification, 6, 57, 290 Sinsign, xiv, 149, 150 Sophists, 142, 285 Spatiotemporal, 172 Spontaneity, 19, 25, 40, 45, 54, 60, 61, 109, 110, 114, 119, 184, 187, 188, 224, 225, 232, 249, 272, 308, 309, 314, 317 Suchness, 21 Symmetry, 9, 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, 26, 32, 39, 40, 42, 45, 49, 54, 56, 60, 68, 80, 99–101, 103, 116, 119, 123, 135, 137, 138, 160, 172, 191, 232, 236, 240, 244, 245, 257, 268, 297, 300, 304, 314, 317, 318 System, vi, xxiv–xxvii, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18–22, 24, 27–29, 31, 35–38, 40, 49, 52–55, 70, 82, 83, 90, 91, 94–96, 99, 101, 103, 107, 108, 111, 115, 118–121, 123, 135, 137, 158, 161–163, 167, 174, 177, 187, 195, 200, 204, 205, 212, 218, 219, 222, 225, 227, 230, 235, 237, 241, 245, 247, 256, 257, 268, 270, 277–279, 281, 296, 302, 305, 311, 315, 318, 319 T Temporality, 3–5, 7, 12, 15, 17, 19, 24, 25, 30, 41, 60, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 95, 103, 105, 109, 149, 161, 183, 189, 190, 192, 193, 222, 223, 248, 269, 281, 299, 301 Tenacity, 135, 142, 144, 150, 153, 154, 196, 198, 202, 203, 306 Thirdness, xi, xv, xxvi, 15, 39, 41, 45–47, 49, 54–56, 58–61, 72, 74, 80, 90, 110, 113, 115, 119, 120, 141–144, 151, 181, 186–189, 199–204, 223, 233, 234, 238, 245, 247, 248, 250, 251, 261, 268, 269, 273, 274, 277, 278, 290, 298–304, 306, 308, 309 Thought, vi, xvii, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, xxviii, 5–7, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 23–29, 33–35, 37, 38, 43, 44, 47, 49, 52, 56, 66, 70–74, 79, 80, 82, 85, 87, 88, 93,

Index 94, 99, 101–106, 108, 110, 112–115, 119, 126, 130, 136, 139, 142, 144, 152, 158–161, 163, 167, 172, 174, 175, 179, 180, 183, 185–187, 190, 200, 212, 213, 216, 218, 221–223, 230, 238, 239, 244, 245, 256, 258, 263, 264, 266–268, 270, 273, 274, 277–281, 285, 288, 295, 301, 303, 311–314, 317–320 Time, v, ix–xi, xiii–xv, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, 4, 5, 7, 10–13, 15, 19, 22–26, 29, 33, 35, 41–43, 45, 52, 55–57, 59–61, 67, 69, 70, 72–74, 80, 81, 87, 89, 90, 93, 95, 102, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 118, 119, 123, 125, 129, 139–141, 149, 154, 157–162, 168, 178, 180, 181, 183–185, 187–193, 197–201, 204, 205, 212, 214–217, 220–222, 224, 229, 230, 242, 248, 256, 258, 259, 263, 269, 279, 285, 287, 291, 295, 296, 299, 301, 302, 310, 315, 319, 320 True, 4, 5, 7, 13, 16, 18, 23, 26, 27, 32, 41, 48, 55, 59, 62, 84, 85, 87, 90, 94, 96, 107, 115, 121, 126, 128, 141, 142, 144, 149, 150, 153, 154, 163, 169, 178, 179, 182, 187, 191, 193, 196, 204, 205, 216, 223, 260, 261, 263, 268, 278, 283–285, 292, 293, 300, 304, 307, 312–314, 316, 317, 319 Truth, xii, xiv, xxiv, 4, 27, 32, 39, 41, 48, 67, 74, 82–86, 92, 105, 114, 117, 118, 121, 124–129, 131, 142, 143, 173, 202, 214, 215, 220, 232, 243, 255, 256, 259–265, 278, 280, 284–287, 292, 307, 313, 315 Tychism, 17, 20, 113 U Uncertainty, 118, 119, 121, 123, 136, 180, 197, 201, 250, 270 Universals, xxiv, xxvii, 21, 37, 55, 56, 67, 80, 98, 99, 118, 129, 136, 161, 187, 223, 231, 233, 242, 247, 248, 268, 273, 311, 314, 319 V Vague, xiv, 59, 198, 246 Vagueness, 12, 20, 61, 83, 104, 161, 226, 286

Index W World, v, viii, xvi, xxv–xxviii, 3, 5–7, 11–15, 17, 18, 20–23, 25, 26, 28–32, 35–42, 44–49, 51, 53–62, 65–71, 73–75, 80, 90, 91, 96, 98, 100, 101, 104, 115, 117, 119, 120, 137–141, 144, 148, 153, 160–163, 167,

341 172–174, 179, 180, 184–187, 192, 193, 202, 203, 206, 209, 211–216, 218, 220–222, 225, 227, 230, 231, 233, 236, 238, 239, 241, 242, 244–247, 258–264, 266–269, 273–275, 289, 291, 297–303, 311, 312, 315–317, 319, 320