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CP 2.111. With Speculative Rhetoric, Logic, in the sense of Normative Semeotic, is brought to a close. But now we have to examine whether there be a doctrine of signs corresponding to Hegel's objective logic; that is to say, whether there be a life in Signs, so that--the requisite vehicle being present--they will go through a certain order of development, and if so, whether this development be merely of such a nature that the same round of changes of form is described over and over again whatever be the matter of the thought or whether, in addition to such a repetitive order, there be also a greater life-history that every symbol furnished with a vehicle of life goes through, and what is the nature of it. There are minds who will pooh-pooh an idea of this sort, much as they would pooh-pooh a theory involving fairies. I have no objection to the pooh-pooh-ing of fairies, provided it be critical pooh-pooh-ing; but I wish I had the leisure to place before those gentlemen a work to be entitled The History of Pooh-pooh-ing. I think it would do them good; and make room in their minds for an essay upon the Logic of Pooh-pooh-ing. Mind, that if some forenoon, while I was in the midst of one of the most valuable of the chapters of my "Minute Logic," a rap should come at my outer door, and if, upon going to the door, I were to find two men who proposed to come in and discuss with me the principles of Mormonism or Christian Science, I should promptly recommend them to apply elsewhere. This I should do upon the same grounds upon which I declined to join the American Psychical Research Society when it was started; namely, that I thought that to do so would be to sanction a probable great waste of time, together with the placing of some men in a compromising position. In like manner, if a reader who has thought it worth while to listen to what I have had to say upon normative logic finds objective logic too remote from his interests to care to listen to any discussion of it, I shall fully approve of his allowing the leaves of my chapter upon this subject to remain uncut. But my own position is different. It lies directly in the path of my duty to consider the question critically. END
I do not think Peirce was a skeptic. But he was an inside-outsider. One who knew the insiders but was himself distanced from them by various personal and social means of ostracism. Universties have little patience with aggressive out-of-the-box inquiries. It was predictable that Peirce would live mainly outside of or at the edge of privileged society.
You might think he would have joined the Psychical Society and perhaps he did. I shall investigate further. But his thought is actually dead center between a respect for science and a rigorous method of inquiry which eventually depends on a growing community consensus and an openness to causal factors that cannot be accessed save by logical exploration of metaphysical suppositions.
Peirce believes in Mind and causation but has little patience with his sense of received religion. He is on occasion open to a handful of metaphysical commentators whose books he lauds.We shall continue to explore the psychic in CP.
Suffice to suggest that for Peirce logic has a central place because it is the only way he can mine from human, subjective thinking what makes sense and what is a waste of time.
I do not think Peirce was a skeptic. But he was an inside-outsider. One who knew the insiders but was himself distanced from them by various personal and social means of ostracism. Universties have little patience with aggressive out-of-the-box inquiries. It was predictable that Peirce would live mainly outside of or at the edge of privileged society.
You might think he would have joined the Psychical Society and perhaps he did. I shall investigate further. But his thought is actually dead center between a respect for science and a rigorous method of inquiry which eventually depends on a growing community consensus and an openness to causal factors that cannot be accessed save by logical exploration of metaphysical suppositions.
Peirce believes in Mind and causation but has little patience with his sense of received religion. He is on occasion open to a handful of metaphysical commentators whose books he lauds.We shall continue to explore the psychic in CP.
Suffice to suggest that for Peirce logic has a central place because it is the only way he can mine from human, subjective thinking what makes sense and what is a waste of time.
