Peirce Notes Phil 308

Phil308 Course Outline, Rorty and Peirce, Semester 2, 2009

Pragmatism: Peirce and Rorty

Instructor: Prof John Collier

Room: MTB 280

Phone:260-3248

Office Hours: Monday or Thursday after class, or by appointment (catch me before or after class) I am usually in my office all day Mondays and Thursdays..

Announcement (August 24, 2009) (August 31, 2009): There will be a class on Monday September 7 while I am away. My PhD student Chirag Patel will do a class on a short paper by Rorty called Pragamtism, relativism and irrationalism that is a good introduction to Rorty. Pick up a copy of the paper from Yolanda. There will be no class on Thursday September 3. Remeber that your second Peirce assignment is due when I return (September 14).

Ther short Rorty paper is to be found here. It is due October 1. Try to get started over the break.

The long Rorty paper assignment should be available this weekend. The due date will be October 16. You will find it here.

Your first (short) assignment on Peirce is now available here. It is due August 20, 2009. The second assignment, due September 14, is here.

We will be looking at central writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, roughly one a week in the first half of the course, and Richard Rorty in the second half of the course. The peirce texts will be available from this page. The text for Rorty will be his fairly recent book, Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 (CIS). The book is available at Adams, there should be used copies, and I have asked for two copies to be put on reserve in the Malherbe Library. All of the Peirce articles are available from this web page.

I will be away in Poland September 3 and 7 (see announcement above). During that time you should take the opportunity to catch up on reading and prepare your major assignment on Peirce. Overall, there will be one short assignment each on Peirce and Rorty (3-5 pages double spaced) (10% each) and one longer assignment on each (about 10 pages double-spaced) (40% each). The due dates will be August 14 (short Peirce), September 11 (long Peirce), September 28 (short Rorty), and October 16 (long Rorty). I will give topics two weeks before each due date.

Peirce

The reading for week 1, July 20-24 is What Pragmatism Is, Charles Sanders Peirce The Monist, 15:2 (April 1905), pp. 161-181. This will serve as an introduction to the basic ideas of this part of the course.

Reading for week 2. July 27-31: Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), pp. 103-114 ( html version ).
Some background reading you may find useful if you want to study this more deeply are Peirce's notes Questions on Reality ( html version ). These notes cover much the same material, but in a slightly different way which might be illuminating. There is also a good deal of background in the New List (1867) and On logical comprehension and extension (1867), which are background notes for the Journal of Speculative Philosophy articles.

The answer to Question 5 depends on the answer to question 4. However Perice's answer to question 5 seems to be contradicted by notions like infinity, validity, and perhaps the good, which do not seem to be grounded in signs, but come prior (in some sense) to signs. We must clarify this issue before we go on to Questions 6 and 7.

Reading for week 3&4 August 03-14: Some Consequences of Four Incapacities Claimed For Man, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), pp. 140-157. (html version)

Peirce looks now at the consequences of the four incapacities he described in the previous article (week 2):

1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts.

2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition is determined logically by previous cognitions.

3. We have no power of thinking without signs.

4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable.

Some version of 1-4 have been assumed by most modern philosophers (less so since Peirce, but remnants have been very tenacious). This paper looks at how philosophy has been misled by assuming one or more of these dubious capacities.

You will find things easier if you read the articles in advance rather than at the last minute, and it takes the same amount of time out of your busy life. You may find the paper " What is a sign? " (1894) useful. For further material on the logic, see Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four Incapacities Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1869), 193-208.

Week 5, August 17-21. Peirce's review of Fraser's The Works Of Berkeley (this is an html version).

I will also hand out essay topics this week.

Week 6-7, August 24-31. The Fixation of Belief. Popular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877), pp. 1-15 (HTML version is here .)
How to make our ideas clear. Popular Science Monthly 12 (January 1878), pp. 286-302 ( HTML version is here)
The "classic" statement of pragmatism, as conceived by Peirce: an experimentalist conception of symbolic meaning. The second of the six papers of the "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series of 1877-78, regarded by Peirce as inseparable from "The Fixation of Belief".

Rorty

September 7, Pragamatism, relativism and irrationalism (pick up a copy from Yolanda) (Chirag Patel will do the class)

Week 8, September 10. The contingency of language, from CIS.

Week 9, September 14-18. The contingency of self, from CIS. The contingency of a liberal community, from CIS.

Week 10, September 28, October 1. Continue on the contingency of a liberal community.

Week 11, October 5, 8. Rorty on irony, section 2 of CIS.

Week 12, October 12, 15. Rorty on solidarity, section 3 of CIS.

Week 13: Final topic. A conversation between Peirce and Rorty, as imagined by Susan Haack.

Some useful background about Peirce is given in Discovering the American Aristotle, by Edward T. Oakes.

Some resources on the web:

Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway Contains some of Peirce Мs writings, and secondary sources, as well as links to other Peirce sources. (Arisbe is the place where Peirce died.) The papers on nominalism and realism , Ockham and Whewell may be useful to you.

The Peirce Edition Project Contains a wealth of information, including a short biography, a list or PeirceМs correspondents, a chronology, notes on various papers in The Essential Peirce as well as an online version of “What is a Sign?”, and some other information.

The Digital Encyclopaedia of Charles S. Peirce contains articles on Peirce Мs main concepts and his views on a variety of subjects.

The Commens Dictionary of Peirce Мs Terms Peirce Мs terminology in his own terms (very useful).

Commens As well as the above dictionary, further information about Peirce, some papers on Peirce Мs ideas, and some useful links.
The new Wikipedia material on Peirce is more reliable than usual.

John Deely's " Red Book " is a good secondary source.

I will put up more resources and instructions as I go.

Assessment for this part of the course, in addition to the final exam, is based on one short assignment each on Peirce and Rorty (3-5 pages double spaced, worth 10% each of class grade) and one longer assignment on each (about 10 pages double-spaced, worth 40% each of class grade). The due dates will be August 14 (short Peirce), September 11 (long Peirce), September 28 (short Rorty), and October 16 (long Rorty). I will give topics two weeks before each due date. Students are strongly advised to prepare an outline of their long papers in advance, and discuss their topic and outline with me.

Last Revised September 20, 2009