Abstract
Peirce developed the theory of reasoning as a preferred instrument of the logical analysis of thoughts, while Husserl’s phenomenology took a turn to things we think about. The stark contrast between Peirce phaneroscopy and Husserl’s phenomenology shows up in Peirce’s insight that reasoning is guided by the leading or guiding principle of reason we form in imagination about the logical power of reasoning. Peirce further believed that the analysis of the processes of reasoning in their smallest movements is best accomplished by the methods of existential graphs. We provide an analysis of the guiding principle and its evolution grounded in the primitive forms of that method. We show that there is an evolution of the logical constant of negation from the paradisiacal implication (the scroll) and the blot, and explain the latter in terms of Peirce’s preferred interpretation as unscriptibility. These points establish Peirce’s logico-phaneroscopical analysis of reasoning having advantages not only over Husserl’s phenomenology but also over contemporary studies that have taken keen interest in cognitive aspects of reasoning and inference.
“Do not confound thought with thinking.” Peirce, R 499(s).
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Notes
- 1.
A rich source of relevant information on Peirce–Husserl comparison of psychologism is found in Stjernfelt (2007).
- 2.
An alternative and slightly earlier draft of this passage reads as follows: “Yet how many writers of our generation (I will name Husserl, if I must instance one among the hordes), after underscored promises that their discourse shall be of logic, and not of psychology, forthwith become intent upon these elements of the process of thinking which are special to the human mind, as we find it, to the utter neglect of those elements which equally belong to every mode of embodying the thought.” These quotations have the following historical background. It was Christine Ladd–Franklin who in 1901 urged Peirce to critically engage with Husserl’s thought, especially his prevailing radical anti-psychologism. Ladd–Franklin would then meet Husserl and a number of other philosophers and scientists in 1902 during one of her frequent trips in Europe (Ladd–Franklin 2006). Husserl’s phenomenology, in turn, was inspired by Ladd–Franklin’s doctoral classmate, B. I. Gilman’s, paper on one-dimensional manifolds (Gilman 1892). Peirce’s engagement is found in his November 1906 address at the National Academy of Sciences meeting, entitled “Phaneroscopy, or Natural History of Signs, Relations, Categories, etc.: A method of investigating this subject expounded and illustrated,” of which R 298 is the testimony that is preserved in the archives. It is to appear in Peirce 2020 in full.
- 3.
There are differences in meaning among these terms, but for the purposes of the present paper’s argument, we can safely ignore them.
- 4.
See Ma and Pietarinen (2018b) for ways of weakening the propositional Alpha part to various other ‘non-classical’ graphical logics.
- 5.
By the scroll, we mean both the boundary and its contents, where the contents only contain the continuous sign of the blank.
- 6.
There may be various processes or mechanisms at work that could prevent the recognition or awareness of an explicit negation, including the fact that what “the Phaneron” is cannot be directly observed (R 499(s)), and that its study must therefore be approached from the points of view of the graphicalization of logic. If that graphicalization does not permit a representation of cut as a negation, the latter needs to be gradually worked out from the presence of other signs, such as the scroll, which requires time and cognitive energy which should not be assumed to be at the initial disposal of these make-believe agents.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the Academy of Finland (project 1270335) (DiaMind: Diagrammatic Mind), the Estonian Research Council (project PUT 1305) (Abduction in the Age of Fundamental Uncertainty), and the Russian Academic Excellence Grant “5–100” on Formal Philosophy. We thank the anonymous reader for very helpful remarks and suggestions on this paper.
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Bobrova, A., Pietarinen, AV. (2019). Thoughts, Things and Logical Guidance. In: Shafiei, M., Pietarinen, AV. (eds) Peirce and Husserl: Mutual Insights on Logic, Mathematics and Cognition. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25800-9_3
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