Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Nominalism as demonic doctrine
- 2 Logic, philosophy and the special sciences
- 3 Continuity and the problem of universals
- 4 Continuity and meaning: Peirce's pragmatic maxim
- 5 Logical foundations of Peirce's pragmatic maxim
- 6 Experience and its role in inquiry
- 7 Inquiry as self-corrective
- 8 Theories of truth: Peirce versus the nominalists
- 9 Order out of chaos: Peirce's evolutionary cosmology
- 10 A universe of chance: foundations of Peirce's indeterminism
- 11 From inquiry to ethics: the pursuit of truth as moral ideal
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Logic, philosophy and the special sciences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Nominalism as demonic doctrine
- 2 Logic, philosophy and the special sciences
- 3 Continuity and the problem of universals
- 4 Continuity and meaning: Peirce's pragmatic maxim
- 5 Logical foundations of Peirce's pragmatic maxim
- 6 Experience and its role in inquiry
- 7 Inquiry as self-corrective
- 8 Theories of truth: Peirce versus the nominalists
- 9 Order out of chaos: Peirce's evolutionary cosmology
- 10 A universe of chance: foundations of Peirce's indeterminism
- 11 From inquiry to ethics: the pursuit of truth as moral ideal
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Peirce takes the core of the worldview outlined in Chapter 1 – the worldview he calls ‘nominalism’ – to be the metaphysical theory that only individuals exist and laws and general kinds are ‘figments of the mind’ devised to make sense of experience (1.16, 1903). Since he believes that logic provides the only secure basis for metaphysics, he focuses his critique of nominalism on the logical foundations of its account of laws and general concepts. However, before examining the logical presuppositions of nominalism, he thinks it important to clarify the nature of logical inquiry itself. While he would not go so far as to claim that nominalism stands or falls on its account of the science of logic, he thinks nominalists (and others) go astray as a result of their failure to understand the subject matter and methods of logical inquiry, as well as its relationship to inquiry in other sciences. In this chapter, then, I examine his criticism of the nominalist account of logical inquiry and explain the alternative he proposes. This discussion lays the groundwork for the examination of Peirce's case against the nominalist theory of laws and general concepts in later chapters.
As Peirce defines it, logic is the science that deals with the principles of right reasoning (2.1, 1902). Reasoning, meanwhile, ‘is the process by which we attain a belief which we regard as the result of previous knowledge’ (EP 2: 11, 1895).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism , pp. 13 - 41Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011