Peirce On Realism And Idealism

Re-evaluates Peirce's metaphysics, exploring his views on pragmatism, reality, truth, and the mind's relation to the external world.

Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of Pragmatism, was convinced that metaphysics is not just of primary importance to philosophy, but that it serves as the basis of all sciences. From Realism to 'Realicism' is a unique critical study of Peirce's metaphysics, and his repeated insistence on the realism of the medieval schoolman as the key to understanding his own system. By tracing the problem of universals beginning with its Greek roots, Rosa Maria Perez-Teran Mayorga provides the necessary yet underrepresented background of moderate realism and Peirce's eventual revision of metaphysics. This book examines Peirce's definition of the "real," his synechism, his idealism, and his "pragmaticism," which are all related to his sense of realism. With strong analyses and references to Plato, Aristotle, and John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan monk known as a major proponent of scholastic realism, From Realism to 'Realicism' is an insightful and intriguing book that will stimulate the minds of fellow philosophers and those interested in Charles Sanders Peirce.

The essays in this book have grown out of conversations between the authors--and their colleagues and students--over the past decade and a half. Their germinal question concerned the ways in which Charles Sanders Peirce was and was not both an idealist and a realist. The dialogue began as an exploration of Peirce's explicit uses of these ideas and then turned to consider the way in which answers to the initial question shed light on other dimensions of Peirce's architectonic. The essays explore the nature of semiotic interpretation, perception, and inquiry. Moreover, considering the roles of idealism and realism in Peirce's thought led to considerations of Peirce's place in the historical development of pragmatism. The authors find his realism turning sharply against the nominalistic conceptions of science endorsed both explicitly and implicitly by his nonpragmatist contemporaries. And they find his version of pragmatism holding a middle ground between the thought of John Dewey and that of Josiah Royce. The essays aims to invite others to consider the import of these central themes of Peircean thought.

The book is a collection of chapters on the work of Charles S. Peirce that grew out of conversations between the authors over the last decade and a half. The chapters focus primarily on Peirce's consideration of realism and idealism as philosophical outlooks. Some deal directly with Peirce's accounts of realism and idealism; others look to the consequences of these accounts for other features of Peirce's overall philosophical system."--Publisher's abstract.

In this systematic introduction to the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, the author focuses on four of Peirce's fundamental conceptions.

Reason and Reality expounds a pragmatic metaphysics that offers a new approach to this subject's traditional objective of providing us with a secure cognitive grip on the nature of reality. The characteristic nature of this metaphysical approach lies in its commitment to the idea that the requisite security is best and most reliably provided by functional considerations of pragmatic efficacy service the aims and purposes of rational inquiry and effective communication.

This book explores the complex relationship between the philosophical schools of idealism and pragmatism. Idealism is the older tradition, with roots in Plato and Platonism, and has been developed in a myriad of forms. At heart, it holds that reality is either mind-like, or is contained in the mind. Pragmatism is a newer school, traceable to the work of philosophers such as C.S. Peirce and William James in the mid-nineteenth century. It offers a distinctive account of meaning, knowledge, and metaphysics which stresses our place as agents within the world. While these two schools have often been set at odds with one another, it is increasingly recognized that idealism and pragmatism share some important common ground, and that their respective histories have been intertwined. The contributions to this volume, by leading international scholars, put these debates in a new light by studying the interrelation across a range of thinkers and issues, including Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Royce, Renouvier and Collingwood on the one side, and Peirce, James, Dewey and Brandom on the other. This book was first published as a special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.