EN49
Facsimile
Transcription
1908 Nov 12
Logic
32
I have been so careful in defining 'Determination', for the
reason that I have to use it in defining an even more important expression,
'Determination after' anything. But before defining this
I must call your attention to the most important conception in the
whole range of thought, which that which is expressed by the word
'After.' For there is no science and no department of life in which
it does not fulfill a commanding office. Words have different kinds
of Meanings. I use the term Meaning as a general name for the
office of any word, sentence, paragraph, book, symptom, token,
diagram, portrait, or in short of any sort of sign. In
order to call your point out to you a somewhat surprising
property of the word after and the 'After' and of the concept that
word expresses, I shall have to call your attention to three different
kinds of Meaning instances of all three which I attach to different
Notes and Questions
Please sign in to write a note for this page
Compare this page to what Peirce says in this selection from the Collected Papers:
Any mind which has the power of investigation, and which therefore
passes from doubt to belief, must have its ideas follow after one another in time. And
if there is to be any distinction of a right and a wrong method of investigation, it must
have some control over the process. So that there must be such a thing as the
production of one idea from another which was previously in the mind. This is what
takes place in reasoning, where the conclusion is brought into the mind by the
premises. (CP, 7.346)
We may imagine a mind which should reason and never know that it
reasoned; never being aware that its conclusion was a conclusion, or was derived
from anything which went before. For such a mind there might be a right and a wrong
method of thinking; but it could not be aware that there was such a distinction, nor
criticise in any degree its own operations. To be capable of logical criticism, the mind
must be aware that one idea is determined by another. (CP, 7.347)