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Phaneroscopy. “φαν”
1. The Gist of the Argument.
My parting word to you, Reader, in the number for October, 1906, was a promise that in the present article the relevancy of the system of Existential Graphs to the question of the truth of Pragmaticism should be disclosed. Today, I straightway proceed to redeem that promise. I have already explained to you what Pragmaticism is; so that you are already aware that it is a theory in regard to the common nature of the meanings of all concepts. But you have seen (or should you not be satisfied with it, the next following sections of this article shall make it clear to you,) that Existential Graphs furnish a moving picture of the action of the mind in thought,— that is, to so much of that as is common to thoughts on all subjects. The study of that system,
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then, must reveal whatever common nature is necessarily shared by the significations of all thoughts. You ‘catch on,’ I hope. I mean, you apprehend in what way the system of Existential Graphs is to furnish a test of the truth or falsity of Pragmaticism. Namely, a sufficient study of the Graphs should show what nature is truly common to all significations of concepts; whereupon a comparison will show whether that nature be or be not the very ilk that Pragmaticism (by the definition of it) avers that it is. It is true that the two terms of this comparison, while in substance identical, yet might make their appearance under such different garbs that the student might fail to recognize their identity. At any rate, the possibility of such a result has to be taken into account; and therewith it must be acknowledged that, on its negative side, the argument may not turn out to be sufficient. For example, quâ Graph, a concept might be regarded as the passive object of a geometrical intuitus, although Pragmaticism certainly makes the essence of every concept to be exhibited in an influence on possible conduct; and a student might fail to perceive that these two aspects of the concept are quite compatible.
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But, on the other hand, should the theory of Pragmaticism be erroneous, the student would only have to compare concept after concept, each one, first, in the light of Existential Graphs, and then as Pragmaticism would interpret it, and it could not but be that before long he would come upon a concept whose analyses from these two widely separated points of view unmistakably conflicted. In the present article mention can be made of but a small percentage of the concepts whose analyses have been subjected by me to such examination. For we shall manage to dispense with scrutinizing them one by one; and the [?presented?] statement represents merely the general drift of my argument. It will nevertheless be of service, however; and the more so, in that the argument itself is of somewhat complex structure, is very long, and carries a number of subsidiary arguments of some difficulty, so that, without the guidance of the general statement, the clearest minded reader might lose his bearings, and run aground; and even with this aid some
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supplementary resumés will not come amiss.
II. Thought and Thought-sign.
The first point to be made in the argument,—the first position secured,—is that Existential Graphs afford a moving-picture of thought in all its essential details. But the proposition in this abridged enunciation leaves room for several misconceptions of vital importance against which I must take care that the reader is well guarded before I attempt to convince him of its truth.
To begin with, then, it is not pretended that the system of Existential Graphs is indispensable to such an analysis of thought as may serve as a pattern to which Pragmaticism, in order to be true, must conform. Indeed, for many years before my own possession of this system, and while I as yet had nothing but only the traditionary methods of logic for my implements,