Roundtable of "Sociedad Latinoamericana Peirce"

From Self to the Cosmos: Latinamerican Readings of Peirce

The Sociedad Latinoamericana Peirce promotes the study of the work of Charles S. Peirce, and the academic exchange of research and researchers from across the continent. Four Latin-Americans researchers are presented at this roundtable: Catalina Hynes, President of the Sociedad Latinoamericana Peirce; Jorge Alejandro Flórez, from Colombia; Paniel Reyes Cárdenas and Darin McNaab, from Mexico.

SPEECHES:

Catalina Hynes | UNT Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina

Reading Peirce's "Photometric Researches"

As was to be expected from such an original thinker, these Photometric Researches are nothing like a report in the style of those published by the Observatory at the time. They contain considerations of experimental psychology surrounding the sensation of light, history of science, translation of Ptolemy's catalog, comparisons between different measurements made by earlier and contemporary astronomers, from Ptolemy to Seidel, through Brahe, Kepler, Herschel and many more. He uses these comparisons to delve into the problem of error in observations by applying statistics. Not only does he present his own original observations, a novelty considering the state-of-the-art instruments used, but he also advances hypotheses about the shape of our galaxy, being, apparently, the first to suggest its disk shape.

In the present work we will present some keys for the reading and evaluation of this work. We intend to present its translation into Spanish along with ongoing research with a view to publishing in the near future an annotated edition as complete as possible. We will also try to evaluate its importance for various disciplines, i.e., the theory of perception, and the possible connections with the "Illustrations on the Logic of Science". We hope that these reflections will be useful considering the very scarce presence of this text in the Peircean bibliography.

Panel Reyes Cárdenas| UPAEP Universidad, Puebla, Mexico; The University of Sheffield, UK

Evolutionary Cosmology: Peirce and Contemporary Images of the Universe

Contemporary models ache from the lack of a correct system of categories to understand the reality of the universe in terms of the big picture. By and large, the language of contemporary physics could be limited by the common assumptions of a physicalist, scientist or materialist prejudice.
This presentation has an aim related to metaphysics and physics, but more specifically between metaphysics and cosmology; it connects the Peircean system of categories as well as the metaphysical doctrines he proposed with the story of the cosmos at large as an evolutionary system.
The concepts of modern cosmology need new insightful conceptions of time, space, generality, continuity, evolution, chance, mind, habit, etc. I believe that the Peircean phenomenology and metaphysics can provide such a battery of renewed conceptions.
Hence, this talk will engage with a dialogue that connects two goals:

 1. A deeper understanding of Peirce's Evolutionary Cosmology, the insights that the cosmology itself has as an original theory of the universe and the way it relates with Peirce's pragmatist philosophy.
2. A correlation of Peirce's thought with contemporary cosmology and the result of the interaction between the two that produces a deeper approach to cosmology.

Jorge Alejandro Flórez R.| Universidad de Caldas, Manizales, Colombia; Editor of Cuadernos de Sistemática Peirceana

Categorical Order and Semiotic Classification of Logical Inferences

The three logical inferences (abduction, induction and deduction) have received particular attention since their function in logical criticism and metodeutics, the last two parts of semiotics, but their categorial classification from phenomenology and their semiotic classification from speculative grammar have not been sufficiently discussed. The doubt that drives this research is which phenomenological category of firstness, secondness and thirdness corresponds to each of the logical inferences. The consequences of this categorical classification would be reflected in the semiotic classification, and, therefore, we also ask with which semiotic categories we can classify these three inferences. I think there is no dispute in categorizing abduction as primacy, but the doubt arises about the position of deduction and induction. In a manuscript in preparation for his 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism Peirce himself says that he will classify induction as second and deduction as third, but that he is not yet sure of this:

“But If were asked today [1903] (…) as to the connection between the three categories and the three modes of inference, I am forced to confess that it is obscure. (…) Now, I said, Abduction, or the suggestion of an explanatory theory, is inference through an Icon, and is thus connected with Firstness; Induction, or trying how things will act, is inference though an Index, and is thus connected with Secondness; Deduction, or recognition of the relations of general ideas, is inference through symbol, and is thus connected with Thirdness. (…)

But as years rolled on I began to waver this position. And here I beg you to permit a personal explanation. (…)

I represented Induction to be connected with the third category and Deduction with the second. It is needless to say that I had reasons for this which seemed strong to me then and which seem strong to me now. At present, I am somewhat disposed to revert to my original opinion; but I will leave the questions undecided”. (1903; Harvard Lecture V, cited by Turrisi 1997 p. 276-277, n. 3).

Although Peirce left the matter undecided, I consider that there are reasons to hold with greater confidence that deduction is second and induction third. For example, a further classification of types of arguments shows that deduction follows the principles of secondness and shows one degenerate and one genuine case; and that induction shows two degenerate and one genuine case, like thirdness. In short, the aim of this presentation is then to show the arguments by which I hold that deduction is second and induction third. 

Darin McNabb Costa| Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico; Traductor de Peirce al español; Director de “La fonda filosófica”

The Self in Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death": A Reading from Hegel and Peirce

"The first six paragraphs of Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death are among the densest and most difficult passages to interpret in his entire oeuvre.  There he expounds the nature of the self in terms of relations, which many have interpreted as an expression of Hegel's dialectic.  In this essay, I read those paragraphs in terms of Peirce's logic of relations and show that Peirce allows us to understand Kierkegaard much more clearly than Hegel.  Moreover, in spite of all that Peirce and Hegel have in common, Peirce criticizes him severely with respect to the reality of Secondness.  In analyzing this criticism and also what Peirce and Kierkegaard say about the importance of doubt vis-a-vis consciousness, I show that a Peircean reading of Kierkegaard is much more fruitful than the Hegelian framework that Kierkegaard knew.  I end the essay reflecting on the possibility of speaking of a “semiotic Kierkegaard” and of an “existentialist Peirce”. 

Roundtable of "Brazilian Logic Society"

The SBL session will consist of three (3) presentations, starting from the work of Charles S. Peirce and beyond. Indeed, Peirce currently appears in the history of logic as one of the inventors of mathematical logic, whose work and legacy yet remain to be fully known. With a mathematical interpretation of logical propositions and inferences, Peirce's logical work shows itself as a source of inspiration for contemporary systems, extending the tradition of the algebra of logic in the 20th century, from Tarski to the most advanced research in paraconsistency.

The session will be coordinated by Prof. Dr. Anderson L. Nakano (PUC-SP) and has the institutional support of SBL. 

SPEECHES:

Ítala Maria Loffredo D'Ottaviano| CLE-UNICAMP, Brazil

Charles Sanders Peirce and the Theory of Relation Algebras

Up to the mid 19th century, research in logic was mostly done by philosophers and mathematicians under the predominant influence of the aristotelian tradition which was strongly based on the theory of syllogisms.

In this work I will present Peirce as one of the most important forerunners of the algebraic tradition of logic, in particular as one of the logicians who have conceived the theory of relation algebras.

Edelcio Gonçalves de Souza | USP, Brazil

Paraconsistentization of Logics 

Paraconsistentization is a method that serves to transform any logical system into a paraconsistent system. To do this, given a logical system defined by a consequence relation, we construct a new system such that new inferences are only obtained from consistent sets of premises. This method is general enough to be applied even in logics the languages of which do not contain the negation connective. We will discuss some algebraic properties of the method.

Cassiano Terra Rodrigues | ITA, Brazil

Did Peirce Invent a Mathematical Truth Table for Connectives or Not?

Peirce may not have invented what we now know as truth tables, and some commentators consider it an open question whether he developed a generalized mathematical interpretation of propositions. I will argue that not only did he develop a mathematically abstract vero-functional analysis of complex propositions, but he also developed a totally original diagrammatic model to accomplish exactly what is now done with truth tables. This model, at least in Peirce's conception, is perfectly mathematical and fully represents the 16 elementary connectives, including negation. 

Round-table of "Pragmatism and Aesthetics Research Group" | CEP- PUCSP, Brazil

SPEECHES:

Ariane Porto Costa Rimoli | Unicamp, Brazil

God is Polyglot: Dialogues Between Peirce and Quantum Science about the Reality of God

In March 1897, at the age of 56, unemployed and trying to care for his sick wife, Peirce writes to his friend William James: “I have learned a lot about philosophy in recent years, because they have been very miserable and failed years (...), a new world of which I know nothing (...) has been unveiled for me: the world of misery. (...) I learned a lot about life and the world, shedding strong lights on philosophy during these years. Undoubtedly, the resulting tendency is to value the spiritual more, but not an abstract spirituality.... On the other hand, this experience increases the sense of reverence through which we consider Gautama Booda.”  In your text “C. S. Peirce, God and Realism: the neglected intersection between science and religion”, Arthur F. Stewart addresses abductive reasoning, the categories of reality, experience, the distinction between argument and argumentation in Peirce as presuppositions of scientific interdisciplinary research on religion and art, from which we have that Peircean's conception of God is an aesthetic conception. According to Prof. Ivo Ibri, the argument about the aesthetic reality of God is the "common matrix between the mental and material universes".  From 1900 onwards, the quantum worldview began to seek to explain consciousness, freeing itself from the view that science should only be responsible for explaining the functioning of the material world. The conscious perception that the subject and the object exist, that the “experiencer” exists, leads us to the notion of consciousness. If, for quantum physics, consciousness is the basis of all existence and if all possibilities reside in us due to our experiences, quantum physics also presents itself as the science of experience. The reflection proposed in "God is polyglot: dialogues between Peirce and Quantum Science about the reality of God" lies in the establishment of a dialogue hitherto unprecedented, where Peirce's considerations on aesthetics and the ideas contained in "Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (The Hibbert Journal: October 1908), find the ideas of Beauty, one of the archetypes (Truth, Love, Beauty, Goodness, Wholeness, Justice, Self, Abundance, Power) present in Quantum Science as contexts for finding greater meanings in life. The dialogue will continue into other fields opened by Peirce's consideration that the Reality of God is axiomatic and can be used to organize chains of knowledge including the spiritual. When science presupposes religion, we are again faced with the foundations of Quantum Science. Abduction and intuition will enter into the dialogue in order to point out other possible conceptual interfaces between Peirce and Quantum Sciences for the construction of a conceptual universe that unites science, art and spirituality.

Renata Silva Souza; Mariana Vitti Rodrigues | USP, Brazil

Abductive Semiosis: Possible Relationships Between Art and Science in Photography

The aim of this work is to investigate the dynamics underlying abductive processes in the scope of sciences and arts. More specifically, we will discuss the role of abduction in the processes of photographic elaboration, experimentation, and construction applied to both domains. The photographic mechanism has provided, since the beginning of its invention, in the mid-nineteenth century, documentation practices that have been applied in different contexts, for example, in medicine, journalism, arts, and police documentation. Over time, there is an expansion of the documentary photographic use for expressive elaborations of photographic images, as is the case, for example, of images of an artistic nature (Rouille, 2019). Such expansion, even today, raises critical questions about the nature of the image and its referential and documentary value of world facts, especially when the documentary photographic record is mixed with a high aesthetic expressiveness, in which there is a striking predominance of qualitative elements expressed in the images. In this work, we are interested in understanding the creative dynamics underlying photographic production in the fields of arts and sciences. In this scenario, the following questions will guide our investigation: (1) What role would abductive reasoning play in the creative process of photographic construction? (2) What is the relevance of thinking about possible intersections related to creative processes between scientific and artistic practices? To achieve this work’s goal, we will make use of the theoretical support concerning the works of the North American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, analyzing the semiotic concept of abduction in the scope of the creative action. According to Peirce, abduction is understood as the only type of reasoning that enables the emergence of new ideas (Peirce CP 5.171); its role in the elaboration of explanatory hypotheses is explained by its iconic character that enables the imagination of possible scenarios (Pietarinen & Bellucci 2016). We will discuss to what extent the abductive processes of photographic production, in the scope of the sciences and the arts, converge in virtue of the character of admiration or amazement in the face of a given surprising event that is intended to be represented in an image. In order to illustrate the proposed discussion, we will bring examples to highlight the possible convergence of creative aspects of photographic production in arts and sciences.

Lucia F. N. de Souza Dantas | FSB-SP, Brasil

The semiotic dynamics of the creative process

Sometimes understood as a divine gift, arising from the inspiration of the goddesses Muses, as described in Plato's dialogue "Ion", sometimes seeing as a result of the fluid irrationality of the unconscious, as suggested by Friedrich Schelling in his book "The Philosophy of Art", the fact is that the creative process - in addition to other relevant conceptions that we could relate to - has a differentiated element, which does not underlie (at least not entirely) the automatic productive realization of an idea through knowledge arising from a previously acquired rationality. This difference, even if tenuous, would be at the heart of the very definition of modern art, coming out of the context of post-Kantian German romanticism, that is: art, the 'great art', that performed by an artistic genius, does not follow rules. It is precisely on this path that art will, from this moment on, be understood as 'opera prima'. In other words, since the 19th century, art has been art when it is original, it is unique and, above all, when it introduces something new. For the genius - as Kant explained in his "Critique of the Faculty of Judgment" - is the one who does not follow the rules. But then, how is it possible to study art, how is it plausible to have artistic knowledge? Either we succumb to the Kantian perspective, which suggested that it would not be admissible to have a science of art, or we need to admit that there is, indeed, a possible logic in the process of artistic creation. On this mat, unlike Kant, Luigi Pareyson, in his book "The Problems of Aesthetics”, explains that the artist invents the rule of art while elaborating his own work. Therefore, it would be possible to conclude that great art would indeed have rules, but that the artist would produce these rules while making the work itself born. Therefore, my hypothesis is that it is possible to suggest, or even identify, a logic of artistic know-how, which would define and particularize the creative process of art itself, differentiating it from other productive processes. On the other hand, the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, upon detecting a subtle but fundamental difference between 'epagoge' and 'apagoge'-logical inferences described by Aristotle in "First Analytics"- pointed out that there would be a specific inference of discovery, which he called abduction, as it is the only inference capable of formulating hypotheses towards new knowledge and, therefore, capable of founding new rules. Although Peirce's lectures on abductive inference are within the scope of his studies on scientific knowledge, other concepts he brings, such as firstness (phenomenological category of feeling and possibility), as well as his theory of perception, allow us to associate with his semiotics - as part of his philosophical architecture - to Pareyson's philosophy of art, in order to traverse and clarify the intricacies of creative action. Therefore, in light of Pareyson and Peirce's theories, we can suggest that it is possible to detect the structure of the semiotic (or logical ) process, which would allow an artist to engender new rules, enabling him to take new paths, develop new hypotheses, have new artistic experiences. These paths are possible, above all, because of the special perceptual capacity that an artist has - which Peirce called 'poetic gaze' (CP 5.44) – and which would be at the base of the artist’s very capacity to see and imagine, to perceive and hallucinate at the same time. Or as Arthur Danto stated in "What Art Is": the artist is the one who has the ability to share a daydream (because dreaming, everyone dreams, but it is up to artists to show their daydreams, transforming them into art products, in works of art). Finally, our objective is to clarify and scrutinize the specificities the art’s cognitive-productive dynamics, based on Peircean semiotics, positioned in an interface with the Pareysonian 'Theory of Formativity'.

Dewey's Pragmatism: Between Aesthetics and Education

We present in this Round Table Deweyan intertwined issues that we investigate in our research group. Firstly, F. Campeotto shows the anthropological background of Dewey’s aesthetics. Some scholars (G. Dykhuizen 1973, G. Biesta 2006, and R. Dreon 2013; 2018), hold that the influence of Franz Boas, his colleague at Columbia University, can be traced back to several of Dewey's major works (Democracy and Education 1916, Reconstruction in Philosophy 1920, Experience and Nature 1925, Art as Experience 1934). Moreover, it has been argued (Dreon 2013) that an explicit influence of cultural anthropology characterizes Dewey’s mature philosophical position, which in 1940 he called “Cultural Naturalism”, and which he understood as an extension –or an overcoming– of his instrumentalism. By contrast, Campeotto’s hypothesis is that an anthropological approach slowly developed in Dewey’s philosophy already during his period at the University of Chicago (1894-1904), when he was the Director of the Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Pedagogy. These anthropological traits become evident by analyzing the sporadic forays into the field of aesthetics by Dewey and fellows of the Department that worked with him (specially Tufts).

In the second place, Juan Manuel Saharrea presents some links between the concepts of experimental democracy, experimentalism and education within Dewey’s thought. In order to carry out this task, he divides the work into two parts. First, he highlights a recent recovery of Dewey's experimentalism in pragmatist political philosophy (Anderson 2006; VanderVeen 2011; Pappas, 2012; Forstenzer, 2019). Saharrea highlights a neglected issue in this literature: there are few references to the link between experimentalism and education. Secondly, he stands out Dewey’s references to the scope of experimentalism, conceptually as well as empirically upholding democratic education (Oliverio, 2018 and 2020). To this end, he reconstructs Dewey's experimentalism from his educational texts in the period from “The Bearings of Pragmatism Upon Education” (1909-09) to Democracy and Education (1916). Finally, he holds the idea that the "scientific habits of thought" advocated by Dewey in his educational texts may constitute today an adequate pedagogical response to the challenges facing contemporary democracies: strong polarization tendencies (Talisse, 2019), authoritarian positions, and even fascism "as a self-propagating rhetorical phenomenon in social media" (Crick, 2020 ─recently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, see also Crick 2019, Lekan 2020).

Finally, C. Viale presents the relationship between aesthetics and education in Dewey’s thought. To carry out this task he divides this talk into three parts. In the first (Dewey and Education: Central Issues) he presents key aspects of this topic. In the second (The Genesis of Dewey’s Aesthetics. A Reinterpretation), he argues how to interpret the raising of Dewey’s aesthetics. Meanwhile, in the third section (Two Neglected Roots of Dewey’s Aesthetics), he develop his argument depicting how to recover these sources, on one hand, and showing how Dewey’s aesthetics may/could be critically reevaluated or reconstructed from a contemporary viewpoint, on the other. Finally, he presents a conclusion.

SPEECHES:

• Fabio Campeotto | CONICET/UNLaR/UCC, Argentina
• The Anthropological Roots of Dewey's Aesthetics: A Preliminary Approach

• Juan M. Saharrea | CONICET/UNC/UCC, Argentina
• Experimentalism, Democracy and Education. Deweyan Roots for Current Issues

• Claudio M. Viale | CONICET/UCC, Argentina
• Two Neglected Roots of Dewey's Aesthetics

Round Table of "Pragmatism and Ethics Research Group" | CEP-PUCSP, Brazil

The theme concerning this roundtable is intended to stimulate reflection on the validity of contemporary pluralism and multiculturalism in light of the concepts of public reason, which is able to trace and delimit the spaces for tolerance and acceptance of different opinions, considering a new world in which the media open up to the formation of identity groups. The basis for such reflection towards an approach that does not abandon the concept of justice seems to align with the ethics of rational pretension associated with contemporary thought – that is, based on what is conventionally called the linguistic-hermeneutic-pragmatic turn –, which center their debate on dealing with the issue of consensus and dissent in the public sphere, without loss of individual freedom and autonomy. In this new condition, the formation of self-styled post-metaphysical currents of thought became common, moving away from transcendental, religious, and/or teleological metaphysics. On the other hand, it is necessary to evaluate the so-called ethics of tradition, as a challenge of the rational approach in the relationship of distancing and belonging in the qualification of the good and fair. Relevant questions of how to reconcile the subjective point of view – considering that since Kant the constitution of opinions, by free will, are under the freedom of the unconditioned – with an intersubjective freedom thus are re-presented, also involving the concepts of autonomy and heteronomy. Furthermore, it is assumed to reflect on how to deal with the phenomenon of contemporary pluralism without the disagreement being understood as a transitory phase of a process by which an agreement solely guided by ideas from hegemonic groups is expected in futuro. Also, with regard to declaratory and positive public law, this phenomenon is a space for the private autonomy of citizens, implying that private and public autonomy are mutually presupposed. Pragmatism, as it replaces the Kantian "constitution" of opinions with "experience" – its own vector –, presents itself as an alternative to study plurality as a phenomenon and to reflect on its nature (currently spread out in the multiplicity of propositions and statements immersed in divergent spheres), leading to reflections on the possible applications of public reason. Pragmatism, even when the strict distinction between appearance and reality is not adopted, does not abandon the question of what reality is like. Therefore, Pragmatism is positioned to face both the epistemic/procedural challenge of the unlimited pluralities of individual identities and the formation of identity groups that diverge from the prevailing hegemonies.

SPEECHES:

• Antonio Wardison C. da Silva| UNISAL, Brazil
• Apel With and Against Weber: Critique of Traditional Metaphisics and the Urgency of a Pragmatic Transcendental Ethics on the Threshold of Philosophical Language

• Julio D'Oliveira| CEP/PUC-SP, Brazil
• Peircian Pragmatism as a Possible "Tabula Salutis" of the Desirable Judicial Product 

• Arthur Araújo | UFES, Brazil
• Pragmatism, Facts, Values, Meaning

• José Luiz Zanette | CEP/PUC-SP, Brazil
• The Detranscendentalized Kantian Realm of Ends as a Possible Formal Pragmatic Vector in the Conciliation Between the Public and the Private Conciliation Between the Public and the Private

Semiotics and Communication: A Cartography of Pluralities and Confluences at the Semiotics and Communication Graduate Program in Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil

At the context from the courses of Postgraduate studies in semiotics that are present in several parts of the world, the Postgraduate studies program in Communication and Semiotics highlights itself by the interconnections that it proposes with the communication field. Thanks to the pioneering from their founders, the COS [Postgraduate studies program in Communication and Semiotics], since their origins, on 1970, has already born with the presence of semiotics. For 20th International Meeting on Pragmatism, the Postgraduate studies program in Communication and Semiotics organized a table with the challenge to promote a space of debate on the im portance from semiotics ont the researches that have been performed for more than fifty years ago. Being constituted by representative professors from the three research lines, and by the program coordination, the table aims incite the dialogue and to weave a panorama between the pluralities and confluences from the studies.

SPEECHES:

• Lucrécia Ferrara | PUC-SP, Brazil
• Semiotic Resonances in Communication

• Norval Baitello | PUC-SP, Brazil
• Sciences from Culture: Three Proposals of Semiotics Reading of Macro Environments and Confluences - Flusser, Watsuji, Warburg
• 
  
• Ana Claudia Oliveira| PUC-SP, Brazil
• Multiple Perspectives of Semiotics in Semiotics and Communication Graduate Program in Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo

• Lucia Leão | PUC-SP, Brazil
• Semiotics and Communication: A Cartography of Pluralities and Confluences at the Semiotics and Communication Graduate Program in Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
  

In dialogue with Pragmatism

Include a brief summary of the table's proposal

SPEECHES

Enrico Monacelli | State University of Milano, Italy

The Policy of Truth: Jean Wahl as a Pragmatist

Jean Wahl has been one of the most neglected figures in pragmatist scholarship. Albeit being one of the thinkers in Europe to take pragmatism seriously in all of its various conceptual implications, little has been written about his work and his legacy. Only recently we’ve witnessed a sparse interest in his work on the American tradition, that lacks, most of the times, a serious engagement with the way in which pragmatism informed Jean Wahl’s thinking. Namely, most scholarship has described Jean Wahl’s engagement with pragmatism as merely historiographical affair, relegated to his early works (Les philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique and Vers le concret), a sort of informal American period.

Contrary to this, we will try to uphold a much bolder thesis: Jean Wahl was a pragmatist through and through, albeit of a peculiar stride. In order to prove this claim, we’ll concentrate on Jean Wahl’s mature metaphysical work, L’expérience métaphysique, a work supposedly far removed from Wahl’s American period. We will try to make sense of the role played by pragmatism in that book, answering three main question in Wahlian ontology: what is experience? What is metaphysics? And why they are both, in some sense, pragmatist? 

Silvia Zanelli | University of Bergamo, Italy

The Universe as a Vast Representamen: Cosmosemiosis as a Logic of Events. A Dialogue Between Charles Sanders Peirce and Gilles Deleuze

In this talk we will try to propose a contemporary reading of Charles Sanders Peirce’s thought, using some of the conceptual tools offered by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. The first aim of this paper isto present a holistic and cosmic vision of the sign, focusing on the concepts of pansemioticism and cosmosemiosis. Secondly, we will try to provide a cartography of the concept of individuation (or secondness), in its relation with the dimension of pre-individuality and generality, welding together ontology and semiotics. The red thread will be to cross the pragmatist, cosmological and semiotic dimensions of Peirce's thought, considering them as an intertwined and open network and taking into account the constitutive, deeply characteristic and intrinsic transdiciplinarity of his philosophy. To do this we will rely on some Deleuzian concepts, focusing in particular on the theme of impersonality, anonymity and pre-individuality. If Peirce's philosophy in its most recent reinterpretations tends to remain in the shadow of a purely semiotic theory as an exclusively humanistic field, through the Deleuzian thought we will propose instead to overcome a human-centered and logocentric semiotics, analysing the concept of sign from a non-anthropocentric and non-species-specific perspective. In this sense we will deepen and problematize the path of anonymization of the process of interpretation that takes shape within Peirce's work, following the idea that the universe presents itself as a vast representamen and reasoning on the Peircean notion of Quasi-Mind. Ultimately, we will focus on the cognitive, informational and relational dimension of all the Real, in order to abandon the terrain of the Significant as a correlative of subjective individuation, proposing rather a semiotics of continuity and intensities, to be thought as an evenemential and cosmic process of individuation of the sign. We will also consider the topic of individuation, reflecting on the common debt that the philosophy of Duns Scotus exercises both on the thought of Deleuze and on the philosophy of Peirce with respect to the theme of haecceitas, to show how in both thinkers there is a profound resemantization of inveterate idea of abstract universal, towards a philosophy of the virtual, understood as a maximally efficient and "concrete" general. Universality will therefore be redefined according to the boundaries of an inter res generality rather than being presented as a construct in re or ante rem, as well as the power of the general in Peirce and of the virtual in Deleuze -between which we will try to note the similarities and affinity- will be considered precisely in its effectiveness through entities, as a pre-individual and immanent rule of conduct or singularity

Michael Karľa  | Charles University, Faculty of Humanities, Czech Republic

On the Origins of Peirce's Logic of Science

The aim of this paper is to show how certain doctrines connected—either closely or loosely—with Peirce’s Pragmaticism, e.g., critical common-sensism, scholastic realism (1905, EP 2: 346ff.), fallibilism (e.g. 1898, EP 2: 44; 1913, EP 2: 469), and the logic of abduction (1903, EP 2: 226), originated in his earliest writings of the 1860s. More concretely, I will focus on how these were developed as replies to specific questions of Peirce’s metaphysics. While reading Peirce’s writings on metaphysics (and semiotic) of the 1860s, two crucial turning points emerge. One concerns Peirce’s shift from metaphysics of the “primary conditions of all science” (1861, W 1: 59) to logic/semiotic giving account of the conditions of possibility of (scientific) reasoning (1865, W 1: 183). The other was the shift from metaphysics conceived as being an analytical, a priori, project (1861, W 1: 59) to metaphysics proceeding synthetically, by producing hypotheses and testing their results (1868, W 2: 165ff.). I shall argue that the indicated shifts are not contradictions, but different (and ultimately consistent) unfoldings of Peirce’s initial hypothesis that all cognition is in signs (see, e.g., 1868, W 2: 162), which is confirmed once his theory of cognition is developed in enough detail (1868, W 2: 193ff.). Moreover, alongside these shifts Peirce had been able to lay grounds of the doctrines later included under the umbrella of pragmati(ci)sm—his metaphysical theory of faith (1861, W 1: 74-79) being the precursor of fallibilism and the logic of abduction, the later semiotic theory of cognition (1868, W 2: 193ff.) establishing the basis of his later critical common-sensism and scholastic realism.

Edivaldo José Bortoleto | UFES, Brazil

Semiotic Paulo Freire?

The title of this essay is already its theme and problem. Theme, as a matter that gains importance in the present year, which celebrates the centenary of Paulo Freire's birth (b. 19.09.1921 – d. 02.05.1997). Problem, because the question that arises is: Semiotic Paulo Freire? Thus, on the centenary of Paulo Freire, we sought to enter the field of Semiotics and look at his work from this perspective. Undeniably, Paulo Freire's humanist and liberating conception has a national, Latin-American-Caribbean and global dimension. From the concept of elective affinities subsumed in Goethe's work, it is possible to find and recognize elective affinities in Paulo Freire. In it are: Christian Humanism – Mounier, Maritain, Bernanos, Amoroso Lima, Ernani Maria Fiori; German Idealism – Kant, Hegel; Marxism – Marx, Engels; Existentialism – Sartre; ISEB (Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies) – Álvaro Vieira Pinto; Phenomenology – Husserl, Merleau-Ponty; and, Pragmatism – Dewey, Anísio Teixeira. The worldwide scope of Freire's work was due to how much he read and lived. A great number of authors are found in his formulations. Here are just a few, to exemplify how Paulo Freire lived what he wrote: no one frees anyone, no one frees himself: men free themselves in communion. His thought, therefore, has the sign of communion, language ties established with other semantic language fields. Action and reflection, therefore, are the dialectizing keys of his thought. But Paulo Freire has contact with North American Pragmatism through Anísio Teixeira, who he calls My Master. But, if there is a Semiotics in Freire – and there is – it doesn't come from this, from the long North American tradition since Peirce. It has another origin. The Semiotics present in Paulo Freire's thought, and perhaps the structuring Semiotics of his thought, comes from the Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which subsumes the linguistic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure. Thus, through the French tradition of Phenomenology, the European Semiotics, taken as Semiology, comes to Paulo Freire. Well, it can be said, then, that in a Phenomenological Paulo Freire there is a Semiological Paulo Freire. This is the point of this essay, that is, to look at a Semiological Paulo Freire but as someone who can also be looked at as a Semiotician. Thus, the Saussurian Semiology found in Freire can also be, in the form of elective affinities, approximated to Peircean Semiotics. Therefore, the operation of this expedient can open up other possibilities and horizons in Freire's thought. And what are these possibilities and horizons? Now, facing this question means subsuming Paulo Freire in the horizon of language, therefore, subsuming Paulo Freire as a philosopher who also moved in the horizon of the linguistic turn. Thererone, the matter of language, the turn of the language – Linguistic turn – imposes itself. Here, then, it seems to me that something new resides in what concerns Freirean studies to make his thought advance without being repeated and to remove him from the danger of dogmatics. Frege with his Logic and Mathematics and Nietzsche with his philosophical language are at the beginning of this question. Neopositivism, the Vienna Circle and Analytical Philosophy, mainly Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, carry this debate to this day. As for the Semiotic field that comes from Greek medicine, passing through medievality and modernity, it gains in Saussure with the General Linguistics Course a high form in European culture, in which formulation the sign has a vocal nature and a psychic nature, therefore, its acoustic image, signifier, and the idea (concept), signified. With Charles Sanders Peirce, on the other side of the Atlantic, the “sign is what, in a certain aspect or way, represents something to someone”. In its philosophical architecture, Semiotics while Logic takes language as verbal and non-verbal, and the sign in its object-idea-interpretant trifurcation, and Phenomenology, distinct from Husserl's, moves in a conception of reality where there is a first (Firstness), a second (Secondness) and a third (Thirdness). But they cannot be left out of this great field of language, Psychoanalysis formulated by Freud who takes it as a Meta-Psychology - as a critique to Psychology and Neurology; the School of Tartu-Moscow, moving in the fields of Culture, History and Communication with Lotman and many others; as well as with Husserl's Phenomenology. The perspectives opened by Psychoanalytic Semiotics, Russian Semiotics and Phenomenological Semiotics were decisive, and continue to be, for the understanding of the sign as a production of the Unconscious, Culture and Intentionality. But, in a more immediate way, Phenomenological Semiotics is more developed here than the two previous ones – Psychoanalytic Semiotics and Russian Semiotics – because in Merleau-Ponty it meets Saussurian Semiology. This seems to be a meeting and communion point of Paulo Freire, therefore, of elective affinities, where one can think of the presence of Saussurian Semiology in Paulo Freire also, mainly in the conception of sign that underlies Freire's thought. Or, to put it another way, the conception of sign in Freire comes from Ferdinand de Saussure through Merleau-Ponty. I then dwell on Husserl's Phenomenology for a moment. Husserl's Phenomenology is a critique of Positivism and Psychologism. The object for Phenomenology is no longer the existing object of common sense but constructed, now, in consciousness. Phenomenology, therefore, is not a mere description, but a Logic. Thus, it can be said that the matter of language in Husserl is already found in his works, The Origin of Geometry and The Logical Investigations. Well, it seems, then, that there is already a turn of language in Husserl, and it can be said that there is in him a conception of language as a “constitutive a priori”. This also happens in Merleau-Ponty. His texts on language such as Sur la Phenomenologie du Langage and Le Langage Indirect et les Voix du Silence beckon a conception of language as a “constitutive a priori”. Thus, Saussurian Semiology provides language as itself being a “constitutive a priori”. What do Saussure, Peirce and Husserl have in common? The three have in common the elevation of thought and language to the sphere of Logic and Mathematics. There is, therefore, a logic between the three. In Paulo Freire, in turn, it seems to me that the matter of language is the central matter. This is the starting point assumed here. It can be said that there is a “constitutive a priori'' in Paulo Freire regarding the matter of language. However, it also seems to me that Freire's theory of language needs to be elaborated, developed, explained. It is there, traversing and shaping all his work. The objective now, therefore, is to take it as an object of reflection: Semiotic Paulo Freire? Paulo Freire in The Importance of the Act of Reading says that “the reading of the world precedes the reading of the word”. The child, therefore, before saying and reading the word has other mediations of reading the world, such as: gestures, looking, touching, smelling, seeing, hearing, body movements, the body itself. This moment can be approached with Peirce's Firstness in which the child accesses the qualitative dimension of the world. But it is also true that this reading of the world that precedes the word presupposes the sign as a precedent. This is the first access mediation to the world. Without the signs that constitute the moments of Firstness (Experience), Secondness (Action-Reaction) and Thirdness (Reasoning, Argument), the world as an object-sign, therefore, Representamen, the world of the human, therefore of the other and God's world, the totally other could not and cannot be read, thought, said, reflected upon. If the reading of the world precedes the reading of the word, the sign precedes the reading of the word and there is no one before the sign. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire says that “as we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover the essence of dialogue itself: the word”. Louis Hjelmslev in Linguistic Essays on the same train of thought as Saussure says that “the term language is here taken in the technical sense usually given to it in French-speaking scientific literature and which was refined and codified in F. de Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale: language is the totality constituted by language and speech”. Thus, in Saussure we are in the realm of verbal language, as in Merleau-Ponty and as in Freire. Therefore, in language as a “linguistic a priori”. Thus, one can say of a Semiotic Paulo Freire from the Saussurean semiological paradigm model. In this way one can establish elective affinities among Saussure, Hjelmslev, Merleau-Ponty, Freire. But, one can also ask: what would Freire's thought mean and what would it gain if it were shifted to other semiotic bases, that is, to the Peircean semiotic paradigm model? How to think about Paulo Freire and his philosophical-pedagogical-liberating architecture from a “semiotic a priori” as a conception of verbal and also non-verbal language? How to read-think-say-reflect-want-love the body-sign, the world-sign and god-sign under a conception of both verbal and non-verbal language in order to establish knowledge, dialogue and communion in the sign and by the sign? Paulo Freire, still in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, says that “there is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world”. Now, paraphrasing Paulo Freire, it could be said that “there is no true sign that is not praxis, and to say the sign is to transform the world”. Now, from these premises, it is possible to understand, expand and complexify the concept of dialogue as semiosis – expansion of the sign – where all verbal and non-verbal signs go together. Learning can also be understood, expanded and complexified as a semiosis in which all signs play. The understanding of awareness itself, because in this process the interpretant is made, modifies the very place of the subject, which is not necessarily the center, but the semiotic process itself as a learning process and as a process of awareness not centered on who but in true and loving communion with the signs.



Logic and Semiotics in Peirce

SPEECHES:

Alessandro Ballabio | UPN, Colombia

Abductive Reasoning in Light of the Notions of Information and Feedback

Isabel Victoria Galleguillos Jungk |  PUC-SP, Brazil 

Peirce's Initial Deduction of Universal Categories 

Peirce's trajectory is grounded in the seminal ideas of his article On a New List of Categories (1867) in which he develops a set of universal conceptions that he demonstrates are necessary for the unification of impressions of experience. He has stated, since that inaugural moment, that, despite not being completely satisfactory from a logical point of view, this new list is one of his works of greatest philosophical strength, the result of a decade of work, the last two years of which were intense of dedication. The cornerstone of his scientific-philosophical building, Peirce's three universal categories are post-Kantian, as they start from a critique of the list of categories proposed by Kant, which are not likely to be found in all types of phenomena.
Peirce begins his 1867 article stating that he is based “on the already established theory according to which the function of concepts is to reduce the multiplicity of sensitive impressions to unity and that the validity of a concept consists in the impossibility of reducing the content of consciousness to unity without its introduction” (1867, EP 1, p. 1). In this opening paragraph, Peirce refers to Kantian theory, although it is possible to detect genuine differences between the thoughts of Peirce and Kant. Kantian categories are material and particular, and Peirce seeks to describe only those elementary and universal ones that are present to the mind whenever something presents itself to it; the same reasoning can be applied to Aristotelian categories. For Peirce, philosophical categories must be universal and omnipresent in any and all phenomena, which is why, years later, after long studies, he proposed them as fundamental categories of thought and nature (1885).
Peirce's desire to achieve clear and distinct conceptions based on the analysis of the experience that forces itself on us, without resorting to the results of previous philosophies, was, more than an ambition, an observation that the previously proposed categories suffered from vices that prevented them from being conceptions endowed with the degree of generality necessary for the foundation of a comprehensive philosophical theory, which would not be limited to this or that field of experience. In Peirce's manuscripts, four partial drafts or preliminary versions of the 1867 text can be found and, from excerpts from the final version and the previous versions, which contain some developments that do not appear in the published text, it is possible to have an in-depth idea of how the categories were elaborated at this initial moment, providing important indications about their nature. 

Tobias Augusto Rosa Faria| Facapa and Unicamp, Brazil

Notes on the General and the Vague: The Case of Peirce's Triadic Logic

This work seeks to investigate the logical status of generality and vagueness in Peirce's philosophy. For the philosopher, both are forms of indeterminacy and, as such, are opposed to singularity, which marks what is individual and defined. In this sense, a proposition is general if it is universally quantified, whereas a proposition is vague if it is existentially quantified. Peirce adds that the principle of excluded middle does not apply to the general, while to the vague the principle of contradiction does not apply. Since both principles constitute – along with the principle of identity – the basis of classical logic, it is legitimate to question whether their inapplicability to general and vague propositions would be related to another logical formulation proposed by Peirce, namely the triadic logic. Triadic logic contemplates three truth values – V (true), F (false) and L (limit) – and six connectives. It is characterized, in Peirce's words, by recognizing that “every proposition, S is P, is either true, or false, or else S has a lower mode of being such that it can neither be determinately P, nor determinately not-P, but is at the limit between P and not P”. Given the link established by Peirce between generality and the principle of excluded middle, some commentators have interpreted L as a value for general propositions. Other commentators (for example, Chiasson), evaluating the philosophical meaning of the L-value, have argued that it values vague propositions, to which the principle of contradiction does not apply. Following Lane, it is argued here that the value L seems to concern propositions that violate the principle of excluded middle, that is, for which the principle is false. This, however, requires that the principle be applicable to the propositions in question, so that they cannot be general – they must be individual. For Lane, propositions with an L value refer to situations where there is a break in continuity, a central issue in Peirce's mature philosophy.

José Renato Salatiel| UFES, Brazil

Peirce's Triadic Logic: a new approach
 

Peirce is today recognized as one of the pioneers of mathematical and algebraic logic, but his original work on non-classical logic still receives little attention outside the narrow circle of Peirce scholars. Experiments with three-valued logical matrices were recorded in his Logical Notebook, in a few pages of unpublished manuscripts dated 1909, a decade before similar systems have been developed by other logicians. Since the partial publication of these manuscripts by Fisch and Turquette in 1966, the triadic logic, as named by Peirce, has been the subject of discussion among researchers, both for its formal aspects and for its philosophical motivations. The most extensive analysis on formal aspects was carried out by Turquette in several articles published between 1967 and 1981. Turquette suggested that triadic logic matrices are related by dual pairs of logical operators, establishing a unique axiomatic Hilbert-style system. This communication aims to investigate the hypothesis that Peirce’s tables for negation, conjunction, and disjunction give rise to three distinctive propositional many-valued systems. Two of these systems were later discovered by Łukasiewicz, Kleene, and Bochvar, therefore, best known in the many-valued logic literature. Nevertheless, one of these systems, which we called P₃, is distinguished from the others because the statements only get indeterminate truth-value when their compounds are also indeterminate. The study of that system shows us it is both functionally complete and an extension of classical logic. To prove this, we first assume a notion of material implication whose statements only have indeterminate truth-value when his compounds are indeterminate as well. We then assume D = {1, 1/2} as the set of designated values. Besides that, we will show the P₃ system can easily be transformed into paraconsistent and paracomplete calculi, adding to them, respectively, unary operators of consistency and intuitionistic negation. We will employ the method of the analytic tableau in this research, which allow us to prove that P₃ is sound and complete. We conclude by pointing out some open problems concerning that issue.