> On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 11:42 AM, Clark Goble <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> one should note that in the 1890’s Peirce shifted from a moderate realist >> largely following Duns Scotus to a stronger realist largely on the basis of >> how he considered thirdness ontologically. So a quote from 1893 is almost >> certainly in reference to his moderate realist phase. >> >> I should add that even with either the Scotus styled moderate realism or the >> stronger realism that took thirdness as fully mind independent, that Peirce >> and Dewey did route a third way between the extremes of realism and >> idealism. That continued through the idealist/realist debates up to around >> the post war period when positivism and analytic philosophy became dominate. > > On Nov 29, 2016, at 11:31 AM, Stephen C. Rose <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks Clark for putting that odd Carus quote in context and for your > clarififying words that follow, particularly your description of thirdness. > In my own thinking I see this final stage as action and expression which > means essentially that Peirce moves us from what used to be called > transcendent to the here and now.
I was trying to get at how “here and now” versus “transcendence” as a false dichotomy that both Peirce and Dewey managed to avoid. Effectively both realism of the sort introduced by Descartes as well as the idealism that effectively also branched off from Descartes introduce this false dilemma. Even before he moves more away from Duns Scotus there’s a sense that Peirce isn’t satisfied with either approach because both hinge upon a kind of internalist view from which to think through the problem. Treating thirdness as something real in the universe independent of what any particular person thinks about it is key. In epistemology and semantics we call this Externalism and it pops up in various guises. I think the problem with Duns Scotus’ moderate realism is that for all its strengths it’s still fundamentally tied to the individual (albeit perhaps not quite as strong as what Descartes gave philosophy) Most of the problem of nominalism really is the problem of internalism. Lose internalism and then realism makes far more sense without the problems of transcendence. In a certain way the entire trajectory of Peirce’s thought from the beginnings of rejecting Kantian transcendence and the “in itself” is this move of thinking through Externalism. If anything it’s surprising that it’s not until the later part of the 1890’s that he finally takes his objective idealism seriously. While to my mind there are many problems with Dewey, one of his great strengths is that many aspects of this central Peircean insight remain in Dewey’s thought.
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