On 2/26/2019 7:34 AM, Stephen Curtiss Rose wrote:
"Because Peirce was very precise in what he wrote, and he had
no sympathy with people who misrepresented what he was saying."
That seems a mite broad.
Many people, including me, have found that in most publications,
even by prominent Peirce scholars, the quotations by Peirce are
more precise than the discussions about them.
The explanations by Peirce scholars are certainly helpful, because
they highlight points that we may have missed on first reading.
But when we reread Peirce's originals, we marvel at how clearly,
succinctly, and precisely they make their point.
SCR
Peirce seems to have gained in sympathy over time.
He wrote the following passage in 1911:
The more I studied [logic] the more and more deeply I felt the
shocking levity and looseness of thought with which these basic
questions had been treated. (NEM 3:159)
SCR
He did after all reject the term pragmatism. That suggests
that he regarded words themselves as weak vessels.
He was angry about the loose thinking of people who "hijacked"
the word he coined. Therefore, he switched to another word
that was less likely to be hijacked and therefore more precise.
Note that one of the people who misused that term was his best
friend William James. He even added the name Santiago to his own
because of his high regard for James. But that did not stop him
from criticizing the way WJ used the word.
John
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