Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes (121 quotes, page 2)

“All the monads except as serve as intermediaries for the connections have distinctive designations.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Source: Mathematical Monads (1889), p. 268
Context: As the mathematics are now understood, each branch — or, if you please, each problem, — is but the study of the relations of a collection of connected objects, without parts, without any distinctive characters, except their names or designating letters. These objects are commonly called points; but to remove all notion of space relations, it may be better to name them monads. The relations between these points are mere complications of two different kinds of elementary relations, which may be termed immediate connection and immediate non-connection. All the monads except as serve as intermediaries for the connections have distinctive designations.

“The recognition by one person of another's personality takes place by means to some extent identical to the means by which he is conscious of his own personality. The idea of the second personality, which is as much as to say that second personality itself, enters within the direct consciousness of the first person, and is immediately perceived as his ego, though less strongly. At the same time, the opposition between the two persons is perceived, so that the externality of the second is perceived.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea , Time , Personality

“But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Personality

“The next simplest feature that is common to all that comes before the mind, and consequently, the second category, is the element of Struggle.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.45
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

“What distinct meaning can attach to saying that an idea in the past in any way affects an idea in the future, from which it is completely detached?”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Way , Idea , Past , Future

“It has never been in my power to study anything, — mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Letter to Victoria (23 December 1908)

Women , Men , History , Mathematics

“From these two immediate perceptions, we gain a mediate, or inferential perception of the relation of all four instants. This mediate perception is objectively, or as to the object being represented, spread over the four instants; but subjectively, or as itself the subject of duration, it is completely embraced in the second moment. (The reader will observe that I use the word instant to mean a point in time, and moment to mean an infinitesimal duration.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Time

“Let me now try to gather up all these odds and ends of commentary and restate the law of mind, in a unitary way.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Law , Way

“I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby (1908) SS 80-81

Personality

“The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Letter to William James (8 January 1909)

“If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum. Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea , Time

“The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Quoted in Essays in Zoosemiotics (1990) by Thomas A. Sebeok

Universe

“The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders to-day. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise called monism.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Architecture of Theories (1891)

“The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Source: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908), V

Life , Question , Nature

“Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. V, par. 265
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Heart

“When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.44
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

“I think that I have succeeded in making it clear that this doctrine gives room for explanations of many facts which without it are absolutely and hopelessly inexplicable; and further that it carries along with it the following doctrines: first, a logical realism of the most pronounced type; second, objective idealism; third, tychism, with its consequent thoroughgoing evolutionism. We also notice that the doctrine presents no hindrences to spiritual influences, such as some philosophies are felt to do.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Thinking

“Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. V, par. 438
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

“By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i. e. anything we can talk about.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

"Reflections on Real and Unreal Objects", Undated, MS 966

Thinking

“You are of all my friends the one who illustrates pragmatism in its most needful forms. You are a jewel of pragmatism.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Letter to William James (16 March 1903), published in The thought and character of William James, as revealed in unpublished correspondence and notes (1935) by Ralph Barton Perry, Vol. 2, p. 427

“First then, we find that when we regard ideas from a nominalistic, individualistic, sensualistic way, the simplest facts of mind become utterly meaningless. That one idea should resemble another or influence another, or that one state of mind should so much as be thought of in another is, from that standpoint, sheer nonsense.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Way , Idea

“Logical analysis applied to mental phenomenon shows that there is but one law of mind, namely that ideas tend to spread continuously and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. In this spreading they lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others, but gain generality and become welded with other ideas.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Law , Idea

“To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. V, par. 254
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Way , Time

“Thus far, gentlemen, I have been insisting very strenuously upon what the most vulgar common sense has every disposition to assent to and only ingenious philosophers have been able to deceive themselves about. But now I come to a category which only a more refined form of common sense is prepared willingly to allow, the category which of the three is the chief burden of Hegel's song, a category toward which the studies of the new logico-mathematicians, Georg Cantor and the like, are steadily pointing, but to which no modern writer of any stripe, unless it be some obscure student like myself, has ever done anything approaching to justice.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.59
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Justice , Sense , Study

“Fourth, this supreme law, which is celestial and living harmony, does not so much as demand that the special ideas shall surrender their peculiar arbitrariness and caprice entirely; for that would be self-destructive. It only requires that they influence and be influenced by one another.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Law , Idea

“Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. V, par. 211
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Truth , Question

“Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. VI, par. 286
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Imagination

“Accordingly, time logically supposes a continuous range of intensity of feeling. It follows then, from the definition of continuity, that when any particular kind of feeling is present, an infinitesimal continuum of all feelings differing infinitesimally from that, is present.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Feeling , Time

“We have here a question of difficulty, analogous to the question of nominalism and realism.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Question

“In deduction the mind is under the dominion of a habit or association by virtue of which a general idea suggests in each case a corresponding reaction. This is the way the hind legs of a frog separated from the rest of the body, reason, when you pinch them. It is the lowest form of psychical manifestation.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Way , Idea

“In fact, this infinitesimally spread-out consciousness is a direct feeling of its contents as spread out. In an infinitesimal interval we directly perceive the temporal sequence of its beginning, middle, and end… Now upon this interval follows another, whose beginning is the middle of the former, and whose middle is the end of the former. Here we have an immediate perception of the temporal sequence of its beginning, middle and end, or say, of the second, third, and fourth instants.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Feeling

“Here we must make one of those inductive applications of the law of continuity which have produced such great results in all of the positive sciences. We must extend the law of insistency into the future. Plainly, the insistency of a future idea with reference to the present is a quantity affected by the minus sign; for it is the present that affects the future, if there be any effect, not the future that affects the present.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Law , Idea , Science , Future

“Third, these general ideas are not mere words, nor do they consist in this, that certain concrete facts will every time happen under certain descriptions of conditions; but they are just as much, or rather far more, living realities than the feelings themselves out of which they are concreted. And to say that mental phenomenon are governed by law does not mean merely that they are describable by a general formula; but that there is a living idea, a conscious continuum of feeling which pervades them, and to which they are docile.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Law , Feeling , Idea , Reality

“Understand me well. My appeal is to observation — observation that each of you must make for himself.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.53
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Understanding

“How can a past idea be present?… it can only be going, infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the present is connected to the past by a series of real infinitesimal steps.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea , Past

“Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Source: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908), IV

Understanding , Nature , Chance

“Do not block the way of inquiry.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. I, par. 135
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Way

“The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. I, par. 216
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Soul , Idea

“The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Architecture of Theories (1891)

Law , Intelligence , Mathematics , Universe

“Fifth, in what measure this unification acts, seems to be regulated only by special rules; or, at least, we cannot in our present knowledge say how far it goes. But it may be said that, judging by appearances, the amount of arbitrariness in the phenomenon of human minds is neither altogether trifling nor very prominent.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Knowledge , Appearance

“Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. …it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time… Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. …Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)

Color , Feeling , Time , Past

“Now, to say that a lot of objects is finite, is the same as to say that if we pass through the class from one to another we shall necessarily come round to one of those individuals already passed; that is, if every one of the lot is in any one-to-one relation to one of the lot, then to every one of the lot some one is in this same relation.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

On The Algebra of Logic (1885)

“All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. VI, par. 191
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

“Be it understood, then, that what we have to do, as students of phenomenology, is simply to open our mental eyes and look well at the phenomenon and say what are the characteristics that are never wanting in it, whether that phenomenon be something that outward experience forces upon our attention, or whether it be the wildest of dreams, or whether it be the most abstract and general of the conclusions of science.
The faculties which we must endeavor to gather for this work are three. The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear. When the ground is covered by snow on which the sun shines brightly except where shadows fall, if you ask any ordinary man what its color appears to be, he will tell you white, pure white, whiter in the sunlight, a little greyish in the shadow. But that is not what is before his eyes that he is describing; it is his theory of what ought to be seen. The artist will tell him that the shadows are not grey but a dull blue and that the snow in the sunshine is of a rich yellow. That artist's observational power is what is most wanted in the study of phenomenology. The second faculty we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises. The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.41 - 42
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Dreams , Color , Nature , Study

“The word "God," so "capitalised" (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

I, Ens necessarium is a latin expression which signifies "Necessary being, necessary entity"
A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908)

God , Universe

“The third argument, enclosing and defending the other two, consists in the development of those principles of logic according to which the humble argument is the first stage of a scientific inquiry into the origin of the three Universes, but of an inquiry which produces, not merely scientific belief, which is always provisional, but also a living, practical belief, logically justified in crossing the Rubicon with all the freightage of eternity.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Source: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908), V

Universe

“A pair of statements may be taken conjunctively or disjunctively; for example, "It lightens and it thunders," is conjunctive, "It lightens or it thunders" is disjunctive. Each such individual act of connecting a pair of statements is a new monad for the mathematician.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Source: Mathematical Monads (1889), p. 268

“May some future student go over this ground again, and have the leisure to give his results to the world.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

The Architecture of Theories (1891)

World , Future

“Effort supposes resistance.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. I, par. 320
Collected Papers (1931-1958)

Effort

“If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum.”

Charles Sanders Peirce

Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.
The Law of Mind (1892)