12,080
edits
Changes
MyWikiBiz, Author Your Legacy — Sunday June 30, 2024
Jump to navigationJump to search→Excerpt 3. Peirce (CE 1, 169–170)
====Excerpt 3. Peirce (CE 1, 169–170)====
====Excerpt 3. Peirce (CE 1, 169–170)====
{| align="center" width="90%"
|
<p>Some reasons having now been given for adopting the unpsychological conception of the science, let us now seek to make this conception sufficiently distinct to serve for a definition of logic. For this purpose we must bring our ''logos'' from the abstract to the concrete, from the absolute to the dependent. There is no science of absolutes. The metaphysical logos is no more to us than the metaphysical soul or the metaphysical matter. To the absolute Idea or Logos, the dependent or relative ''word'' corresponds. The word ''horse'', is thought of as being a word though it be unwritten, unsaid, and unthought. It is true, it must be considered as having been thought; but it need not have been thought by the same mind which regards it as being a word. I can think of a word in Feejee, though I can attach no definite articulation to it, and do not guess what it would be like. Such a word, abstract but not absolute, is no more than the genus of all symbols having the same meaning. We can also think of the higher genus which contains words of all meanings. A first approximation to a definition, then, will be that logic is the science of representations in general, whether mental or material. This definition coincides with Locke's. It is however too wide for logic does not treat of all kinds of representations. The resemblance of a portrait to its object, for example, is not logical truth. It is necessary, therefore, to divide the genus representation according to the different ways in which it may accord with its object.</p>
<p>Some reasons having now been given for adopting the unpsychological conception of the science, let us now seek to make this conception sufficiently distinct to serve for a definition of logic. For this purpose we must bring our ''logos'' from the abstract to the concrete, from the absolute to the dependent. There is no science of absolutes. The metaphysical logos is no more to us than the metaphysical soul or the metaphysical matter. To the absolute Idea or Logos, the dependent or relative ''word'' corresponds. The word ''horse'', is thought of as being a word though it be unwritten, unsaid, and unthought. It is true, it must be considered as having been thought; but it need not have been thought by the same mind which regards it as being a word. I can think of a word in Feejee, though I can attach no definite articulation to it, and do not guess what it would be like. Such a word, abstract but not absolute, is no more than the genus of all symbols having the same meaning. We can also think of the higher genus which contains words of all meanings. A first approximation to a definition, then, will be that logic is the science of representations in general, whether mental or material. This definition coincides with Locke's. It is however too wide for logic does not treat of all kinds of representations. The resemblance of a portrait to its object, for example, is not logical truth. It is necessary, therefore, to divide the genus representation according to the different ways in which it may accord with its object.</p>
<p>The third kind of truth or accordance of a representation with its object, is that which inheres in the very nature of the representation whether that nature be original or acquired. Such a representation I name a ''symbol''.</p>
<p>The third kind of truth or accordance of a representation with its object, is that which inheres in the very nature of the representation whether that nature be original or acquired. Such a representation I name a ''symbol''.</p>
<p>C.S. Peirce, ''Chronological Edition'', CE 1, 169–170</p>
<p align="right">C.S. Peirce, ''Chronological Edition'', CE 1, 169–170</p>
|}
<p>Charles Sanders Peirce, “Harvard Lectures ''On the Logic of Science''” (1865), ''Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866'', Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.</p>
<p>Charles Sanders Peirce, “Harvard Lectures ''On the Logic of Science''” (1865), ''Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866'', Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.</p>
