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

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

You are of all my friends the one who illustrates pragmatism in its most needful forms. You are a jewel of pragmatism. —Letter to William James

I can prescind red from blue, and space from color (as is manifest from the fact that I actually believe there is an uncolored space between my face and the wall); but I cannot prescind color from space, nor red from color. I can dissociate red from blue, /1

Abstraction or precision, therefore, supposes a greater separation than discrimination, but a less separation than dissociation. Thus I can discriminate red from blue, space from color, and color from space, but not red from color.

Dissociation is that separation which, in the absence of a constant association, is permitted by the law of association of images. It is the consciousness of one thing, without the necessary simultaneous consciousness of the other.

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.

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

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

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.

Now let us compare the facts I have stated with the argument I am opposing. That argument rests on two main premisses; first, that it is unthinkable that a man should act from any other motive than pleasure, if his act be deliberate; /1

What other distinct idea than that, I should be glad to know, can be attached to the word liberty?

My account of the facts, you will observe, leaves a man at full liberty, no matter if we grant all that the necessitarians ask. That is, the man can, or if you please is compelled, to make his life more reasonable.

I’ve been enjoying reviewing @amiethomasson.bsky.social’s Rethinking Metaphysics for Phil Review – here’s the submitted version. #philsky #pragmatism

If someone is looking for a sane, generous review of Amie's book.

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.

Finally, in addition to this personal meditation on the fitness of one's own ideals, which is of a practical nature, there are the purely theoretical studies of the student of ethics who seeks to ascertain, as a matter of curiosity, what the of an ideal of conduct consists in, /1

And just as we first become aware of the peculiar color of the ink and afterward ask ourselves whether it is agreeable or not, so in formulating the judgment that the image of our conduct does satisfy our previous resolution we are, in the very act of formulation, /1

It is accompanied, however, by a certain quality of feeling which is related to the formula itself very much as the color of the ink in which anything is printed is related to the sense of what is printed.

The answer to this question, like the answer to any inward question, is necessarily of the nature of a mental formula.

The memory of my action may be roughly described as an image. I contemplate that image and put the question to myself. Shall I say that that image satisfies the stipulations of my resolution, or not?

To return to my interview, as soon as it is over I begin to review it more carefully and I then ask myself whether my conduct accorded with my resolution. That resolution, as we agreed, was a mental formula.

All action in accordance with a determination is accompanied by a feeling that is pleasurable; but, whether the feeling at any instant is felt as pleasurable in that very instant or whether the recognition of it as pleasurable comes a little later is a question of fact difficult to make sure about.

But considering how, in the heat of conversation, I might be led to take a different tone, I proceed to impress the resolution upon my soul; with the result that when the interview takes place, /1

In order to fix our ideas, let us suppose a case. In the course of my reflexions, I am led to think that it would be well for me to talk to a certain person in a certain way. I resolve that I will do so when we meet.

All action in accordance with a determination is accompanied by a feeling that is pleasurable;but,whether the feeling at any instant is felt as pleasurable in that very instant or whether the recognition of it as pleasurable comes a little later is a question of fact difficult to make sure about.

We do not know by what machinery the conversion of a resolution into a determination is brought about. Several hypotheses have been proposed; but they do not much concern us just now.

James and Nietzsche did for the word “true” what John Stuart Mill had done for the word “right.” PasAA p.25 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

If you think this statement too vague, I will say, more specifically, that there are three ways in which these ideals usually recommend themselves and justly do so. In the first place certain kinds of conduct, when the man contemplates them, have an esthetic quality. /1

Every man has certain ideals of the general description of conduct that befits a rational animal in his particular station in life, what most accords with his total nature and relations.

Please join us on Thursday at 1:30pm for Arto Charpentier, “Metaphysics as Method: A Methodological Reading of Dewey’s Metaphysical Theory.” Learn more at deweycenter.siu.edu/center-events/

Namely, there have been those who have made the end purely subjective, a feeling of pleasure; there have been those who have made the end purely objective and material, the multiplication of the race; /1

The truth is that there have been three grand classes of rationalistic moralists who have differed from one another upon the much more important question of the mode of being of the end.

The most serious defect of this classification lies in its subdivision of rationalistic theory into only two main branches splitting upon the insignificant question of whether the end is completely attainable or not.

Devotion may operate in a momentary impulse. In that case, the agent does not put himself in the place of the object…

Thoughts? #philosophy

This statement will be facilitated and made clearer by a notation which is designed to show what the essential elements of the different ends appear to me to be.

His doctrine of the schemata can only have been an afterthought, an addition to his system after it was substantially complete. For if the schemata had been considered early enough, they would have overgrown his whole work.

But he drew too hard a line between the operations of observation and of ratiocination. He allows himself to fall into the habit of thinking that the latter only begins after the former is complete; /1

This was what emancipated him from Leibnizianism, and at the same time turned him against sensationalism. It was also what enabled him to see that no general description of existence is possible, which is perhaps the most valuable proposition that the Critic contains.

Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic. He gives the name of logic to the greater part of his Critic of the Pure Reason, and it is a result of the great fault of his logical theory that he does not extend that name to the whole work. /1

John Rawls would have turned 105 today. Here he is at his best...

I should express it in this way:modern students of science have been successful because they have spent their lives not in their libraries and museums but in their laboratories and in the field;and while in their laboratories and in the field they have been not gazing on nature with a vacant eye, /1

Mr. George Henry Lewes in his work on Aristotle seems to me to have come pretty near to stating the true cause of the success of modern science when he has said that it was verification.

I was thus stimulated to independent inquiry into the logical support of the fundamental concepts called categories.

…Summulæ Logicales, the elementary schoolbook of the Plantagenet era. Now although a beastlike superficiality and lack of generalizing thought spreads like a pall over the writings of the scholastic masters of logic, yet the minute thoroughness with which they examined every problem that came /1

Before I came to man's estate, being greatly impressed with Kant's Critic of the Pure Reason, my father, who was an eminent mathematician, pointed out to me lacunæ in Kant's reasoning which I should probably not otherwise have discovered.

But I will so far anticipate that as to say that there is, first, the direct reference of a symbol to its objects, or its denotation; second, the reference of the symbol to its ground, through its object, that is, its reference to the common characters of its objects, or its connotation; /1

The other divisions of terms, propositions, and arguments arise from the distinction of extension and comprehension. I propose to treat this subject in a subsequent paper.