Can Peirce Be a Pragmaticist and an Idealist?

Can Peirce Be a Pragmaticist and an Idealist?Author(s): John PetersonSource: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 221-235Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40320326 .

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Can Peirce Be a Pragmaticist and an Idealist*

John Peterson

To appreciate the question which entitles this paper, attention must be focused on the relationship between Peirce's category of thirdness and his concept of sign. Is the relation of thirdness to signs in Peirce one of equivalence or is it one of genus to species? I here argue that depending on how Peirce answers this question, he must give up his pragmatism or his Idealism respectively.1 In fine, because Peirce must choose between equating thirds with signs and subsuming signs under thirds, he must abandon his view that the meaning of a word comes down to a habit or else

relinguish his identification of reality with Mind. But to bring out this dilemma in which Peirce is caught, something must be said first about Peirce's Idealism and then about his concepts of thirdness and sign.

I As regards his Idealism, recall that at the end of his most cele-

brated paper, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," Peirce attempts a clarification of the concept of reality according to his own rule of

making ideas clear. He defines 'reality1 in terms of the peculiar sensible effects which things that partake of it produce. As only existence or what falls under the category of secondness produces sensible effects in us, it is clear that Peirce here aims to define real-

ity in the sense of existence and not essence. Essences or univer- sals are also real for Peirce and on the status of essences he classi- fies himself as a Scotistic realist. But, Peirce continues, the only effect which real things produce is belief. So reality is defined in terms of belief or opinion. To prevent reality from being defined in terms of false belief, Peirce adds that that opinion which will



222 John Peterson

ultimately be agreed on by all who investigate is the true opinion and that this true opinion has the real as its object. In other words, reality in the long run produces true opinion in all who investigate and is defined in terms of that effect. To counter the an- ticipated objection that this makes the real depend on what is thought about it, Peirce offers this reply:

. . .But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any other man thinks.2

As Peirce says just before this reference that true opinion has the real as its object, the phrase \ . .the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is1 in the foregoing quotation cannot be construed as meaning anything else than that reality depends on thought. But the thought on which it depends is not the thought of any individual or group of individuals. Rather, the thought on which reality depends is thought in general. Like Rousseau's General Will, Peirce's thought in general is identified neither with the sum total of its instances nor with a majority of its instances. The idea of thought or consciousness in general goes back to Kant, of course. It was absolutized by Hegel, and Kant and Hegel both were philosophers by whom Peirce was deeply influenced. Elsewhere, Peirce makes his espousal of objective idealism explicit. He once outlined three possible ontologies, namely, neutralism, materialism and idealism, dismissing the first two as untenable. In the same context he opts for monism as over against dualism and ends up saying that "the one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws."3

Further, Peirce sees idealism as the solution to the problem of how protoplasm can have the property of feeling. Protoplasm can



Can Peirce Be a Pragtn&ticist and an Idealist? 223

be made synthetically in a laboratory out of its chemical elements. This manufactured protoplasm would have all the characteristics of natural protoplasm, including the property of feeling. Yet, says Peirce, it is impossible to deduce this property from the laws of mechanics. He concludes that the fact that the produced protoplasm has feeling is explained only on the idealistic hypothesis that "physical events are but degraded or undeveloped forms of psychical events. H Thus,

But what is to be said of the property of feeling? If consciousness belongs to all protoplasm, by what mechanical constitution is this to be accounted for? The slime is nothing but a chemical compound. There is no inherent impossibility in its being formed synthetically in the laboratory, out of its chemical elements; and if it were so made, it would present all the characters of natural protoplasm. No doubt, then, it would feel. To hesi- tate to admit this would be puerile and ultra-puerile. By what element of the molecular arrangement, then, would that feeling be caused? This question cannot be evaded or pooh-poohed. Protoplasm certainly does feel; and unless we are to accept a weak dualism, the property must be shown to arise from some peculiarity of the mechanical system. Yet the attempt to deduce it from the three laws of mechanics, applied to never so ingeni- ous a mechanical contrivance, would obviously be futile. It can never be explained, unless we admit that physical events are but degraded or undeveloped forms of psychical events.4

II As for Peirce 's concept of thirdness, this can best be explained

by contrasting thirdness with Peirce's two other categories, firstness and secondness. Firstness is the category of possibility and secondness is the category of actuality. Firstness is what may be and secondness is what if. But in addition to the possible and the



224 John Peterson

actual, Peirce held that there is another category of being which brings together, unites or mediates the possible and the actual. This category of thirdness is a synthesis of firstness and secondness.5 As opposed to what may be or what is, thirdness is what would be. Peirce often calls thirdness the category of law. A law, such as the Law of Gravity, is a synthesis of firstness and secondness in the following way: like a first but unlike a second a law is general; but like a second and unlike a first a law is actual. A law is, then, a general fact. Moreover, a law or third is not reducible to a statement of the uniformity of actions as seconds, and hence something which is entirely consequent upon or a mere summing up of its instances. This nominalist concept of law Peirce repudi- ates. Rather, even though laws cannot exist independently of any concrete instances they are nonetheless logically prior to their instances. Thus the Law of Gravity, a third, is not true because things behave the way they do. It is not simply a law of uniformity as the nominalist would construe it. Rather, things behave as they do because the general formula, the Law of Gravity, is al- ready true. This is what Peirce means by saying that he is a Scotis- tic realist. The general is not the sum-total of the individuals but rather it is the condition of the individuals. Generality explains particularity and not the other way around.

To use an example of secondness, namely, the event of an ap- ples' falling on Newton's head, thirdness can be understood as the Law of Gravity which is operative in and which determines this secondness as well as all other concrete causal connections (seconds) between a falling body and the body on which it falls. In this situation the apple qua apple is a first which is brought into the existential relation of felling on Newton's head, the second, by virtue of the Law of Gravity, the third. Thirdness is then perhaps most informatively called the category of mediation, the category which mediates or joins possibility and fact. It is that which is expressed by a contrary-to-fàct conditional statement in the subjunctive mood. Thus the statement "If a body were to be unsupported then it would fall" expresses a certain



Can Peirce Be a Pragmaticist and an Idealisti 225

thirdness or law. Peirce prefers to call thirdness the category of the general rath-

er than the category of the universal because the term 'universal' is usually associated with the sorts of thing which Peirce calls firsts or possibles, i.e. things like roundness and redness. In particular, part of the reason why Peirce calls thirds generals rather than uni- versals is that thirdness, like secondness, does not refer to things or substances but rather to relations. Just as a second is primarily identified by him with a dyadic relation (an action) rather than with a thing, so too a third is primarily identified by Peirce with the triadic relation of mediation and not with any transcendent thing or essence. But the term 'universal' is commonly used to refer to the latter.

Moreover, just because thirdness is defined as that which mediates a first and a second, thirdness cannot exist without firstness or secondness, each of which thirdness logically presupposes. But secondness can exist apart from thirdness, according to Peirce as, for example, in voluntary actions. But this does not alter the fact that most seconds are instances of some third or law. If all seconds were exemplifications of thirds, then it would seem to follow that there are no seconds which are not subject to law, no events which come about by chance. Yet Peirce insisted that chance is operative in the universe, that not everything is subject to law. He rejected the mentality of Newtonian mechanism according to which, given the laws of nature, the course of nature could be in- fallibly predicted in every last detail.

Further, Peirce's treatment of the relation of thirdness to the other categories bears a remarkable resemblance to Hegel's dia- lectic. For while every third mediates a first and a second, it is not itself a fixed or static law but can be further developed by still another third or law and this latter law by still another law and so on. As in Hegel every synthesis is itself a thesis for some further synthesis, so in Peirce every third or law is or becomes a first for some further law. Thus, all thirds are overcome, taken up or absorbed in some more developed third. Whether or not



226 John Peterson

this continuing process of thirds comes to a final third in Peirce is a moot point. The answer depends on which side of Peirce 's philosophy is stressed, his pragmatism or his Idealism, his empiri- cism or his rationalism. The former links Peirce with James, the latter with that intellectualism in Hegel and Royce against which James recoiled.6

Ill The same kind of open-endedness, incompleteness and generali-

ty which characterizes thirdness permeates meaning as well, according to Peirce. This is because meaning is either identical with or a subset of thirdness. Moreover, with meaning as with thirdness an ongoing progress as well as an unending regress again breaks out. The progress in question is initiated by Peirce's con- tention that all meaning is in signs and that signs are themselves interprétants of still other signs. If an interprétant of a sign is its effect on some interpreter(s) and if every sign is an interprétant as well as having an interprétant, then there must be an infinite regress of signs and interprétants. For there is no such thing as a first sign which is not the effect of some previous sign. Moreover, if all signs have interprétants which are also signs, then there must be an infinite progress of signs and interprétants as well as an infinite regress of them. As what Peirce calls a belief-hypothesis in science is both the end-product of inquiry and the starting point of further inquiry, so every sign is both the effect of a previous sign and the instigator of a further sign. Just as belief-hypotheses develop into wider, more explanatory belief-hypotheses, so too, Peirce would say, any sign of an object is superceded by a further, richer sign of the same object. For Peirce there is growth in meaning as well as growth in scientific inquiry. The idea of con- tinuous growth and development in scientific inquiry and meaning is central to his program. He remarks several times that nothing at all is inexplicable. His reason for insisting on this is that otherwise inquiry would come to end or would be blocked, and that meaning would be fixed and static, the implication being that



Can Peirce Be a Praymaticist and an Idealist? 227

the growth of inquiry and meaning is for him an end in itself. And so for Peirce meaning, no less than inquiry, is never totally completed and is open-ended just in that sense. If the meaning of a sign itself has a meaning and that second meaning also has a meaning and so on ad infinitum, then the meaning of the original sign can never be made determinate, fixed and complete. Meaning, like scientific inquiry, is always in process. As hypotheses in science are both a stopping-place of inquiry and a starting- place of further inquiry, so meaning is both the end-product of development and the beginning of further development. Signs be- come richer as they grow out of previous signs.

Even so, it seems that Peirce was more troubled by the idea of an infinite progress of meanings than he was by such a progress of hypotheses in scientific inquiry. It is one thing for truth to be partial and incomplete and another thing for meaning to be partial and incomplete. If all meaning takes the form of signs the meanings of which are themselves more developed signs which have further meaning and so on, then no sign ever has a determinate sense. More important for Peirce, if signs and their meanings are always general and abstract, how can thought ever touch existence which is particular and concrete? And yet for Peirce thought must make contact with existence. This is clear both from his analysis of signification into sign, object and interprétant as well as from his pragmaticism. As for the first, every sign for Peirce must have an object. As these objects are typically seconds

(existents) and the meaning of a sign is general, the problem sur- faces as to how this general can signify the particular object. Yet it is clear that it must. For Peirce, the meaning of any sign is itself a sign of the same object which is signified by the original sign. The problem is not unlike Kant's puzzle of how pure cate-

gories apply to sensible intuitions. And Peirce's solution parallels Kant's. As Kant ties categories to intuitions by way of the schemata, Peirce links meanings of signs (logical interprétants) to ob-

jects of signs by way of habits. Like schemata, habits have a cognitive and a non-cognitive side and that is why, though they are



228 John Peterson

general, they can be signs of particular objects. To be sure, habits are logical interprétants but unlike other logical interprétants habits do not have as interprétants other logical interprétants. Instead, the interprétants of habits are actions or energetic interprétants. As schemata are not only rules but rules for the construction of images, so habits are not only logical interprétants but logical in- terprétants which have actions as interprétants. That is why they can tie thought with existence.

As regards Peirce's pragmaticism, it is clear that this too rules out an infinite progress of meanings on the level of thought or generals. According to Peirce's pragmaticist account of meaning, the meaning of a word comes down to a habit. But as a habit is a rule of verification and as the meaning of this rule is the verification itself and not some further intellectual sign, it follows that an infinite progress of meanings is excluded. Thus, Peirce's pragmaticism, i.e. his view that meaning comes down to a rule of verification, as well as his insistence that logical interprétants must be about objects both require a final interprétant or habit which fells between being a pure concept on the one hand and a sensation on the other. This is the point at which his pragmaticism and his semiotics join hands.

Stated differently, open-endedness in his theory of meaning thus posed a larger problem for Peirce than did the corresponding open-endedness in his theory of inquiry. There is nothing particu- larly alarming in the thought of an indefinite progress of belief- hypotheses in science. Each succeeding hypothesis simply covers more ground than its predecessor. But there is something alarming in the view that words or concepts do not have a fixed or determinate sense, that what a word or concept means depends on an endless series of future interprétants. If the meaning of signx is its interprétant (sign2) and the meaning of sign2 is its interprétant (sign3) and so on, then the meaning of the original sign (sign^ is forever postponed. But signx can only be said to have meaning if there is no such permanent postponement of meaning. Not only that but, if all thoughts are signs and the interprétant of every



Can Peirce Be a Pragmaticist and an Idealist? 229

sign is another thought (i.e. what Peirce calls a logical interpré- tant), then how can the gap be bridged between thought and existence?

It was his recognition of these problems which awakened Peirce from his "dogmatic slumbers." And Peirce 's response was pragmatism. Concretely, the problems inherent in the idea of an infinite progress in the development of meaning spurred Peirce to develop his celebrated pragmatic view of meaning.7 If the problems are to be solved, there must be a final or ultimate logical in- terprétant of a word which does not itself have a further logical interprétant.8 Otherwise, since all logical interprétants are signs and all signs have interprétants, the meaning of a word is never reached. Further, if thought is ever to touch reality in the sense of existence, the vehicles of thought, general signs, must at some point have interprétants which are not themselves general or logical interprétants. These final logical interprétants are identifiable with what Peirce calls habits. In the following he identifies these habits with the ultimate logical interprétants of concepts:

In advance of ascertaining the nature of this effect, it will be convenient to adopt a designation for it, and I will call it the logical interprétant, without as yet determining whether this term shall extend to anything beside the meaning of a general concept, though certainly closely re- lated to that, or not. Shall we say that this effect may be a thought, that is to say, a mental sign? No doubt, it may be so; only, if this sign be of an intellectual kind - as it would have to be - it must itself have a logical interpré- tant; so that it cannot be the ultimate logical interprétant of the concept. It can be proved that the only mental effect that can be so produced and that is not a sign but is of general application is a habit-change; meaning by a habit-change a modification of a person's tendencies to- ward action, resulting from previous experiences or from

previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause.9



230 John Peterson

And once again,

. . .1 do not deny that a concept, proposition or argu- ment may be a logical interprétant. I only insist that it cannot be the final logical interprétant, for the reason that it is itself a sign of that very kind that has itself a logical interprétant. The habit alone, which though it may be a sign in some other way, is not a sign in that way in which that sign of which it is the logical interpré- tant is a sign. . . .10

The infinite progress of meanings is avoided because, while habits are signs and hence must have interprétants, these interprétants are not further signs but rather actions instead. By this Peirce does not mean that all thought is for the sake of action. He does not mean that, to be meaningful, thought must be translated into concrete practical results which in some way benefit either the individual or the community. What he means is that the meaning of a thought, belief, idea or concept is a rule of verification, the latter necessarily involving some experimental activity or self-controlled conduct on the part of the verifier or inquirer. For Peirce, habits are rules of action, so that when he says that the meaning of a sign comes down to the habits it produces in interpreters, he means by this the rules of action which guide our verification of whether or not some subject bears that sign as its predicate. In short, what an intellectual sign or predicate means is simply the rule of action whereby we test whether something or other really has that predicate. This is why he repeats that the meaning of an idea, belief, thought, etc. lies in the future. To borrow his most celebrated example, the meaning of the word 'hard' simply is the rule of action in us whereby we would test whether or not some subject bore that predicate. This rule of action or habit is always expressed in the form of a conditional statement in the subjunctive mood. Thus, to say of something X that it is hard means just this: that if we were to perform certain actions (say rub- bing X against any surface whatever) then certain effects would follow, i.e., X would not be scratched).



Can Peircc Be a Preyjtnaticist and an Idealisti 231

IV Having reviewed Peirce's idealism and his concepts of 'third-

ness' and 'sign,' the stage is now set for pressing that dilemma which was raised at the outset. If on the one hand Peirce takes the third-sign relation as being one of genus to species, then Peirce admits thirds which are not signs. But as Peirce held that all thought - be it thought in general or a particular thought - is a sign,11 it follows that in Peirce's system some thirds are independent of thought. If all thought is a sign and signs are one among other species of third, then there are thirds which are not thought. But as Idealism countenances no being, thirds included, which is not either thought in general or a particular thought, it follows that Peirce cannot count the third-sign relation as one of genus to species and retain his Idealism.

But suppose on the other hand Peirce avoids this horn of the dilemma by equating thirds with signs.12 Then the other horn of the dilemma looms large and Peirce is forced to abandon his pragmatic theory of meaning. This can be seen from the following ar- gument (A) steps 2, 4, 6, and 8 of which are indisputably held by Peirce:

(A) 1 Assume that thirds are equivalent to signs. Then, if 2 All habits are thirds, then, 3 All habits are signs. (1.2) 4 Among signs, only symbols are thirds. 5 Hence, all habits are symbols. (2, 3, 4) 6 By definition, the signifying character of a symbol is made

by mind. 7 Hence, the signifying character of a habit is made by

mind. (5,6) 8 By definition, any sign the signifying character of which is

made by mind has a mental or logical interprétant. 9 Hence, any habit has a logical interprétant. (7, 8)

10 But then, no habit is a final logical interprétant as Peirce says, in which case Peirce's pragmatism is defeated. (9)



232 John Peterson

It may be objected against (A) that 'third1 is not used in the same sense in steps 1, 2 and 4 and hence that (A) fails due to equivocation. For it is well-known that Peirce distinguished genuine from degenerate thirds and it may be that 'third1 does not mean 'genuine third1 in 1, 2 and 4 of (A). A genuine third is one in which neither one of the three terms in the relation can be removed without destroying the relation. One of Peirce's examples of a genuine third is giving. In the situation in which A gives B to C, if either A or B or C is removed so too is the relation of giving. But in a degenerate third one of the terms in the apparently triadic relation may be removed without destroying the relational character in question. Peirce's example is a pin which fastens two things together, as, say, a pin sticks a carnation to one's lapel. If the carnation is removed, the pin would still retain the relational character of sticking through something, namely, the lapel. For this reason, the case of a pin fastening two things together is really reducible to two dyadic relations, i.e. the pin's sticking through the one thing and the pin's sticking through the other. Thus it is not a genuine third.

But the answer to this objection is that 'thirds' can only mean 'genuine thirds' in 1, 2 and 4 of (A). When in 1 the assumption is made that thirds are equivalent to signs it is being assumed that something which has the nature of a third for Peirce (as opposed to the nature of a first or a second) also has the nature of a sign. It is not being assumed that something which appears to be a third but which is really reducible to two or more seconds is equivalent to a sign. Otherwise, the assumption is pointless. Sec- ond, it is also clear that 'thirds' in 2 of (A) refers to genuine and not degenerate thirds. For it is Peirce's view that all habits are laws and if laws are not genuine thirds in Peirce's view then nothing is. Finally, 'thirds' in 4 of (A) can only mean 'genuine thirds.' For Peirce's whole point in saying that among signs only symbols are thirds is that the other two types of signs which are grouped with symbols, namely, icons and indices, retain the relational character of signifying even if their interprétants are removed. Thus,



Can Peirce Be a Prajmaticist and an Idealist? 233

since their relational character is not eliminated when one of their terms is (i.e. their interprétants), icons and indices are not genuine thirds. So by saying that among signs only symbols are thirds Peirce evidently means by 'thirds' here 'genuine thirds.'

To expand on (A), then, if all habits are laws for Peirce and laws are equivalent to thirds, then all habits are thirds. But under the assumption of the equivalence of thirds and signs, all habits are signs for Peirce. But among signs only symbols are thirds. The reason for this is that it is of the essence of a true third that if any one of its three terms is eliminated then the third itself is de- stroyed. Thus, if A, B or C is removed in the triad "A gives B to C," then so too is the triadic relation of giving.13 And this is the way it is with symbols. If the interpretation of any symbol is removed, then so too is the relation of signifying which the symbol bears to its object. For example, the word 'cat' would not signify a certain animal unless some mind established the sign-relation between the two. All and only those signs the signifying character of which is made by their interprétants are symbols.14 By contrast, a bullet-hole in a wall signifies a gun shot, says Peirce, even without an interprétant. No mind confers signifying character on the bullet-hole; it has that character apart from minds. Signs like this are degenerate and not genuine thirds.15 All and only true signs are symbols because among signs only symbols are genuine thirds.16 Therefore, on the assumption that signs in the strict sense are identical with thirds, all habits are symbols in the view of Peirce. Symbols are to be contrasted with icons and indices which are signs in a secondary sense, i.e. signs the signifying character of which is not made by mind. These secondary signs have interpré- tants, of course, but since the interprétants they have are not de- creed by mind, they are not logical but either emotional or energetic interprétants.

But notice what follows from all this. If habits are symbols, then, since the signifying character of a symbol is made by mind, it follows that, like all symbols, habits have a logical interprétant. If it is mind that establishes the signifying character of a sign,



234 John Peterson

then the interprétants of the sign in question must include something mental i.e., a logical interprétant. It is because mind makes the connection between the symbol 'cat* and the animal which is signified by it that fcatf produces a concept (logical interprétant) in the mind of those English-speaking persons who hear or see the word. But if habits are symbols and hence have logical inter- prétants, then habits cannot possibly be what Peirce says they are, namely, final logical interprétants.

But right here is the rub, at least so far as Peirce's maintaining his pragmaticist theory of meaning is concerned. For that the meaning of a word comes down to a habit which, though it is itself a logical interprétant, does not have a logical interprétant, is the nerve of Peirce's pragmaticist theory of meaning. As was men- tioned, denying that habits have logical interprétants was Peirce's way of preventing an infinite progress of meanings and of linking thought with existence. Therefore, if for Peirce signs are equivalent to thirds instead of being a species of thirdness, then those signs which Peirce calls habits can only be construed as symbols. For among signs only symbols are true thirds and habits, being laws, are true thirds. But since this implies that the connection between a habit and its siynatum is made by mind, then the inter- prétants of a habit must include a logical interprétant. But in that case habits are not after all the final logical interprétants which Peirce intends them to be and Peirce's very own pragmatist theory of meaning is sacrificed.

University of Rhode Island

NOTES

1. Strictly speaking and by his own preference, Peirce's pragmatism is more accurately called "pragmaticism." As for his Idealism, Peirce openly characterizes his philosophy as a variety of Idealism. See Hart- shorne and Weiss, ed., Collected Papers ofC.S. Peircey Cambridge, 1960,



Can Peirce Be a Praymaticist and an Idealisti 235

5.38, 6.24. 2. C.S. Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" in Philosophical

Writings of Peirce, ed. by J. Buchler, p. 39. 3. Hartshorne and Weiss, eds., The Collected Papers of C.S. Peirce

Cambridge, 1960, 6.25. 4. Hartshorne and Weiss, eds., 6.264. 5. Peirce sometimes identifies thirdness with mediation. See

Hartshorne and Weiss ed., 5.121, 3.422 and 3.423. 6. Thomas A. Goudge characterizes this tension in Peirce as one

between Peirce' s naturalism and his transcendentalism. See his The

Thought of C.S. Peirce, New York, 1969, pp. 5-6. 7. See William Alston, "Pragmatism and the Theory of Signs in

Peirce," Philosophy and Phenomenoloßical Research \ Sept., 1956, p. 85.

See also, G. Gentry, "Habit and the Logical Interprétant" in Weiner and

Young, eds., Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Cam-

bridge, 1952, pp. 75-90. 8. Though Peirce identifies the final logical interprétant with a

habit, he sometimes implies that there is no final interprétant and that the

progress of signs and interprétants is indefinite or even infinite. See Hart-

shorne and Weiss eds., 1.339, 2.302. I interpret this inconsistency as a

sign of the tension in Peirce 's thought between his Idealism and his pragmaticism, a tension which in my judgment Peirce never finally resolves.

9. Hartshorne and Weiss eds., 5.476.

10. Hartshorne and Weiss eds., 5.491. 11. Hartshorne and Weiss eds., 5.253. 12. Peirce sometimes does identify third and signs, bee Hart

shorne and Weiss eds., 1.345, 8.332. 13. Hartshorne and Weiss eds., 1.366-7.

14. Harshorne and Weiss eds., 2.304, 2.247. 15. Hartshorne and Weiss eds., 2.304, 5.73.

16. Hartshorne and Weiss eds., 5.73, l<or a detense ot the view

that only symbols are proper signs for Peirce, see my "Signs, Thirdness

and Conventionalism in Peirce" in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce So-

ciety, Winter 1983, pp. 23-28.



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Can Peirce Be a Pragmaticist and an Idealist?