Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and Communication

ISBN-13: 9789048169443 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 510 str.

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen

Opis

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was one of the United States most original and profound thinkers, and a prolific writer. Peirce s game theory-based approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of signs and language, to the theory of communication, and to the evolutionary emergence of signs, provide a toolkit for contemporary scholars and philosophers. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, the book offers a rich, fresh picture of the achievements of a remarkable man."

Recenzje

"[...] a "must-have" for both the Peircean scholar and any other philosopher who wishes to relate Peirce's thinking on language and logic to other major thinkers and logical themes of the twentieth century (and beyond)."
Robert W. Burch, Texas A&M University, USA, in 'Project Muse - Scholarly Journals Online'

"Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen's Signs of Logic is a ground-breaking contribution to Peircean semiotics, impressive in its scope and depth. It is the first book where Peirce's pragmatic theory of meaning, logic of existential graphs, and theory of communication are presented in a unified game-theoretical framework. This work is indispensable to all serious students of Peirce's philosophy of logic, language, and communication."
Risto Hilpinen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA

"Charles Peirce, America's great scientific philosopher, was convinced that his late logic could contribute significantly to 'man's future intellectual development', but he never got the chance to make his case. Now, a century later, Pietarinen shows that Peirce was right and that Peirce's semiotic and logic can inform the theory of games and strategy and contribute to a general theory of intelligent agency. This is cutting edge philosophy and it is much to Pietarinen's credit that he has been able to find such up-to-date relevance and significance in Peirce's century old writings."
Nathan Houser, Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Institute for American Thought, Director and General Editor of the Peirce Edition Project

"In this magisterial work Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen has performed the valuable service of demonstrating the extent that Peirce's logic admits of systematic expression, notwithstanding the scatter and fragmentariness of his writings. Even more impressive is the success of Signs of Logic in establishing Peirce's remarkable prescience as anticipator of developments ranging from game-theoretic logic to dialogue logic, from Gricean pragmatics to the economics of cognitive practice, and so on. Signs of Logic is essential reading for the Peirce scholar and for any one interested in the development of logic in the century just past and beyond."
John Woods, Professor, FRSC, Dept. of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Canada, and Charles S. Peirce Professor of Logic, Dept. of Computer Science, King's College London, UK

"Pietarinen's book fills an important void in the contemporary understanding of Peirce's logical heritage. Its thorough intertwining of Peirce's game-theoretic ideas and Peirce's existential graphs opens up an immense panorama. Combining precision and perspective, mathematical detail and philosophical architectonics, the work presents one of the best available accounts of Peirce's kinetic thought."
Fernando Zalamea, Profesor Asociado, Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Spis treści

Preface. Bibliographical abbreviations. Part I: Peirce. 1. AN INTRODUCTION TO PEIRCE’S LOGIC AND SEMEIOTICS. 1.1 Kant’s influence and the logical roots of pragmatism. 1.2 On this uninteresting planet: a biographical sketch. 1.3 Signs, logic and semeiotics. 2. FROM PRAGMATISM TO PRAGMATICS. 2.1 Peirce, communication and formal pragmatics. 2.2 Common ground and natural language. 2.3 Conclusions. Appendix: The early dawn of neuroscience. 3. PEIRCE’S GAME-THEORETIC IDEAS IN LOGIC. 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 The emergence of the notion of strategy. 3.3 The economics of research and evolutionary metaphysics. 3.4 The theory of existential graphs. 3.5 Graphs, semeiotics and language. 3.6 Conclusions. 4. MOVING PICTURES OF THOUGHT I. 4.1 Introduction. 4.2 Existential graphs in a historical context. 4.3 The magic lantern lit up. 4.4 Existential graphs on the move. 5. MOVING PICTURES OF THOUGHT II. 5.1 Information flow in existential graphs. 5.2 Extending existential graphs. 5.3 The game interpretation fine-tuned. 5.4 Topology, graphs and games. 5.5 On diagrammatic representations. 5.6 Conclusions. Appendix: Some diagrammatic representations. 6. EXISTENCE, CONSTRUCTIVISM, MODELS, MODALITY. 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 The emergence of existence in quantificational logic. 6.3 The rise of constructivism. 6.4 Two and three in tension?. 6.5 The endoporeutic method. 6.6 Modality and quantification. 6.7 Conclusions. Appendix: The entry on Modality in MS 1147. Part II: Games. 7. SEMANTIC GAMES IN LOGIC AND LANGUAGE. 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 Game-theoretic semantics. 7.3 Logic and imperfect information. 7.4 Directions in game-theoretic semantics. 7.5 Semantic games and natural language. 7.6 Conclusions. 8. LOGIC, LANGUAGE GAMES AND LUDICS. 8.1 Introduction. 8.2 Wittgenstein, language games and logic. 8.3Wittgenstein and Peirce. 8.4 Language games in computation. 8.5 On 'one of the most fundamental language-games'. 8.6 Wittgenstein and Peirce revisited. 8.7 Logical semantics from a game-theoretic perspective. 9. DIALOGUE FOUNDATIONS AND INFORMAL LOGIC. 9.1 Lead-in. 9.2 Whither dialogue foundations? 9.3 Informal logic from a pragmatist perspective. 9.4 Conclusions. Appendix: A dialogue. 10. GAMES: FORMAL TOOLS OR EXPLANATIONS? 10.1 Introduction. 10.2 Game diversity in science and formal studies. 10.3 Game theories as explanations. 10.4 Conclusions. Part III: Language and Communication. 11. THE EVOLUTION OF SEMANTICS. 11.1 Introduction. 11.2 Semantic games and linguistic meaning. 11.3 Evolutionary language-games. 11.4 Truth, meaning and composition. 11.5 Common knowledge in the evolution of semantics. 11.6 Comparison and outlook. 12. PRAGMATICS FROM PEIRCE TO GRICE AND BEYOND. 12.1 Introduction. 12.2 Peirce’s pragmatism vs. pragmatics. 12.3 Economics, evolution and language change. 12.4 Pragmatics betwixt Peirce and Grice. 12.5 Grice in the wake of Peirce. 12.6 Post-Gricean pragmatics: towards relevance. 12.7 Historical and Peircean pragmatics. 12.8 Agenda cognitive linguistics. 12.9 Conclusions. 13. PEIRCE’S THEORY OF COMMUNICATION. 13.1 Introduction. 13.2 Triangulate them all. 13.3 Applications and complications. 13.4 Pragmatism from a communicational perspectiv. 13.5 Towards open-systems philosophy. 13.6 Conclusions. Appendix: Manuscript 614 on Common Ground. 14. GAMES AND AGENTS: A PEIRCEAN MANIFESTO. 14.1 A semeiotic perspective. 14.2 On the foundations of agent methodology. 14.3 Games, agents and information. 13.4 Conclusions. 15. FINAL WORDS. Bibliography. Index.

Blurb

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the principal subject of this book, was one of the most profound and prolific thinkers and scientists to have come out of the United States. His pragmatic logic and scientific methodology largely represent the application of interactive and intercommunicative triadic processes, best viewed as strategic and dialogic conceptualisations of logical aspects of thought, reasoning and action. These viewpoints also involve pragmatic issues in communicating linguistic signs, and are unified in his diagrammatic logic of existential graphs. The various game-theoretic approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of signs and language, to the theory of communication, and to the evolutionary emergence of signs, provide a contemporary toolkit, the relevance of which Peirce envisioned to a wondrous extent.

This work sheds considerable new light on these and other aspects of Peirce’s philosophy and his pragmatic theory of meaning. Many of his most significant writings in this context reflect his later thinking, covering roughly the last 15-20 years of his life, and they are still unpublished. Drawing comprehensively from his unpublished manuscripts, the book offers a fresh and rich picture of this remarkable man’s original involvement with logical aspects of thought in action.