IDEAS IN ACTION Proceedings of the Applying Peirce Conference Edited by: Mats Bergman, Sami Paavola, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, Henrik Rydenfelt Nordic NSP Studies in Pragmatism 1 IDEAS IN ACTION Nordic Studies in Pragmatism Series editors: Mats Bergman Henrik Rydenfelt The purpose of the series is to publish high-quality monographs and col- lections of articles on the tradition of philosophical pragmatism and closely related topics. It is published online in an open access format by the Nordic Pragmatism Network, making the volumes easily accessible for scholars and students anywhere in the world. IDEAS IN ACTION PROCEEDINGS OF THE APPLYING PEIRCE CONFERENCE Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 1 Edited by Mats Bergman, Sami Paavola, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen & Henrik Rydenfelt Nordic Pragmatism Network, NPN Helsinki 2010 Copyright c 2010 The Authors and the Nordic Pragmatism Network. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. CC BY NC For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/./ www.nordprag.org ISSN-L - ISSN - ISBN ---- This work is typeset with Donald Knuth’s TEX program, using LATEX2ε macros and the ‘Nnpbook’ class definition. Contents Preface iv Note on References v 1 Reconsidering Peirce’s Relevance 1 Nathan Houser Part I 2 Serving Two Masters: Peirce on Pure Science, Useless Things, and Practical Applications 17 Mats Bergman 3 The Function of Error in Knowledge and Meaning: Peirce, Apel, Davidson 38 Elizabeth F. Cooke 4 Peircean Modal Realism? 48 Sami Pihlstr¨om 5 Toward a Transcendental Pragmatic Reconciliation of Analytic and Continental Philosophy 62 Jerold J. Abrams 6 Reflections on Practical Otherness: Peirce and Applied Sciences 74 Ivo Assad Ibri 7 Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 86 Erkki Kilpinen 8 Peirce and Pragmatist Democratic Theory 105 Robert B. Talisse i ii CONTENTS Part II 9 Peirce’s Revolutionary Concept of Rhetoric 118 James Jak´ob Liszka 10 Evolution, Pragmatism, and Rhetoric: Exploring the Origin and Loci of Meaning 134 Vincent Colapietro 11 Iconicity as Homomorphism: The Case of Picasso’s Guernica 151 Chiara Ambrosio 12 Not Just Underlying Structures: Towards a Semiotic Approach to Scientific Representation and Modeling 163 Tarja Knuuttila 13 Pragmaticism on the Semantic Web 173 Catherine Legg 14 Towards a Sound Contextualism: Applying Peircean Ideas at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface 189 Daniel Rellstab Part III 15 Habits as Vehicles of Cognition 201 Pentti M¨a¨att¨anen 16 Peirce’s Theory of Assent 211 Giovanni Maddalena 17 Mindless Abduction: From Animal Guesses to Artifactual Medi- ators 224 Lorenzo Magnani 18 The Logicality of Abduction, Deduction and Induction 239 Gerhard Minnameier 19 Peirce, Abduction and Scientific Realism 252 Ilkka Niiniluoto CONTENTS iii 20 Complementary Strategies in Scientific Discovery: Abduction and Preduction 264 Andr´es Rivadulla 21 Towards a Complex Variable Interpretation of Peirce’s Existential Graphs 277 Fernando Zalamea 22 Challenges and Opportunities for Existential Graphs 288 Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen Preface This volume contains selected papers presented at the Applying Peirce con- ference at the University of Helsinki, 11–13 June 2007. The meeting brought together scholars and researchers to explore and discuss Charles S. Peirce’s thought and its applications. With more than a hundred participants and more than 60 papers presented by an internationally diverse group from many different fields, the organizers felt that a selection of extended papers representative of the contents of the conference should be made available to the public. The Applying Peirce conference, organized by the members of the Helsinki Peirce Research Centre, was arranged in conjunction with the 9th World Congress of the International Association of Semiotic Studies. The meeting was made possible by the financial support received from the Uni- versity of Helsinki (project 2023031, “Peirce’s Pragmatistic Philosophy and Its Applications”) and the Academy of Finland, and the sponsorship of the Philosophical Society of Finland and the Charles S. Peirce Society. We would also like to acknowledge the help we received from Prof. Douglas Anderson, who commented on the whole of the volume, and Mr. Jukka Nikulainen, whose competence and eye for detail was crucial to its techni- cal production. This volume is the first in the series Nordic Studies in Pragmatism, which publishes peer reviewed monographs and collections of articles on philosophical pragmatism. We feel that there is no better way to start this series than with a book highlighting the range and contemporary relevance of the founder of the pragmatist movement. Helsinki, December 2010 The Editors iv Note on References The following standard abbreviations of editions of Charles S. Peirce’s writ- ings are used: CN n:m Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to the Nation. K. L. Ketner (Ed.). Vols. 1–4. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. 1975–87 CP n.m Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. W. Burks (Eds.). Vols. 1–8. Cambridge, MA.: Har- vard University Press. 1931–58 EP n:m The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. N. Houser, C. J. W. Kloesel, & The Peirce Edition Project (Eds.). Vols. 1–2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1992–98 HP n:m Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science. C. Eisele (Ed.). Vols. 1–2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1985 NEM n:m The New Elements of Mathematics. C. Eisele (Ed.). Vols. 1–4. The Hague: Mouton. 1976 PM m Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings. M. E. Moore (Ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2010 PPM m Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism. P. A. Turrisi (Ed.). Al- bany: State University of New York Press. 1997 RLT m Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Confer- ences Lectures of 1898. K. L. Ketner (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1992 v vi NOTE ON REFERENCES SS m Semiotics and Significs: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby. C. S. Hardwick (Ed.). Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press. 1977 W n:m Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. The Peirce Edition Project (Eds.). Vols. 1–6, 8. Bloomington: Indi- ana University Press. 1982– In references to CP, citations of the form n.m refer to paragraph m in vol- ume n. Citations of the form MS n:m are to page m in manuscript n, as numbered in Richard S. Robin’s Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst, MA.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967). In all other editions, n refers to volume and m to page number. Reconsidering Peirce’s Relevance Nathan Houser Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis In June 2007, an international conference convened at the University of Helsinki to explore the emerging interest in the thought of Charles S. Peirce and to consider the applicability of Peirce’s ideas to diverse fields of in- quiry.1 To underscore the breadth they were aiming for, the conference or- ganizers listed the following fields of relevance: logic, abductive reasoning, communication and rhetoric, contemporary philosophical debates, mathe- matics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, linguistics, literary studies, the study of fine arts and design, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The Helsinki Conference was held in conjunction with the 9th World Congress of Semiotics, so semiotic and textual studies were also areas of interest. The conference opened with a general survey of the breadth and influence of Peirce’s thought2 and with a stimulating discus- sion of T. L. Short’s newly published book, Peirce’s Theory of Signs (2007).3 As the conference unfolded, the application of Peirce’s thought in addi- tional fields or sub-fields was explored including architecture, virtual real- ity, data modeling, and other new media applications, geology, and such intriguing and specialized studies as distributed intentionality and seman- tic webs. Several papers dealt with graphical logic; in particular, with ap- plications of Peirce’s well-known (at least becoming so) Existential Graphs, and those applications dealt with a number of interesting issues including 1 The conference, Applying Peirce, was arranged by the Helsinki Peirce Research Centre and was sponsored by the Charles S. Peirce Society and the Philosophical Society of Finland. 2 This introductory essay is a revision of the keynote lecture for the Helsinki Conference. 3 The participants in this Author Meets Critics symposium were Mats Bergman, Risto Hilpinen, James Liszka, and the author, T. L. Short. 1 2 Ideas in Action problems in information theory as well as in language representation and processing. Some papers, and a workshop, dealt with how Peirce’s ideas inform, or might inform, editing theory and practice. This overview of topics covered during the three days of the Helsinki Conference provides a comprehensive glance at where to look for effective applications of Peirce’s ideas. As I go on, I will add a few more areas in which Peirce’s thought has been found relevant, although I will certainly not attempt to be exhaustive – that, I believe, would be an all but impos- sible undertaking in any case. But first I want to remark on why I believe the theme of the Helsinki Conference, Applying Peirce, might at first strike one as a little curious, and might even be slightly unsettling. The crux of this concern has to do with what is meant by “Applying Peirce.” The idea of