Peirce's Empiricism

Widely praised as a founder of modern semiotics and of the pragmatist tradition in philosophy, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) spent over forty years realizing a comprehensive philosophical vision that addresses the fundamental problems of Western metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. Although it was never formally completed, what emerges from PeirceΓÇÖs writings is a distinctive system that cleverly marries a thoroughgoing form of empiricism (that denies that any of our knowledge is a priori) with a robustly realist metaphysics that emphasizes the mind-independence of laws and other universals. PeirceΓÇÖs Empiricism: Its Roots and Its Originality attempts to explain this seemingly impossible marriage by tracing the roots of PeirceΓÇÖs thought in the history of Western philosophy, with particular attention paid to his predecessors in the empiricist and the common sense traditions. By purging modern empiricism of its nominalistic metaphysics and its Cartesian assumptions about mind and knowledge, and by combining it with insights from sources as diverse as Duns Scotus and Charles Darwin, Peirce reinvents the idea that all our knowledge depends on sense perception while reaffirming the place of philosophy as a foundational field of inquiry.This book will be of interest to scholars of Peirce, scholars of American Philosophy, scholars of modern philosophy, and researchers in semiotics.