Jeffrey, Edwina, Jon, List, Yes, I preferred to wait for others to proffer comment rather than this be a mere exchange between two people. But I agree with each of Edwina and Jeffrey here.
Peirce, in certain comments, does say Kant is nominalist. I'll let it be known though that many philosophers I have spoken with consider Peirce a nominalist. I think that empty verbiage. I don't buy that Kant was a nominalist (entirely wrong in my opinion). I think one can easily refute it but happy to let others chime in as is already the case. As for iconicty in syntax. No, I'm not sure I agree. At least, it doesn't seem genuine to me at all. Best Jack ________________________________ From: Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2025 2:41 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> Cc: Gary Richmond <[email protected]>; Jack Cody <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Propositions, Truth, and Experience (was Will and Belief) List I agree - I think it’s sometimes useful to consider WHY one labels another person a ’nominalist’. Heck - it’s even considered almost an insult in some cases ‘ [why, you lowly nominalist, you…]. I think it has to do with the source and site and thus the very identity of knowledge. Is it within the full control of the individual Or the comunity/ Or some other agency, such as god The nominalist obviously locates the source of knowledge generation and development within the individual. Socially - this sets up a very different society - than one that rests all knowledge generation with a non-human agency [ such as god]. This was a key concept that so outraged the anti-Darwinists - to have knowledge development in the individual - not preordained by god - and - even random at that!! Ii think Peirce’s three categories - especially Thirdness, which is the mode fo being of knwoeldge/habits that are general rather than unique, that are common to a community..removes him from nominalism. But- it doesn’t move him into a priori determinism. Rather it removes him from pure idealism [ ie, such as Plato’s] by his insistence that these very same habits are self-generating, self-organize, can change, can emerge as novel, and that this takes place within the individual and Secondness. [there’s that ’symbolic indexical relation].. As for Kant- the fact that he acknowledges a non-human knowledge base [ the noumena] means that he’s not a pure or full nominalist, because he thus reduces man’s power to ‘know’. And he seems to me to be very much a ‘creature of his era - the era of the rise of the individual freedom. Edwina On Sep 12, 2025, at 12:17 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> wrote: Hello, I'd like to challenge the assertion that Peirce considers Kant to be an "ultra-nominalist" in metaphysics. How can one square such a claim with Peirce's classification of metaphysical theories--based on the categories. Here is a screenshot from an online version of the Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism: <Screenshot 2025-09-11 at 3.59.16 PM.png> Drawing on this diagram, the most extreme type of nominalism is any metaphysical theory that affirms the reality only of individual existences--where those actual individuals are understood to have the character of the second phenomenological category of brute reaction. The examples he gives are Lutoslawski and Mickiewicz. Again, drawing on this table, "Kantism" (which I take to include Kant's own theory) affirms the reality of real possibilities, real laws and actual individuals, where the reality of each corresponds to the first, second and third phenomenological categories. As such, here is one text where Peirce explicitly rejects interpretations of Kant's metaphysics that treat the view as ultra-nominalist. On my interpretation of texts, the vast majority of what Peirce says about Kant is entirely consonant with his classification here. Peirce suggests there are places in Kant's metaphysics where he is less realistic about things (e.g., the nature of space and time) than Plato or Aristotle, but that only makes Kant a more hesitant realist (of a particularly conceptualist stripe) about the reality of some things than Peirce happens to be. Hope that helps, Jeff ________________________________ From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2025 12:51 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: Jack Cody <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Propositions, Truth, and Experience (was Will and Belief) Jon, Jack, List, Jon, thanks for showing in this post as well as other posts in this thread that, in positing unknowable 'things in themselves', Kant's ultranominalism is seen to be in direct contrast with Peirce’s Scholastic realism which identifies reality with what true propositions represent. As you've shown, there's no 'mystery' in any of this, nothing is 'hidden': so it is a fact that the green grass I'm currently looking at outside my window is unquestionably green and you -- and anyone who knows English and has ever had the collateral experience of seeing green grass -- indeed, as the French phrase it, tout le monde (in whatever language they express it) knows exactly the truth of that statement. In addition, Jon, it was helpful to read your succinct account of Peirce’s view that syntax and diagrams in logic, as well as sometimes is the case in natural language, iconically mirror logical and causal relations. I should note that I have thoroughly enjoyed and most definitely have learned from your and Jack's, as well as other contributors' participation in the discussion in this thread. Best, Gary R On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 4:17 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jack, List: Perhaps I misunderstood, but "agreed-upon meaning" struck me as a likely indicator of nominalism--the doctrine that "grass" and "green," as words signifying general concepts, "are mere names without any corresponding reality." Do you agree after all that my grass being green today is "the ontic reality," such that the proposition "my grass is green today" is true? Do you also agree that the structure of propositions matches that of real facts, such that even if no one had ever actually expressed this one in any particular human language, it would still be true? A scholastic realist says yes to both these questions, while a nominalist says no. Peirce was as serious a scholar of Kant's work as they come, and he explicitly "return[ed] the verdict of nominalism," regardless of how Kant viewed himself. "Kant was a nominalist; although his philosophy would have been rendered compacter, more consistent, and stronger if its author had taken up realism, as he certainly would have done if he had read Scotus" (CP 1.19, 1903). Here is a longer excerpt from an early (and still unpublished) manuscript draft of CP 5.464 (EP 2:400). CSP: I was long enough within the Kantian fold myself to comprehend clearly in what their difficulty consists in, and how it arises, but the full explanation would be too long for this article. It may be said to have two sources; first, that the main propositions of Kant solve no problems, but merely transform, or restate them, and that in a way that tends to block the road of inquiry, the worst tendency that a philosophy can have. The reception the Kantians gave to the non-Euclidean geometry illustrated that. The second source of the Kantian misunderstanding,--only to be indicated here,--is Kant's nominalism. The essence of nominalism lies in its assumption that reality consists in a mode of being independent of thought, instead of in a mode of being independent of any actual thoughts, or judgments, concerning the real object. Accordingly, as soon as a nominalist is convinced that an object or meaning is constructed of thought, he pronounces it unreal without any further discrimination. Kant is ultranominalistic when he refers to his nonsensical things in themselves. (R 321, 1907) Of course, the last sentence makes it unmistakably clear that Peirce specifically considered Kant's notion of an incognizable thing-in-itself to be irremediably rooted in nominalism. "Now this scholastic realism is usually set down as a belief in metaphysical fictions. But, in fact, a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true representation. Since, therefore, the word 'man' is true of something, that which 'man' means is real. The nominalist must admit that man is truly applicable to something; but he believes that there is beneath this a thing in itself, an incognizable reality. His is the metaphysical figment" (CP 5.312, EP 1:53, 1868). Even more strongly, "The absolutely unknowable is a non-existent existence. The Unknowable is a nominalistic heresy" (CP 6.492, c. 1896). As for "the syntactical element of iconicity in propositions," it is most obvious in Beta EG, where individuals are denoted by continuous heavy lines and concepts are attributed to them by attaching words to those lines, so we can literally see their logical relations. Frederik Stjernfelt observes in Sheets, Diagrams, and Realism in Peirce (2022) that this is unquestionably more iconic than the now-standard algebraic notation, where each variable denoting an individual must occur repeatedly--for every quantifier and predicate--instead of only once (pp. 138&172). Even in natural languages, Peirce observes a tendency for the syntax to embody "the flow of causation," giving the English sentence "Cain killed Abel" as an example (SWS 289-90, 1910 Nov 26-27)--it is just as compact and iconic as the corresponding graph in Beta EG, and much more so than spelling out ∃x ∃y (Cx ∧ Ay ∧ Kxy) as "there exists an x and there exists a y such that x is Cain and y is Abel and x stands in the relation of killing to y." On the other hand, Peirce recognizes elsewhere that certain arrangements of certain words are sometimes needed to represent logical relations in natural languages. He classifies these signs as "Copulants, which neither describe nor denote their Objects, but merely express universally the logical sequence of these latter upon something otherwise referred to. Such, among linguistic signs, as 'If ____ then ____,' '____ is ____,' '____ causes ____,' '____ would be ____,' '____ is relative to ____ for ____,' 'Whatever,' etc." (CP 8.350, EP 2:484, 1908 Dec 25). Even here, the syntax in each case exhibits a degree of iconicity--the antecedent precedes the consequent, the cause precedes the effect, the present state precedes the future state, etc. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 7:24 AM Jack Cody <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jon, list I don't think it has to do with nominalism. I mean here's a description definition of nominalism: ....doctrine<https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&sca_esv=b77b92e33e02ffaf&q=doctrine&si=AMgyJEtf_wwxVVftS7Kej8ZWRY4P7gIcRG6G4u_Xg6bPl-yTECp_j1PcSZ8A_HoklT5kOf-e7sx5pnGLU4SYl7N7RneLPTUGti5UYpxAP-1HHyFQ93RfNis%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5k4-R08uPAxX2XEEAHaPPEXwQyecJegQIFhAS> that universals<https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&sca_esv=b77b92e33e02ffaf&q=universals&si=AMgyJEt_i95eqLH3KOj-Ut-VGJJ77WvzNUmBAvuI6WxhNKmIrl95_LaTkh90xsuWN86qbxHRehXGcotf7kXJYuD2Q47X4KfHKs2n_0FRAkr_0gFs_REPyJw%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5k4-R08uPAxX2XEEAHaPPEXwQyecJegQIFhAT> or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. Only particular objects exist, and properties, numbers, and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. (Taken from Google). I mean, there's some sense in the above. You can go at it categorically and affirm some of the criteria easily enough. It would have to be a far more technical definition before I'd consent to that term and what it denotes being the difference though I do think you are right that there is a philosophical difference. I merely think that difference, if we made a decision tree, (and I've sort of done this already), would be between dynamic objects (and infinite inquiry, however one wishes to invoke it) and the ding-an-sich. The weird part, for me, is that I don't disagree about convergence — my own philosophical stance is that truth, as it is regardless, is always present but cannot be measured in opinions. The truth, as it is, (for me), is not so far from what Peirce postulates but I do not think it an object but rather a real "thing" which if you could understand it at all would be more an ideal (an actually extant/real ideal) than any object — and here you can invoke the regulative hope of Peirce in perhaps an interesting way? I don't have my core library to hand here but from memory Kant goes to great lengths to demonstrate why the ding-an-sich (and the general system he writes) is not nominalist. He knows, because of the dialogical context at the time, that they will charge him of such. But no serious scholar, surely, can read the Critique, et al, and return the verdict of nominalism (though you could read much twentieth century, or nineteenth, also, and actually return such a verdict). I'd have to know what is meant by it before I agreed, either way, as to whether that's the stumbling block for I consider myself a "realist", also, in the way I go about substantiating whatever it is I would claim. I'd ask that you clarify what you mean by iconic in the context of propositions. Yes, off-the-top, I would agree, but I'm not sure it is a genuine icon. If you could clarify the syntactical element of iconicity in propositions, without being overly verbose (i.e., assume I am a child who wants to know what you mean), then perhaps we could come to an agreement there also? Best, Jack _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>?subject=SIG%20peirce-l">UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. 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