On 1/1/2018 7:07 AM, Auke van Breemen wrote:
I am quite sure Peirce felt rationally necessitated to be of the opinion that it is not allowed to favor his suggestions after they pop up only on the basis that they are written by him.
I agree. But Peirce would also insist that readers should make a clear distinction between his exact words and anybody else's interpretation. Note how strongly he objected to the version of pragmatism by William James. He even replaced the word 'pragmatism' with 'pragmaticism' to avoid any confusion. As I said in my note about ways of studying Peirce, the first is trying to determine exactly what he said. But there may be 5, 7, or indefinitely (infinitely?) many ways of interpreting, building on, using, and extending his work.
Filling in gaps tentatively due to inaccessible manuscripts offers a chance to check our understanding at some future time, as well of the text as of the object the text tries to understand.
Yes, of course. There has been a century of developments that Peirce could not have known. Even for those subjects he knew very well, he did not provide an exhaustive analysis of every detail. We must fill in those gaps, but we also have to be clear about the sources. And by the way, I like to quote a comment that Hilary Putnam made about Aristotle: "Whenever I become clearer about a subject, I find that Aristotle has also become clearer." I would make that same comment about Peirce. John
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