Jon, List Common sense is what a child learns before the age of six. The innovations of one generation become the common sense of the next generation. The common sense of European culture is based on a version of Plato-Aristotle that has been absorbed into the European languages and life. For Peirce, common sense included the New England version as enhanced with his father's tutoring in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. JAS: I believe that my proposed terminology is more consistent with the common-sense notion of continuity that Peirce persistently sought to capture. For Peirce, diagrammatic reasoning is the one and only method of reasoning. It involves analogies -- matching signs (diagrams or patterns) from memory to signs in the phaneron. There is no difference in principle between the most precise pattern matching in mathematics and the looser pattern matching in everyday life. Whenever Peirce made any statement about continuity in ordinary English, all his mathematical patterns were in the back of his mind. Even in the most informal comments, they served as a filter that blocked the typical mistakes of the "loose thinkers" and "metaphysicians" he was constantly criticizing. Fundamental principle: It's possible to get a rough idea of what Peirce meant by reading his words. But it's not possible to understand his words in depth or to make accurate inferences from them without understanding the details of the mathematics that blocked the mistakes. John
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