Just a quick note to remark that Creath is clearly right about there being a close relationship between the New Elements and the 1903 Harvard Lectures. Creath gives some indication of what that is, but I won't attempt to describe that in more detail myself at the moment since it will take some time for me to re-read the lectures closely enough to see what light that might throw on some of the puzzling things said in New Elements. A quick browse, though, verifies what Creath says. One version of the lectures can be found in Vol. 5 of the Collected Papers and there is also a volume edited and with an extensive commentary by Patricia Ann Turrisi called _Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism_, " with an extensive commentary by Turrisi as well. (SUNY Press 1997)
I still think, though, that there might also be a connection with Peirce's reviews of Royce's The World and the Individual, which may help account for some of the things happening in the New Elements, One reason for thinking this is Peirce's use of the example of the self-representing map in the Harvard lectures, which was first used by Royce in one of the supplementary essays in Vol 1 of The World and the Individual, and the other and more substantial reason -- the reason I actually had in mind -- is Royce's long argument for absolute idealism in Vol. 1, using the notions of internal and external meaning, which are comparable to Peirce's notions of signification and denotation (intension and extension, sense and reference, etc.). Peirce does not agree with Royce on this, identifying himself as a "conditional" idealist rather than an "absolute" idealist -- but still an idealist -- and the crux of the argument, as I recall it, has to do with the fact that Royce sets out and purports to show that although we can begin by drawing a distinction between internal meaning and external meaning, we supposedly find that there really is no such thing as external meaning, i.e. reference is only a sort of illusion: all meaning is internal. Thus Peirce's opposition to Royce at that time is that he, Peirce, regards reference or denotation as incapable of being reduced to connotation or sense or internal meaning: i.e. there is no object, just the idea. This is of course a very fundamental difference between their views at that time. Now in calling himself a conditional idealist Peirce was presumably making reference to the pragmatic maxim, which correlates the concept being defined with a conditional relationship (i.e. with a consequence or if-then relationship), so that Peirce was implicitly opposing himself to Royce as a pragmatist vs. a non-Pragmatist. This was around 1900 but that was really only an early stage of the evolving Peirce-Royce relationship which resulted finally in Royce becoming, in his own words, a kind of disciple of Peirce by the time of Peirce's death, incorporating sign-interpretational conceptions into his own work in his late years, publicizing Peirce in his university seminars, etc.. How faithfully this was done and when, exactly, these changes in his philosophy were taking place I do not know because I don't know Royce's later work well enough to track changes in it to bring it into conformity with Peirce's view. But they were happening and Royce was openly urging study of Peirce on others in the yearly and highly prestigious university seminars on philosophy of science he was holding at Harvard, traveling back and forth to Milford during the last years of Peirce's life, and so forth. And what I am suggesting is that at least some of what I find most puzzling in what Peirce is saying in certain places in the New Elements seems to me to be being said by him as a kind of emulation of Royce's way of framing those grand questions about being, purpose, perfection, entelechy, and so forth. I am not suggesting that Peirce was changing his view but that he was filling it out in certain ways so that his view and Royce's would be regardable or comparable with use of a common vocabulary, expressing to some extent a shared sensibility, etc. There are a number of different themes mentioned in the New Elements which Peirce shared with Royce To me these are important clues as to what Peirce was saying and why he was saying it. Does anyone know of anyone who is working on a overall comparison of Royce and Peirce, i.e. of Peirce's influence on Royce? It turned out that this influence not only did Pierce no good, as regards the problem of getting himself into the mainstream of academic philosophy, but may have been -- this is my guess -- the main reason why Peirce was instead moved inexorably out of the mainstream, marginalized with increasing calumny, his Nachlass treated with contempt while being raided shamelessly while under the "protection" of the department, etc., since Royce died only two years after Peirce and at a time when American philosophy and intellectual culture was becoming radically anti-Germanic (because of the War) hence radically hostile to anything smacking of idealism, which was the mark of Germanic philosophy at that time. Russell moved in on American philosophy during that period, with his talent for self-promotion at the expense of others, eclipsing Peirce as a logician, and I suspect that the appointment in the 1920's of Whitehead to what was, in effect, Royce's old position at Harvard as the master figure of philosophy of science had the same effect on Peirce considered as a philosopher of science, though it turned out to be Carnap and the Wiener Kreis people generally who captured both logic and philosophy of science in the 30's. In any case, Royce became such an albatross for Peirce -- this is, as I said, my guess -- that by the mid-30's even the references to Peirce in the footnotes of others who were working out of his ideas largely disappeared in new editions of their work. Just how deep and effective that sea-change of opinion was -- I mean the sea-change at the time of World War One and occasioned by it -- is indicated, I believe, by the fact that even today there seems to be a strong reluctance on the part of Peirce enthusiasts to have anything to do with Royce's work. The suggestion of Creath about Aristotelian conceptions looks promising, too, but I have no comment on that at this time. Joe Ransdell ----- Original Message ----- From: "csthorne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 9:33 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? It does seem consistent, however, with the Harvard lectures of 1903 and, in particular, with Peirce's effort to systematically classify metaphysics there. In "The Seven Systems of Metaphysics" Peirce again declares himself an Aristotelian, praises Aristotle for recognizing at least two grades of being, and then indicates that Aristotle "glimpsed" the distinction between actuality and entelechy, complete reality. This all seems consistent to me with Peirce's long effort to move us beyond nominalism and existence to deeper notions of reality. The "New Elements," in general, is shot through with efforts to recast Aristotelian common-places. I'm reading the distinction between Theory and Practice at the beginning of III.2. as picking up on Aristotle's two ideal men: the man of contemplation and the man of appropriate action. That is, semiotics allows us either to perfectly (in the long run) perceive complete reality; it also allows us (along with the rest of the semiotic universe) to make that reality. Creath Thorne -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.14.22/239 - Release Date: 1/24/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
