Peirces 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 developing a philosophical system that addresses the fundamental problems of Western metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. Although never formally completed, what emerges from Peirce’s writings is a distinctive system, through an innovative semiotic or theory of signs and cognition, that combines with a robustly realist metaphysics that emphasizes the mind-independence of laws and other universals. Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its Originality explains this marriage of empiricism with realism by tracing the roots of Peirce’s 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. In Peirce’s Empiricism, Aaron Bruce Wilson defends an interpretation of Peirce’s philosophical work as forming a systematic whole, and develops the connections between Peirce, Reid, and the British empiricists. Wilson provides focused analyses of Peirce’s accounts of experience, habit, perception, semeiosis, truth, and ultimate ends. This book will be of great value to students and scholars with interests in Peirce, American philosophy more broadly, modern philosophy, and semiotics.

Contents: Overview, Pierce on Belief, Pierce on Feeling and Metaphysics, James on Consciousness and Truth, Dewey on Society, Dewey: Experience and Pragmatism, Conclusion.

Though Aristotle is often thought to be an empiricist--someone who thinks all knowledge is somehow derived from perception--the philosopher is often thought to have little to say on these matters. Gasser-Wingate here offers a sustained examination of these discussions and their epistemological, psychological, and ethical implications. It defends an interpretation of Aristotle as a moderate sort of empiricist, who thinks we can develop sophisticated forms of knowledge by broadly perceptual means, and that we therefore share an important part of our cognitive lives with nonrational animals, but al.

Volume 10 brings together Russell's writings on ethics, politics, religion and academic philosophy.During the period covered by this volume, Bertrand Russell first retired from and then resumed his philosophical career. In 1927 he published two philosophy books, The Analysis of Matter and An Outline of Philosophy. His next book in academic philosophy, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, was not published until 1940.Yet, Russell published a significant amount of essays and popular books between 1927 and 1946, mostly to finance the running of Beacon Hill School, and his growing family. Those years also saw his break-up with Dora Russell, his marriage to Patricia (Peter) Spence and a move of the family to the United States.Volume 10 brings together Russell's writings on ethics, politics, religion and academic philsophy. It is an invaluable guide to the thought and development of one of the most famous philosophers of this century.

This title anticipates and explains the post-structuralist turn to empiricism. Presenting a reading of David Hume's philosophy, the work assists in understanding the progress of Deleuze's thought.