Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1938. / Typescript. Includes abstract and vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-132).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Frederick M. Kronz. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2006. / Title from screen (viewed on Apr. 30, 2007) Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-113)

This thesis has as its main aim to present Peirce's project as an organic system that is able to provide a reasonable account of our complex experience of freedom. For this reason, in the first chapter I will maintain that there are three conditions of possibility for human freedom that can be established according to an attentive reading of Aristotle's works, namely, the contingency of the world, the existence of a being who can take advantage of the world's contingency, and the capacity of a person to decide his or her own idea of Happiness or final good in a human community. These conditions can be tracked, consolidated, and improved through Peirce's philosophy. It can be tracked, first of all, in their common perspective regarding the world's element of contingency and openness to growth. Second, both philosophers think that human beings have the power to decide and actively participate in the world through experience and habit. Finally, both grant an important role to community in their philosophies in order to give sense to persons' actions. After establishing this background, I will focus primarily on the detailed presentation of the first condition of possibility for freedom, that is, in Peirce's idea of God as a metaphysical condition for freedom. In the second chapter, I will explore the historical development of Peirce's cosmology, in order to show that Peirce's idea of God is not the product of a stubborn religious prejudice but a genuine achievement of his philosophy that harmonizes with his general project of an evolutionary philosophy open to critique and working hand in hand with science. Finally, in the third chapter, I will try to clarify further Peirce's idea of God in dealing with some misconceptions generated by standard religious notions of God and by the philosophical conception of the Absolute. Thus, I hope to present Peirce's idea of God as a middle ground between these two approaches. I will argue that, on the one hand, he wanted to propose an idea of God that is open to scientific critique, as is the conception of the philosophical Absolute. On the other hand, he defended an idea of God that has bearing upon our conduct of life and, therefore, is sentimental and approachable as is the idea of God proposed at least by Christian religion. As a result, Peirce's God works as a condition of possibility for freedom insofar as he is the living idea of a developmental telos open to growth. That is, Peirce provided an idea of a cosmos that shares with us the general features of being reasonable and free.

The argument of this dissertation is that the full and continued importance of evolution to the foundations and practice of American philosophy has not been fully recognized. The years surrounding the first appearance of the theory of evolution on American shores were full of scientific uncertainty and philosophical excitement. William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey responded to this uncertainty and excitement with a unique interpretation of evolution that recognized the deeply constructive and interactive nature of all living beings. This living idea of evolution fed back into many aspects of their mature philosophies. The early historians and commentators of this period, such as Herbert W. Schneider, and Phillip P. Wiener, whatever their view of evolution, did not fully understand the change that had just taken place in philosophy and biological science. They missed the radical change in the causal structure of science and philosophy implied by evolutionary philosophy. Later commentators on this period, with a few notable exceptions, have continued this trend. This has contributed to a disconnect of James, Peirce, and Dewey from the larger narrative of evolutionary philosophy. In this dissertation I reconnect James, Peirce, and Dewey to this larger historical narrative. I show how the narrative they began is still vitally important to our understanding of American philosophy and the philosophy of evolution.

This dissertation inaugurates a study on the connections between the philosophies of Aristotle and Charles S. Peirce. It discusses, first, Peirce's reading of Aristotle's works and philosophy, with an emphasis on three studies by Peirce of a translation of Aristotle's Categories, a study on Aristotle's notion of priority, and a study on the current situation of the Corpus Aristotelicum. Secondly, this dissertation deals with logic, particularly induction, abduction, and analogy. In the case of induction, Peirce claimed that Aristotle stated perfectly the form of induction in Prior Analytics II 23. However, Aristotle's concept of induction is not univocal, but, I argue, it stands for six different notions. Peirce seemed to neglect such diversity in Aristotle's concept of induction, even though his own concept of induction is also diverse. Aristotle's six concepts of induction and Peirce's kinds of induction do not match each other, and therefore, the chapter on induction closes with a comparison between these notions in order to determine to what extent they resemble or differ from each other. With regard to abduction, Peirce claimed that it originated in Prior Analytics II, 25. I argue that Peirce was mistaken in focusing on this passage. This does not mean that Aristotle did not have an idea of abduction. As I will show, there are other passages in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, neglected by Peirce, in which it is possible to find such an analysis of this kind of reasoning. In the case of analogy, both philosophers have a similar and clear account of it as a compound or composite. However, whereas Aristotle claimed it to be composed of induction and deduction, Peirce included abduction too. Thirdly, I explore and compare their theories of cognition. Peirce did not feel indebted to Aristotle and, on the contrary, criticized the positions of the Greek philosopher. However, I will argue that their theories of cognition agree in their general features, namely, empiricism, realism, and synechism. Peirce's critiques of Aristotle are in part due to a misinterpretation of Aristotle's philosophy that took Aristotle to be, in modern terms, a dualist and a rationalist. In sum, I aim to show through these three features, the ways in which Peirce's philosophy is ‒and is not‒ aligned with that of Aristotle.

This dissertation considers the supportive and complementary relation between Mark Johnson’s embodied realism and Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do as a philosophical practice. In exploring this relationship, the emphasis on one’s embodiment condition and its relationship with metaphor and self-expression are the primary focus. First, this work involves providing an introduction to and an exploration of Johnson’s understanding of embodiment and his pragmatic realism with its foundation in metaphorical expression. Second, Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do serves as a kind of exemplification and possible case of effective metaphorical development founded upon a desire for metaphorical-based self-expression of a combat philosophy of embodiment. Third, an analysis of the convergence between the use of metaphor-based embodiment in Lee’s and Johnson’s philosophies is considered. In this respect, both views serve to promote communication and evolution of self-expression as a consequence of certain metaphors. In the final area of analysis, Peirce’s phenomenology offers an understanding of how Lee’s and Johnson’s metaphor-based embodiment provides a fuller context and awareness of the phenomena of embodiment.

The main thesis of this project is that Peirce’s theory of the categories can be applied in order to better explain and inform a robust theory of creative freedom. I defend the claim that those three categories are: Peirce’s idea of God, understood as his idea of an evolving cosmos open to growth, as firstness; self-control and our capacity to deliberate in order to make choices as secondness; and the idea of community as thirdness. However, the concept of God, what I consider the first category of freedom, is not the main focus of this project, since I have dealt with it at some length in my master thesis. In this dissertation, I provide a general overview of the context and the scholarly tradition of Peirce’s studies on ethics in order to show and justify my position in it. Moreover I explore the second category of freedom, i.e. self-control. First, I show the development of this idea under the context of the philosophical tradition that influenced Peirce; second, I deal with a reconstruction of the concept of self-control under Peirce’s theory of semeiotics; third, I attempt to explain self-control according to the three categories based on Edward Petry’s formulations; and fourth I explore the conception of the summum bonum, not only from the perspective of its development in Peirce’s theory but also in its function as the aesthetic value that directs and guides the manner in which self-control and its categories work out under the frame of a theory of creative freedom. Finally, I analyze the role of community in enabling and making freedom possible from the perspective of education, more specifically, its role of promoting truth, goodness, and beauty according to the normative sciences. The application of Peirce’s theory of the categories to a theory of creative freedom provides some advantages over other kind of approaches. If the three Peircean categories can be applied to the way in which we experience freedom, then the possible theories of ethics can be reduced to seven in the same way that Peirce’s model of classification catalogues all possible systems of metaphysics. Furthermore, it means that all other systems of ethics that neglect one of these conditions would be for Peirce degenerate in some respect. Although I do not explore this account in greater detail here, as I see it, this proposal provides a very useful framework. Thus, I hope to provide a robust perspective on freedom as creativity, where positive freedom (not just the negative freedom emphasized by North American cultures) plays an important role in acknowledging that a community acquires a responsibility for the well being and flourishing of its people, and therefore, the role of education, and community become also crucial.

This thesis aims to reexamine the index as a sign that generates meaning in the sculptural oeuvre of contemporary British artist Antony Gormley. The artist has consistently proclaimed his work to be indexical but has never offered clarification of the term. Rather, he adheres to the definition developed in the late nineteenth century by the term's originator, Charles Sanders Peirce. This is problematic because it gives false meaning to the indexical sign in a contemporary context. By comparing Gormley's use of the term in his sculptural practice to Peirce's theories and those of art historian Rosalind Krauss, who was the first to significantly and convincingly relate the index to art, this study will attempt to provide a contemporized definition of the index. This thesis aims to offer a clarification in the meaning of Antony Gormley's sculpture and demonstrate the index's ability to offer resolution to what is contemporary about contemporary art.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Filosofía / En la literatura actual el problema de la abducción ha sido abordado desde numerosos ángulos y disciplinas, catalogándose los más diversos fenómenos bajo el rótulo de ‘abducción’. En lógica formal se ha considerado a la abducción como una forma de razonamiento donde no se cumple la propiedad de la ‘monotonía’; desde la psicología computacional y la inteligencia artificial, se ha enfocado a la abducción desde el llamado ‘problema del marco’ —cómo actualizar la base de datos después de una intervención en el mundo—; para la filosofía del lenguaje se ha considerado a la abducción como un proceso de interpretación semiótico. En todas estas aproximaciones se alude a Peirce —y, eventualmente, a otras fuentes históricas— fundamentalmente para mostrar las atractivas intuiciones subyacentes a la idea de una forma de inferencia como la descrita en la sección anterior y para justificar, a continuación, la aplicación que puede dársele en el campo peculiar de interés. La presente investigación pretende aportar a esa discusión identificando algunas de las ideas filosóficas más básicas que inspiraron a Peirce a plantear el concepto de razonamiento hipotético o abductivo. Más específicamente, examino sus orígenes atendiendo a la influencia del marco de la filosofía de Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sobre la génesis conceptual de esa forma de inferencia. La investigación se centrará en el primer ciclo de escritos filosóficos y lógicos de Peirce, publicados entre los años 1867 y 1869 en los Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences y en el Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Estos escritos corresponden a lo que Murray Murphey ha denominado el “segundo sistema” de Peirce, caracterizado por su adhesión a la silogística, y por la configuración de un sistema propio en el rechazo de lo que llamaba el ‘espíritu del cartesianismo’ y en la apropiación del kantismo. Se hará referencia, por su supuesto, a material anterior y posterior, pero ese será el centro bibliográfico del análisis, pues tales escritos muestran de modo más directo la filiación kantiana de la tesis de la tricotomía así como del concepto de un tercer modo de inferencia.