Dissertation Abstract
Author: Maroosis, James Dennis
Title: Further Consequences Of Human Embodiment: A Description Of Time And Human
Existence As Disclosed At The Origin Of Peirce's Philosophy Of Community
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1981
Pages: 00001
Institution: UNIVERSITY
OF TORONTO (CANADA); 0779
Source: DAI, 42, no. 10A, (1981): 4476
Abstract: In three articles published by C. S. Peirce
in 1868 "Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," "Some
Consequences for Four Incapacities" and "Grounds of Validity of the
Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four Incapacities" Peirce examines
several consequences that follow from four incapacities of man's cognitive
faculties. These four incapacities are (1) hat of immediate perception or
introspection; (2) that of any cognition not logically determined through a
history of previous cognition; (3) that of thinking without thought-signs, and
(4) that of conceiving anything incognizable.
In this dissertation we shall use the
first two of these three articles as guides to initate a further description of
these consequences that will describe the nature of man's cognitional existence
and the cognitional character of man's temporal being in the world. Given
Peirce's four incapacities, this description will analyze the type of activity
that human cognition must be understood to be, and it will interpret the effect
of this description in such a way as to determine how man can claim to
understand the meaning of the reality of those things he is able to understand,
as well as his understanding, of himself as that being who can articulate the
meaning of those things.
The purpose of this dissertation,
then, is to set forth our own description of further consequences of Peirce's
four incapacities. In this dissertation we shall attempt to make clear the
purpose towards which and the manner in which we understand Peirce's answer to
the question "what is man?" and the philosophical consequences of
Peirce's answer to this question.
The strategy of this dissertation will
be to delineate Peirce's critique of the psycho-physiological limitations of
man's cognitive faculties and then to describe what we see to be the further philosophical
consequences of these limitations vis a vis Peirce's critique of intuition and
introspection, the historical location of his own thinking, the theory of
thought-signs, the theory of community and reality and the theory of man.
The delineation of these five points
will reveal that there exists a fundamental reciprocal relationship between
time and being at the heart of Peirce's own description of cognition,
community, reality, and man. The nature of this relationship is such that
whereas time is not "a being" and beings are not time nevertheless
time and being belong together within any description of man's cognitive
capabilities. Once this has been established, we will describe man as a member
of a community and describe man's own understanding of himself from within our
understanding of this reciprocal relationship between time and being.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: PHILOSOPHY
Accession
No: AAG0537027
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations