Dissertation
Abstract
An Interpretation Of Peirce's Ontology
by
Kelly Jo Wells
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1994
Pages: 00305
Institution:
Advisor: Adviser: RICHARD J. BLACKWELL
Source: DAI, 56, no. 06A, (1994): 2272
This dissertation has two fundamental objectives.
The first objective, which is undertaken in Part I, is to develop an
interpretation of the ontology of Charles Sanders Peirce. This interpretation
is needed because Peirce who founded pragmatism and at the same time espoused
realism has, because of this, been the subject of much misunderstanding. The
proposed interpretation of Part I thus stands
exegetically and philosophically entirely on its own merits.
The second objective,
undertaken in Part II, is to relate the interpretation
of Peirce given in Part I to what is identified as the thermodynamic
explanatory mode. The thermodynamic explanatory mode, it is argued, possesses
many of the characteristics of Peirce's architectonic approach to the
construction of philosophic systems. For example both the thermodynamic
explanatory mode and Peirce's architectonic incorporate the methodology of a
"closed system" which includes the relevant and excludes the
irrelevant. In addition both approaches are reductive in a similar manner. The
reductions proposed by the standards contained in the pragmatic maxim and
thermodynamic reduction, the goal of the thermodynamic explanatory mode, are
both explicitly qualitative. That is they both employ a method entirely
different from the traditional, atomistic or quantitative reduction. If the
pragmatic system developed in Part I is right, and if the association drawn
between it and the thermodynamic explanatory mode holds, then the suggestion
arises that the expanding use of the thermodynamic explanatory mode in
contemporary science can be understood as providing support for not only
scientific metaphysics as such but a metaphysics peculiar to the Peircean
ontology. However Part II stands as only an illustration of the interpretation o f Peirce's ontology
given in Part I, and its success or lack thereof can have no impact on the
validity of Part I.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: PHILOSOPHY
Accession
No: AAI9531427
Provider: OCLC