From the Chain to the Cable: Peirce's Theory of Inquiry Through His Metaphors
LXIX Estudios Filosoficos 229-251, 2020
25 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2020
Date Written: 2020
Abstract
Peirce’s work is replete with marvelous metaphors; and many of these metaphors are philosophically deep and illuminating. My initial reflections on the role of metaphor in philosophical inquiry will draw on Peirce’s ideas both about the relation of thought and language and about vagueness, indeterminacy, and precision. Then I explore Peirce’s theory of inquiry, starting with some important metaphors from his extraordinarily fertile critique of Cartesianism); and next turn to the deep and subtle metaphors that inform Peirce’s mature understanding of doubt, the spirit of inquiry, the method of experience and reason, the community of inquirers, and the impediments we put in our own way. And finally, by way of conclusion, I explore some significant advantages of Peirce’s approach over the epistemology predominant in the philosophical mainstream today, showing that, in this as in so much, he was ahead of our time as well as of his own.
Keywords: Peirce, Metaphor, Theory of Inquiry, Perception, Logic, Epistemology
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