Abstract
In comparing Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a Logic of Science with the modern ‘Logic of Science’ one might find the profoundest point of difference between them in the fact that one is an analysis of ‘consciousness’, the other an analysis of ‘language’.
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References
Cp. K.-O. Apel: ‘Der philosophische Hintergrund der Entstehung des Pragmatismus bei Ch.S. Peirce’, in: Ch.S. Peirce: Schriften, Frankf. A. M., 1967; und K.-O. Apel: ‘Peirce’s Denkweg vom Pragmatismus zum Pragmatizismus’, in: Ch.S. Peirce: Schriften II, Frankf. A. M., 1970.
Quotations of Peirce are, as usual, from Collected Papers, vol. I-VI (ed. by Ch. Harts- horne and P. Weiss), Harvard University Press, 1931–35, 21960, vol. VII-VIII, (ed. by A.W.Burks, 1958, 21960, as for example: CP, 5.263 = Collected Papers, vol. V, paragraph 263.
Peirce had discovered the later so called propositional functions under the title Rhemata, cp. CP, 3.420. - Cp. J. v. Kempski: Ch.S. Peirce und der Pragmatismus, Stuttgart 1952, s. 55ff.
Thus the young Peirce writes in 1861: “Psychological transcendentalism says that the results of metaphysics are worthless, unless the study of consciousness produces a warrant for the authority of consciousness. But the authority of consciousness must be valid within the consciousness or else no science, not even psychological transcen-dentalism, is valid; for every science supposes that and depends upon it for validity”. (Quotation from Murphey, The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy, p. 26.)
Quoted from Murphey, p. 65.
A decisive nuance of Peirce’s interpretation of Kant is concealed by the fact that Kant’s term Vorstellung is usually translated into English by ‘representation’. With Peirce, however, such a translation already implies a semiotical transformation of the very conception.
Quoted from Murphey, p. 89. Cf. Peirce, 5.289 n.: “ just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought and not that thoughts are in us”.
Peirce understood this discovery as an interpretation of Aristotle. Cp. his Memoranda Concerning the Aristotelian Syllogism, Nov. 1866 (CP, 2. 792–807 ).
Cp. the formulation in 5.407 (1878!).
See for instance the following argumentation of 1905 (5.525): Kant (whom I more than admire) is nothing but a somewhat confused pragmatist… but in half a dozen ways the Ding an sich has been proved to be nonsensical; and here is another way. It has been shown (3.417) that in the formal analysis of a proposition, after all that words can convey has been thrown into the predicate, there remains a subject that is indescribable and that can only be pointed at or otherwise indicated, unless a way, of finding what is referred to, be prescribed. The Ding an sich, however, can neither be indicated nor found. Consequently, no proposition can refer to it, and nothing true or false can be predicated of it. Therefore, all references to it must be thrown out as meaningless surplusage. But when that is done, we see clearly that Kant regards Space, Time, and his Categories just as everybody else does, and never doubts or has doubted their objectivity. His limitation of them to possible experience is pragmatism in the general sense; and a pragmaticist, as fully as Kant, recognizes the mental ingredient in these concepts…. Cp. 5. 452.
Cp. above p. 97 ff. about the cognitive function of the ‘indices’ and ‘icons’.
Peirce writes in 1861: “… Faith is not peculiar to or more needed in one province of thought than another. For every premise we require faith and no where else is there any room for it. This is overlooked by Kant and others who drew a distinction between knowledge and faith”. (Quotation from Murphey, loc. cit. p. 26f.).
Cp. to this topic the Dissertation of G. Wartenberg: Logischer Sozialismus. Die Transformation der Kantschen Transzendentalphilosophic durch Ch.S. Peirce, Frankfurt a.M. 1970, (forthcoming).
For a criticism in Peirce’s ‘Scientism’ cp. G. Wartenberg, loc. cit.; furthermore K.-O. Apel: ‘Szientismus oder transzendentale Hermeneutik?’ in: Hermeneutik und Dialektik, Tubingen, 1970.
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© 1972 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
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Apel, KO. (1972). From Kant to Peirce: The Semiotical Transformation of Transcendental Logic. In: White Beck, L. (eds) Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress. Synthese Historical Library, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3099-1_5
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