“Thereupon I thought it high time to give my method a less distinguished designation; and I rechristened it pragmaticism.” C.S. Peirce
This essay’s intent is to distinguish the issue of psychologism from Pragmaticism by contrasting it with two other modes of reasoning; deduction and induction.
Logic is the most difficult science in that it has to do not with intuitions - and not even with abstract sensory representations as in geometry - but with pure abstractions. It requires a certain strength and versatility to retreat into pure thought, to hold on to it steadfastly and to move about in it. On the other hand, logic could be considered the easiest science, because its content is nothing but one’s own thinking and its familiar determinations, and these are at once the simplest and the elementary sort of determinations. (1)
Hegel is the sine qua non of relevant history to our problem. To interpret the most difficult to the easiest semantics would take you through Godel’s theorems. However this is not our subject. The proper object to be observed is (I.O.)“its familiar determinations.”
Nietzsche no doubt saw past the limits of deductive reasoning, with the help of Schopenhauer, and was inspired to go beyond it to create, intentionally or not, psychologistic thought. He understood the resentment built up in formal reasoning and how it defeated its author, and thought how this could be used to turn against those without the will to “steadfastly” (past) and resolutely (future) “move about in it.”
Heidegger took a step further into the body politic with Dasein. By this time inductive methods were distinguishing their-self from the Tick-Tock of Hegelianism. Now the “familiar determinations” could be directed toward resolute and “authentic” conditioning (induction) with Care.
Which brings us to our problem. To reiterate Peirce’s quote about distinguishing the less-ness of Pragmaticism requires us to understand the Would-be interpretant. The hard-ness of a diamond carries its semantics into future instantiations that are met with in experience. This type of semantic content is future oriented and has no Grue about it. It is abductive and distinguishes itself from the psychologistic forms of thought Peirce was reacting to when he formulated a term that would-be safe from kidnappers.
Peirce’s abduction takes us deeper into the ontological priority of being. Heidegger may have pointed out a way, but surly got lost in fashionable “poetic” forms of thought that could be directed with Nietzschean intent to zap insects: deconstruction as a form of self undoing. No singular value to hold onto as you sail the abyss of Advaita? Good luck swimming: Nietzsche and Heidegger will throw you a life preserver. Oh the perverse irony! Or, at least a peculiar interpretation of them.
Abduction is the path to Antahkarana, the affinity of phenomena: fundamental ontology that shedd’s psychologism.
Perhaps a neologism is needed “shedd” =df. future abducted semantic content.
Pragmaticism, then, is a theory of logical analysis, or true definition; and its merits are greatest in its application to the highest metaphysical conceptions. At the same time, these merits can only be appreciated as the result of long training. C.S.P.
N.B. High and Low, less and more are not intended to spin this essay. It is still to be worked out in a more apt theory.
1) Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, et al. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline. Part 1, Science of Logic. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
