Philosophy

Charles Sanders Peirce

1839 to 1914, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

The founder of pragmatism and modern semiotics - meaning lies in practical effects, inquiry is fallible yet self-correcting, and truth is the opinion fated to be agreed on by all who investigate.

Start learning Charles →

Lessons

The Pragmatic Maxim: How to Make Our Ideas Clear

Peirce’s founding rule of pragmatism - that the whole meaning of any conception lies in its conceivable practical effects - and the three grades of clearness that lead up to it, grounded in his theory that a belie…

The Fixation of Belief

Peirce’s account of how we settle opinion: inquiry begins in the irritation of doubt and ends in the calm of belief, and he ranks four methods of fixing belief - tenacity, authority, the a priori method, and the m…

Abduction and Fallibilism

Peirce’s logic of discovery and his theory of knowledge’s limits: abduction , the reasoning that forms explanatory hypotheses and is the only inference that introduces a new idea, paired with fallibilism , t…

Signs: Icon, Index, and Symbol

Peirce’s semiotics - his general theory of signs - built on the triadic relation of sign, object, and interpretant, and his famous classification of signs into icons (which resemble), indices (which connect), and…

Truth and the Community of Inquiry

Peirce’s pragmatic account of truth and reality: truth is the opinion fated to be ultimately agreed upon by all who investigate, and the real is its object - a reality independent of what any particular mind think…

More in Philosophy

AristotlePlatoImmanuel KantFriedrich NietzscheConfuciusSenecaEpictetusMarcus Aurelius
← All thinkers

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.