C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) was probably the first significant American philosopher, and many would probably regard him as still the most significant. This article is the first and sharpest statement of the position that gave rise to the movement “Pragmatism,” which became widely known through the work of William James (1842–1910) and John Dewey (1859–1952).

The article is one of a series of six, and Peirce’s most substantial completed work appears in this and a few other series of articles and lectures. You can find the whole of this series in HTML format on the course Canvas site. The first article in the series (“The Fixation of Belief”) is also widely known and influential; and the last contains a three-fold classification of inference (something that Peirce presented also on other occasions) that is also an important contribution.

Each of the two sections in this first assignment has two parts. The first section begins with a critique the 17th-century rationalists’ ideas of clarity and distinctness and ends with a discussion of the value of clarity in ideas. In spite of Peirce’s critique, his interests were as close to those of 17th and 18th century philosophy as anyone of his era, and what those philosophers had to say about “ideas” is the place to look first for connections with what philosophers in the 20th century had to say about meaning.

The heart of the article is the second section, which begins with recap of ideas from the first article in the series and ends with the view for which the label “pragmatism” came to be used. That view is stated most explicitly in the short paragraph at the end of the section, but you should think about its development over the course of the preceding several paragraphs.

You will need to give Peirce (or his editors) the benefit of the doubt regarding the diagrams of figures 1 and 2. Apparently, each is intended to be the result of rotating the other by 45°. Peirce’s example of transubstantiation also may not be an especially helpful one—and he’ll offer others later in the article—but it does anticipate attacks on metaphysical disputes as meaningless that became a feature not only of later pragmatism but also of other movements that we will consider. One response to him would come from a “realist” (in one of the many senses of that term) who would hold that there can be a difference in underlying realities that is not reflected in differences of “sensible effects.”