Signs of Logic

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the principal subject of this book, was one of the most profound and prolific thinkers and scientists to have come out of the United States. His pragmatic logic and scientific methodology largely represent the application of interactive and intercommunicative triadic processes, best viewed as strategic and dialogic conceptualisations of logical aspects of thought, reasoning and action. These viewpoints also involve pragmatic issues in communicating linguistic signs, and are unified in his diagrammatic logic of existential graphs. The various game-theoretic approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of signs and language, to the theory of communication, and to the evolutionary emergence of signs, provide a contemporary toolkit, the relevance of which Peirce envisioned to a wondrous extent.

This work sheds considerable new light on these and other aspects of Peirce's philosophy and his pragmatic theory of meaning. Many of his most significant writings in this context reflect his later thinking, covering roughly the last 15-20 years of his life, and they are still unpublished. Drawing comprehensively from his unpublished manuscripts, the book offers a fresh and rich picture of this remarkable man's original involvement with logical aspects of thought in action.

Zusammenfassung

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was one of the United States' most original and profound thinkers, and a prolific writer. Peirce's game theory-based approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of signs and language, to the theory of communication, and to the evolutionary emergence of signs, provide a toolkit for contemporary scholars and philosophers. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, the book offers a rich, fresh picture of the achievements of a remarkable man.

Inhalt

Peirce.- An introduction to peirce's logic and semeiotics.- From pragmatism to the pragmatics of communication.- Peirce's game-theoretic ideas in logic.- Moving pictures of thought I.- Moving pictures of thought II.- Existence, constructivism, models, modalities.- Games.- Spiel-trieb operationalised: semantic games in logic and language.- Logic, language games and ludics.- Dialogue foundations and informal logic.- Games as formal tools versus games as explanations.- Language and Communication.- The evolution of semantics and language games for meaning.- Common ground, relevance and other notions of pragmatics: from peirce to grice and beyond.- Peirce's theory of communication and its contemporary relevance.- Games VIS-À-VIS multi-agent systems: a peircean manifesto.- Final words.