Beyond explication

meaning and habit-change in Peirce's pragmatism

Mats Bergman

pp. 171-197

in: Myrdene Anderson (ed), Consensus on Peirce's concept of habit, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

In the seminal essay "Pragmatism", Peirce discusses the end of interpretation in terms of the ultimate logical interpretant, which is varyingly characterized as habit or habit-change. While it is broadly accepted that his conception of pragmatic meaning rests on habit, the precise role of habit-change in his account of conceptual purport has not been examined in detail. In this chapter, I address this issue, which turns out to be closely linked to the pivotal question of the purpose of Peircean pragmatism itself. My primary aim is to demonstrate that Peirce's pragmatic account of the interpretant surpasses that of mere explication of habitual meaning, something that can be teased out from an embryonic account of three logical interpretants, sketched in "Pragmatism" and supported by certain suggestive references to first, second, and third pragmatistic interpretation in other writings. This investigation not only exposes the hitherto overlooked fact that Peirce recognizes a stage of conceptual clarification beyond that of the ultimate logical interpretant; it also paves the way for a reassessment of the significance of the pragmatist approach within a broader developmental-normative framework aimed at the improvements of our habits.

Cited authors

Peirce Charles Sanders