Charles Sanders Peirce
1839-1914 · American Philosophy · Prominent
Peirce was an American logician whose test for any idea was a question: what practical difference would it make if it were true? None, and the idea is empty. He also worked out how signs carry meaning, sorting them into ones that resemble their object, ones that point at it, and ones that stand for it by convention. Pragmatism starts with him, and he counts among the founders of the modern study of signs.
Signature
The position Peirce is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- leans Realism
- Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- mildly leans Collectivism (37 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Beauty
- mildly leans Objective (63 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly between Unity and Multiplicity (46 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- mildly between Mastery and Harmony (54 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Conviction
- strongly leans Uncertain (4 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Peirce refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Symbolic Forms
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Quantum Indeterminism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Primordial Chaos / Other
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive / Spiral
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Productive Tension
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Agnostic
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Cognitive Theory of Emotion
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?