>"On a New List of Categories" is a compressed and difficult paper, but it
>has been my experience that the descriptions Peirce made of his categories
>late in life, such as in the 1903 lectures that John Sowa mentioned, tend
>to be somewhat murky unless one has an understanding of the history of the
>terms.
Yes, I certainly agree. I cannot completely blame Willam James for his
reaction to Peirce's presentation in his 1903 talks. It took me several
years of reading and rereading various writings by Peirce before I accepted
his categories myself. It's the kind of thing that you have to think through
yourself before you can begin to understand what CSP was getting at. But
after you work through it, you can't think about meaning, intentionality,
semantics, etc., in any other way.
Now whenever I look at anything on intentionality by people like
John Searle, Daniel Dennet, etc., I find it exceedingly shallow.
Jerry Fodor's ramblings about "The Language of Thought" are hopelessly
superficial compared to Peirce's semeiotic. And I get thoroughly
disgusted when I pick up something by Michael Dummet, who goes on
incessantly about Frege and never once mentions Peirce. Dummet is
not as shallow as some of the others, but he would be far, far more
insightful if he had read, reread, and meditated on what CSP had to say.
John Sowa