Ivan Mladenov

1. Conceptualizing Symbols and Metaphors from Everyday Life

(On Charles Peirce’s philosophy)

We conceptualize the world of ideas to orient ourselves in it. However, we conceptualize even at the most elementary level. Any coordinated movement of our bodies implies that a lightning-fast concept has been performed in our mind and we have acted according to this short scheme that we received from the mind. We conceptualize the symbols and the signs we constantly perceive, which means that we are permanently de-coding and de-ciphering the realm of signs we are facing.

Why "metaphor"? Simply, because most of our thinking flows as a permanent substituting process and we know something by comparing and relating it to something else, which is more familiar to us. Then we conceptualize the newly received knowledge, that is, we "store it" in our memory and it becomes a part of our previous experience.

This is a philosophy about the nature of scientific metaphors and how they extract disclosed knowledge or, to put it differently, it develops metaphors based on Charles Peirce’s philosophical concepts, but the purpose is the same. These are either some of his well-known ideas, which are elaborated according to their own implications, or abandoned notions carefully exposed and applied to contemporary theories.

 

Course requirements

The course combines lectures with discussion. The latter is based on primary source readings and written focus questions. Each student is required to do a 5 minutes’ oral presentation on selected items based on the current topic. Grading will be calculated mostly on the base of attendance and participation. A mid-term paper and a final paper are mandatory. These should not exceed 5 pages. 

Learning outcomes:

• • Students who will successfully complete this course will be able to strengthen their overall abilities of decision-making by mastering strategies of thinking and reasoning.
• • The chief result of training in pragmatic thinking would be the clarification of thought. This is Peirce’s own final goal, expressed succinctly in his most celebrated essay “How to Make Our Thoughts Clear” (1878).
• • We require mutually transformable and translatable terms necessary for any kind of communication and better understanding. Pragmatism provides such skills, while enriching and developing our orientation in the realm of ideas.

 

General structure of the course:

Part I. Theory of sign and theory of knowledge

Is there any difference between “what we know” and “how we learn”? Does information represent knowledge? Why do we want to know something? Theories of knowledge: Pre-Socratic era, Stoics, Ancient theories of knowledge. Scholasticism. British empiricism. “The Road Not Taken”: semiotics vs. philosophy.

 

Part II. Theory and a method

The demise of the “great systems” in the 19th century and the search for methods. Descartes, Kant and the German classical idealism (overview).

 

Part III. Charles Peirce’s philosophy and general semiotics. Categories and sign system.

The “continental semiotics”; its dyadic character and structuralism. Charles Peirce’s three- category thinking and his division of signs. What was innovative in Peirce’s 3 categories in comparison to earlier philosophers? Logic and semiotics.

 

Part IV. Conceptualizing as a method of deriving meaning. Pragmatism and concepts.

Universals and particulars. The difference between metaphorical and non-metaphorical discourse.  Intuition and knowledge.  Conceptualizing everyday symbols and metaphors –

students’ choice.

 

 

2.Ideas of Knowledge

We will discuss the basic theories of knowledge from their classical Greek origin to contemporary views. Starting with the pre-Socratics, we proceed to the classical legacy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. We then continue through the Medieval Ages, focusing on the differences between Byzantine philosophy, Classical Greek thinkers and their Roman successors. We will overview the works of Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham and continue to the British empiricists: Locke, Berkeley and Hume. We will follow Descartes and Kant to the German idealists and review the so-called “modern philosophy” of the 19th century, focusing on Charles S. Peirce. We will then overview today’s most significant theories of knowledge.

 

Course requirements:

The course combines lectures with discussion. The latter is based on primary source readings and written focus questions. Each student is required to do a 5 minutes’ oral presentation on selected items based on the current topic. Grading will be calculated mostly on the base of attendance and participation. A mid-term paper and a final paper are mandatory. These should not exceed 5 pages. It is recommended that each student choose an author or a period on which to write a paper at the beginning of the semester.

 

Learning outcomes:

The main purpose of the course is to provide a frame for all kinds of knowledge the students will require in their future studies. They will obtain an overview of the general cognitive ideas from the classics to current views and thus increase their competence in what is substantial in the humanities in general. This will improve their orientation in the realm of ideas.

 

General structure of the course:

 

Part I. Introducing criteria of knowledge as a historical category

Aristotelian innate pursuit of knowledge: why do we all want to know something? What knowledge did people possess before it was recorded? Was this a knowledge or it was a collection of instincts? Poetry, narration, folklore: forms of preserving and transmitting knowledge. The emergence of philosophy, what was the need for it?

Part II. Medieval Ages and knowledge

Appropriating knowledge as theology: achieving knowledge as the summum bonum of searching for God. A new dialogue: Man-God. Monotheism, Neo-Platonism, scholasticism: knowledge as re-interpretation of Aristotle. East and West of Rome.

 

Part III. British Empiricism and early pragmatic thinking

Locke, Berkeley, Hume: putting knowledge on a new and social ground. Perceiving vs. reflecting; is generality a “real” thing or a figment of our minds? Abstract ideas and God’s mind. The earliest mention of semiotics as a doctrine of signs: the not-taken road of knowledge. The big geographical discoveries. Towards Enlightenment.

 

Part IV. Ideas in progress

German classical idealism and phenomenology. The categories and the problem of the universals. The idea of knowledge’s growth. The developmental theories. American pragmatism and analytic philosophy. American and European semiotics. Modern theories of knowledge. Is information knowledge?

 

 

3.Pragmatism and Semiotics

The most outstanding American contribution to philosophy is no doubt the doctrine of Pragmatism. The focus of this course will therefore be on pragmatism and the ideas of its founder, Charles S. Peirce. The American polymath and prolific scientist, considered by many as the greatest American philosopher, invented the concept of pragmatism in 1870. Peirce is also the founder of American semiotics, which is simply a terminological portmanteau wrap for its philosophy. We will look at the European tradition and its linguistic orientation, which originated with Ferdinand de Saussure and flourished in the 1960s, alongside Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur and Julia Kristeva.

We will discuss other historically well-formed schools, such as: M. M. Bakhtin and the Moscow-Tartu School with its famous notion of the “Semiosphere” and its recent inquiries into natural sign-phenomena. Students will also become familiar with Umberto Eco’s semiotics and some Scandinavian schools. Our main aim will be to apply some avant-garde methods of modern semiotics for conceptualizing the world of ideas.

 

Course requirements:

The course combines lectures with discussion. The latter is based on primary source readings and written focus questions. Each student is required to do a 5 minutes’ oral presentation on selected items based on the current topic. Grading will be calculated mostly on the base of attendance and participation. A mid-term paper and a final paper are mandatory. These should not exceed 5 pages. It is recommended that each student choose an author or a period on which to write a paper at the beginning of the semester.

 

Learning outcomes:

Students will get a glimpse of the latest trends in the theory and methodology of pragmatism and semiotics. They will develop their own stance on what is substantial in the humanities in general. This will hone their skills in creating concepts and improve their ability to orient themselves in the realm of ideas. These new competencies will strengthen their decision- making abilities in their areas of interest.

 

General structure of the course:

 

Part I. Limits of Thought and Borders of Knowledge

The origin and rise of pragmatism due to Charles Peirce’s philosophy; why is it worthwhile to study a century-old philosophical system? Peirce’s famous “pragmatic maxim”: its development, distortion and contemporary status. Considering reality from the pragmatic perspective. The followers of pragmatism and Peirce’s attitude towards them. Humanism, Instrumentalism and Conceptualism. From pragmatism to pragmaticism. The consequences of the “maxim” of belief, meaning and truth.

 

Part II. Charles Peirce’s pragmatism and the shift to his “semiotic”. Categories and sign system.

The three-category thinking of Charles Peirce and his division of signs. What was innovative in Peirce’s 3 categories in comparison to earlier philosophers? Explanation of the categories and relating them to his sign-system. Examples of some basic operations with his 10- fold division of signs. (Based on his first essay from “The Essential Peirce”, “On a New List of Categories”).

The four denials of our faculties: in what sense is Peirce an anti-intuitionist? How do we see and how do we understand? What does the intellect achieve? What follows from the proposition that every thought is a sign? (Based on his second essay from “The Essential Peirce” “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man”).

 

Part III. Embedding thought. A pragmatic perspective

Unlike the empiricists, Peirce did not limit meaning to words or sentences. Unlike the Port Royal school or the Frege-Russell tradition, he claimed that any sign can have meaning. A Peircean reply to the question, ‘is there anything in the universe that is not a sign?’, would be: ‘there might be, but there is nothing in the universe that cannot become a sign.’ Thus, Peirce avoids one of the biggest problems of modern philosophy: namely, to determine what meaning is embedded in: ideas, words, sentences beliefs, doctrines, etc. Like Aristotle’s categories, they are ‘dresses of all things’; the sign character for Peirce is a universal tool for stripping meaning off all things. For Peirce, thoughts are signs, but the latter could be a single letter, or an entire culture.

 

Assigned Readings:

 

Basic Readings: We will generally read the following books, which will be made available to the students:

 

Brent, Joseph (1993) Charles Sanders Peirce. A Life, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

 

Deely, John, Basics of Semiotics, IU-Press, 1990

 

Mladenov, Ivan (2006) Conceptualizing Metaphors. On Charles Peirce’s Marginalia, Routledge, London & New York, Taylor and Francis Group, 2006, 198pp. ISBN 0-415-36047

Charles S. Peirce’s Letters to Lady Welby (1953) Ed. by Irwin C. Lieb, Whitlock’s, Inc. New Haven, Connecticut.

 

Colapietro, Vincent (1989) Peirce’s Approach to the Self. A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity, State University of New York Press, Albany

 

De Waal, Cornelis, ON PRAGMATISM, Wadsworth Philosophical Topics, 2005. De Waal, Cornelis, ON PEIRCE, Wadsworth Philosophical Topics, 2001.

 

Additional Bibliography (not obligatory):

 

Hookway, Christopher (1985) Peirce Routledge and Kegan Paul: London.

 

Mounce, H.O. (1997) The Two Pragmatisms, From Peirce to Rorty, Routledge: London and New York.

 

Murphey Murray G. (1961) The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

 

Peirce, Charles S. (1931-1966) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vols. 1-6 edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-1935. Vols. 7-8 edited by Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.

 

Savan, David (1976) An Introduction to C. S.  Peirce's Semiotics.  Part I.

Toronto Semiotic Circle; Toronto: Victoria University.

 

Scheffler, Izrael, Four Pragmatists, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.

 

The Essential Peirce vol.2. (1998) ed. by Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis (general look).

 

Readers and Dictionaries:

 

Against Theory, Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism, ed. by W.J. Mitchell, The U-ty of Chicago Press, 1982.

 

Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, ed. Stuart Sim, Routledge, New York, 1999

 

Pragmatism, A Reader, ed. by Louis Menand, Vintage Books, 1997.

 

A Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. A.R. Lacey, Routledge & Kegan Paul Lmt. first edition 1976. Vincent M. Colapietro, Glossary of Semiotics, Paragon House, New York, 1993