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CHAPTERI O N E Biographical Sketch I A Logician's Life Charles Sanders Peirce routinely described thinking as a dialogue between one's self and one's critical self: "thinking always proceeds in the form ofa dialogue-a dialogue between different phases ofthe ego-so that, being dialogical, it is essentially composed of signs, as its matter, in the same sense in which a game ofchess has the chessmen for its matter" (CP, 4.6).1 The career of thought itself, he suggested , takes place through the dynamic inquiry of a community of inquirers in ongoing dialogue. Occasionally Peirce indicated that writing functioned as a degenerate or weakened form ofreasoning. A written text brings a writer and reader into a dyadic relation that does not become dialogic unless the reader can in some part capture the meaning or the "soul" ofthe text. "Man is a sign," Peirce argued; one's writing is an embodiment ofsome ofthe sign one is (W, 2:241). Given this semeiotic conception of the self2 and his dialogical conception ofthinking and, consequently, ofwriting, it is not surprising that Peirce prefaced many ofhis papers with brief autobiographies. Occasionally he offered justifications for these prefatory pieces, as we find, for example, in a manuscript from the late 1890s: The reader has the right to know how the author's opinions were formed. Not, of course, that he is expected to accept any conclusions which are not borne out by argument. But in discussions of extreme difficulty, like these, when good judgment is a factor, and pure ratiocination is not everything, it is prudent to take every element into consideration. (CP, 1.3) These prefaces served as attempts to ameliorate the degenerate state ofthe dialogue between reader and writer-to fill out the sign at hand. For Peirce, the felt need for such amelioration was particularly acute, for, as we will see, from the late 1880s until the end ofhis I 1 2 I CHAPTER ONE life, he carried on most ofhis work in isolation from a community of scholars. Moreover, even when given opportunities in his 1903 Harvard and Lowell lectures to present his pragmaticism, he failed to find an audience:As his biographer, Joseph Brent, notes: Either of these exposures might have been the means to bring Peirce into a dialogue with the mainstream ofAmerican philosophy , but they did not. James, by his influential disapproval , effectively prevented publication ofthe Harvard series, and the Lowell lectures did not mend Peirce's isolation from his peers, because oftheir oddity to conventional thinkers. (Brent, 323)3 In a lengthy unpublished draft of"A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," Peirce directly addressed the possibility of a philosophical dialogue through a written text. Interestingly, the draft is presented in the fonn of a letter addressed "To the friend of my dreams" (MS 842, G1). The dream-friend serves as an ideal reader who will read honestly, without "paper" or "Cartesian" doubts (MS 842, G1). The friend is also an "open-minded and scientific critic" akin to the critical self in one's own thinking. Further characteristics of the ideal, and therefore dialogical, reader that Peirce disclosed include the patience to acquire intimate acquaintance with the argument and the ability to disregard "the repute of the arguer" (MS 842, G3). This last item was of particular significance for Peirce, since, as we will see, he suffered both personally and professionally for the last thirty years of his life under the weight of a bad reputation. Peirce feared that his reputation might lead readers to skim his argument and miss its force; and such a cursory reading~ he feared, would never lead the reader beyond the rumored reputation. ''Now I know well," he said, "that ifI could only converse with those very people face to face, there would be no such danger" (MS 842, G4-5). Since such conversation was not an option, Peirce suggested his alternative: Now it has occurred to me, as a possibility that the difference between the cases ofwriting and oftalking might be lessened if the perusers ofwhat I write were to be frankly told what manner ofman I am. Let that consideration, dubious though it may be, outweigh every other. (MS 842, G5-6) Herein lies the justification for his autobiographical prefaces. I offer these remarks at the outset to suggest the philosophical importance that Peirce might have attached to the kind of biographical sketch that I present. On the one hand, a biographical statement works toward...

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