Home

Commens
Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce



Dictionary
Encyclopedia
Papers
Bibliography
News
Links

Latest...

12/10/2018 Elements Letters to Francis C. Russell preview
12/10/2018 Critic Letters to Francis C. Russell preview
12/10/2018 Methodeutic Letters to Francis C. Russell preview
10/10/2018 Science From Comte to Benjamin Kidd preview
08/10/2018 Logic Introductory Lecture on the Study of Logic preview
08/10/2018 Instinct Miscellaneous Fragments [R] preview
07/10/2018 Real Letters to F. C. S. Schiller preview
07/10/2018 Science Nominalism, Realism, and the Logic of Modern Science [R] preview
28/05/2018 Habit Meaning Pragmatism [R] preview
09/04/2018 Critic On Signs [R] preview
more...

Some Wit, Wisdom & Bewilderment

Comte, Poincaré, and Karl Pearson take what they consider to be the first impressions of sense, but which are really nothing of the sort, but are percepts that are products of psychical operations, and they separate these from all the intellectual part of our knowledge, and arbitrarily call the first real and the second fictions. These two words real and fictive bear no significations whatever except as marks of good and bad. But the truth is that what they call bad or fictitious, or subjective, the intellectual part of our knowledge, comprises all that is valuable on its own account, while what they mark good, or real, or objective, is nothing but the pretty vessel that carries the precious thought.
Lowell Lectures, 1903