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CLEAR_PEIRCE

                                             February 15, 2010
                                             August   12, 2011

    Charles S Peirce, "How to Make our Ideas Clear" (1897):
    http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/ideas/id-main.htm#CP5.393

    "The very first lesson that we have a right
     to demand that logic shall teach us is, how
     to make our ideas clear ..."

    Here, by "clear" Peirce
    means a clearing away, he's       Reading between the lines
    a believer in elegance...         one can infer an approval
                                      of monotheism.
       That stands in contrast
       to William James, the
       great popularizer of
       "pragmatism", who spoke
       eloquently of embracing
       the diverse phenomena
       of the universe, over
       the idealized view of
       things.

          Perhaps this is why Pierce tried to distance
          himself from this "pragmatism", and the term
          he invented, later concocting a new term:
          "pragmaticalism".


    Peirce presumes that
    the number of words
    (terminology) corresponds      Compare this to the hard-to-shake notion of
    to the number of ideas.        many programmers that the best solution is
    And suggests that you can      the one that uses the fewest lines of code.
    have too many.
                                               (Ah, if only we could get it
      "A nation, it is true, may,              down to *one* line, the god-line
      in the course of generations,            that writes all others... in
      overcome the disadvantage of             "The Final Program".)
      an excessive wealth of
      language and its natural
      concomitant, a vast,              And of course, there are
      unfathomable deep of ideas."      vast gulfs between this
                                        attitude and our present,
                                        conventional opinions:
      But he has
      a strange       A touch of                 We regard English as a
      ways of         hypocrisy?                 rich language because
      using words     Peirce adds                of a wealth of synonyms
      (and he         linguistic                 with subtle differences.
      admits as       complexity.
      much).                                     And we complain about
                    THE_PEIRCE_HABIT             "jargon", the invention
                                                 of new terminology without
      These dualities                            significant differences
      are presented as                           from the old.
      parallels:
                                                          JARRING
      doubt       vs   belief

      indecision  vs   decision
                                          A "feigned hesitancy" is used
          A belief is a decision          to mean idle speculation.
          about what is true.



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