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Review article Perspectives on Peirce's logic*

LEILA HAAPARANTA

Introduction The volume on Charles Peirce's logic, which Nathan Houser has edited, is a collection of papers presented at the Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress at Harvard University in 1989. As the editors state in the `Preface', the collection of essays is an outgrowth of the principal logic symposium of the Congress which celebrated Peirce's birth on the tenth of September in 1839. The editors tell us that the logic symposium focused on Peirce's contributions to exact logic, with a special emphasis on linkages between Peirce' s work and contemporary research in technical logic and foundations and in the history of logic. The majority of the papers published in the volume are of the same kind, but the collection has a somewhat broader scope, as its papers also discuss issues in what a late twentieth-century logician or philosopher would call Peirce's philosophy of logic. That kind of broadening is defensible for several reasons, not least for the reason that Peirce uses the term `logic' in various meanings and the study which we take to be the technical part of Peirce's logic is linked with, and cannot be properly understood without, its background in Peirce's philosophy. The volume opens with an introductory article by Nathan Houser, one of the editors, who raises the question of Peirce's concept of logic in relation to our concept. Houser seeks to give an overview of the dierent branches of Peirce's logical studies, and he also seeks to locate Peirce in the history of logic as a pioneer of modern logic along with Gottlob Frege. The important contributions made by Frege, Peirce, and Peirce's students are naturally the new analysis of statements and the idea of quantication. Houser also points out that by 1882, that is, three years after the publication of Frege's Begrisschrift, Peirce attempted to develop what he
*Nathan Houser, Don D. Roberts, and James van Evra (eds.), Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Semiotica 1331/4 (2001), 157167 00371998/01/0133 0157 # Walter de Gruyter

158 L. Haaparanta called spread formulas to represent relations. Later he turned back toward logic with a graphical syntax. Houser assumes, quite naturally I think, that the interest in graphical notation most probably came from Peirce's fascination with geometrical constructions or with Euler's diagrams. The importance of geometrical inuences is acknowledged in several articles in the volume, but there may be even more need to show the actual connections between geometry and Peirce's discoveries than scholars have realized so far. That is even more the case with Frege's discoveries, the background of which is less known than that of Peirce's discoveries. As far as Frege is concerned, scholars may be unwilling to admit that geometry had strong impact upon what Frege did in his logic, as Frege's logicist program is often understood as denying that logic could nd its basis in any sense of the word `basis' in a branch of mathematics. The present volume on Peirce makes a valuable eort to clarify the complicated connections between logic and mathematics in Peirce's thought, and one can only hope that more such eorts will be made in studies in Frege's logic. On the contents of the volume The papers published in the volume cover several themes which can be called Peirce's logic. Ivor Grattan-Guinness, whose article opens the volume after the introductory chapter by Houser, takes to his task to locate Peirce's thought between logic and mathematics. The same question is touched upon by Stephen Levy, when he discusses Peirce's distinction between theoremic and corollarial reasoning, and by James Van Evra, who pays attention to the relation between logic and algebra. Alan Ili, who studies the role of matrix representation in Peirce's development of quantiers, also makes a contribution to the study of the relation between logic and mathematics in Peirce's thought. The volume contains studies in the development and in specic features of Peirce's systems; the papers by Daniel D. Merrill, Geraldine Brady, Robert W. Burch, Jacqueline Brunning, Glenn Clark, Shea Zellweger, and Don D. Roberts are of that kind. Case studies in Peirce's views of the branches of mathematics are presented by Paul Shields in his article on Peirce's axiomatization of arithmetic and by Randall D. Dipert in his paper on Peirce's philosophical conception of sets. Peirce's philosophy of mathematics is discussed in Angus Kerr-Lawson's contribution on Peirce's pre-logistic account of mathematics. More philosophical themes are taken up by Beverley Kent in her article on Peirce's diagrammatic thought and by E. James Crombie in his paper on deduction. A philosophical emphasis can also be found in the study of abduction by Tomis Kapitan and even more so in the paper on

Perspectives on Peirce's logic 159 logic, learning, and creativity in evolution by Arthur Burks. A special interest in Peirce's philosophy of language, particularly in his theory of proper names, is shown by Jarrett Brock and by Jerey R. DiLeo. The paper by John F. Sowa on matching logical structure to linguistic structure stica on a nonmonotonic approach to and the paper by Ana H. Maro tychist logic show that Peirce's logic has interesting things to tell us also when it is evaluated from the perspective given by late twentieth-century logic, meaning articial intelligence and computational linguistics. In addition, the book locates Peirce's logic in the long tradition of philosophical and logical thought. Jay Zeman studies Peirce and Philo, Benjamin S. Hawkings, Jr. pays attention to Peirce and Russell, Henry Hiz discusses Peirce's inuence on logic in Poland, and Irving H. Anellis studies Tarski's development of Peirce's logic of relations. Hence, the book is very rich, and I can only take a few of its central themes under discussion. On the various parallel traditions But what could be the most natural lines to which Peirce's logic belong in the history of logic? The `Foreword' by Jaakko Hintikka and Risto Hilpinen suggests one such line. The authors mention that Charles Peirce and Gottlob Frege both invented a notation for quantiers and quantication theory almost simultaneously, independently of each other, and that therefore they can be regarded as the principal founders of modern logic. However, Hintikka and Hilpinen stress that the two logicians are far apart philosophically. What they mean is the contrast between the conception of language as the universal medium of communication and the view of language as calculus. That distinction has been suggested from the perspective of twentieth-century developments, but it has been applied to the earlier phases of modern logic. Various stories can be told depending on how the distinction is understood. In order to derive arithmetical truths from the axioms of logic and from the denitions of the basic arithmetical concepts by logical deduction, it was necessary for Frege to formulate explicitly the rules of logical inference. For this reason, it is natural to think that his conceptual notation was an attempt to present those rules. If we think that logic is understood as a calculus whenever it is given by giving vocabulary, formation rules, and transformation rules, that is, rules of derivation, we may say that Frege presented his logic as a calculus. However, Frege himself emphasized that he did not want to put forward, in Leibniz's terms, only a calculus ratiocinator but that his conceptual notation was to be a proper language, a lingua characterica, as

160 L. Haaparanta he called it, from which all ambiguities were obliterated and which speaks about all that there is.1 It has been argued that dierent logicians emphasized dierent sides of the Leibnizian project and came to defend opposite views of the basic nature of logic. It has been claimed that Boole, Peirce, and Schro der, for example, stressed the importance of developing a calculus, whereas Frege and the early Russell laid more emphasis on the idea of logic as a universal language. The systematic consequences of the two views have been under careful scrutiny by a number of authors, especially by Jean van Heijenoort (1967), Warren D. Goldfarb (1979), and Jaakko Hintikka (1979, 1981a, 1981b). According to these interpreters, those who stressed the idea of logic as language thought that language speaks about one single world. It is certain that Frege held that position. He thought that there is one single domain of discourse for all quantiers, as he assumed that any object can be the value of an individual variable and any function must be dened for all objects. He stated that by means of his principle of completeness (Grundsatz der Vollstandigkeit) (GGA 2, paragraphs 5665). On the other hand, those who supported the view that logic is a calculus gave various interpretations or models for their formal systems. That was Boole's and his followers' standpoint (see Boole 1965 [1847]: 3). However, Frege also wished to construct a language which can be applied to various elds like arithmetic and geometry (BS: xii). Still, elds of application are not what is meant by the distinction between the one-world and the many-world view. Moreover, Frege says that he wants to develop both a language and a calculus. If he wants to do both, he cannot mean by language and calculus all the things that are meant by them in the twentieth century. However, Frege was quite consistent if he merely wanted to tell us that he was giving both a language, meaning a vocabulary and rules of forming complex expressions in the language, and rules of transforming sentences to other sentences. The volume on Peirce's logic also introduces another pair of traditions, which are mathematical logic and algebraic logic. Ivor Grattan-Guinness states in his article that he uses both terms in their modern senses. In the notes he explains that the phrase `mathematical logic' was introduced by De Morgan in 1858 but that it served to distinguish logics using mathematics from purely `philosophical logic', which was also a term used by De Morgan (p. 39). However, in Grattan-Guinness's terminology, De Morgan's logic was part of the algebraic tradition. Grattan-Guinness also mentions that mathematical logic was called `logistic' in the early part of the twentieth century (p. 39). In Grattan-Guinness's terminology, using algebraic methods in logic would be typical of what he calls algebraic logic. The most common phrase used in the nineteenth century was `the algebra of logic' or sometimes `logical algebra'.

Perspectives on Peirce's logic 161 In the gure which Grattan-Guinness presents us, Whately, Hamilton, Boole, De Morgan, Peirce, and Schro der belong to the tradition of algebraic logic, while Cauchy, Weierstrass, Cantor, Peano, and Russell belong to the tradition of mathematical logic (p. 25). It seems that many of those who belong to the tradition of logic as calculus are claimed to belong to the tradition of algebraic logic, and that many of those who think that logic is a language belong to the tradition of mathematical logic. GrattanGuinness pays little attention to Frege, but Frege certainly belongs to the tradition of mathematical logic. Grattan-Guinness gives us a few typical features of the two traditions that he discusses. In algebraic logic, laws were stressed, in mathematical logic axioms were emphasized. Moreover, he states that in mathematical logic, especially in the logicist version represented by Russell, logic was held to contain all mathematics, while in algebraic logic it was maintained that logic had some relationship with mathematics. In Grattan-Guinness's view, algebraic logic used part-whole theory and relied on a basically extensionalist conception of a collection, while in mathematical logic the theory of collections was based on Cantor's Mengenlehre. Grattan-Guinness stresses that both systems developed propositional calculi and predicate calculi of functions of one and of several variables with quantication but the dierent approaches to collections aected the character of the logical concepts involved. He argues that in algebraic logic they were often extensional, while in mathematical logic intensionality was usually dominant, at least before World War I. In addition, there was, in his view, an important dierence between the traditions concerning quantication; the interpretation of the universal and existential cases as innite conjunctions and disjunctions with the algebraic analogies of innite products and sums were typical of the algebraic tradition. Finally, Grattan-Guinness states that among the logicians of this period only Frege took the distinction between theory and metatheory seriously but that even he did not observe it all the time. That is a surprising comment, given what those who stress the distinction between logic as language and logic as calculus say; in their listing, the distinction between theory and metatheory is precisely what Frege does not emphasize. However, it seems that in this connection Grattan-Guinness has something dierent in mind; when he speaks about the distinction between theory and metatheory, he mentions such examples as the distinction between implication and inference, pieces of language and their denotations, and phrases and their meanings. Grattan-Guinness also notes that the questions addressed in mathematical logic were more specic than those addressed in algebraic logic. It would be important to study the connections between dierent ways of dividing the history of modern logic into traditions. That task is clearly

162 L. Haaparanta suggested by the volume, as its `Foreword' and its rst article after `Introduction' suggest two dierent pairs of traditions and there is no discussion in the book on how to evaluate the four lines in the history of logic in relation to each other. Peirce and the relations between logic and mathematics One of the most important themes discussed in the volume is the relation between logic and mathematics in Peirce's thought. If Peirce had been a typical representative of the tradition of mathematical logic, he would probably have favored the program of logicism, hence the idea that mathematics or at least arithmetic is reducible to logic. Peirce is not a representative of that line of thought, but it seems that his attitude towards logicism is not a simple rejection. Raising the complicated relation between logic and mathematics in Peirce's thought is one of the great merits of the volume. In her important article, to which some of the authors of the volume also refer, Susan Haack (1993) argued that there are two theses of logicism, and both of the theses have a narrower and a broader version. The theses concern the relation of arithmetic to logic in the narrower version and the relation of mathematics to logic in the broader version. One of the theses states that arithmetic, or the whole eld of mathematics, is reducible to logic. The other thesis, which can be called epistemological, states that the epistemological foundations of mathematics (arithmetic) lie in logic (Haack 1993: 35). Frege's principal aim in his logical and foundational work was to carry out his logicist program, i.e., to reduce arithmetical truths to logical truths. Expressed in Frege's own terms, this amounted to showing that arithmetic is analytic a priori. According to his account, an analytic a priori truth is a truth which can be derived exclusively from general logical laws and denitions, and these laws, for their part, neither need nor admit of any proof (GLA, paragraph 3). To carry out his program, Frege had to perform two tasks: to dene arithmetical concepts by means of logical concepts, and to prove that arithmetical truths are derivable from axioms of logic and from the denitions of the basic arithmetical concepts by means of logical deduction. In order to fulll the latter part of his program, that is, in order to derive arithmetical truths from the axioms of logic and from the denitions of the basic arithmetical concepts by means of logical deduction, it was necessary for Frege to formulate explicitly the rules of logical inference. For this reason, his conceptual notation has often been regarded merely as an attempt to present those rules. However, for Frege it was a universal language, a language which speaks about the world, as we noted above.

Perspectives on Peirce's logic 163 Haack argues that according to Frege, Russell, and Whitehead the reducibility explains the security of mathematical knowledge. Frege held the narrower version of the logicist thesis. According to Haack, Peirce had sympathies with the reducibility thesis, but he did not approve of the epistemological thesis. Haack distinguishes between two concepts of logic used by Peirce, namely, logic as a formal deductive logic and logic as the theory of reasoning. In the rst sense mathematics is reducible to logic, that is, it is reducible to a formal deductive system. However, Haack argues that in Peirce's view mathematics needs no foundation. Mathematics is not subordinate to the theory of reasoning. The present book on Peirce makes contributions in the same direction as Haack's paper, as in several papers there are comments on Peirce's relation to logicism. In his introductory article Nathan Houser subscribes to the view that Peirce did not accept the logicist thesis that foundational theory is logic; instead, Houser argues, for Peirce logic, particularly, his own logic of relations, made possible the analysis that was essential for foundational theory (p. 2). In the volume on Peirce the doctrine called `logicism' is not understood in the sense which Theodor Ziehen mentions in his history of logic in 1920; Ziehen lists nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century philosophers and logicians who supported logicism, and that doctrine amounted to the acknowledgment of a specic source of logical knowledge and a realm of abstract objects which is studied by the science of logic (Ziehen 1920: 173). In that sense of the term Peirce was not a logicist. However, in his paper on Peirce's philosophy of mathematics Kerr-Lawson claims that Peirce was a weak Platonist or a structuralist. If that is the case, Peirce did acknowledge a realm of mathematical objects in the special sense that for him mathematical categories were universals which belong to a dierent ontological category from the category of particles and forces. The points made by Kerr-Lawson, especially his remark that for Peirce mathematical theory describes hypothetical states of aairs which might or might not nd actual realization in the world, are worth considering in the framework suggested by Hintikka and Hilpinen. Moreover, Kerr-Lawson's considerations support the interpretation that in Peirce's view mathematics was not in need of an epistemological foundation. The paper is quite speculative, as the author states in the beginning, but it shows important connections between Peirce's notes and contemporary philosophy of mathematics. Comparisons between Kant's views of mathematics and intuition and Peirce's views could also be made, for example, by taking into account what J. Alberto Coa tells us in his book on the development of the semantic tradition from Kant to Carnap. The development which Coa describes means getting rid of intuition (Coa 1991: 23). The relation

164 L. Haaparanta between mathematics and logic in Peirce's thought is also discussed by James Van Evra. However, he formulates the problem from a somewhat dierent angle; he asks how much of mathematics can properly been drawn into analogical connection with logic (p. 148). One of Peirce's answers, which Van Evra considers, is that logical algebra proves that mathematics extends over the whole realm of formal logic (p. 154). He also notes that Peirce speaks about applying geometry to logic (p. 155). He concludes that for Peirce logic and mathematics are blended in logical algebra, that an analogical pairing is not the correct characterization of their relation (p. 155). The story of Peirce's view concerning the relation between logic and mathematics is quite complicated. It is certain at least that geometry is a model of algebra and a model of logical discovery in Peirce's view. Therefore, Peirce's discussion of geometrical reasoning is illuminating, and that portion of his writings is also taken into account in some of the articles published in the volume. It is true there are many articles on this subject in various journals. It is well known that Peirce lays special stress on the role of observing gures in mathematical and logical reasoning. It has even been claimed by Joswick (1988) that as the nature of mathematics, according to Peirce, involves the construction and the observation of a diagram, likewise the interpretation of any sign, according to Peirce, involves the construction and observation of an icon (Joswick 1988: 107). What Joswick argues is that Peirce took it to be essential for mathematical practice, like for all scientic practice, to make experiments and observations and that a logician's practice also ought to follow this model. On Joswick's interpretation, Peirce's emphasis on geometrical thought lies behind his general theory of signs. Semiotic does not receive much attention in the volume on Peirce's logic, but it is certainly important to have such papers as those by Hawkins, Jr., Brunning, Kent, and DiLeo, for example, which pay attention to the semiotic way of thinking in Peirce's logical contributions. Particularly, Peirce formulates his view of the role of diagrams quite emphatically in his Carnegie Application in 1902 as follows: `The rst things I found out were that all mathematical reasoning is diagrammatic and that all necessary reasoning is mathematical reasoning, how simple it may be' (NE 4: 4748). Earlier in his paper `On the algebra of logic' in 1885 he labels the formulas of his general algebra of logic as icons (CP 3.363). The various connections between logic and the whole of mathematics, logic and algebra, logic and geometry, and algebra and geometry are studied or at least touched upon in all of the papers of the volume. In algebraic logic, as Grattan-Guinness describes it, logicians took algebraic notation to be useful for logic. Frege, who was a representative of the

Perspectives on Peirce's logic 165 tradition of mathematical logic, thought that arithmetic is a model for the formula language of pure thought; that is what he expresses in the subtitle of his Begrisschrift. If we pay attention to the logic of justication and to the logic of discovery within the `science of logic', we may nd various roles for dierent branches of mathematics; for Frege, logic is prior to arithmetic in justication, while geometry seems to give hints at making discoveries in logic and both geometry and arithmetic turn out to be useful models for constructing the formula language of pure thought.2 Following Haack and many others, we may say that there is a sense of `logicism', and also a sense of `justication', in which we can say that Peirce regarded logic as prior to mathematics in the order of justication, but there are also other senses of `justication' in which Peirce was clearly opposed to the idea that mathematics would be epistemologically dependent of logic. Peirce also takes up various model relations between logic and dierent parts of mathematics, and those considerations are often linked with his view of how the human mind works. For Peirce, the human mind is not a calculating engine, but it is a mind which draws gures. Therefore, Peirce's thought is a valuable source also for quite recent thought in cognitive science. A concluding note: Peirce's place in the history of logic The volume gives the reader links to the history of logic, but Peirce's place in history is not sought to study extensively by taking the most important gures of the history of logic into account. There are naturally a number of those who ought to be considered in relation to Peirce; besides Peirce's contemporaries, one ought to mention Aristotle, medieval logicians, Kant, Hegel, and a number of Peirce's followers in the twentieth century. As far as the various philosophical traditions are concerned, it is worth remembering that both Frege and Peirce have Kant as their background. This is also a philosophically important theme, which is not much discussed in the volume. As for Frege and Peirce, there is one shared attitude. Frege notes in the `Preface' of his Begrisschrift that every important discovery in the history of science, presupposes an improvement in method and that this is precisely what he is oering to science when he develops his new logic. Peirce, for his part, states in his `Introductory lecture on the study of logic' in 1882 that his age is the age of methods and that the university which is to be the exponent of the living condition of the human mind, must be the university of methods (W 4: 379). In his `Introductory lecture on logic' in 1883 Peirce also stresses that Germans do not regard logic as an art but as a science which analyzes method

166 L. Haaparanta (W 4: 509510). That, I think, was also true of Frege's endeavor. However, those positions would be worth studying by paying attention to the actual practice of the science of logic represented by the two pioneers of modern logic. Unlike Frege, Peirce also gives us plenty of material for that kind of project. Notes
ber den Zweck der Begrisschrift' (1879), (BS: 98), `U ber die 1. See, for example, `U Begrisschrift des Herrn Peano und meine eigene' (1896), (KS: 227), and `Anmerkungen Frege's zu: Philip E. B. Jourdain, The development of the theories of mathematical logic and the principles of mathematics' (1912), (KS: 341). See also `Booles rechnende Logik und die Begrisschrift' (1880/1881), (NS: 952). 2. See, for example, Haaparanta 1993.

References
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(1981b). Wittgenstein's semantical Kantianism. In Ethics: Proceedings of the Fifth International Wittgenstein Symposium, E. Morscher and R. Stranzinger (eds.), 375390. Joswick, H. (1988). Peirce's mathematical model of interpretation. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 24, 107121. Peirce, Charles S. (19311958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols., ed. by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and A. W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Reference to Peirce's papers will be designated CP.] (1976). The New Elements of Mathematics, 4 vols., ed. by C. Eisele. Berlin: Mouton; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. [Reference to Peirce's New Elements will be designated NEM.] (1982). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, 5 vols., ed. by M. Fisch, E. Moore, and C. Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Reference to Peirce's writings will be designated W.] van Heijenoort, Jean (1967). Logic as calculus and logic as language. Synthese 17, 324330. Ziehen, Theodor (1920). Lehrbuch der Logik auf positivistischer Grundlage mit Beru cksichtigung der Geschichte der Logik. Bonn: A. Marcus and E. Webers Verlag. Leila Haaparanta (b. 1954) is Professor of Mathematics, Statistics, and Philosophy at the University of Tampere in Finland pmaleha@uta.o. Her research interests include the history and philosophy of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. Her major publications include Frege's Doctrine of Being, A Monograph (1985), Frege Synthesized (ed., with J. Hintikka, 1986), Mind, Meaning, and Mathematics: Essays on the Philosophical Views of Huneil and Frege (ed., 1994), Mind and Cognition (ed., with S. Heindman, 1995).

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