This account demonstrates how index moderates abductive rationality from early ages. It first presents the theoretical framework of index within Peirce’s semiotic; afterward it reveals the ontogeny of explanatory abductions from children’s narratives (3;0 through 9;0). The latter accounts for when explanations emerge (and the nature of the explanations) in the story-telling process. This account further addresses the utility of certain semiotic devices (namely indexical ones) to enhance implementation of children’s explanations.

Abstract This inquiry demonstrates Scotus’ and Peirce’s shift from representing haecceities as momentary objects in Secondness (depending heavily upon sensation), to the recognition that haecceities force their way into the awareness as mental objects. As such, both conclude that mental objects to be haecceities. Nonetheless, it is Peirce who more clearly determines that haecceities materialize as apparitions (cognitions) – incorporating physically absent places, objects, and moments. Peirce’s continuum, and his commitment to realism are responsible for considering apparitions to be haecceities. Both Peirce and Scotus contend that although haecceities are individual, they, nevertheless should be folded into the continuum. In line with the Scholastic record, Peirce defines haecceity as “thisness,” which encompasses the riveting effect of Objects (including places) – proximate to observers (inward and outward) space and/or time. Haecceities allow for intrusion of present objects and places upon interpreters’ consciousness – noticing properties of objects with some degree of awareness. This beckoning effect of objects in single, intense experiences accounts for selection of certain objects over others in the attentional stream. As such, context illuminates the core meaning within the sign (synchronic, diachronic) – demonstrating the need for Peirce’s continuum. But, Peirce’s continuum does not stop at present objects (mental, physical); it proposes the need for “concretion,” rather than Scotus’ adherence to “contraction.” In other words, the “all cannot be in the one” (as Scotus claims) if possible objects are not incorporated into the continuum. In short, Peirce’s “concretion” supplies a fuller account of object meaning, given that it integrates future objects and future meanings (would-bes).

Abstract This inquiry addresses how working memory underpins abductive inferences, given their means to objectify meanings. Binding experiences in WM: integrates features with objects, makes obvious object situatedness, and determines impingement of objects upon other objects. These meaning chunks verify how events affect consequences, tracing episodic profiles. WM binding is essential to the evolution of sign meanings, when hatching inferences about which objects/events should be included in the same image, illustrating how WM bindings are implicated in constructing Percepts. Percepts mark the starting point when new meanings are attributed to objects (7.671). These new meanings materialize consequent to implied predicative alterations. WM chunks consist in locative and/or descriptive predicates; they can be implicit in Terms, or explicit in Propositions (1908: 8.373). As Terms with implied predicates, percepts provide the building blocks to attribute new meanings to event profiles, complying with Peirce’s proviso that interpretants “have to be much widened” (1906: 4.538).

Peirce's concept of virtual habit, (1909: MS 620), constitutes a scaffold for abductive reasoning. Notable is how virtual habit compel the conduct employed to avert anticipated consequences. Virtual habits surface as vivid action- images, so specific that they qualify as determinations, soon to be enacted. Although they do not rise to the level of habit, in that repetition has not yet materialized, they serve a higher calling, inciting novel hypotheses, particularly in children (habit-change). Vivid, episodic memories emerge at 3;0 when index differentiates the where of event scenes. These memories are constructed when index hastens the application of logic to cause-effect scenarios, such that spatial relations suggest a logic for event frames/scenes, in line with Schacter and Addis' 2007 Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis. This inquiry shows how Peirce's concept of virtual habit (compelling, episodic images) constitutes the most effective preparation for implementing novel inferences.

AbstractEvidence abounds that the humanities and social sciences are well equipped to hasten hypothesis generation; but their advantages are often underdetermined. Such may be the case consequent to the fact that their facilitative devices are not directly observable. While mathematical algorithms and scientific theorematic principles can provide structural templates to discern and record cause-effect relations, measuring and stimulating reasoning, the meanings which they convey may alone be insufficient to incite inquiry. Their adherence to a single correct response/method often stifles insight, as well as foresight. Nonetheless, the implicit meanings conveyed via literary genres (particularly narratives) can bring interpreters to a higher logical level—to assert revisionary hypotheses. In short, the abstract semantic character of mathematical expressions does not encourage revisionary reasoning, because its meanings are not specific enough to relate cause to effect, particularly within a retroductive framework (independent of whether the surprising consequence is foregrounded or backgrounded). Conversely, storylines which rely upon pragmatic skills may more effectively foster inferential reasoning, since they situationalize specific changes in states and attitudes of the characters in particular contexts—thereby encouraging foresight not insight alone. As such, interpreters look ahead to anticipate potential effects in subsequent contexts. Furthermore, while the natural sciences may supply indexical and relational information, the semantic content is often rather opaque, making it difficult to determine where to apply the algorithm. This is especially the case for less experienced interpreters, given the disconnect between knowledge of an algorithm and its appropriate use in actual problems/life events. The present inquiry argues that exposure to narratives and narrator attitudes naturally raise interpreters’ dialectic competencies, especially early in ontogeny. The claim here is that narratives are so influential to hatching novel inferences. Because narratives lay out episodic schemata, they require listeners to assume another’s role, a shift which heightens awareness from the less idiosyncratic accounts to what does, can, and what might happen to an objective other.

Peirce’s Pheme directs interpretation of narratives via a “series of surprises” ( ep 2:154). The indexical and iconic elements inherent in Phemes are particularly potent in forcing attention and depicting relevant events. Index intrudes upon interpreters’ consciousness to notice the unexpected consequence; but icons exploit vividness. As imperatives, Phemes compel particular behaviors (1906: ms 295). When narratives are portrayed in pictures, interpreters remember happenings in which Phemes feature surprising percepts, evoking an attentional response, and securing a confluence of events in memory. Findings from children’s narrations demonstrate that events represented by Phemes are more often included in children’s retellings, because surprising images command active participation. This viewpoint impels listeners to build episodes, ascribing meanings across events, and proposing rationale for novel outcomes.

Abstract The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical (or real) for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper seeks to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting.

This monograph shows how communicability of narratives can be reinvigorated using Peirce's pragmatistic model integrating the logical with the empirical

This Chapter provides a new characterization of gestural performativesGestural Performative, providing a semiotic analysis of their dialogic meaning—that performatives function as action signs, specifically indexes.

This inquiry illustrates how Peirce's Energetic Interpretant facilitates consciousness raising between sign users. Because it forces attention and progression of action, the Energetic Interpretant highlights perfective aspectual characteristics, namely atomistic/punctual cause-effect sign relations by featuring junctures between events: beginning, middle, end. For example, the stops and starts of events are influenced by the nature of the action, in addition to the agent's idiosyncratic preferences and predilections. The Thirdness underlying it further perpetuates the punctual component (Vendler 1967) present in action relations, operational when effort produces resistance against an opposing force. Because effort can materialize physically, or internally, it demonstrates the continued primacy of Peirce's categories in fostering certain consequences. Energetic Interpretants can inhibit (Secondness), i.e., attention to one stimulus, while ignoring another. Nonetheless, consciously inhibiting/resisting a force (via Energetic Interpretants) introduces control beyond the self-another's reflections upon the conscious acts of an agent (Ms 318). This influence between interlocutors satisfies Peirce's maxim of a "common place to stand" (Ms 614), demonstrating mutual comprehension of the sign's proper effect (5.475). In fact, Energetic Interpretants may result in an effect of such proportion upon either or both interlocutors that a habit-change materializes. As such, Energetic Interpretants epitomize the perfectivity exercised by particular efforts, intimating the likelihood of their discursive success. Inherent in punctual events (versus dynamic ones) is the element of surprise, which ultimately hastens the kind of habit-change especially exhibited in Peirce's double consciousness (5.53)-self talking to self or other.

Abstract Determining the utility of auditory hallucinations (including imaginary friends) in developing logic is sorely under-investigated (Fernyhough, Charles. 2016. The voices within: The history and science of how we talk to ourselves. New York: Basic Books). The present account demonstrates how Peirce’s double consciousness fueled by his endoporeutic principle, provides insight into how abduction directs adopting arguments from one source while dismissing others. Peirce’s categories provide hints as to which voices become admitted to logical scrutiny, and which are validated – consequent to irritations imposed by surprise/conflict. Effort/resistance (4.536) clearly illustrates how Secondness legitimizes emerging perspectives, facilitating examination of peripheral voices, which can be competitive (MS 9) or collaborative (4.551). Peirce’s Energetic and Emotional Interpretants (MS 318) impel or inhibit new habits (attention to one stimulus over another). Consciously inhibiting forces hastens self-control (Thirdness) integrating voices on the fringes of conventionality into one’s own (MS 318). Ultimately, incorporating alterity via imagined arguments satisfies Peirce’s endoporeutic maxim because reflecting upon the legitimacy of alien perspectives transforms habits from the outside in.