• aletheist
    1.5k
    Two papers of mine have been published recently, both of which address topics on which I have posted at length here in the past.

    "Peirce's Topical Continuum: A 'Thicker' Theory"
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 56(1):62-80
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.56.1.04
    Although Peirce frequently insisted that continuity was a core component of his philosophical thought, his conception of it evolved considerably during his lifetime, culminating in a theory grounded primarily in topical geometry. Two manuscripts, one of which has never before been published, reveal that his formulation of this approach was both earlier and more thorough than most scholars seem to have realized. Combining these and other relevant texts with the better-known passages highlights a key ontological distinction: a collection is bottom-up, such that the parts are real and the whole is an ens rationis, while a continuum is top-down, such that the whole is real and the parts are entia rationis. Accordingly, five properties are jointly necessary and sufficient for Peirce's topical continuum: rationality, divisibility, homogeneity, contiguity, and inexhaustibility.

    "Temporal Synechism: A Peircean Philosophy of Time"
    Axiomathes Online:1-37
    https://rdcu.be/b9xVm
    Charles Sanders Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but the name that he preferred for his overall system of thought was “synechism” because the principle of continuity was its central thesis. He considered time to be the paradigmatic example and often wrote about its various aspects while discussing other topics. This essay draws from many of those widely scattered texts to formulate a distinctively Peircean philosophy of time, incorporating extensive quotations into a comprehensive and coherent synthesis. Time is not an existential subject with past, present, and future as its incompatible predicates, but rather a real law enabling things to possess contrary qualities at its different determinations, and Peirce identifies four classes of such states based on when and how they are realized. Because time is continuous, it is not composed of instants, and even the present is an indefinite lapse during which we are directly aware of constant change. The accomplished past is perpetually growing as the possibilities and conditional necessities of the future are actualized at the present, and the entire universe evolves from being utterly indeterminate toward being absolutely determinate. Nevertheless, time must return into itself even if events are limited to only a portion of it, a paradox that is resolved with the aid of projective geometry. Temporal synechism thus touches on a broad spectrum of philosophical issues including mathematics, phenomenology, logic, and metaphysics.

    I would welcome constructive discussion of these abstracts or anything in the papers themselves. Thanks in advance.
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