Reality and continuity: Peirce and James
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Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to compare and contrast the thought of Charles Sanders Peirce and William James in two respects: (1) their ideas of reality and (2) their doctrines of the continuity of consciousness and its metaphysical implications.
Chapter II traces their different theories of reality to basic differences in their metaphysical orientations. Peirce, as a metaphysical realist, maintains that general terms refer to ideas and laws which are realities apart from the particulars which manifest them and the minds which apprehend them. The real correspondents of general terms are within two realms of being: the realm of first-ness, which is possibility and feeling; and the realm of thirdness, which is law, meaning, and thought, all of which are synonymous. Both differ from the world of existence, or secondness, in which possibility is actualized, and in which ideas, including laws, are physically and mentally operative. [TRUNCATED]
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Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University
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