
Publication details
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Place: Basingstoke
Year: 2018
Pages: 133-150
ISBN (Hardback): 9783319779676
Full citation:
, "To take the writer's meaning", in: Walker Percy, philosopher, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018


To take the writer's meaning
an unpublished manuscript on "Peirce and modern semiotic" by Walker Percy
pp. 133-150
in: Leslie Marsh (ed), Walker Percy, philosopher, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018Abstract
Percy has been studied under several headings: Catholic, Southerner, Existentialist. Two such aspects, however, have been neglected: the strong influence of Charles Sanders Peirce, plus Percy's deep competence in laboratory science. His typescript essay, "Peirce and Modern Semiotic (1959)," presented here, shows that Percy was well ahead of his contemporaries in understanding the scientific and philosophical importance of Peirce's Semeiotic, the Theory of Semeioses. Percy particularly pointed to the experiential importance of "taking the other's meaning." He regarded that common phenomenon as vital, and genuine—a kind of event that behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner or Charles Morris explained away as nothing but a dynamic dyadic causal (or S-R) process. Percy's essay definitively blocks those reductions.
Cited authors
Publication details
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Place: Basingstoke
Year: 2018
Pages: 133-150
ISBN (Hardback): 9783319779676
Full citation:
, "To take the writer's meaning", in: Walker Percy, philosopher, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018