Comunicação e Ética: O sistema semiótico de Charles ... - Ubi Thesis

✐✐✐✐254 Anabela Gradimconcebíveis, 68 espécie de “experiência pensada” geral, e não facto concreto eindividual.9.5 A interpretação jamesiana do pragmatismoMas porque é nominalista esta primeira especificação da máxima e os exemplosdo diamante e do brilhante no fundo do mar? Já vimos detalhadamenteo entendimento, muito lato, que Peirce tem de nominalismo, e quais as consequênciasque acarreta. Esta forma de abordar o problema retira densidadeontológica aos entes (quanto ao diamante, por exemplo, não faz sentido perguntarse é duro ou não, e não seria falso dizer que não o é), que só assumemtal ou tal carácter quando são testados. Isto é o mesmo que dizer que é o teste,a forma do homem conhecer, que confere às coisas as suas características –o que é extremo nominalismo – e que não sendo testadas – tal como Peircenão pretendo aqui fazer ontologismo – as coisas poderão ter um de dois estatutos:ou uma natureza informe e indeterminada que se vai organizando e68 . “I myself went too far in the direction of nominalism when I said that it was a merequestion of the convenience of speech whether we say that a diamond is hard when it is notpressed upon, or whether we say that it is soft until it is pressed upon. I now say that experimentwill prove that the diamond is hard, as a positive fact. That is, it is a real fact that it wouldresist pressure, which amounts to extreme scholastic realism. I deny that pragmaticism asoriginally defined by me made the intellectual purport of symbols to consist in our conduct.On the contrary, I was most careful to say that it consists in our concept of what our conductwould be upon conceivable occasions. For I had long before declared that absolute individualswere entia rationis, and not realities. A concept determinate in all respects is as fictitious as aconcept definite in all respects. I do not think we can ever have a logical right to infer, even asprobable, the existence of anything entirely contrary in its nature to all that we can experienceor imagine. But a nominalist must do this. For he must say that all future events are the totalof all that will have happened and therefore that the future is not endless; and therefore, thatthere will be an event not followed by any event. This may be, inconceivable as it is; but thenominalist must say that it will be, else he will make the future to be endless, that is, to havea mode of being consisting in the truth of a general law. For every future event will have beencompleted, but the endless future will not have been completed. There are many other turnsthat may be given to this argument; and the conclusion of it is that it is only the general whichwe can understand. What we commonly designate by pointing at it or otherwise indicating itwe assume to be singular. But so far as we can comprehend it, it will be found not to be so.We can only indicate the real universe; if we are asked to describe it, we can only say that itincludes whatever there may be that really is. This is a universal, not a singular”, CollectedPapers, 8.208.www.labcom.pt✐✐✐✐