Excerpt from "Exegesis of the Cushion-Diamond Example"

The Exegesis in Brief

Charles Sanders Peirce asks four questions in the extremely long twenty-three-sentence first paragraph of Section III (FP3) of his 1878 “How To Make Our Ideas Clear” (HTM). Three of these questions are not explicitly answered in the text and there are logical interludes between each in place of answers. In each case, Peirce moves very quickly, elliptically leaving out explicit statements of weighty implications. As a result, the transitions from one sentence to the next are oblique and indirect.

Peirce addresses the first two of the four questions in the first six sentences of FP3—A–F. A–F contains the first application of the Pragmatic Maxim (PM) which occurs immediately prior to FP3 at the end of Section II. A–F is also well-known for exhibiting Peirce’s early nominalism—Peirce’s infamous nominalist maxim D and the example of the diamond “crystallized in the midst of a cushion of soft cotton… [and untested until it] was burned up” —the cushion-diamond. Thus, Peirce’s early nominalism will be a continuing theme in this explication, but this article is not an article detailing Peirce’s early nominalism; it is an explication of six sentences of the most pivotal article in the history of American Pragmatism.

As I work through A–F, I will discuss many aspects of these sentences, but the keystone of this article is a reformulation A–F as dialectical exchange. This formulation alleviates the obliqueness and makes intuitive sense out of A–F. To justify this reformulation, I look to a very similar example in section IV of HTM, which Peirce introduces with “but it might be objected”.

In the smallest nutshell: apart from the more ecumenical sounding PM and Sentence B, the surrounding text implicitly commits Peirce to a specific type of nominalism: prospective-actualism. A primary case in point is the cushion-diamond in E. Through a dialectical lens, the two conditions—the “crystallized and burned up” (CABU) and the cotton conditions—emerge as tailored to serve different dialectical purposes: Peirce’s prospective-actualism and counterfactual-realism, respectively. Therefore, not only is Peirce not a realist in HTM; he explicitly bars counterfactualism from having any more to say than actualism. Essentially, the cotton ensures that the counterfactualist ends up at the exact same dialectical position as the actualist.

Methodological Admission

Throughout this article, I adopt an expository voice that does not assume extensive prior familiarity with HTM. My approach here is strictly internal; rather than navigating the vast secondary scholarship on Peirce, I have chosen to wrestle directly with the 1878 text. Consequently, I do not claim to be offering new insights in a professional sense, but only to be detailing the internal logic of A–F.

My aim is strictly exegetical, historical, and biographical. I will not argue that his early nominalism mars his reputation or deserves another look—my goal is simply to formulate what he appears to be implying through his oblique style. Thus, I will not argue that Peirce’s positions are “right” or “wrong.” Nor am I airing Peirce’s intellectual dirty laundry. I am simply reporting what I believe Peirce is saying in these specific sentences.

My motivation is also personal: these sentences were deeply puzzling to me and refused to sit still each time I read them. Initially, I was unaware of the realist/nominalist controversy surrounding this passage. When I began posting about this on Twitter, my Piercean followers began correcting me that these sentences are obsolete because Peirce updated his position. This feedback only piqued my interest. But my goal remains unchanged: to understand the internal logic of these sentences and to clarify their role in the history of American Pragmatism.