Research / Research program
Peircean Pragmatism
The clarification of meaning and the conditions under which we form, sustain and revise our beliefs.
Clarifying meaning
The pragmatic maxim directs the clarification of a concept towards its conceivable practical consequences. The 2018 chapter examines this requirement through the notion of consequence and its relation to the development of hypotheses. Its proposal connects that analysis with the study of interpretants and habits.
This line of work asks what conditions allow us to make our understanding more precise and how such clarification participates in inquiry.
Signs and purposes
The study of signs raises a question about what makes a response adequate. In Signo y propósito (2010), the discussion of Thomas Short’s interpretation of Peirce’s model places purpose within the relation between sign, object and interpretant. A response can be assessed in light of what it represents and the role it fulfils.
The work presents that interpretation, examines objections to the notion of purpose and explores its bearing on the experience of meaning-making. This investigation precedes the attention to agents and their agendas developed in Agentive Semiotics.
Doubt, belief and trust
Algunas reflexiones sobre la duda y la creencia (2009) begins with Peircean inquiry as a process of fixing belief. It then asks about the conditions of the confidence we place in a proposition. The content of what we hold and our attitude towards it require separate examination.
The 2011 text develops the distinction between fiduciary range and fiduciary framework. Range concerns the level of confidence in propositions. Framework incorporates our relations with those who provide information and the regulation of trust across contexts. These notions allow an examination of both the fixation and the defence of belief.
Standards of justification express different levels of demand for accepting something or proceeding in a particular way. Their study raises questions about the support we need in everyday life, professional practice or scientific inquiry, and about how those requirements affect our epistemic attitudes.
The New List of Categories
An expanded and updated version of La Nueva Lista de Categorías del joven Peirce (2004) is in preparation, jointly written by Douglas Niño and Carlos Garzón.
Experience and inquiry
The interpretation of pragmatism connects with the question of the role of experience in inquiry. The 2012 work on abduction and inference to the best explanation examines how different conceptions of experience and evidence affect the understanding of inferences. The philosophical context is part of what needs clarification when comparing these accounts.
This program brings the interpretation of Peirce into contact with questions about meaning and the assessment of our beliefs. The selected publications and presentations offer a way to follow these developments at different points in the research.
Selected reading
Work on pragmatism and interpretants, purpose, doubt and belief, and the role of experience in inference.
2018
Abducción, pragmatismo e interpretantes: una propuesta
Consequences, pragmatic clarification and relations with interpretants.
Full bibliographic recordChapter from the published volume; original pagination retained.
2010
Signo y propósito. Presentación y crítica de la propuesta de interpretación de Thomas Short del modelo de signo de Charles S. Peirce
An account and critical discussion of Thomas Short’s reading of Peirce’s sign model.
Full bibliographic record2011
El rango y el marco fiduciario. Reflexiones ulteriores sobre la duda y la creencia
Trust, contexts and standards of justification in the fixation and defence of belief.
Full bibliographic record2009
Algunas reflexiones sobre la duda y la creencia
Propositional content, epistemic attitudes and the conditions of doubt and belief.
Full bibliographic record2008
Pragmatismo y Abducción: otra aproximación
Earlier work on the relations between pragmatism and abduction.
Full bibliographic record2012
Abducción y pragmatismo peirceano versus inferencia a la mejor explicación y empirismo: un comentario crítico
Experience and evidence in the comparison of Peircean abduction with inference to the best explanation.
Full bibliographic record
Selected presentations
Presentations connected with this program, from 2006 to 2025.
Cómo (no) estudiar a Peirce
Presentación especial. III Congreso de la Sociedad Latinoamericana Peirce / Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile. Septiembre de 2025.
Event detailsAbducción, pragmaticismo e interpretantes: una propuesta
Congreso “Comunidad, Pragmaticismo y Verdad: el legado de C. S. Peirce”. Universidad del Valle, Cali (Colombia). Noviembre 25-27, 2016 (Noviembre 26).
Event detailsPeircean Pragmatism and Inference to the Best Explanation
12th International Meeting on Pragmatism. Sao Paulo, Brasil, 2009, Nov. 10–13.
Event detailsPragmatismo y Abducción: otra aproximación
I Congreso Colombiano de Filosofía, Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Bogotá, Colombia, 2006, Abril 22-26.
Event details
Connection with Abduction and Induction
The role of experience and of a hypothesis’s consequences connects this line of work with the study of inference and its justification.
Read about Abduction and Induction