On Peirce’s Logical Thoughts

Charles Sanders Peirce is a famous American philosopher, logician and scientist, one of the founders of modern logic, the founder of pragmatism. Peirce’s ultimate goal is to establish a system of philosophy that can be adapted to all disciplines with logic as the core, he treats logic, philosophy and semiotics as no difference, so his logical thoughts greatly on behalf of his whole philosophical thoughts.Science, Boole algebra, relational logic of De Morgan, Kant’s philosophy are the theoretical origins of Peirce’s logical thoughts. Science plays an important role on the formation of Peirce’s scientific thoughts; Boole algebra and relational logic of De Morgan lay the foundation for the development of Peirce’s relational calculus; Kant’s philosophy made necessary ideological preparation to Peirce’s transcendental philosophy dream and the birth of “pragmatism”. Peirce’s logical thoughts mainly includes the theory of logic, logic algebra and the “Existential Graphs”, semiotics three parts, means the logical view, logic technology and generalized logic three aspects. Peirce’s logical view has the tendency of “pragmatism”, he believes that logic belongs to philosophy, can be extended to semiotics, and the meaning of concept is the produce of actual effect that can be imagined. Base on the experience Peirce makes a profound interpretation of copula and quantifier, and the Existential Graphs as a schema of inference system that express the first-order logic and modal logic very well. Peirce points out that semiotics is a generalized logic after expansion, thoughts through signs, and sign is the unique carrier of reasoning.Peirce’s rich logical thoughts not only promoted the formation of pragmatism, accelerated the spread of analytical philosophy especially the logical positivism, helped such as the emphasis on the concept of clear ideas form in analytical philosophy; but also change people’s concept of logic, open the logical view, expand the scope of logic study, which has a very important significance for the diversified development of modern logic today.