Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Consider what effects might conceivably have practical bearings — your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | How to Make Our Ideas Clear |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Real time of inquiry and habit-formation. The truth is what would be reached at the ideal end of investigation — a regulative ideal across time.
Space
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Standard scientific realism.
Matter
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Real and inquiry-engaged. Standard scientific framework.
Observer
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
The Peircean observer is the embodied inquirer — plural, active in scientific community. Moral authority is reason. Peirce retains a robust theistic register (his "Neglected Argument for the Reality of God") in his late work.
Energy
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Standard scientific energetics.
Information
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Signs are the substantival informational structure of reality; Peirce's semiotics is built on this. Personal information conserved in his theistic framework.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Peirce's relation to James's subsequent psychological pragmatism was famously fraught. Peirce's late "pragmaticism" was specifically distinguished from James's "pragmatism" on the grounds that James had subjectivised the pragmatic maxim. Modern Peirce scholarship (Christopher Hookway, Cheryl Misak) has recovered the distinctive realist Peircean position against the more familiar Jamesean variant.