The Intelligibility of Peirce's Metaphysics of Objective Idealism

Abstract

The paper critically explores the meaning and intelligibility of Peirce's theory of objective idealism as found in his papers of the Monist series (1891–3) beginning with "Architecture of Theories". The grand idea of Peirce's mature philosophical system proposes an epistemological realism and an idealist metaphysics. The paper primarily focuses on the latter, which expresses a worldview that conceives mind as the primordial or fundamental reality of nature. By analyzing Peirce's metaphysics in contrast to the alternative versions of Cartesian dualism, neutralism, and materialism, and by connecting it to his cosmogony, phenomenology, and physiology, the tenability of the primordiality of mind is defended as "the one intelligible theory" for explaining evolution, variety, human consciousness, and other observed facts of the world.