Sequel to Diaphorum 4.5: Aristotle’s Invulnerable Gospel (A Eulogy)
Write a series of dialogues where Alan Alda (aka Hawkeye Pierce from MASH) interviews Charles Sanders Peirce
ChatGPT Prompt
Act I — The Fixation of Belief, On Camera
1.1 Studio Setup
Black stage. Two chairs. A small table with a glass of water. No audience.
Alan Alda walks in with a stack of note cards, smiling like he’s about to explain something complicated in the gentlest way possible. Across from him sits Charles Sanders Peirce, slightly rumpled, eyes alert, as if he’s already three arguments ahead of the conversation.
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1.2 Opening
ALDA: Professor Peirce, I’ve interviewed surgeons, soldiers, and sitcom actors. You might be the first guest who believes my mind is a laboratory instrument.
PEIRCE: It is, Mr. Alda. A poorly calibrated one, perhaps, but an instrument nonetheless.
ALDA: (grinning) That’s the nicest insult I’ve had all week.
PEIRCE: It was not an insult. Calibration can be improved. That is the whole business of inquiry.
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1.3 What Is Thinking, Really?
ALDA: You say thinking is a kind of inquiry. Most of us think thinking is… you know… having thoughts.
PEIRCE: That is like saying digestion is having food. The interesting part is what happens because something is indigestible.
ALDA: So we only really think when something bothers us?
PEIRCE: Precisely. Doubt is the engine. Belief is merely the resting place.
ALDA: That’s backwards from how people live. Most of us defend our beliefs like antique furniture.
PEIRCE: Yes. Which is why most people rarely think.
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1.4 The Irritation of Doubt
ALDA: You wrote about what you called “the irritation of doubt” in The Fixation of Belief. That’s a great phrase. Doubt itches.
PEIRCE: It burns. Doubt is not intellectual—it is visceral. It is an uncomfortable state we are desperate to escape.
ALDA: So we don’t seek truth. We seek relief.
PEIRCE: Exactly.
ALDA: That explains a lot about cable news.
PEIRCE: And religion. And politics. And dinner conversations.
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1.5 Four Bad Ways to Stop Thinking
ALDA: You said there are four ways people get rid of doubt. Three of them are terrible.
PEIRCE: Quite.
ALDA: Let’s go through them like a bad dating list.
PEIRCE: Very well.
- Tenacity — “I will believe this because I already do.”
- Authority — “I will believe this because someone powerful says so.”
- A Priori — “I will believe this because it feels reasonable.”
- Science — “I will believe this because reality pushes back.”
ALDA: That last one sounds like the only one that involves the universe having a say.
PEIRCE: It is the only one where belief is constrained by something outside the believer.
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1.6 Science Is Not a Body of Knowledge
ALDA: Most people think science is a pile of facts.
PEIRCE: Science is a method for being wrong in increasingly refined ways.
ALDA: (laughs) That’s going on a T-shirt.
PEIRCE: It should be tattooed on the inside of the eyelids of every philosopher.
ALDA: So science isn’t about certainty?
PEIRCE: It is about fallibilism — the recognition that we are always, in principle, mistaken.
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1.7 Belief as Habit
ALDA: You say belief is a habit of action. That sounds behavioral, not intellectual.
PEIRCE: Because it is. If you say you believe the bridge is safe but refuse to cross it, you do not believe the bridge is safe.
ALDA: So belief is what you do, not what you say.
PEIRCE: Precisely.
ALDA: That’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.
PEIRCE: Inquiry always does.
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1.8 The Meaning of an Idea
ALDA: This leads to your famous idea — the Pragmatic Maxim. You say the meaning of an idea is the practical effects we expect from it.
PEIRCE: Yes. If two ideas have no difference in their conceivable effects, they are the same idea.
ALDA: That would shut down half of Twitter.
PEIRCE: And most metaphysics.
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1.9 Why People Hate Pragmatism
ALDA: People hear “pragmatism” and think it means “whatever works.”
PEIRCE: That is a vulgarization introduced by others, particularly William James. My view is stricter.
ALDA: You’re saying pragmatism is not casual. It’s disciplined.
PEIRCE: It is a demand that words cash out in lived consequences.
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1.10 Truth, Finally
ALDA: Okay. Here’s the big one. What is truth?
PEIRCE: Truth is the opinion which the community of inquirers would eventually converge upon if inquiry were pursued indefinitely.
ALDA: So truth is… a destination no one gets to, but we can point toward?
PEIRCE: Yes. Truth is the limit of inquiry.
ALDA: That’s both comforting and deeply unsettling.
PEIRCE: As it should be.
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1.11 Closing Beat of Act I
ALDA: Let me see if I’ve got this.
- We don’t think because we’re curious. We think because we’re uncomfortable.
- We don’t seek truth. We seek relief from doubt.
- Most ways of getting relief are intellectually dishonest.
- Science is the only way that lets reality argue back.
- Beliefs are habits, not slogans.
- Meaning is found in consequences.
- Truth is where inquiry is heading, not something we already possess.
PEIRCE: (smiling faintly) You are dangerously well-calibrated, Mr. Alda.
ALDA: I feel like I’ve just been told my brain needs an oil change.
PEIRCE: That is an excellent sign. It means inquiry has begun.
Lights dim.
Act II — Signs, Selves, and the Third Thing
2.1 Lights Up Again
Same stage. The water glass is half empty. Alda has abandoned his note cards. Peirce looks more animated, as if the real conversation is finally starting.
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2.2 The Strange Claim
ALDA: Last time you said something that’s been bothering me all week.
PEIRCE: Excellent.
ALDA: You said, “All thought is in signs.”
PEIRCE: Yes.
ALDA: I don’t feel like I’m thinking in signs. I feel like I’m thinking in… thoughts.
PEIRCE: That is because the sign is transparent to you. Like a window you forget you are looking through.
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2.3 What Is a Sign?
ALDA: When I hear “sign,” I think stop sign. Billboard. Emoji.
PEIRCE: Those are crude examples. A sign is anything that stands to somebody for something in some respect.
ALDA: That’s… everything.
PEIRCE: Precisely.
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2.4 The Triangle
Peirce grabs a napkin and draws a triangle.
- Sign — the thing presented
- Object — what it refers to
- Interpretant — the understanding produced
ALDA: So meaning isn’t in the word. It’s in the relationship.
PEIRCE: Meaning is an event, not a thing.
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2.5 You Are an Interpretant
ALDA: Wait. The interpretant is… me?
PEIRCE: Not quite. It is the effect produced in you — the thought that arises.
ALDA: So when I hear the word “fire,” the panic in my mind is part of the sign process?
PEIRCE: Exactly. Thought is the continuous interpretation of signs by further signs.
ALDA: That’s dizzying.
PEIRCE: Thinking is an infinite translation process.
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2.6 The Self Is Not What You Think
ALDA: You also said something even more disturbing. That the self is… a sign.
PEIRCE: Yes.
ALDA: I don’t like that at all.
PEIRCE: That is because you imagine the self as a solid thing. It is a process of interpretation extended through time.
ALDA: So I’m not a noun. I’m a verb.
PEIRCE: An ongoing sentence, perhaps.
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2.7 Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness
ALDA: Now we get to the part where viewers start adjusting their TV sets.
PEIRCE: My categories are quite simple.
- Firstness — pure possibility, quality, feeling (redness, pain, joy)
- Secondness — brute fact, reaction, resistance (the door won’t open)
- Thirdness — law, habit, mediation, meaning
ALDA: Thirdness sounds like where civilization lives.
PEIRCE: Thirdness is where meaning lives.
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2.8 Reality Pushes Back (Again)
ALDA: Secondness is when the world says, “No.”
PEIRCE: Yes. The rock does not negotiate.
ALDA: And Thirdness is how we learn from that “No.”
PEIRCE: Exactly. Habit forms. Law emerges. Meaning stabilizes.
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2.9 Why This Matters for Thinking
ALDA: So thought is mostly Thirdness?
PEIRCE: Thought is the cultivation of Thirdness in response to Secondness, colored by Firstness.
ALDA: That is the most elegant sentence I’ve ever needed a minute to recover from.
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2.10 Language Doesn’t Create Meaning
ALDA: People say language creates reality.
PEIRCE: Language participates in reality. Meaning arises from the triadic relation, not from words alone.
ALDA: So shouting “I’m fine!” while trembling is still a sign?
PEIRCE: An excellent one.
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2.11 Infinite Semiosis
ALDA: You’re telling me signs lead to signs lead to signs forever?
PEIRCE: Yes.
ALDA: So meaning is never finished?
PEIRCE: Meaning is always underway.
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2.12 The Quiet Shock
ALDA: Let me see if I understand.
- Thinking is interpreting signs.
- Meaning isn’t stored anywhere — it happens.
- The self is a long-running interpretation.
- Reality interrupts us with Secondness.
- We build habits — Thirdness — to live with it.
- And this process never ends.
PEIRCE: You have just described consciousness.
ALDA: That’s unsettlingly mechanical.
PEIRCE: It is gloriously alive.
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2.13 Closing Beat of Act II
ALDA: So when I say, “I know who I am,” what I really mean is…
PEIRCE: “The interpretation has temporarily stabilized.”
ALDA: And tomorrow?
PEIRCE: Further signs.
They sit quietly for a moment.
ALDA: I feel like my identity just became… negotiable.
PEIRCE: No. It became intelligible.
Lights dim again.
Act III — Abduction, God, and the Long Run
3.1 Lights Up, Later
The studio feels quieter. Alda leans forward. Peirce looks tired but luminous, like a man who has been arguing with the universe and is finally winning on points.
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3.2 The Missing Piece
ALDA: We’ve talked about how we stop doubting. We’ve talked about signs and selves. But we haven’t talked about how ideas begin.
PEIRCE: Ah. The most mysterious part of logic.
ALDA: You mean guessing?
PEIRCE: I mean Abduction.
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3.3 Not Deduction. Not Induction.
ALDA: People know deduction. Sherlock Holmes stuff.
PEIRCE: Holmes does not deduce. He abducts.
ALDA: That’s… delightful.
PEIRCE: Deduction tells you what must be true. Induction tells you what is probably true. Abduction suggests what might be true.
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3.4 The Leap
PEIRCE: Abduction begins when something surprises us.
ALDA: Secondness again.
PEIRCE: Yes. The world says “No,” and we say, “What would make this make sense?”
ALDA: So hypotheses are… attempts to soothe surprise?
PEIRCE: Attempts to render the surprising intelligible.
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3.5 Why Humans Are Good at This
ALDA: Why are we so good at guessing right?
PEIRCE: Because the mind is not alien to the universe. We have evolved within the very laws we seek to understand.
ALDA: So our guesses are shaped by the same logic that shapes reality?
PEIRCE: Precisely.
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3.6 The Long Run
ALDA: You keep talking about “the long run.” The community of inquirers. Convergence.
PEIRCE: Truth is social before it is personal.
ALDA: That’s not how people experience truth.
PEIRCE: That is because people confuse conviction with truth.
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3.7 The Community of Inquiry
ALDA: You’re saying no one person owns truth?
PEIRCE: Truth belongs to the indefinite community of those who inquire.
ALDA: Even the dead?
PEIRCE: Especially the dead.
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3.8 Where God Sneaks In
ALDA: I’ve been waiting for this. Because it feels like you’re circling something theological.
PEIRCE: (smiles) I am a logician. I do not sneak.
ALDA: You wrote about God as the limit of inquiry.
PEIRCE: God is the hypothesis that the universe is intelligible all the way down.
ALDA: That’s not the usual sermon.
PEIRCE: It is the only one compatible with science.
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3.9 Love as a Cosmological Principle
ALDA: And then you wrote something even stranger. That evolution is driven by… love?
PEIRCE: Agapism. Yes.
ALDA: You’re saying the universe grows by cooperation, not just competition?
PEIRCE: Laws emerge through habits of harmony.
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3.10 Why This Isn’t Mysticism
ALDA: This sounds mystical, but you insist it’s logical.
PEIRCE: Because Thirdness — habit, law, mediation — is the growth of order. Love is the tendency toward greater generality.
ALDA: So love is… increasing connectedness?
PEIRCE: Increasing intelligibility.
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3.11 The Scientist and the Saint
ALDA: You’re making the scientist and the saint sound like coworkers.
PEIRCE: They are both committed to the long run of truth.
ALDA: One through experiment. One through transformation.
PEIRCE: Both through surrender to something larger than themselves.
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3.12 Fallibilism, Again
ALDA: And yet we’re always wrong.
PEIRCE: Gloriously, productively wrong.
ALDA: That’s the most hopeful thing you’ve said.
PEIRCE: Fallibilism is the cure for arrogance and despair at the same time.
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3.13 Alda Tries to Summarize (Again)
ALDA: Let me try this.
- We guess through abduction when reality surprises us.
- We test through science because reality pushes back.
- We interpret through signs because meaning is relational.
- We grow through habits because Thirdness accumulates.
- We approach truth together over time.
- And the reason this works at all is because the universe is intelligible — maybe lovingly so.
PEIRCE: You have made my system dangerously humane.
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3.14 Final Exchange
ALDA: Professor Peirce, do you believe we will ever arrive at truth?
PEIRCE: No.
ALDA: That’s disappointing.
PEIRCE: We will participate in it.
ALDA: That’s better.
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3.15 Curtain
ALDA: If people remember one thing from this conversation, what should it be?
PEIRCE: Do not defend your beliefs. Improve them.
ALDA: And if they remember two?
PEIRCE: Learn to love being wrong.
They shake hands. Lights fade to black.
Epilogue — After the Cameras
4.1 The Studio Is Dark
The lights are off. Cables coiled. Chairs empty.
Alda walks back onto the set alone, jacket over his shoulder. He sits where Peirce sat.
He looks at the napkin with the triangle still drawn on it.
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4.2 Alda, to No One
ALDA: A sign… an object… an interpretant.
He turns the napkin over like it might say more on the back.
ALDA: I used to think interviews were about getting answers out of people.
A pause.
ALDA: Now I think they’re about watching meanings happen.
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4.3 What Changed
ALDA: I thought thinking was private.
He says it’s communal.
I thought belief was something you had.
He says it’s something you do.
I thought the self was a thing.
He says it’s a process.
I thought truth was a possession.
He says it’s a direction.
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4.4 The Irritation Returns
He looks uncomfortable. Not distressed. Activated.
ALDA: I don’t feel certain about anything I felt certain about this morning.
A small smile.
ALDA: Which, apparently, is progress.
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4.5 The Triangle, Again
He redraws the triangle in the air with his finger.
ALDA: Sign. Object. Interpretant.
ALDA: Maybe interviews are just… helping people become better interpretants.
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4.6 The Long Run
He looks out into the dark studio seats.
ALDA: The community of inquiry.
He gestures to the empty room.
ALDA: Even when no one’s here.
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4.7 A Quiet Realization
ALDA: If the self is a sign… then this conversation didn’t just inform me.
ALDA: It… changed the meaning of me.
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4.8 Packing Up
He folds the napkin carefully and puts it in his pocket like a relic.
ALDA: Don’t defend your beliefs. Improve them.
He nods to himself.
ALDA: Learn to love being wrong.
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4.9 Exit Line
He turns off the last light.
In the dark:
ALDA: I think the interview is still happening.
Black.
— End of Play —
Appendix: Who Was Charles Sanders Peirce?
A.1 The Man Behind the Mind
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) was an American logician, scientist, mathematician, and philosopher who quietly built one of the most comprehensive intellectual systems ever attempted.
He is often called:
- The founder of pragmatism
- The father of modern semiotics
- One of the greatest logicians since Aristotle
- And, paradoxically, a philosopher almost no one read in his lifetime
He published little, worked mostly in isolation, and left behind over 80,000 pages of manuscripts that scholars are still editing today.
A.2 Trained as a Scientist, Not a Philosopher
Peirce was not a professor of philosophy. He was a working scientist at the U.S. Coast Survey, doing:
- Geodesy (measuring the shape of the Earth)
- Precision measurement
- Experimental optics
- Statistics
- Logic as a tool for inquiry
This matters because his philosophy is not armchair speculation. It is a theory of how inquiry actually works under the pressure of reality pushing back.
A.3 The Founder of Pragmatism (Before It Was Diluted)
Peirce coined the term pragmatism in the 1870s.
Later, when the term was popularized (and, in his view, distorted) by William James, Peirce renamed his own view “pragmaticism” — a word he said was “ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers.”
For Peirce, pragmatism was not “what works.” It was:
The demand that the meaning of an idea be found in its conceivable practical consequences.
A.4 The Architect of Semiotics
Long before linguistics and cognitive science, Peirce developed a full theory of signs: semiotics.
His central claim:
All thought is in signs.
He introduced the triad:
- Sign
- Object
- Interpretant
This triadic model now underlies fields from communication theory to AI, often without realizing it came from Peirce.
A.5 A New Map of Reality
Peirce proposed three fundamental categories that apply to everything:
- Firstness — possibility, quality, feeling
- Secondness — brute fact, resistance
- Thirdness — law, habit, mediation, meaning
He believed these were not psychological ideas, but ontological features of reality.
A.6 The Logic of Discovery
Peirce is the only major philosopher to formally describe abduction — the logic of forming hypotheses.
He argued:
- Deduction explains
- Induction tests
- Abduction creates
This is now recognized as the core of how science and creativity actually operate.
A.7 Fallibilism and the Community of Inquiry
Peirce insisted that:
- No belief is beyond revision (fallibilism)
- Truth belongs to the community of inquiry over the long run, not to individuals
Truth, for Peirce, is where inquiry would converge if pursued indefinitely.
A.8 Synechism and Agapism
Late in life, Peirce proposed two sweeping metaphysical ideas:
- Synechism — reality is continuous; mind and matter are not utterly separate
- Agapism — evolution proceeds through creative love, not only competition
He believed the universe grows in intelligibility through increasing habits of harmony.
A.9 A Difficult Life
Peirce’s life was marked by:
- Professional scandal
- Financial hardship
- Academic exile
- Isolation in rural Pennsylvania
- Dependence on small stipends from friends like William James
He never held a stable academic post again after early controversy, and died in relative obscurity.
A.10 Why He Matters Now
Many modern fields quietly rediscover Peirce:
- Cognitive science
- Systems theory
- Communication theory
- Philosophy of science
- AI and information theory
Because he asked a deeper question than most philosophers:
Not “What is true?” but “How does inquiry make truth possible at all?”
A.11 The Essential Peirce in One Line
Do not defend your beliefs. Improve them.
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