Peirce’s Views on Education and Learning

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers how Peirce’s semiotic work suggests perspectives on learning and education. It focuses mostly on Peirce’s outlines of a speculative grammar from the mid-1890s, but it also considers earlier and later phases of his philosophical development. In the mid-1890s Peirce analyzed signs used in assertions and how the uses of these signs serve as conditions for learning from experience. Peirce qualifies these signs in terms of his symbol/index/icon typology and analyzes how they enable learning in everyday life and further prepare the learner for scientific education and specialization. The chapter shows how Peirce’s analysis may shed further light on learning processes through a comparison with Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Finally, the chapter considers how Peirce’s semiotic analysis can be complemented by perspectives on learning and education that philosophers of education have recently developed from his post-1900 semiotic work.