Peirce's Triadic Logic: Continuity, Modality, and L

Abstract

In 1909, in his Logic Notebook, Charles Sanders Peirce conducted what, to my knowledge, are the first experiments with many-valued post-Aristotelian logic. As these experiments are entirely contained in a handful of pages in his notebook, which were not published or discussed by other authors during his lifetime, his reasons are open to conjecture. By examining and transcribing these pages and connecting them to his larger body of philosophy, I show how his motivations lie within his views on modality, continuity, and his hypothetical cosmology.