This essay is a bit old, but was and continues to be of significant importance in my own thought, so it was a pleasure to see it raised in today's IFETS discussion. The commentator, Michael Barner-Rasmussen, observes (edited for grammar), "The very way you pose the question limits the type of answers you might receive from the literature. Who is to say, that information (as in bits) and knowledge, as in remembered behavior-tranforming experiences have any relevant similarities? The very terms we use to describe such abstract and ephemeric phenomena often turn out to bias any 'observations' we subsequently manage." This is exactly right: the manner in which we express our thoughts in this, or any, discipline has a direct bearing on the range of theoretical options available. Now read Peirce: "The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise." Here we see the seed of logical positivism and behaviourism. Yet if we reinterpret "habit" as something like this, "when the mind is once inlivened by a present impression, it proceeds to form a more lively idea of the related objects," (Hume) what we see in Peirce is completely transformed.
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