Peirce's Semiotics, Subdoxastic Aboutness, and the Paradox of Inquiry

The author suggests that educational philosophy should benefit from addressing questions traditionally asked within discourse in the philosophy of mind, namely: the relation between the mind and world and the problems of intentionality (or aboutness), meaning, and representation. Peirce's semiotics and his category of creative abduction provide a novel conceptual framework for exploring these questions. A model of reasoning and learning, based on Peirce's triadic logic of relations, is analysed. This model, it is argued, is fruitful for overcoming the paradox of new knowledge that was first debated by Socrates in his dialogue with Meno.