Logic and Semiotic

Peirce distinguishes between Logic 'proper', and Logic 'in general'. The former refers to the subject matter usually covered under the rubric 'Logic', while the latter he also calls 'Semiotic', or the 'Doctrine of Signs', and the former is a branch of the latter. While most Modern Logicians would agree that Modern Logic is fundamentally Symbolic Logic, few seem to share Peirce's insight that 'Symbolic Logic' means, first and foremost, not 'Logic expressed in symbolic terms', but, 'the Logic of Symbols'. Peirce's treatment of Logic, in the conventional sense, as one of many systems of Signs, anticipates Wittgenstein's conceiving it as one of many 'language games', except that unlike Wittgenstein, he offers a systematization of those 'games'. More generally, Semiotic is for Peirce interrelated with his Theory of Mind, which is interrelated with his theory of Conduct. In other words, Logic for him is an unprivileged part of a general System, and, so, hardly the 'essence of Philosophy', as Russell has asserted. What is, instead, at least implicitly essential to Peirce is the Systematic nature of Philosophy. Now, Formaterialism makes 'Systematics', for want of a better term, explicitly essential to Philosophy, because it holds that everything that exists is some combination of the Formal Principle and the Material Principle, and every such combination constitutes a 'System'. Furthermore, every System has a 'Complexity', so Systems can be evaluated on the basis of greater or lesser Complexity. Since Russell, and Analytic Philosophy, in principle, eschew Complexity, from the perspective of Formaterialism, Peirce, and Pragmatism, especially Dewey's, present a System that is greater than Analytic Philosophy.