Minutes of the Business Meeting

Charles Sanders Peirce Society

28 December 2008

 

Following the annual scholarly meeting, with papers by President Jaime Nubiola (“What Reasonableness Really Is”) and Essay Contest winner Daniel Campos (“Imagination, Concentration, and Generalization: Peirce on the Reasoning Abilities of the Mathematician”), President Nubiola called the meeting to order at 5:15pm at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.

 

 

1.       Jaime Nubiola asked for a moment of silence for three past presidents of the Society who passed away in 2008: Arthur Burks, Peter Hare (who also served for many years as an editor of the Transactions), and Rulon Wells.

 

 

2.       Jaime asked for approval of the minutes of the 2007 business meeting. Robert Lane indicated that there were three minor errors in the financial report presented at that meeting, none of which affected the figures included in that report, and he submitted the following, corrected version:

 

The Society’s income in 2007 was $6,128.90: $3,110.50 in membership dues; a $2,800.00 anonymous donation, for which the Society is deeply grateful; and $218.40 in interest. Our 2007 expenditures were $6,440.40: $5,600.00 to Indiana University Press, as per the publication agreement for the Transactions (this is the last of three payments the Society will be making to IUP); $500 for the essay contest prize; $182 for FISP (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie) dues for 2007; $75 for International Society for the Philosophy of Science (Logic and Methodology section) dues for 2007; and $83.40 for web-site fees. As of December 31, 2007, the Society’s assets were $7,741.06, a decrease of $311.50 from last year. The breakdown of the assets is: $600.00 in checking, $7,067.52 in a money-market account, and $73.54 in savings.

 

No other errors in the minutes of the 2007 meeting were reported.

 

3.       Tom Short delivered the following report from the Transition Advisory Committee (TAC):

 

The Transition Advisory Committee, or TAC, was formed by the Society’s president, Jaime Nubiola, to advise the Society, through its Executive Committee, on changes desirable to be made in Transaction’s editorial team, following the unexpected death of Peter Hare. The surviving editors, Randall Dipert and Cornelis de Waal, had risen to the occasion but could not be expected to continue bearing the added burden. The committee consisted of Jaime, Nathan Houser, and Robert Lane, with myself as chair. We consulted widely among scholars of American philosophy and, on our recommendation, the executive committee asked Randy and Cornelis to continue as editors and asked Douglas Anderson to join them.  Later, after Randy decided to step down, the Executive Committee on TAC’s recommendation asked Sami Pihlström and Scott Pratt also to assume editorial functions. All those asked agreed, despite many other demands on their time. We are grateful to them for assuming these burdens, as well as to Randy for having borne them. The result is that we now have four editors from four different universities, three American and one Finnish, giving Transactions four institutional legs to stand on. Because the editorial team has been enlarged, it was deemed necessary to designate one of the four as Editor-in-Chief, and Doug reluctantly consented to be so designated. As of this meeting, TAC happily terminates its existence.

 

Jaime then thanked Tom for his tactful leadership of TAC.

 

4.       At Jaime’s request, Robert delivered the following report from the President and the Executive Committee:

 

The executive committee met on the morning of December 28th , from 7:30-9:00 a.m. The members present at the meeting were Jaime Nubiola, Rosa Mayorga, Matthew Moore, Douglas Anderson, and Robert Lane. André De Tienne also attended at the invitation of the committee. Absent were executive committee members Larry Laudan, Sami Pihlström, Cornelis de Waal and Scott Pratt.

The first subject we discussed was the importance to the Society of our sustaining members. Sustaining memberships cost $100 per year, as opposed to regular individual memberships, which cost $36 for electronic access, $40 for print, and $44 for combined print and electronic. All of the difference between sustaining and regular memberships ($64, $60 or $56) comes directly to the Society, whereas only a very small amount from the regular memberships does. The names of sustaining members are published both in the Transactions and on the Society’s website. We discussed ways in which we might increase the number of sustaining members. Matthew suggested the possibility of adding a third type of membership with higher annual dues than the sustaining membership, for those members who are willing and able to contribute more to the Society. We agreed that this is a promising idea and that we would discuss this further in the new year.

The second subject we discussed was the role that presidents play in the Society. Doug reminded us of the tremendous amount of work that Peter Hare did for the Society and suggested that, in his absence, it is important for our presidents to take a greater leadership role in the Society than we have expected of them in the past, and he cited Jaime’s very active presidency as a model. We agreed that this should be made clear to potential candidates when they are asked to stand for election to the position of vice president, and we agreed to develop a list of things that Peter used to do that we might now expect our presidents to do. Doug also suggested that we consider the possibility of each outgoing president serving as an ex officio member of the executive committee for one year, to improve continuity in the operations of the Society. We agreed that this was a good idea and that we would raise this for discussion with the full executive committee in 2009.

We next discussed the possibility of putting together an International Advisory Committee for the Society and the Transactions. We agreed that early in 2009 an ad hoc committee will be appointed to discuss the formation of this International Advisory Committee. It was suggested that Sami Pihlström, whose term on the executive committee ends this year, be asked to chair this ad hoc committee.

Robert reported on the status of Peter Hare’s Transactions files. Until recently these were in the possession of Martha Clother, Peter’s secretary. Just a couple of weeks ago, John Shook picked them up from Martha and will soon send them to André, the Society’s archivist. The exception is the paperwork relevant to a bank account that Peter maintained in the name of the Society. John will send that material to Susan Howe, Peter’s widow. The Society was billed by Martha Clother and paid her $950 for Transactions-related work she did for Peter in 2007, as well as for the storage of his files for several months after his death.

Robert also reported that, at the executive committee’s request, he has composed procedural guidelines to be followed by the president and vice-president for conducting Society business. These guidelines will now be provided to each new president and vice-president.

Finally, Robert reported that, at Jaime’s request, he has created a calendar on the Society website that lists conferences and other events pertaining to Peirce, American philosophy and pragmatism. The calendar is updated regularly. Society members may email Robert (at rlane@westga.edu) with information on events they wish to have listed on the calendar.

 

 

5.       Douglas Anderson delivered the following report for the Transactions:

 

During 2008, in the wake of Peter Hare’s untimely death, the Transactions underwent an editorial transition. Thanks are owed to Randy Dipert and Kees de Waal for keeping things on an even keel through the spring. Doug Anderson became editor-in-chief in May and Kees de Waal remained as editor for Peirce materials. Later, Scott Pratt was added as non-Peirce editor and Sami Pihlström as book review editor. Thanks are owed to Joe Palencik for his tremendous help to the editorial team during the transition. Volume 44 is now complete and 45:1 is in press. There were costs for overruns in 2007 and some for 2008; Anderson is exploring these with the Press to ensure that future costs be avoided. Subscriptions remain steady, though the Press would like to increase paper subscriptions.

 

 

6.       Robert Lane delivered a preliminary version of the following financial report:

 

The Society’s income in 2008 was $2,913.09: $2,785.50 in membership dues; and $127.59 in interest. 2008 expenditures were $3,170.91: $500 for the essay contest prize; $38.47 for dinner for the essay contest winner; $710.68 for cost overruns, paid to Indiana University Press, for Transactions 43:4 and 44:1 (up until this year Peter Hare would pay for these overruns himself); $950.00 paid to Martha Clother, Peter Hare’s former secretary, for Transactions work for which Peter hired her but for which he had not yet paid her before his death, as well as for storing his files for approximately 11 months after his death; $15.00 for postage; $94.36 for Peirce Society letter-head and envelopes; $200 for FISP (Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie) dues for 2008; $579 for a suite at this year’s SAAP meeting, required for private interviews of several senior members of the American philosophy community by the Transition Advisory Committee regarding new editorial appointments for the Transactions (I used the bedroom of the suite; $579 was the difference in cost between a two-night stay in a regular room and a two-night stay in the suite; my institution paid the balance); and

$83.40 for web-site fees. As of December 31, 2008, the Society’s assets were $7,483.24, a decrease of $257.82 from last year. The breakdown of the assets is: $261.53 in checking, $7,147.49 in a money-market account, $74.22 in savings.

 

 

7.       André De Tienne delivered the following report on the Peirce Edition Project:

 

This is the first time I have the honor to present the annual report of the Peirce Edition Project to the Peirce Society, and I will try to be as succinct as possible, although there is much that I need to say. As many of you know, the Project is at the moment going through a critical transition.

Our last NEH grant ran out two months ago, at the end of October. It was a two-year grant received in 2005 which was extended for one year with no supplementary funding. The Project applied in October 2007 for a new three-year grant that, if received, would have started this last November. But in early June 2008, we learned that we would not receive that grant for several reasons, the most significant of which was our lack of productivity—a glaring fact since the Project had not published any new volume since the year 2000. Other reasons included the lack of trust in how the transition in the Project leadership would pan out given that it was unclear at the time whether and how the next Dean would continue supporting us, and there were doubts regarding our technological infrastructure. NEH referees advised the grantor to wait and see for a year before considering refunding us.

The loss of the grant in June, the start of a new fiscal year on July 1st, and the transition to a new Dean on that same day prompted the School leadership to revisit the Project’s own transition plan. You may recall that, as stated in last year’s report, I was supposed to succeed Nathan Houser upon his retirement, on May 1st, 2009. Both the former and the new Deans decided that it would be better to accelerate the timetable.  Houser agreed that it was best and most practical for him to step down earlier than scheduled from both the Institute and the Project’s directorships, in part to make way for the changes called for by the NEH referees. Houser became the Project’s Senior Editor, and I succeeded him on July 1st as Director and General Editor of the Peirce edition, having been appointed in that function by Professor William Blomquist, the new Dean of the School of Liberal Arts. Houser received a six-month research leave to continue working on the introduction to W8. He is slated to return to the Project in January 2009 and will spend the last four months of his 28-year tenure with the edition helping organize the manuscript base for W10 and sorting out his professional files. Associate Editor Albert Lewis, meanwhile, reached retirement age in early August and left the Project to pursue other private scholarly endeavors in Austin, Texas, and we wish him well and thank him for his ten years of service at the Project.

I want to take this occasion to express my deepest gratitude toward a person whose wise counsel and active mediation have been crucial to the success of the transition that has been taking place at the Project, and this is Tom Short, the chairman of our Advisory Board. His service and assistance to the Project over the past year has been of highest value, just as they have been to the Society and the Transactions following the passing of Peter Hare.

As soon as I was appointed, I did two things: one was to prepare and submit a dossier for promotion to full professor at the urging of all my colleagues, and the other was to draw up a plan to revamp the Project’s operation, the details of which were negotiated with the other units of the Institute, the chair of the Philosophy Department, and Dean Blomquist. In a nutshell the plan had three components. The first was to ask the Dean to let me have the line vacated by Albert Lewis so that I could assign it to our two production staff members, Diana Reynolds and Joseph Kaposta, whose positions have always been NEH-dependent. The Dean agreed, and I am thus glad to say that those two positions are now secured with hard budget lines. That’s a huge relief and a guarantee of continuity in our production. The second component is the creation of a position to be shared by the several IAT units, that of a technical editor in charge of revamping the electronic side of our edition. The Dean agreed to fund one half of that position in hard money, and it is up to the IAT units to raise funds through grants to fund the other half. The third component was to ask the Dean to let us keep Houser’s line upon his retirement so that we could hire two new persons: an assistant research editor for manuscript work, and an associate textual editor to produce the critically edited text. The Dean agreed in principle to let us have those two lines as soon as the School could afford it after May 1st, 2009. Regardless of when that will be possible, I am very grateful for these signs of strong support coming from the Dean, and he has several times told me that he had great confidence that we would be able to turn our ship around. I am utterly determined to do everything that needs to get done to improve our operation.

In October I applied for two grants, one internal to IUPUI and one external. The first grant is part of an IUPUI program called Research Support Fund Grants, one component of which is reserved for bridge funding to help projects that have been denied a major grant to strengthen their position. I am glad to announce that we have received that grant, in the amount of $35,000, which I will put to good use over the course of next year. The other grant I have applied for is a research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; the goal is to collaborate with a specialist of Peirce’s mathematical philosophy to do a lot of legwork on W12, a volume slated to contain a critical edition of Peirce’s New Elements of Geometry and New Elements of Mathematics. It will be several months before I learn about the outcome of that grant application (it’s a new ACLS program with no past history).

The plan for 2009 is straightforward: we are going to work extremely hard. The first goal is to finish W8. Nathan Houser promised that the introduction would be ready by the end of this month, and thus I am looking forward to reading it at the start of the new year. If all goes well, we will finalize W8 in January 2009 and send it to the printer. The second goal is to finish W9. It’s a matter of finishing the editing and annotating of all texts, and of writing the introduction, which I will do myself. The third goal is to continue working on W11 (“The Art of Reasoning: The Critick of Arguments”) so that, come next October we can tell NEH that W11 will be ready less than a year later. The fourth goal is to apply for a new NEH grant in October 2009, showing the progress we’ve made between now and then and giving good cause to believe that we are on the right track toward enhanced productivity.

Our relations with IU Press remain very positive. IU Press has been favorably impressed by the commitment the Project has received from the School. And they have been exploring several avenues that could help us make the text of our published volumes available on-line and to make much more of Peirce’s writings searchable on the Internet. These are very good signs, ones that I believe will please NEH, since NEH insists that the scholarly editions they sponsor make their products available electronically.

Production of W7, Peirce’s contributions to the Century Dictionary, continues apace, I am happy to say, in Montreal. Our satellite operation directed at UQAM by François Latraverse has continued to improve significantly its database, editing, and page-layout software solution and electronic interface. I was glad to receive, one year ago, a $10,500 grant from IUPUI’s International Development Fund to begin the second phase of our collaboration with PEP-UQAM. Latraverse, too, was able to secure a second grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. With that money he feels confident that he will be able to bring W7 to publication by the time he will himself retire, in 2010.

Our collaboration with Professor Helmut Pape on W22 (the Lowell lectures of 1903) has come to an end. Several years ago Pape received a large grant from the Deutsche Forschung Gemeinschaft to help us produce that volume out of sequence. He and his small team were able to reorganize the entire manuscript base of those lectures—a great feat all by itself as anyone who knows the complexity of those documents would acknowledge—and to transcribe many of them. But money has now run out and Pape has himself withdrawn from an academic world that should have been kinder to him. He sent me the result of all of his team’s work, and it will be up to the Project to take it from there and continue the production of that important volume. We are very grateful to Helmut Pape for all of his efforts over the past years and for having given us the benefits of his philosophical expertise in Peirce’s writings.

We at the Peirce Edition Project would like to invite the Peirce Society to join us in thanking Nathan Houser for having dedicated the gist of his philosophical career to Peirce scholarship with enormous devotion, charisma and sense of leadership. Let us always remember that it was Houser who himself turned around the Project in 1993 and the years following with the finalization of W5, the production of EP2 and W6, the remarkable introductions he has written for all of these volumes, the overseeing of the work on subsequent volumes now in the pipeline, and the creation of the Institute for American Thought in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. Those are signal accomplishments of which he can be truly proud, and all of us scholars who work for the advancement of Peirce studies and of American philosophy are very grateful for all the difficult and productive work he has done, and of which we are all the beneficiaries.

As always, the Peirce Project remains grateful for the unflinching support of the Peirce Society and all of her members. We will continue to need your support, moral, scholarly, philosophical, scientific, and especially financial, over many years. I thank all of you who have made donations to the Project in the past, and encourage you to continue doing so on as regular and generous a basis as you can afford in the future. 

 

Jaime, noting that this is the first Society meeting from which Nathan has been absent in very many years, moved to ask Robert to draft a letter of thanks from the Society to Nathan for his many years of service to both the Society and the Peirce Edition Project. His motion was approved unanimously. The text of the letter that was subsequently sent to Nathan Houser is as follows:

 

 

January 9, 2009

Professor Nathan Houser

Department of Philosophy

IUPUI

425 University Blvd.

Indianapolis , IN 46202-5140

 

 

Dear Professor Houser,

 

On behalf of the Charles S. Peirce Society, I am writing to inform you of the decision taken by unanimous vote of the Society during its business meeting of December 28, 2008, to express to you our deepest gratitude for your outstanding service over so many years.

 

In the Report on the Peirce Edition Project that he presented to the Society during this meeting, André De Tienne noted all that you have done to promote the interests of the Society, its Transactions, and Peirce studies generally, and that you have rendered this service “with enormous devotion, charisma and sense of leadership.” Subsequently, Jaime Nubiola, the president of the Society for 2008, moved that the Society express to you its deepest gratitude for this service, and his motion was approved unanimously.

 

Among your signal accomplishments are your leadership of the Peirce Edition Project and your contributions to its publications, the creation of the Institute for American Thought in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, and your service to the Peirce Society, including serving as the Society’s president in 2003. We scholars of Peirce and of American philosophy are all the grateful beneficiaries of your efforts.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Robert Lane, Ph.D.

Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society

 

 

8.       Rosa Mayorga delivered the following report on the Peirce Society session at the World Congress of Philosophy:

 

The Peirce Society sponsored a session at the 2008 World Congress of Philosophy, held in Seoul, South Korea, from July 30 to August 5. The session, titled “Rethinking Peircean Pragmatism,” was held on Friday August 1, from 4-6pm local time and was chaired by Sami Pihlström (University of Jyvaskyla). Two papers were presented: Rosa Mayorga (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), “Rethinking Democratic Ideals in Light of Charles Peirce,” and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (University of Helsinki), “Pragmaticist’s Methodology Rethought.” Sami also served as the Society's delegate to the FISP general assembly.

 

 

9.       On behalf of the executive committee, Robert moved that the constitution of the Society be amended to take account of the fact that the Transactions now has four editors instead of two, and one of those four now serves as Editor-in-Chief. The proposed amendments were as follows:

 


ARTICLE IV: EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

The first paragraph of this article reads:

 

“The Executive Committee shall be composed of the President, the Vice President, the Secretary-Treasurer, the Editor(s) of the Society’s journal, the Society’s webmaster, and three members of the Society, one elected each year, to serve a three-year term. In conducting its affairs, the Executive Committee will routinely inform and consult with the president of the Charles S. Peirce Foundation, the director of the Peirce Edition Project, and the chairs of committees as appropriate.”

 

As amended:

 

“The Executive Committee shall be composed of the President, the Vice President, the Secretary-Treasurer, the Editor(s) Editor-in-chief of the Society’s journal, the Society’s webmaster, and three members of the Society, one elected each year, to serve a three-year term. In conducting its affairs, the Executive Committee will routinely inform and consult with the president of the Charles S. Peirce Foundation, the director of the Peirce Edition Project, and the chairs of committees as appropriate.”

 

 

ARTICLE VIII: JOURNAL

The first two paragraphs of this article read:

 

“The Society publishes a journal known as The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy. The scope of the journal incorporates the purpose of the Society as given in Article I above. The Editor(s) of the journal shall be member(s) of the Society and will hold their office for an indefinite term. The Editor(s) will have control of the contents of the journal consistent with the purpose of the Society. The Editor(s) may appoint such editorial consultants as are needed to ensure high standards of scholarship for articles accepted for publication. The journal will publish such official notices of the Society as the Executive Committee may require from time to time.

 

“When an Editor of the journal resigns, or is incapacitated, or is for some reason temporarily unable to serve, a new Editor or Acting Editor shall be elected by the Executive Committee by unanimous vote. This vote will be taken only after the Executive Committee has thoroughly and widely consulted among the Fellows of the Society.”

 

As amended:

 

“The Society publishes a journal known as The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy. The scope of the journal
incorporates the purpose of the Society as given in Article I above. The Editor(s) of the journal shall be member(s) of the Society and will hold their office for an indefinite term. The Editor(s) will have control of the contents of the journal consistent with the purpose of the Society. The Editor(s) may appoint such editorial consultants as are needed to ensure high standards of scholarship for articles accepted for publication. The journal will publish such official notices of the Society as the Executive Committee may require from time to time.

 

“When an Editor of the journal resigns, or is incapacitated, or is for some reason temporarily unable to serve, a new Editor or Acting Editor shall be elected by the Executive Committee by unanimous vote. This vote will be taken only after the Executive Committee has thoroughly and widely consulted among the Fellows of the Society. Editors of the journal shall be members of the Society who are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the Society, acting through its Executive Committee by 2/3 majority vote. In performance of this function, the Executive Committee shall consult the Fellows of the Society.”

 

 

 

ARTICLE V: OTHER COMMITTEES

The final paragraph of this article reads:

“Status as a committee member may be discontinued by a majority vote of the Executive Committee.”

 

As amended (to bring it into line with the proposed change to Article VIII):

“Status as a committee member may be discontinued by a 2/3 majority vote of the Executive Committee.”

 

These proposed amendments were initially distributed to the Society membership via email on November 11. Printed copies were made available at this meeting. The motion to amendment the constitution was approved unanimously.

 

 

10.   Kelly Parker read the following report from the Nominating Committee:

 

The Nominating Committee, chaired by James Liszka, with Kelly Parker and Tom Short as members, propose Cheryl Misak for Vice President (2009, succeeding to the presidency in 2010), and Mats Bergman for the Executive Committee (2009-11).

 

Both nominations were approved and those nominated were elected unanimously.

 

 

11.   There was no new business.

 

 

12.   President Nubiola acknowledged the incoming President, Larry Laudan, who could not attend this meeting. Robert Lane graciously thanked President Nubiola for his service and adjourned the meeting at 7:20pm.

 

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

Robert Lane, Secretary-Treasurer