Editing Charles W. Morris (section)

==Career==
After his graduation, Morris turned to teaching, first at Rice University, and later at the University of Chicago. In 1958 he became Research Professor at the University of Florida. His students included semiotician [[Thomas A. Sebeok]]. In 1937 Morris presided over the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association, and was Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Morris was an instructor of philosophy for six years from 1925 to 1931 at [[Rice University]] in [[Houston]], Texas.<ref name="Reisch 2005">Reisch, George A. “Morris, Charles William (1901-79)”. Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers Vol. 3. Ed. Shook. England. Thoemmes. 2005.</ref> After leaving Rice, he was associate professor of philosophy at the [[University of Chicago]] from 1931 to 1947. Morris became a lecturing professor at Chicago in 1948, occupying the position until 1958 when he received an offer for a special appointment as a Research Professor at the [[University of Florida]], where he remained until his death.

During his time at Rice University, Morris wrote and defended his philosophical perspective known as neo-pragmatism. He also worked on and published ''Six Theories of Mind''.<ref name="Reisch 2001">Reisch, George A. Guide to the Charles W. Morris Collection at the Peirce Edition Project, IUPUI. Created for the Indiana Scholarly Editions Consortium. Unpublished manuscript. 2001.</ref> At the end of his term at Rice, Morris returned to the University of Chicago. In the early 1930s, the University of Chicago's philosophy department was unstable, but in the midst of change and difficult economic times, Morris felt that philosophy would serve as a torch that would light the way to saving world civilization.<ref name="Reisch 2001"/> Morris had hoped to create an institute of philosophy at the University of Chicago, but his efforts to convince the university president of such a venture were unsuccessful.

===Semiotics===
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Morris's development of a behavioral theory of signs—i.e., [[semiotics]]—is partly due to his desire to unify  [[logical positivism]] with [[behavioral empiricism]] and [[pragmatism]].<ref name="Posner">Posner, Roland. “Charles Morris and the Behavioral Foundations of Semiotics.” Classics of Semiotics. Ed. Krampen. Plemun Press. New York: 1987. pp. 25.</ref> Morris's union of these three philosophical perspectives eventuated in his claim that symbols have three types of relations: 
# to objects,
# to persons, and
# to other symbols.
He later called these relations "semantics", "pragmatics", and "syntactics".<ref name="Posner" /> Viewing semiotics as a way to bridge philosophical outlooks, Morris grounded his sign theory in Mead's social behaviorism. In fact, Morris's interpretation of an interpretant, a term used in the semiotics of [[Charles Sanders Peirce]], has been understood to be strictly psychological.<ref name="Dewey">Dewey, John. “Peirce's Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Feb. 14, 1946), pp.85-95.</ref> Morris's system of signs emphasizes the role of stimulus and response in the orientation, manipulation, and consummation phases of action. His mature semiotic theory is traced out in ''Signs, Language, and Behavior'' (1946).<ref name="Morris">Morris, Charles W.: Signs, Language and Behavior. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1946. Reprinted, New York: George Braziller, 1955. Reprinted in Charles Morris, Writings on the General Theory of Signs (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 73–397.</ref> Morris's semiotic is concerned with explaining the tri-relation between syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics in a dyadic way, which is very different from the semiotics of C. S. Peirce. This caused some to argue that Morris misinterpreted Peirce by converting the interpretant into a logically ''existent'' thing.<ref name="Dewey" />

===Institute for American Thought===
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Toward the end of his life in 1976, Morris sent two instalments of his work to the Institute for American Thought (IAT) at [[Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis]] (IUPUI). Three years later in 1979, Morris's daughter, Sally Petrilli, arranged to have additional installments of his work sent to IUPUI. In 1984 Italian philosopher Ferruccio Rossi-Landi added to the Morris collection at IUPUI by sending his correspondence with Charles W. Morris. Among the vast Morris collection at the IAT are 381 titles of books and journal articles regarding pragmatism, logical empiricism, poetry, ethics, and Asian studies.