Abstract

My last chapter examines various aspects of normative science in general as well as esthetics and ethics. Particular attention is given to the proof that logic depends on esthetics and ethics as well as to questions about hedonism and psychologism that the proof raises. Next I go to the problem of the chronology of the MSS for Peirce's Minute Logic because it has a bearing on how his concept of normative science developed. Once the chronology is determined, four periods in the development of the idea of normative science can be distinguished. The upshot of the development is that there are three normative sciences, esthetics, ethics, and logic, and that all are connected with action in some way. The dual distinctions of good and bad that normative science makes are discussed and their connection with action and reaction is extensively traced out. This gives some insight into the definition of normative science as the study of phenomena in their secondness, i.e., as subjects of action and reaction. Next I give a brief discussion of esthetics followed by a quite extensive discussion of the theory of moral self-control which is Peirce's theory of free will. Peirce's theory or moral value is taken up and I find that according to it reason is the good. I finish with a discussion of so much of his normative ethics as I can make out. In it we find that the theory of moral value is reflected in somewhat surprising ways in Peirce's sentimental conservatism and his conception of personal ideals. ;The third chapter treats methodeutic. Its nature and contents are discussed. The only parts of this division of normative semiotic that seem to have been worked out are pragmatism and the theory of classification. I discuss and try to reconstruct the proof of pragmatism in the "Lectures on Pragmatism." I compare pragmatism with verificationism, which it resembles, and show that it escapes the objection to Ayer's formulation of the verification criterion of meaning and that it offers a simple solution to Goodman's "new riddle of induction" to boot. The pragmatic theory of truth and the related topic of the logical sentiments are taken up. Next I examine the theory of classification and Peirce's theory of natural classes, especially as it involves teleology. Finally Peirce's classification of the sciences is discussed. ;The second chapter, on critical logic, is mainly taken up with a discussion of the three elementary forms of inference, abduction, deduction, and induction. Peirce's conception of reasoning as a species of voluntary action is discussed. Then the question is opened about what is needed to supply a justification for a valid form of inference. I examine Peirce's proof that the concept of truth is analyzable into the concept of validity and another concept and then look into Peirce's realism as the foundation of logical value. I discuss the justifications for deduction, induction and abduction that Peirce supplies. Finally, various objections to the justifications of induction and abduction are taken up and answered. ;My first chapter, on speculative grammar, opens with a preliminary discussion of Peirce's universal categories. I give a proof of their completeness and irreducibility along with examples of each category. Then I discuss the nature and content of speculative grammar. The only parts on which there is much material are the theory of signs and critical commonsensism. I take up Peirce's second or revised theory of signs, distinguish three periods in its development, and devote particular attention to the concept of an interpretant of a sign. The new theory of signs is found to make cognition depend on prior affective and conative reponses to the world. Next I discuss semiosis, the action of signs, as a teleological process. I finish with an examination of critical commonsensism, showing how it provides a method of securing a right to employ assumptions that logic, in particular, needs