This is my third post so far. The second question (why did Peirce attempt to prove the truth of the pragmatic maxim?) troubles me more. The pragmatic maxim is a regulative (or in other words normative) principle for attaining greater clearness of apprehension or in other words clarifying the meaning of a sign. "Speak the truth !" one may say to one's kids. But it would be absurd to try to prove the truth of a regulative principle from factual premises. So why did peirce attempt to do it for his pragmatism? Especially why do it late in his life when his understanding of logic was getting clearer by the day. He had earlier remarked that pragmatism is a principle of logic. Logic according to him is a normative science for attaining truth.
One thing that immediately strikes one is that since logic and pragmatism are regulative principles for attaining knowledge, we can expect that the pragmatic maxim must be a part of logic. But at which stage of the inquiry process ? We try to resolve the problem by trial and error. All thinking is semiosis according to peirce. Semiosis (sign-use to gain increased knowledge) has three components: the object, the sign and finally the interpretant. Similiarly there are three stages of inquiry- abduction, deduction and induction. Can we connect the components of semiosis to the process of inquiry ? The various possible relations are sign & object, sign & interpretant, object & interpretant. What is the order in which they occur ? Firstly one chooses a sign to stand for an object. Secondly one determines the interpretant of the sign. Thirdly by interpreting the sign, a knowledge of the object is attained. The order of logical processes on the other hand is abduction, deduction and induction. Abduction then, corresponds to the sign object relation. The allotment of a sign to stand for an object is just another way of saying that we attribute meaning to a sign. The first attachment of meaning to a sign and the first explanation of a surprizing fact by a hypothesis requires that the meaning of a hypothesis be apprehended first. As outlined in my previous post, pragmatism is just another way of apprehending the meaning of any sign, whether it be a term or a proposition. A hypothesis is just a proposition. So we can now come to understand why peirce may have called pragmatism as the logic of abduction. But the first question (why he attempted to prove pragmatism to be true) still eludes me...
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