Dear Janet,

Thank you for your interesting - and yet challenging - question. One could take many approaches to tackle such an important question. For instance, one could compare the ontological positioning that Peirce assumes for his philosophical system, that is that of objective idealism (later called by Peirce "logical idealism", based mainly on the ontological position (with the same name, i.e., Objektiver Idealismus) from Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831), both major representatives of the German Idealism. From this, one could interpret Peirce's metaphysics and cosmology with a similar approach, although it is important to maintain a sound separation, or better, a distinction, between the theory of inquiry (or Erkenntnistheorie or Erkenntnislehre) and metaphysics. Now, the path to this approach is always very difficult and can lead to innumerous ambiguities as well as misconceptions. I am not saying that this is impossible, but there are different ways to approach this matter. Yet, it is important to keep in mind the metaphysical developments Peirce had in his philosophical period between 1890 and 1898, comprising the development and publication of his famous "Monist Metaphysical Series" which include texts such as "The Law of Mind", "Man's Glassy Essence", "Architecture of Theories", "Evolutionary Love", and the Cambridge Lectures.

However, Peirce had studied Immanuel Kant's "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" up to the point he knew it by heart, as he wrote it on many an occasion. One of the most important things Peirce takes from Kant is the following: Logic must come first in the process of inquiry and must not, by any means, be dependent on metaphysics. Peirce makes this distinction clear in his early writings, especially in a series of texts of the 1860s, one of which is the famous "Certain Faculties Claimed for Men", in which he distances his thought from the "one metaphysical certainty" that bases logic, a characteristic feature that was a constant in pre-Kantian philosophical systems (specifically Cartesian-like systems).

There is another approach, and this I would perhaps recommend at first. Instead of lengthy comparative studies between philosophical systems, trying to extract information ex-negativo, I would suggest you to focus upon the architectonic system of Peirce's thought itself. In later manuscripts, especially after 1902, going up to 1911, Peirce sought to develop his system of sciences, focusing mainly on the first division of the sciences, the more theoretical ones, called Heuretic Sciences (Heuretic from heurískō, to find, to discover), also called Sciences of Discovery. Within this first division, Peirce submits the following structure (after 1903, especially after the end of this year, after Peirce had delivered his Lowell Lectures, the structure remains more or less the same throughout his career, with some significant adjustments around 1906 and 1910 regarding the normative sciences).

According to Peirce, the first division of the sciences runs as follows:

1. Sciences of Discovery (or Heuretic Sciences) consisting in

I – Mathematics

II – Philosophy or Cenoscopy, embracing

a) Phaneroscopy (or phenomenology)

b) Normative Sciences, embracing

i. Esthetics

ii. Ethics

iii. Logic or Semiotics

c) Metaphysics

III – Idioscopy (or Special Sciences)

I am pretty sure you have encountered this before, especially in the book by Beverley Kent from 1987. The relations that the sciences thread among themselves here are the most important. From the more general to the more specific, also known as "top-down bottom-up". But I myself never use the latter formulation, as I find it quite vulgar. I prefer the term precept of principle and data dependence, wherein the most theoretical of the sciences furnish the less theoretical with principles and the less theoretical sciences provide the more theoretical with data, results, and problems. Here, we can see Peirce's version of the importance of this ladder of sciences: the pure science of hypothetical forms and hypotheses, mathematics, furnishes all others with the ability to generalize and construct hypothetical forms, without the need to have positive data. Philosophy, or Cenoscopy (from Jeremy Bentham, a common view of the more general), receives these principles of mathematics and articulates them in its own form of inquiry, which comprises phaneroscopy, or Peirce's other name for phenomenology, followed by the normative sciences, which comprise esthetics, ethics, and logic or semiotics. Esthetics is, for Peirce, a very different science in comparison to the tradition of aesthetics in Western philosophies. Peirce's Esthetics is the science tasked with disclosing what is the highest ideal, admirable in itself, regardless of aught else, that can guide the generation of future habits of feeling, and consequently habits of conduct and thought. It is also a very theoretical inquiry, highly depending on his phaneroscopy and his theory of perception (which, by the way, remains schematic, at best, though it can be reconstructed from his latest manuscripts). Ethics is the science tasked with the pursuit of the highest ideal identified by esthetics and making it a more concrete goal that should be actively sought. Therefore, it is the study of the formation of the habits of conduct. And then we have logic or semiotics. Yes, they are one and the same. Since his earlier writings, Peirce has recognized that one cannot think without signs. All forms of thought are made with signs. Then, logic is not only the study of the right form of thinking through valid inferences alone (if it is only that), but its study comprises the transmission and the conveyance of meaning and forms from one mind to another (or others) in the form of signs as well as the transmission of thought, meaning, and forms from an earlier to a later state of the same mind, as in an internal dialogue, for instance. And, the fact that the main goal of logic is that of proposing lines of inquiry and experiments to advance all manners of knowledge, it follows that the condition for this to happen is that of the way of sign-processes, or semioses. And, here, it is important to take a closer look at the structure of logic, or semiotics. By the way, in affirming that logic is the one and the same as semiotics, I am simply following Peirce as he has clearly indicated this in a series of late manuscripts from 1904. The most famous of which is the manuscript R693, 1904 entitled "Reason’s Conscience: A Practical Treatise on the Theory of Discovery wherein Logic is conceived as Semeiotic".

Semiotics is itself subdivided into three divisions:

1. Speculative Grammar, the best-known branch, where the sign typologies become apparent. Here we find the classifications of the Representamen, the ground of the sign as quali, sin, and legi-signs. Then, the sign typologies according to the sign in relation to its dynamic object, which conveys the relations of icons, indexes, and symbols; and third, we have the typology in accordance with the relation of the ground of the sign with its interpretant, which produces the relations of rheme, discent, and arguments. Peirce has a wide range of variations concerning these nomenclatures. The most important here are the relations and the logic of relatives that are represented by these varied names.

Then we have the second division:

2. Logical Critic: where Peirce divides the forms of arguments or inferences. These are abduction, deduction, and induction.

Then we have the third division, 3., which is called methodeutics (also sometimes called speculative rhetoric). Here we have the articulation of the inferences explicitly and symbiotically structured with the aim of generating lines of inquiries and methods of inquiries for the advancement of knowledge. It is here, at this point, that the maxim of logic is articulated, that is Peirce's pragmatism. He rephrased it Pragmaticism in 1905 to differentiate his line of the maxim of logic from other forms of pragmatisms (such as William James', Schiller's, and so on). But already in 1907, he reverted to the word pragmatism (as in the lengthy manuscript R318, 1907 entitled Pragmatism). Later on, he uses both terms as synonyms (as in the manuscript R649, 1910). He said that he had chosen this ugly name to keep his line of thought away from kidnappers. Now, here is the most interesting part. Already in 1903, Peirce established that the maxim of logic, or the pragmatic maxim, IS the logic of abduction. The logic of abduction is not the inference, but the manner in which the search within any form of inquiry starts and comes into play: by the abductive generation of a new hypothesis, concept, or any other form that can propel any form of inquiry, no matter how theoretical or practical. This alone requires the symbiotic and concatenated articulation of deduction and induction, but is properly articulated in a continual process of inquiry and experimentation to tackle the required field to be investigated.

That is to say, the logic of abduction is the main guidance for pragmatism as a method, and, as such, is solely dependent upon the previous sciences - but not metaphysics.

Here, I have compressed plenty of possible points of entrance to deal with the question you have stated. I would suggest staying close to logic/semiotics, but recognizing the systemic linkages (especially phaneroscopy and the normative sciences) among all these sciences is of paramount importance to studying pragmatism.

I have dealt extensively with this problem in my own research and would be open to further exchanges regarding these matters.

With kindest regards from Berlin, Germany,

Tiago

See

https://www.kenketner.net/_files/ugd/dd0fee_bcb447780d8d488ea1173d6960851516.pdf

for a summary

Dear Janet Christopher , maybe a silly answer, have you tried this? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/ or does it make you even more confused and you need specialised papers on the topic?

These are very helpful summaries of Peirce's

Doctrines. Thanks.