Thinking and Acting: Tne Logial Background of Peirce's Pragmatism

Abstract

What is the logical background of pragmatism? The answer I want to suggest in this paper is that pragmatism is supported by some mathematical and logical ideas that provide a logical background for it. That is to say, they may be used to back up pragmatism's claim to give us a viable account of thought and knowledge acquisition that describes some of the crucial relations by which knowledge acquisition and action are guided. I will start by giving a shot account of why some mathematical and logical ideas coming from the logic of relations, order theory in particular, might be helpful for pragmatism's view of knowledge and praxis. That is, I claim that they support, clarify and strengthen some of the claims made by the pragmatic maxim. In a second step I describe why these logical concepts and rules of reasoing acquire a normative meaning when they become part of pragmatism's semiotic, methodology and epistemology. In particular, the normative role of a semiotic concept ot the identity of an object of different beliefs is discussed. In a concluding step some of the consequences of all of this for the pragmatistic account of thought for the theory of interpretations is developed.