Pragmatism and Logic

The paper seeks to explain in what sense pragmatism was for Peirce a doctrine of logic. It is argued that pragmatism is a doctrine of logic for Peirce because its maxim, the pragmatic maxim, is a maxim of the methodeutic of abduction, i.e., concerns the method of selecting hypotheses for experimental testing. The paper also connects this idea to Peirce’s 1913 thesis according to which pragmatism contributes to the security but not to the uberty of reasoning. The connection consists in that by excluding hypotheses that cannot be tested, the maxim renders the whole process of reasoning more secure, while any explanatory hypotheses is “uberous” in Peirce’s sense as any other.