The Fitness of an Ideal: A Peircean Ethics

Aaron Massecar

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

King’s University College at Western University

London, Ontario N6A 2M3

Canada

amassec@uwo.ca

The paper makes a place for a Peircean Ethics. It begins by briefly outlining the theory/practice

problem and then moves on to the difficult development of Ethics as a normative science. It is

no surprise that Peirce wrote about Ethics as a Normative Science at the same time as the ideals

of conduct in 1903. The result of this work is a theory of the growth of concrete reasonableness

that provides us with the tools to critically engage the ideals that guide our behaviour. This

description relies on an explanation of the slow percolation of forms, or more particularly, of

generals. This is the heart of synechism.

Synechism is founded on the notion that

the coalescence, the becoming continuous,

the becoming governed by laws,

the becoming instinct with general ideas,

are but phases of one and the same process

of the growth of reasonableness.

(CP 5.4, 1902)

In 1898, Charles Sanders Peirce stood before his audience and said, “Now, the two masters,

theory and practice, you cannot serve” (EP 2:34)1 and condemned with the whole strength of

conviction the tendency to mingle philosophy and practice. It comes as no surprise, then, that in

1898 Ethics is not considered a Normative Science. But just a few years later Peirce changed his

mind. In the “Minute Logic” of 1902, we find Peirce calling Ethics one of the Normative

Sciences that “are the very most purely theoretical of purely theoretical sciences” (CP 1.281,

1902). I think what allowed Peirce to include Ethics as a normative science was the realization

that ideals of conduct function like the laws of nature: both guide habitual behaviour. Ethics is

the study of the conformity of our action towards the ideals proposed by Esthetics. The ideals

proposed by Esthetics are the sedimentation of an entire culture’s practices that have provided

the culture with a stable belief set. Once those ends are brought under the scope of rational,

critical deliberation, then they can become subject to the scientific method. This is what allows

Ethics to become a Normative Science. Peirce’s fear, however, is that a wholesale rejection of

our belief set would lead to a type of Cartesian doubt that is not only unwarranted and

unjustified, but also very likely to lead us into error because of a lack of the stable foundation

that our cultural practices have afforded us. Instead of this wholesale rejection, in 1903, Peirce

outlines a process of critical self-control that brings our practices in line with rational

deliberation, which ultimately contributes to the growth of concrete reasonableness.

The purpose of this paper is to explain why Peirce held that there is a division between

theory and practice and to show how the two must inform one another through “a slow

percolation” of forms. (RLT, 122) I will do this by first setting up the theory/practice problem

for Peirce and showing why that is a problem for pragmatism in general. Second, I will trace the

development of Ethics through the evolution of the Normative Sciences.2 Third, I will show that

the development of the Normative Sciences must come out of practice. The results of the

normative sciences should be taken up again in practice in order for them to contribute to the

growth of concrete reasonableness. The concluding section will bring together two essays from

The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce (2012), namely, Rosa Maria Mayorga’s Peirce’s

Moral “Realicism” and Ignacio Redondo’s The Normativity of Communication: Norms and

Ideals in Peirce’s Speculative Rhetoric. By combining these two papers, we can better

understand that the slow percolation of forms that Peirce talks about in the Reasoning and the

Logic of Things lectures involves activity in accordance with the forms of relations of objects.

This move relies on both his normative sciences and metaphysical inquiry.

1. Theory and Practice

The position that I would like to put forward has been hinted at in the secondary literature but

has not been spelled out in complete detail.3 What I would like to see is an approach that respects

the roles that instinct and habit play in ethical deliberation by developing deliberate, intelligent

habits that contribute to the growth of concrete reasonableness. To get there, it will first be

necessary to dispel some of the myths about Peirce holding a division between theory and

practice. This will be done by showing what Peirce had to say about Ethics as a Normative

Science. It is here and in his comments about the ideals of conduct that one can plainly see the

interwovenness of theory and practice.

At the outset, it should be noted that there is a fairly straightforward solution to this

problem that could have been employed here, and it is a move that many commentators, such as

Vincent Colapietro, have made before.4 The solution would be to say that theory, or more

particularly, theorizing, is actually a form of practice. Thus, the strict division between theory

and practice is not possible to hold simply because theory is a subset of practice. The position

that I am arguing for here matches up nicely with this approach that sees theory as a form of

practice insofar as both approaches are undermining the dualism in some accounts of Peirce.

These approaches differ insofar as I am concerned with providing an account that focuses on the

role of instinct and habit as intermediaries between theory and practice.

2. Normative Sciences

Peirce did not always think of Ethics as a Normative Science. It is clear that he struggled with

the idea for nearly forty years. In the end, though, he came to see the importance of

Ethics/Practics as a Normative Science. This section will detail that development.

There are four main points where Peirce talks about the Normative Sciences: the 1898

lecture “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life” as a part of the Cambridge Conference Series in

1902’s “Minute Logic”, 1903’s “Some Topics of Logic” as a part of the Lowell Lecture Series,

and 1906’s “The Basis of Pragmatism,” which some have said is just a reworking of the 1903

lecture. Peirce makes a significant shift from his early writing on the Normative Sciences to his

later writing. That shift has to do with the placement of Ethics. In 1898, Peirce excluded Ethics

from the Normative Sciences, but in the 1903 and 1906 series, he includes Ethics as a Normative

Science. It is the purpose of this section on the Normative Sciences to trace the development of

Ethics from something that ranked with the general arts to a full normative science. There has

already been some really good work done in this area. I have in mind, for example, Vincent

Potter’s Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals. Though this section will come to roughly the

same results, unlike many other works, this section focuses on the development of Ethics in

particular, rather than the development of the Normative Sciences as a whole. I will start where

most people start when they’re looking for Peirce’s view on the relationship between theory and

practice: the 1898 lectures.

1898

In the complete version of the 1898 lecture,5 Philosophy and the Conduct of Life found in

Kenneth Laine Ketner’s edition of Reasoning and the Logic of Things, Peirce presented what

was apparently common at the time: a classification of the sciences. This classification begins

with Mathematics at the top and each of the following sciences are ordered depending on the

abstractness of their objects. Each science may thereby “rest for its principles upon those above it

in the scale while drawing its data in part from those below it” (RLT, 114). Peirce lists off a

fairly complicated organizational structure for classifying everything following mathematics and

philosophy. The following should help to explain this classification.

The aim of the classificatory sciences “is from the known laws made out by nomological

investigations, and the fundamental differences which are mathematically possible to deduce all

the properties of the different classes of mental products on the one hand, of kinds of matter on

the other hand.”

The aim of the special sciences of Geology, Astronomy and the like, are “to explain

special phenomena by showing that they are the results of the general Laws ascertained by the

Nomological Sciences applied to the special kinds discovered by the Classifactory Science

together with certain accidental arrangements. Last of all psychics and physics reunite in the

applied sciences or arts,” which is where Ethics belongs (RLT, 117).

Peirce says that all sciences are slowly merging towards the more general, the more law-

like. History, for example, attempts to classify particular events under more general laws in order

to form laws of psychics that the individual phenomena of history can be grouped under. Seen in

this way, all scientific pursuits are aiming at generating laws that subsume particulars under

laws.

Ethics belongs down at the bottom of the list because, according to Peirce,

in the first place, as the science of the end of the aim of life it seems to be exclusively

psychical, and therefore to be confined to a special department of experience, while

philosophy studies experience in its universal characteristics. In the second place, in

seeking to define the proper aim of life, Ethics seems to me to rank with the arts, or rather

with the theories of the arts, which of all theoretical sciences I regard as the most

concrete, while what I mean by philosophy is the most abstract of all the real sciences.

(RLT, 115-116)

Peirce’s 1898 classification of the sciences leaves little room for an ethical science. If the point

of scientific investigation is to generalize from the particular to the more general, then Ethics, by

its very nature, is hindered because of the particularity of the individual situation that ethical

questions must respond to. If Ethics cannot generate laws, then it has no hope of becoming a

nomological science.

19025

Sometime between the 1898 lectures and 1902, Peirce changed his classification of the sciences.

In his 1902 “Minute Logic” he restructured the hierarchy so that Esthetics, Ethics, and Logic are

the three branches of “The Normative Sciences.”7

A normative science is one which studies what ought to be. How then does it differ from

engineering, medicine, or any other practical science? If, however, logic, Ethics, and

esthetics, which are the families of normative science, are simply the arts of reasoning, of

the conduct of life, and of fine art, they do not belong in the branch of theoretic science

which we are alone considering, at all. There is no doubt that they are closely related to

three corresponding arts, or practical sciences. But that which renders the word normative

needful (and not purely ornamental) is precisely the rather singular fact that, though these

sciences do study what ought to be, i.e., ideals, they are the very most purely theoretical

of purely theoretical sciences. (CP 1.281)

Normative Science is the study, not of what is, but of what ought to be: ideals. These normative

sciences are the most theoretical of the theoretical sciences. As such, they are not the practical

sciences that can sometimes be associated with them, such as the particular arts of reasoning,

conducting one’s life, and the fine arts. The most important point here is that Peirce makes a shift

from saying that Ethics belongs somewhere in the general arts to belonging on par with Logic

and Esthetics, above the general arts.

The main difference appears to be the inclusion of a study of ideals as the proper domain of the

normative sciences. To understand what these ideals are, we have to turn to his work of 1903.

1903

There are two lecture series from 1903 that we will look at. The first is the Harvard Lectures on

Pragmatism that ran from March through May. The second series is the Lowell lectures on

"Some Topics of Logic," delivered in November and December. Along with the second lectures

is a section entitled A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic, which was meant to be a supplement

to the Lowell Lectures.8 The last two should be combined in order to fill out a complete picture

of the status of Ethics in the latter part of the year.

1903: Harvard Lecture Series on Pragmatism

Peirce introduces Ethics in the first lecture as “a most entrancing field of thought but sown

broadcast with pitfalls” (EP 2:142). He then goes on to say that Ethics must rely upon Esthetics,

a “doctrine which without at all considering what our conduct is to be, divides ideally possible

states of things into two classes, those that would be admirable and those that would be

unadmirable, and undertakes to define precisely what it is that constitutes the admirableness of

an ideal” (EP 2:142). Peirce later says that Esthetics relies on a basic description of all

experience, that is, Phenomenology. To engage in a phenomenological pursuit is to describe the

way the world appears to us, and Esthetics moves beyond a description of that reality and begins

classifying reality into things that are admirable and unadmirable and attempts, from this

classification, to define what it is that makes something admirable.

In the fifth lecture, Peirce says that Normative Science in general is “the science of the

laws of conformity of things to ends, esthetics considers those things whose ends are to embody

qualities of feeling, Ethics those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those things whose

end is to represent something” (EP 2:200). Later he says that, “Ethics is the study of what ends of

action we are deliberately prepared to adopt. That is right action which is in conformity to ends

which we are prepared deliberately to adopt” (EP 2:201). And about this end, it must be

something that is reasonably adopted, it “must be a state of things that reasonably recommends

itself in itself aside from any ulterior consideration. It must be an admirable ideal, having the

only kind of goodness that such an ideal can have, namely, esthetic goodness” (EP 2:201).9 It

must be an “absolute aim, which is what would be pursued under all possible circumstances” (EP

2:202). From this it is quite clear that Ethics concerns itself with what ends are to be deliberately

adopted as an ideal of conduct. The ultimate or absolute aim that is deliberately adopted must be

an aim that can be pursued in all foreseeable circumstances. There is little else in this lecture on

the specific nature of Ethics in the Harvard Lectures. It would be helpful to turn to the Syllabus

of 1903 to fill in some of the details.

1903: A Syllabus On Certain Topics of Logic

The following is a chart that represents the Classification that Peirce offers in the Syllabus.10

In a single paragraph, Peirce describes the Normative Sciences:

Normative Science has three widely separated divisions: i. Esthetics; ii. Ethics; iii. Logic.

Esthetics is the science of ideals, or of that which is objectively admirable without any

ulterior reason. I am not well acquainted with this science; but it ought to repose on

phenomenology. Ethics, or the science of right and wrong, must appeal to Esthetics for

aid in determining the summum bonum. It is the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate,

conduct. Logic is the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate, thought; and as such, must

appeal to Ethics for its principles. It also depends upon phenomenology and upon

mathematics. All thought being performed by means of signs, logic may be regarded as

the science of the general laws of signs. It has three branches: I, Speculative Grammar, or

the general theory of the nature and meanings of signs, whether they be icons, indices, or

symbols; 2, Critic, which classifies arguments and determines the validity and degree of

force of each kind; 3, Methodeutic, which studies the methods that ought to be pursued in

the investigation, in the exposition, and the application of truth. Each division depends on

that which precedes it. (CP 1.191)

Phenomenology will be addressed in the following section. In the Syllabus, Peirce says

that “Esthetics is the science of ideals, or of that which is objectively admirable without any

ulterior reason.”

The next in line after Esthetics is Ethics, or the theory of self-controlled conduct, which

relies on Esthetics to provide the ideals of conduct. Ethics, as the study of right or wrong, is the

study of the right or wrong self-controlled conduct, determined by whether or not our activity

accords with the ideals that have been presented by Esthetics.

Next is Logic. Just as Ethics relies on Esthetics for its foundation, so does Logic rely on

Ethics for its foundation. Peirce says two things about logic in the quote above. First, that logic is

the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate thought. Second, that it is comprised of Speculative

Grammar, Critic, and Methodeutic. Speculative Grammar breaks down into signs: Icons, Indices,

and Symbols, all of which are the objects of thought.11

But what does it mean to provide the principles on which another pursuit relies? What are

the principles? If one looks back to 1902 to what Peirce said about the more particular sciences

generating principles upon which the more general sciences operate, then one has a better

understanding of what Peirce means by the generation of the principles for use by the more

general sciences. This process relies on abduction and abstraction.12

1903: Lowell Lectures

In the Lowell Lectures, Peirce gives a more sustained account of the study of phenomenology as

the ground on which Esthetics, Ethics, and Logic rely. Peirce says that Phenomenology “just

contemplates phenomena as they are, simply opens its eyes and describes what it sees; not what

it sees in the real as distinguished from figment — not regarding any such dichotomy — but

simply describing the object, as a phenomenon, and stating what it finds in all phenomena alike”

(CP 5.37).

1906

In the 1906 lecture, Peirce gives a new name to the normative science of Ethics. Instead of

calling it Ethics, as he had done since the mid 1860s, Peirce starts calling it practics, in order to

distinguish it from Ethics because “Ethics” leads to some confusion. He avoids the use of the

term “Ethics” for two reasons. One, because Ethics involves more than just the conformity of

action to an ideal: “it involves more than the theory of the ideal itself, the nature of the summum

bonum” (EP 2:377). Second, because Ethics merely studies the relation of action to an ideal

without critically examining whether it is worthy of being an ideal of conduct (EP 2:377). Ethics

merely takes its direction from whatever it finds worthy of pursuit, and what it usually finds

worthy of pursuit is little more than “a composite photograph of the conscience of the members

of the community” (EP 2:377). Presumably, a real Ethics, or practics, involves a critical

evaluation of those ideals. As distinguished from this pursuit, practics is the theory of the

conformity of action to an ideal.

Normative Sciences “form one distinctly marked whole” (EP 2:378). It would be

difficult, therefore, to draw a strict division between the different sciences. There seems to be a

role for each of these different pursuits within each other. In fact, Peirce said that “the theory of

the deliberate formation of such habits of feeling is what ought to be meant by esthetics” (EP

2:378). Habits bridge between Esthetics, Ethics, and Logic. In order to understand how to

deliberately form habits of feeling, we need to look at reflection and the ideals of conduct.

3. Reflection and the Ideals of Conduct

In the 1903 Lowell lectures referred to above, Peirce said that there are certain ideals of conduct

that have been “imbibed” in us since childhood that are the “general description of conduct that

befits a rational animal in his particular station in life, what most accords with his total nature

and relations” (CP 1.591-2). These ideals are not the product of “any distinct acts of thought,”

but “have gradually been shaped to his personal nature and to the ideas of his circle of society”

(CP 1.592). Peirce acknowledges the vagueness of the words “befit” and “accords” in the above

statement and begins to clarify. There are three ways that the ideals of conduct recommend

themselves to us: through contemplation of the esthetic quality of the ideals, through a desire for

consistency between ideals, and through an examination of the consequences of those ideals. In

each of these situations, the contemplation of the ideals need not take place as an awareness of

the contemplation of the ideal as an ideal, but rather would most likely take the form of a

contemplation of a particular behaviour and whether the agent would like to engage in that

behaviour. The remainder of this section will focus on the movement of a passive acceptance of

the ideals to an active adoption of an ideal that is the result of deliberate reflection. This process

is, in effect, the development of intelligent habits that contribute to the growth of concrete

reasonableness—the movement from esthetics to ethics and logic and back into esthetics.

The reflection on the ideals of conduct leads to four steps in the process of the adoption

of the ideal and five steps in the critical assessment of whether the behaviour matched the ideal.

The process of adopting an ideal begins with (i) a general intention or desire to make our conduct

conform to the ideal.13

We admire an activity, believe it to be admirable, and want to behave in a

similar way. (ii) On further reflection on the activity, certain rules of conduct are formed that

would bring our activity in accordance with the ideal. Peirce says that “Reflection upon these

rules, as well as upon the general ideals behind them, has a certain effect upon his disposition, so

that what he naturally inclines to do becomes modified” (CP 1.592). By recognizing an ideal as

admirable, one will begin modifying one’s behaviour in accordance with that ideal. By

identifying a particular behaviour, one has already begun the process of being able to analyze the

component parts of that behaviour and generate rules of conduct that are in accordance with the

ideal.

Once the rules of conduct have been established, a resolution is made:

he often foresees that a special occasion is going to arise; thereupon, a certain gathering

of his forces will begin to work and this working of his being will cause him to consider

how he will act, and in accordance with his disposition, such as it now is, he is led to

form a resolution as to how he will act upon that occasion. This resolution is of the nature

of a plan; or, as one might almost say, a diagram.

The resolution is a decision about the way in which someone will act once a certain occasion

presents itself. The way that this resolution manifests itself is as a diagram for action. A diagram

for action, says Peirce in the Prolegomena for an Apology to Pragmatism, is “what is called a

General sign; that is, it denotes a general Object.”14

The diagram is not designed to represent

particular details, but merely the form of relation, what Peirce elsewhere calls “the meaning of a

general predicate” (EP 2:303). In the same passage, Peirce calls a diagram an “icon or a

schematic image” (EP 2:303). Unifying all of these passages, the diagram is an icon that

represents not particular objects but the form of relation of between objects; it is designed to

demonstrate how objects are related to one another, or, to put it another way, how general objects

behave with one another. When Peirce talks about the diagram that is necessary for enacting a

resolution, Peirce is talking about knowing how one should comport oneself when certain

situations arise. It is in this sense that the resolution to act is a further step along the process of

forming a habit.

The third step (iii) involves the transformation of a resolution into a determination.

Being nothing more than an idea, this resolution does not necessarily influence his

conduct. But now he sits down and goes through a process similar to that of impressing a

lesson upon his memory, the result of which is that the resolution, or mental formula, is

converted into a determination, by which I mean a really efficient agency, such that if

one knows what its special character is, one can forecast the man's conduct on the special

occasion. (CP 1.592)

The ability to see what would be necessary for the realization of some ideal isn’t sufficient for

the realization of that ideal. One must turn that mental formula into a determination. The

determination is a preparedness to act in a particular way or, for short, a habit. Once the habit has

been determined, then we are able to predict the behaviour that will result. Elsewhere Peirce calls

this an “imperative command addressed to the future self” (CP 5.477). This movement of a

resolution to a determination is the point at which the image converts to a readiness to action. Of

the process of transformation of a resolution into a determination, Peirce says “We do not know

by what machinery the conversion of a resolution into a determination is brought about” and that

it “is something hidden in the depths of our nature” (CP 1.593). One way to ensure that the

resolution is transformed into a determination is to ensure that there is a “unitary conception of

all that has to be done and just when it must be done” (CP 5.479). If the agent is able to ensure

that all of the activities are thought through in advance, then the resolution is more likely to turn

into a determination. The imagination is vitally important for both overcoming this problem and

for the formation of a habit: “a belief-habit formed in the imagination simply, as when I consider

how I ought to act under imaginary circumstances, will equally affect my real action should

those circumstances be realized” (CP 2.148).

It seems like the process of moving from a resolution to a determination is a problem for

Peirce because he thinks there is a difference between thinking about something as a

preparedness for action and being ready to act when the situation arises. If it is the case that there

is no fundamental difference between the two types of behaviour, then there is no problem

transforming resolutions into determinations. We are embodied beings and merely thinking about

how we want to behave when a situation arises is often enough to prepare our body for that

activity when that situation arises.15

Once the activity has been performed, the agent is able to reflect on whether that activity

accorded with the resolution that the agent had expressed before the activity. This initiates the

five step process of critical assessment that leads towards theoretical speculation. The first step is

(i) to ask ourselves whether the activity corresponded with the resolution. Now the activity that

we are contemplating is not the activity itself but a memory of that activity. The memory of the

activity Peirce calls an image (CP 1.596). “To imagine is to reproduce in the mind elementary

sensible intuitions and to take them up in some order so as to make an image” (W 1.353). This

image is then compared to the resolution to determine if the activity was good or not.

Accompanying this comparison is a feeling:

so in formulating the judgment that the image of our conduct does satisfy our previous

resolution we are, in the very act of formulation, aware of a certain quality of feeling, the

feeling of satisfaction — and directly afterward recognize that that feeling was

pleasurable. (CP 1.596)

Presumably the feeling of satisfaction comes as a result of the accordance of the image with the

ideal. Peirce later argues that it is not the feeling that makes the act a good or bad one, but the

judgment that one makes about the act that determines whether the act was good or bad. If the

activity was good then the judgment will be felt to be pleasurable, but if the activity was bad then

the judgment will be felt to be unpleasurable.16

The second step is (ii) to ask whether the behaviour accorded with the general intentions

laid out at the beginning. “But now I may probe deeper into my conduct, and may ask myself

whether it accorded with my general intentions. Here again there will be a judgment and a

feeling accompanying it, and directly afterward a recognition that that feeling was pleasurable or

painful” (CP 1.597). The feeling that accompanies such a judgment, Peirce says, “will probably

afford less intense pleasure than the other; but the feeling of satisfaction which is pleasurable

will be different and, as we say, a deeper feeling” (CP 1.597). Though the feeling will still be

one of pleasure or pain, the feeling will not be as strong but will be longer lasting than the

pleasure from asking if the behaviour agreed with the resolution.

A third step can be taken (iii): one can ask if the image of the conduct is in agreement

with the ideals of conduct in general: “I may now go still further and ask how the image of my

conduct accords with my ideals of conduct fitting to a man like me” (CP 1.598). In each of these

situations, “whether the man is satisfied with himself or dissatisfied, his nature will absorb the

lesson like a sponge; and the next time he will tend to do better than he did before” (CP 1.598).

The act of reflecting on one’s behaviour, Peirce argues, will inevitably lead to the modification

of that behaviour.

In each of these steps, Peirce is moving beyond the particularities of the situation and

questioning the direction of the self over an extended period. This movement towards

generalization (which was one of the requirements of the sciences that Peirce described in 1898)

leads to the fourth step (iv):

In addition to these three self-criticisms of single series of actions, a man will from time

to time review his ideals. This process is not a job that a man sits down to do and has

done with. The experience of life is continually contributing instances more or less

illuminative. These are digested first, not in the man's consciousness, but in the depths of

his reasonable being. The results come to consciousness later. (CP 1.599)

Questioning the ideals is neither something that happens all the time nor something that “a man

sits down to do and has done with”; rather, these reflections occur slowly and over the course of

one’s lifetime. The lessons learned through the “experience of life” are slowly brought to bear on

one’s reasonable being, only to be brought up to consciousness later. It is a long and difficult

process to evaluate one’s ideals, and this is not a process that happens all at once, but slowly,

with constant modifications taking place over the course of one’s lifetime.

There is a fifth and final step that one may make (v), and this consists in a theoretical,

ethical study that examines “what the fitness of an ideal of conduct consists in, and to deduce

from such definition of fitness what conduct ought to be” (CP 1.600). At least in theory, there is

a clear line of demarcation that differentiates Ethics as a practical science from Ethics as a

theoretical science. Once the Ethicist steps over into questions of the fitness of an ideal, then the

Ethicist is in the realm of theory. Immediately, however, once the fitness of an ideal of conduct is

examined, then there is inevitably going to be a modification of behaviour, if only a slight

modification in the beginning, but will eventually modify conduct over the long term.

With these five steps, Peirce has outlined an ethics of critical self-evaluation. (i) First

there is the examination of the accordance between the conduct and the resolution, (ii) then the

conduct and the general intentions, (iii) then the conduct and ideals, (iv) then a review of the

ideals themselves, and finally (v) a theoretical study of the fitness of the ideals and what

behaviour can be deduced therefrom. When these five steps are combined with the previous four

steps of intention, rules of conduct, resolution, and determination, then there is clearly explained

an ethics of critical self-control and the formation of intelligent habits.

The next move that Peirce makes in this section on the ideals of conduct is to propose the

growth of concrete reasonableness as the ultimate ideal (CP 1.606). Peirce does this by

describing a class of inferences that not only applies for a particular case, but would apply for

every analogous case as well. If the inference passes the test of being applicable to analogous

cases, then the inference can be considered reasoning. He then identifies “certain norms, or

general patterns of right reasoning” and compares the inference with those norms in order to see

if the inference satisfies the requirements set out by those norms. If it does satisfy those

requirements then “we get a feeling of approval” and we become more certain of the inference.

For Peirce, the evaluation of reasoning contains all the main elements of moral conduct: “the

general standard mentally conceived beforehand, the efficient agency in the inward nature, the

act, the subsequent comparison of the act with the standard” (CP 1.607). From there Peirce asks

what “right reasoning consists in? It consists in such reasoning as shall be conducive to our

ultimate aim. What, then, is our ultimate aim?” (CP 1.611). Peirce then states that he is

unsatisfied with the answers of the estheticians who argue that the ultimate aim is the beautiful

without any reasoning for it to be so—there must be a reason for it to be beautiful. Instead,

Peirce says that “The object that is admirable per se must, no doubt, be general. Every ideal is

more or less general. It may be a complicated state of things. But it must be a single ideal; it must

have unity, because it is an idea, and unity is essential to every idea and every ideal” (CP 1.613).

The admirable object is the growth of concrete reasonableness.

For Peirce, reason is “something that never can have been completely embodied”,

“actually governs individual events,” “always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth,” and is

the ideal of conduct that we are aiming for (CP 1.615). Peirce uses the example of predicating

“hardness” of a stone—no matter how many times one tries, the governing law of the hardness of

the stone will always dictate that the stone will be hard. Because the development of reason

requires more individual events than can ever occur, will never be exhausted, and is always in

the process of growth, the growth of reason functions as the ultimate ideal. Our job then becomes

to embody reason in the concrete: “Under this conception, the ideal of conduct will be to execute

our little function in the operation of the creation by giving a hand toward rendering the world

more reasonable whenever, as the slang is, it is ‘up to us’ to do so” (CP 1.615).17

The ambiguity surrounding concrete reasonableness has confounded more than a few

thinkers.18

Nevertheless, concrete reasonableness is the exercise of logic “to pull to pieces our

inferences, to show whether they are good or bad, how they can be strengthened, and by what

methods they ought to proceed” (W 5:328, CP 7.449). Through reflecting on our inferences,

using logic to pull them apart, and critical self-control as a means of modifying our behaviour in

accordance with the ideals of conduct and, by extension, the laws of reason, then we are in a

position to render the world more reasonable.

The result of the reasoning process is what Vincent Colapietro has called being deliberate

and thoughtful: “Our conduct is deliberate not because it necessarily involves stopping and

deliberating before we act but because our past deliberations have shaped (and often profoundly

transformed) our presently spontaneous acts.”19

This is how Colapietro describes thoughtful

persons:

Thoughtful persons deliberate when circumstances allow and tend to act thoughtfully

(attentively, considerately, purposefully) even when the pressures of circumstance

preclude the possibility of deliberation. In contrast, thoughtless persons squander

opportunities to deliberate (like the White Rabbit, each insisting, “I’m late, I’m late, for a

very important date”) and exaggerate the extent to which extenuating circumstances

rather than debilitating choices account for their all too characteristic thoughtlessness. At

a certain point in our intellectual development, it is inadequate to excuse ourselves by

insisting that we did not think that a particular omission would be irritating, or an

insulting utterance hurtful, or an impulsive action disastrous. In general, being truly

thoughtful requires us to discern our own tendencies toward thoughtlessness; it requires

us to imagine, for the purpose of self-accountability, both the contexts in which and

people to whom our habitual responses are most likely ingrained patterns of inattention

and insensitivity. Habits of sustained thoughtfulness, sharpened attentiveness, painstaking

consideration, and so on are not random results but the cumulative effects of

conscientious deliberation.20

Colapietro doesn’t make an explicit value judgment about the type of life that a thoughtful,

deliberate person would lead, but even if one is not convinced that the life that Colapietro

describes is worthwhile, it at least fits well within the Peircean framework outlined above.

If we were to push this idea about the growth of concrete reasonableness a little further,

then we can see that there is quite a bit that hangs on this notion. In particular, it brings together

Peirce’s ideas of inquiry, habits, and synechism. The end goal is to make ourselves continuous

with nature by discovering the principles that are operating in nature and operate in accordance

with those principles. This story goes back to the 1877 and 1878 papers, “The Fixation of Belief”

and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” and pulls out of them the basic model for the development

of beliefs and habits that are going to lead to fewer and fewer frustrations over the long term.

The idea presented in both of those papers is that we are in a state of belief until that belief

becomes troubled by some unexpected experience. We then enter into a state of doubt which is a

uneasy state of irritation that we attempt to flee. If we adopt the scientific method of fixing

beliefs and avoid the pitfalls presented by the methods of tenacity, authority, and the a priori,

then we will generate a hypothesis about how to overcome that state of doubt in the future. After

a bit of testing, we are prepared to adopt that belief and thereby have a preparedness to act

should the doubt-inducing situation present itself again in the future. This, Peirce says, and we

can see the influence of Darwin here, is the best means that we have for adapting ourselves to

our environments and avoiding frustrations in the future. The strange thing about this model is

that the whole purpose of thought and inquiry is to eliminate thought and inquiry—inquiry is

aimed at beliefs that won’t be overturned by future experience, which would then require doubt

and inquiry again. The point of inquiry is to develop beliefs that won’t require inquiry in the

future. Sometimes this involves understanding properties of rare metals and sometimes this

involves detouring around a construction zone. In both situations, inquiry is required in order to

navigate through the doubt-inducing situation. Once the right pathway of action is found and

tested, then very little thought is required next time around and we can say that a habit has been

established. Thus, the establishment of habits that involve the right combinations of feeling,

action, and thought21

(not all thought can be removed because there will always be some form of

sign interpretation) will then permit one to successfully navigate that situation again in the

future. The movement of belief into embodied expectations that require less and less thought in

future situations is, I believe, what Peirce means by the development of concrete reasonableness.

When we switch over from the ethical to the metaphysical, then we start getting into some

interesting Peircean claims about matter being effete mind. We can see mind as an attempt to

constantly preserve itself by accounting for future situations with beliefs of expectations about

those situations. As more and more general beliefs are established that account for future

situations, then less and less mind is required. A full explanation of Peirce’s metaphysics isn’t

required here to understand how inquiry can bring about the growth of concrete reasonableness

by establishing beliefs of expectation that allow us to spontaneously behave without the

necessity of thought when the doubt-inducing situation presents itself in the future. This process

of becoming more reasonable and less doubt-filled is specifically the process of becoming

continuous with nature, which is one aspect of synechism. By moving thought out of our brains

and into our bodies, into our instinctive nature, then we are becoming continuous with the

principles that govern nature and we are thereby participating in the growth of concrete

reasonableness22

and simultaneously embodying his notion of synechism. This is, I believe, what

Peirce means by the process of the slow percolation of forms gradually reaching the core of

one’s being (RLT, 122).

To explain this point about the percolation of forms in more detail, it will be helpful to

look at some contemporary work being done in this area. When Ignacio Redondo’s work on the

forms from “The Normativity of Communication: Norms and Ideals in Peirce’s Speculative

Rhetoric”23

The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce is coupled with John F. Boler’s work

Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism (1963) then we have a much better understanding of the

nature of the slow percolation of forms.

Redondo’s work helps to explain this point; he says that, according to Peirce, the sign is

something that “communicates forms or features from the object…” (225), that “because of its

conditional structure, forms are equivalent to rules” (226), and quoting Peirce, “‘the conditional

relation which constitutes the form is true of the form as it is in the object’ (R 793:3, 1906).”

(227) Last, “the acceptance of the reality of forms, as potential habits to be received, carefully

percolated and put into action by real interpreters in the world grasps the full meaning of

pragmaticism.” (229) There is a lot to unpack there, but there is one further voice that I would

like to add before pulling it all together: John Boler from Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism.

Boler uses some of the same language as Redondo, but modifies things slightly and it is

this modification that I think presents a more complete picture of Peirce’s work. Whereas

Redondo writes about the forms of objects, Boler emphasizes generals instead:

The schoolmen, as Peirce sees them, realized the importance of habits or dispositions, but

unfortunately the treated them as forms. Lacking the logic of relatives and pragmatism,

they were unable to do justice to the relational structure of real generals. The result was a

static doctrine of substantial forms that could not account for the important elements of

continuity and process.24

From Boler’s writing, it is clear that Peirce preferred “general” to “form” because of the baggage

of the scholastics, but that the meaning of the terms is quite similar. The point about generals that

Boler emphasizes with respect to Peirce is that real generals have a relational structure that

manifests when certain conditions obtain. This manifestation is the same manifestation that

Redondo mentions above with the conditional relation. Boler is quite good at explaining this

relation. He says that “the discovery of relations or laws (as relations of relations) must involve

abduction.”25

An object tends to behave in a regular pattern or habit. The habit is the

manifestation of a law that is operating through the object. The regular manifestation of

particular relations lends itself to discovery through abductive inference. The abductive

inference, once tested, then takes on the status of a relation about relations, or a law. Boler,

however, identifies a problem with respect to understanding how generals become embodied.26

This is where Redondo steps back in: the communication to others of the product of the

abductive inference, the law as now manifested in signs, then governs concrete actions in the

future.27

“The function of the sign is, therefore, to mediate in the transmission of a rule—a real

general—from the object to the interpretant.”28

I take it that communicating rules can take the

form of forming sentences, but it can also take the form of mimesis, or simply copying the

behaviour of others.

Communicating rules governs habit development. This is the ideal situation, that is,

where through the process of inquiry and abductive inference, laws are discovered and tested

with a sense of fallibilism with respect to those laws; they could be wrong in the future. More

often than not, however, laws are communicated without any sense of testing or fallibilism and

thus entire cultures tend to adopt certain prejudices within its conscience that are difficult if not

impossible to remove. LIszka calls conscience “the repository of commonsense beliefs” and says

that it is open to change though.29

Commonsense beliefs are the products of the adaption of that

community to its environment and they condition the individual to behave in certain ways and

have certain expectations about the nature of the surrounding environment. Beliefs help the

individual adapt, but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily good. There are all sorts of ways

of fixing belief (tenacity, authority, and the a priori), but it is the scientific method of generating

hypotheses and testing those hypotheses that are liable to get the most stable set of beliefs that

help individuals adapt to their environment over the long term.

The point, though, is that with constant testing and the acceptance of a position of

fallibilism, the discoveries wrought out from nature will tend to influence future conduct in the

form of the communication of general laws. In order for this to happen, there has to be an

interplay between conscience as commonsense beliefs and the discoveries made through

abductive inference. Abductive inference needs to test its discoveries, not just against possible

future consequences, but also against our culture’s sentiment. It is only through this process of

constantly examining and questioning a cultures commonsense beliefs that it is more likely to

produce a stable belief set that will be less susceptible to doubt over the long run.30

Conclusion

It is clear that in Peirce’s later articulations of the Normative Sciences, that he still held a

distinction between theory and practice. He came to see the importance of Ethics as a Normative

Science, however, when he realized that the ideals of conduct can become the object of

theoretical inquiry. There is a parallel here between the ideals of conduct and the laws of nature

insofar as they both regulate behaviour. It is that discovery, I believe, that caused Peirce to begin

considering Ethics as a Normative Science.

When thinking shifts from examining what one should do here and now towards thinking

about what the fitness of an ideal consists of, then Ethics moves from a practical pursuit to a

theoretical pursuit. It is here that the activity shifts from “what am I to do now that would

eliminate these irritations” to the generation of an ideal that answers the question, “what am I

deliberately prepared to adopt as an ultimate ideal over the course of my lifetime?” There is a tie

back into practice, however, as Peirce is quick to mention: once the inductive process of

proposing and examining the fitness of an ideal in general has taken place, then there is a

deductive process of putting those ideals into action, into practice. Once the deliberative process

has taken place and one has resolved to behave according to the ideals that one has adopted, then

habits and instincts begin to form as the behaviour becomes more routine. If the ideals that we

have adopted are correct and meet with little resistance then we have done our part in

contributing to the growth of concrete reasonableness. It is here that we see the real power of

Peirce’s Synechism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For the helpful comments that kept me from overstating my cause, I would like to thank the

anonymous reviewers for the journal. In addition, I would like to thank the members of the

Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, in particular Doug Anderson, Vincent

Colapietro, Erin McKenna, Thomas Alexander, and many, many others for their helpful

conversations that have also kept me on the straight and narrow path necessary for understanding

Peirce.

NOTES

1. I am using the standard practice of referring to Peirce’s Collected Papers (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1931-58) with volume followed by paragraph number. For example, CP 7.448 would

refer to volume seven, paragraph 448. For the Writings of Charles S. Peirce (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1981-2009) I use a similar format in that W 2:233 would refer to the second volume,

page 233. For the Essential Peirce (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992-1998), EP 2:150 refers

to the second volume, page 150. Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conference Lectures

of 1898 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) will be abbreviated RLT

2. The most sustained and thorough account of the Normative Sciences has to be Vincent Potter’s

Charles S. Peirce on Norms and Ideals (Worcester: The Hefferman Press, 1967). In that book, Father

Potter’s description of the Normative Sciences and their relationship to the three categories, synechism,

and tychism is so complete that one wonders how so many people could have misunderstood the role of

Ethics as a Normative Science. And yet here we are with so many people misunderstanding Peirce as a

result of the popularization of the 1898 lecture.

One of the most interesting accounts of Peirce’s Normative Sciences comes from Richard S.

Robin’s 1964 work Peirce’s Doctrine of the Normative Sciences (Richard Robin, “Peirce’s Doctrine of

the Normative Sciences,” Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Second Series, eds.

Edward C. Moore and Richard Robin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964). In that work,

Robin places the Normative Sciences within the general category of the Theory of Inquiry. Robin states

that,

First, one may go behind the theory of inquiry to its presuppositions, and second, one may extend

the theory beyond its present limits so that it includes a consideration of norms and values. The

first direction leads to Peirce’s Critical Common-sensism; the second to his Doctrine of the

Normative Sciences. (p.271)

T.L. Short has built on parts of Robin’s account and corrected other parts. Specifically, Short

states that it isn’t the Normative Sciences in general that bear a relationship to Critical Common-sensism,

but it’s the doctrine of the Normative Sciences, the theory about the Normative Sciences, that bears that

relation to Critical Common-sensism (T.L. Short, “Robin on Perception and Sentiment in Peirce”

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 38 no. 1/2, (2002:Winter/Spring), pp.267-282.

Just what is the role of Normative Sciences? Is it descriptive or prescriptive? Henry Veatch

attacks the view that a Normative Science like Ethics can be only prescriptive and not descriptive. (See

Henry Veatch, “Concerning the Distinction Between Descriptive and Normative Sciences,” Philosophy

and Phenomenological Research 6, no. 2 (1945), pp.284-306).This opens up the way to saying that the

Normative Sciences can be both descriptive and prescriptive simultaneously. This view is shared by Irdell

Jenkins in his article, “What is a Normative Science?”:

In a word, modern philosophy has on the whole distinguished emotion from perception on the

basis of a deep-seated conviction that emotional data are not fit material for the type of

intellectual analysis that can lead to a disclosure of the character of the real. And this conviction

is itself controlled by a pre-conception concerning the real objects at which such analysis is to

arrive. Perception has been purposefully selected from the body of consciousness and vested with

a pre-eminent status in inquiry. And emotion, which is integral with perception in experience, is

cast aside as a deceptive interloper (Irdell Jenkins, “What is a Normative Science?,” The Journal

of Philosophy 45, no. 12 (1948), p.319).

Karl-Otto Apel has taken a different approach in trying to understand Peirce’s conception of the

relationship between the different normative sciences. Instead of looking for the general category under

which to place the normative sciences, Apel has looked for the principle that guides all of the individual

sciences. Eventually, Apel concludes that it is the rationalization of the universe that should provide the

direction for all of our activities:

The view that we should take part in the rationalization of the universe in the framework of the

“indefinite community” has evidently been presupposed in the foregoing sketch of the foundation

of a general ethical maxim and assumed to be itself capable of no further justification. To put it

another way, it has been presupposed as the summum bonum, which is attractive in itself (Karl-

Otto Apel. Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism (Amherst, Mass.: University of

Massachusetts Press, 1981), p.93).

Apel does address this point by stating that the goal of the normative sciences is the establishment

of concrete reasonableness in us.

Apel’s point about the summum bonum of the normative sciences comes up in the discussion of

the mediation of the idea and the sensory—how are generals recognized in particulars. Peirce, like so

many others, looks to Esthetics for the point of convergence between the idea and the sensory.

The circumstance that makes it possible here for Peirce to accept the feeling quality of beauty as a

manifestation of the summum bonum, despite his rejection of Hedonism, is his interpretation of

this aesthetic quality categorically as the Firstness of Thirdness. That is, he conceives it as the

qualitatively unified and therefore intuitively perceivable expression of universality, continuity,

and order, or, in other words, of the concrete reasonableness of the future universe (Karl-Otto

Apel, Charles S. Peirce, p.94).

Much more remains to be said about the convergence of firstness and thirdness.

3. There are elements of this in the work of Christopher Hookway Peirce, (London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul, 1985), Richard Mullin, Soul of Classical American Philosophy: The Ethical and Spiritual

Insights of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce, (Albany: State University of New

York Press, 2007) John Michael Krois’ work understanding that instincts are inherited habits in “C.S.

Peirce and Philosophical Ethics” ed. Merman Parret, Peirce and Value Theory: On Peircean Ethics and

Aesthetics, (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1994), and incarnating the universal in a

habit in Karl-Otto Apel, Charles S. Peirce, p.89.

4. See, for example, Vincent Colapietro’s “Peirce Today”, Pragmatism Today 1 no.4,

(2010:Winter): pp.7-24 wherein Colapietro specifically states that “theory is a form of practice” and

shows his indebtedness to H.S. Thayer, Mats Bergman, and Doug Anderson for this position.

5. If one looks to the Collected Papers, one won’t find any reference to the Normative Sciences in

the section entitled Theory and Practice (CP 1.616-1.648).

6. Also in 1902, Peirce wrote his Carnegie application for funding what would have been a

comprehensive work, detailing most of Peirce’s logic and how it hung together with the other normative

sciences, phenomenology, and metaphysics. Though this is an important piece, it does not provide

sufficient clarity regarding the specific, interrelated roles of esthetics, ethics, and logic to be considered in

detail in this paper.

7. In this paper, I am dealing with Logic as a normative science and not in the many other forms

of logic that Peirce writes about. For that discussion, see of Susan Haack, Peirce and Logicism: Notes

Towards an Exposition, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 29 no.1 (1993:Winter) pp.14-20.

8. Because Peirce refers to the Lowell Lectures as occurring in the future in the preface to this

work, we are led to believe that this Outline was written after but published before the Lowell Lectures.

9. For Peirce, Right reasoning consists in reasoning in accordance with our ultimate aim, and that

this aim is not determined by Ethics, as that is good for only

telling us that we have the power of self-control, that no narrow or selfish aim can ever prove

satisfactory, that the only satisfactory aim is the broadest, highest, and most general possible aim;

and for any more definite information, as I conceive the matter, he has to refer us to the

esthetician, whose business it is to say what is the state of things which is most admirable in itself

regardless of any ulterior reason. (CP 1.611)

Esthetics tells us what is admirable in itself without regard for anything else. So what role does

Ethics play? Peirce’s work in 1906 is a little more helpful in this regard.

10. There are other branches that can be traced, but they are long and unimportant for our

positioning of Ethics.

11. If logic is the study of self-controlled thought, and one thinks only in signs, then we should

look for the control of thought in the structure and use of signs. For now, the important point is that Ethics

is foundational for Logic insofar as Ethics provides the principles with which Logic operates.

12. The main idea here is that the more specific sciences generate principles that apply to their

specific domains. As the principles become more general, then so too do the sciences. In this way, the

generation of more abstract principles through abductive inferences, which then lend themselves to more

and more general abductive inferences until the highest levels of mathematics of logic.

13. There is, of course, a step that happens before this process can occur: the ideal needs to be

seen as worthy of admiration. Peirce says that this is the work of esthetics—to figure out what ideals are

worthy of admiration.

14. Peirce, Collected Papers, “Prolegomena for an Apology to Pragmatism”', New Elements of

Mathematics (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958-60) 4:315-316n1, c. 1906

15. Imagining oneself in a fight is often enough to get the blood pumping, for example.

16. Peirce makes this argument, it seems, to avoid being misinterpreted as advocating a simple

hedonism where all acts are performed for their pleasure and not for their worth independent of pleasure.

17. There are articles, such as those by Bent Sorenson and Ciano Aydin that purport to provide an

explanation of the growth of concrete reasonableness, but in fact, concrete reasonableness, despite being

in the title of one and one of the central ideas of the other, was very little mentioned even though it is the

central ideal that unifies Peirce’s thinking about ethics. See Ciano Aydin “On the Significance of Ideals:

Charles S. Peirce and the Good Life” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 45, no. 3 (2009),

pp.422-443 and Bent Sorenson, “The sign universe, Summum Bonum, self-control, and the normative

sciences in a Peircean perspective or man ought to contribute to the growth in the concrete

reasonableness” Semiotica 176, no.1/4 (2009), pp.83–93.

18. See, for example, Cheryl Misak’s characterization of Peirce’s concrete reasonableness as an

answer to the question of what can be admired unconditionally as “rather unhelpful.” Cheryl Misak,

“C.S. Peirce on Vital Matters” Cambridge Companion to Peirce, ed Cheryl Misak (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.170.

19. Vincent Colapietro, “Peirce’s Guess at the Riddle of Rationality” Classical American

Pragmatism: Its Contemporary Vitality, ed by Sandra B. Rosenthal, Carl Hausman, and Douglas

Anderson (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), p.17.

20. Colapietro, “Peirce’s Guess at the Riddle of Rationality”, 17.

21. See James Liszka, “Charles Peirce on Ethics” The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce,

(New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), p.63 for more detail on the nature of the growth of

concrete reasonableness. Though Liszka’s account is primarily anthropocentric, this could equally be

applied to the growth of reason in nature.

22. This Peirce gets from Bain’s definition of a belief as involving feeling, action, and thought.

Though for the utilitarian Bain, feeling is the telos of the action, the pleasurable state, whereas for Peirce,

feeling pervades all of our actions and is the content of our consciousness.

23. Ignacio Redondo, “The Normativity of Communication: Norms and Ideals in Peirce’s

Speculative Rhetoric” The Normative Thoughts of Charles S. Peirce, (New York: Fordham University

Press, 2012).

24. John Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce’s Relation to John

Duns Scotus (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963), p.148.

25. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism, 87.

26. Ibid, 149

27. Redondo, “The Normativity Connection”, 226.

28. Ibid. See also Menno Hulswit, From Cause to Causation: A Peircean Perspective (Dordrecht,

Kluwer, 2002)

29. Liszka, “Charles Peirce on Ethics” p.77 See also CP 1.56, c.1896

30. This move wouldn’t likely interest Peirce all that much considering that he was interested in

the theoretical sciences, but I think it would fit well with Kelly Parker’s distinction between the

theoretical and practical normative sciences. See Kelly Parker, “Reconstructing the Normative Sciences”

from Cognitio, 4 no.1, 2003, p.41.

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