This volume explores the three normative sciences that Peirce distinguished (aesthetics, ethics, and logic) and their relation to phenomenology and metaphysics. The essays approach this topic from a variety of angles, ranging from questions concerning the normativity of logic to an application of Peirce’s semiotics to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”

A recurrent question throughout is whether a moral theory can be grounded in Peirce’s work, despite his rather vehement denial that this can be done. Some essays ask whether a dichotomy exists between theoretical and practical ethics. Other essays show that Peirce’s philosophy embraces meliorism, examine the role played by self-control, seek to ground communication theory in Peirce’s speculative rhetoric, or examine the normative aspect of the notion of truth.

Table of contents:

1. Traditions of Innovation and Improvisation: Jazz as Metaphor, Philosophy as Jazz / Vincent Colapietro
2. Normative Judgment in Jazz: A Semiotic Framework / Kelly A. Parker
3. Charles Peirce on Ethics / James Liszka
4. Who’s Afraid of Charles Sanders Peirce?: Knocking Some Critical Common Sense into Moral Philosophy / Cornelis de Waal
5. Peirce’s Moral “Realicism” / Rosa Maria Mayorga
6. Improving Our Habits: Peirce and Meliorism / Mats Bergman
7. Self-Control, Values, and Moral Development: Peirce on the Value-driven Dynamics of Human Morality / Helmut Pape
8. Why Is the Normativity of Logic Based on Rules? / Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen
9. Unassailable Belief and Ideal-Limit Opinion: Is Agreement Important for Truth? / Mateusz W. Oleksy
10. Normativity of Communication: Norms and Ideals in Peirce’s Speculative Rhetoric / Ignacio Redondo
11. Peircean Modal (and Moral?) Realism(s): Remarks on the Normative Methodology of Pragmatist Metaphysics / Sami Pihlström.