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Comments on six papers, appearing in this issue of the Transactions, discussing rational inquiry, pragmatism, truth, cognitive progress, and value. The six papers were originally presented at 'The Idea of Pragmatism,' a conference held at the University of Sheffield on 18-19 May 2015 to honour the work of Christopher Hookway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with Isaac Levi's approach to justifying changes in our states of full belief and offers a Peircean criticism of his strategy for resolving conflicts between the results of what inquirers deem to be the most reliable programs for a given situation and the settled beliefs about which we have no doubts. In the first section, I discuss the central features of Levi's theory of justifying changes to our state of full belief. In the second section, I present a Peircean approach to evaluating the reliability of these programs for routine expansion of belief, and I argue that there is a conflict between Levi's approach to situations where an inquirer has expanded her beliefs into inconsistency and Peirce's criticisms of non-scientific methods for settling opinion. The third section presents two potential objections to the Peircean approach, objections that emphasize the importance of our concern to avoid error, and in the fourth section, I propose an original supplement to the Peircean approach that better addresses that concern. Ultimately, my aim is to develop and defend a Peircean approach that is in opposition to Levi's views about when it is appropriate to question the reliability of our programs for routine expansion of belief but that also addresses his legitimate worries about underemphasizing our concern to avoid error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine recent treatments of Peircean truth in terms of regulative principles or intellectual hopes, drawing on work by Christopher Hookway, Cheryl Misak, and Andrew Howat. In doing this I show that recent arguments by Huw Price that Peirce's account cannot provide an effective truth norm do not apply when Peircean truth is construed as a regulative assumption on inquiry. I conclude by comparing the 'anthropological' sensibilities of Price's account of truth as convenient friction, and Peirce's account of truth as a regulative assumption or intellectual hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on Bellucci's and Murphey's accounts of Peirce's early logic of signs by making a pair of contributions to the literature on Peirce's reduction of illation to the sign relation. First, I reinvestigate the connection between the structure of inference and the representative relation, relying here on Peirce's early accounts of sign inference from 1865 and 1866. Second, with the development of Peirce's theory of inquiry in mind, I elucidate the implications of Peirce's early view of sign inference. These contributions deepen our understanding of Fisch's claim that the Illustrations series "is thought out within the framework of the doctrine of signs." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking my lead from Robert Talisse and Scott Aikin's distinction between 'meaning pragmatism' and 'inquiry pragmatism,' and guided throughout by Christopher Hookway's understanding of Peirce, I revisit some of the best-known locuses of both Peirce's meaning pragmatism and his inquiry pragmatism, and conclude that the distinction dissolves in Peirce. For Peirce, the very mechanism for elucidating a concept's meaning, the pragmatic maxim, requires ongoing inquiry. Moreover, in performing an inquiry, we elucidate meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece offers a reflection on James Liszka's book, Charles Peirece on Ethics, Esthetics, and the Normative Sciences. I consider Liszka's approach to Peirce's writings, especially the Minute Logic and "Evolutionary Love", and explore his extension of Peirce's ethical thought. I conclude that Liszka's work in this volume shows us what reasonableness as self-correction might require of us, and suggests ways in which we can take up the work of the normative sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I distinguish two concepts of progress. One of them is teleological: we make progress by decreasing our distance from a goal. The other, I suggest, is pragmatic: progress consists in overcoming some of the problems of the current state. Scientific progress is best thought of as a type of pragmatic progress. Once this is understood, we can recognize that the deepest form of scientific progress does not focus on content alone, but on the ways in which inquiry is adapted to meeting human needs. I connect this concept of progress with themes in Dewey, proposing a Deweyan emendation of some Peircean themes in Chris Hookway's thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]