Inquiry and Discovery Procedures

Abstract

Little attempt will be made in this chapter to discuss in detail Peirce’s methodology except to clarify it with respect to interpretation and discovery procedures in law. To recapitulate briefly: Peirce’s semiotic methodology, or speculative rhetoric, is the highest division of his expanded pragmatic logic: It seeks to account for the development of meaning in verbal signs in all acts of inquiry, such that a sign is shown to interpret its previous sign, or referent in discourse, and to bring a cumulation of meaning forward in a dynamic and open-ended process. The result of any given inquiry is a judgment which corresponds to the conclusion of a logical argument.