Brunning, Jacqueline, and Paul Forster, eds., _The Rule of Reason: The
	Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce_, (Toronto / Buffalo / London:
	University of Toronto Press, 1997).  xii, 316pp.
	ISBN 0-8020-0829-1 (cloth) US $80.00
	ISBN 0-8020-7819-2 (paper) US $24.95

Reviewed by Gene R. Thursby, gthursby@religion.ufl.edu, University of Florida

A contribution to the Toronto Studies in Philosophy series, the book is
based on the Peirce conference held at the University of Toronto in 1992,
and is comprised of fourteen papers that were presented at the conference
in an earlier version or were solicited by the editors. There is also a
brief thematic introduction to the papers by the editors, and a memorial
statement in honor of the late David Savan to whom the book is dedicated.

Each of the papers undertakes to assess some aspect of the work of the
pioneering "backwoodsman philosopher" C. S. Peirce as it applies to a
particular philosophical problem or contemporary subfield.  As the volume's
title might suggest, several of the papers give considerable attention to
Peirce's work in logic.

In fact, at several points the first six papers presuppose training in
logic and logical notation.  Jaakko Hintikka (Boston University) reviews
the place of Peirce in the history of logical theory.  Isaac Levi (Columbia
University) treats inference and logic according to Pierce, with attention
to "unpsychologistic" logic, probabilistic logic, and three tasks in
inquiry.  Editor Paul Forster (University of Ottawa) considers the logical
foundations of Peirce's indeterminism.  Robert W. Burch (Texas A & M
University) contributes a short and dense treatment of a Tarski-style
semantics for Peirce's beta graphs -- referring back to part of Peirce's
1896 "System of Existential Graphs."  Jay Zeman (University of Florida)
sketches out an approach to Peircean logic that utilizes the graphical
capabilities of the computer in a diagrammatically enriched paper called
"The Tinctures and Implicit Quantification over Worlds."  Sandra B.
Rosenthal (Loyola University, New Orleans) deals with the
mathematical-deductive theme of the derivation of categories in relation to
pragmatic experimentalism.

The seventh and eighth papers enlarge the frame of reference by connecting
logic and  metaphysics.  Richard S. Robin (Mount Holyoke College) takes up
"one of the remaining puzzles of Peirce scholarship, namely, the proof of
pragmatism, which Peirce claimed to have and which he promised to publicize
but never did."  Helmut Pape (University of Hannover, Germany) carries the
discussion further into the metaphysical bases and implications of Peirce's
work in a paper on "The Logical Structure of Idealism: C. S. Peirce's
Search for a Logic of Mental Processes."  He piques the reader's interest
with the opening gambit: "There is something mysterious, obscure, and, for
some people, even repulsive about the idealism in Peirce's philosophy."

The last six papers further extend the range of analysis into semiotics,
sentiments, politics, and the nature of human agency and consciousness.
Carl R. Hausman (emeritus, Pennsylvania State University) opens Peirce's
contributions to semiotics to consideration in his paper on Peirce and "the
origin of interpretation."  Christopher Hookway (University of Sheffield,
England) attempts to clarify Peirce's "apparently conflicting remarks about
the relations of reason and sentiment" in a paper on sentiment and
self-control.  He takes up several issues currently discussed in a much
wider circle than that of Peircean specialists -- the nature of norms,
foundationalism, and altruism -- in the course of which he explores the
notion of logical sentiments, too.  Douglas R. Anderson (Pennsylvania State
University) in "A Political Dimension of Fixing Belief" depicts a
conservative Peirce who represents a "moment of resistance" that sets him
apart from later and more popular versions of pragmatic tradition that run
through William James and John Dewey down to Richard Rorty.

Susan Haack (University of Miami) identifies a basic principle that carries
through much of Peirce's work -- the first rule of reason or FRR.  Simple
in formulation and difficult in practice, as with most such principles, the
FRR according to Peirce is that "in order to learn you must desire to
learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to
think" and its corollary is "do not block the way of inquiry."  With a few
more metaphysical entailments, something like the FRR can be found in many
classical "spiritual" texts including Patanjali's Yoga Sutra(s) where the
sought-for desire to learn leads through a process of inquiry and all the
way to ultimate liberation from otherwise endless cycles of existence.
Peirceans, however, are not likely to take kindly to this sort of
comparison, which risks falling into the category of what Peirce
indelicately termed "sham reasoning" and attributed to many metaphysicians
and most theologians.

Immediately following Haack's paper, and extending some of its insights, is
one by Vincent M. Colapietro (Fordham University) that also functions as a
tribute to the work of David Savan.  It develops the paired themes of the
"deliberative subject" and the "dynamical object" in relation to Peirce and
with reference to Richard Bernstein, Jurgen Habermas, and Jacques Derrida.
Colapietro's discussion of Peirce's "strenuous fallibilism" links to the
FRR and its corollary but opens out considerably beyond it because
Colapietro evokes Peirce's vision of cosmic evolution, in which context
deliberative subjects are emergent agents: "Deliberative subjects,"
Colapietro affirms, "emerge out of a cosmic process; moreover, it is only
in reference to this process . . . that the personal agency of beings like
ourselves can be adequately comprehended.  Apart from this frame of
reference, we can offer at best only a trivial and trivializing account of
ourselves."

A brief analysis by T. L. Short (National Association of Scholars) of
"Hypostatic Abstraction in Self-Consciousness" completes the set of
fourteen papers.  Short takes up the theme of mediated self-knowledge in
the work of Peirce with the aim to examine "the way in which concepts of
selves, oneself, thoughts, feelings, and powers of thought and decision are
formed."  Given the interests of members of MYSTIC-L, one anti-Cartesian
statement by Short merits particular attention:

"_Cogito ergo sum_ is almost right: not that thinking that I think reveals
a substantial self but that it creates an insubstantial one -- one that is
in process of becoming substantial.  Being of 'two minds' about too many
issues or about issues that are too fundamental, suffering from conflicting
purposes, or being weak and irresolute in action -- these constitute
fissures within or a breakdown of the ego, or reveal that this human never
did achieve full selfhood, responsibility, and freedom.  Nor can thinking
alone achieve selfhood."

In summary, Brunning and Forster have edited an excellent collection of
papers.  Although this collection will make difficult reading for
non-specialists, it has the power to surprise any reader and to repay in
unanticipated ways the effort of working through the book.  Someone who
lacks prior acquaintance with Peirce, and who wants a more suitable
introduction to the philosopher and his influence, might look into
Christopher Hookway's _Peirce_ (Routledge, 1985) or H. O. Mounce's _The Two
Pragmatisms_ (Routledge, 1997).

There are other studies that take up aspects of Peirce which connect more
directly to the interests most frequently in evidence on MYSTIC-L, and
these include Michael L. Raposa's _Peirce's Philosophy of Religion_
(Indiana, 1989) and Vincent G. Potter's "C. S. Peirce and Religious
Experience" in the posthumously published collection of his papers
_Peirce's Philosophical Perspectives_, ed. by Vincent M. Colapietro
(Fordham, 1996).

For additional background on semiotics and Peirce, see Vincent M.
Colapietro, _Glossary of Semiotics_ (Paragon House, 1993), Thomas A.
Sebeok, _Semiotics in the United States_ (Indiana, 1991), and Floyd
Merrell, _Sign, Textuality, World_ (Indiana, 1992).

A collection of papers on Peirce that complements the one under review, and
compares well with it, is Kenneth Laine Ketner, ed., _Peirce and
Contemporary Thought: Philosophical Inquiries_ (Fordham, 1995) which is
dedicated to the memory of Vincent G. Potter.

Finally, MYSTIC-L members may recall that the late Walker Percy, a southern
Catholic and an honored novelist, made frequent excursions into semiotics
and had some knowledge of Peirce.  Most relevant are his essays in _Message
in the Bottle (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1984) and as posthumously collected
in _Signposts in a Strange Land_ (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991).  But far
more creative and provocative is Percy's _Lost in the Cosmos: The Last
Self-Help Book_ (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1983) which belongs right between
the anonymous _The Cloud of Unknowing_ or John Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_  and the _Collected Papers_ of Charles Sanders Peirce on a
bookshelf within easy reach of any scholar of mysticism working in North
America.