Abductive Issues in Peirce’s Proof of Pragmaticism

Peirce’s later writings centre on his mature philosophy of pragmaticism, which he set out developing around the mid-1890s. My purpose is to argue for three interrelated theses: (i) that Peirce believed his pragmaticism to incorporate the notion of abduction, (ii) that pragmaticism is a consequence of several fundamental assumptions that he believed can be shown to build a logically sound argument for its correctness, and (iii) that abduction features in pragmaticism in contributing to the argument in terms of two fundamental steps towards its conclusion