This volume of eleven essays collects diverse applications of and investigations into Charles Sanders Pierce's thoughts about normativity. They are select contributions to an American/European conference on philosophy and have been extensively peer-reviewed. The first two essays explore jazz composition and musical phenomena in general with an eye toward semiotics. Others consider the critical link between theoretical and practical ethics, the compatibility of Peirce's ethics and a principle of meliorism or the desire to improve future generations, flexible logical control in moral and cognitive autonomy, the use and abuse of identifying truth with an ideal consensus, and questions about the distinction between metaphysics and ethics. These essays, while well written, are not introductory material on Pierce's thought. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)