ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Peirce's early theory of epistemic justification envisioned a dual role for interpretive inference, both explanatory and justificatory. Consequently, Peirce's theory of knowledge is tethered to his theory of meaning. The chapter argues that the view presents an early articulation of infinitism regarding epistemic justification. In particular, Peirce adopts a version of mixed or impure epistemic infinitism, one that acknowledges plural sources of epistemic support. The chapter shows that Peirce later revised his views about inferences and indexicals in order to save his realism; and so it seems, he no longer had reason to embrace infinitism. Peirce's project is structurally similar. It is Peirce's semiotic commitment that thought must be understood as inferential that yields the meta-requirement for intuitions, the intelligibility of a regress of interpretations, and the demonstrative relation between thoughts and the seconds that give rise to them. Peircean infinitist epistemology rides piggyback to Peircean infinitist semiotics.
