ABSTRACT
The American philosopher, Charles S.Peirce, conceived and articulated a theory of inquiry that underscores the continuity between belief and conduct, while describing human reasoning in terms of the deliberate modification of habits, the exercise of a type of self-control. Here I explore the hypothesis that something like the logic of Peirce’s pragmatism (or “pragmaticism” as he came to prefer) is embodied in various forms of ritual activity. Religious rituals are designed for no single purpose, serve multiple and sometimes widely disparate purposes. Nevertheless, they often consist of practices intended to inculcate, reinforce or transform specific beliefs and habits, and thereby to shape human conduct in deliberate ways.1
