Copyright 1999-2000 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Behind the philosophical debates over religion and human intelligence lay the entire history of modern philosophy from Hobbes and Descartes through Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Kant's resolution of the tension between rationalism and empiricism began in the 1780s, less than a century earlier. Hegel's Idealism was even closer in time and its influence was strongly felt in other parts of the US. Peirce's first essays were published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, founded in 1867 with special interest in German Idealism. John Dewey published his first philosophical work in the same journal fourteen years later.
Peirce began his philosophical studies informally, reading his brother's logic text --- Richard Whately's Elements of Logic. From there he moved on to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to which he devoted himself over a period of three years. In creating the view that Peirce called "pedestrianism," he showed primary interest in creating a systematic account of logic and a strong Kantian disposition to see all knowledge as woven by the mind out of sense experience. In particular, knowledge is conceived of as the logical manipulation of mental signs anchored in experience.
Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man (1868)
The first presumed faculty that Peirce attacks here is intuition. Peirce means cognitions that are judged to be true solely by intuition; that is, he is using the term differently from Kant's "sensuous intuitions." Plato believed that the so-called Ideas are real and that the soul knows the Ideas intuitively while separate from bodily existence. The Ideas are largely forgotten when soul and body come together in life, and they are only vaguely recollected in life because we experience objects in which the ideas "participate." Descartes believed that his procedure of radical doubt could reduce all judgments from the senses to naught and that only specific intuitive principles ("I think therefore I am," "I am a thinking thing," etc.) could escape it. In contrast, Peirce conceives of cognition working only with signs representing sense experience and, then, only within indefinite successions of cognitions derived from each other. There are no free-standing true cognitions or intuitions.
One of the chief intuitions claimed that Peirce wanted to deny is any intuitive knowledge of self or self consciousness. Clearly this stands at the foundation of all rationalist philosophy. Peirce suggests that we become conscious of self only by inference from normal cognitions attached to sense experience. In particular, we seem to detach a separate concept of self from an otherwise completely general "ego of pure apperception" because of our distinctive experience of "ignorance and error."
Next Peirce rejects the idea that we can (or need to) intuitively judge subjectivity of our cognitions and he asserts that everything we take to be "internal" to ourselves is actually inferred from external facts, that is, cognitions representing sense experience. Clearly, the position being developed here denies any possibility of doing philosophy in the rationalist tradition based on the internal mental experience of self where absolute a priori truths might be known to us intuitively. Our experience of the world is put together in a continuous succession of cognitions which represent sense experience and out of which we infer or construct the object we call self.
In the last three sections of this piece Peirce introduces his theory of signs. All thoughts are signs representing sense impressions. There are no signs which are not thoughts in this sense or cognizable. Since cognition is always derivative, thinking in signs is part of a continuous process with no beginning and no end.
Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868)
Critical Review of Berkeley's Idealism (1871)
What do "realists" believe? The answer, clearly, is that they believe there are real things or realities. But equally clearly, this alone is uninformative. The point becomes interesting only when we stand it off against an alternative -- idealism or subjectivism. It is possible to harbor the notion that all of experience is a kind of illusion. That is, we can think of things as ever changing and we can even think of things as conforming to our own internal mental states. No where does this debate stand out in greater relief than with so-called "universals." Do we consistently identify "circularity" in objects we experience because there is a real object, "circle," or is 'circle' merely a word that we conveniently apply to things in experience? Plato, a realist, thought the idea circle was a real entity. Nominalists argue that the name circle is merely usefully applied to various objects.
Objectivity and subjectivity are clearly involved here because a realist believes that the real entity guides us toward knowledge or truth. That is, while subjective experience is clearly involved in producing all empirical knowledge, the truth of empirical knowledge is still directed by realities, things outside of our own mental states. Subjectivists tend more toward convention, habit, and coherence as criteria of truth; we come together in sharing and talking about experience.
Metaphysics is also clearly involved. That which people claim to be real is most frequently imagined to stand beyond any human experience. We experience phenomena; that which stands beyond experience is noumenal.
In this essay, Peirce makes it clear that he is a realist, though he is quick to differentiate his kind of realism from old fashioned metaphysical realism. In these respects, we see that Peirce remains faithful to much of Kant's analysis in rejecting any science of metaphysics. We may believe that things-in-themselves exist as reality, but we freely admit that we can know nothing about such things. Mind deals with objects in the phenomenal realm and Kant's position "was to regard the reality as the normal product of mental action." (p. 84) Peirce adds, "this realistic theory is thus a highly practical and common-sense position." (p. 84, my emphasis) The fundamental error in past reasoning was to imagine the mind as a "container" of ideas so that realism would require corresponding objects outside of this container that match the ideas inside. For Peirce objective reality is determined by being cognizable mental states attached to our phenomenal life. His realism lies in the notion that "the final opinion" on any matter is the determining reality. That is, he imagines the realm of cogitation leading to a resolution in accord.
The Fixation of Belief (1877)
This essay and the next one were the first two essays in a series of six called "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" published in Popular Science Monthly in 1877-8 at the publisher's invitation. As we can see from the beginning, Peirce's passion for logic comes forward immediately and is, indeed, the framework from which his ideas are developed.
Action becomes intelligent and moral when it becomes deliberate. We detach ourselves from practical immediacy and ponder what is possible and what we should do. In deliberating, we exercise the logical capacities of the mind to arrange premises and conclusions. We are lead to conclusions because we assent to certain premises. That is, we possess beliefs. Peirce imagines that we often have little sense of our beliefs because they are habitual channels of deliberate activity. We become conscious of our beliefs only when we run into trouble and get stuck. In this situation of irritating doubt, we struggle to discover new beliefs that will convey us through our problems (p. 99). When new beliefs are successfully achieved, habit takes over and the feeling of belief recedes into the background.
How are such habits of belief formed? In this essay and quite in agreement with French Positivists like August Comte, Peirce imagines that human history has worked its way through a number of clearly recognizable stages. First is what Peirce calls the "method of tenacity." In this pattern individuals acquire esoteric beliefs on their own and hold to them rigidly. Perhaps we have all know someone who seemed unwilling to entertain any doubt at all about some issue or practice because to him/her giving up on a personally systematic belief-commitment would seem to mean losing all definition and identity.
Second, Peirce imagines that individuals eventually understand the necessity of culture and community. Life goes better when people agree in their general beliefs and the "method of authority" is adopted. It is only when authority collapses in some significant way that people have to question their beliefs again. There are huge periods of European history marked by unquestioned belief in various authorities.
Third, the so-called "Modern Period" of European history, beginning in the 17th Century, involves the challenging of authority along many lines. The Reformation had already challenged the authority of the Universal Christian Church. Modern scientific method moved away from Scholasticism and into experimentation with the natural world. A succession of political revolutions challenged the Divine Right of kings to rule and upset the social authority of nobility. Capitalism challenged the right of kings to regulate commerce and brought forward a new concept of the wealth of nations. It is no surprise, then, that Descartes inaugurated the era of modern philosophy by articulating his method of radical doubt, a search for new beliefs. This tendency in the modern mind quickly lead to the rationalization of authority on the grounds of reason rather than personality. This is the "method of metaphysics." But the problems of metaphysical philosophy had become all too apparent by the time of Peirce. Indeed, Immanuel Kant's Critique . . . and his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics were both aimed solidly at the most severe limitation of metaphysical reasoning.
The final desirable era of European/American history brings us to the "method of science." Like the method of authority, science aims at a community of agreement. Like the method of metaphysics, science conveys itself to beliefs through reasoning. Unlike either of these, science reasons with empirical observations rather than with a priori assumptions. In contrast to the three preceding "methods," science is truly "critical," meaning that we can inspect scientific practice and judge whether it is rightly or wrongly conducted. Peirce argues that only in the scientific method is truth guided by reality.
In this essay, Peirce has clearly presented the goal and methodology of Pragmatism, making the fixation of all human belief a matter of scientific observation and reasoning. The outstanding question, however, is exactly how this can be done and, in the face of Existentialism, whether science doesn't throw away our "humanity" in a way that leaves us without a spiritual and moral life. Solution of these issues was left to James and Dewey.
How to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878)
This was the second of the essays to appear in Popular Science Monthly and Peirce wrote it while he was in Paris working on gravimetrics. The import of this work was the accurate measurement of the gravitational force at any place on the earth's surface. Peirce was using pendula for these measurements. Assuming uniformity of density in the earth's surface [not a bad assumption at good distances from mountain ranges], the variations of the gravitational force can be interpreted in terms of the ellipsoidal shape of the earth itself. One can easily see the influence of this work on Peirce's thought.
In the beginning of the essay, Peirce reflects on the older treatises of logic that he studied in the past decade. Descartes himself suggested that true intuitions can be recognized by their "clarity" and "distinctness." Later logicians suggested that true and meaningful ideas must be clear. Complex ideas are distinct when their component ideas are clear. But what does all of this mean and can it ever escape subjectivism?
Connecting ideas, or thought, with the previous essay in which the central role of thought is to put doubt to rest by determining beliefs on which we can base actions, Peirce illustrates the dangers of making spurious distinctions. Indeed, most of the field called metaphysics is composed of such spurious distinctions. But scientific method avoids these spurious distinctions. Meanings of scientific ideas are involved in the habits they produce. "We come down to what is tangible and practical as the root of every real distinction of thought." Any real distinction must lead to "a possible difference of practice." (p. 123) As Peirce illustrated the use of this method in science, he clearly developed what came to be called "operational definitions."
Concerned that nominalism must be avoided at all costs, Peirce concludes the essay by returning to his definition of realism. While granting that science and all human endeavors are caught up in continuing debate and disagreement, he understands that the method of science is bases on criticism and experiment so that there will be a "final opinion" that is judged sound by all participants. This final opinion on any matter is what should be judged as true and real. Because it is the work of all witnesses, it does not depend on any single person's will or belief and is, in that sense, independent of our minds.
Notes on Positivism (?)
To understand Peirce's criticism of Positivism, we have to know a little about the movement. The so-called Introduction to Positive Philosophy was written by August Comte in the early 19th Century. Comte was personal secretary to Saint-Simon. Neither was a scientist. Saint-Simon was a wealthy man, interested in science and the intellect. As a consequence, he organized a Paris salon frequented by many. The ideas expressed and pursued as Positivism came out of the intellectual climate of the French Revolution as continued through these salons.
Positivism at first glance looks very similar to Peirce's philosophical position and, indeed, Comte's analysis of the history of Western thought follows exactly the same line of thought as Peirce's "Fixation of Belief." Where the two methods diverge radically is in the Positivist criterion of "verification." For the Positivist, ideas are immediately subject to verification by observation and live or die on that basis. For Peirce, our ideas are momentary and live on an endless chain of interpretations of the sensed world.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
This essay is probably more interesting from an historical point of view than from a philosophical one. Written in 1891, it demonstrates the range of Peirce's scientific interests and, consequently, says much about the scientific interests of his time. The influence of Darwin is clear and the speculative interests in psychology should be observed. But the most interesting idea is the interpretation of "law" as a product of evolution. Contrast this with the views of the Enlightenment.
Science and Immortality (1887)
This is another essay with considerable historical interest. The relation between science and religion had gone in quite different ways in different camps within America. Throughout the first half of the 19th Century the issue was largely how growing scientific knowledge about the natural world impacted the foundations of religious thought. Advancing from conservative religions (Calvinism) to more liberal religions (Unitarianism and Transcendentalism) was aided by interpretations holding that science actually informs us in greater depth and detail about God's creation. Nevertheless, after the Civil War and the popularization of Darwinism -- along with the development of geology, paleontology, thermodynamics, synthetic organic chemistry, and physiological psychology -- the tension between science and religion became apparent. Science now threatened to negate religion. The impact on founding moral principles was significantly felt.
Peirce develops, here, a concept of scientific religion. That is, religious life can be understood as scientific practice. It is necessary, here, to understand that scientific method is crucial and, in the terms of his "Fixation of Belief," the final historical resting place of various methodologies that history has witnessed. To understand Peirce, we need to recognize what experiential contents represent the source of "religious sensibility" and how the scientific method can be practiced on these.
What Pragmatism Is (1905)
Issues of Pragmaticism (1905)
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