Charles Peirce

1. Charles Peirce How to Make our Ideas Clear

2. Clear and Distinct Descartes: “Clear and distinct” are justification criteria. So, if some things is both clear and distinct, then we know that it is true. Clear vs. obscure Distinct vs. confused

3. Clear An idea is clear if it is apprehended such that it is recognized when it is met with. In other words, it is familiar. Objection: To be familiar with an idea so as not to doubt your ability to recognize it correctly, only points to a subjective feeling of mastery over the idea.

4. Distinct An idea is distinct if it contains nothing which is not clear. An idea is distinct, if we are able to give its definition (content) in abstract terms.

5. Idea An idea: a quality of mind or feeling An idea: the content, the definition, or the meaning of the idea.

6. Logic/Pragmatism First Lesson: To make our ideas clear; more precisely, to make the meaning of our ideas clear. To know what we think. To be masters of our own meaning.

7. Doubt-Belief- Action Doubts arise from some indecision to act. Actions arise from some belief.

8. Immediate vs. Mediate What is immediately present to consciousness can not occupy a succession of time. For instance, a melody cannot be immediately present because to extends over time. Only each particular note is immediate, but each not, by itself, does not make up a melody. Similarly, a thought cannot be immediately present to consciousness. Only instances of thought, which on their own, are meaningless.

9. Thought “Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensation.” Thought-Belief “Thought in action has for its only possible motive the attainment of thought at rest; and whatever does not refer to belief is no part of thought itself.”

10. Belief/Pragmatism 1) something we are aware of 2) it appeases the irritation of doubt 3) establishes in our nature a rule of action

11. Pragmatism “The essence of a belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, and more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different tunes.”

12. Pragmatism “To develop its [thoughts’] meaning, we have therefore, simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves.” “Thus, we come down to what is tangible and practical, as the root of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtile it may be; and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice.”

13. Pragmatism Third Grade of Clearness: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

14. Examples Figures 1 and 2 Transubstantiation “There is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice.”

15. Examples “Hard” The meaning of this quality can be determined only through the effects. What it means for a thing to be hard is “that it is not easily scratched” or “that it is not easily broken into parts.”

16. Difficulty If a diamond rest in the ground and is never tested for its hardness, can we consider it hard? “Would it be foolish to say that the diamond is soft?” Can we say “that all hard bodies remain perfectly soft until they are touched, when their hardness increases with the pressure until they are scratched.” Peirce argues that these questions are not questions of facts but rather of the arrangement of facts.

17. Difficulty There seem to be two issues: (1) when we derive the meaning of a concept by noting its consequences, are we referring to the actual or possible consequences? (2) claims that have no way of being falsified are meaningless. For instance, the claim that hard bodies remain perfectly soft until they are touched could never be verified; it is inherently unverifiable.

18. More Examples Weight: to say that a body is heavy simply means that in the absence of opposing force it will fall. This leads to the need for further clarifications of other ideas, such as gravity and force. Force is used to think about “change of motion” Changes of the motion of bodies are the actual accelerations (changes of velocity) of the bodies over time. Therefore, force is nothing more than “an acceleration” .

19. Force “Consequently, if we know what the effects of force are, we are acquainted with every fact which is implied in saying that a force exists, and there is nothing more to know.”

20. Reality Real Figments are the product of one’s imagination. It has the character that thought impresses upon it. Real, therefore, is that which is independent of what we think (nothow we think). Dreams are real events because they are independent of what we think. But the content of the dreams are ontologically dependent but not the meanings or specific events are independent.

21. What is Real Applying the pragmatic maxim to reality: The only effect reality has is to produce beliefs. How is true beliefs or beliefs caused by reality distinguished from false belief (belief in fiction)?

22. Scientific Method and Reality “all followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they are applied.” The processes of science will lead all scientific men to the one and same conclusion. This final conclusion, which we are all fated towards, this is what Peirce means by truth or reality.

23. Truth as thought There seems to be an interesting problem, insofar as truth is what IS thoughtand yet IS independent of thought. Truth and reality, therefore, is both dependent and independent of thought. “But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you and I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what the opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks.”