C.S. Peirce

1. C.S. Peirce Pragmaticism

2. Charles Sanders Peirce • 1839-1914 • "Beyond doubt … he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century, and certainly the greatest American thinker ever." • Bertrand Russell • Published works run to about 12,000 printed pages and his known unpublished manuscripts run to about 80,000 handwritten pages • Widely regarded as the greatest logician of his day, also made key contributions in many areas of the sciences (including the philosophy of science) • Wrote on mathematics and the hard sciences at one extreme, to economics, psychology, anthropology, history of science, and the theory of signs • Current interest comes from industry, business, technology, and the military, resulting in the existence of a number of agencies, institutes, and laboratories in which ongoing research into and development of Peircean concepts is being undertaken. *Note that much of the following comes from the Stanford entry linked on the class webpage for Peirce, which was supplied by TAMU philosopher Robert Burch

3. Charles Sanders Peirce • By age 16, dismissed Kant as “puerile” • Though later respected and continued to read throughout life, and was himself a Kantian • Graduated from Harvard where he met James • U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1859-1891 • Lost job due to funding concerns, was in a bad way financially for the rest of his life, sometimes required aid from others, e.g. James • 1879 until 1884, Peirce maintained a second job teaching logic in the Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University (his only academic position), but lost it due to his marriage to (and prior cohabitation with) a gypsy!

4. Topics • Semiotics & Logic • Abduction • Anti-determinism evolutionism • Probability • Pragmaticism

5. Semiotics & Logic • Semiotics • Theory of signs in the most general sense • Sign as something which stands for something else to something else • Heavily influenced by the difficult Duns Scotus • What is of fundamental import is the representing relation • A thing (the object) is represented by another thing (the “representamen”, or sign) with regard to a third thing (the “interpretant”, i.e. its significance or meaning) • Irreducible Triad • Defined semiosis as an “action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs” • Today’s psychological theories of knowledge representation distinguish between the represented world and the representing world, and a set of rules for determining their correspondence, much in keeping with such Peircean notions

6. Semiotics & Logic • Meaning obtained by decoding or interpreting the sign which may be: • Immediate • What the sign denotes • Dynamical • the meaning actually produced by the sign • Final • the meaning that would be produced if the sign were properly understood • “The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses... The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day.” • Peirce saw logic as a division of the more general semiotics, and noted 3 divisions of semiotics • ‘Speculative’, or theoretical, grammar • Analysis of the kinds of signs there are and the ways that they can be combined significantly • Logic • Aristotle and on type stuff • Speculative rhetoric (methodeutic) • inquiry into the principles of the effective use of signs for producing valuable courses of research etc. • Yes, he liked things in threes

7. Abuduction • Deduction • Necessary inferences (if A leads to B and B leads to C, then A leads to C) • All balls in this urn are red • All balls in this particular random sample are taken from this urn • Therefore All balls in this particular random sample are red • Peirce regarded the major premise here as being the Rule, the minor premise as being the particular Case, and the conclusion as being the Result of the argument. • The argument is a piece of deduction (necessary inference): an argument from population to random sample.

8. Abuduction • Induction • Interchange the conclusion (the Result) with the major premise (the Rule). Argument becomes: • All balls in this particular random sample are red • All balls in this particular random sample are taken from this urn • Therefore, All balls in this urn are red • Here is an argument from sample to population, and this is what Peirce understood to be the core meaning of induction: argument from random sample to population

9. Abuduction • Abduction • New argument: Interchange the conclusion (the Result) with the minor premise (the Case) • Argument becomes: All balls in this urn are red • All balls in this particular random sample are red • Therefore, All balls in this particular random sample are taken from this urn. • This is nothing at all like an argument from population to sample or an argument from sample to population: it is a form of probable argument different from both deduction and induction • Would later see these as three aspects of the scientific method

10. Determinism • Suggested that there was not the slightest scientific evidence for determinism and that there was considerable scientific evidence against it • Appealed to the evidence of the actual phenomena in laboratories and fields • Actual observations (e.g. measurements) do not conform to some exact point or smooth function • For example, if we take, however carefully we may do so, a thousand measurements of some physical quantity, we will not obtain a thousand equal results, but rather only a distribution (e.g. normal distribution of hundreds) of different results. • If we measure the value of an independent variable that we assume to depend on some given parameter, and if we let the parameter vary while we take successive measurements (random effects model), the result will never be a smooth function (for example, a straight line or an ellipse); rather it will be a "jagged" result, to which we can at best fit a smooth function by using some clever method (e.g. least-squares fitting). • Moreover, the variation and inexactness of measurements become more pronounced and obtrusive the more refined and microscopic are our measurements • Anticipation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

11. Determinism • The facts of scientific practice tell us then that, although the universe displays varying degrees of habit, that is to say of partial, varying, approximate, and statistical regularity, the universe does not display deterministic law, that is to say total, exact, non-statistical regularity. • Note the recent finding of a fundamental cosmological constant not being so constant • The habits that nature displays appear in varying degrees of entrenchment • From the almost pure freedom and spontaneity of some processes of thought, at one end of the spectrum, to the nearly law-like behavior of large physical objects like planets, at the other end of the spectrum. • Spontaneity has an objective place in the universe, and evolution applies to the universe itself • For Peirce, the most fundamental engine of the evolutionary process is not struggle, strife, greed, or competition, but rather nurturing love (God’s, a notion he called agapism, agapastic evolution), in which an entity is prepared to sacrifice its own perfection for the sake of the wellbeing of its neighbor • Science suggests that the universe has evolved from a condition of maximum freedom and spontaneity into its present condition, in which it has taken on a number of more and less entrenched habits

12. Probability • Statistical information is often the most exact information we can have about phenomena • Rather than holding probability to be a measure of degree of confidence or belief, Peirce adopted an objectivist notion of probability • Held that probability is actually a notion with clear empirical content and clear empirical procedures for ascertaining that content • First, what is assigned a probability is neither a proposition nor an event nor a type of event. Instead what is assigned a probability is an argument, with premises and a conclusion. • Second, in order to ascertain the probability of a particular argument, the observer notes all occasions on which all of its premises are true, case by case, just as they come under observation. For each of these occasions the observer notes whether the conclusion is true or not, and continues such recordings • The probability of the argument in question is defined by Peirce to be the limit of the crucial ratio (of true premises + conclusion to just true premises) as the number of observations tends to grow large • One might be inclined to see in Peirce’s thinking the meta-analytic approach

13. Pragmaticism • William James regarded Peirce and two of Peirce's papers, "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) as being the origin of pragmatism. • “Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.” • Peirce conceived pragmatism to be a method for clarifying the meaning of difficult ideas through the application of the pragmatic maxim above. • The meaning of a conception consists in the entire set of its practical consequences • A meaningful conception must have some experiential "cash value," capable of being specified as some sort of collection of possible empirical observations under specifiable conditions

14. Pragmaticism • Disagreed with Cartesian foundationalism, that there are a few, self-evident beliefs upon which all others depend or are derivative of • What is important in developing knowledge is the application of the scientific method, which is observable and self-correcting • The scientific method can be understood in three stages • Abduction, defined as inference to and provisional acceptance of an explanatory hypothesis for the purposes of testing it. • Not always inference to the best explanation, but at least inference to some explanation or at least to something that clarifies some information that has previously been "surprising," given our current state of knowledge. • Deduction, the drawing of conclusions as to what observable phenomena should be expected if the hypothesis is correct. • Induction, the entire process of experimentation performed in service of hypothesis testing

15. Pragmaticism • Two avenues of thought will eventually arrive at the same conclusions as long as they adhere to the method, and this is what we may call truth, and reality is that truth • Much like the correspondence theory of the logical positivists • Note that at any one point we don’t know where we are with regard to that reality • Science is fallible, and at any given time we may be very close to very far off

16. Pragmaticism • The economics of research • Science always operates in some given historical and socio-economic context, in which context certain problems are paramount and other problems trivial or frivolous. • Peirce understood that in such a context some experiments may be crucial and others insignificant, and that the economic resources of the scientist are severely limited, while the "great ocean of truth" that lies undiscovered before us is infinite. • Such resources, such as personnel, time, and apparatus, are costly, and it is irrational to squander them. • He proposed, therefore, that careful consideration be paid to the problem of how to obtain the biggest epistemological bang for the buck. • In effect, the economics of research is akin to a cost/benefit analysis in connection with states of knowledge and this is central to the scientific method and to the idea of rational behavior.

17. William James

18. 1842-1910 • James first announced his commitment to pragmatism in a lecture at Berkeley in 1898, entitled "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results." • Pragmatism emerges in James's thought as: • a philosophical temperament • a theory of truth • a theory of meaning • a holistic account of knowledge • a metaphysical view • a method of resolving philosophical disputes

19. The pragmatic temperament appears where James classifies philosophers according to their temperaments: in this case "tough-minded" or "tender-minded." • The pragmatist is the mediator between such extremes with adherence to the scientific method but not entirely at the cost of human intuition

20. The pragmatic theory of truth • Truth, is "a species of the good" like health. • “Truth is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.” • Truths are goods because we can take them into the future without being unpleasantly surprised • They lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible ends • They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse • They lead away from eccentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking • Although James holds that truths are not independent of human experience, he also understands truth in terms of verification, and requires a correspondence with the facts

21. “We carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to serve our human purposes” • However, James recognizes there are obstacles in coming to a conclusion of what is true • Including not only our present sensations or experiences but the whole body of our prior beliefs. • James holds neither that we create our truths out of nothing, nor that truth is entirely independent of humanity. • "you can't weed out the human contribution"

22. He also embraces a metaphysics of process in the claim that "for pragmatism [reality] is still in the making," whereas for "rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity" • In this light, religion has its place and value • “If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true"

23. On the distinction with Peirce’s pragmaticism • “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real” • Peirce • As mentioned, for James something remains true as long as it continues to ‘cash out’ for us • For Peirce such a stance is too individualistic and possibly dependent upon a single observation • His pragmaticism called for the eventual convergence of ideas to a truth, which is the last observation after a great many

24. John Dewey

25. 1859-1952 • Dewey worked from strongly Hegelian influences, unlike James, who drew particularly on empiricist and utilitarian thought. • Dewey was also not nearly so pluralist or relativist as James. • He held that value was a function not of whim nor purely of social construction, but a quality situated in events • He also held, unlike James, that experimentation could be used as a relatively hard-and-fast arbiter of truth

26. "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896). • Dewey argued that the dominant conception of the reflex arc in the psychology of his day, was a carry-over of the old, and errant, mind-body dualism • Environmental contingencies imposing their will on a passive organism • Dewey argued for an alternative view: the organism interacts with the world through self-guided activity that coordinates and integrates sensory and motor responses • The world is not passively perceived and thereby known • Active manipulation of the environment is involved in the process of learning from the start • The candle cannot be accurately described as a 'stimulus' until the child looks at the candle. • The movement of the hand toward the flame can not be described as a 'response' until we know that the child intends to touch the flame (in the first encounter) or avoid touching it (in the second encounter). • In other words, the so-called stimulus and response have "a special genesis or motivation and a special end or function [utility]" rather than a detached "preexistence"

27. For Dewey, past doctrines always require reconstruction in order to remain useful for the present time • The pragmatic approach entails that knowledge is a product of an activity directed to the fulfillment of human purposes • A true (or warranted) belief is known to be such by the consequences of its employment rather than by any psychological or ontological foundations

28. Argued that the traditional correspondence theory of truth begs the question of what the "agreement" or "correspondence" of idea with reality is • Dewey and James maintained that an idea agrees with reality (and is therefore true), only if it is successfully employed in human action in pursuit of human goals and interests • It leads to the resolution of a problematic situation

29. Dewey, like Peirce, thought that truth and knowledge, were obscured by traditional, and in his view misguided, meanings of the terms, which resulted in confusing ambiguity. • Used the term "warranted assertiblity" to describe the distinctive property of ideas that results from successful inquiry

30. The process of inquiry • Begins with the problematic situation • a situation where instinctive or habitual responses are inadequate for the continuation of ongoing activity in pursuit of the fulfillment of needs and desires • The second phase of the process involves the defining the conditions upon which the problem is to be investigated • In the third, reflective phase of the process, the cognitive elements of inquiry (ideas, theories, etc.) are entertained as hypothetical solutions to the originating impediment of the problematic situation, the implications of which are pursued in the abstract

31. The final test of the adequacy of these solutions comes with their employment in action • If the solutions continue to hold, their ‘theoretical’ standing becomes factual