[2.1.4.] Against Individual Certainty.

 

C2. “the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individual consciousness.”

 

Descartes has employed clearness and distinctness as a standard of certainty. On his view, any belief that is clear and distinct is epistemically certain. Peirce expresses this idea as: “Whatever I am clearly convinced of is true.” (71) In place of it, he asserts:

 

P2. “...to make single individuals absolute judges of truth is most pernicious.”

 

pernicious (df.): destructive; tending to cause great harm.

 

Why, on Peirce’s view, is Descartes’ standard of clearness and distinctness pernicious?

 

On Descartes’ approach, each individual inquirer can judge for herself whether one of her beliefs is “clear and distinct.” For example, when I reflect on my own thoughts and on my own existence, my belief that I am thinking and my belief that I exist appear to me as being clear and distinct. I am in a unique position to judge whether my own beliefs are clear and distinct, and thus to judge whether they are epistemically certain. And you are in the same position with regard to your beliefs. So on Descartes’ approach, each individual is capable of seeing for herself whether her own belief is certain.

 

So how is this pernicious? On Peirce’s view, it is pernicious for inquiry.

 

If each individual is the absolute judge of what is true, then there is no need to pay attention to the results of others’ inquiry, even when they disagree with you. When individual inquirers, such as philosophers, are intellectually isolated from each other, each caring nothing about the opinions of others, even when those opinions diverge dramatically from their own, there is no hope that agreement among those individuals will ever be reached.

 

By employing the Cartesian criterion, philosophers have failed to achieve the consensus (df.:  general agreement; unanimity) that is frequently reached in the physical sciences:

 

[M]etaphysicians will all agree that metaphysics has reached a pitch of certainty far beyond that of the physical sciences;—only they can agree upon nothing else. In sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory has been broached it is considered to be on probation until this agreement is reached. After it is reached, the question of certainty becomes an idle one, because there is no one left who doubts it. We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers. (71)

 

This passage suggests that progress in philosophy can happen only if individual philosophers begin to collaborate with each other the way that scientists do: sharing their results, taking account of the previous findings of others, noting when those findings disagree with one’s own, etc. No one philosopher, working in complete isolation from others, can build a complete philosophical system, any more than a single physicist could, on her own, arrive at a complete account of the physical universe.

 

 

[2.1.4.1.] Against Certainty, Period.

 

Lurking behind C2 is Descartes’ assumption that epistemic certainty is attainable.

 

Peirce’s view was that we will never attain the certain beliefs that Descartes sought. Even if it were possible voluntarily to doubt everything, this would not help us identify a set of certain beliefs.

 

Rather than the “pretend doubt” that (according to Peirce) Descartes adopted in his quest for certainty, Peirce advocates...

 

fallibilism (df.): the view that any belief, no matter how fundamental or seemingly secure, might turn out to be false.[1]

 

On Peirce’s view, no belief is ever beyond revision, and there is no such thing as (epistemic) certainty.[2]

 

In short, Peirce rejects two assumptions made by Descartes:

1.      that individual inquirers can attain epistemic certainty, and

2.      that epistemic certainty is possible for human inquirers at all, whether they are acting alone or in collaboration.

But in doing so he does not give up the belief that we can discover things about the world. Human inquiry is never guaranteed to be perfect, but it is frequently successful.

 

 

Stopping point for Monday August 29. We have fallen one day behind the original course schedule. Next time we will still be covering Peirce’s criticisms of Cartesian, focusing on the third and fourth claims and Peirce’s responses to them (pp.69-72).