[2.1.5.] Chain vs. Cable.

 

C3. In philosophy, it is acceptable to support claims with “a single thread of inference depending upon inconspicuous premises.”

 

P3. Philosophy should “proceed only from tangible premises which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and ... trust to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one.”

 

Peirce is making two claims here:

 

The first claim is that the premises in philosophical arguments need to be clearly stated so as to be subject to careful examination. This is a sensible piece of advice not only for philosophy but for any area of inquiry.

 

The second claim is a bit more complicated....

 

Philosophical reasoning should be less like a chain constructed from single links, one link connecting only with the previous and the next, and more like a cable woven from many different threads.

·         A claim that is supported by multiple arguments is more warranted than a claim supported by only a single argument, just as a scientific claim, e.g., that exposure to a certain chemical tends to cause cancer in humans, is better supported if multiple studies by different researchers in different laboratories reach that conclusion than if only a single study by only a single group of researchers does so.[1]

·         If a given claim is supported by only a single argument, then that claim is only as secure as the weakest step in that argument. And if that single argument turns out to be unsound, then the claim will lack support altogether. On the other hand, if that claim is supported by several distinct arguments, than the failure of one argument does not leave the claim completely without support. The claim way yet still be sufficiently supported by the remaining arguments.

·         An example of “the multiform argumentation of the middle ages” is the approach taken by the medieval theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) to prove the existence of God. Aquinas did not rely on only a single proof but instead gave five arguments each of which purported to demonstrate that God exists.[2]

 

Peirce rejects Descartes’ attempt to prove his own existence, an attempt that we can represent as follows:

 

1. I am thinking.

2. Therefore, I exist.

 

Peirce suggests that instead of this single-link Cartesian chain, an individual might employ an exceedingly thick cable to support the claim that she herself exists.

 

Let us suppose ... that a dozen witnesses testify to an occurrence. Then my belief in that occurrence rests on the belief that each of those men is generally to be believed upon oath. Yet the fact testified to is made more certain than that any one of those men is generally to be believed. In the same way, to the developed mind of man, his own existence is supported by every other fact ...[3]

 

An argument for one’s own existence can be built using as premises every other fact of which one is aware. This would form an enormously thick cable, in contrast to the feeble thread by which Descartes’ belief in his own existence dangles.

 

 

[2.1.6.] Against the Inexplicable.

 

C4. There are “absolutely inexplicable” facts—facts that can never be explained—“unless to say ‘God makes them so’ is to be regarded as an explanation.”

 

P4. The supposition that something is “absolutely inexplicable ... is never allowable.”

 

Peirce asserts P4 in the following passage:

 

                Every unidealistic philosophy supposes some absolutely inexplicable, unanalyzable ultimate; in short, something resulting from mediation itself not susceptible to mediation. Now that anything is thus inexplicable can only be known by reasoning from signs. But the only justification of an inference from signs is that the conclusion explains the fact. To suppose the fact absolutely inexplicable, is not to explain it, and hence this supposition is never allowable. (72)

 

There is a lot going on here, and we will not be able to discuss all of it. I will limit my explanation to just a few points.

 

First, about the word “unidealistic”…

 

Peirce tends to use the word “idealism” in a non-standard way…

 

idealism (standard df.): the view that everything that there is, is (in some sense) mind, or mental, or an idea.

·         On this definition of idealism, perhaps the most straightforward example of idealism is the view of George Berkeley (1865-1753) that to be is to be perceived (“esse est percipi”).

 

idealism (Peirce’s very broad df.): the view that everything that there is, is cognizable, i.e., everything real can be thought, can be an object of cognition.

·         On this broad sense of “idealism,” Berkeley’s idealism is a form of idealism, but it is not the only form. One may accept Peirce’s broad form of idealism without maintaining that everything there is is mind or mental.

 

By “unidealistic philosophy,” Peirce means a philosophy according to which there are aspects of reality that, for whatever reason, cannot be the object of an idea and that will therefore always be beyond the comprehension of human inquirers. On such a view, there are things about the universe that no human being could ever even think about, let alone fully understand.

 

Peirce believes that Descartes’ approach is “unidealistic” in this sense. The tricky part is seeing why he thinks this... It has to do with Descartes’ view about the mind and the body.

 

Descartes famously defended:

 

dualism (a.k.a.  mind-body dualism and Cartesian dualism): the mind and the body are two totally different things, capable of existing separately.

 

A huge problem for any form of dualism about mind and body is to explain how the two interact.

 

Descartes held that

·         the mind is essentially something that thinks;

·         the body is essentially something that is extended in space; but

·         despite being separate things, the mind and body can interact:

 

mental states/events   e.g., desire to move	can cause à	bodily states/events   e.g., movement
e.g., pain	can cause ß	e.g., stubbing my toe

 

But if the body, including the brain, is a physical thing, and the mind is non-physical, then it is completely mysterious how one can interact with another. This is because it is completely mysterious how a physical event can cause a non-physical event to happen, and vice versa.

 

On Peirce’s view, if we adopt Cartesian dualism, then we have given up any possibility of explaining how the mind and body interact:

·         In 1890’s “Logic and Spiritualism,” he says that “[t]he obsolete Cartesian dualism, that soul and body are two substances, distinct, independent, [is] untenable as positing a double absolute, rendering connection of soul and body absolutely inexplicable either on mechanical or on psychological principles”.[4]

·         Dualism prohibits us from ever explaining how what happens in the mind can affect what happens in the body and vice versa. Ordinary facts, like the fact that scraping my knee causes me to feel pain, become inexplicable.

 

Again, Peirce urged that “there are many facts which Cartesianism not only does not explain but renders absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that ‘God makes them so’ is to be regarded as an explanation.” (SCFI, 5.264, W 2:212, EP 1:28) But why isn’t “God makes it so” an acceptable explanation of mind-body interaction, or of anything else, for that matter?

 

The reason Peirce rejects the appeal to God as an explanation is revealed in his criticism of the doctrine of pre-established harmony. According to that doctrine, what seem to be causal relationships between a person’s mind and his body, e.g., the mental experience of pain that follows immediately upon stubbing one’s toe, are no such thing. The toe stubbing does not cause the pain. Rather, the series of mental events that leads up to the pain, and the series of physical events that leads up to the stubbing, run in harmonic parallel with one another, a parallel that was established by God when he created the mind and the body. So the explanation why I feel pain when I stub my toe is ultimately this: God did it.

 

On Peirce’s view, this sort of “explanation” is really no explanation at all.

 

This is because it fails to meet one of the basic criteria that a theory must meet in order genuinely to explain:

 

A scientific explanation ought to consist in the assertion of some positive matter of fact, other than the fact to be explained, but from which this fact necessarily follows; and if the explanation be hypothetical, the proof of it lies in the experiential verification of predictions deduced from it as necessary consequences. Leibnitz's explanation merely comes to this, that the motions and changes of state of atoms are relative to one another, because God made them so in the beginning. But nothing can be deduced from this theory, since it is impossible for man to predict what God might see fit to do. This stamps the theory as one of those [that is] unverifiable. (6.273, c.1893)

 

A hypothesis put forward to explain some mysterious or puzzling observation is acceptable as a hypothesis only if it has implications that can be tested in future experience. This story illustrates Peirce’s point…

·         Suppose you come home one evening to find that your front door is standing wide open. Nothing else on your front porch seems amiss, and the doorknob is not broken. You quickly jump to the conclusion that you have been burglarized.

·         The hypothesis that you have been burglarized implies that you will make some further observations, e.g., that some of your valuables will be missing and that other parts of your house will be in disarray. Because it has these implications about what your future experience will be, it is testable against that future experience: you can walk into your house and see whether in fact there are valuables missing, whether any pieces of furniture have been turned over, whether any drawers have been emptied, etc.

·         Of course, the simple fact that you can test the hypothesis this way does not make the hypothesis true. But it does mean that the hypothesis has crossed one hurdle of legitimacy, viz. that it leaves open an avenue for testing it to see whether or not it is true.

·         But now let’s suppose that, instead of jumping to the hypothesis that you have been burglarized, you come up with a very different hypothesis to explain why your front door is standing wide open: you conjecture that God did it. On Peirce’s view, there are no further observations that can be derived from this hypothesis, “since it is impossible for man to predict what God might see fit to do.” The hypothesis that God caused your door to open is not testable, and so it fails to meet this basic standard of legitimacy for explanations.

 

Likewise, the hypothesis that God causes the mind and the body to interact has no implications for what further observations we can expect to make. There are no further observations that we can make that would show either that the hypothesis is true or to that it is false.[5]

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday August 31. For next time, read through the end of section IV of “The Fixation of Belief” (pp. 107-15).