[2.2.4.] Believing vs. Doubting.

 

In section III, Peirce identified the three differences between believing and doubting:

 

1.      They feel different. The sensation accompanying belief is unlike the sensation accompanying doubt: “...there is a dissimilarity between the sensation of doubting and that of believing.” (113)

 

2.      A belief involves a habit, a disposition to act, to do something. A doubt involves the absence of such a habit. “The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect.” (113)

 

Peirce’s example: the followers of “the Old Man of the Mountain” (Sheik al-Jebal), a radical Muslim of the eleventh century. His followers would undertake suicide missions at his command, because they believed, and did not doubt, that they would be rewarded in the afterlife for doing so.

 

A more ordinary example: Suppose that you believe that the liquid in this container is water. Your belief involves a group of dispositions to do certain things, e.g., pick it up and drink it; pour it on your houseplants or in your dog’s water bowl; use it to brush your teeth or wash your hair or your car; etc. If you aren’t sure whether it is water, i.e., if you doubt that it is water, then you will not know what to do with it. You will not have any dispositions to behave in a certain way towards it.

 

So on Peirce’s view, having a belief is not simply a matter of having a thought or cognition in your mind or of feeling a specific way. Beliefs involve habits of action, and we have those habits even when we’re not consciously thinking about the object of the belief (we have dispositions to act certain ways with regard to water, even when we’re not thinking about water).[1]

 

So having a belief involves having a habit. And to doubt is to lack such a habit. But a doubt is not simply the absence of belief. It is “a condition of erratic activity.”

 

3.      We are content with belief, but we tend to try to escape from doubt, to eliminate doubt and replace it with belief. “Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else.” (114)[2]

 

 

[2.2.5.] Inquiry as the Struggle to Escape Doubt and Fix Belief.

 

Many philosophers would define inquiry something like this: “an attempt to discover truths about the world.”

 

But at this point in “The Fixation of Belief,” Peirce describes inquiry differently, as the struggle to escape doubt and attain a settled state of belief:

 

The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle inquiry, though it must be admitted that this is sometimes not a very apt designation. (114)

 

For Peirce, doubt is unpleasant and is satisfied only by a new belief.[3] Once thrown into doubt, we go through some process or other until belief is “fixed” (settled, made permanent). The goal of such a process is stable belief. The process itself is inquiry.[4]

 

Peirce considers an objection to this definition of inquiry:

 

Isn’t inquiry the attempt to arrive at, not a fixed belief, but a TRUE belief? As Peirce himself put the objection:

 

We may fancy that this [namely, the settlement of belief] is not enough for us, and that we seek not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. (114)[5]

 

The idea behind this objection is this: when we are engaged in the activity of eliminating doubt and settling belief, we don’t simply want to make just any beliefs permanent. If that were our goal, we would be perfectly satisfied swallowing a belief-fixing pill. What we want to do, rather, is replace our doubts with accurate, true beliefs.

 

Peirce’s response to this objection:

 

The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so. ... the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry...  (115)[6]

 

tautology (df.): a logically true statement, e.g., “all bachelors are unmarried,” “either I am taller than 5 feet or I am not,” any statement of the form “either it is the case that p or it is not the case that p.”

 

He does not think we should define inquiry as an attempt to arrive at true beliefs, for the following reason… As soon as someone believes that p, she is “entirely satisfied” with that belief, and it doesn’t matter whether it is actually true or false. The actual truth of a belief is irrelevant to whether the believer is satisfied with it—all that matters is that she believes that it is true. If one’s belief that p is genuine, it is pointless to say “I now believe that p. I wonder whether p?”

 

Another way of putting this point: If you believe that p, then you also believe that it is true that p. (This is why Peirce says “We think each one of our beliefs to be true” is a tautology: to believe that p is to think that it is true that p.) As long as you have no actual reason to doubt your belief that p, you will think that your belief that p is true. Only when you pass from the satisfactory state of belief to the unsatisfactory state of doubt do you question whether it is true that p.

 

Peirce’s point seems to be methodological, i.e., it seems to be about the method that people use to establish beliefs. The method that says “seek to believe only that which is true” is a pointless method.

 

He concludes: “the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry” (115). And from this he infers three claims about inquiry and proof, the first two of which Descartes (or Peirce’s version of Descartes) would have rejected:

 

1.      “Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry it was only necessary to utter a question or set it down upon paper, and have even recommended us to begin our studies with questioning everything! But the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a real and living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle.” (115) This suggests a different way of understanding Peirce’s criticism of Descartes...

• If Descartes did not advocate actually trying to doubt all of one’s beliefs, then it seems like he at least held that inquiry should begin by questioning things that we don’t actually doubt. E.g., even if you don’t doubt that God exists, you should still begin inquiry by setting aside that belief as not an appropriate starting point for inquiry.
• Here Peirce is saying that it is a waste of time to start inquiry by setting aside things you actually do believe. Genuine inquiry is motivated by actual doubt, “real and living doubt,” so unless you have a reason really to doubt a given claim, then it is pointless to say that you are going to set it aside for the sake of inquiry. If inquiry is to be genuine, it must begin with all the beliefs that an inquirer actually has.

 

2.      In order for the proof of a claim to be adequate, it need only begin with premises that are not actually doubted; proof does not require reasoning that begins with “ultimate and absolutely indubitable propositions.”

 

3.      Inquiry cannot be advanced beyond the point at which belief is actually settled. “When doubt ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would be without a purpose.” (115)

 

 

[2.2.6.] The Four Methods of Fixing Belief.

 

Peirce now turns to the question: What is the best method of inquiry?

 

But given the account of inquiry he has just provided (according to which inquiry is the attempt to eliminate doubt and establish a fixed belief), this question becomes: How can we “fix” (establish, settle) a belief? I.e.., what’s the best way to establish permanent belief?

 

According to Peirce, there are four methods of establishing belief about a given issue, methods by which doubt can be eliminated and replaced with “fixed” belief. And according to Peirce, one of them works much better than the others. The methods are:

 

1. the method of tenacity

2. the method of authority

3. the a priori method

4. the method of science

 

 

[2.2.6.1.] The Method of Tenacity.

 

Using this method, an individual:

(a)         chooses a belief that he or she likes and obstinately sticks to it, no matter what; and

(b)         intentionally avoids any evidence or reasons that might threaten that belief.

 

Why should we not attain the desired end, by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it? (115-16)[7]

 

Example: someone who (a) chooses a specific religious faith that she finds appealing and sticks to it dogmatically and (b) avoids reading or hearing any evidence or arguments that she thinks might threaten her religious faith. She feels comfortable in that faith and does not want anything to undermine it.

 

Why Peirce thinks it does not work as a method of “fixing” belief:

 

The social impulse is against it. The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him, and it will be apt to occur to him, in some saner moment, that their opinions are quite as good as his own, and this will shake his confidence in his belief. (117)[8]

 

The fact that others do not share your belief will constantly undermine your confidence in that belief, thus letting doubt creep back in.

 

And when this method fails, a very important conception arises:

(I) “...another man’s thought or sentiment may be equivalent to one’s own” (117).[9] I.e., when it comes to belief, you are not privileged; others’ beliefs can be just as good as your own.

 

So Peirce says that what we need is a way of fixing belief in the entire “community” of believers, not just in the individual.

 

A charitable understanding of what Peirce says about this method is: the method cannot work for every belief that an individual has. Some people obviously do have their religious beliefs “fixed” in this way, but no sane person can have their beliefs about every topic whatsoever fixed in this way.

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday September 7. For next time, finish reading “The Fixation of Belief” (pp.122-26).