[2.2.9.] The External and the Real.

 

A new conception involved in the fundamental assumptions of the method of science is the conception of reality.

 

Notice that the view described by Peirce is:

 

(1) There are things whose characteristics do not depend on what anyone in particular thinks about them.

 

Peirce describes such things as real, and he described things whose characteristics do depend on what someone thinks about them as fictional or figments.

 

Claim (1), which is part of the “fundamental hypothesis” of the method of science, is subtly different than the following:

 

(*) There are things whose characteristics do not depend on what anyone in particular thinks.

 

Peirce described such things as external, and he described things whose characteristics do depend on what someone thinks as internal. In short, the external is that which is outside of anyone’s mind, and the internal is that which is inside someone’s mind. If I step on a tack and then feel pain, the tack is external, as is the event of the sharp end of the tack entering my toe; but the pain that I feel is internal.

 

So we have two different distinctions:

·         real vs. fictional

·         external vs. internal

 

What is the relation between the real and the external?

·         Anything that is external (not within someone’s mind and therefore not dependent on what anyone thinks) must also be real (not dependent on what anyone thinks about it).

·         But notice that Peirce did NOT say that everything that is real is external—his definitions of “real” and “external” leave open the possibility that part of reality is internal. And in fact, Peirce did believe that there are real things (that are independent of what people think about them) that are internal (that are dependent of what someone thinks).

 

On Peirce’s view, the method of science depends on there being both external things (“an external permanency...something upon which our thinking has no effect”) and real things (“things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them”).

 

 

[2.3.] “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878).

 

This article is the second of the “Illustrations of the Logic of Science” series published in Popular Science Monthly from 1877 to 1878 (the first was “The Fixation of Belief”).

 

It contains the first appearance in print of the idea that has come to be called the “Pragmatic Maxim” (PM), and so it is plausible to think of it as the publication in which pragmatism was first introduced to the public, even though nowhere in the article does Peirce use the expression “pragmatic maxim” or “pragmatism.”

 

 

[2.3.1.] The First Two Degrees of Clearness.

 

Peirce describes three different levels or “degrees” of clearness that a concept can have.

 

The first two levels were recognized by the rationalist philosophers Descartes and Leibniz (whom Peirce discusses in section I of this essay).

 

The third level of clearness is something that Peirce himself is introducing. The pragmatic maxim is the tool that he uses to clarify concepts to that third degree.

 

To illustrate these three degrees of clearness, I’ll use the concept gold.

 

The first two degrees of clearness are as follows:

 

1.      Being “familiar” with the concept, so that you are able to “recognize” the concept wherever it occurs. What Peirce may mean by this is the ability to tell the difference between things to which the concept applies and things to which it does not apply.

·         You have attained this level of clarity with regard to the concept gold when you can sort things according to whether or not they are gold.

·         This corresponds with the “clearness” of ideas emphasized by Descartes and Leibniz.

 

2.      Being able to give a verbal definition of the concept, such as you can find in a dictionary.

·         You have attained this level of clarity when you can define the word “gold” (such as: “a soft, yellow, corrosive-resistant element, the most malleable and ductile metal, occurring in veins and alluvial deposits and recovered by mining or by panning or sluicing”[1]).

·         This corresponds with the “distinctness” of ideas emphasized by Descartes and Leibniz.

 

But Peirce thought that this degree of clarity could be improved upon, that we can attain a level of even greater clearness.

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday September 14. For next time, continue reading “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (pp.138-47).