[2.3.2.] An Argument for the Pragmatic Maxim.

 

Peirce holds that the principles about belief and doubt that he set forth in “The Fixation of Belief” suggest a method we can use to clarify our ideas beyond the first and second levels (i.e., beyond “clearness and distinctness”).

 

He summarizes the principles about belief and doubt at the beginning of “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” section II:

·         “the action of thought is excited by the irritation of doubt”

·         “doubt ... ceases when belief is attained”

·         it follows “that the production of belief is the sole function of thought.” (132)[1]

 

He reminds us that on his conception of belief, a belief has three traits (134-35):

·         “it is something we are aware of”;

·         “it appeases the irritation of doubt”;

·         “it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit.”

 

From this conception of belief together with the claim that the purpose of thought is to produce belief, it follows that “the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action.” (136)

 

This way of thinking about belief, habit, and thought underwrites Peirce’s argument for the Pragmatic Maxim. That argument is not set out in a very straightforward way in “How to Make…” But years later, he stated it more explicitly:

 

1. The concept of truth “developed out of an original impulse to act consistently, to have a definite intention.” This premise refers to the genealogy of the concept of truth he gave in “Fixation”: Our desire to dispel doubt (and the chaotic behavior that accompanies it) and establish belief (and the disposition to act in some settled, consistent way) is what propels us out of the concept of truth as that which I believe and toward the concept of truth as that which represents reality. The point he is making here seems to be this: we arrived at the first, most primitive notion of truth because of our impulse to behave consistently, non-chaotically, i.e., to establish the habits that accompany beliefs.

 

2. Therefore, “belief [i.e., holding for true] consists mainly in being deliberately prepared to adopt the formula believed in as the guide to action.” Genuinely believing that p (in other words, really holding it to be true that p) requires that one be prepared to act as if p.

 

3. Therefore, “the proposition believed in can be nothing but a maxim of conduct.” (A maxim is a rule or principle of conduct.[2]) When one genuinely believes that p, the meaning of p must be understood in terms of conduct, action, purposeful behavior.

 

4. Therefore, “the possible practical consequences of a concept constitute the sum total of the concept.”[3] The meaning of the ideas/concepts involved in our beliefs – for example, the concept water, which is involved in my belief that the liquid in this container is water – is given by a specification of the possible consequences of performing some set of actions.

 

 

[2.3.3.] The Pragmatic Maxim Itself.

 

Peirce intended the Pragmatic Maxim (PM) to be a rule for clarifying the meaning of concepts beyond the second degree of clearness by showing how meaning is connected to action (purposeful behavior) and the experiences that follow.[4]

 

The last line in the argument given above is how he expressed the PM in 1903. Here is how he put it earlier, in 1878’s “How to Make…”

 

Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (138)[5]

 

Here is a formulation that captures this idea:

 

The meaning of a concept is given by a description of the experiences you will have as a result of performing actions that involve objects to which the concept applies; in particular, it is given by a list of conditionals (if-then statements) of the following form:

 

“If you do [specification of some action], then you will experience [specification of some experiential consequence].”

 

The first part of the conditional specifies some behavior or test or “experiment” that a person can perform; the second part specifies the experiences that will follow as an effect of performing that test.

 

 

[2.3.4.] Illustrations of the Pragmatic Maxim.

 

EXAMPLE 1: silver

 

Consider the claim “This ring is pure silver.” What does this claim mean? Its pragmatic meaning is given by a list of conditionals (if-then statements), e.g.,

·         If you raise the temperature of the ring to 100° F, it will not melt.

·         If you raise the temperature of the ring to 1763.2° F, it will melt.

·         If you raise the temperature of the ring to 3924° F, it will boil.

·         If you hammer it, it will flatten out.

·         If you wear the ring around your finger, it will not turn your skin green.

etc.

 

This is how the PM ties the meaning of concepts to both actions and sensible effects: the PM gives the meaning of a concept in terms of the experiential consequences of engaging in certain actions.

 

EXAMPLE 2: hard

 

As an example of the application of the PM, Peirce gives the concept hard (138).[6] [Peirce is considering the word “hard” in its strict, mineralogical sense.]

 

The pragmatic meaning of the claim that an object, e.g., a diamond, is hard is given by a list of conditionals, such as:

·         If you attempt to scratch it with a knife, then the diamond will not be scratched.

·         If you attempt to use it to scratch a piece of glass, then the glass will be scratched.

etc.

 

On Peirce’s view, this list of conditionals is all that is (pragmatically) meant by the word “hard.” There is no hidden quality of hardness inside the diamond. To say that it is hard is to say simply that if you do specific things with it, then specific sensible results will occur.

 

Peirce himself illustrated the PM by applying it to the following concepts of physical science:

 

·         hard (138)

·         weight / heavy (140)

·         force (140-42; requires an understanding of the Parallelogram of Forces)

·         lithium:

 

If you look into a textbook of chemistry for a definition of lithium, you may be told that it is that element whose atomic weight is 7 very nearly. But if the author has a more logical mind he will tell you that if you search among minerals that are vitreous, translucent, grey or white, very hard, brittle, and insoluble, for one which imparts a crimson tinge to an unluminous flame, this mineral being triturated with lime or witherite rats-bane, and then fused, can be partly dissolved in muriatic acid; and if this solution be evaporated, and the residue be extracted with sulphuric acid, and duly purified, it can be converted by ordinary methods into a chloride, which being obtained in the solid state, fused, and electrolyzed with half a dozen powerful cells, will yield a globule of a pinkish silvery metal that will float on gasolene; and the material of that is a specimen of lithium. The peculiarity of this definition—or rather this precept that is more serviceable than a definition—is that it tells you what the word lithium denotes by prescribing what you are to do in order to gain a perceptual acquaintance with the object of the word.[7]

 

Below we will see how he applied it to a few other concepts that are more relevant to philosophy: reality, and truth.

 

 

[2.3.5.] Same Habit of Action, Same Belief.

 

...the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they might be. What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act. As for the when, every stimulus to action is derived from perception; as for the how, every purpose of action is to produce some sensible result. Thus, we come down to what is tangible and practical, as the root of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtile it may be; and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. (137)[8]

 

In other words:

·         Any belief has associated with it a habit of action—a habit of responding to specific perceptions by acting in a specific way, a way that is intended to produce some perceptible outcome.

·         If belief A has the exact same sensible results associated it as does belief B, then belief A is the same belief as belief B. The meaning of a belief cannot be separated from the experiences or sensations associated with it. If A produces the same habits of action as B, and thus the same sensible results, then A and B have the same meaning, and so A is one and the same belief as B.

 

To illustrate this, Peirce uses as an example the doctrine of transubstantiation (that wine and wafers taken during communion literally turn into the blood and body of Christ):

 

...our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief;

 

I.e., our concepts, beliefs, habits, and actions all refer exclusively to what can affect our senses.

 

and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. (137)

 

On Peirce’s view, the claim that wine changes into the blood of Christ, although none of its sensible properties change, is pragmatically meaningless.

 

This is the sort of clarification that the Pragmatic Maxim is supposed to yield: it reveals the connection that a concept has with habits of action and the sensible results of those actions, and therefore with the perceptible world with which each of us interacts.

 

And if there is no such connection, then the concept is pragmatically meaningless.

 

 

[2.3.6.] The “First and Second Grades” of Clarity Regarding the Real.

 

Having used the pragmatic maxim (PM) to clarify a number of scientific concepts, he now turns toward a more philosophical concept: reality.

 

He begins by considering the concept real in its “first grade” of clarity (the clearness of Descartes and Leibniz):

 

Taking clearness in the sense of familiarity, no idea could be clearer than this. Every child uses it with perfect confidence, never dreaming that he does not understand it. (144)

 

He then considers the concept real in its “second grade” of clarity (the distinctness of Descartes and Leibniz). This is the dictionary definition of “reality.” Here he reiterates the definition we’ve seen him use before:

 

Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be. (144) [9]

 

[At this point he also defines the external (that which does not depend on what anyone thinks) and the fictional (that which depends on what someone thinks about it—this is the opposite of the real).]

 

But Peirce wanted to go beyond this “second grade” of clarity to a higher grade, one that ties the concept of reality directly to action and its sensible effects.

 

In other words, he wanted to apply the PM to the concept real, in order to answer the question: What conceivable sensible effect does reality have?

 

Here, then, let us apply our rules. According to them, reality, like every other quality, consists in the peculiar sensible effects which things partaking of it produce. The only effect which real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations which they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs. The question therefore is, how is true belief (or belief in the real) distinguished from false belief (or belief in fiction). (145)[10]

 

So the pragmatic account of reality will need to be put in terms of true belief. The object of a true belief is real, and the only difference that the real makes in our experience is that it causes our true beliefs. So in order to have a pragmatic understanding of reality, we must understand what it is to have a true belief….

 

 

Stopping point for Friday September 16. For next time, finish reading “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (pp.147-50)