[1.] Introducing Charles S. Peirce.

 

[1.1] Biographical Background.

 

·         1839-1914

·         Peirce grew up in Cambridge, MA (location of Harvard University), which by the 1800s was an important center of American intellectual activity.

·         His father was Benjamin Peirce, a professor of mathematics at Harvard and one of the most distinguished American mathematicians of the nineteenth century.

·         Peirce graduated from Harvard College in 1859.

·         He then began working as a geodesist for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (geodesy is “a branch of applied mathematics concerned with the determination of the size and shape of the earth and the exact positions of points on its surface and with the description of variations of its gravity field.”)[1]

·         He returned to college, graduating from Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School with a Bachelor’s of Science in chemistry in 1863. As we will see, his training and work as a scientist informs his work in philosophy.

·         He began lecturing and publishing in philosophy in 1863.

·         He taught at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) from 1879 to 1884 as a part-time lecturer in logic. This was the only regular position with an academic institution he ever held.

·         Peirce was forced to resign from both the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and Johns Hopkins by a combination of circumstances, including his difficult personality, circumstances surrounding his second marriage (it was known he had had an affair with his second wife before they were married), and his having made powerful enemies. He never held an academic position again.

·         In 1887, he retired to Milford, PA. There he spent the rest of his life in poverty, writing almost constantly on philosophical and scientific issues.

·         In his introduction to Essential Peirce volume 1 (EP1), Nathan Houser calls Peirce “as great a thinker as any that America has ever produced.” (xix)

 

 

[1.2.] Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Pragmatic Maxim.

 

Peirce belongs to a well-known and widely studied philosophical tradition known as pragmatism, which also includes

·         William James (1842-1910)

·         John Dewey (1859-1952)

 

Pragmatism is the only philosophical tradition to have developed entirely in the United States.

 

It is an approach to philosophy (logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics) that emphasizes

·         the experiential and empirical

·         the experimental

·         the practical consequences of claims and beliefs

·         understanding philosophical concepts in terms of actions or deeds.

 

While Peirce, James, Dewey and a number of other philosophers are all lumped together as “pragmatists,” there is no doctrine that they all have in common. In fact, “pragmatism” means something slightly different for each one of them.

 

There are two events either of which could, with good reason, be described as the birth of pragmatism:

 

 

1. The Formation of the Metaphysical Club in 1871.

 

Its initial members included Peirce, James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), who later served on the US Supreme Court for over thirty years.[2]

 

The club name was a joke; they were all critical of much traditional metaphysics.

 

During these meetings, Peirce coined the term “pragmatism” to describe a rule or method for clarifying the meaning of concepts.

 

This rule came to be known as the Pragmatic Maxim.

 

 

2. The publication of Peirce’s “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878).

 

In that article, Peirce articulated the pragmatic maxim as follows:

 

...consider what effects, which 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. (EP1:132)

 

This is my attempt to distill the essence of it:

 

The meaning of a concept is given by a description of the practical consequences that would occur were you to perform an action involving objects to which that concept applies. In particular, it is given by a list of conditionals (if-then statements) of the following form:

 

“If you were to do so-and-so, then such-and-such would happen.”

 

The first part of the conditional specifies some behavior or test or “experiment” that a person can perform; the second part specifies the practical consequences of that test.

 

Let’s apply this idea to the concept gold. Consider the claim “This chain is pure gold.” What does this claim mean? Its pragmatic meaning is given by a list of conditionals, e.g.,

 

If you were to raise the temperature of the chain to 100° F, then it would not melt.

If you were to raise the temperature of the chain to 1948° F, then it would melt.

If you were to hammer the chain, it would flatten out.

If you were to wear the chain around your neck, it would not turn your skin green.

etc.

 

The idea behind the PM is that such a list of conditionals gives the clearest statement of the meaning of the concept gold.

 

Peirce himself illustrated the PM by applying it to the concept 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. (“Syllabus”, c.1902, CP 2.330; not in EP)

 

Peirce’s pragmatic maxim reflects his background as a scientist. Peirce was trained as a chemist and worked as a geodesist for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey for several years. He approached the issue of clarifying meaning in terms of experiments, in a very broad sense of that word: what would happen were you to perform some specific action?

 

As we will see later, this approach to explaining the meaning of concepts seems to pose a threat to much traditional metaphysics. On Peirce’s view, many of the claims of traditional metaphysics are “pragmatically meaningless” and have no consequences for our practical interactions with the world.

 

One philosopher Peirce had in mind was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

 

Peirce was deeply influenced by Kant, but he was especially critical of Kant’s concept of the Welt an sich, the “world in itself.” This is the world as it is apart from how we experience it and which is composed of Dinge an sich (“things in themselves”). What sort of practical consequences does the concept of “the world apart from how we experience it” have? Peirce says: none at all. He thought that Kant’s concept of the Welt an sich was pragmatically meaningless.

 

So at its birth, pragmatism was a rule or method of clarifying the meaning of concepts/ideas.

 

 

[1.3.] The Term “Pragmatism.”

 

Peirce derived the word “pragmatism” from Kant’s use of “pragmatisch,” to mean “experiential.”[3]

 

Kant distinguished between two types of “law” (a principle or rule for behavior):

 

As Kant put it...	e.g.
pragmatic (“pragmatisch”) laws, “for the attainment of those ends which are commended to us by the senses”	“if you want to improve your chess game, then you should study the games of the masters”
practical (“praktisch”) laws, which are known a priori (independently of sense experience) “and which are prescribed to us not in an empirically conditioned but in an absolute manner ... such are moral laws...”[4]	“you should always be honest” (on Kant’s view, this does not depend on any desire we have for ourselves--it stems entirely from our reasoning)

 

According to Peirce (“What Pragmatism Is,” EP 2:333, CP 5.412, 1905[5])

·         “pragmatisch” expresses a “relation to some definite human purpose,” the intention to bring about some specific state of affairs (e.g. the state of affairs in which your chess game is much improved). He intended the name “pragmatism” to reflect the theory’s “recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose.” In the gold and lithium examples, the concepts gold and lithium are explained in terms of what would happen as the result of performing some purposeful behavior.

·         “praktisch” “belong[s] in a region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his feet.” Kant’s categorical imperatives are supposed to result from pure reason, totally divorced from both experience and purposeful behavior.[6]

 

It was James, not Peirce, who first used the term “pragmatism” in public and made it well-known. He did this in 1898, about 25 years after Peirce had coined the term privately in meetings of the Metaphysical Club.

 

Soon other philosophers in the US and abroad began describing themselves as “pragmatists.” Peirce was dismayed by this, because these new versions of pragmatism were very different from what he had coined the name to describe. Even James’ version of pragmatism was importantly different from Peirce’s.

 

In 1905, Peirce wrote that he would thenceforth call his own position “pragmaticism”—a name he hoped was “ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers.” He did this to distance his form of pragmatism from that of other philosophers who had begun calling themselves pragmatists. (EP 2:335, CP 5.414, 1905)

 

 

[1.4.] From More- to Less-Realist Pragmatism.

 

Peirce accepted

 

realism: (df.) the view that there is a real world, one that has being apart from anyone’s thoughts or beliefs about it.

 

WARNINGS:

·         The word “realism” is used in a number of different ways in philosophy, not all of them having anything to do with the mind-independence of the world.

·         Even when the word “realism” is used to describe a position about the mind-independence of the world, it is sometimes still used to refer to a view different than the one that Peirce is describing here.[7]

 

Peirce also believed that:

·         we can discover truths about the (real) world through experience and reasoning.

·         philosophy is a type of inquiry (an attempt to discover truths about the world).

 

The history of pragmatism includes a drift away from a more realist view of truth and reality (there is a world that exists apart from what we think about it, and we are capable of having true beliefs about that world) to a less realist view of truth and reality. Peirce actually saw this shift occurring in his own lifetime. By the late 20th century, pragmatism had changed significantly.

 

The best-known neo-pragmatist is Richard Rorty (1931-2007), professor emeritus of comparative literature at Stanford.[8] Rorty sees himself as inheriting and forwarding the work begun by some of the classical pragmatists, especially Dewey. His form of pragmatism holds that:

     There is no such thing as an objective world that exists apart from what we think about it.

     “True” means whatever you can actually defend against all objections.

·         Philosophy is not inquiry; it is a conversation. Philosophy should think of itself not as an attempt to discover truths but as something more like literature.

 

Although Rorty denies it, some of his critics accuse him of being a relativist:

 

relativism (df.): the view that truth and/or reality are somehow dependent on human thought.

 

Although Rorty himself doesn’t put it this bluntly, his type of pragmatism seems to imply that truth and reality are relative to us (either as a group or as individuals).

 

 

[1.5.] Peirce Less Well-Known Than Others.

 

Peirce is much less known and studied than either James or Dewey. This is illustrated by the results of a recent Google search on their names (May 9, 2007):

 

“William James” about 1,270,000 [up from 505,000 on June 8, 2004; an increase of 251%]

 

“John Dewey” about 1,140,000 [up from 145,000 on June 8, 2004, an increase of 786%]

 

“Charles Peirce” about 104,000 [up from 7,530 on June 8, 2004; an increase of 1380%]

“Charles Sanders Peirce” about 257,000 [up from 16,900 on June 8, 2004; an increase of 1500%]

“C. S. Peirce” about 163,000 [up from 13,900 on June 8, 2004; an increase of 1172%]

TOTAL: about 524,000 [certainly an over-estimation, since many of the same web pages will appear across those three searches]

 

Cornelis de Waal[9] lists a number of reasons why Peirce is not very well known:

·         he never held a permanent academic position, so he had very few students to disseminate his ideas;

·         he was relatively isolated from academia for the last few decades of his life; and

·         his work is allegedly difficult and inaccessible, stemming from his use of symbolic logic and his use of difficult terminology which he himself coined.

 

Another reason his work is difficult to understand is that he was a system-builder (along the lines of Aristotle and Kant--he wanted to build an all-encompassing philosophical system) who never articulated a complete and definitive statement of that system. This can make studying Peirce somewhat frustrating, to say the least.

 

There is also the following:

·         Peirce scholars disagree about which of his writings are the most important for understanding his thought.[10]

·         Peirce wrote a tremendous amount of philosophical material, much of which was published in his lifetime, but the majority of which was not and still has not been.

·         For decades, the most thorough collection of his philosophical writings was the 8 volume Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. While valuable, this edition has significant weaknesses: it is arranged topically not chronologically, omits many important writings, and does not come close to containing everything Peirce wrote.

·         Since the 1980s, the Peirce Edition Project[11] (based at IUPUI in Indianapolis) has been working on a critical, chronological edition of Peirce’s work. It will not be comprehensive, but it will contain much more that the Collected Papers. So far the Project has published 6 volumes (from 1857 to 1890) and project the total set will run 30 volumes.

·         There are a number of other published collections of Peirce’s writings, but there is still much material that has never been published. Scholars have access to some of his manuscripts, those which for decades were housed at Harvard University Library, via a set of 33 microfilm rolls sold by that Library.[12]

·         We will be using the 2 volume Essential Peirce, put together by the Peirce Edition Project. It contains what its editors judge to be the most important of Peirce’s philosophical writings.

 

Stopping point for Friday August 17. For next time, begin reading “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” (EP 1: 28-29).