[2.1.4.] Against Individual Certainty.

 

C2. “the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individual consciousness.”

 

P2. “...to make single individuals absolute judges of truth is most pernicious.”

 

pernicious (df.): destructive; tending to cause great harm.

 

If each individual is the absolute judge of what is true, then there is no need to pay attention to others when they disagree with you.

 

When individual inquirers, such as philosophers, are intellectually isolated from each other in this way, each caring nothing about the opinions of others, even when those opinions diverge dramatically from their own, there is no hope that agreement among those individuals will ever be reached.

 

In assuming C2, Descartes was presupposing that (epistemic) certainty is attainable.

 

Peirce’s view was that we will never attain the absolutely certain beliefs that Descartes sought. Even if it were possible voluntarily to doubt everything, this would not help us identify a set of beliefs that cannot possibly be false.

 

Rather than the “pretend doubt” that (according to Peirce) Descartes adopted in his quest for certainty, Peirce advocates...

 

fallibilism (df.): the view that any belief, no matter how fundamental or seemingly secure, might turn out to be false.[1]

 

On Peirce’s view, no belief is ever beyond revision, and there is no such thing as (epistemic) certainty. In Peirce’s words: “people cannot attain absolute certainty concerning questions of fact.” (CP 1.149, c.1897; not in EP)

 

Years later, he wrote:

 

Only once, as far as I remember, in all my lifetime have I experienced the pleasure of praise—not for what it might bring but in itself. That pleasure was beatific; and the praise that conferred it was meant for blame. It was that a critic said of me that I did not seem to be absolutely sure of my own conclusions. ...

For years ... I used for myself to collect my ideas under the designation fallibilism; and indeed the first step toward finding out is to acknowledge you do not satisfactorily know already; so that no blight can so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness; and ninety-nine out of every hundred good heads are reduced to impotence by that malady—of whose inroads they are most strangely unaware!

                Indeed, out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my philosophy has always seemed to me to grow. . . . (CP 1.8, 13-14, c.1897; not in EP)[2]

 

So the fact that we cannot start from certain premises, or arrive at certain conclusions, does not mean that inquiry itself is pointless. Although we are always susceptible to error, we nonetheless sometimes engage in successful inquiry.

 

 

[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.”

 

Philosophical conclusions should be supported, not by single arguments, but by multiple arguments. Philosophical reasoning should be less like a chain and more like a cable.

 

Peirce has in mind something like the approach of the medieval theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)[3] who gave several different arguments for the existence of God rather than relying on just a single argument, like Descartes.[4]

 

What’s more, the premises in those arguments need to be clearly stated so as to be subject to careful examination.

 

 

[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.”

 

What Peirce said here is a bit difficult and worth quoting in full:

 

                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. (EP 1:29, CP 5.265)

 

 

[2.1.6.1.] Cognitionism.

 

First let’s consider what Peirce means by an “unidealistic philosophy.” Clearly he thinks that Cartesianism qualifies as “unidealistic,” but he does not tell us here what that means.

 

To really understand exactly what Peirce was accusing Descartes of here, we need to jump ahead to close to the end of this article, where he is discussing a doctrine which he characterizes as “directly idealistic” (and thus not “unidealistic). The doctrine is that “the absolutely incognizable is inconceivable.”

 

In other words, we cannot conceive of (i.e., have the idea of) that which is incognizable (i.e., that which cannot be cognized, i.e., that of which we can have no idea).

 

The principle now brought under discussion [that the absolutely incognizable is absolutely inconceivable] is directly idealistic; for, since the meaning of a word is the conception it conveys, the absolutely incognizable has no meaning because no conception attaches to it. It is, therefore, a meaningless word; and, consequently, whatever is meant by any term as “the real” is cognizable in some degree, and so is of the nature of a cognition, in the objective sense of that term. (EP 1:51-2, CP 5.310)

 

Here Peirce is arguing that everything real “is of the nature of a cognition, in the objective sense of” the word “cognition.”

 

This means that everything real is capable of being cognized, of being thought. There is nothing real that is incapable of being the object of cognition, that is incapable of being cognized.

 

We saw this idea in the introduction, in Peirce’s use of the pragmatic maxim to reject Kant’s notion of a World in Itself, apart from any possible conception of it.

 

I will call this view Peirce’s cognitionism…

 

cognitionism (df.): the view that everything real is “of the nature of a cognition,” i.e., capable of being cognized or thought, i.e., capable of being the object of cognition or thought.[5]

 

An unidealistic philosophy is one that claims that there are aspects of reality that, for whatever reason, cannot be the object of an idea, i.e., that cannot be cognized.

 

 

[2.1.6.2.] Inexplicable Facts.

 

Again, Peirce writes: “Every unidealistic philosophy supposes some absolutely inexplicable, unanalyzable ultimate…”

 

To recognize a fact, such as the fact that one exists, or that one is having experiences, but then to maintain that such facts are inexplicable (that they cannot be explained), is on Peirce’s view to deny that we can ever “get behind” those facts and understand what has caused them.

 

So to say that there are inexplicable facts is to imply that there is an aspect of reality that cannot be cognized. It is to adopt an “unidealistic philosophy.”

 

Peirce believes that Descartes’ approach to inquiry implies that there are facts for which there is no explanation whatsoever.

 

The problem is that Descartes assumes that there is a single starting point for inquiry, a single justified belief from which all other justified beliefs can be derived.

 

If there is such a belief, then there is no evidence that supports that belief—no reasons for thinking that the belief is true. The belief must simply be accepted as it is, without support from any other beliefs. This is an example of a view of knowledge that has come to be called foundationalism:

 

foundationalism (df.): the view according to which there are two types of justified beliefs: (i) basic beliefs, which are justified, but not justified by any other beliefs; and (ii) derived, which are justified by other beliefs.

 

To explain a fact (to explain how it came to be a fact) is to give evidence/reasons for thinking that it is a fact.

 

For example, if I come home to find my front door busted down, my furniture in disarray, and many of my belongings missing, I can explain all these facts by saying that I have been robbed. Conversely, if I know on independent grounds (say, because the police call me at work and tell me) that I have been robbed, the information that I have been robbed can give me a reason for thinking that, when I get home, I will find my front door busted down, my furniture in disarray, and many of my belongings missing. In this way, an explanation of the fact that p can also serve as evidence or reasons for thinking that p.

 

If no evidence/reasons can be given for the claim that p, then the fact that p is inexplicable.

 

This is the position that Descartes finds himself in with regard to the beliefs “I think” and “I am.” These are simple, fundamental claims not supported by any other beliefs. And so the facts that Descartes thinks and that he exists are inexplicable (unless, as Peirce says, “God made it so” counts as an explanation).

 

For Peirce, it is never legitimate to maintain that something (an object, event, phenomenon, anything) cannot be explained.

 

On Peirce’s view, supposing that some fact is inexplicable is a way of “blocking the way of inquiry.” As he wrote in 1898 (thirty years after your current reading):

 

                [There is an idea] which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy.

 

Do not block the way of inquiry.

 

Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations ... yet there is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.[6]

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday August 22. For next time, continue reading “Some Consequences”: EP1:29-38.