[5.] Scholastic Realism.

 

In 1905’s “What Pragmatism Is,” Peirce writes:

 

[The pragmatic maxim] will serve to show that almost every proposition of ontological metaphysics is either meaningless gibberish—one word being defined by other words, and they by still others, without any real conception ever being reached—or else is downright absurd... (EP 2:338, CP 5.423, emphasis added)

 

So Peirce takes pragmatism to be antagonistic towards “ontological metaphysics.” But much of Peirce’s own philosophical writings were given over to metaphysical theorizing, especially beginning in the mid to late 1880s.

 

In this section of notes, we will examine the implications Peirce’s pragmatism has for metaphysics in general and then consider a metaphysical doctrine that plays a central role in Peirce’s overall philosophical system: his scholastic realism, according to which there are real “generals.”

 

 

[5.1.] Metaphysics and Ontology Defined.

 

One of the four traditional areas of philosophy (along with ethics, logic and epistemology) is metaphysics:

 

metaphysics (df.): the area of philosophy concerned with questions about reality and existence.[1]

 

The most basic metaphysical question is: what is there?

·         Metaphysics is not concerned to find very specific answers to this question: “There are 25 desks in this room; there is water on Mars; there are seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but there are no vampires.” It is not even concerned with more general, but still specific, answers: “there are desks; there is water; there are no vampires.”

·         Rather, it is concerned with the most general possible answers: there is matter, there are substances, there are persons, there are qualities, there are kinds.

·         Other, slightly more general questions, also belong to metaphysics: what do the words “is” and “are” mean? What is existence?

·         And still other, slightly more specific questions also belong to metaphysics: does God exist? are minds non-physical and independent of brains, or physical and identical with brains, or something else?

 

The word “ontology” is ambiguous:

 

1. Sometimes “ontology” is used to refer to an account (or list, or catalog) of the things (or types of thing) that have being, i.e., of the things (or types of things) that there are. For example, one philosopher may have an ontology that includes only physical objects (such a philosopher believes that the only things there are, are physical objects); another may have an ontology consisting of physical objects, non-physical minds, and God (such a philosopher thus believes the only things there are, are physical objects, non-physical minds, and God).

 

2. Sometimes “ontology” is used to refer, not to a list of fundamental types of thing, but to the area of metaphysics that tries to come up with such a list. In this sense, ontology itself is an area of metaphysics. Some people use the terms “ontology” and “metaphysics” interchangeably.

 

So, roughly, “ontological metaphysics” is the area of metaphysics that attempts to articulate an ontology.

 

 

[5.2.] Pragmatism vs. Traditional Metaphysics.

 

... metaphysics is a subject much more curious than useful, the knowledge of which, like that of a sunken reef, serves chiefly to enable us to keep clear of it... (“How to Make…,” EP 1:140, CP 5.410, 1878)

 

We have seen that Peirce intended the Pragmatic Maxim (PM) to serve as a tool for clarifying intellectual concepts, to go beyond the “antique bijou” of the traditional doctrine of clear and distinct ideas by explaining a concept in terms relevant to practical matters, and especially to our possible experience of the world.

 

But in doing this, the PM will show some metaphysical claims to be meaningless, or at least pragmatically meaningless. When the PM is applied to these concepts, it reveals that they have no bearing on our experience of the world. Peirce sees much of metaphysics as sheer gibberish, something that has no pragmatic meaning.

 

He called ontological metaphysics the “Paris of the intellect. Young men go there to be ruined.”[2] In his social milieu it was fairly common to be sent to Europe (including Paris, a dangerous and exciting place) to find one’s feet, only to return with a case of syphilis.

 

Examples of metaphysical claims shown to be meaningless by the PM, according to Peirce:

 

·         Kant’s doctrine of things-in-themselves.

 

·         The idea that human actions performed in the past could have been other than they actually were. (EP 1:133, CP 5.403) Consider the claim: “I could have acted other than I actually did.” Does it have pragmatic meaning? Peirce seems to hold that it does not; he implies that there is no pragmatic difference between the claims “I could have done otherwise” and “I could not have done otherwise.”[3]

·         Transubstantiation.(EP 1:131-2, CP 5.401) This is the doctrine that a communion wafer becomes the body of Jesus, and that communion wine becomes the blood of Jesus, when it is ingested by a devout worshipper. The claim isn’t that the observable properties of the wafer and wine change--if you open me up and examine the wafer and wine after I swallow them, they will still seem to be wafer and wine, not flesh and blood. The claim is that the essence or substance of the wafer and wine change, while their sensible properties stay the same. On Peirce’s view, this way of understanding the doctrine of transubstantiation is meaningless:

 

...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; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine [i.e., the word “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. (“How to Make…” EP1:131, CP 5.401)

 

 

[5.3.] Scientific Metaphysics.

 

Peirce did think there is room for respectable metaphysics. About the PM, he wrote:

 

It will serve to show that almost every proposition of ontological metaphysics is either meaningless gibberish—one word being defined by other words, and they by still others, without any real conception ever being reached—or else is downright absurd; so that all such rubbish being swept away, what will remain of philosophy will be a series of problems capable of investigation by the observational methods of the true sciences—the truth about which can be reached without those interminable misunderstandings and disputes which have made the highest of the positive sciences a mere amusement for idle intellects, a sort of chess—idle pleasure its purpose, and reading out of a book its method. ... So, instead of merely jeering at metaphysics ... whether by long drawn-out parodies or otherwise, the pragmatist extracts from it a precious essence... (“What Pragmatism Is,” EP2:338-9; emphasis added)

 

Peirce mentioned at least two questions which would remain in a scientific metaphysics, questions which the PM does not show to be meaningless:

 

... after all pragmatism solves no real problem. It only shows that supposed problems are not real problems. But when one comes to such questions as immortality, the nature of the connection of mind and matter ... we are left completely in the dark. The effect of pragmatism here is simply to open our minds to receiving any evidence, not to furnish evidence. [8.259, letter to William James, March 1904, emphasis added]

 

Peirce’s scientific metaphysics would differ from traditional metaphysics in two ways:

 

1.       Scientific metaphysics will employ “the method of science,” the method of experience and reasoning:

 

experience: unlike the physical sciences, metaphysics does not depend on obscure, hard-to-come-by sorts of observation; it relies on experiences and observations available to anyone at any time… experiences that are so pervasive that it is sometimes difficult to focus one’s attention on them.

 

reasoning, including the three types of reasoning he distinguished in “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities”: deduction, induction, and abduction.

 

2.       Scientific metaphysics will be conducted with “the scientific attitude,” the genuine desire to discover the truth, to learn how things really are. Inquiry that is conducted with this attitude is genuine inquiry.

 

Peirce’s emphasis on genuine inquiry and the scientific attitude is connected with what he calls the First Rule of Reason (FRR): “in order to learn you must desire to learn and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think” (EP 2:48)

 

... there is but one thing needful for learning the truth, and that is a hearty and active desire to learn what is true. If you really want to learn the truth, you will, by however devious a path, be surely led into the way of truth, at last. No matter how erroneous your ideas of the method may be at first, you will be forced at length to correct them so long as your activity is moved by that sincere desire. Nay, no matter if you only half desire it, at first, that desire would at length conquer all others, could experience continue long enough. But the more veraciously truth is desired at the outset, the shorter by centuries will the road to it be. (EP 2:47, CP 5.582, 1898, emphasis added)

 

In other words, in the FRR is: in order to discover the truth, one must be a genuine inquirer, someone who has the scientific attitude, the genuine desire to learn the truth, no matter what that truth is.

 

 

[5.3.1.] “Do Not Block the Way of Inquiry.”

 

Peirce identifies what he calls a “corollary” to the FRR, one that “deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy”: “Do not block the way of inquiry.” This is something to which metaphysicians have been especially susceptible:

 

... to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offense in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted. (EP 2:48, emphasis added)

 

He goes on to describe four ways of doing this:

 

1. “absolute assertion,” asserting a claim as if it were (epistemically) certain. To reject fallibilism about a given claim, to maintain not simply that one’s claim that p is true but also that it cannot possibly be false, is to block inquiry into whether p.

 

2. “maintaining that this, that, and the other never can be known.” Peirce’s example: Comte’s assertion that we will never know “the chemical composition of the fixed stars.” (EP 2:49, CP 1.138). This echoes Peirce’s response to the objection from buried secrets: “it is unphilosophical to suppose that, with regard to any given question (which has any clear meaning), investigation would not bring forth a solution of it, if it were carried far enough.” (EP 1:140, CP5.409)

3. “maintaining that this, that or the other element of science is basic, ultimate, independent of aught else, and utterly inexplicable,—not so much from any defect in our knowing as because there is nothing beneath it to know.” (EP 1:140, CP 1.139)[4] For example, “I am thinking,” as asserted by Descartes: this is supposed to be a foundational claim, one that is basic and unsupported (and unsupportable!) by other claims.

 

4. “holding that this or that law or truth has found its last and perfect formulation”…

 

… and especially that the ordinary and usual course of nature never can be broken through. “Stones do not fall from heaven,” said Laplace, although they had been falling upon inhabited ground every day from the earliest times. But there is no kind of inference which can lend the slightest probability to any such absolute denial of an unusual phenomenon. (EP 2:49-50, CP 1.140)

 

So a truly scientific metaphysics, like any other truly scientific area of inquiry, will not “block the road of inquiry” in any of these four ways.

 

 

Stopping point for Monday September 24. For next time, read pp.20-22 of Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, on reserve at Ingram Library.