[9.6.] Pragmaticism Restated.

 

At this point in “What Pragmatism Is,” Peirce turns to what he calls “the exposition of pragmaticism itself.” Here we will see the explicit emphasis on modality, and especially on possibility, that follows the “modal shift” of 1896.

 

Recall the statement of pragmaticism (the pragmatic maxim) that Peirce gave towards the beginning of this paper:

 

... a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. (EP 332, CP 5.412)

 

As Peirce emphasizes, this is quite different from the claim that “a conception is to be tested by its practical effects.” (EP 2:338, CP5.442)[1] Peirce’s pragmatism is a doctrine about the meaning of concepts: the meaning of a concept C is identical to the meaning of the concept  of the practical effects (the effects upon one’s life) that the objects of C might have.

 

He reiterates his original statement from 1878:

 

Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearing you conceive the object of your conception to have. Then your conception of those effects is the WHOLE of your conception of the object. (EP 2:338, CP 5.442)[2]

 

And it is at this point that, as we have already seen, Peirce describes the maxim’s function as a metaphysical bullshit detector:

 

[Pragmatism] 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. ... instead of merely jeering at metaphysics ... whether by long drawn-out parodies or otherwise, the pragmaticist extracts from it a precious essence, which will serve to give life and light to cosmology and physics. (EP 2:338-39, CP 5.423)

 

Here he lists three distinguishing marks of pragmaticism:

1.       “its retention of a purified philosophy”

2.       “its full acceptance of the main body of our instinctive beliefs”

3.       “its strenuous insistence upon the truth of scholastic realism” (EP 2:339, CP 5.423)

 

 

The second item is Peirce’s critical common-sensism, which he will discuss in detail in the next article.

 

At this point he turns back to scholastic realism, and begins to explain why he believes that it is implied by pragmaticism.

 

 

[9.7.] Pragmaticism and Scholastic Realism.

 

Peirce’s imagined questioner now asks the following:

 

... you say that the only meaning that, for you, any assertion bears is that a certain experiment has resulted in a certain way: Nothing else but an experiment enters into the meaning. Tell me, then, how can an experiment, in itself, reveal anything more than that something once happened to an individual object and that subsequently some other individual event occurred? (EP 2:339, 5.424, emphasis added)

 

But of course, this expresses a misunderstanding of Peirce’s pragmaticism, one which Peirce now attempts to correct.

 

The questioner is speaking of an experiment as something that has happened in the past.

 

But, says Peirce, this “fail[s] to catch [the pragmaticist’s] attitude of mind.” He is concerned, not with “any particular event that did happen to somebody in the dead past, but [with] what surely will happen to everybody in the living future who shall fulfill certain conditions.” (EP 2:340, CP 5.425)

 

In other words, the pragmaticist wants to understand the meaning of a concept in terms, not of individual events that have happened in the past, but of experimental phenomena, which “consist[] in the fact that when an experimentalist shall come to act according to a certain scheme that he has in mind, then will something else happen...” (EP 2:340, CP 5.425)

 

It is important to see that it is not individual events or individual phenomena that Peirce has in mind, but rather “general kinds of experimental phenomena. [Pragmaticism’s] adherent does not shrink from speaking of general objects as real, since whatever is true represents a real. Now the laws of nature are true.” (EP 2:340, CP 5.426) And thus the laws of nature represent reality: they represent how the world is independent of what anyone in particular thinks about it.[3]

 

 

For example, the pragmaticist maxim (as Peirce now calls it) gives the meaning of “x is a diamond” as a list of conditionals specifying the practical consequences that will result from interaction with x:

·         “If you apply pressure to x, it will resist.”

·         “If you try to cut x with glass, x will not be cut.”

·         “If you try to cut glass with x, x will cut the glass.”

 

Each such conditional proposition asserts an experimental phenomenon, which is a fact that an “action of a certain description will have a certain kind of experimental result. ... Whenever a man acts purposively [i.e., with a specific purpose in mind], he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.” (EP 2:340-41, CP 5.427) So the meaning of “x is a diamond” is given by a list of conditional propositions expressing all the relevant experimental phenomena.

 

But Peirce says: it is a mistake to think of the “experiments” described in these conditionals as isolated, individual actions. In particular, it is wrong to think of them as individual events that have occurred in the past. The meaning of a concept is to be understood in terms of future experimental phenomena... phenomena that result from someone performing some action.

 

Such conditional future phenomena are not limited to single, individual events. The reality of such phenomena requires that there be real generality.

 

For example, to say that x is a diamond is not to say something about some specific group of individual events or actions in the past, or even in the future. It is to make a general claim about what will happen any time in the future when specific conditions are met: any time you interact with x in a particular way, there will be such-and-such practical consequences.

 

And here we start to see why Peirce was so concerned with the notion of self-control earlier in the article...

 

The interpretation (or interpretations) that give “the very meaning” of a proposition (that translate a proposition so as to reveal its most essential, most important meaning) is that in which “the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct ... that form which is most directly applicable to self-control under every situation, and to every purpose. This is why he locates the meaning in future time; for future conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control.”(EP 2:340, CP 5.427)

 

 

[9.8] A Tangle of Objections.

 

Peirce once again considers an objection put forward by his imaginary questioner, this one less a single objection than a whole snarl of them:

 

Well, if you choose so to make Doing the Be-all and the End-all of human life, why do you not make meaning to consist simply in doing? Doing has to be done at a certain time upon a certain object. Individual objects and single events cover all reality, as everybody knows, and as a practicalist ought to be the first to insist. Yet, your meaning, as you have described it, is general. Thus, it is of the nature of a mere word and not a reality. You say yourself that your meaning of a proposition is only the same proposition in another dress. But a practical man's meaning is the very thing he means. What do you make to be the meaning of "George Washington"? (EP 2:431, CP 5.429)

 

As a prelude to a response, Peirce lists six claims that his questioner is assuming, all of which Peirce believes to be true (explaining these in a slightly different order than Peirce lists them):

 

1. “if pragmaticism really made Doing to be the Be-all and the End-all of life, that would be its death. For to say that we live for the mere sake of action, as action, regardless of the thought it carries out, would be to say that there is no such thing as rational purport.”

• Peirce is adamantly opposed to any form of pragmatism that would identify the whole meaning of a proposition with actions themselves.

 

3. “pragmaticism fails to furnish any translation or meaning of a proper name, or other designation of an individual object.”

 

A proper name, like “George Washington” or “Charles S. Peirce,” has “a certain denotative function.” It denotes (refers to, picks out, points to) some specific object (“George Washington” refers to the man who was the first president of the United States; “Charles S. Peirce” refers to another man, the one who founded pragmatism).

·         This is the sort of meaning that Gottlob Frege referred to as Bedeutung, normally translated into English as “reference.” It is the thing that a term refers to.

·         It is different from another sort of meaning identified by Frege, which he called Sinn, normally translated as “sense.” It is the idea conveyed by a term. Frege might say that the sense conveyed by “George Washington” is the idea expressed in the following description: “The first president of the United States, who was married to Martha Washington, and who crossed the Delaware River, etc.”

The pragmaticist maxim does not say anything about the meaning of proper names or other terms that designate or refer to individual objects.

 

 

2.      “every proposition professes to be true of a certain real individual object, often the environing universe.”

·         “every assertion contains such a denotative or pointing-out function.” (EP 2:342, CP 5.430) Even though the whole meaning of a proposition goes beyond simply pointing out, denoting, or referring to some specific individual object, still, every proposition does purport to be true of some such object. “Washington crossed the Delaware” purports to be true of the man to whom “George Washington” refers; and even the general proposition “All solid bodies fall in the absence of upward motions or pressure” purports to be true of an individual object: the universe.

 

4. “the pragmaticistic meaning is undoubtedly general; and it is equally indisputable that the general is of the nature of a word or sign.”

·         “In its peculiar individuality, the pragmaticist excludes this [i.e., an assertion’s denotative or pointing-out function] from the rational purport of the assertion, although the like of it, being common to all assertions, and so, being general and not individual, may enter into the pragmaticistic purport.” (EP 2:342, CP 5.430)

·         Peirce distinguishes two types of generality, and notes that pragmaticistic meaning is general in both ways:

 

1.       objective generality: a term or other expression, or other kind of sign, is general in this way when it represents anything of which “a certain predicate may be true.”

·         the term “soldier” is true of any number of individual men (unlike “George Washington,” which is individual: it applies to only one individual man).

·         a statue of a Civil War soldier may be taken by different families as a sign of their own departed uncle

 

2. subjective generality: to explain this, Peirce brings up his famous type/token distinction. Each of the words in the following list is a token of the same type:

 

cat

cat

cat

 

In that list, there are three tokens of the same type of word. The sort of generality had by word-types is what Peirce means by “subjective generality.” In this sense of general, the name “George Washington” is general, too. This list--

 

George Washington

George Washington

George Washington

 

contains three tokens of the same general type of expression.

 

5. “individuals alone exist”

• “Whatever exists, ex-sists, that is, really acts upon other existents, so obtains a self-identity, and is definitely individual.” Existence is a mode of reality limited to things that can react against or clash with other things; and only individual objects can do this.
• But it is not the only form of reality; generals (which are not individual objects, not even abstract individual objects) are also real.

 

 

6. “the very meaning of a word or significant object ought to be the very essence of reality of what it signifies.” (EP 2:343, CP 5.429)

·         Here Peirce reiterates both the verbal definition of “reality” (“That is real which has such and such characters, whether anybody thinks it to have those characters or not.”) and the pragmatic explanation of reality (“the state of things which will be believed in the ultimate opinion”). (EP 2:343-44, CP 5.430)

·         And he again gives his pragmatic argument for scholastic realism (“...for the most part, such opinions will be general. Consequently, some general objects are real.” EP 2:343, CP 5.430)

·         And he then ties this point back into his explanation of pragmaticism:

 

That which any true proposition asserts is real, in the sense of being as it is regardless of what you or I may think about it. Let this proposition be a general conditional proposition as to the future, and it is a real general such as is calculated really to influence human conduct; and such the pragmaticist holds to be the rational purport of every concept. (EP 2:343, CP 5.432)

 

So Peirce’s pragmatic account of truth applies to the conditional propositions generated by the pragmatic maxim (“If you apply pressure to x, it will resist”; “If you let go of the stone, it will fall to the floor.”) These true conditional propositions are, according to pragmaticism, the “rational purport” [i.e., rational meaning, or import, or sense] of concepts like diamond and solid object.

 

Accordingly, the pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum [i.e., the ultimate or highest good] to consist in action, but makes it to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent [the actual, the individual] comes more and more to embody those generals which were just now said to be destined, which is what we strive to express in calling them reasonable. In its higher stages, evolution takes place more and more largely through self-control, and this gives the pragmaticist a sort of justification for making the rational purport to be general. (EP 2:343-44, CP 5.433)

 

So for the pragmaticist, the ultimate good is not action, but rather a certain process of evolution: the process whereby existing, actual, individual things become more reasonable (rational? cognizable?) by coming more and more to embody generality. [This seems like an allusion to his evolutionary cosmology, only applied to the evolution of human behavior? Peirce refers to his cosmology and connects it to pragmaticism at the end of this article: EP 2:345.]

 

 

Stopping point for Monday October 29. For next time, begin reading “Issues of Pragmaticism,” pp.346-50.