[10.] Vagueness.

 

We have seen the increasing importance of possibility in Peirce’s philosophical system:

·         In 18891-93, he argues for tychism, his view that there is real “absolute chance” in the universe, i.e., that there is real contingency (possibility not governed by necessity). He describes the specific form of possibility involved here as substantial possibility.

·         In 1896, he gave up his view that all types of possibility (and modality, in general) can be explained in terms of states of information. Substantial possibility, on his new view, is not a matter of ignorance.

·         Shortly after this “modal shift,” Peirce begins explaining continuity (and thus his synechism, the view that all that is, is continuous) in modal terms.

·         We have examined his last pragmatism, i.e., his pragmaticism, and we have seen how he thinks that it implies scholastic realism, his view that there are real generals.

 

In the next reading, “Issues of Pragmaticism” (the second of three articles about pragmatism published in The Monist in 1905-06), Peirce describes two theories which he believes are implied by pragmaticism. The second theory he considers is his scholastic realism, but in this article it becomes explicit how that theory has expanded into (what I call his) extreme scholastic realism (ESR), the view that there are not only real generals (including real necessity) but also real vagues (including real possibility).

 

We will consider ESR after we examine the other theory, which he discusses first: his so-called critical common-sensism (CCS).

 

Peirce says that he defended both of these doctrines “about nine years before the formulation of pragmaticism” (EP 2:346, CP 5.439). He is here referring to his anti-Cartesian papers of 1868-69, of which we read the second: “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.”

 

We saw very early on in the semester that Peirce defended scholastic realism in that 1868 paper.

 

What Peirce here presents as CCS is a much more elaborate and detailed version of the anti-Cartesian view he defended in 1868.

 

The two theories (CCS and ESR) are not completely isolated from each other. They both essentially involve a concept that is the central topic of this chapter: vagueness.

 

 

[10.1.] Contemporary Philosophers on Vagueness.

 

We need to be especially careful not to misunderstand what Peirce meant by “vagueness” in this context. He did not mean what most philosophers now use the word to mean, viz. the property of having cases of indeterminate or borderline application, i.e., the property commonly called “fuzziness”).[1] In this more common sense of the term “vague,” predicates such as “is bald” and “is a heap” are vague:

 

There are people who are definitely bald (anyone who has no hair whatsoever, e.g., Tiki Barber, Kojak, Lex Luthor).

 

And there are people who are definitely non-bald (anyone who has lots of hair on his or her head, e.g., me, or Fabio, or Andre Agassi in the 90’s)

 

But there other people who fit into neither category. The predicate “is bald” is said to be vague in the sense of fuzzy because there are such cases of indeterminate application.

 

This is not what Peirce has in mind when he uses the word “vague.”

 

 

[10.2.] The Six Characters of Critical Common-Sensism.

 

In a 1905 draft of letter to Calderoni, Peirce wrote (about “Issues of Pragmaticism”):

 

In an article which should have appeared in the July Monist but which seems to have been crowded out by matters of superior importance, magic squares and the like, I specify six errors which I find in the Scotch doctrine of common sense ... (EP 2:541 n.10, CP 8.208)

 

Peirce’s reference to “the Scotch doctrine of Common-Sense” is to a tradition of 18^th century Scottish philosophy primarily associated with Thomas Reid (1710-1796).[2]

 

Peirce here describes his CCS as “a variety of the Philosophy of Common Sense,” one that (given his comments to Calderoni) corrects six errors he sees in that theory. Each of the six “characters” he describes here is supposed to correct one of those errors. Those characters are:

 

1. There are both indubitable propositions and indubitable inferences, i.e., beliefs and inferences that are beyond doubt. (EP 2:347, CP 5.440)

2. Although indubitable beliefs vary with time, they do so only slightly (both for a single individual and across generations). (EP 2:349, CP 5.444)

3. Indubitable beliefs and inferences are “of the general nature of instincts” and have to do with “a primitive mode of life.” (EP 2:349, CP 5.445)

4. Our indubitable beliefs are “invariably vague.” (EP 2:350, CP 5.446)

5. CCS places value on genuine doubt, not on Cartesian “paper doubt.” (EP 2:353, CP 5.451)

6. CCS deserves its name because it is a genuinely critical philosophy (in at least two different ways (see EP 2:353-54, CP 5.452).

 

 

 

[10.3.] Acritical Inferences and Self-Control.

 

Character I. Critical Common-sensism admits that there not only are indubitable propositions but also that there are indubitable inferences. In one sense, anything evident is indubitable; but the propositions and inferences which Critical Common-sensism holds to be original, in the sense one cannot "go behind" them (as the lawyers say), are indubitable in the sense of being acritical. (EP 2:347, CP 5.440, emphases added)

 

By “acritical inference,” Peirce means the process in which:

·         one belief is determined (brought about, caused) by another,

·         you are conscious of this having happened; but

·         you are not conscious of the guiding principle according to which the inference proceeded.[3]

He cites as an example of this the cogito of St. Augustine (354-430 CE): “Cogito, ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I exist.”[4]

 

He describes two other ways in which one belief can determine (cause, bring about) another.

 

The first is an associational suggestion, in which one belief causes another, but the person in question is not conscious of it happening at all.

 

The second he calls reasoning:

 

... in reasoning we [are] conscious, not only of the conclusion, and of our deliberate approval of it, but also of its being the result of the premiss from which it does result, and furthermore that the inference is one of a possible class of inferences which conform to one guiding principle. (EP 2:348, CP 5.441)

 

The consciousness involved in reasoning (which is partially absent in acritical inference and wholly absent in associational suggestion) is self-control (“...to say that an operation of the mind is controlled is to say that it is, in a special sense, a conscious operation; and this no doubt is the consciousness of reasoning.” EP 2:348, CP 5.441)

 

Recall that in “What Pragmatism Is,” Peirce claims that rational beings have a degree of self-control over their own future actions:

 

a process of self-preparation will tend to impart to action (when the occasion for it shall arise), one fixed character, which is indicated and perhaps roughly measured by the absence (or slightness) of the feeling of self-reproach [i.e., self-criticism, finding fault with oneself], which subsequent reflection will induce. Now, this subsequent reflection is part of the self-preparation for action on the next occasion. (EP 2:337, CP 5.418, emphasis added)

 

On Peirce’s view, “thinking is a species of conduct which is largely subject to self-control”(EP 2:337, CP 5.419) and thus subject to this sort of self-preparation.

 

But an acritical inference is not, strictly speaking, an instance of reasoning, nor is it within one’s control.

 

 

[10.3.1.] Pragmaticism and Self-Control.

 

Peirce indicates that his original exposition of pragmatism in 1877-78 involved the notion of self-control (even though he did not put it in those words; neither “self-control” nor even “control” appears in those two papers) and that pragmatism must always be based on that notion: “For it is to conceptions of deliberate conduct that Pragmaticism would trace the intellectual purport of symbols; and deliberate conduct is self-controlled conduct.” (EP 2:348, CP 5.442)

 

In other words, the conditionals generated by the pragmatistic maxim convey what will happen if someone, not merely demonstrates some behavior, but performs some action, a purposeful behavior under his or her deliberate control.

 

 

[10.4.] Instincts and “the Primitive Mode of Life.”

 

This character modifies the original Common Sense philosophy of the Scottish in at least two ways:

 

1.       While the Common Sense philosophers recognized that our acritical beliefs and inferences are “of the general nature of instincts,” Peirce’s CCS, which incorporates a more advanced understanding of instincts themselves, adds that they “can be somewhat modified in a very short time.”

 

2.       While the Common Sense philosophers recognized that “instinct seldom errs, while reason goes wrong nearly half the time, if not more frequently,” Peirce’s CCS recognizes that our acritical beliefs “only remain indubitable in their application to affairs that resemble those of a primitive mode of life.” (EP 2:349, CP 5.445)

 

·         One such indubitable belief may be that things in space move in only three dimensions. When applied to things known to primitive man (objects visible to the naked eye, for example), this is indeed indubitable... but not so when applied to objects such as electrons, which primitive man had no way of knowing about. [This is a prescient comment, since contemporary physics postulates a number of spatial dimensions other than the traditional three.]

 

·         But consider the belief that incest is immoral. Our strong emotional response to this issue suggests that it is an instinctive belief, and therefore not actually dubitable (although some may claim to doubt it):

 

On the other hand, as soon as we find that a belief shows symptoms of being instinctive, although it may seem to be dubitable, we must suspect that experiment would show that it is not really so; for in our artificial life, especially in that of a student, no mistake is more likely than that of taking a paper-doubt for the genuine metal. Take, for example, the belief in the criminality of incest. Biology will doubtless testify that the practice is inadvisable; but surely nothing that it has to say could warrant the intensity of our sentiment about it. When, however, we consider the thrill of horror which the idea excites in us, we find reason in that to consider it to be an instinct; and from that we may infer that if some rationalistic brother and sister were to marry, they would find that the conviction of horrible guilt could not be shaken off. (EP 2:349-50, CP 5.445)

 

·         In contrast to the belief about incest, consider the belief that suicide is murder, i.e., suicide is immoral killing. Peirce gives two reasons for thinking that this is not instinctive (and thus not acritical)...

 

a.       “[I]t is substantially confined to the Christian world”

b.       “[W]hen it comes to the point of actual self-debate, this belief seems to be completely expunged and ex-sponged from the mind.” In other words, a person debating with himself over whether or not to kill himself tends not to get hung up on the question whether or not it would be morally wrong to do so. [Peirce may be speaking from first-hand knowledge here.]

 

 

Stopping point for Wednesday October 31. For next time, continue reading “Issues of Pragmaticism” (pp.350-54, through the end of the very first paragraph on 354).