[10.5.] Pragmaticism and Vagues.[1]

 

[10.5.1.] Indicative vs. Subjunctive Conditionals.

 

Fully to understand Peirce’s pragmaticism (his later pragmatism, as that theory came to be after the 1896 modal shift), we need to revisit the distinction between two sorts of conditional (“if… then…”) statement: those in the indicative mood and those in the subjunctive mood:

 

indicative mood: (df.) verb forms used to express actual actions. (“If you ___________, then you will experience ................”). Conditionals in this mood cover only actual cases; i.e., they refer only to events that actually do happen. Such conditionals do not say anything about possible but non-actual events.

 

If the PM generates conditionals in the indicative mood, then the pragmatic meaning of “the diamond is hard” is given by sentences like:

·         If you use the diamond to apply pressure to glass, the glass will be cut.

·         If you attempt to cut the diamond, the diamond will resist being cut.

 

subjunctive mood: (df.) verb forms used to express hypothetical action (“If you were to do __________, then you would experience .............”) and to refer to all possible cases.[2]

 

If the PM generates conditionals in the subjunctive mood, then the pragmatic meaning of “the diamond is hard” is given by sentences like:

·         If you were to use the diamond to apply pressure to glass, the glass would be cut.

·         If you were to attempt to cut the diamond, the diamond would resist being cut.

 

Early on (including in 1878’s “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”) Peirce was not clear on whether the conditionals that give the pragmatic meaning of a concept are in the indicative mood or in the subjunctive mood.

 

 

[10.5.2.] The Diamond Then, the Diamond Now.

 

To see why the difference between subjunctive and indicative moods is important, let’s revisit Peirce’s example of a diamond that is “crystallized in the midst of a cushion of soft cotton, and ... remain[s] there until it [is] finally burned up.” (EP 1:132, CP 5.403) It is never used to cut anything, and which no one ever attempts to cut. The diamond is destroyed without ever having any further pressure applied to it.

 

Question: was the diamond hard?

 

Answer #1:   If the pragmatic meaning of “hard” is given in terms of possible behavior (if the conditionals are in the subjunctive mood)— ·         “if you were to apply pressure to x, then x would resist”   then...   the answer is yes—the diamond is hard, even though it never actually had pressure applied to it. It is hard because, if pressure had been applied to it, it would not have been scratched.

Answer #2   If the meaning of “x is hard” is given in terms of actual behavior (if the conditionals are in the indicative mood)—   ·         “if you apply pressure to x, then x will resist”   then...   it is not clear what the answer should be!

 

Peirce’s initial answer (from 1878’s “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”): It is MERELY a matter of language whether we say that a diamond to which pressure is never applied is “hard,” or (to use another of his examples) whether we say that a stone that never sees the light of day is “brilliant.”

 

In both the diamond and the stone case, we are free to choose whichever description we want. The difference between them will be a difference only in how we use the words “hard” and “brilliant” and will not reflect a difference in our ideas of hardness and brilliance, at least in the pragmatic meaning of those ideas.

 

... what prevents us from saying that all hard bodies remain perfectly soft until they are touched, when their hardness increases with the pressure until they are scratched. Reflection will show that the reply is this: there would be no falsity in such modes of speech. They would involve a modification of our present usage of speech with regard to the words hard and soft, but not of their meanings. (EP 1:132; CP 5.403)

 

... it makes very little difference whether we say that a stone on the bottom of the ocean, in complete darkness, is brilliant or not—that is to say, that it probably makes no difference, remembering always that that stone may be fished up tomorrow. But that there are gems at the bottom of the sea, flowers in the untraveled desert, etc., are propositions which, like that about a diamond being hard when it is not pressed, concern much more the arrangement of our language than they do the meaning of our ideas. (EP 1:140; CP 5.409)

 

In the years following the modal shift, Peirce criticized his own earlier answer to this question:

 

... In the Monist of Jan. 1897 [“The Logic of Relatives” (1897), selection 3 in the modality handout], quite assertorically, ... and this same journal during 1892 more tentatively [“The Doctrine of Necessity Examined”][3], the author of the present article repudiated the nominalistic view of possibility, and explicitly returns to the Aristotelian doctrine of a real possibility.  This was the great step that was needed to render pragmaticism an intelligible doctrine. The paper of Jan. 1878 [“How to Make Our Ideas Clear”] wavers palpably at this point, sensible of the advantages of a real possibility, yet wishing to save pragmaticism in case that doctrine should prove untenable.  (R 288, 1905; a draft of “Issues of Pragmaticism,” selection 6 in modality readings document)

 

[In t]he article of January 1878 [“How to Make Our Ideas Clear”] ... perhaps the writer wavered in his own mind. He said that if a diamond were to be formed in a bed of cotton-wool, and were to be consumed there without ever having been pressed upon by any hard edge or point, it would be merely a question of nomenclature whether that diamond should be said to have been hard or not. ... the question is, not what did happen, but whether it would have been well to engage in any line of conduct whose successful issue depended upon whether that diamond would resist an attempt to scratch it... (“Issues of Pragmaticism,” EP2:354, CP 5.453; emphases in original)[4]

 

So: the question whether the diamond was hard does not depend on what actually DID happen to the diamond. Rather, it depends on what WOULD HAVE happened to the diamond had pressure been applied to it.

 

So, the pragmatic meaning of hard is given, not by a list of indicative conditionals, but by a list of subjunctive conditionals.

 

Peirce’s later position, after his adoption of modal realism, was that (1) it IS a matter of language, but (2) it is not a MERE matter of language--the difference in the words we use DOES reflect a difference in how things really are.

 

[In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” I] said that if a diamond were to be formed in a bed of cotton wool, and were to be consumed there without ever having been pressed upon by any hard edge or point, it would be merely a question of nomenclature whether that diamond should be said to have been hard or not. No doubt, this is true, except for the abominable falsehood in the word MERELY, implying that symbols are unreal. Nomenclature involves classification; and classification is true or false, and the generals to which it refers are either reals in the one case, or figments in the other. (“Issues of Pragmaticism,” EP 2:354, CP 5.453, 1905)

 

Here Peirce was attributing to his earlier self the same mistake he attributes to nominalists: moving from the claim that something is a matter of representation or language to the conclusion that it is not also real.

 

 

[10.5.3.] Why the Revised PM Requires Real Possibility.

 

We have already seen that Peirce takes the PM to require the truth of scholastic realism. Peirce had come to hold that it is a mistake to construe the “experiments” described in the conditionals generated by the PM as isolated, individual actions. Rather, they should be understood as “general kinds of experimental phenomena,” and thus, in order for any of the conditionals generated by the PM to be true, there must be real generals.

 

And do not overlook the fact that the pragmaticist maxim says nothing of single experiments or of single experimental phenomena (for what is conditionally true in futuro can hardly be singular), but only speaks of general kinds of experimental phenomena. Its 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 5.425)

 

But here we see why he takes the PM to also require the reality of vagueness, as well.

 

On Peirce’s view, the conditionals that give the pragmatic meaning of a concept must be capable of being true.

 

And in order for subjunctive conditionals to be true, there must be real possibility, i.e. real “vagues.”

 

Pragmaticism makes the ultimate intellectual purport of what you please to consist in conceived conditional resolutions, or their substance; and therefore, the conditional propositions, with their hypothetical antecedents, in which such resolutions consist, being of the ultimate nature of meaning, must be capable of being true, that is, of expressing whatever there be which is such as the proposition expresses, independently of being thought to be so in any judgment, or being represented to be so in any other symbol of any man or men. But that amounts to saying that possibility is sometimes of a real kind. (“Issues...” CP 5.453; EP2:354; 1905, emphases added)

 

Again, indicative conditionals cover only actual existence. A different example: part of the pragmatic meaning of “x is gold” is that if x is dropped in water it will sink… The indicative conditional…

 

If you drop x in pure water, it will sink.

 

says something only about cases in which x is actually dropped in water.

 

Subjunctive conditionals go beyond the actual cases to cover both actual and non-actual-but-possible cases:

 

If you were to drop x in water, it would sink.

 

says something about cases in which x is actually dropped in water and about cases in which it is not dropped in water but could have been. This conditional says something about all possible cases (not just the actual ones) in which x is dropped in pure water.

 

In order for that conditional to be true, it really must be possible for the x to be dropped in water, whether or not it is ever actually dropped in water.

 

This possibility is not just a matter of us being ignorant of whether x will ever be dropped in water.

 

Just like the points in a continuous line or the drops of water in the ocean, the merely possible future events to which a subjunctive conditional refers do not constitute a collection of distinct individuals. To say that x is hard is not to say something about a collection of individual events or actions in the past, or even in the future. Rather, it is to make a general claim about what would happen in the future were specific conditions met. The “would” of the subjunctive conditionals generated by the PM is inexhaustible by any multitude of actual events (8.208, c.1905), just as the continuous line is inexhaustible by any multitude of individual points.

 

Peirce’s view (after the modal shift) was that:

·         the conditionals generated by the PM express something more than mere information-relative  (IR) possibility;

·         they express a real possibility--possibility that is a real part of the world;

·         if the only sort of possibility you recognize is IR possibility, then you are a nominalist.

 

 

[10.6.] Truth Revisited.

 

As noted above, Peirce, in 1905, viewed himself as having “wavered” in his own mind over the issue of the PM and modality in his original, 1878 enunciation of pragmatism in “How to Make Our Beliefs Clear.”

 

A careful examination of that article reveals that it was not just with regard to the hardness of diamonds and the brilliance of stones that Peirce wavered.

 

In that article, Peirce wavers with regard to his pragmatic account of truth.

When he first presents that account, he does so in terms of statements in the indicative mood:

 

…all the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be applied. … Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic view, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a foreordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. (EP 1:139, CP 5.407, emphases added)

 

So when he first states this account, it is something like this:

 

·         Peirce’s Pragmatic Account of Truth: The truth is the final opinion (belief) on which users of the scientific method (the method of experience and reason) will permanently agree if inquiry is pursued long enough.

 

“It is true that p” = “If inquiry into whether p is pushed as far as it can go, then it will be believed that p.”

 

But immediately after stating this account, Peirce begins to consider objections. And in responding to those objections, he shifts into the subjunctive mood:

 

Objection 1: This account is incompatible with the definition of the real as that which is independent of what anyone thinks about it.

 

Peirce’s response: “…if, after the extinction of our race, another should arise with faculties and disposition for investigation, that true opinion must be the one which they would ultimately come to. …the opinion which would finally result from investigation does not depend on how anybody may actually think.” (EP 1:139, CP 5.408)

 

Objection 2: “Buried Secrets”—it seems that there are some truths that are forever beyond the reach of inquiry (e.g. the number of times Julius Caesar sneezed on the day he died.)

 

Peirce’s response: “…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, CP 5.409)

 

So even before the modal shift, Peirce seems to have been half-conscious of the need to modify the indicative-mood account of truth and replace it with:

 

·         Peirce’s (Revised) Pragmatic Account of Truth: The truth is the final opinion (belief) on which users of the scientific method (the method of experience and reason) would permanently agree if inquiry were pursued long enough.

 

There are a number of points about this revised account of truth that you need to understand:

 

·         The “final opinion” / “end of inquiry” may never be reached. Note the emphasis on the “would” and the “were.” Peirce does not claim that the actual scientific community will eventually reach a point at which all beliefs about everything have been permanently fixed. This definition is hypothetical in nature: imagine such an ideal community, and imagine them pushing their investigations as far as they can possibly go. There is no guarantee that any community of inquirers will ever actually arrive at this ideal “end of inquiry.”

 

·         But that doesn’t mean that none of our present beliefs are true. According to Peirce, plenty of our present beliefs are true, meaning that they would never be permanently “overthrown” by experience, no matter how long experience were to continue. But we cannot know for certain exactly which beliefs are true; i.e., we cannot know with certainty which of our beliefs would be included in the “final opinion.” Remember Peirce’s fallibilism: any belief that any individual has could possibly be wrong; certainty is impossible.

 

·         The truth does not depend on what any individual or group of individuals actually thinks.  There is a definite way the world is, and the opinion of the ultimate community of inquirers would be constrained by that.

 

If your terms ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ are taken in such senses as to be definable in terms of doubt and belief and the course of experience (as for example they would be, if you were to define the “truth” as that to a belief in which belief would tend if it were to tend indefinitely toward absolute fixity), well and good: in that case, you are only talking about doubt and belief. But if by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off. (“What Pragmatism Is”, EP 2:336, CP 5.416, 1905; emphasis added )

 

 

Stopping point for Friday November 9. For next time, read my online article “Triadic Logic” (http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/lane/trilan.htm). We will be working through this article over the next week.