|
|
| Ligne 93 : |
Ligne 93 : |
| <p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Morris R. Cohen</span></p> | | <p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Morris R. Cohen</span></p> |
|
| |
|
| <p class='c005'><span class='sc'>The College of the City of New York.</span></p>
| | ... |
| <div class='chapter'>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
| |
| <h2 class='c009'>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <p class='c006'><a href='#intro' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Introduction</span> vii</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#proem' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Proem. The Rules of Philosophy</span> 1</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#part1' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Part I. Chance and Logic</span> (Illustrations of the Logic of Science.)</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-1' style='color:#FFFF;'>1. The Fixation of Belief 7</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-2' style='color:#FFFF;'>2. How to Make Our Ideas Clear 32</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-3' style='color:#FFFF;'>3. The Doctrine of Chances 61</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-4' style='color:#FFFF;'>4. The Probability of Induction 82</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-5' style='color:#FFFF;'>5. The Order of Nature 106</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-6' style='color:#FFFF;'>6. Deduction, Induction and Hypothesis 131</a></p>
| |
| <p class='c006'><a href='#part2' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Part II. Love and Chance</span></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-1' style='color:#FFFF;'>1. The Architecture of Theories 157</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-2' style='color:#FFFF;'>2. The Doctrine of Necessity Examined 179</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-3' style='color:#FFFF;'>3. The Law of Mind 202</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-4' style='color:#FFFF;'>4. Man’s Glassy Essence 238</a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-5' style='color:#FFFF;'>5. Evolutionary Love 267</a></p>
| |
| <p class='c006'><a href='#essay' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Supplementary Essay</span>—The Pragmatism of Peirce, by John Dewey 301</a></p>
| |
| <div class='chapter'>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>
| |
| <h2 id='intro' class='c009'>INTRODUCTION</h2>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <p class='c006'>Many and diverse are the minds that form the philosophic
| |
| community. There are, first and foremost, the great
| |
| masters, the system builders who rear their stately palaces
| |
| towering to the moon. These architectonic minds are
| |
| served by a varied host of followers and auxiliaries. Some
| |
| provide the furnishings to make these mystic mansions of
| |
| the mind more commodious, while others are engaged in
| |
| making their façades more imposing. Some are busy
| |
| strengthening weak places or building much-needed additions,
| |
| while many more are engaged in defending these
| |
| structures against the impetuous army of critics who are
| |
| ever eager and ready to pounce down upon and destroy all
| |
| that is new or bears the mortal mark of human imperfection.
| |
| There are also the philologists, those who are in a
| |
| more narrow sense scholars, who dig not only for facts or
| |
| roots, but also for the stones which may serve either for
| |
| building or as weapons of destruction. Remote from all
| |
| these, however, are the intellectual rovers who, in their
| |
| search for new fields, venture into the thick jungle that
| |
| surrounds the little patch of cultivated science. They are
| |
| not gregarious creatures, these lonely pioneers; and in their
| |
| wanderings they often completely lose touch with those
| |
| who tread the beaten paths. Those that return to the community
| |
| often speak strangely of strange things; and it is
| |
| not always that they arouse sufficient faith for others to
| |
| follow them and change their trails into high roads.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>Few nowadays question the great value of these pioneer
| |
| minds; and it is often claimed that universities are established
| |
| to facilitate their work, and to prevent it from being
| |
| lost. But universities, like other well-managed institutions,
| |
| can find place only for those who work well in harness.
| |
| The restless, impatient minds, like the socially or conventionally
| |
| unacceptable, are thus kept out, no matter how
| |
| fruitful their originality. Charles S. Peirce was certainly
| |
| one of these restless pioneer souls with the fatal gift of
| |
| genuine originality. In his early papers, in the <i>Journal of
| |
| Speculative Philosophy</i>, and later, in the <i>Monist</i> papers
| |
| reprinted as <a href='#part2'>Part II</a> of this volume, we get glimpses of a
| |
| vast philosophic system on which he was working with an
| |
| unusual wealth of material and apparatus. To a rich
| |
| imagination and extraordinary learning he added one of the
| |
| most essential gifts of successful system builders, the power
| |
| to coin an apt and striking terminology. But the admitted
| |
| incompleteness of these preliminary sketches of his philosophic
| |
| system is not altogether due to the inherent difficulty
| |
| of the task and to external causes such as neglect and
| |
| poverty. A certain inner instability or lack of self-mastery
| |
| is reflected in the outer moral or conventional waywardness
| |
| which, except for a few years at Johns Hopkins,
| |
| caused him to be excluded from a university career, and
| |
| thus deprived him of much needed stimulus to ordinary
| |
| consistency and intelligibility. As the years advanced,
| |
| bringing little general interest in, or recognition of, the brilliant
| |
| logical studies of his early years, Peirce became more
| |
| and more fragmentary, cryptic, and involved; so that
| |
| James, the intellectual companion of his youth, later found
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>his lectures on pragmatism, “flashes of brilliant light relieved
| |
| against Cimmerian darkness”—a statement not to
| |
| be entirely discounted by the fact that James had no interest
| |
| in or aptitude for formal logical or mathematical considerations.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Despite these limitations, however, Peirce stands out as
| |
| one of the great founders of modern scientific logic; and in
| |
| the realm of general philosophy the development of some
| |
| of his pregnant ideas has led to the pragmatism and
| |
| radical empiricism of James, as well as to the mathematical
| |
| idealism of Royce, and to the anti-nominalism which characterizes
| |
| the philosophic movement known as Neo-Realism.
| |
| At any rate, the work of James, Royce, and Russell, as
| |
| well as that of logicians like Schroeder, brings us of the
| |
| present generation into a better position to appreciate the
| |
| significance of Peirce’s work, than were his contemporaries.</p>
| |
| <h3 class='c010'>I</h3>
| |
| <p class='c006'>Peirce was by antecedents, training, and occupation a
| |
| scientist. He was a son of Benjamin Peirce, the great
| |
| Harvard mathematician, and his early environment, together
| |
| with his training in the Lawrence Scientific School,
| |
| justified his favorite claim that he was brought up in a
| |
| laboratory. He made important contributions not only in
| |
| mathematical logic but also in photometric astronomy,
| |
| geodesy, and psychophysics, as well as in philology. For
| |
| many years Peirce worked on the problems of geodesy, and
| |
| his contribution to the subject, his researches on the pendulum,
| |
| was at once recognized by European investigators
| |
| in this field. The International Geodetic Congress, to
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>which he was the first American representative, gave unusual
| |
| attention to his paper, and men like Cellerier and
| |
| Plantamour acknowledged their obligations to him.<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c011'><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>This and other scientific work involving fine measurement,
| |
| with the correlative investigations into the theory
| |
| of probable error, seem to have been a decisive influence
| |
| in the development of Peirce’s philosophy of chance.
| |
| Philosophers inexperienced in actual scientific measurement
| |
| may naïvely accept as absolute truth such statements as
| |
| “every particle of matter attracts every other particle
| |
| directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the
| |
| square of the distance,” or “when hydrogen and oxygen
| |
| combine to form water the ratio of their weights is 1 : 8.”
| |
| But to those who are actually engaged in measuring natural
| |
| phenomena with instruments of precision, nature shows no
| |
| such absolute constancy or simplicity. As every laboratory
| |
| worker knows, no two observers, and no one observer in
| |
| successive experiments, get absolutely identical results. To
| |
| the men of the heroic period of science this was no difficulty.
| |
| They held unquestioningly the Platonic faith that nature
| |
| was created on simple geometric lines, and all the minute
| |
| variations were attributable to the fault of the observer or
| |
| the crudity of his instruments. This heroic faith was,
| |
| and still is, a most powerful stimulus to scientific research
| |
| and a protection against the incursions of supernaturalism.
| |
| But few would defend it to-day in its explicit form, and
| |
| there is little empirical evidence to show that while the
| |
| observer and his instruments are always varying, the objects
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>which he measures never deviate in the slightest from
| |
| the simple law. Doubtless, as one becomes more expert in
| |
| the manipulation of physical instruments, there is a noticeable
| |
| diminution of the range of the personal “error,” but
| |
| no amount of skill and no refinement of our instruments
| |
| have ever succeeded in eliminating irregular, though
| |
| small, variations. “Try to verify any law of nature and
| |
| you will find that the more precise your observations, the
| |
| more certain they will be to show irregular departure from
| |
| the law.”<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c011'><sup>[2]</sup></a> There is certainly nothing in our empirical information
| |
| to prevent us from saying that all the so-called
| |
| constants of nature are merely instances of variation between
| |
| limits so near each other that their differences
| |
| may be neglected for certain purposes. Moreover, the approach
| |
| to constancy is observed only in mass phenomena,
| |
| when we are dealing with very large numbers of particles;
| |
| but social statistics also approach constant ratios when
| |
| the numbers are very large. Hence, without denying discrepancies
| |
| due solely to errors of observation, Peirce contends
| |
| that “we must suppose far more minute discrepancies
| |
| to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself,
| |
| to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite
| |
| formula.”<a id='r3' /><a href='#f3' class='c011'><sup>[3]</sup></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>It is usual to associate disbelief in absolute laws of nature
| |
| with sentimental claims for freedom or theological
| |
| miracles. It is, therefore, well to insist that Peirce’s attack
| |
| is entirely in the interests of exact logic and a rational
| |
| account of the physical universe. As a rigorous logician
| |
| familiar with the actual procedures by which our knowledge
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xii'>xii</span>of the various laws of nature is obtained, he could not
| |
| admit that experience could prove their claim to absoluteness.
| |
| All the physical laws actually known, like Boyle’s
| |
| law or the law of gravitation, involve excessive simplification
| |
| of the phenomenal course of events, and thus a large
| |
| element of empirical inaccuracy. But a more positive
| |
| objection against the traditional assumption of absolute or
| |
| invariable laws of nature, is the fact that such assumption
| |
| makes the regularities of the universe ultimate, and thus
| |
| cuts us off from the possibility of ever explaining them or
| |
| how there comes to be as much regularity in the universe
| |
| as there is. But in ordinary affairs, the occurrence of any
| |
| regularity is the very thing to be explained. Moreover,
| |
| modern statistical mechanics and thermodynamics (theory
| |
| of gases, entropy, etc.) suggest that the regularity in the
| |
| universe is a matter of gradual growth; that the whole of
| |
| physical nature is a growth from a chaos of diversity to a
| |
| maximum of uniformity or entropy. A leading physicist of
| |
| the 19th Century, Boltzmann, has suggested that the
| |
| process of the whole physical universe is like that of a
| |
| continuous shaking up of a hap-hazard or chance mixture
| |
| of things, which thus gradually results in a progressively
| |
| more uniform distribution. Since Duns Scotus, students
| |
| of logic have known that every real entity has its individual
| |
| character (its <i>haecceitas</i> or <i>thisness</i>) which cannot be explained
| |
| or deduced from that which is uniform. Every
| |
| explanation, for example, of the moon’s path must take
| |
| particular existences for granted. Such original or underived
| |
| individuality and diversity is precisely what Peirce
| |
| means by chance; and from this point of view chance is
| |
| prior to law.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>All that is necessary to visualize this is to suppose that
| |
| there is an infinitesimal tendency in things to acquire
| |
| habits, a tendency which is itself an accidental variation
| |
| grown habitual. We shall then be on the road to explain
| |
| the evolution and existence of the limited uniformities
| |
| actually prevailing in the physical world.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>A good deal of the foregoing may sound somewhat
| |
| mythologic. But even if it were so it would have the merit
| |
| of offering a rational alternative to the mechanical mythology
| |
| according to which all the atoms in the universe are
| |
| to-day precisely in the same condition in which they were
| |
| on the day of creation, a mythology which is forced to
| |
| regard all the empirical facts of spontaneity and novelty
| |
| as illusory, or devoid of substantial truth.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>The doctrine of the primacy of chance naturally suggests
| |
| the primacy of mind. Just as law is a chance habit so is
| |
| matter inert mind. The principal law of mind is that ideas
| |
| literally spread themselves continuously and become more
| |
| and more general or inclusive, so that people who form
| |
| communities of any sort develop general ideas in common.
| |
| When this continuous reaching-out of feeling becomes nurturing
| |
| love, such, e.g., which parents have for their offspring
| |
| or thinkers for their ideas, we have creative
| |
| evolution.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>James and Royce have called attention to the similarity
| |
| between Peirce’s doctrine of tychistic-agapism (chance and
| |
| love) and the creative evolution of Bergson. But while
| |
| both philosophies aim to restore life and growth in their
| |
| account of the nature of things, Peirce’s approach seems to
| |
| me to have marked advantages, owing to its being in closer
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xiv'>xiv</span>touch with modern physics. Bergson’s procedure is largely
| |
| based on the contention that mechanics cannot explain
| |
| certain empirical facts, such as the supposed identity of
| |
| the vertebrate eye and the eye of the scallop. But the fact
| |
| here is merely one of a certain resemblance of pattern, which
| |
| may well be explained by the mechanical principles of convergent
| |
| evolution. Peirce’s account involves no rejection
| |
| of the possibility of mechanical explanations. Indeed, by
| |
| carrying chance into the laws of mechanics he is enabled to
| |
| elaborate a positive and highly suggestive theory of protoplasm
| |
| to explain the facts of plasticity and habit.<a id='r4' /><a href='#f4' class='c011'><sup>[4]</sup></a> Instead
| |
| of postulating with Spencer and Bergson a continuous
| |
| growth of diversity, Peirce allows for growth of habits both
| |
| in diversity and in uniformity. The Spencerian mechanical
| |
| philosophy reduces all diversity to mere spatial differences.
| |
| There can be no substantial novelty; only new forms or
| |
| combinations can arise in time. The creative evolution of
| |
| Bergson though intended to support the claims of spontaneity
| |
| is still like the Spencerian in assuming all evolution
| |
| as proceeding from the simple to the complex. Peirce
| |
| allows for diversity and specificity as part of the original
| |
| character or endowment of things, which in the course of
| |
| time may increase in some respects and diminish in others.
| |
| Mind acquires the habit both of taking on, and also of laying
| |
| aside, habits. Evolution may thus lead to homogeneity
| |
| or uniformity as well as to greater heterogeneity.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Not only has Peirce a greater regard than even Bergson
| |
| for the actual diversity and spontaneity of things, but he
| |
| is in a much better position than any other modern philosopher
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xv'>xv</span>to explain the order and coherence of the world.
| |
| This he effects by uniting the medieval regard for the
| |
| reality of universals with the modern scientific use of the
| |
| concept of continuity. The unfortunate war between the
| |
| pioneers of modern science and the adherents of the scholastic
| |
| doctrine of substantial forms, has been one of the
| |
| great misfortunes of human thought, in that it made absolute
| |
| atomism and nominalism the professed <i>creed</i> of physical
| |
| science. Now, extreme nominalism, the insistence on
| |
| the reality of the particular, leaves no room for the genuine
| |
| reality of law. It leaves, as Hume had the courage to
| |
| admit, nothing whereby the present can determine the
| |
| future; so that anything is as likely to happen as not.
| |
| From such a chaotic world, the <i>procedure</i> of modern natural
| |
| and mathematical science has saved us by the persistent
| |
| use of the principle of continuity; and no one has indicated
| |
| this more clearly than Peirce who was uniquely qualified
| |
| to do so by being a close student both of Duns Scotus and
| |
| of modern scientific methods.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>It is instructive in this respect to contrast the views of
| |
| Peirce and James. James, who so generously indicated his
| |
| indebtedness to Peirce for his pragmatism, was also largely
| |
| indebted to Peirce for his doctrine of radical empiricism.<a id='r5' /><a href='#f5' class='c011'><sup>[5]</sup></a>
| |
| The latter doctrine seeks to rescue the continuity and
| |
| fluidity of experience from the traditional British empiricism
| |
| or nominalism, which had resolved everything into a
| |
| number of mutually exclusive mental states. It is curious,
| |
| however, that while in his psychology James made extensive
| |
| use of the principle of continuity, he could not free himself
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xvi'>xvi</span>from British nominalism in his philosophy—witness the
| |
| extreme individualism of his social philosophy or the equally
| |
| extreme anthropomorphism of his religion. Certain of
| |
| Peirce’s suggestions as to the use of continuity in social
| |
| philosophy have been developed by Royce in his theory of
| |
| social consciousness and the nature of the community;<a id='r6' /><a href='#f6' class='c011'><sup>[6]</sup></a>
| |
| but much remains to be worked out and we can but repeat
| |
| Peirce’s own hope: “May some future student go over
| |
| this ground again and have the leisure to give his results
| |
| to the world.”</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>It is well to note, however, that after writing the papers
| |
| included in this volume Peirce continued to be occupied
| |
| with the issues here raised. This he most significantly
| |
| indicated in the articles on logical topics contributed to
| |
| Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy.<a id='r7' /><a href='#f7' class='c011'><sup>[7]</sup></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>In these articles it is naturally the logical bearing of the
| |
| principles of tychism (chance), synechism (continuity), and
| |
| agapism (love) that is stressed. To use the Kantian terminology,
| |
| almost native to Peirce, the regulative rather
| |
| than the constitutive aspect of these principles is emphasized.
| |
| Thus the doctrine of chance is not only what it was
| |
| for James’ radical empiricism, a release from the blind
| |
| necessity of a “block universe,” but also a method of keeping
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xvii'>xvii</span>open a possible explanation of the genesis of the laws
| |
| of nature and an interpretation of them in accordance with
| |
| the theorems of probability, so fruitful in physical science
| |
| as well as in practical life. So the doctrine of love is not
| |
| only a cosmologic one, showing how chance feeling generates
| |
| order or rational diversity through the habit of generality
| |
| or continuity, but it also gives us the meaning of truth in
| |
| social terms, in showing that the test as to whether any
| |
| proposition is true postulates an indefinite number of co-operating
| |
| investigators. On its logical side the doctrine of
| |
| love (agapism) also recognized the important fact that
| |
| general ideas have a certain attraction which makes us divine
| |
| their nature even though we cannot clearly determine their
| |
| precise meaning before developing their possible consequences.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Of the doctrine of continuity we are told expressly<a id='r8' /><a href='#f8' class='c011'><sup>[8]</sup></a> that
| |
| “synechism is not an ultimate absolute metaphysical
| |
| doctrine. It is a regulative principle of logic,” seeking the
| |
| thread of identity in diverse cases and avoiding hypotheses
| |
| that this or that is ultimate and, therefore, inexplicable.
| |
| (Examples of such hypotheses are: the existence of absolutely
| |
| accurate or uniform laws of nature, the eternity and
| |
| absolute likeness of all atoms, etc.) To be sure, the
| |
| synechist cannot deny that there is an element of the inexplicable
| |
| or ultimate, since it is directly forced upon him.
| |
| But he cannot regard it as a source of explanation. The
| |
| assumption of an inexplicability is a barrier on the road to
| |
| science. “The form under which alone anything can be
| |
| understood is the form of generality which is the same thing
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xviii'>xviii</span>as continuity.”<a id='r9' /><a href='#f9' class='c011'><sup>[9]</sup></a> This insistence on the generality of
| |
| intelligible form is perfectly consistent with due emphases
| |
| on the reality of the individual, which to a Scotist realist
| |
| connotes an element of will or will-resistence, but in logical
| |
| procedure means that the test of the truth or falsity of any
| |
| proposition refers us to particular perceptions.<a id='r10' /><a href='#f10' class='c011'><sup>[10]</sup></a> But
| |
| as no multitude of individuals can exhaust the meaning of
| |
| a continuum, which includes also organizing relations of
| |
| order, the full meaning of a concept cannot be in any
| |
| individual reaction, but is rather to be sought in the manner
| |
| in which all such reactions contribute to the development of
| |
| the concrete reasonableness of the whole evolutionary
| |
| process. In scientific procedure this means that integrity
| |
| of belief in general is more important than, because it is
| |
| the condition of, particular true beliefs.</p>
| |
| <h3 class='c010'>II</h3>
| |
| <p class='c006'>This insistence on the continuity so effectually used as a
| |
| heuristic principle in natural and mathematical science,
| |
| distinguishes the pragmatism of Peirce from that of his
| |
| follower James. Prof. Dewey has developed this point
| |
| authoritatively in the supplementary essay; but in view of
| |
| the general ignorance as to the sources of pragmatism which
| |
| prevails in this incurious age, some remarks on the actual
| |
| historical origin of pragmatism may be in order.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>There can be little doubt that Peirce was led to the formulation
| |
| of the principle of pragmatism through the influence
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xix'>xix</span>of Chauncey Wright.<a id='r11' /><a href='#f11' class='c011'><sup>[11]</sup></a> Wright who had first hand acquaintance
| |
| with creative scientific work in mathematics,
| |
| physics, and botany was led by the study of Mill and Bain
| |
| to reflect on the characteristics of scientific method. This
| |
| reflection led him to draw a distinction between the use of
| |
| popular scientific material, by men like Spencer, to construct
| |
| a myth or picture of the world, and the scientific
| |
| use of laws by men like Newton as means for extending our
| |
| knowledge of phenomena. Gravitation as a general fact
| |
| had interested metaphysicians long before Newton. What
| |
| made Newton’s contribution scientific was the formulation
| |
| of a mathematical law which has enabled us to deduce all
| |
| the then known facts of the solar system and to anticipate
| |
| or predict many more facts the existence of which would
| |
| not otherwise be even suspected, e.g., the existence of the
| |
| planet Neptune. Wright insists, therefore, that the principles
| |
| of modern mathematical and physical science are
| |
| the means through which nature is discovered, that scientific
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xx'>xx</span>laws are the finders rather than merely the summaries of
| |
| factual truths. This conception of the experimental scientist
| |
| as translating general propositions into prescriptions
| |
| for attaining new experimental truths, is the starting point
| |
| of Peirce’s pragmatism. The latter is embodied in the
| |
| principle that the meaning of a concept is to be found in
| |
| “all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the
| |
| affirmation or denial of the concept could imply.”<a id='r12' /><a href='#f12' class='c011'><sup>[12]</sup></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>In the earlier statement of the pragmatic maxim,<a id='r13' /><a href='#f13' class='c011'><sup>[13]</sup></a>
| |
| Peirce emphasized the consequences for conduct that follow
| |
| from the acceptance or rejection of an idea; but the stoical
| |
| maxim that the end of man is action did not appeal to him
| |
| as much at sixty as it did at thirty.<a id='r14' /><a href='#f14' class='c011'><sup>[14]</sup></a> Naturally also Peirce
| |
| could not follow the development of pragmatism by Wm.
| |
| James who, like almost all modern psychologists, was a
| |
| thorough nominalist and always emphasized particular
| |
| sensible experience.<a id='r15' /><a href='#f15' class='c011'><sup>[15]</sup></a> It seemed to Peirce that such emphasis
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxi'>xxi</span>on particular experiences endangered the principle
| |
| of continuity which in the hands of men like Weierstrass
| |
| had reformed modern mathematics. For this reason he
| |
| began to call his own doctrine pragmaticism, a sufficiently
| |
| unattractive name, he thought, to save it from kidnappers
| |
| and from popularity. He never, however, abandoned the
| |
| principle of pragmatism, that the meaning of an idea is
| |
| clarified (because constituted) by its conceivable experimental
| |
| consequences. Indeed, if we want to clarify the
| |
| meaning of the idea of pragmatism, let us apply the pragmatic
| |
| test to it. What will be the effect of accepting it?
| |
| Obviously it will be to develop certain general ideas or
| |
| habits of looking at things.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Peirce’s pragmatism has, therefore, a decidedly intellectual
| |
| cast. The meaning of an idea or proposition is
| |
| found not by an intuition of it but by working out its implications.
| |
| It admits that thought does not constitute
| |
| reality. Categories can have no concrete being without
| |
| action or immediate feeling. But thought is none the less
| |
| an essential ingredient of reality; thought is “the melody
| |
| running through the succession of our sensations.” Pragmatism,
| |
| according to Peirce, seeks to define the rational
| |
| purport, not the sensuous quality. It is interested not in
| |
| the effect of our practical occupations or desires on our
| |
| ideas, but in the function of ideas as guides of action.
| |
| Whether a man is to pay damages in a certain lawsuit may
| |
| depend, in fact, on a term in the Aristotelian logic such as
| |
| proximate cause.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>It is of interest to observe that though Peirce is an ardent
| |
| admirer of Darwin’s method, his scientific caution makes
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxii'>xxii</span>him refuse to apply the analogy of biologic natural selection
| |
| to the realm of ideas, in the wholesale and uncritical
| |
| manner that has lately become fashionable. Natural selection
| |
| may well favor the triumph of views which directly
| |
| influence biologic survival. But the pleasure of entertaining
| |
| congenial illusions may overbalance the inconvenience
| |
| resulting from their deceptive character. Thus rhetorical
| |
| appeals may long prevail over scientific evidence.</p>
| |
| <h3 class='c010'>III</h3>
| |
| <p class='c006'>Peirce preferred to call himself a logician, and his contributions
| |
| to logic have so far proved his most generally
| |
| recognized achievement. For a right perspective of these
| |
| contributions we may well begin with the observation that
| |
| though few branches of philosophy have been cultivated as
| |
| continuously as logic, Kant was able to affirm that the
| |
| science of logic had made no substantial progress since the
| |
| time of Aristotle. The reason for this is that Aristotle’s
| |
| logic, the logic of classes, was based on his own scientific
| |
| procedure as a zoologist, and is still in essence a valid
| |
| method so far as classification is part of all rational procedure.
| |
| But when we come to describe the mathematical
| |
| method of physical science, we cannot cast it into the
| |
| Aristotelian form without involving ourselves in such complicated
| |
| artificialities as to reduce almost to nil the value
| |
| of Aristotle’s logic as an organon. Aristotle’s logic enables
| |
| us to make a single inference from two premises. But the
| |
| vast multitude of theorems that modern mathematics has
| |
| derived from a few premises as to the nature of number,
| |
| shows the need of formulating a logic or theory of inference
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxiii'>xxiii</span>that shall correspond to the modern, more complicated, practice
| |
| as Aristotle’s logic did to simple classificatory zoology.
| |
| To do this effectively would require the highest constructive
| |
| logical genius, together with an intimate knowledge
| |
| of the methods of the great variety of modern sciences.
| |
| This is in the nature of the case a very rare combination,
| |
| since great investigators are not as critical in examining
| |
| their own procedure as they are in examining the subject
| |
| matter which is their primary scientific interest. Hence,
| |
| when great investigators like Poincaré come to describe
| |
| their own work, they fall back on the uncritical assumptions
| |
| of the traditional logic which they learned in their school
| |
| days. Moreover, “For the last three centuries thought
| |
| has been conducted in laboratories, in the field, or otherwise
| |
| in the face of the facts, while chairs of logic have been
| |
| filled by men who breathe the air of the seminary.”<a id='r16' /><a href='#f16' class='c011'><sup>[16]</sup></a> The
| |
| great Leibnitz had the qualifications, but here, as elsewhere,
| |
| his worldly occupations left him no opportunity
| |
| except for very fragmentary contributions. It was not until
| |
| the middle of the 19th century that two mathematicians,
| |
| Boole and DeMorgan, laid the foundations for a more generalized
| |
| logic. Boole developed a general logical algorithm
| |
| or calculus, while DeMorgan called attention to non-syllogistic
| |
| inference and especially to the importance of the logic of
| |
| relations. Peirce’s great achievement is to have recognized
| |
| the possibilities of both and to have generalized and developed
| |
| them into a general theory of scientific inference.
| |
| The extent and thoroughness of his achievement has been
| |
| obscured by his fragmentary way of writing and by a rather
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxiv'>xxiv</span>unwieldy symbolism. Still, modern mathematical logic,
| |
| such as that of Russell’s <i>Principles of Mathematics</i>, is but a
| |
| development of Peirce’s logic of relatives.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>This phase of Peirce’s work is highly technical and an
| |
| account of it is out of place here. Such an account will
| |
| be found in Lewis’ <i>Survey of Symbolic Logic</i>.<a id='r17' /><a href='#f17' class='c011'><sup>[17]</sup></a> I refer to
| |
| it here only to remind the reader that the <i>Illustrations of
| |
| the Logic of the Sciences</i> (<a href='#part1'>Part I</a> of this volume) have a
| |
| background of patient detailed work which is still being
| |
| developed to-day.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Symbolic logic has been held in rather low esteem by
| |
| the followers of the old classical methods in philosophy.
| |
| Their stated objection to it has been mainly that it is
| |
| concerned with the minutiae of an artificial language and is
| |
| of no value as a guide to the interpretation of reality.
| |
| Now it should be readily admitted that preoccupation with
| |
| symbolic logic is rather apt to retard the irresponsible
| |
| flight of philosophic fancy. Yet this is by no means always
| |
| an evil. By insisting on an accuracy that is painful to those
| |
| impatient to obtain sweeping and comforting, though hasty,
| |
| conclusions, symbolic logic is well calculated to remove the
| |
| great scandal of traditional philosophy—the claim of absolutely
| |
| certain results in fields where there is the greatest
| |
| conflict of opinion. This scandalous situation arises in part
| |
| from the fact that in popular exposition we do not have to
| |
| make our premises or assumptions explicit; hence all sorts
| |
| of dubious prejudices are implicitly appealed to as absolutely
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxv'>xxv</span>necessary principles. Also, by the use of popular
| |
| terms which have a variety of meanings, one easily slides
| |
| from one meaning to another, so that the most improbable
| |
| conclusions are thus derived from seeming truisms. By
| |
| making assumptions and rules explicit, and by using technical
| |
| terms that do not drag wide penumbras of meaning
| |
| with them, the method of symbolic logic may cruelly reduce
| |
| the sweeping pretensions of philosophy. But there is no
| |
| reason for supposing that pretentiousness rather than
| |
| humility is the way to philosophic salvation. Man is bound
| |
| to speculate about the universe beyond the range of his
| |
| knowledge, but he is not bound to indulge the vanity of
| |
| setting up such speculations as absolutely certain dogmas.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>There is, however, no reason for denying that greater
| |
| rigor and accuracy of exposition can really help us to discern
| |
| new truth. Modern mathematics since Gauss and
| |
| Weierstrass has actually been led to greater fruitfulness by
| |
| increased rigor which makes such procedure as the old
| |
| proofs of Taylor’s theorem no longer possible. The substitution
| |
| of rigorous analytic procedures for the old Euclidean
| |
| proofs based on intuition, has opened up vast fields
| |
| of geometry. Nor has this been without any effect on
| |
| philosophy. Where formerly concepts like infinity and continuity
| |
| were objects of gaping awe or the recurrent occasions
| |
| for intellectual violence,<a id='r18' /><a href='#f18' class='c011'><sup>[18]</sup></a> we are now beginning to
| |
| use them, thanks to Peirce and Royce, in accurate and
| |
| definable senses. Consider, for instance, the amount of
| |
| a priori nonsense which Peirce eliminates by pointing out
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxvi'>xxvi</span>that the application of the concept of continuity to a span
| |
| of consciousness removes the necessity for assuming a first
| |
| or last moment; so likewise the range of vision on a large
| |
| unobstructed ground has no line between the visible and the
| |
| invisible. These considerations will be found utterly destructive
| |
| of the force of the old arguments (fundamental
| |
| to Kant and others) as to the necessary infinity of time and
| |
| space. Similar enlightenment is soon likely to result from
| |
| the more careful use of terms like relative and absolute,
| |
| which are bones of contention in philosophy but Ariadne
| |
| threads of exploration in theoretical physics, because of
| |
| the definite symbolism of mathematics. Other important
| |
| truths made clear by symbolic logic is the hypothetical
| |
| character of universal propositions and the consequent insight
| |
| that no particulars can be deduced from universals
| |
| alone, since no number of hypotheses can without given data
| |
| establish an existing fact.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>There is, however, an even more positive direction in
| |
| which symbolic logic serves the interest of philosophy, and
| |
| that is in throwing light on the nature of symbols and on
| |
| the relation of meaning. Philosophers have light-heartedly
| |
| dismissed questions as to the nature of significant signs as
| |
| ‘merely’ (most fatal word!) a matter of language. But
| |
| Peirce in the paper on Man’s Glassy [Shakespearian for
| |
| Mirror-Like] Essence, endeavors to exhibit man’s whole
| |
| nature as symbolic.<a id='r19' /><a href='#f19' class='c011'><sup>[19]</sup></a> This is closely connected with his
| |
| logical doctrine which regards signs or symbols as one of
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxvii'>xxvii</span>the fundamental categories or aspects of the universe
| |
| (Thoughts and things are the other two). Independently
| |
| of Peirce but in line with his thought another great and
| |
| neglected thinker, Santayana, has shown that the whole life
| |
| of man that is bound up with the institutions of civilization,
| |
| is concerned with symbols.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>It is not altogether accidental that, since Boole and
| |
| DeMorgan, those who have occupied themselves with symbolic
| |
| logic have felt called upon to deal with the problem
| |
| of probability. The reason is indicated by Peirce when he
| |
| formulates the problem of probable inference in such a way
| |
| as to make the old classic logic of absolutely true or false
| |
| conclusions, a limiting case (i.e., of values 1 and 0) of the
| |
| logic of probable inference whose values range all the way
| |
| between these two limits. This technical device is itself
| |
| the result of applying the principle of continuity to throw
| |
| two hitherto distinct types of reasoning into the same class.
| |
| The result is philosophically significant.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Where the classical logic spoke of major and minor
| |
| premises without establishing any really important difference
| |
| between the two, Peirce draws a distinction between
| |
| the premises and the guiding principle of our argument.
| |
| All reasoning is from some concrete situation to another.
| |
| The propositions which represent the first are the premises
| |
| in the strict sense of the word. But the feeling that certain
| |
| conclusions follow from these premises is conditioned by an
| |
| implicit or explicit belief in some guiding principle which
| |
| connects the premises and the conclusions. When such a
| |
| leading principle results in true conclusions in all cases of
| |
| true premises, we have logical deduction of the orthodox
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxviii'>xxviii</span>type. If, however, such a principle brings about a true conclusion
| |
| only in a certain proportion of cases, then we have
| |
| probability.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>This reduction of probability to the relative frequency
| |
| of true propositions in a class of propositions, was suggested
| |
| to Peirce by Venn’s <i>Logic of Chance</i>. Peirce uses it to
| |
| establish some truths of greatest importance to logic and
| |
| philosophy.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>He eliminates the difficulties of the old conceptualist
| |
| view, which made probability a measure of our ignorance
| |
| and yet had to admit that almost all fruitfulness of our
| |
| practical and scientific reasoning depended on the theorems
| |
| of probability. How could we safely predict phenomena by
| |
| measuring our ignorance?</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Probability being reduced to a matter of the relative frequency
| |
| of a class in a larger class or genus, it becomes,
| |
| strictly speaking, inapplicable to single cases by themselves.
| |
| A single penny will fall head or it will fall tail every time;
| |
| to-morrow it will rain, or it will not rain at all. The
| |
| probability of 1/2 or any other fraction means nothing in
| |
| the single case. It is only because we feel the single event
| |
| as representative of a class, as something which repeats
| |
| itself, that we speak elliptically of the probability of a
| |
| single event. Hence follows the important corollary that
| |
| reasoning with respect to the probability of this or that arrangement
| |
| of the universe would be valid only if universes
| |
| were as plentiful as blackberries.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>To be useful at all, theories must be simpler than the
| |
| complex facts which they seek to explain. Hence, it is
| |
| often convenient to employ a principle of certainty where
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxix'>xxix</span>the facts justify only a principle of some degree of probability.
| |
| In such cases we must be cautious in accepting
| |
| any extreme consequence of these principles, and also be
| |
| on guard against apparent refutations based on such extreme
| |
| consequences.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Finally I should like to emphasize the value of Peirce’s
| |
| theory of inference for a philosophy of civilization. To the
| |
| old argument that logic is of no importance because people
| |
| learn to reason, as to walk, by instinct and habit and not by
| |
| scientific instruction, Peirce admits<a id='r20' /><a href='#f20' class='c011'><sup>[20]</sup></a> that “all human
| |
| knowledge up to the highest flights of science is but the
| |
| development of our inborn animal instincts.” But though
| |
| logical rules are first felt implicitly, bringing them into
| |
| explicit consciousness helps the process of analysis and
| |
| thus makes possible the recognition of old principles in novel
| |
| situations. This increases our range of adaptability to such
| |
| an extent as to justify a general distinction between the
| |
| slave of routine or habit and the freeman who can anticipate
| |
| and control nature through knowledge of principles. Peirce’s
| |
| analysis of the method of science as a method of attaining
| |
| stability of beliefs by free inquiry inviting all possible
| |
| doubt, in contrast with the methods of iteration (“will to
| |
| believe”) and social authority, is one of the best introductions
| |
| to a theory of liberal or Hellenic civilization, as
| |
| opposed to those of despotic societies. Authority has its
| |
| roots in the force of habit, but it cannot prevent new and
| |
| unorthodox ideas from arising; and in the effort to defend
| |
| authoritative social views men are apt to be far more ruthless
| |
| than in defending their own personal convictions.</p>
| |
| <div>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxx'>xxx</span>
| |
| <h3 class='c010'>IV</h3>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <p class='c006'>Not only the pragmatism and the radical empiricism of
| |
| James, but the idealism of Royce and the more recent
| |
| movement of neo-realism are largely indebted to Peirce.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>It may seem strange that the same thinker should be
| |
| claimed as foster-father of both recent idealism and realism,
| |
| and some may take it as another sign of his lack of consistency.
| |
| But this seeming strangeness is really due to
| |
| the looseness with which the antithesis between realism and
| |
| idealism has generally been put. If by idealism we denote
| |
| the nominalistic doctrine of Berkeley, then Peirce is clearly
| |
| not an idealist; and his work in logic as a study of types
| |
| of order (in which Royce followed him) is fundamental
| |
| for a logical realism. But if idealism means the old
| |
| Platonic doctrine that “ideas,” genera, or forms are not
| |
| merely mental but the real conditions of existence, we need
| |
| not wonder that Peirce was both idealist and realist.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Royce’s indebtedness to Peirce is principally in the use
| |
| of modern mathematical material, such as the recent development
| |
| of the concepts of infinity and continuity, to
| |
| throw light on fundamental questions of philosophy, such
| |
| as relation of the individual to God or the Universe. At
| |
| the end of the nineteenth century mathematics had almost
| |
| disappeared from the repertory of philosophy (cf. Külpe’s
| |
| <i>Introduction to Philosophy</i>), and Peirce’s essay on the
| |
| <i>Law of Mind</i> opened a new way which Royce followed in
| |
| his <i>World and the Individual</i>, to the great surprise of his
| |
| idealistic brethren. In his <i>Problem of Christianity</i> Royce
| |
| has also indicated his indebtedness to Peirce for his doctrine
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxi'>xxxi</span>of social consciousness, the mind of the community,
| |
| and the process of interpretation. It may be that a great
| |
| deal of the similarity between the thoughts of these two
| |
| men is due to common sources, such as the works of Kant
| |
| and Schelling; but it is well to note that not only in his
| |
| later writings but also in his lectures and seminars Royce
| |
| continually referred to Peirce’s views.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>The ground for the neo-realist movement in American
| |
| philosophy was largely prepared by the mathematical work
| |
| of Russell and by the utilization of mathematics to which
| |
| Royce was led by Peirce. The logic of Mr. Russell is
| |
| based, as he himself has pointed out, on a combination of
| |
| the work of Peirce and Peano. In this combination the
| |
| notation of Peano has proved of greater technical fluency,
| |
| but all of Peano’s results can also be obtained by Peirce’s
| |
| method as developed by Schroeder and Mrs. Ladd-Franklin.
| |
| But philosophically Peirce’s influence is far greater in
| |
| insisting that logic is not a branch of psychology, that it
| |
| is not concerned with merely mental processes, but with
| |
| objective relations. To the view that the laws of logic
| |
| represent “the necessities of thought,” that propositions
| |
| are true because “we can not help thinking so,” he answers:
| |
| “Exact logic will say that <i>C</i>’s following logically from <i>A</i> is
| |
| a state of things which no impotence of thought alone can
| |
| bring about.”<a id='r21' /><a href='#f21' class='c011'><sup>[21]</sup></a> “The question of validity is purely one
| |
| of fact and not of thinking.... It is not in the least the
| |
| question whether, when the premises are accepted by the
| |
| mind, we feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also.
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxii'>xxxii</span>The true conclusion would remain true if we had no impulse
| |
| to accept it, and the false one would remain false
| |
| though we could not resist the tendency to believe in it.”<a id='r22' /><a href='#f22' class='c011'><sup>[22]</sup></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Since the days of Locke modern philosophy has been
| |
| almost entirely dominated by the assumption that one must
| |
| study the process of knowing before one can find out the
| |
| nature of things known; in other words, that psychology is
| |
| <i>the</i> central philosophic science. The result of this has been
| |
| an almost complete identification of philosophy with mental
| |
| science. Nor did the influence of biologic studies of the
| |
| middle of the nineteenth century shake the belief in that
| |
| banal dictum of philosophic mediocrity: “The proper
| |
| study of mankind is man.” The recent renaissance of
| |
| logical studies, and the remarkable progress of physics in
| |
| our own day bid fair to remind us that while the Lockian
| |
| way has brought some gains to philosophy, the more ancient
| |
| way of philosophy is by no means exhausted of promise.
| |
| Man cannot lose his interest in the great cosmic play.
| |
| Those who have faith in the ancient and fruitful approach
| |
| to philosophy through the doors of mathematics and physics
| |
| will find the writings of Charles S. Peirce full of suggestions.
| |
| That such an approach can also throw light on the
| |
| vexed problem of knowledge needs no assurance to those
| |
| acquainted with Plato and Aristotle. But I may conclude
| |
| by referring to Peirce’s doctrine of ideal as opposed to
| |
| sensible experiment,<a id='r23' /><a href='#f23' class='c011'><sup>[23]</sup></a> and to his treatment of the question
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxiii'>xxxiii</span>how it is that in spite of an infinity of possible hypotheses,
| |
| mankind has managed to make so many successful inductions.<a id='r24' /><a href='#f24' class='c011'><sup>[24]</sup></a>
| |
| And for the bearing of mathematical studies on the
| |
| wisdom of life, the following is certainly worth serious reflection:
| |
| “All human affairs rest upon probabilities. If
| |
| man were immortal [on earth] he could be perfectly sure
| |
| of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted
| |
| should betray his trust. He would break down, at last, as
| |
| every great fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization
| |
| does. In place of this we have death.” The recognition
| |
| that the death of the individual does not destroy the logical
| |
| meaning of his utterances, that this meaning involves the
| |
| ideal of an unlimited community, carries us into the heart
| |
| of pure religion.</p>
| |
| | |
| <div class='chapter'>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
| |
| <h2 id='proem' class='c009'>PROEM <br /> THE RULES OF PHILOSOPHY<a id='r25' /><a href='#f25' class='c011'><sup>[25]</sup></a></h2>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <p class='c006'>Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, and the
| |
| spirit of Cartesianism—that which principally distinguishes
| |
| it from the scholasticism which it displaced—may
| |
| be compendiously stated as follows:</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>1. It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal
| |
| doubt; whereas scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>2. It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is to be
| |
| found in the individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism
| |
| had rested on the testimony of sages and of the Catholic
| |
| Church.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>3. The multiform argumentation of the middle ages is
| |
| replaced by a single thread of inference depending often
| |
| upon inconspicuous premises.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>4. Scholasticism had its mysteries of faith, but undertook
| |
| to explain all created things. But there are many facts
| |
| which Cartesianism not only does not explain but renders
| |
| absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that “God makes them
| |
| so” is to be regarded as an explanation.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>In some, or all of these respects, most modern philosophers
| |
| have been, in effect, Cartesians. Now without wishing
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>to return to scholasticism, it seems to me that modern
| |
| science and modern logic require us to stand upon a very
| |
| different platform from this.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin
| |
| with all the prejudices which we actually have when we
| |
| enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are
| |
| not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which
| |
| it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this
| |
| initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real
| |
| doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will
| |
| ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those
| |
| beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as
| |
| useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be
| |
| in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly
| |
| upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course
| |
| of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing;
| |
| but in that case he doubts because he has a positive
| |
| reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim.
| |
| Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not
| |
| doubt in our hearts.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>2. The same formalism appears in the Cartesian criterion,
| |
| which amounts to this: “Whatever I am clearly convinced
| |
| of, is true.” If I were really convinced, I should have done
| |
| with reasoning and should require no test of certainty.
| |
| But then to make single individuals absolute judges of truth
| |
| is most pernicious. The result is that metaphysics has
| |
| reached a pitch of certainty far beyond that of the physical
| |
| sciences;—only they can agree upon nothing else. In
| |
| sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>has been broached it is considered to be on probation until
| |
| this agreement is reached. After it is reached, the question
| |
| of certainty becomes an idle one, because there is no one
| |
| left who doubts it. We individually cannot reasonably
| |
| hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue;
| |
| we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers.
| |
| Hence, if disciplined and candid minds carefully
| |
| examine a theory and refuse to accept it, this ought to create
| |
| doubts in the mind of the author of the theory himself.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>3. Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in
| |
| its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premises
| |
| which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust
| |
| rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than
| |
| to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not
| |
| form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link,
| |
| but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided
| |
| they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>4. Every unidealistic philosophy supposes some absolutely
| |
| inexplicable, unanalyzable ultimate; in short, something
| |
| resulting from mediation itself not susceptible of 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.</p>
| |
| | |
| <div class='chapter'>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>
| |
| <h2 id='part1' class='c009'>PART I <br /> CHANCE AND LOGIC <br /> (ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE)</h2>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <div>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>
| |
| <h3 id='chap1-1' class='c001'>CHANCE AND LOGIC <br /> FIRST PAPER <br /> THE FIXATION OF BELIEF<a id='r26' /><a href='#f26' class='c011'><sup>[26]</sup></a></h3>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <h4 class='c012'>I</h4>
| |
| <p class='c006'>Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives
| |
| himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning
| |
| already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to
| |
| one’s own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of
| |
| other men.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>We come to the full possession of our power of drawing
| |
| inferences the last of all our faculties, for it is not so much
| |
| a natural gift as a long and difficult art. The history of
| |
| its practice would make a grand subject for a book. The
| |
| medieval schoolman, following the Romans, made logic the
| |
| earliest of a boy’s studies after grammar, as being very
| |
| easy. So it was as they understood it. Its fundamental
| |
| principle, according to them, was, that all knowledge rests
| |
| on either authority or reason; but that whatever is deduced
| |
| by reason depends ultimately on a premise derived from
| |
| authority. Accordingly, as soon as a boy was perfect in
| |
| the syllogistic procedure, his intellectual kit of tools was
| |
| held to be complete.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle
| |
| of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the
| |
| schoolmen’s conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle
| |
| to truth. He saw that experience alone teaches anything—a
| |
| proposition which to us seems easy to understand,
| |
| because a distinct conception of experience has been handed
| |
| down to us from former generations; which to him also
| |
| seemed perfectly clear, because its difficulties had not yet
| |
| unfolded themselves. Of all kinds of experience, the best,
| |
| he thought, was interior illumination, which teaches many
| |
| things about Nature which the external senses could never
| |
| discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Four centuries later, the more celebrated Bacon, in the
| |
| first book of his “Novum Organum,” gave his clear account
| |
| of experience as something which must be open to verification
| |
| and reëxamination. But, superior as Lord Bacon’s
| |
| conception is to earlier notions, a modern reader who is not
| |
| in awe of his grandiloquence is chiefly struck by the inadequacy
| |
| of his view of scientific procedure. That we have
| |
| only to make some crude experiments, to draw up briefs
| |
| of the results in certain blank forms, to go through these
| |
| by rule, checking off everything disproved and setting down
| |
| the alternatives, and that thus in a few years physical
| |
| science would be finished up—what an idea! “He wrote
| |
| on science like a Lord Chancellor,”<a id='r27' /><a href='#f27' class='c011'><sup>[27]</sup></a> indeed.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>The early scientists, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler,
| |
| Galileo and Gilbert, had methods more like those of their
| |
| modern brethren. Kepler undertook to draw a curve
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>through the places of Mars;<a id='r28' /><a href='#f28' class='c011'><sup>[28]</sup></a> and his greatest service to
| |
| science was in impressing on men’s minds that this was the
| |
| thing to be done if they wished to improve astronomy;
| |
| that they were not to content themselves with inquiring
| |
| whether one system of epicycles was better than another
| |
| but that they were to sit down by the figures and find out
| |
| what the curve, in truth, was. He accomplished this by his
| |
| incomparable energy and courage, blundering along in the
| |
| most inconceivable way (to us), from one irrational hypothesis
| |
| to another, until, after trying twenty-two of these,
| |
| he fell, by the mere exhaustion of his invention, upon the
| |
| orbit which a mind well furnished with the weapons of
| |
| modern logic would have tried almost at the outset.<a id='r29' /><a href='#f29' class='c011'><sup>[29]</sup></a></p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>In the same way, every work of science great enough to
| |
| be remembered for a few generations affords some
| |
| exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning
| |
| of the time when it was written; and each chief step in
| |
| science has been a lesson in logic. It was so when Lavoisier
| |
| and his contemporaries took up the study of Chemistry.
| |
| The old chemist’s maxim had been, “Lege, lege, lege,
| |
| labora, ora, et relege.” Lavoisier’s method was not to read
| |
| and pray, not to dream that some long and complicated
| |
| chemical process would have a certain effect, to put it into
| |
| practice with dull patience, after its inevitable failure to
| |
| dream that with some modification it would have another
| |
| result, and to end by publishing the last dream as a fact:
| |
| his way was to carry his mind into his laboratory, and to
| |
| make of his alembics and cucurbits instruments of thought,
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>giving a new conception of reasoning as something which
| |
| was to be done with one’s eyes open, by manipulating real
| |
| things instead of words and fancies.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>The Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question
| |
| of logic. Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical
| |
| method to biology. The same thing has been done in a
| |
| widely different branch of science, the theory of gases.
| |
| Though unable to say what the movement of any particular
| |
| molecule of gas would be on a certain hypothesis regarding
| |
| the constitution of this class of bodies, Clausius and Maxwell
| |
| were yet able, by the application of the doctrine of
| |
| probabilities, to predict that in the long run such and such
| |
| a proportion of the molecules would, under given circumstances,
| |
| acquire such and such velocities; that there would
| |
| take place, every second, such and such a number of collisions,
| |
| etc.; and from these propositions they were able to
| |
| deduce certain properties of gases, especially in regard to
| |
| their heat-relations. In like manner, Darwin, while unable
| |
| to say what the operation of variation and natural selection
| |
| in every individual case will be, demonstrates that in the
| |
| long run they will adapt animals to their circumstances.
| |
| Whether or not existing animal forms are due to such action,
| |
| or what position the theory ought to take, forms the
| |
| subject of a discussion in which questions of fact and
| |
| questions of logic are curiously interlaced.</p>
| |
| <h4 class='c012'>II</h4>
| |
| <p class='c006'>The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration
| |
| of what we already know, something else which we do
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>not know. Consequently, reasoning is good if it be such
| |
| as to give a true conclusion from true premises, and not
| |
| otherwise. Thus, the question of validity is purely one of
| |
| fact and not of thinking. A being the premises and B being
| |
| the conclusion, the question is, whether these facts are
| |
| really so related that if A is B is. If so, the inference is
| |
| valid; if not, not. It is not in the least the question
| |
| whether, when the premises are accepted by the mind, we
| |
| feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also. It is true
| |
| that we do generally reason correctly by nature. But that
| |
| is an accident; the true conclusion would remain true if we
| |
| had no impulse to accept it; and the false one would remain
| |
| false, though we could not resist the tendency to believe
| |
| in it.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>We are, doubtless, in the main logical animals, but we
| |
| are not perfectly so. Most of us, for example, are naturally
| |
| more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify.
| |
| We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any
| |
| facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the
| |
| effect of experience is continually to counteract our hopes
| |
| and aspirations. Yet a lifetime of the application of this
| |
| corrective does not usually eradicate our sanguine disposition.
| |
| Where hope is unchecked by any experience, it is
| |
| likely that our optimism is extravagant. Logicality in regard
| |
| to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal
| |
| can possess, and might, therefore, result from the
| |
| action of natural selection; but outside of these it is probably
| |
| of more advantage to the animal to have his mind
| |
| filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently
| |
| of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>That which determines us, from given premises, to draw
| |
| one inference rather than another, is some habit of mind,
| |
| whether it be constitutional or acquired. The habit is good
| |
| or otherwise, according as it produces true conclusions from
| |
| true premises or not; and an inference is regarded as valid
| |
| or not, without reference to the truth or falsity of its conclusion
| |
| specially, but according as the habit which determines
| |
| it is such as to produce true conclusions in general
| |
| or not. The particular habit of mind which governs this
| |
| or that inference may be formulated in a proposition whose
| |
| truth depends on the validity of the inferences which the
| |
| habit determines; and such a formula is called a <i>guiding
| |
| principle</i> of inference. Suppose, for example, that we observe
| |
| that a rotating disk of copper quickly comes to rest
| |
| when placed between the poles of a magnet, and we infer
| |
| that this will happen with every disk of copper. The guiding
| |
| principle is, that what is true of one piece of copper is
| |
| true of another. Such a guiding principle with regard to
| |
| copper would be much safer than with regard to many other
| |
| substances—brass, for example.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>A book might be written to signalize all the most important
| |
| of these guiding principles of reasoning. It would
| |
| probably be, we must confess, of no service to a person
| |
| whose thought is directed wholly to practical subjects, and
| |
| whose activity moves along thoroughly beaten paths. The
| |
| problems which present themselves to such a mind are
| |
| matters of routine which he has learned once for all to
| |
| handle in learning his business. But let a man venture into
| |
| an unfamiliar field, or where his results are not continually
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>checked by experience, and all history shows that the most
| |
| masculine intellect will ofttimes lose his orientation and
| |
| waste his efforts in directions which bring him no nearer to
| |
| his goal, or even carry him entirely astray. He is like a
| |
| ship on the open sea, with no one on board who understands
| |
| the rules of navigation. And in such a case some general
| |
| study of the guiding principles of reasoning would be sure
| |
| to be found useful.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>The subject could hardly be treated, however, without
| |
| being first limited; since almost any fact may serve as a
| |
| guiding principle. But it so happens that there exists a
| |
| division among facts, such that in one class are all those
| |
| which are absolutely essential as guiding principles, while
| |
| in the other are all those which have any other interest as
| |
| objects of research. This division is between those which
| |
| are necessarily taken for granted in asking whether a certain
| |
| conclusion follows from certain premises, and those
| |
| which are not implied in that question. A moment’s thought
| |
| will show that a variety of facts are already assumed when
| |
| the logical question is first asked. It is implied, for instance,
| |
| that there are such states of mind as doubt and
| |
| belief—that a passage from one to the other is possible,
| |
| the object of thought remaining the same, and that this
| |
| transition is subject to some rules which all minds are alike
| |
| bound by. As these are facts which we must already know
| |
| before we can have any clear conception of reasoning at all,
| |
| it cannot be supposed to be any longer of much interest to
| |
| inquire into their truth or falsity. On the other hand, it
| |
| is easy to believe that those rules of reasoning which are
| |
| deduced from the very idea of the process are the ones
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>which are the most essential; and, indeed, that so long as it
| |
| conforms to these it will, at least, not lead to false conclusions
| |
| from true premises. In point of fact, the importance
| |
| of what may be deduced from the assumptions involved
| |
| in the logical question turns out to be greater than might
| |
| be supposed, and this for reasons which it is difficult to exhibit
| |
| at the outset. The only one which I shall here mention
| |
| is, that conceptions which are really products of logical
| |
| reflections, without being readily seen to be so, mingle with
| |
| our ordinary thoughts, and are frequently the causes of
| |
| great confusion. This is the case, for example, with the
| |
| conception of quality. A quality as such is never an object
| |
| of observation. We can see that a thing is blue or green,
| |
| but the quality of being blue and the quality of being green
| |
| are not things which we see; they are products of logical
| |
| reflections. The truth is, that common-sense, or thought
| |
| as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical,
| |
| is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the
| |
| epithet <i>metaphysical</i> is commonly applied; and nothing can
| |
| clear it up but a severe course of logic.</p>
| |
| <h4 class='c012'>III</h4>
| |
| <p class='c006'>We generally know when we wish to ask a question and
| |
| when we wish to pronounce a judgment, for there is a dissimilarity
| |
| between the sensation of doubting and that of
| |
| believing.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>But this is not all which distinguishes doubt from belief.
| |
| There is a practical difference. Our beliefs guide our desires
| |
| and shape our actions. The Assassins, or followers
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>of the Old Man of the Mountain, used to rush into death at
| |
| his least command, because they believed that obedience
| |
| to him would insure everlasting felicity. Had they doubted
| |
| this, they would not have acted as they did. So it is with
| |
| every belief, according to its degree. The feeling of believing
| |
| is a more or less sure indication of there being established
| |
| in our nature some habit which will determine our
| |
| actions. Doubt never has such an effect.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Nor must we overlook a third point of difference. Doubt
| |
| is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle
| |
| to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the
| |
| latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish
| |
| to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else.<a id='r30' /><a href='#f30' class='c011'><sup>[30]</sup></a> On
| |
| the contrary, we cling tenaciously, not merely to believing,
| |
| but to believing just what we do believe.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>Thus, both doubt and belief have positive effects upon us,
| |
| though very different ones. Belief does not make us act at
| |
| once, but puts us into such a condition that we shall behave
| |
| in a certain way, when the occasion arises. Doubt has not
| |
| the least effect of this sort, but stimulates us to action until
| |
| it is destroyed. This reminds us of the irritation of a nerve
| |
| and the reflex action produced thereby; while for the analogue
| |
| of belief, in the nervous system, we must look to what
| |
| are called nervous associations—for example, to that habit
| |
| of the nerves in consequence of which the smell of a peach
| |
| will make the mouth water.</p>
| |
| <div>
| |
| <span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>
| |
| <h4 class='c012'>IV</h4>
| |
| </div>
| |
| <p class='c006'>The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state
| |
| of belief. I shall term this struggle <i>inquiry</i>, though it must
| |
| be admitted that this is sometimes not a very apt
| |
| designation.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for
| |
| the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for us
| |
| that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our
| |
| actions so as to satisfy our desires; and this reflection will
| |
| make us reject any belief which does not seem to have been
| |
| so formed as to insure this result. But it will only do so
| |
| by creating a doubt in the place of that belief. With the
| |
| doubt, therefore, the struggle begins, and with the cessation
| |
| of doubt it ends. Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the
| |
| settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not
| |
| enough for us, and that we seek not merely an opinion,
| |
| but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it
| |
| proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached
| |
| we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be false or true.
| |
| And it is clear that nothing out of the sphere of our knowledge
| |
| can be our object, for nothing which does not affect
| |
| the mind can be a motive for a mental effort. The most
| |
| that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we
| |
| shall <i>think</i> to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs
| |
| to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>That the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry
| |
| is a very important proposition. It sweeps away, at once,
| |
| various vague and erroneous conceptions of proof. A few
| |
| of these may be noticed here.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>1. Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry
| |
| it was only necessary to utter or question or set it
| |
| down on paper, and have even recommended us to begin
| |
| our studies with questioning everything! But the mere
| |
| putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does
| |
| not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There
| |
| must be a real and living doubt, and without all this discussion
| |
| is idle.</p>
| |
| | |
| <p class='c005'>2. It is a very common idea that a demonstration must
| |
| rest on some ultimate and absolutely indubitable propositions.
| |
| These, according to one school, are first principles
| |
| of a general nature; according to another, are first sensations.
| |
| But, in point of fact, an inquiry, to have that completely
| |
| satisfactory result called demonstration, has only
| |
| to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual
| |
| doubt. If the premises are not in fact doubted at all, they
| |
| cannot be more satisfactory than they are.</p>
| |
|
| |
|
| </body> | | </body> |
