Transforming philosophy into a science: A debilitating chimera or a realizable desideratum?

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 72, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 245-278

  Colapietro, Vincent M ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 24344491718     PISSN: 10513558     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/acpq199872218     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Peirce's self-identification as a scientist needs to be stressed, and his understanding of science clarified. See my article on "Peirce the Contrite Fallibilist, Convinced Pragmaticist, and Critical Commonsensist" in Semiotica 111:1/2: 75-101.
2. In "What Pragmatism Is" (1905), Peirce himself suggested that "every physicist, and every chemist, and, in short, every master in any department of experimental science, has had his mind moulded by his life in the laboratory to a degree that is little suspected" 5.411.
3. All citations from The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1931-1958), volumes 1-6 edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, volumes 7 & 8 edited by Arthur W. Burks, will be made in accord with the established convention of Peirce scholarship; for example, 5.411 refers to volume 5, paragraph 411. The disposition of such a mind is "to think everything just as everything is thought of in the laboratory, that is, as a question of experimentation." He then added: "That laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who ⋯ simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and determined by accidental prepossessions ⋯ he sometimes came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which has been true of other laboratory men" (5.412). By "science" Peirce does not mean scientia in its classical sense, that is, demonstrative knowledge ultimately based upon indubitable premises or principles. Rather "it is necessary to consider science as living, and therefore not as knowledge already acquired but as the concrete life of the men [and women] who are working to find out the truth" (7.50). Peirce obviously takes the idea of science to be "inseparably bound up with that of a life devoted to single-minded inquiry. That is also the way in which every scientific man thinks about science⋯. Science is to mean for us a mode of life whose single animating purpose is to find out the real truth, which pursues this purpose with a well-considered method, founded on thorough acquaintance with such results already ascertained by others as may be available, and which seeks cooperation in the hope that the truth may be found, if not by any of the actual inquirers [working today], yet ultimately by those who come after them and who shall make use of their results. It makes no difference how imperfect a man's knowledge may be, how mixed with error and prejudice;yrom the moment that he engages in an inquiry in the spirit described [emphasis added], that which occupies him is science ⋯" (7.54; see 6.428).
4. In "Knowing as a Passionate and Personal Quest: C. S. Peirce" in American Philosophy and the Future, ed. Michael Novak (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968), David B. Burrell identifies, highlights, and explicates the most important aspects of human knowing as a passionate quest and, though a communal enterprise, a personal undertaking. This essay is seldom cited by scholars of Peirce, but it nonetheless remains thirty years after its publication an illuminating paper.
5. Regarding the evolving aims, methods and paradigms of science, see T. L. Short's contribution to this special issue of ACPQ ("The Discovery of Scientific Aims and Methods");
6. also his "Peirce and the Incommensurability of Theories," in The Relevance of Peirce, ed. Eugene Freeman (La Salle, IL: The Monist Library, 1983), 119-31.
7. Regarding the formation of character, see Walter P. Krolikowski, S.J., "The Peircean Vir," Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Edward C. Moore and Richard S. Robin (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964), 257-70. This theme is also deftly conceived by one of the most important living Peirce scholars. In "Semiotic Objectivity" Joseph Ransdell suggests that there is a conception of science according to which "science is primarily a code of conduct-something rather more like a code of honor than like a linguistic code-which is constitutive of an ideal and shared form of life, that ethic being derived logically from an analysis of how we must relate to one another communicationally if we are to achieve our common goal of a shared understanding of our subject matter. It is, if you will, a semiotic conception of objectivity and science." Semiotica, vol. 26, nos. 3/4 (1979): 266-67. But the code in this case is largely a codification of the virtues (that is, the habits) deemed constitutive of the role; just as being a soldier requires courage, being a scientist itself requires a form of courage, a form closely allied to humility (a form of courage which shows itself primarily in one's disposition to admit to oneself and one's co-inquirers one's errors, ignorance, oversights, etc.), veracity, and a host of other virtues.
8. Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 211-14. Hereafter cited as Rorty.
9. See Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 203.
10. In a letter to Victoria Lady Welby (December 23, 1908), Peirce wrote: "I say the creed in church with the rest. By doing so I only signify, as I presume the majority do,-I hope they do-my willingness to put aside, most heartily, anything that tends to separate me from my fellow christians. For the very ground of my criticism of creeds is that every one of them was originally designed to produce such a separation, contrary to the notions of him who said 'He that is not against me is for me'" (SS 78). All references to Semiotic and Signifies: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, ed. Charles S. Hardwick (Blooming, IN: Indiana University Press, 1977) will be in accord with established practice;
11. for example, SS refers to Semiotic and Signifies, the number to the page in this work. See Donna Orange, Peirce's Conception of God: A Developmental Study (Lubbock, TX: Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, 1984), 45-46. In this same letter to Lady Welby, Peirce went so far as to suggest: "Every true man of science, that is, every man belonging to a social group, all the members of which sacrifice all the ordinary motives of life to their desire to make their beliefs concerning one subject conform to verified judgments of perception together with sound reasoning, and who therefore really believes the universe to be governed by reason, or in other words by God, ⋯ has Faith in God, according to my use of the term God" (SS 75).
12. Again see Orange, Peirce 's Conception of God.
13. See Cheryl Misak, "Pragmatism and the Transcendental Turn in Ethics," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, volume XXX (1994): 739-75.
14. Burrell, "Knowing as a Passionate and Personal Quest," 134.
15. Letter quoted in Ralph Barton, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1935), volume II, p. 438. (Hereafter this work by Perry will be cited as TCWJ) But Peirce also noted: "The fallacy of over-precision ⋯ may be called the Philosopher's Fallacy" (8.244). Somewhat allied to this is his belief that "we naturally make all our distinctions too absolute" (7.438). It is instructive also to note that, in another context (that is, a relationship with someone other than Peirce), James proclaimed: "Technical writing on philosophical subjects, meanwhile, is certainly a crime against the human race!" (TCWJ, II, 387)
16. See Kenneth Laine Ketner, "Peirce's Ethics of Terminology" in Transactions of the Charles S Peirce Society, volume XVII, no. 4, 1981 (Fall): 327-47;
17. also Klaus Oehler, "The Significance of Peirce's Ethics of Terminology for Contemporary Lexicography in Semiotics" in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, volume XVII, no. 4, 1981 (Fall): 348-57; finally, John Deely's contribution to this special issue of ACPQ.
18. See Ransdell, "Semiotic Objectivity," 266.
19. One of the texts in which Peirce delineates this process of purification is, in fact, in a review of Ernst Mach's The Science of Mechanics! There Peirce pointed out: "The proposition that all our knowledge rests upon and represents experience is nowadays accepted by sensualists and their opponents alike, the latter [in fact, the group with which Peirce himself identified] taking 'experience,' in its ultimate sense, for whatever has been forced upon our minds, willy-nilly, in the course of our intellectual history.
20. To major force [that is, force majeure; see, for example; 5.581] we can only submit, and it is idle to dispute the reality of such things as food, money, beds, shoes, friends, enemies, sunshine, etc. But the anti-sensualists, or perhaps the most advanced of them, say that, having once surrendered to the power of nature, and having allowed the futile ego on some measure to dissolve, man at once finds himself in synectic union with the circumambient non-ego, and partakes in its triumphs. On the simple condition of obedience to the laws of nature, he can satisfy many of his selfish desires; a further surrender will bring him the higher delight of realizing to some extent his ideas; a still further surrender confers upon him the function of cooperating with nature and the course of things to grow new ideas and institutions. Almost everybody will admit there is truth in this: the question is how fundamental that truth may be." Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to the Nation, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner and James Edward Cook (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech Press, 1975), Part I (1869-1893), 188-89. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate how fundamental a truth Peirce himself took this to be. In another context, he confessed that he hoped some power of truth was resident in his theory, "because it has been conceived in a spirit of utter surrender to the force majeure of Experience, or the Course of Life; and it is through such self-abnegation that all power comes" Bibliography in volume 8 of Collected Papers, 283. But such abnegation is not a single act but a series of self-surrenders in which the form of power consequent upon self-surrender at one level is different, perhaps even dramatically different, from the form of power at a different level of self-abnegation.
21. see Beverley Kent's, Charles S. Peirce: Logic and the Classification of Sciences (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987).
22. See T. L. Short, "On Hermeticism in Semiotics" in The Peirce Seminar Papers, Volume II, ed. Michael Shapiro and Michael Haley (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1994), 231-59.
23. In this connection, Frederick Crews in Skeptical Engagements (NY: Oxford University Press, 1986) draws an important distinction. After defining theoreticism as "frank recourse to unsubstantiated theory, not just as a tool of investigation but as anti-empirical knowledge in its own right," he goes on to suggest that: "To appreciate the theoreticist climate, it is essential to recognize a distinction between two related conceptions of experience," 164. "The empiricism that stands in some jeopardy today is simply a regard for evidence - a disposition to consult ascertainable facts when choosing between rival ideas [or theories]. In practice, of course, the individual investigator never collects enough evidence to guarantee that a given idea [or hypothesis] is the best one going. Consequently, the heart of empiricism consists of active participation in a community of informed people who themselves care and who can be counted on for unsparing criticism" (ibid; emphasis added).
24. See Cornel West, Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (NY: Routledge, 1993), 89.
25. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, volume 2 (1893-1913), ed. the Peirce Edition Project (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 452-53.
26. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1965), 309.
27. "Descartes marks the period when Philosophy put off childish things and began to be a conceited young man. By the time the young man has grown to be an old man, he will have learned that traditions are precious treasures, while iconoclastic inventions are always cheap and often nasty. He will learn that when one's opinion is besieged and one is pushed by questions from one reason to another behind it, there is nothing illogical in saying at last, 'Well, this is what we have always thought; this has been assumed for thousands of years without inconvenience.' The childishness only comes in when tradition, instead of being respected, is treated as something infallible before which the reason of man is to prostrate itself, and which it is shocking to deny" (4.71); see my essay "Tradition: First Steps Toward a Pragmaticistic Clarification" in Philosophy in Experience, ed. Richard Hart & Douglas Anderson (NY: Fordham University Press, 1997), 14-45. There are occasions when Peirce pushed this point regarding some of our traditions to an extreme at odds with his comment about prostrating our reason before tradition. For example, he wrote: "The system of morals is the traditional wisdom of ages of experience. If a man cuts loose from it, he will become the victim of his passions. It is not safe for him even to reason about it, except in a purely speculative way. Hence, morality is essentially conservative" 1.50.
28. "General Theories, Vague Utterances, and Fruitful Inquires" in Peirce 's Doctrine of Signs, ed. Thomas Olshwesky and Vincent Colapietro (Berlin: Mouton de Griuyter, 1996), 9-11.
29. See Charles S. Peirce, "An Essay toward Reasoning in Security and Uberty" in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, volume 2 (1893-1913), ed. the Peirce Edition Project (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 463-74.
30. Smith, The Spirit of American Philosophy, Revised Edition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983), 237.
31. In The World and the Individual (NY: Macmillan, 1899), Josiah Royce in effect also insists upon the need for a twofold vocabulary, noting in volume I: "Technical metaphysics, like all other learned enterprises, has its foundations in just such linguistic folk-lore, so to speak, as [such everyday locutions as to be genuine or to be well-founded]" 55. One "easily misapprehends the philosophers if one fails to observe whence they got their vocabulary." For reminding me of this important parallel between Peirce and Royce as well as for offering other helpful comments, I am indebted to Doug Anderson.
32. The modesty of this proposal is perhaps best seen if the proposal is taken to be a request to incorporate into philosophy "something of that cooperative tendency toward consensus which marks inquiry in the natural sciences." Though John Dewey (the author from whom these words are taken) tends to think in terms of method rather than ethos, what he says here is highly instructive: "The adoption of an empirical method is no guarantee that all the things relevant to any particular conclusion will actually be found or pointed to⋯. But the empirical method points out when and where and how things of a designated description have been arrived at. It places before others a map of the road that has been travelled; they may accordingly, if they will, re-travel the road to inspect the landscape for themselves. Thus the findings of one may be rectified and extended by the findings of others, with as much assurance as is humanly possible of confirmation, extension and rectification. The adoption of empirical, or denotative, method would thus procure for philosophic reflection something of that cooperative tendency toward consensus which marks inquiry in the natural sciences. The scientific investigator convinces others not by the plausibility of his definitions and the cogency of his dialectic, but by placing before them the specified course of experiences of searchings, doings and findings in consequence of which certain things have been found." The Later Works of John Dewey, (volume 1), ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: SIU Press, 1981), 389-90.
33. See Krolikowski, "The Peircean Vir";
34. also my Peirce1 s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Approach to Human Subjectivity (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989), 96-97.