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A Peircean Perspective
Web sites Devoted to Peirce:
Peirce.org
Indiana University's Peirce Edition Project
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Peirce
Digital Encyclopedia of Peirce
Philosophy Pages: Peirce
The Philosophy Guide: Peirce
Angelfire.com: Peirce
Questia Library: Online Books on Peirce
Lists of Links to Peirce and Peirce related sites:
International Peirce Telecommunity
Links to other sites, from IU Peirce project
EpistemeLinks: Philosophy Resources on the Internet
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is one of the most important thinkers in modern philosophy, and while receiving some attention in his day, much of his work remained unpublished while he was alive and interest in him has increased immensely since his death. As one of the primary American pragmatists, Peirce influenced William James, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce during his lifetime. Since then, he has had even more effects on philosophers and thinkers in many other fields -- including Walker Percy. Peirce's diverse talents manifested themselves in many fields -- he was a scientist, mathematician, logician, linguist, writer, reviewer, psychologist, and historian. (For more information on his life, see Indiana University's Peirce project bio.)
A brief summary of some of his main philosophical ideas follows; for a more complete study of Peirce, as well as links to other sites and some full-text papers, see the links above.
The first concept of Peirce's that must be understood is his idea of "The Fixation of Belief." In Peirce's words: "That which determines us, from given premisses, to draw one inference rather than another, is some habit of mind, whether it is constitutional or acquired" (Peirce 8). In other words, we tend to think or believe a certain way, and draw conclusions from the facts and statements given to us, on the basis of HABIT -- we have thought that way before, we have walked that path before, and so our first inclination when presented with a new or similar situation is to do the same thing again. (And the more we engage in a path or course of action, the more likely we are to do so in the future.)
In addition, humans are driven to "fix" their belief -- to come to a feeling of certainty and decision on any given subject. There are essentially only two mental states: "doubt" and "belief". Both are positive states in different ways. The state of doubt, while useful in that it predisposes us to question and examine the topic at hand, is extremely uncomfortable for us, and we are compelled by an inner need to resolve it -- to leave the state of doubt, and enter the state of belief, which is much more comfortable for us. Doubt causes "thought," which is mental action aimed to come to a state of belief (a decision about the way things are, which then presupposes us to act in a certain way). When doubt ceases, thought (regarding that particular subject) then ceases.
There are four ways to leave a state of "doubt," that is, to "fix" our belief. These are the method of tenacity, the method of authority, the a prior method, and the method of science.
The method of tenacity means to simply continue believing the way we have always believed and not to accept any new belief that contradicts our previously held beliefs. The problem here is that this does not cause our beliefs to approximate reality, and the social impulse, which exposes us to other people's thoughts, will cause us to be swayed from our held traditionally beliefs. The method of authority is to believe something because some authority has told us to believe that way, or told us that such things are so. Examples might be the church, our community, a teacher, or governmental authority. The method of authority can be voluntarily employed or it may be forced on us, such as has happened in some communist societies, or at times in the history of the Catholic church. This method fails on many counts. The a prior method, while more desirable than the previous two, is also inadequate. It arises from thinkers conversing with each other and coming to conclusions and systems of thought based simply on what seems "agreeable to reason" (15) or harmonious and artistically pleasing. The problem, for Peirce, with this is that this method of fixing our beliefs most often has no basis in any observed facts.
The method of science is the best way of "fixing belief." It is the only method that can distinguish between right and wrong beliefs. Peirce says there is a "reality," a real world out there, which "affect[s] our senses according to regular laws" (18), and by examining it objectively with our senses, we can know how things really are. (Peirce also says in a later essay that things exist whether any mind is present to perceive or understand them, and whether any mind is capable of knowing they exist.) Peirce writes, "To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect" (18). So the method of science also settles differences in opinions, since everyone exists in and examines the same reality, they must come to the same conclusions if using the same scientific method.
Peirce elaborates in his essay, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." The state of doubt is the cause of thought -- the purpose of thought is to resolve doubt and bring us into a state of belief. Once we are in that state, our thought on that subject will end. Peirce explains, "The soul and meaning of thought...is the production of belief" (9). Furthermore, belief predisposes us to act in a certain way; it produces "habits of action" (30). All of our actions are results of beliefs. Peirce says, "The essence of belief is the establishment of habit" (29). While belief will not necessarily cause us to immediately go out and act in such-and-such a way, it will cause us to act in a certain way when the appropriate situation comes up. Any action we take will of necessity have an underlying belief that causes that action; conversely, we cannot act in a certain way unless we have a previous belief that is the source of that action and predisposes us to act in that way.
He continues in this essay, in a clear criticism of Descartes' dualism, revealing his pragmatic bases: "It is [impossible] that we should have an idea in our mind that relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything IS its sensible effects" (31). We come to our conclusions about what things are and the way things are by experiencing them physically. For example, he says, our idea of an object being "hard" as opposed to "soft" arises solely from our having the physical sensation of the object's hardness or softness. So physical experience forms our ideas, and conversely, our ideas affect our actions in the physical world. How things will act in the real world is their idea and their definition. Peirce explains the idea of "weight": "to say that a body is heavy means simply that, in the absence of an opposing force it will fall" (33). Unlike some philosophers, Peirce believes there is an external reality which really exists: "we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be" (36).
The problem is thus how to distinguish between true beliefs from false beliefs. True beliefs approximate, correspond to, describe the "real" world; false beliefs do not. For our world view to correspond to reality, Peirce says we must use only ONE method of fixing our beliefs: The Method of Science. The methods of tenacity, authority, and "a priori" will produce false beliefs except by accident. In addition, the method of science resolves arguments about contradictory beliefs; reality is independent and external from what any man may think about it, and when examined and discovered and described by science, will cause our ideas to conform to each other as our ideas begin to conform more closely to the real world.
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