Sveinbjorn Thordarson's Website

Charles Sanders Peirce is well known for the introduction of a scientific method as an epistemological method for dealing with philosophical questions. In his 1877 essay, "The Fixation of Belief"¹, Peirce advances the skeleton of such a theory, and expands on it in the follow-up "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"² (1878). In this paper I give an overview of his arguments for this theory and to examine and criticise where appropriate the epistemological realism on which it rests.

Peirce introduces the scientific method as a contrast to other methods of settling belief, such as settlling belief by way of authority, taste or undiscriminating stubborness. These methods, he maintains, are unsatisfactory in the long run, since they contain within themselves the seeds of eventual doubt -- we cannot contemplatively employ them without questioning the truth of our conclusions. Any method which seeks to establish the truth must have as its source something outside the community of inquirers -- it must aim at making our beliefs respond to something which is independent.

This leaves us with the method of science as the the only objective method of inquiry, for it presupposes a reality external to us, a real world of objects that exist and have certain properties regardless of our beliefs concerning them. This is the "Hypothesis of Reality", namely that

By the method of science, a communal process of inductive inference, Peirce maintains that we can ultimately discover the truth about things. Our minds, different as they may be, are constrained by a "force outside of themselves"⁴ (i.e. our experience of reality) and ultimately carried to "one and the same conclusion". While scientists may very well obtain a variety of different and conflicting results in their inquiries, they will, as a community of inquirers, slowly and surely converge "toward a destined center"⁵. That center is the truth of the matter.

Peirce advances four arguments in favour of this theory. I shall start by giving an overview of the arguments. The first argument is the following:

In other words, no valid inductive inference we make can lead us to doubt the existence of external objects. From this we are to concede that the method of science cannot disprove the hypothesis which it supposedly presupposes, i.e. the Hypothesis of Reality. Other methods of inquiry, e.g. the method of accepting truths from a higher authority such as the state, can eventually lead us to doubt the source of truths.

We now come to the second argument:

This second argument leaves itself open to different interpretations. If my interpretation is correct, Peirce is saying that if our propositions did not, in some sense, represent external objects, we would be perfectly happy to accept two conflicting propositions -- we would not feel compelled to conduct an inquiry in order to determine which of them is correct, for there would be no reason for inconsistency to be a source of discomfort. Since we do conduct inquiries when presented with conflicting propositions, it follows that we wish to remain free of inconsistencies. Our belief in a given proposition thus implies the existence of something external which makes that proposition true or false. In other words, "doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction" if no mapping between our propositions and an external permanency would obtain. From this we may then deduce that the propositions we believe to be true are always checked by our experiences -- i.e. a world of external objects. Finally, the existence of an external permanency accessible to all inquirers makes the method of science a public method; it does not rely on characteristics peculiar to the inquirer. Hence "the social impulse does not cause men to doubt it".

We now come to the third and fourth arguments, both of which are of an empirical kind:

and

Arguments 3) and 4) are, I believe, not really relevant to the discussion at hand, and do not serve any great role in the thrust of Peirce's argumentation. The generalisation that everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things does not, I must say, belong in a philosophical discussion about its merits, and it is certainly not a particularly convincing argument in favour of it. Nor can we, as in the fourth argument, appeal to empirical data in support of an epistemological theory without begging the question. And while the scientific method may very well have proven itself to be a good method of settling opinion, this does not at all indicate that it is correct. Perhaps, taken in the context of Peirce's conception of the convergence of opinion as the truth limit, it might serve as a pragmatic supporting argument in favor of the method of science, but it does not, by itself, support his Hypothesis of Reality. Consequently, Peirce's realism must rest on the first two arguments. What, then, are we to make of these arguments?

Let us begin by examining argument 1). This argument supports the Hypothesis of Reality by way of exclusion -- methods other than that of science are inconsistent and lead to doubt, so we reject them as being unsuitable in the long run. The method of science, by itself, gives us no cause to doubt it, so why should we? And if the method of science presupposes the Hypothesis of Reality, why should we doubt it either? Bluntly speaking, Peirce is simply passing the ball to the skeptic. Given Peirce's position concerning doubt, namely that "putting [...] a proposition into the interrogative form"¹⁰ is not enough, that there must be "a real and living doubt", and furthermore, that one "has only to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual doubt", it is clear that the skeptic has his work cut out for him -- he must give a reason for us to doubt the scientific method. But surely the burden of proof rests with the person making the claim. Why should the skeptic prove a negative?

Then there is the question of how alternative methods of inquiry fail to "remain in harmony" with the "conception on which they are based". Peirce unfortunately does not elaborate on this, and it is not at all clear what conceptions he thinks other methods (such as those of authority) are based on.

Robert Almeder points out¹¹ that by combining argument 1) with Peirce's claim that the method of science presupposes the Hypothesis of Reality, we can construct the following argument:

This is a valid argument, but P1 is problematic. Although this argument demonstrates that the Hypothesis of Reality is a sufficient condition for accepting the scientific method as a source of knowledge, it does not demonstrate that it is a necessary condition. Indeed, the everyday physical object language used in the process of employing the scientific method might be construed as being ontologically neutral, a mere linguistic convenience which does not actually commit us to the Hypothesis of Reality. If this objection holds and the physical object language of science can in fact be translated with corresponding truth values into another language with different ontological commitments, the scientific method might be made to rest on an altogether different hypothesis. This is something which Peirce would have to address in order for the argument to stand.

With P2, we again run into Peirce's conception of doubt as a lynchpin in his method of arguing -- he refuses to acknowledge the starting point of the Cartesian doubter. We may not, as Peirce says, have any good reason to question the scientific method as a source of knowledge, but the skeptic can comfortably reply that we do not have any good a priori reasons to suppose the method true either. Given that fact that empirical reasons for the scientific method of inquiry presuppose the method itself and lead to a circular justification for it, we would seem to have a conundrum. Whether we can ignore the skeptic's objections depends entirely on our willingness to accept Peirce's claims that one "has only to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual doubt"¹² and that "we cannot begin with complete doubt."¹³

Let us move on to argument 2). This argument is puzzling, and leaves much to be read between the lines. When Peirce maintains that "dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions" gives rise to methods of fixing belief, he seems to be saying that if we conduct inquiries at all, we must find it unacceptable, or at least dissatisfactory, to hold beliefs that are in conflict with one another. From a scientist's point of view, this might be exemplified by how theories are revised when they run counter to empirical results. But why should we find conflicting beliefs unacceptable if we do not accept the Hypothesis of Reality? If our beliefs did not represent anything, we could hold contrary beliefs without discomfort. From this, he deduces that "nobody [who wants to have consistent beliefs] can really doubt that there are reals".

Apart from the fact that is not obvious that people in general do want to hold consistent beliefs, we run up against the problem of consistency within a framework of beliefs when we examine this idea of experiential constraint. A given set of beliefs acquired by a method other than that of science can be fully inter-consistent (e.g. Catholic dogma or, say, an elaborate system of idealist metaphysics). Peirce needs to introduce involuntary beliefs, beliefs that must clash with any method of inquiry which is not based on the Hypothesis of Reality. His candidate for this role is our sensory experience, which he regards as compulsory, in the sense that there is no element of free will involved. If I see an elephant in front of me, I see it whether I want to or not. I cannot "will" it away, regardless of how this experience fits in with any preconceived ideas I may have (e.g. that elephants do not exist). Thus, we can appeal to independent experience as always acting in a constraining fashion on our beliefs, whatever the methods of inquiry we adopt. This seems to support Peirce's contention that other methods contain within themselves seeds of doubt, as a set of beliefs based on a non-scientific method will eventually bump into the constraints of experience.

It is, however, quite possible to argue that the method of science must not be constrained in this way. Philosophers such as Paul Feyerabend have attacked the idea that scientific theories can be constrained by empirical evidence against them. If Feyerabend is correct, then Peirce's idea of constraint via experience cannot provide a basis for our belief in the Hypothesis of Reality.

Argument 2), on its own, appears to propose a variant of a correspondence theory of truth. It is hard to see how this fits in with Peirce claim that the real is not only that which exists and has certain properties independent of our beliefs about them, but also the belief which a community of inquirers employing the scientific method will ultimately agree on. Reality is, in this conception, both something ontologically distinct from our minds, and yet also an ultimate belief. Peirce certainly makes no attempt to reconcile the two in the early essays, leaving us to look to his other writings for answers as to how this reconciliation is to be made.

In conclusion, the arguments presented by Peirce in these early articles clearly reflect a developing (but still underdeveloped) line of thought. There is a plethora of unspoken assumptions behind the steps of the arguments which makes them difficult to piece together for critical analysis. Certainly he expands considerably on the underlying ideas in later works, but the arguments as they stand do not constitute an adequate defense of the Hypothesis of Reality.

Reykjavík, December 9th 2005

Sveinbjorn Thordarson

Endnotes

1. FOB
2. HMOIC
3. FOB p. 120
4. HMOIC p. 138
5. HMOIC p. 139
6. FOB p. 120
7. FOB p. 120
8. FOB p. 120
9. FOB p. 120
10. FOB p. 115
11. PCI p. 111
12. FOB p. 115
13. SCFI p. 28

Sources

Peirce, Charles S. "The Fixation of Belief" p. 109 in The Essential Peirce: Volume I (1867-1893) Ed. Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, Indiana University Press, United States 1992 (FOB)

Peirce, Charles S. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" p. 109 in The Essential Peirce: Volume I (1867-1893) Ed. Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, Indiana University Press, United States 1992 (HMOIC)

Peirce, Charles S. "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" p. 28 in The Essential Peirce: Volume I (1867-1893) Ed. Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel, Indiana University Press, United States 1992 (SCFI)

Almeder, Robert The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce: A Critical Introduction, 1st edition, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, United Kingdom 1980 (PCI)

Savan, David "Peirce and Idealism" p. 315 in Peirce and Contemporary Thought: Philosophical Inquiries, 1st edition, Ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Fordham University Press, New York, United States 1995 (SD)