Pragmatism

An Introduction

Michael Bacon

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780745680675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Pragmatism in Philosophy

Pragmatism: An Introduction provides an account of the arguments of the central figures of the most important philosophical tradition in the American history of ideas, pragmatism. This wide-ranging and accessible study explores the work of the classical pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey, as well as more recent philosophers including Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, Cheryl Misak, and Robert B. Brandom.

Michael Bacon examines how pragmatists argue for the importance of connecting philosophy to practice. In so doing, they set themselves in opposition to many of the presumptions that have dominated philosophy since Descartes. The book demonstrates how pragmatists reject the Cartesian spectator theory of knowledge, in which the mind is viewed as seeking accurately to represent items in the world, and replace it with an understanding of truth and knowledge in terms of the roles they play within our social practices.

The book explores the diverse range of positions that have engendered marked and sometimes acrimonious disputes amongst pragmatists. Bacon identifies the themes underlying these differences, revealing a greater commonality than many commentators have recognized. The result is an illuminating narrative of a rich philosophical movement that will be of interest to students in philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas.

1

The Birth of Pragmatism: Charles Sanders Peirce and William James

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) trained as a chemist and worked intermittently as a scientist for much of his life. He saw no tension between philosophy and natural science, and indeed argues that philosophy should adopt the methods of the sciences. Peirce outlines the position which William James would later call pragmatism, but pragmatism is by no means the entirety of his philosophy; it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that there are few areas of inquiry about which he did not have something to say. His understanding of pragmatism is deliberately very narrow, conceived of exclusively as a theory of meaning. Yet, as such, it has important consequences for philosophy.

The spirit of Cartesianism

In 1868 Peirce published two essays in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy which form the background from which he was later to develop his understanding of pragmatism. The heart of these early papers is an examination of what he calls ‘the spirit of Cartesianism’ (Peirce, 1992: 28). In order to understand Peirce’s argument, it needs to be considered in the context of Descartes’ work. Descartes wrote in the intellectual climate forged by the emergence of the new sciences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The new sciences radically challenged the worldview of the Scholastics. The Scholastics had sought to harmonize Christianity with classical philosophy, in particular the work of Aristotle. The resulting picture of the world, which held that there was structure and purpose to nature, was one which the new sciences called into question. Descartes sought to demonstrate that, in overturning this image of the world, the new sciences could properly be seen as providing genuine knowledge.

Descartes offered a description of the mind as a private sphere separate from the external world, with knowledge understood as a matter of accurate representations of that world. This account of the mind generated a series of problems which have dominated modern philosophy. For, according to it, we are not in direct contact with objects in the world but only with our mental representations of those objects. We are imprisoned behind what Descartes called a ‘veil of ideas’ and must justify our confidence in thinking our mental representations correctly ‘picture’ the world. In this way, Descartes introduced into philosophy a radical form of scepticism by raising the question of whether we can know with certainty external reality. How might we be sure that we correctly represent the world? How indeed can we be sure of the existence of the external world at all?

In rejecting Scholastic accounts of scientific and metaphysical knowledge, Descartes identified certainty, understood as immunity from doubt, as a requirement of knowledge. If we can doubt a belief, any beliefs resting upon it for justification are undermined. Unless we can find a belief immune from doubt, we confront an ‘infinite regress’ which undermines our claims to knowledge. Such a belief must not rely on any other belief for justification, rendering it ‘basic’ (non-inferentially justified) and knowable ‘immediately’. The assumption that sense-experience is beyond doubt fails when faced with the Arch Deceiver, leading to radical scepticism. Descartes claimed, however, that we can have knowledge before experience, in the form of ‘clear and distinct perceptions’ which rest upon the indubitable foundation of the Cogito. He employed these in deductive arguments to answer the radical sceptic, using God as a guarantor of the reliability of sense-experience. In doing so he introduced the notion that only foundationalism – the belief that we can locate indubitable beliefs which can be known ‘immediately’ – can block radical scepticism. As we will see, pragmatists reject the very idea of immediate knowledge, and of the Cartesian picture of the mind and its relation to the world which gave rise to radical scepticism. Peirce writes: ‘Now without wishing 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’ (Peirce, 1992: 28).

In his early papers, Peirce allows that Cartesianism heralded an advance over medieval Scholasticism. However, he argues that it too needs to be questioned. Descartes had opened up an ontological dualism between mind and world, with knowledge seen as a matter of moving from the contents of our minds to construct a mental picture of the external world. Peirce’s objection takes the form of arguing that this picture is untrue to how humans actually confront and experience the world. He does so by calling into question the very idea of direct, non-inferential knowledge of the kind Descartes thought provided a foundation for other kinds of knowledge. There is no knowledge given immediately to us – or, in Peirce’s term, there is no ‘intuitive’ knowledge. Rather, knowledge presupposes interaction with the external world.

In the first of his essays, entitled ‘Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man’, Peirce begins by defining a ‘cognition’ as an object of thought, such as a concept or a judgement. Immediate cognitions, which Peirce calls ‘intuitions’, are objects of thought supposedly arrived at ‘independently of any previous knowledge and without reasoning from signs’ (Peirce, 1992: 11). Simply enough, Peirce rejects the idea of immediate awareness of cognitions. His opening argument is empirical. He acknowledges that everyone thinks that they have intuitions, as evidenced by their preparedness to distinguish them from beliefs which they can trace to alternative sources, such as their education or prior experience. This, however, tells us nothing about whether those beliefs really are intuitions rather than being inferences from other beliefs. He supports this with the observation that, as a matter of fact, different people (not to say philosophers) take different ideas to be intuitions.

But what of the apparently obvious intuition that we have intuitive (immediate) knowledge of our selves? This was the intuition that most impressed Descartes in his argument that no one can doubt that they are thinking. Peirce thinks this an unwarranted assumption. His argument is once again empirical: he points out that young children do not manifest self-consciousness, and that their first thoughts are directed outwards to the external world. Although conscious, the child only becomes self-conscious through interaction with their environment. On Peirce’s presentation, the child first builds up a picture of the world and only then develops a concept of themselves as individual selves. The notion of self stems in particular from the possibility of error, with the child’s interaction with the world giving rise to an understanding of the difference between what is wished for and what is actually the case.

A child hears it said that the stove is hot. But it is not, he says; and, indeed, that central body is not touching it, and only what that touches is hot or cold. But he touches it, and finds the testimony confirmed in a striking way. Thus, he becomes aware of ignorance, and it is necessary to suppose a self in which this ignorance can inhere. So testimony gives the first dawning of self-consciousness. (Peirce, 1992: 20)

Peirce’s understanding of these matters constitutes a complete reversal of the spirit of Cartesianism. For Descartes, the focus was upon one’s inner states of mind to which one purportedly has privileged access, and how, from there, one might came to possess knowledge of the external world. Peirce’s suggestion is that, despite its apparent plausibility, objects that might appear to be items of immediate awareness turn out to be the result of association between ideas and observations from the external world. This is not to deny that we are conscious beings, but is to say that our self-consciousness is built upon our knowledge of that world: ‘our whole knowledge of the internal world is derived from the observation of external facts’ (Peirce, 1992: 22).

The question remains of the possibility of knowledge of things which are apparently immediately before the mind, such as the appearance of colours or the flavours of foods. Peirce takes up this question by making a distinction which would become of great importance in twentieth-century philosophy, between knowledge and mere sensory awareness. In the case of knowledge of the colour red, Peirce writes: ‘If it be objected that the peculiar character of red is not determined by any previous cognition, I reply that that character is not a character of red as a cognition; for if there be a man to whom red things look as blue ones do to me and vice versa, that man’s eyes teach him the same facts that they would if he were like me’ (Peirce, 1992: 26). Knowledge of ‘red’, as distinct from awareness of the sensation of red, requires that one be in possession of the concept of red, and that capacity is one which is provided by one’s interaction with other people in the light of the external world.

One important element of the view that knowledge depends upon interaction with the external world is Peirce’s argument that all thought is in signs. Peirce claims that thought entails a three-way relationship, in which (i) a sign serves to represent (ii) an item or object to (iii) an ‘interpretant’. This three-way, or triadic, relationship contrasts with the Cartesian view that the meaning is a two-way relationship, a matter of how signs represent items in the world. In turn, Peirce argues that the meaning of a particular sign is a function of its role in a system of such signs. As we will see below, Peirce thought of pragmatism as the way to clarify the meaning of signs.

Bringing these considerations together, Peirce’s conclusion is that all cognitions are the result of previous cognitions. He acknowledges the attractiveness of the Cartesian belief in immediate knowledge, noting the apparent plausibility of the claim that ‘since we are in possession of cognitions, which are all determined by previous ones, and these by cognitions earlier still, there must have been a first in this series’ (Peirce, 1992: 25). However, despite its plausibility, he argues that there is no such thing as non-relational thought; there is no intuitive, or immediate, knowledge. Rather, knowledge is inferential:

We must begin, then, with a process of cognition, and with that process whose laws are best understood and most closely follow external facts. This is no other than the process of valid inference, which proceeds from its premise, A, to its conclusion, B, only if, as a matter of fact, such a proposition as B is always or usually true when such a proposition as A is true. (Peirce, 1992: 30)

Fallibilist anti-scepticism

Peirce denies the existence of Cartesian intuitions, something immediately given to the mind, which might serve as an epistemic foundation for knowledge. This, however, raises a problem, which is that it generates an infinite regress of the sort Descartes claimed to block. Peirce sketches his own response to this problem in his paper ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’, in which he develops his argument by engaging directly with Descartes. There he identifies several features which he labels Cartesian, and that he takes to be central to the history of modern philosophy.

The first of these features is that philosophy must begin with universal doubt. In Descartes’ method everything is doubted in an effort to identify which beliefs (if any) can survive. Peirce argues that this is a wholly artificial requirement, one which is untrue to what it actually is to experience doubt. He points out that in our lives, doubt is only occasioned in response to specific circumstances:

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 scepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt … 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. (Peirce, 1992: 28–9)

Peirce, as we have seen, argues that there are no foundations for knowledge of the kind Descartes sought, namely basic beliefs which can be known with certainty. Yet he thinks that we do have foundations for knowledge, in the sense of beliefs that have been established in inquiry and that are presently not in question. These he calls ‘prejudices’, beliefs we rely upon for our current purposes even though they may come to be revised or relinquished at some point in the future. Peirce’s argument effectively reverses the Cartesian burden of proof. Whereas Descartes granted the sceptic’s premise that we can only have knowledge if it is based upon an indubitable foundation, Peirce argues that it rests with the sceptic to give us reason to question our settled beliefs. Doubt of the kind Descartes invoked is dismissed by Peirce as ‘paper doubt’; for a doubt to be real, it must be one which we genuinely feel. In other words, Peirce sought an alternative to both dogmatism and scepticism, which he called ‘fallibilism’. While any particular belief might, in the course of inquiry, be upset and overturned, they are unproblematically relied upon until reason to question them is given.

Peirce develops his argument against Descartes by challenging his understanding of certainty. Descartes identified certainty as residing within the individual consciousness, with the result that the individual is the final judge of truth. This Peirce dismisses, claiming in its place that knowledge is arrived at through collective inquiry. Only in a community of inquirers can those beliefs which we currently rest upon be subjected to scrutiny and found to be secure (or revised if not): ‘We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers’ (Peirce, 1992: 29). As we will see in the next section, Peirce thinks this community must be committed to a specific method of inquiry.

The proposal that knowledge is the result of collective endeavour leads Peirce to a further objection to Cartesianism. This is made in response to Descartes’ claim that reasoning should be thought of as a single chain of inference leading back to epistemically basic intuitions (cognitions not inferred from other cognitions). Peirce argues that knowledge should be thought of rather as a collection of mutually supporting beliefs. Inquiry is not built up step by step from a single premise but is the result of many different findings: philosophy’s ‘reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibres may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected’ (Peirce, 1992: 29). The cable metaphor captures the combination of fallibilism and anti-scepticism that he thinks so important, for although any particular finding might be erroneous, this does not invalidate the entire structure of knowledge. Peirce’s argument in support of this idea is once again empirical, which is that it captures the way inquirers actually proceed in their investigations.

Fixing belief through inquiry

The papers published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy lay the groundwork for pragmatism without themselves mentioning the term. Peirce revisits these themes, again without reference to pragmatism, a decade later in essays published in the journal Popular Science Monthly. In ‘The Fixation of Belief’ (1877), he returns to the issue of the nature of belief and considers how it might be secured.

Peirce proceeds by contrasting belief with doubt. He adopts Alexander Bain’s view that a belief is that which one would be prepared to act upon, with doubt defined as the uneasy sense of dissatisfaction caused when acting according to that belief does not result in the anticipated consequences: ‘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’ (Peirce, 1992: 114). Inquiry is provoked not by belief but by doubt, and is undertaken in order to attain a belief that will bring about an end to doubt. Recalling his earlier argument, Peirce writes that doubt must be real, the kind one genuinely feels, rather than the hypothetical doubt that animated Descartes.

Furthermore, Peirce maintains that inquiry is exclusively a matter of securing beliefs which are free from doubt. He writes that: ‘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 true or false’ (Peirce, 1992: 114–15). That is to say, inquiry does not aim at truth but at security from doubt. If we reach a belief that answers doubt, we may call that belief true, but our doing so says nothing at all about whether the belief is in fact true: ‘The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so’ (Peirce, 1992: 115).

In saying that the object of inquiry is to bring about an end to doubt, Peirce raises the question of how exactly it might do so. For there are many ways in which we might silence doubt, some of which do not lead to what can meaningfully be described as knowledge – one might, for example, arrive at a belief simply by ignoring evidence that counts against it. Accordingly, Peirce set about examining the merits of different methods of ‘fixing belief’.

In ‘The Fixation of Belief’, Peirce claims that there are four methods of establishing belief or ‘settling opinion’. The first is the ‘method of tenacity’, in which one holds fast to a belief irrespective of the weight of evidence for or against it. The tenacious believer does so by actively avoiding encounters which will lead to their beliefs being called into question. The second method is the ‘method of authority’, in which the declarations of an authority, such as a government or religious institution, are taken to be fixed and final. This method is similar to that of tenacity in that in both cases belief is protected from reasons and evidence that challenge it, though in this case this is done not by an individual act of will but by an authority through means such as censorship and repression.

The method of tenacity and the method of authority are importantly similar, and similarly flawed. Both might temporarily fix belief, but Peirce claims that both tend to be unsuccessful in the long term. The method of tenacity fails in the face of the fact that the tenacious believer will have their confidence shaken because they will inevitably confront people, as intelligent and well-informed as themselves, who believe contrary things. The method of authority is more successful, evidenced by the success of religious and political authorities in establishing orthodoxy and stifling dissent. Yet despite the superiority of the method of authority over that of tenacity, it too ultimately cannot fix belief, because no authority is able to regulate opinion on all topics. And it is weakened still more once we see that society will contain people with a diversity of beliefs, something which will threaten any easy confidence we have in our own beliefs:

[People see] that men in other countries and in other ages hav...