Peirce's Account of Purposefulness

A Kantian Perspective

Gabriele Gava

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415731812
• eBook ISBN: 9781317910275
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

This book presents a systematic interpretation of Charles S. Peirce's work based on a Kantian understanding of his teleological account of thought and inquiry. Departing from readings that contrast Peirce's treatment of purpose, end, and teleology with his early studies of Kant, Gabriele Gava instead argues that focusing on Peirce's purposefulness as a necessary regulative (in the Kantian sense) condition for inquiry and semiotic processes allows for a transcendental interpretation of Peirce's philosophical project. The author advances this interpretation through presenting original views on aspects of Peirce's thought, including: a detailed analysis of Peirce's 'methodeutic' and 'speculative rhetoric, ' as well as his 'critical common-sensism'; a comparison between Peirce's and James' pragmatisms in view of the account of purposefulness Gava puts forth; and an examination of the logical relationships that order Peirce's architectonic classification of the sciences.

1 The Architectonic and the Fundamental Elements of Thought and Sign Processes

In the past, Peirce has been criticized for having developed a philosophy flawed at the heart due to the endorsement of incoherent and conflicting doctrines and principles.¹ However, since at least Paul Weiss’s article, “The Essence of Peirce’s System,”² the architectonic way in which Peirce approached his work has been emphasized.³ Peirce was strongly interested in clarifying the relationships among the different results of his research and in drawing general conclusions concerning his system, following these clarifications. For this reason, trying to analyze a particular aspect of Peirce’s philosophy without a general idea of the whole of his system is a doomed enterprise.

As far as my intention in this study is to investigate Peirce’s account of purposefulness, in this chapter I will provide a general survey of Peirce’s classification of the sciences (his most important architectonic edifice) in order to discover the role played by purposefulness in his system. In so doing, I do not want to give a detailed elucidation of the sciences in Peirce’s scheme, for this elucidation has been well developed by other commentators.⁴ By contrast, I will limit my attention to an exposition of the relationships among the different objects studied by philosophy, giving particular attention to the branches of the latter that investigate thought and sign processes. However, in order to clarify these relationships, a detailed analysis of Peirce’s categories and of the methods he used to identify them will be necessary. Peirce arranged his classification of the sciences according to his three categories, and only a consideration of them and of their relationships with one another can allow us to gain a proper understanding of Peirce’s architectonic.

But before we start with the consideration of the categories, it is useful to notice that Peirce’s classification of the sciences is itself an instantiation of purposefulness. That is to say, in classifying the sciences, we purposefully arrange them according to an idea that provides a principle according to which we can see the different sciences as parts of a unitary whole. It is no wonder that Peirce lists the principle of classification (not only of the sciences but of every kind of object) among the interests of methodeutic,⁵ that is, the science most interested in the principles of the purposeful development of thought. Peirce inherits this idea of architectonic from Kant, and, accordingly, he states:

[p]ragmatism was not a theory which special circumstances had led its authors to entertain. It had been designed and constructed, to use the expression of Kant, architectonically. Just as a civil engineer, before erecting a bridge, a ship, or a house, will think of the different properties of all materials, and will use no iron, stone, or cement, that has not been subjected to tests; and will put them together in ways minutely considered, so, in constructing the doctrine of pragmatism the properties of all indecomposable concepts were examined and the ways in which they could be compounded. Then the purpose of the proposed doctrine having been analyzed, it was constructed out of the appropriate concepts so as to fulfill that purpose (CP 5.5, c.1905).⁶

So Peirce, in accordance with Kant, states that in developing a theory or a classification we should have a plan in view and carry out our reasoning systematically.⁷

Peirce’s project is far more ambitious than the Kantian one, though. He does not limit himself to an analysis of philosophy but wishes to classify the whole of the sciences. Unlike Kant, whose main interest was an architectonic of pure reason, Peirce aimed at a classification of the various results of reason in its entirety. So philosophy, as a study of the fundamental elements of thought, sign processes, and nature, is only a minor part of Peirce’s projected scheme. In this respect, Peirce listed as predecessors of his classificatory enterprise such thinkers as William Whewell, Herbert Spencer, and Alexander von Humboldt (EP 2:258–259, 458), even if Auguste Comte was surely the most frequent reference. There is another point to note that distinguishes Peirce’s project from Kant’s and that is a direct consequence of his attention to the sciences in their entirety: Peirce stresses that his classification is a classification of the actual inquiries scientists of his time were undertaking.

This Classification, which aims to base itself on the principal affinities of the object classified, is concerned not with all possible sciences, nor with so many branches of knowledge, but with sciences in their present condition, as so many businesses of groups of living men (EP 2:258, 1903).

Thus, Peirce’s classification aims to be an essentially historical enterprise, due to its attention to the sciences in their actual existence. The emergence of new fields of research gives rise to new disciplines, which need to be placed in the scheme. However, it is equally possible that those new disciplines are destined to perish, and other ones to take their place. So it is obvious that a science aiming at classifying living objects such as the sciences cannot but declare itself to be a historical and fallible endeavor, tied up with inquiries forever subject to changes.

If the classification of the sciences is thus itself a purposeful undertaking that put historically determined sciences into a systematic whole, we should now consider a fundamental aspect of this classification that I have already mentioned, that is, its triadic ordering. This was a consequence of Peirce’s three categories: firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Peirce began to apply his three categories to a consideration of the sciences sometime after his project “A Guess at the Riddle” (W 6:166–210, 1887–8), where he claims that:

[t]he undertaking which this volume inaugurates is to make a philosophy like that of Aristotle, that is to say, to outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long time to come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy of every school and kind, in mathematics, in psychology, in physical science, in history, in sociology, and in whatever other department there may be, shall appear as the filling up of its details. The first step toward this is to find simple concepts applicable to every subject (W 6:168–9, 1887–8).

Naturally, these concepts were “no more than the ideas of First, Second, and Third” (W 6:169, 1887–8).⁸

Thus, a survey of Peirce’s categories is essential for understanding the relationships involved in his classification. However, the categories do not simply explain why Peirce arranges the sciences in groups of three. Rather, they provide an essential framework to understanding the various kinds of logical relationships existing among the sciences. It is thus to an analysis of Peirce’s categories and of their mutual relationships that we now turn.

1.1 THE THREE FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES

Peirce introduced a triadic list of fundamental elements of thought quite early in his career, when he used to indicate them by means of the personal pronouns I, It, and Thou (see, for example, MS 1141, 1857; W 1:45–6, 1861).⁹ However, it is generally acknowledged that the first well articulated and argumentatively strong exposition of the categories is to be found in the 1867 article “A New List of Categories.”

1.1.1 The Categories in the “New List”

In “A New List of Categories” Peirce tried to identify the universal conceptions that are necessary to unify the manifold of sense impression. He accepted as a premise the Kantian theory that some fundamental concepts are required in order to give unity to the manifold of intuition. Thus, he began his article asserting: “[t]his paper is based upon the theory already established, that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold of sensuous impression to unity” (W 2:49). Peirce seems also to take from Kant the idea that, in order to identify these universal conceptions, we need to begin with an analysis of propositions. So he said, “[t]he unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is the unity of a proposition” (W 2:49). However, unlike Kant, he thought that every fundamental conception had to be present in order to render any cognition valid,¹⁰ while he describes Kant’s position as stressing that only one category out of each of the four groups Kant identifies must be used in a determinate judgment (EP 2:148).

Let us now turn to the analysis of Peirce’s argument.¹¹ As we have just seen, Peirce assumed that the role of a conception is that of reducing the manifold of sensation to unity. Therefore, he began his analysis with the conception that is closest to that manifold.

That universal conception which is nearest to sense is that of the present, in general. This is a conception, because it is universal. . . . Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of substance (W 2:49).

Substance is thus the first essential conception required to give unity to the manifold. As such, it can be seen as the material condition of a proposition; that is, it is equivalent to the possibility of recognizing something to denote. Next to substance comes being, which is the conception that makes it possible to introduce a predicate in a proposition. As such, being is the conception that is responsible for the introduction of unity in the proposition and that is equivalent to the copula.

This unity consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject; and, therefore, that which is implied in the copula, or the conception of being, is that which completes the work of reducing the manifold to unity (W 2:49–50).

So, if substance was equivalent to the possibility of denoting, being is nothing else but the possibility of connoting and is thus the formal condition of a proposition. Both substance and being, as conceptions of the present in general and of the conjunction of a predicate to a subject respectively, have no particular content. As Peirce said, they are “the beginning and end of all conception” (W 2:50). As such, they are only limit ideas, insofar as they represent a pure denotation and a pure connotation.¹² Accordingly, Peirce asserted that “[s]ubstance is inapplicable to a predicate, and being is equally so to a subject” (W 2:50).

Peirce describes substance and being as the essential conceptions nearest to and furthest from the manifold of sense. He then tries to identify which are the essential conceptions that are intermediate between substance and being. To do that, he isolates the elements of the proposition required to render the abstract and empty unity of being a determinate unity applicable to substance. Before he turns to the search of these intermediate conceptions, Peirce clarifies the method by which this endeavor was to be undertaken. As we will see, this method will be fundamental to the entirety of Peirce’s philosophical career. Peirce names it prescision, and he describes it as follows.¹³

The terms ‘prescision’ and ‘abstraction’ . . . are now limited not merely to mental separation, but to that which arises from attention to one element and neglect of the other. Exclusive attention consists in a definite conception or supposition of one part of an object, without any supposition of the other (W 2:50).

Prescision is thus a method to distinguish various aspects in a conception and to isolate those elements that are logically independent from the others. So, for example, space can be prescinded from color (insofar as we can think of a space without color), but color cannot be prescinded from space (W 2:51). Prescision proceeds by showing which elements can be bracketed in a complex conception, thus indicating which constituents have logical priority over the others. Consequently, “[p]rescision is not a reciprocal process” (W 2:51). It must be distinguished from discrimination and dissociation. Discrimination draws distinctions only in meaning and is equivalent to the mere possibility of recognizing a difference between two concepts. On the contrary, dissociation is the complete separation of an element from another. So it is evident that prescision is a mode of distinction lying between discrimination and dissociation (W 2:50).

Peirce uses prescision first of all as a method to distinguish those elements that are logically more essential in experience, so that a conception cannot be a universal one if it cannot be prescinded from the impression that occasioned its application.¹⁴

Hence, the impressions (or more immediate conceptions) cannot be definitely conceived or attended to, to the neglect of an elementary conception which reduces them to unity. On the other hand, when such a conception has once been obtained, there is, in general, no reason why the premises which have occasioned it should not be neglected, and therefore the explaining conception may frequently be prescinded from the more immediate ones and from the impressions (W 2:51).

Prescision is thus intended to separate the totality of the categories from experience in general, indicating their essentiality to account for that experience.¹⁵ Peirce’s move consists thus in showing that experience cannot be thought of without those categories, although they can be prescinded from experience in general. As is clear, the priority Peirce tried to identify is not a temporal one but possesses more of a logical character. Besides separating the categories from experience in general, prescision is also capable of investigating the internal relationships among the different categories. In fact, one of Peirce’s first criticisms of the Kantian table of categories was its lack of a detailed analysis of the internal relationships among the essential concepts.¹⁶ Thus, Peirce, after having introduced his general method of arguing, begins to investigate the intermediate concepts that are necessary to apply being to substance.

The first conception that we encounter is that of quality. Quality is the basic requisite for connecting, by means of the copula, a content to substance.

A proposition always has, besides a term to express the substance, another to express the quality of that substance; and the function of the conception of being is to unite the quality to the substance. Quality, therefore, in its very widest sense, is the first conception in order in passing from being to substance (W 2:52).

Peirce is careful in noticing that quality is an abstraction introduced by the proposition (W 2:52). As such, it can be prescinded from the data to which it applies and so regarded as a pure abstraction, or general attribute. For that reason, quality is also called “reference to a ground.” However, Peirce asserts that a quality can be apprehended just by means of a contrast with or similarity to another. In this way, he introduced the second universal conception in order to pass from being to substance, that is, t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Architectonic and the Fundamental Elements of Thought and Sign Processes
• 2 Methodeutic and Speculative Rhetoric
• 3 How Are Synthetical Judgments Possible?
• 4 Teleology in Peirce’s Evolutionary Metaphysics
• 5 Peirce and Transcendental Philosophy
• 6 Pragmatism and Common Sense
• Conclusion
• References
• Index