EPISTEMOLOGY AS A NORMATIVE INQUIRY

Descartes' epistemological inquiry in the Meditations begins with this question: What propositions are worthy of belief? In the First Meditation Descartes canvasses beliefs of various kinds he had formerly held as true and finds himself forced to conclude that he ought to reject them, that he ought not to accept them as true. We can view Cartesian epistemology as consisting of the following two projects: to identify the criteria by which we ought to regulate acceptance and rejection of beliefs, and to determine what we may be said to know according to those criteria. Descartes' epistemological agenda has been the agenda of Western epistemology to this day. The twin problems of identifying the criteria of justified belief and coming to terms with the skeptical challenge to the possibility of knowledge have defined the central tasks of theory of knowledge since Descartes. This was as true of the empiricists, of Locke and Hume and Mill, as of those who more closely followed Descartes in the rationalist path.

It is no wonder then that modern epistemology has been dominated by a single concept, that of justification, and two fundamental questions involving it: What conditions must a belief meet if we are justified in accepting it as true? and What beliefs are we in fact justified in accepting? Note that the first question does not ask for an “ analysis” or “ meaning” of the term “ justified belief”.

A BIFURCATED WORLD OR A LAYERED ONE?

Mind-body dualism in the classic Cartesian style envisages two nonoverlapping domains of particulars (“substances”) that are, by and large, equal in ontological standing. Mental items are thought to share a certain defining property (“thinking” or “consciousness,” according to Descartes) that excludes the defining property shared by the items on the physical side (“extension,” according to Descartes). And associated with each domain is a distinct family of properties, mental properties for one and physical properties for the other, in terms of which the particulars within that domain can be exhaustively characterized. We are thus presented with a bifurcated picture of reality: the world consists of two metaphysically independent spheres existing side by side.

But not everyone who accepts a picture like this thinks that the two domains are entirely unrelated; although there are notable exceptions, such as Leibniz and Malebranche, many substantival dualists, including of course Descartes, have held that, in spite of their separateness and independence, the domains are causally connected: mental events can be, and sometimes are, causes and effects of physical events, and changes in a mind can be causes or effects of changes in a body. This means that events of both kinds can occur as links in the same causal chain: if you pick a physical event and trace its causal ancestry or posterity, you may run into mental events, and similarly if you start off with a mental event.

Reductionism of all sorts has been out of favor for many years. Few among us would now seriously entertain the possibility that ethical expressions are definable, or reducible in some broader sense, in terms of “descriptive” or “naturalistic” expressions. I am not sure how many of us can remember, in vivid enough detail, the question that was once vigorously debated as to whether so-called “physical-object statements” are translatable into statements about the phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience, whether these are conceived as “sense data” or as some manner of “being appeared to”. You may recall the idea that concepts of scientific theories must be reduced, via “operational definitions”, to intersubjectively performable procedures whose results can be ascertained through observation. This sounded good - properly tough-minded and hard-nosed - but it didn' t take long for philosophers and scientists to realize that a restrictive constraint of this sort was neither enforceable nor necessary - not necessary to safeguard science from the threat of metaphysics and pseudo-science. These reductionisms are now nothing but museum pieces.

In philosophy of mind, too, we have gone through many reductionisms; some of these, such as logical behaviorism, have been defunct for many years; others, most notably, the psychoneural identity theory, have been repeatedly declared dead; and still others, such as versions of functionalism, are still hanging on, though with varying degrees of difficulty. Perhaps as a result of the singular lack of success with which our earlier reductionist efforts have been rewarded, a negative image seems to have emerged for reductionisms in general.

SUPERVENIENCE IN PHILOSOPHY

Supervenience is a philosophical concept in more ways than one. First of all, like such concepts as cause and rationality, it is often used in the formulation of philosophical doctrines and arguments. Thus, we have the claim that ethical predicates are “supervenient predicates”, or that the characteristics of a whole supervene on those of its parts. And arguments have been advanced to show that the supervenience of moral properties undermines moral realism, or that, on the contrary, moral supervenience shows ethical judgments are “objective” after all. And, again like causality and rationality, the concept of supervenience itself has become an object of philosophical analysis and a matter of some controversy.

But unlike causality, supervenience is almost exclusively a philosopher's concept, one not likely to be encountered outside philosophical dissertations and disputations. The notion of cause, on the other hand, is an integral part of our workaday language, a concept without which we could hardly manage in describing our experiences and observations, framing explanationsof natural events, and assessing blame and praise. Something similar can be said about thenotion of being rational as well, although this concept is not as ubiquitous in ordinary discourse as that of cause. Supervenience of course is not unique in being a technical philosophicalconcept; there are many others, such as “haecceity” and “possibleworld” in metaphysics, “analyticity” in the theory of meaning, and the currently prominent concepts of “wide” and “narrow” content.

INTRODUCTION

We think of the world around us not as a mere assemblage of unrelated objects, events, and facts, but as constituting a system, something that shows structure, and whose constituents are connected with one another in significant ways. This view of the world seems fundamental to our scheme of things; it is reflected in the commonplace assumption that things that happen in one place can make a difference to things that happen in another in a way that enables us to make sense of one thing in terms of another, infer information about one thing from information about another, or affect one thing by affecting another. Central to this idea of interconnectedness of things is a notion of dependence (or, its converse, determination): things are connected with one another in that whether something exists, or what properties it has, is dependent on, or determined by, what other things exist and what kinds of things they are. It is in virtue of these dependency or determinative relationships that the world can be made intelligible; and by exploiting them we are able to intervene in the course of events and alter it to suit our wishes. Activities like explanation, prediction, and control would make little sense for a world devoid of such connections. The idea that “real connections” exist and the idea that the world is intelligible and controllable are arguably equivalent ideas.

INTRODUCTION

The leading idea in the notion of “supervenience” is commonly explained this way: things that are indiscernible in respect of properties of one kind (the “base” or “subvenient” properties) are indiscernible in respect of properties of another kind (the “supervenient” properties). If moral properties are taken as supervenient properties and descriptive or naturalistic properties are taken as base properties, we have the doctrine of moral supervenience: the moral properties of persons, acts, and other objects supervene on their descriptive or naturalistic properties. Similarly, by taking mental properties as supervenient properties and physical properties as the base, we can formulate the doctrine of psychophysical supervenience: the psychological features of persons, organisms, etc., supervene on their physical characteristics.

Another familiar explanation of the idea goes like this: no difference in properties of one kindwithout a difference in properties of a second kind. Thus, as we say, there can be no difference in moral properties, unless there is some difference in descriptive, or nonmoral, properties. Inboth these initial characterizations, the things that have the supervenient properties areassumed to be also the things that have the base properties. If St. Francis is a good person, wesay, then anyone who has all the naturalistic properties that St. Francis has must also be a good person; this makes St. Francis and others the subjects of both moral and naturalistic properties.

“If the match had not been struck, it would not have ignited.” This counterfactual expresses a relationship of dependency between two events: the ignition of the match was dependent on the match's being struck. Here, the dependency is a causal one: the striking of the match caused it to light. We also say: the ignition was causally determined by the striking. The causal relation is a paradigmatic case of what I shall call relations of “dependency” or “determination” between events and states; in fact, it is the only relation of this sort that has been explicitly recognized and widely talked about.

The dominant place accorded to the causal relation is evident in the fact, for example, that the thesis of universal determinism is most often stated in some such form as “Every event has a cause.” The implicit assumption in such a formulation is that being determined comes to the same thing as being caused. This, however, requires reconsideration. There appear to be dependency relations between events that are not causal, and, as I shall argue, universal determinism may be true even if not every event has a cause. These noncausal dependency relations are pervasively present in the web of events, and it is important to understand their nature, their interrelations, and their relation to the causal relation if we are to have a clear and complete picture of the ways in which events hang together in this world.

The question whether there are, or can be, psychological laws is one of considerable interest. If it can be shown that there can be no such laws, a nomothetic science of psychology will have been shown to be impossible. The qualifier ‘nomothetic’ is redundant: science is supposed to be nomothetic. Discovery, or at least pursuit, of laws is thought to be constitutive of the very nature of science so that where there are no laws there can be no science, and where we have reason to believe there are none we have no business pretending to be doing science.

At least in one clear sense, therefore, the absence of psychological laws entails the impossibility of psychology as a science. This need not be taken to mean that there can be no scientists, called ‘psychologists’ or ‘cognitive scientists’, who study psychological topics and write useful tracts about them. It is to say that whatever else they may be doing that is useful and worthwhile, they will not be producing psychological theories, comprehensive and integrated systems of precise general laws, couched in a characteristic theoretical vocabulary, on the basis of which mental phenomena could be explained and predicted. If such theory-based explanatory and predictive activities are what we suppose psychologists qua psychologists to be engaged in, recognition of the impossibility of psychological laws would force us to reconsider the nature of psychology as an intellectual enterprise.

MENTAL CAUSATION AS SUPERVENIENT CAUSATION

The account of mental causation defended in various essays in Part II views mental causation as “supervenient causation.” The idea, roughly, is that for an instance of mental property M to cause, or be caused by, event e (let's assume e is a physical event), the following conditions must hold: there is a physical-biological property P such that (1) M supervenes on P; (2) P is instantiated on the occasion of M's instantiation; and (3) this instance of P causes e, or is caused by e (on your favorite account of physical causation). I still find something like this account, and a similar one for the case of mental-mental causation, attractive and appealing in many ways, but I believe that the account is faced with some difficulties that have yet to be resolved.

Some specific objections and criticisms have been voiced by philosophers including Brian McLaughlin, Peter Menzies, and Gabriel Segal and Elliott Sober. Although the points made by them are by and large valid and need to be taken seriously, I do not think that they strike at the heart of the account; I think they are reasons for refining the account rather than reasons for abandoning the approach. (In fact, Segal and Sober helpfully offer an improved version of the account.) The approach has much intuitive plausibility as well as a potential to satisfy various philosophical requirements, and for that reason it may well be worth saving.

The 1877 and 1878 articles “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” are generally thought to initiate pragmatism, which Peirce would later call pragmaticism. Both are parts of a series of six papers intended for a book called “Illustrations of the Logic of Science.” They represent Peirce's concern with proposing a theory of inquiry based on his conception of experimental science. At the time they were written, Peirce regarded it as his mission to incorporate the logic of experimental methods into philosophy. An explicit expression of this aim can be found in his later writing where he aligns himself with “those few fellow-students of philosophy, who deplore the present state of that study, and who are intent upon rescuing it therefrom and bringing it to a condition like that of the natural sciences” (5.413). Thus, Peirce's discussion of the way beliefs may be fixed and of the proper criterion for clarifying ideas is a means to this longerrange goal. The consequences of realizing this goal imply the reinterpretation of traditional philosophical issues. Most of the issues so important to Peirce throughout his career will be seen to emerge within the context of his concerns in the 1877 and 1878 articles.

Before considering these articles, let me make two preliminary observations. The first is that I bypass four earlier essays, “On a New List of Categories,” “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,” “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” and “Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic.” Some key points in three of these will be taken up later in connection with semeiotic and with further consideration of Peirce's view of inquiry.

Beginning a book on the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce is something like entering a labyrinth with almost as many entrances as passages. What aspect of his thought provides the best entry? should Peirce's work be considered in chronological order? Should his ideas be traced to antecedents in the history of philosophy? Should his thought be understood as representative of a school or tradition such as empiricism, rationalism, pragmatism, Aristotelianism, orscholasticism? Should he be approached as an antimetaphysician, or should his thought be interpreted more broadly in terms of his metaphysical speculations? Are there certain topics, themes, or theses that are more basic and hence best used as organizing principles in offering an account of his philosophy? These questions reflect the fact that selection, arbitrary or purposeful, is necessary at the outset. The approach to be taken in this book has a purpose. It assumes that there are basic themes in Peirce's thought that can be used as organizing principles. These themes express the two main purposes mentioned in the Preface: to introduce Peirce to readers who have had little or no acquaintance with his ideas and to propose that there is a cohesiveness in his thought that implies an architectonic – an architectonic that has at its core a special kind of realism.

Our entry into Peirce's philosophy, then, will be made through four themes, each serving as the topic of a chapter. These themes were chosen because they are foundational ingredients of his thought as a whole.

The Nature and Function of Philosophical Categories

It should not be necessary to launch a lengthy general discussion of the nature and functions of categories in philosophy in order to give an account of what they are and the role they play in Peirce's thought. However, some comments about categories in general are necessary. Briefly, and most generally, categories in philosophy are fundamental conceptions, in the sense that they are conditions of intelligibility. Such conceptions may be regarded as the classes or types of things into which things that are and can be known can be divided. Or they may be considered to be the ways or conditions according to which things can be distinguished and accordingly known. Some things can be made intelligible because they can be located in space and time – as substances that serve as referents for subjects in sentences or propositions. These belong to the category of substance. Some things can be made intelligible because they can be determined to be contingent (Abraham Lincoln's beard, which may or may not be shaved off), whereas others are regarded as necessary (2 + 2 = 4 in a number system based on 10). These belong to the category of modality, which includes contingency, possibility, and necessity. Fundamental classes or conditions of intelligibility are not unlimited in number. They are necessary for identifying, classifying, and relating what may be an unlimited number of things in the universe (or universes of discourse) encountered in any and all domains of experience, including the domain proper to science and that which is available to common sense. However, one may distinguish what Peirce called a “long list” and a “short list” of categories. Aristotle's categories belong to the long list.

Introduction

A theme central to the discussion in this book has been the expression of the belief that Peirce's philosophy presupposes an architectonic founded primarily on a form of realism. There are reasons for resisting this interpretation, however, as I have already suggested. It has been claimed that Peirce was fundamentally an idealist. This difference is understandable, for there is a sense in which he was an idealist and a sense in which he was a realist. Hence it may be claimed that he was a kind of metaphysical idealist and, at the same time, an epistemological realist. On this view, he was an idealist metaphysically in the sense that the final object of thought in general, the final aim of investigation, is regarded as not only completely thought-dependent but also mental in nature. He was a realist epistemologically, then, in the sense that in the context of any theoretical investigation, what investigation is about is independent of that investigation, but what is independent is thought or theory that is not exhausted by the particular theoretical framework at the time. I think this is a misleading suggestion. My purpose in the first section, then, will be to show why it is misleading and to propose that Peirce's conception of the constraints of an extrasemeiotic or extraepistemic condition has a fundamental function that aligns him with a special form of metaphysical realism – what I have called evolutionary realism.

The proposal that his is an evolutionary realism will, I hope, make clear that I believe Peirce wanted and managed to push beyond the traditional labels idealism and realism.

This book has two major objectives: first, to offer an introduction for persons beginning the study of Peirce and, second, to address some of the more complex issues and problematic aspects of his thought on the assumption that these issues can be understood in terms of an overarching, coherent philosophical view – what Peirce aimed at as an architectonic. I am not concerned with criticizing Peirce's ideas, although occasionally my comments raise questions that could be pursued in terms of possible criticisms and suggested answers. I refrain from criticism primarily because I do not think this task is appropriate in an interpretive account. In addition, Peirce's way of presenting his thought seems to have been more hypothetical than categorical, continually exhibiting a commitment to fallibilism. Criticism would be proper only if one were intent on moving beyond his thought, perhaps in order to launch one's own hypotheses. There is a sense in which this latter kind of consideration may enter into what I attempt in this book. To some extent my interpretation of Peirce's aims, particularly with respect to his metaphysics, inevitably flows from certain conceptions I have about what he ought to have meant in the context of his broader, long-range perspectives.

The specific interpretations I offer were initiated more than ten years ago while I was conducting seminars on Peirce. After reflecting on the conclusions I had drawn in trying to help students read and discuss Peirce intelligently, I felt the urge to bring my conclusions and the reasons behind them into a single, sustained discussion. This concern was related to my hope to suggest to students a coherent picture of Peirce's complex and sometimes apparently conflicting views.