Peirce Strings
While John Dewey is considered one of the classical pragmatists, ‘pragmatism’ is not a word he often used to describe his way of thinking. Rather, the term was popularized in the early 1900s by Harvard philosopher William James, who credited the term to an old friend of his named Charles Sanders Peirce. For a number of reasons, Peirce never attained the academic successes of Dewey and James, and he gradually developed a complex philosophical system that is beyond the scope of both my expertise and this article. However, in a series of articles published in popular magazines in the late 1800s, Peirce set forth in rather clear terms a number of the principles that James and Dewey later adopted and developed.
Peirce was deeply interested in what he called the fixation of belief. Belief by Peirce’s definition is the opposite of doubt – when we have a belief, we know how we should respond to a given situation, but when we are in doubt, we are momentarily unable to act. The doubt acts as an irritant, provoking us to do something to establish a belief and therefore regain our ability to act. Let’s take a somewhat trivial example to illustrate the point. If I want to go somewhere, I might have to decide whether to take the bus or walk. If I already have some established belief about which method of travel is better, I’ll choose that method without much of a thought, and go about my business. But let’s say I can’t decide. I am in doubt over the preferred method of travel, and so I neither walk nor take the bus. Instead I need to take some kind of action to resolve the doubt. I might check my pocket and realize I don’t have exact fare, at which point I believe that walking is the best course of action. Doubt resolved, course of action chosen, I can proceed.
According to Peirce, the human being doesn’t really care how the doubt gets resolved. It just wants the doubt gone. However, human history has revealed that some methods are ultimately more effective than others. Peirce defines ‘more effective’ according to the original goal of eliminating doubt – if a method generates a belief that generates a new doubt almost immediately, it’s not a very good method. Peirce identified four commonly used methods, and he wasn’t shy about pointing out his favorite.
Method of tenacity: This is pretty simple. Pick a belief, and stick to it regardless of evidence to the contrary. Someone tries to tell you different, perform the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling, “I’m not listening!� The advantage here is that it’s very easy to fix a belief. The disadvantage is that no matter how tenacious you are, the world around you is likely to raise doubts. If your neighbors believe something different than you, and they seem to be prospering, that can raise doubt. And if your belief somehow implicates the natural world, there’s a whole host of potential problems. No matter how tenacious you are, your belief that ‘If I take three steps and a jump I can fly’ is probably going to be called into question at some point.
Method of authority: The first problem of the method of tenacity can be avoided if some external authority decides what everyone is going to believe, and then forces them to stick to it. Thus, no pesky doubts raised by your neighbors. There is still the issue of the natural world, though, as a fellow named Galileo discovered when he encountered a rather tenacious Church.
Method of rationality: This is the method that found favor at the beginnings of modern philosophy. Thinkers like Descartes resolved to use the laws of logic to reason out what beliefs would be reasonable. The problem, as we touched on in our own discussion of Descartes, is that it’s very easy to spin out a rationalization of whatever beliefs and leanings you already had when all you’re using are the rules of logic. So you haven’t rendered your beliefs and more impervious to challenge by the world around you. Which finally leads us to Peirce’s favorite.
Method of empirical investigation: There are two vital elements to this method. First, you form a hypothesis or a proposed belief, and you test it against the actual conditions of the outside world. If you think that a rock thrown in the air will fall back to the ground, you better go get some rocks and start tossing. Once you have tested and established a belief to your satisfaction, you then present both the belief and the test to the others in your community, and say, “Hey, this is what I believe. If my belief is true, I predict these things will happen. Go ahead and try it for yourself and see if I’m right.� By submitting your empirical test to this community, you help reduce the chance for errors and help others establish the ‘correct’ belief along with you.
A lot of this might sound blatantly obvious. But take a look around you and see how many people are still relying on tenacity, authority figures, or rationalizations to determine their beliefs. More than a hundred years after Peirce first published his ideas, we don’t seem to be getting the message.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.