Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674862906, 9780674862890

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STUDIES IN T H E PHILOSOPHY OF

Charles Sanders Peirce

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STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF

Charles Sanders Peirce Edited by P H I L I P P. W I E N E R and F R E D E R I C H. YOUNG

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 1952

Copyright 1952 By the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Distributed in Great Britain by GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE Oxford University Press London

Library o£ Congress Catalog Card Number 52-5411 Printed in the United Sutes of America

Editors' Foreword The initial idea of the present volume came from Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy in a letter to the Secretary of the Peirce Society: "I shall venture to submit a suggestion . . . for a large and difficult but highly desirable undertaking that would seem especially appropriate for this Society. . . . It is my own opinion that his philosophy as a whole, or system (which he certainly conceived it to be), has never been submitted to a sufficiently methodical and searching criticism — especially what I should call 'internal' criticism. What I think is needed, then, is the preparation of a cooperative volume which would at once bring his whole scheme of ideas into clearer focus than he himself ever quite brought it, and present the most thorough critical examination both into the validity of his reasonings and the consistency of his conclusions. . . . But it would not be a simple or easy undertaking. . . ." This volume is a first and significant step in attaining the aim of the Charles S. Peirce Society to encourage actively "the study and development of Peirce's ideas." That a book of this scope and quality should be offered to the philosophic and cultural world by a Society born as recently as 1946, is an achievement of which its membership may well be proud. However, it should be repeated that this is only a first step toward the goal of bringing into his own not only one of America's, but of the world's, most original and creative minds. We believe that the present work goes far toward realizing the difficult and worthy project conceived by Professor Lovejoy and undertaken by the Peirce Society. A word now about the procedure in organizing the volume. We have, with the approval and assistance of the members of the Society, solicited essays from scholars who had been or were engaged in special studies of Peirce's work. Of these, only two out of twenty-six were unable to secure enough free time from other commitments to enter the present volume. This high degree of active collaboration as well as the quality of the results excellently indicates the growing consciousness among our philosophic scholars that Peirce's writings deserve careful and thorough study. The authors of these Studies were left entirely free to write on whatever aspects of Peirce's philosophy they wished to expound, elaborate, or criticize. It was only after all the essays were received that the editors could determine an order of

EDITORS' FOREWORD presentation based on the topics treated. They seemed to fall into four groups of topics: Peirce's Pragmaticist Theory of Meaning; his philosophy of Common Sense, Science, and Logic; his speculations and "musements" in Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Religion; and finally, researches of a biographical and historical sort, including hitherto unpublished letters of Peirce and invaluable bibliographical additions discovered by Professor M a x H . Fisch and his two associates. T h e fact that some of the papers deal independently with similar topics and contain similar criticisms, should be of value in indicating a trend of contemporary interests and a certain degree of objective agreement among philosophers of divergent points of view freely arguing the merits and shortcomings of Peirce's great philosophic vision and his efforts at synthesis. T h e variety of topics treated in this volume exhibits only some of the vast reaches of Peirce's prolific investigations and speculations. These offer fertile ground for continued study; for example, his papers on the foundations of mathematics and logic, on the theory of probability and induction, on methodology in the physical sciences, biology, and psychology, as also his reflections on phenomenology, ethics, aesthetics, the history and teaching of science, the history and philosophy of civilization, and the philosophy of religion. On behalf of the Peirce Society and the authors, we wish to express our deep appreciation for the generous subvention from the Bollingen Foundation which made the publication of this volume possible; also, we hereby convey our gratitude to Mr. John D . Barrett and D r . Huntington Cairns for their particular interest and cooperation. T h e whole enterprise has splendidly exemplified the spirit of Peirce's "community of minds." Finally, we wish to thank Miss Eleanor Bates of the Harvard University Press for her unstinting cooperation and meticulous pains in seeing the manuscript through the press. P H I L I P P . W I E N E R a n d FREDERIC H . Y O U N G

EDITORIAL

NOTE

References to the six volumes of the Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1 9 3 1 - 1 9 3 5 ) , will be abbreviated C.P. and will be indicated in the text and notes, wherever possible, by volume and paragraph number alone; for example, 5.482 means volume V, paragraph numbered 482.

vi

CONTENTS PART ONE

PRAGMATICISM: PEIRCE'S T H E O R Y OF MEANING

1 What Is the Pragmaticist Theory of Meaning? The First Phase

3

ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY

The ]ohns Hopkins

University

2 What Is the Pragmaticist Theory of Meaning?

21

JUSTUS BUCHLER

Columbia University

3 Inquiry and Meaning

33

DANIEL J. BRONSTEIN

City College of New

Yor\

4 Peirce on "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"

53

WINSTON H. F. BARNES

University of Durham, England

5 Peirce's Pragmaticism

61

W. B. GALLIE

University College of North Staffordshire, England

6 Habit and the Logical Interprétant GEORGE GENTRY

University of Texas

VII

75

CONTENTS PART TWO

COMMON-SENSE, SCIENCE, AND LOGIC 7 Fallibilism and Belief

93

RODERICK M. CHISHOLM

Brown University

8 Some Implications of Critical Common-sensism

111

ARTHUR F. SMULLYAN

University of Washington

9 Peirce's Theory of Abstraction

121

THOMAS A. GOUDGE

University of Toronto

10 The Paradox of Peirce's Realism

133

MANLEY H. THOMPSON, JR.

University of Chicago

11 Peirce's Evolutionary Interpretations of the History of Science

143

PHILIP P. WIENER

City College of New York.

12 Peirce's Contributions to the Logic of Statements and Quantifiers

153

GEORGE D. W. BERRY

Princeton University

13 The Logic of the Creative Process

166

PAUL WEISS

Yale University PART THREE

PHENOMENOLOGY, METAPHYSICS, AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 14 On the Origins of Peirce's Phenomenology

185

DAVID SAVAN

University of Toronto

15 Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness

195

ISABEL S. STEARNS

Bryn Mawr University

16 Fourthness

209

HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER

Columbia University

viii

CONTENTS 17 The Relativity of Nonrelativity: Some Reflections on Firstness

215

CHARLES HARTSHORNE

University of Chicago

18 Philosophic Realism: A Study in the Modality of Being in Peirce and Whitehead

225

WILLIAM REESE

Dra\e University

19 Peirce's Scotistic Realism

23 8

CHARLES K. McKEON

Boston, Massachusetts

2 0 Religion and Theology in Peirce

251

JOHN E. SMITH

Barnard College PART FOUR

BIOGRAPHICAL A N D

HISTORICAL

21 Charles Sanders Peirce: 1839-1914

2 71

FREDERIC H. YOUNG

Montclair State Teachers College and Rutgers University

2 2 Peirce at the Johns Hopkins University

2 77

MAX H . FISCH

University of Illinois JACKSON I. COPE

The fohns Hopkins University

2 3 Peirce and Montgomery

312

MORRIS T. KEETON

Antioch College

24 On the Future of Some of Peirce's Ideas

32 5

JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN

Tulane University

NOTES

335

APPENDIXES

361

I 11 III IV V

James's Letter to Gilman Recommending Peirce for a Hopkins Professorship Peirce's Letter to Gilman Concerning the Hopkins Physics Department Peirce's Courses at the Johns Hopkins University The Metaphysical Club at the Johns Hopkms University Some Additions to Morris R. Cohen's Bibliography of Peirce's Published Writings Max H. Fisch Daniel C. Haskell

INDEX

383

ix

ILLUSTRATIONS с . s. Peirce, 1839-1914 From an Original Photograph

in the Harvard University Archives

Frontispiece

Charles S. Peirce From the Harvard Class Album

of i8¡g

Facing p. 272

PART ONE

PRAGMATICISM: PEIRCE'S THEORY OF MEANING

1 What Is the Pragmaticist Theory of Meaning? The First Phase BY A R T H U R O. L O V E J O Y

Peirce's two celebrated essays on " T h e Fixation of Belief" and on " H o w to Make Our Ideas Clear" are generally regarded as the fountainhead of several of the diverse tendencies in American and British philosophy later known as pragmatism, and indirectly of some not ordinarily known by that name. It is true that when William James twenty years later unfurled at Berkeley that banner with a then strange device, he underestimated his own contribution to the pragmatist doctrine and, with characteristic generosity, gave to Peirce almost the whole credit for the origination of it. James certainly added to it some conceptions which were not only foreign to Peirce's thought but uncongenial to it. And — especially in the philosophy of Dewey — several motives and preconceptions entered into pragmatism which derived from other sources. Nevertheless, in these papers written by Peirce in the eighteenseventies we can see a number of distinct strains of thought which were destined to be taken up by later pragmatists, and — sometimes after further development to new consequences, or in new doctrinal contexts — still exercise an influence in contemporary philosophy. It seems worth while, then, to analyze these writings with some care. We shall inquire just what it is that Peirce says in these papers with respect to a single philosophical problem, that of "meaning," and to that end shall examine each of the formulas in which he expresses his contentions on the subject, seeking to determine whether they are free from equivocalities and whether they severally express the same contention or different or even inconsistent ones. The analysis will, I fear, seem to many readers inordinately involved, minute and meticulous. But I know no way of ascertaining what, and how, a writer is thinking as he writes without closely scrutinizing his words, the form of the propositions into which he combines them, and the explicit or implicit logical relations between the propositions.

LOVEJOY In the earlier series of articles, the one chiefly pertinent to our topic is that on "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." Here the argument manifestly concerns primarily, not the nature of knowledge, nor the meaning of "truth," nor the criterion of truth, but what may be called the criterion of meaningfulness. Peirce is asking what he recognizes as the first, or the preliminary, question in logic : What is meant by a term's or sentence's having "meaning" in contrast with one which is meaningless ? Is there any general essence of meaningfulness in words or propositions? How can we tell whether two sentences differing in their words or grammatical structure, or in the emotions which we experience in connection with them, are also different in meaning, or whether, on the contrary, their meaning is identical. Peirce's purpose, in short, is not at this point to assist us to think truly, but "to know u^Aai we think," to avoid "meaningless formulas," to be "masters of our own meaning." His positive purpose, it is true, Peirce formulates as that of showing us "how to make our ideas clear"; Ì£., he is not explicitly dealing with a question about language and its relation to ideas, but (nominally) with a question about a character of "ideas" in themselves, or about their relation to something else. But an answer to the second question would imply an answer to the first. To know that we can have (as he puts it) "ideas in our minds" only of certain kinds of objects of reference would be to know that all terms and sentences which do not express such ideas, or which purport to refer to other kinds of referents, have, so to say, no ideas behind them — are, in short, meaningless. And if there is such a generic character, or type of referent, common to all ideas, we can know at least one thing that is prerequisite in order that two ideas shall be "distinct," i.e., really different from one another, in some other sense than that different symbols are employed for them — viz., that they must be determinate variants of the class to which all ideas belong. Distinctions between ideas are distinctions falling within that class; and verbal distinctions are meaningless unless they express such distinctions between ideas. These appear to be presuppositions — not very clearly expressed, but pervasive — of Peirce's argument. But we are next confronted with a further difficulty arising from Peirce's way of expressing himself. He is to tell us how to clarify our "ideas" in the sense of avoiding terms which express no real ideas; and in the end, also, he offers a series of explanations of what the "meaning" of certain specific "ideas" reduces to — i.e., of certain general terms such as "weight," "hardness," "force," "reality," etc. But immediately after announcing his problem as that of the meaning of ideas, he begins talking about "beliefs." It is not evident, however, that "idea" and "belief" are synonymous terms. In some places they are apparently used as such by Peirce, in some places they are not. By "idea" he sometimes appears to signify a thought of a possible kind of existent, unaccompanied by any judgment as to the actual existence of

P R A G M A T I C I S T THEORY OF MEANING anything, or any "emotion of conviction." A n idea in this sense is presumably a psychological element in a belief, but it is not the whole of it; a belief is expressed by a proposition and constitutes a specific kind of ideationalemotional complex — what some psychologists have called an "attitude." T h e notion of belief is certainly not dissociable f r o m the notion of truth, and unless we already understand the meaning of "truth" we cannot, it would seem, formulate the meaning of "belief." T h u s conclusions drawn from an analysis of the nature of belief will not necessarily be pertinent to the question about the nature of "ideas" or the conditions requisite for the meaningfulness of terms. But it seems clear that Peirce assumes as obvious that we cannot have beliefs about anything of which we cannot have an "idea," so that the range of possible ideas predetermines the range of possible {t.e., of m e a n i n g f u l ) beliefs. It is unfortunate that he did not m a k e this explicit at the outset, and formulate his whole problem as: What can we have ideas o/? What, if anything, is the common characteristic of all ideas that we can actually entertain, so that any term to which no idea having this characteristic corresponds would be a meaningless term ? But in fact he talks mainly about "beliefs," and, in order to keep close to his actual reasoning, it is to his assertions about these that, when dealing with his earlier essays, we must chiefly attend. Any belief, Peirce tells us, has "just three properties" or "elements," and only these three are present in all beliefs: first, "it is something that we are aware o f " ; second, it "appeases the irritation of doubt" (this would obviously not be true of mere "ideas") ; third, "it involves the establishment in our nature {i.e., for the person holding the belief] of a rule of action, or, in short, a habit." ^ N o w when one encounters a general proposition of this kind in an argument, especially as the starting point of an argument, it is important to ask, first of all, whether the statement is put forward as a definition, or an assertion, or a combination of both. What is its intended logical status? Which, to be specific, of the following things does Peirce mean to tell us : ( A ) T h a t he chooses to use the word "belief" to signify any psychological phenomenon having the three characteristics specified; or ( B ) that, besides using the word in the sense defined, he maintains that psychological phenomena corresponding to the definition actually occur; or ( C ) that all the phenomena, all the events in human experience to which the name "beliefs" is applicable, have these three characteristics, and that there are no other characteristics common to all such events ? There is nothing about which it is more essential that a philosopher should, f r o m the start of any inquiry or discussion, be absolutely clear in his own mind, and m a k e himself clear to his readers, than the discrimination of his definitions f r o m his assertions; for this discrimination is the prime requisite for the avoidance of purely verbal issues and controversies. A definition as such — provided it is not

LOVEJOY self-contradictory — being neither capable of nor in need of proof, raises no issue, requires no verification, and permits of no legitimate argument. If, then, Peirce is merely defining "belief," criticism or discussion of the definition by us would be absurd — since the definition does not, at any rate, appear to be self-contradictory, and since it is not likely to be maintained that we have no thought-content which could be expressed by the several terms contained in it. As to the intended status of the proposition Peirce is not so explicit as could be wished. But it would seem from the context that he is asserting a factual proposition which he regards as empirically verifiable, and therefore that he does not intend merely to inform us as to his preference in the use of the word. Does he, then, intend merely to assert proposition (B) ? But this proposition, though it contains an assertion, can hardly be regarded as seriously debatable, either. It tells us, (1), that there actually occur moments in experience in which we are aware that some irritation of doubt has been appeased, and in which, consequently and simultaneously, we are aware of an intention or disposition to "act" in some particular way; and (2), that in Peirce's vocabulary the word "belief" denotes experiences of this type. Now (1) —i.e., the factual part of this proposition (B) —will, I should suppose, hardly be denied by anyone. I do have experiences which could be described by the terms Peirce uses, in some sense of those terms; and from the statements of other men, I gather that they do also. But though proposition ( B ) is thus undisputable, it is not important. For though it asserts an undoubted fact, what it tells us about "belief" acquires the value of a general proposition about beliefs only through the inclusion in it, (2), of a definition. By virtue of (2) the term "belief" is limited, in Peirce's vocabulary, to the designation of experiences of the sort described; and therefore no experiences not so describable are, in his language, "beliefs," and all "beliefs" have the three specified characteristics. But it does not follow from this that there are no experiences — experiences that some or most other persons would call "beliefs" — which do not have different characteristics, or additional characteristics, not mentioned in Peirce's formula. And the real question at issue, the question which is important for the discussion of the meaningfulness of terms or sentences, is a general question of jact. Do we have, over and above the special class of experiences described by Peirce in his definition, certain other kinds of experience, in which what would commonly be termed "belief" does not include all of these elements; or, further, are there some other "elements" common to all or some beliefs which are not noted by Peirce.? That is what we want to know. The fact that he chooses to restrict the term to experiences having the character he specifies is no answer to this general question. It would appear, then, if we are to regard Peirce's statement about "beliefs" as more than verbal, and also as important if true, that we must take it as a factual generalization 6

P R A G M A T I C I S T T H E O R Y OF MEANING about a class of mental phenomena called "beliefs," viz., that all of them contain the three "elements" mentioned, and that there are no elements in any beliefs which cannot be subsumed under these three. Now if Peirce's thesis is thus taken, not as a definition of "belief," but as a factual generalization capable of empirical verification, it is evident that the meaning of the grammatical subject of the proposition must be assumed to be already known — at least its denotation. You obviously cannot — imless you have already defined "cats" as tailed animals — intelligibly ask whether all cats have tails without first having either a definition of "cat" sufficient to enable you to identify, when you meet them, members of the logical genus you are investigating, or at any rate an agreed-upon enumeration of all the species that are to be ta\en as belonging to that genus. Similarly, you cannot intelligibly ask, as a factual question, "Are all beliefs composed of just three specific elements?" without already having a definition of "beliefs" or at all events some convention as to what phenomena are to be classed as "beliefs" and what are not. Peirce's statement, therefore — if, as we are assuming, it is intended as a factual generalization, and not merely an idiosyncratic verbal definition — presupposes that there is a meaning of "belief" already accepted by him and his readers; it is not a formulation of that meaning. His thesis, then, more fully stated, would come to this: There is a certain class of experiences, familiar to all of us, for which the word "beliefs" is, for those who understand English, a sufficient designation — i.e., we all know broadly what the word denotes. If we introspectively analyze experiences of this class, there will always be found "involved" in them elements of the types specified and no others: an awareness of the dissipation of a doubt about something, and of "the establishment of some rule or habit of action." This being, in general terms, Peirce's thesis, the first question a logician might be expected to ask concerning it is "What kind of proof can be offered for it; by what logical procedure is it to be verified?" Peirce does not appear to give a formal answer to this question, but his actual procedures can be described. Since the thesis about belief appears to be a generalization about an empirical matter of fact, some form of inductive argument would seem to be the appropriate method. This, however, can hardly consist— and with Peirce does not consist — in a simple induction by the observation of a sufficiently large number of individual instances of what are commonly called "beliefs" to justify the conclusion that the generalization is probable. Peirce's procedure seems (at times) rather to consist, as I have already remarked, in an appeal to the introspection of his readers. "Take," he appears to say in substance to any reader, "any experience which you call a 'belief and see if you do not find in it all those components I have stated, and find, also, that there are no components which are not de-

LOVEJOY scribable as special cases of one or another of these three sorts of component." This, at least, is the mode of argument that he employs when he is thinking of beliefs as such. But, as has also been noted, his assertions about beliefs are often inferences from prior generalizations about "ideas," based upon the implicit premise that our beliefs can extend no farther than our ideas. And these prior generalizations about ideas are certainly not reached by him through any inductive and empirical procedure; for, as expressed, they profess to tell us, not simply what kinds of ideas we do have, but what kinds (solely) we can have. "It is impossible" he declares, "that we should have ideas in our minds" except of such and such sorts. This is his more characteristic and, I believe, more usual mode of argument about "belief," and it may almost be called a priori reasoning, inasmuch as it is simply deduction from a proposition or propositions presented as so evident that no argument for them need be — or at all events, is — offered. We shall see examples of this later in the present analysis. Whether these propositions as to what sorts of ideas we cannot have are in fact evidently true can be judged only when we have them specifically before us. We have thus far been attempting to make clear to ourselves what logical type of proposition Peirce's thesis about "any belief" must be understood to be and to observe what general modes of reasoning he employs in support of it. We now turn to a closer examination of the specific meaning or substantive content of the Thesis. The first and simplest and most obvious comment to be made upon it is that as an empirical generalization it certainly includes too much: at least one of the three "elements" mentioned by Peirce is not in fact found in all beliefs. The statement asserts that there is no experience of belief (about any particular matter) which is not preceded by, first, the experience of doubt about that matter, and, second, the experience of removal or dissipation of doubt. But I suppose that no one — not even Peirce himself, if he had stopped to think about the point — would maintain that nobody ever believes anything without having first doubted it. The usual sequence is just the reverse, and Peirce's own general line of reasoning on the subject implies this: there is, first, a belief, which is presently disturbed by the "irritation of doubt"; and (by some process not very clearly described) the doubt is in turn "appeased," and a second phase of belief follows. This terminal (though not necessarily permanent) phase of the cycle may be either the original belief, now cleared of doubts, or a new or modified belief to which the phase of doubt gives rise. There are thus in fact four phases in the sort of cycle to which Peirce is referring: (1) the initial belief; (2) the "irritating" experience of doubting that belief; (3) the mental processes or "activities," the "inquiry," by which the doubt is either removed or confirmed; (4) the terminal belief, whether identical with

8

P R A G M A T I C I S T T H E O R Y OF M E A N I N G or different from the initial one. N o w this is a description of a type of sequence in experience with which we are presumably all familiar; and it is the description which, except for a failure to distinguish phase (3) clearly from phase ( 2 ) , Peirce actually assumes in most of his argument. But his formal general statement about belief conflicts with it, by introducing the redundant and factually false proposition that there is no belief without an antecedent doubt. All that is true is that some states of belief are preceded by doubt about some prior belief and by some process aroused by the doubt, which often eventuates in the acceptance of the same or another belief. A statement about all beHefs, or about what the term "belief" means, must obviously hold good of the belief in phase (1) as well as in phase ( 4 ) ; but since Peirce's statement clearly does not hold good of both, phases ( 2 ) and ( 3 ) , as given, must be eliminated f r o m his analysis. It is, however, true that belief (about a particular matter) is a state of being free f r o m doubt about the same matter; this does hold good of both phase ( 1 ) and phase ( 4 ) . W e may therefore amend Peirce's statement to assert of any belief: first, it is something that we are aware of; second, the experience of doubt is excluded from it; third, it "involves the establishment of a rule of action, or, for short, a habit." In the formula as thus amended, the first two "elements" are undisputed (except by behaviorists) and, indeed, truistic; the novel (and pragmatic) part of it is the third proposition, to which we shall henceforth refer as the Pragmaticist T h e o r e m . But if we scrutinize the terms contained in it, we find that the two crucial ones are equivocal. T a k e first the verb "involves." T h i s does not designate any one precisely defined kind of logical relation. A s M r . I. A . Richards has remarked, the word "is the foggy mind's best friend. W h e n you are not sure what you are saying, you will usually be safe in saying 'involves.' " ^ W e need not attempt to enumerate here all its possible senses (there are at least four of them) ; but since, by itself, the term tells us nothing at all specific about the relation of beliefs to habits of action, we must examine other expressions of Peirce's to discover, if possible, what he means by it. T h e r e is a possible equivocality also in the term "rule of action, or habit." " A c t i o n " would naturally be construed as meaning either overt action — bodily behavior, including speech — or at least a subjective decision to act overtly in some manner; Peirce in one place makes it equivalent to "the exercise of volition." But in a later essay in the same series he writes: " T h e belief of a rule is a habit. T h a t a habit is a rule active in us, is evident . . . Every belief is of the nature of a habit in so far as it is of a general character"; this, he tells us, has been shown in the preceding essays.® Here, then, it might appear, is Peirce's own definition of the most important term in his theorem. But unfortunately it is a circulus in defini-

LOVEJOY endo. It says only what we already knew — that a belief, "in so far as it is of a general character," is a habit of believing! There is no reference to "action," except in a sense in which a habit of belief is itself a "rule active in us." If this is all that Peirce is asserting in the Pragmaticist Theorem, that theorem, though undisputable, is a barren tautology. But it is, I think, quite certain that, in the essay on "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," this was not all that Peirce was asserting; if it had been, no lengthy argument would have been necessary. He is there manifestly presenting an ampUative proposition about belief, viz., that it is related to "action" in a certain manner, thus far only ambiguously indicated by the word "involves." And "action" is used as synonymous with "practice." No reader of the essay could, I think, possibly suppose Peirce to be merely propounding the following argument: Belief is a kind of action; therefore, a habit of belief is a habit of action, viz., a habit of believing. I shall therefore henceforth assume that this tautology is not the import of Peirce's theorem, at least in the essay in question. But what is the asserted relation between "a belief" and a "habit of action"? In what sense does the former "involve" the establishment of the latter? T o this question I am unable to find any clear answer. Different statements and arguments of Peirce, in the essay here under consideration, appear to me to be severally consistent with, and to suggest, at least seven different answers, not by him distinguished. We shall call them the possible senses of the Pragmaticist Theorem. Before we proceed to enumerate them, the reader should be warned to note a further equivocality in the term "habit of action," which partly explains their differences. Peirce does not appear to have been clear in his own mind as to whose "habit of action" his theorem, in its various forms, is about. Initially it relates to a habit of action on the part of the person holding a belief, i.e., affirming the truth of a proposition; all our beliefs "relate to" something that we do, or shall do. But sometimes it refers to the "habits of action" of objects not ourselves, to the behavior of "things." A belief of the latter sort will doubtless have some relevance to our habits of action; but to assert merely this is not to assert that a sentence can be meaningful only if it relates to human action; it is to assert the contrary. The distinction is obviously a critical one for the interpretation and appraisal of Peirce's various formulas. We now pass on to distinguish the possible senses of the Theorem. A. Any belief consists in some habit of action: "there is no difference of meaning [between beliefs] so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice." What this apparently says is that a belief is just a habit of action itself; if you have described the habit of overt action you have exhaustively described the belief. But though this is what Peirce 10

PRAGMATICIST THEORY OP MEANING sometimes says, I do not think that it is what he means. I£ "action" or "practice" denotes bodily behavior, we should have here a behavioristic account of belief; but Peirce was not a behaviorist. H e did not deny the existence of consciousness, or of "ideas" in the usual sense. A belief is "something that we are aware of"; the term is often synonymous with, or is subsumed under, "thought" or "thinking." H e has here merely expressed his meaning too elliptically. B. Every belief "produces" or "gives rise to" some habit of action in the believer, and where the habits of action produced are the same, the beliefs are the same, where the habits are different, the beliefs are different. Consequently, to determine whether two nominally different beliefs — i.e., beliefs expressed in different terms — are in fact different or the same, it suffices to note whether the same or different habits of action accompany, or ensue upon, the differing verbal expressions of belief. This is, I think, one sense in which Peirce meant his theorem to be taken. But it does not tell us what belief itself is, what is present in consciousness when the event of believing something occurs; it tells us only what the sequelae or effects of belief are, and adds that we can infer identity or diversity of beliefs from identity or diversity of the effects. The validity of such an inference is by no means evident; it is elementary that the same kinds of effects do not always have the same causes. Peirce, however, as we have seen, usually seems to be intending to explicate the generic conceptual content of beliefs, to tell us what we are "thinking," what kind of ideas are present for awareness, when we believe; and what he sometimes seems to assert about this is the following. C. Present for awareness in any belief is an "idea in our minds," "a thought" of something — other than the believing itself as a psychological event; a belief, in short, has a referent; and the universal and sole \ind of referent in belief consists of future habits of action on the part of the believer. This is an example of Peirce's deductive procedure; the Theorem is deduced from two premises (for which no argument is offered) about "thought," which here (though not always elsewhere) is evidently either equivalent to "belief" or designates a genus of which "belief" is a species: (1) "The whole function," or "purpose of thought is to produce habits of action." (2) "If there is anything connected with a thought which is not relevant to its purpose" it is "an accretion to it, but no part of it." Hence, "if there be a unity among our sensations which has no reference to how we shall act on a given occasion, . . . we do not call that thinking." "It is impossible that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything" other than "thought's only function" — viz., producing habits of action. Since the expressions "relevant to," "has reference to," "relates to" arc all equivocal, it is impossible to be sure what these propositions mean. II

LOVEJOY B u t they at least seem clearly to imply that " a thought" has a content; as Peirce elsewhere puts it, it is, or includes, a "conception" of something; and, taking the equivocal terms in possible and in their most natural senses, the above propositions in conjunction seem to amount to the thesis that we have no "thoughts" or "ideas" of anything but habitual modes of action to be hereafter followed by us, and therefore (since our beliefs cannot g o farther than our ideas) no beliefs about anything other than such habits of action. All other so-called beliefs are devoid of meaning. T h i s thesis, however, will probably seem to most readers so extravagant a paradox that, on that ground alone, it should be assumed that Peirce cannot have intended to affirm it. Its paradoxicality lies in what may be called its futuristic and its activistic implications: {a) W e have no ideas of, and therefore no beliefs about, anything except [ a particular class o f ] future events or experiences; and {b) W e have no ideas of, or beliefs about, anything except active experiences. If I compare these two factual propositions with the class of phenomena to which they presumably relate — viz., the experiences commonly called believing — I do not find them, either in my own experience or in that of other men, as expressed in their words, to be in accord with the empirical facts. I have, and other men say they have, beliefs about past events {e.g., " C o l u m b u s discovered America in 1492") and about experiences, past or future, which are not actions of any h u m a n or conscious agent {e.g., "Pompeii was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius," "it will rain t o m o r r o w " ) . It is difficult to suppose that Peirce actually intended to deny that people have such beliefs. Yet we find him, many years after his essay of 1878, still asserting that "the rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future," and not shrinking from the consequence that " a belief that Christopher Columbus discovered America really refers to the f u t u r e " ; and also asserting that "the very meaning of a proposition is, for the pragmaticist, that f o r m in which the proposition becomes applicable to h u m a n conduct." ^ Whether these assertions are equivalent to the propositions stated just above, { a ) and ( è ) , is thus far obscure, since the words "rational," "very," "applicable," and even " m e a n i n g " are undefined. I shall not here attempt to ascertain the precise import of the later passage. F o r the moment it suffices to note that the earlier essay does say that " t h i n k i n g " always and exclusively "has reference t o " how we shdl act·, that this could be taken by readers of that essay to mean propositions {a) and ( è ) ; and that a tendency to deny the meaningfulness of terms or sentences about past events, or events other than "actions," or both, is conspicuous in the subsequent development of pragmatism. T h u s James in his Berkeley address expresses "Peirce's principle by saying that the effective meaning of any philosophic proposition can always be brought down to some particular consequence, in our future 12

P R A G M A T I C I S T T H E O R Y O F MEANING practical experience, whether active or passive";® and in Baldwin's Dictionary he defines pragmatism as "the doctrine that the whole meaning of a conception expresses itself in practical consequences either in the shape of conduct to be recommended [which would, therefore, be future conduct] or in that of experiences to be expected, if the conception be true . . ." If "meaning" has the signification previously indicated — viz., that of which we are thinking, of which we have an "idea in our minds," when we believe or affirm anything — all that need be said about this theorem is that it just isn't so. The fabric of natural science rests chiefly upon beliefs about remembered or recorded observations or experiments already performed, and a great part of it consists of propositions about correlations or sequences among past events. Scientific "laws," i.e., generalizations, are, of course, propositions about both actual past and possible future events, but not more about the latter than about the former. Since they are about both, if, at a given moment, doubt arises as to the truth or accuracy of a generalization, it must be tested or verified by further observations or experiments, subsequent to that moment; and this consideration presently gave rise, for Peirce himself and others after him, to a particular form of futuristic theory, to the effect that the "meaning" of a proposition consists in the anticipated experiences which would verify it. But the simple truth that, if you consider a proposition as still in need of verification, you must verify it afterwards, does not imply that the meaning of the proposition (in the sense defined) — i.e., its referent — must be future. The future is, obviously, the temporal region in which our desires must find their fulfillment or frustration, and that, therefore, to which our plans of action must refer; but, equally obviously, the framing of an intelligent plan of action is possible only insofar as we can make meaningful and true judgments about the past. Nothing but confusion is caused in philosophy by dwelling upon one of these truisms to the neglect of the other, or by a fashion of speech which, under the name of a theory of meaning, treats one of the tenses as reducible to the other. D. There is, however, another and much less paradoxical meaning, which might conceivably be extracted from the passages cited, though it is certainly not clearly expressed by them. The proposition that the "function of thinking" is "to produce habits of action" might be construed to signify only that thinking is in final analysis always motivated by a desire to find a satisfactory or effective mode of action "on a given occasion," one which will be instrumental to some purpose then entertained by the person thinking; the propositions that we have no "thoughts" which are not "relevant" to this function and that all thinking "has reference to how we shall act," might mean that we think only of matters — facts, considerations — which somehow, directly or indirectly, may help us to determine what modes of action will be thus 13

LOVEJOY instrumental to our purposes.® Construed in this sense, the Theorem does not assert that we can have no "ideas in our minds" except of habits of action on our own part, and no beliefs except beliefs about habits of action. It does not deny the occurrence of beliefs, or the existence of ideas, about all manner of things, past, present, or future, provided only that they have, or are, by those who hold or entertain them, conceived to have, some ultimate "bearing" (as Peirce often puts it) upon our purposive action. Most propositions, and therefore most beliefs, about specific "laws of nature" (e.g., water expands at a temperature above 4° C.) may on occasion have some relevance to the choice of a course of action in a particular situation, but they are obviously not propositions about our "habits of action." These laws, moreover, are based upon beliefs about the actual correlations of natural phenomena in the past; and in the scientist's analysis of past phenomena in order to determine true "causal connections" among them, logical distinctions having no direct reference to "habits of action" — e.g., the primary distinction between post hoc and propter hoc — have an obvious and indispensable part. The Pragmaticist Theorem about "belief," taken in the present sense, does not imply that no such beliefs exist and no such distinctions are made, and it therefore does not very narrowly limit the range of meanings or kinds of "belief." It does, however, apparently require us to accept, as a true generalization in empirical psychology, the proposition that no belief ever occurs which is not prompted by the intent to find a mode of action instrumental to some "practical purpose" of the believer, and is not consciously connected with and directed by that intent. This generalization does not appear to me to be true; but, in the interest of brevity, I refrain from arguing the point. E. All beliefs (1) consist exclusively in "conceptions of objects" as "possessing certain sensible qualities" and (2) are "notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to the objects of our conception according to the qualities which we believe them to possess." "We can mean nothing" by a term {e.g., wine) "but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses"; "it is impossible that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things; and if we fancy that we have any other [idea], we deceive ourselves. . . . Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects." These propositions seem strangely out of line with preceding versions of Peirce's theorem. Hitherto (except in D ) the whole "meaning" of a belief has been declared to consist in a reference to "habits or rules of action" on the part of persons holding the belief ("in our nature"). We are now told that habits of action are not the sole or even the primary referents of beliefs, but that we must first have beliefs about the sensible qualities of "objects" before we can proceed to action. Thus Peirce writes that "we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, 1, that this, that or the other is wine; or, 2, that wine possesses certain

4

PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y O F MEANING properties." The reference to our action is wholly secondary, and not essential to belief at all. The meaning of the term "wine" is given by enumerating a particular set of sensible qualities which the term, by definition, connotes. Naturally, since our idea of wine is our idea of those qualities, if we have occasion to act with reference to wine, we cannot do so without taking account of its qualities. There is, then, nothing novel, or peculiarly "pragmatic," about this form of Peirce's theorem; it is simply a species of sensationalism — a sensationalist or positivist theory of meaning. It is true that he seeks to make this appear equivalent to the activist theory by remarking that "our action has exclusive reference to what affects our senses"; and if this means, as I suppose it does, that we can act (in the bodily sense) only upon sensible objects, his reasoning here amounts to the following syllogism: (1) We can have ideas only of things upon which we can act; (2) we can act only upon sensible objects; (3) ergo, we can have ideas only of sensible objects. But this conclusion Peirce cannot in consistency accept. For the proposition that "we can have ideas in our minds only of sensible objects" is itself a proposition, not about sensible objects, but about ideas in our minds — unless such ideas are themselves sensible objects, which for Peirce they are not. In enouncing that proposition, therefore, Peirce implies that we have ideas of, or beliefs about, things that are not sensible objects or sensible qualities. He thus denies the sensationalist thesis in the very sentence in which he affirms it. Furthermore, he of course constantly employs syntactical or illative terms expressing logical relations; but such terms {e.g., "hence," "whereas," "nevertheless") —which certainly possess "meaning" ® in the sense that we have ideas corresponding to them — do not express ideas of sensible qualities. The proposition, or belief, that "because A is true, В is true" is not accurately describable as a proposition solely about the sensible qualities of an object. That Sense E of his theorem seemed plausible to Peirce can, I think, be explained only by supposing that, when he enunciated it, he had in mind only sensible objects, i.e., he was unconsciously reasoning in a circle. It was from this sense of the theorem that he deduced the conclusion that there is no difference in meaning between the Protestant and Catholic doctrines concerning the elements in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Both parties admit that the "objects" upon the altar, to which their propositions relate, "possess all the sensible qualities of wafer-cakes and diluted wine." When the Catholic asserts that they "literally" are also flesh and blood, what he says is "senseless jargon"; his only meaningful proposition is the one in which he agrees with the Protestant. If this conclusion is accepted, as by many who do not hold the sensationalist theory of meaning it doubtless is, I suggest that their reason for accepting it is that the two propositions "the substances on the altar are wafer-cakes and wine," and "the same substances 15

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are flesh and blood," seem to such persons contradictory — not that one of them is and the other is not a conception of the sensible qualities of the objects. But I do not propose to enter into this theological controversy.® It is more to my present purpose to note that Peirce's conclusion on this matter contradicts his theorem in sense B. The Catholic and the Protestant certainly habitually act in quite different manners in the presence of the objects on the altar; and, taken in sense B, Peirce's Theorem might conceivably be serviceable to the purposes of a Catholic apologist defending the doctrine of transubstantiation. F. The final statement, in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," of the Pragmaticist Theorem is in the form of a "rule" for attaining the highest grade of "clearness of apprehension": "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these e f f e c t s is the whole of our conception of the object" Here, again, the statement concerns, not primarily beliefs, but conceptions, or ideas; and it does not declare that our ideas are concerned wholly with habits of action of our own, but with certain "effects," or properties, of "objects of conception." It is implicitly inconsistent with the original general thesis about beliefs; for if we can have ideas of objects which are not habits of action of ours, we presumably can have beliefs about them. What Peirce means by "objects of conception" is obscure, since "conception" is not defined. It must, however, presumably mean the perception of a particular object, or the framing, by definition, of a general concept of a class of objects, or the classing of a particular object under a general concept — or perhaps all of these; but the second sense seems the most probable. The "rule" also presupposes degrees of "clearness of apprehension," "clearness" also being undefined; apparently we can form a "conception of an object," though not with the "highest degree of 'clearness,'" without following the rule. The vagueness or equivocality of its terms makes the rule very difficult to interpret or apply; but I shall assume that it implies this proposition in the indicative mood: When we conceive clearly of any class of objects, what we are conceiving, or thinking of, consists wholly of the "effects" of the object which might conceivably have "practical bearings." The formula is marked by a curious oversight of a pertinent and elementary logical consideration. It is the case either {a) that all the "effects which an object has" have "practical bearings" (or may be conceived to do so), or {b) that some of its "effects" have such bearings and some do not. If (a) is the case, the rule simply tells us that our whole conception (if it is a clear and correct conception) of the object is the conception of the whole of its "effects." Now if "effects" means here (as it does in E) the "effects of the object, direct or indirect, upon our senses," i.e., its sensed or sensible qualities, all that this comes to is that our conception of a (sensible) object i6

PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y O F MEANING is our conception o£ its sensible qualities as a whole. So taken — assuming {a) — this differs from E only in requiring us, in order to "apprehend" an object clearly, to be aware of all its sensible qualities. But this we do not need to do in order either to perceive an object or to form a clear conception of a class of objects. It is not necessary to think (it is, indeed, impossible to think) of all the sensible characters of actual apples, oak trees, or monkeys, when defining the classes to which those sensible objects belong. If, on the other hand, {b) is the case, it cannot be true that our "whole" conception of the object must consist in thinking only of those "effects which have practical bearings." And, in fact, Peirce's language pretty clearly shows that he himself assumes that {b) may be the case, i.e., an object may have, and be conceived as having, some "sensible effects" which have practical bearings and some which do not. But it is an obvious contradiction to say that, when we conceive of a sensible object, the whole of our conception of it consists in conceiving of only a part of the sensible qualities which we conceive of it as having. G. It seems probable, however, that in using the word "effects" in this "rule" Peirce was thinking not merely of the sensible qualities of objects qua sensible, but chiefly of their capacities of acting upon other objects, their causal potencies in general;^^ and taking the term in this sense, the rule would express the thesis of the exclusively functional or instrumental import of all general concepts. Translated into the indicative mood, it seems to assert: "The whole of your conception of any class of objects, expressed by a general term, is a conception of specific potentialities of action of such objects, which may be employed, under certain conditions, to further (? or alternatively, may obstruct or counteract), some specific mode of potential action on your, or somebody's, part." ^^ In short, we can think of nothing except of instruments for our action or our purposes, qua instruments — together, possibly, with impediments to our action. A thing is what it can be used for, and the only meaningful terms which can be predicated of a subject of discourse are expressions of its potential function or functions in relation to human practice. There is, however, it will be noted, a duality in the present theorem: your conception of an object, it is implied, consists, so to say, of two subconceptions: (a) of the object as having in fact certain potential "effects," (b) of the "practical bearings" of these effects. Nevertheless it is asserted that the entire content of the conception of the object consists of the effects which have such bearings. If it were true, or were expressly assumed by Peirce, that all possible "effects" can conceivably have practical bearings, under some circumstances or other — which would not be unplausible — the subconceptions (a) and (b) would be denotatively coextensive. Yet even in that case they would not be identical conceptions. To think of a stick of dynamite as capable, under certain conditions, of producing an explosion is not the same 17

LOVEJOY thing as thinking of its potential utility for a quarryman. Indeed, in the history of applied science there has often been a considerable time-interval between the discovery of the "effects of an object" and the realization of their "practical bearings." This odd notion that you can tell what a thing is by telling what it does that is serviceable (or the contrary) to men's purposes and actions was destined to have considerable success in the thought of the next fifty years, and to be applied to various problems in a number of fields; it has even been applied to the conception of God. If it had been applied to the physical objects which are obviously and clearly instruments — to tools or machines — its absurdity would, I think, have at once become apparent. A physician might say of a pill which he was prescribing that its only function was to counteract an excess of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, but this would not enable a druggist to fill the prescription. If you define a clock as an instrument for keeping time, or a locomotive as an instrument for pulling cars, you learn something, but very little, about actual clocks or locomotives; and in particular, you don't learn what it is practically most needful to know, namely, what such an instrument is like, what qualities or composition or structure it has. A thing is serviceable for some use only in so far as, before and independently of that use, it has certain characters. If you are making a tool, your choice of the characters to be given to it is, indeed, determined by a relation between certain characters, as conditions, and certain possible effects of those characters which render the tool useful for the purpose in view. But to apprehend the relation between the characters and the uses to which they can be put, you must first know the characters. And in relation to some particular purpose (and all purposes are particular), many or all of the object's "effects" may have no practical bearings. The hardness of a diamond, and its consequent capacity for cutting other substances, has practical bearings if you are contemplating a burglarious entry; it has none if you are purchasing an engagement ring. Nevertheless, it is possible even for a prospective bridegroom to conceive of a diamond as hard. Botanists had a clear conception of pénicillium before the idea of the potential therapeutic uses of that plant occurred to anybody; and physicists "clearly" conceived of molecules as composed of atoms and of atoms as composed of smaller particles or electric charges, before they conceived of the possibility of the splitting of the atom by human agency, with highly "practical bearings." In short, we constantly entertain what may be called purely descriptive ideas of things, and make purely descriptive judgments about them, without conceiving of their practical bearings at all — as should be apparent to anyone who has ever said "the grass is green" or "the sky is blue." If understood in sense G, therefore, Peirce's Theorem is, as an empirical generalization, patently contrary to fact. i8

PRAGMATICIST THEORY OF MEANING Such, then, are the theorems, so far as I am able to distinguish them, which appear to be expressed in the course of Peirce's reasonings pertinent to the problem of meaning, in the essay on "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." They are manifestly not identical or equivalent theorems; they are not mutually implicative; and some of them are inconsistent with others. Yet Peirce does not seem to have been aware of their diversity, nor of the possibility of incongruities among them; the reader gets the impression that they were for him only different ways of expressing a single Theorem. Seeking to help other men to "make their ideas clear," he himself, I cannot but think, produced a rich medley of ideas which, though in fact "distinct," were not by him explicitly discriminated, nor altogether unequivocally worded, with the result that the import of the general thesis enunciated at the outset remains far from "clear." Nevertheless, it is possible to discern a dominant idea, a presupposition (already mentioned) which, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, underlies most of the variants of the Theorem. It is the assumption that thought exists for the sake of action — that "the whole function or purpose of thought is to generate habits of action." This proposition, as we have seen, is treated by Peirce as axiomatic; he offers no argument for it whatever. But it is in fact a very curious proposition, and certainly far from self-evident. It is an assertion about teleology, about what end a natural phenomenon is designed to serve, and such assertions have long been regarded as alien to science. It is, of course, true that some phenomena which occur are conditioned or made possible by other phenomena, but it is a scientifically unverifiable proposition to say that the "purpose" of the latter is to make possible the former. And even if one wishes to express this relation by such terms as "purpose" or "function" or "for the sake of," it is hazardous to assume that a type of phenomenon. A, has for its sole function to produce some one other type, B; it may conceivably have a number of "functions." It is a function of water to put out fires, but also to enable plants to grow. And where two general types of phenomena coexist, it is conceivable that there is a reciprocal "functional" relation between them. It is, in short, no more evident — if one is to employ such expressions — that thought exists in man "for the sake of" action than that action exists for the sake of thought; and it is (I suggest) more probable that neither exists solely for the sake of the other. But the acceptance of the assumption by Peirce becomes somewhat intelligible if one recalls the intellectual climate of the 1870's and the influence, which Professor Wiener has pointed out,^® both of the earlier Lamarckian and of the new Darwinian biology upon Peirce. It was an assumption which, doubtless, seemed in accord with the biological way of thinking, and perhaps, vaguely, with the theory of natural selection — the conception of all animal functions as adaptive. However that may be, Peirce, accepting this assumption, developed it 19

LOVEJOY mainly in two divergent ways (though, as I have said, apparently without being aware of their divergence). 1. By an easy but illicit transition, he converted it into the theorem that all thought is about action: "it is impossible that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but thought's only function," which "has no reference to how we shall act on a given occasion." T h e assumption, so converted, became equivalent to a theory of meaning, of what we can, and cannot, have ideas of — and, naturally, to what I have called a futuristic theory, since thought about action and for the sake of action must be about action yet to be performed. Thus the queer futuristic paradox which runs through much pragmatism was generated. (With James the futuristic and the activistic strains became divorced.) 2. Less paradoxically, the assumption was converted into the proposition that all thought is about the relation of "objects" to action — which is quite a different matter. This took several forms which have been sufficiently distinguished in the preceding analysis. This paragraph is to be taken merely as a somewhat conjectural account of the filiation of ideas concerning "meaning" in Peirce's mind in his early period. When beginning this paper, I had intended similarly to examine Peirce's formulations of the Pragmaticist Theorem in his later essays. These formulations he presented as merely restatements of his original thesis. They do not seem to me to be, in all cases, identical with any of the propositions here distinguished; some quite new and, in their historical influence, important conceptions make their appearance. This is, in part, I think, well shown by Professor Bronstein in this volume.^^ But the limitation of length properly and necessarily imposed by the Editors upon contributions to the volume compels me to abandon that larger undertaking. What has been presented here, then, is only a truncated fragment of an inquiry into the meaning and the tenability of Peirce's doctrine or doctrines about meaning.

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2 What Is the Pragmaticist Theory of Meaning? BY J U S T U S B U C H L E R

In this paper I shall refrain from evaluating Peirce's theory of meaning. The reason is not that I consider such evaluation unimportant. On the contrary, it is very much needed at the present time, when critical sanity with respect to Peirce has fortunately begun to supersede a recent wave of adulation. The reason is rather that misunderstanding of pragmaticism continues rampant and unabated; and this, so far as I am concerned, is a prior problem. N o less a philosopher than Professor Lovejoy, in his contribution to this volume, exhibits the misunderstanding in a characteristic and highly detailed form. Virtually all that he finds implied by pragmaticism appears to me to be excluded by it. I shall therefore use his paper as a vehicle for the clarification of certain key points in Peirce's theory. A good many philosophers who nowadays appeal to "analysis" as though it had been invented in the last half century are hardly as critical of the meaning of their own procedures as of the alleged limitations of other procedures in the past. What these philosophers have indeed invented is the habit of looking at language myopically, as though an atomistic quest for its ingredients brings us closer to the materials of knowledge and error. Professor Lovejoy is surely not to be counted among these philosophers. Yet in practice, and even in profession, his approach in the paper on pragmaticism is remarkably similar to theirs. " . . . I know no way," he says, "of ascertaining what, and how, a writer is thinking as he writes without closely scrutinizing his words, the form of the propositions into which he combines them, and the explicit or implicit logical relations between the propositions." This statement is really quite unexceptionable. That one cannot discern a writer's thought without scrutinizing his words is obvious enough. But why is it not equally obvious that the writer's meaning may not square with some of his formulations, or that the writer's meaning may not be contained in any single formulation? Lovejoy seems to be minimizing any distinction between the analysis of words and the analysis of intent. Lovejoy centers his attention on the essay " H o w to Make Our Ideas Clear." I have no quarrel with the selection of an individual piece for ex21

BUCHLER amination, especially if it be for the purpose of an exercise in logic. But there is a great difference between the individual piece of a living writer and that of a writer the bulk of whose life work lies before us. In the former case there is much more excuse for considering the content in isolation: we cannot anticipate an unproduced context and we may reasonably interpret a given pronouncement as definitive with respect to what has preceded it. Where, however, a body of work manifestly bears upon the content of one of its parts, it is obligatory upon us not to exclude from consideration the light it may throw upon that part. The contrary procedure is not justified by concluding, as Lovejoy does, that his present paper is "only a truncated fragment" of a larger undertaking. No one today would seriously examine, say, Locke's Conduct of the Understanding or Leibniz's Monadology without consideration of their larger context. I do not see why the recency of a philosophic output exempts it from the rules of interpretative evidence. It is worthy of note that on occasion in his paper Lovejoy cites statements from other writings of Peirce in order to support his contentions. Implicitly, then, he would seem to be committed to the relevance of other materials, despite his limited use of them. Lovejoy is troubled by the fact that whereas Peirce's announced problem is that of the meaning of "ideas," "he begins talking about 'beliefs'." And Lovejoy goes on to say, "It is not evident, however, that 'idea' and 'belief are synonymous terms." Now it is quite plain from the kind of essay he was writing that Peirce was addressing an audience for whom in any case it would not have been important to distinguish between "ideas" and "beliefs" or between "terms" and "propositions." The very title "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" is frankly colloquial. It might just as easily have been "What Do We Mean by Clear Thinking?" But the fact of the matter is that, whether in popular or nonpopular discourse, Peirce could not see the distinction between "idea" and "belief" as a sharp one. Ideas or terms, to the extent that they function in deliberative thought, are characteristically regarded by him as potential or implicit assertions. Nor would his purpose in the essay under consideration require any sharp distinction: the very reverse would be true. For it is the meaningfulness or clearness of any conscious instrument of communication that Peirce is concerned to define. Lovejoy, finding that Peirce uses now one word, now another, naturally discovers "inconsistencies" and ambiguities, and marvels that these can occur so liberally in an analysis of clearness. "[Peirce's] assertions about beliefs are often inferences from prior generalizations about 'ideas,' based upon the implicit premise that our beliefs can extend no farther than our ideas." This "implicit premise" is implicit not in Peirce but in the exaggeration of the importance of his alternative usages. What the "prior generalizations" are Lovejoy does not tell us, and I, for one, cannot find them.

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PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y OF M E A N I N G Commenting upon Peirce's view that there are "three properties" of belief, Lovejoy holds that the second of these is contrary to fact. The second property is, according to Peirce, that belief "appeases the irritation of doubt." According to Lovejoy, Peirce is asserting the "factually false proposition that there is no belief without an antecedent doubt." Here we have an instance where there is no problem of interpretation at all: Lovejoy is simply making an erroneous inference from what Peirce has said. He is maintaining that the proposition "belief appeases the irritation of doubt" implies the proposition "there is no belief without an antecedent doubt." Not only is there no warrant for the assertion of the one proposition on the basis of the other, but there is nothing else that Peirce says which, in combination with the first proposition, would imply the second. Lovejoy thinks Peirce is saying "that there is no experience of belief (about any particular matter) which is not preceded by, first, the experience of doubt about that matter, and, second, the experience of removal or dissipation of doubt." And he goes on to say, "But I suppose that no one — not even Peirce himself, if he had stopped to think about the point — would maintain that nobody ever believes anything without having first doubted it." But what Peirce says is that belief is a state which has the property of being able to dissipate another state, doubt. He does not say that every occurrence of a state of belief is preceded by the occurrence of a state of doubt. In the essay "The Fixation of Belief" he had indeed explicitly denied this. For he had there pointed out that only in "inquiry," properly speaking, does a belief follow a doubt. "A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions. . . ." Those who are ruled by "tenacity" may never really doubt at all. But further: Peirce held the view that there are some beliefs which no one ever can doubt. They are the beliefs that relate to the "common sense" level of behavior. Peirce called these "indubitable": they cannot be doubted so long as our experience and discourse is on the vague, noncritical level that is required for the most elementary type of communication. T o this mode of communication we always return in our animal patterns and animal purposes. The indubitable beliefs are the beliefs common to all men which, genetically speaking, precede any kind of doubt whatever. Lovejoy devotes the major part of his paper to a discussion of what he calls the "Pragmaticist Theorem," the statement of the third property of belief that Peirce advances: belief "involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit" Lovejoy feels that the term "involves" is very vague. He agrees with I. A. Richards that it is "the foggy mind's best friend." Let us see where the fogginess lies in this issue over the use of the word "involves." (1) The irony of the matter is that, despite the semipopular character of

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BUCHLER Peirce's essay, he is, in this use of "involves," being far more precise than Lovejoy imagines. Peirce was aware that precision of statement does not depend on the relative specificity of the terms employed, and that general terms can be superior for certain types of designation. He actually does go on to say, a sentence or two later, that "belief is a rule for action" (italics mine); but in a context where he is enumerating three properties of belief and not just one, this simpler identification would have been inaccurate. To say that a belief is a rule of action does not imply that there are no other aspects or characteristics of belief. (2) Not only are there other characteristics of belief, but some of these (like the three properties enumerated) are relevant to its meaning-status, while others are not. For instance, the sheer sensory quality that belongs to believing or thinking is one of the irrelevant properties. In the second of the important papers of 1868 published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Peirce treats thoughts or beliefs as signs, and calls attention to the "material quality" of a thought-sign as one of its attributes. A material quality or feeling is involved in belief, but, like other properties, cannot be said itself to be the belief. It is important to suggest here, in connection with other issues which I shall discuss presently, that Lovejoy's failure to take notice of the 1868 papers (he makes mention only of "formulations" in "later essays") is largely responsible for his distortion of pragmaticism. The 1878 papers may be regarded by him, and may indeed, as he says, be "generally regarded" as the fountainhead of pragmatism. They are certainly less important for an understanding of Peirce's pragmatism than the 1868 papers, which clearly adumbrate the fact (I have tried to show it elsewhere) that his position cannot be fully understood unless seen as part of his general theory of signs. (3) Peirce's use of "involves" reflects his conception of belief in relational terms. Back in 1868 he had said, of thought, that "just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought, and not that thoughts are in us." "Belief" and "thought" as he saw them are not to be interpreted in terms of ordinary entitative equivalents. Lovejoy apparently does not see this, and his own psychologistic usage is the only one that seems to him intelligible. Thus in one place he complains that Peirce's formulation "does not tell us what belief itself is [Lovejoy's italics], what is present in consciousness [my italics] when the event of believing something occurs; it tells us only what the sequelae or effects of belief are. . . ." It is something of a further irony for Lovejoy thus to complain of Peirce's use of the very technique of pragmatic definition which he is at the same time developing theoretically. One can legitimately disagree with the value of pragmatic definition; but it seems much less reasonable to criticize that technique on the ground that it does not coincide with one's own. 24

PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y OF MEANING These considerations may help further to explain why for Lovejoy a clear-cut distinction between terms like "belief" and "idea" is imperative, whereas for Peirce it is usually unimportant. Throughout his analysis of the pragmaticist theory Lovejoy is disturbed by the "equivocality" of expressions like "involves," "has reference to," or "relates to." He himself, however, has no hesitation whatever in the use of a term like "consciousness" or a phrase like "present in consciousness." Nor does he hesitate to offer the "most natural senses" of the terms he calls in question, and to speak of " 'ideas' in the usual sense." He believes that Peirce ought to have formulated his problem thus: "What can we have ideas of?" — unaware that Peirce, struggling away from the older type of appeal to "clear and distinct ideas" with its psychologistic difficulties, strove also to avoid psychologistic formulations. Lovejoy discovers seven "possible" senses of the "Pragmaticist Theorem." "Different statements and arguments of Peirce, in the essay here under consideration, appear to me to be severally consistent with, and to suggest, at least seven different answers, not by him distinguished." Instead of following Lovejoy point by point, I shall select for examination a representative number of his contentions. On the basis of several quotations Lovejoy attributes to Peirce the view that a belief "involves" a habit of action in the sense that the belief is exclusively about a future habit of action on the part of the believer. In Lovejoy's words, what Peirce means (or more accurately, one of the things the theorem can certainly be understood to mean) is that "the universal and sole kind of referent in belief consists of future habits of action on the part of the believer." Were this interpretation advanced by a lesser person than Lovejoy, I should regard it as a bad joke. But justice to both Peirce and Lovejoy seems to require serious elimination of it. Lovejoy thinks Peirce is saying that (1) the meaning of a belief is its referent·, (2) the only referent a belief can have is a habit of action; (3) the habit of action which is the sole "referent" is a habit on the part of the believer. (1) The aim of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" is to provide a way of defining and of understanding which avoids the older appeal to either mere intuitive familiarity or mere abstract definition. The problem is, in other words. What type of equivalent must be given for a sign (idea, belief, thought, term, proposition) which would not be guilty of the subjectivity or verbalism of the older criteria and which could therefore objectively establish that the sign was a "clear" or "meaningful" one? Now the equivalent of a sign is a translation or interpretation of it (an "interprétant"), and the interpretation which constitutes the meaning of the sign is a rule or habit of action. If our belief is that diamond is harder than sapphire, the meaning of this belief is not identical with what it refers to (its referent or "object," diamond and sapphire) but with the rule or habit by which one would get 25

BUCHLER acquainted with, or identify, or manipulate what it refers to. What a sign (belief, thought, etc.) means, then, is given by the interpretation of the sign, not by its referent. As Peirce puts it in 1905, "The meaning of a proposition is itself a proposition. Indeed, it is no other than the very proposition of which it is the meaning: it is a translation of it." (2) The interprétant of a sign and the object or referent of a sign are two different properties of it. The habit of action which constitutes the interprétant of a sign (the rule by which the sign is defined, which provides the meaning of the sign) is not the same, therefore, as the object which the sign is about. It is absurd to say that a sign is about its own meaning. The habit of action does, indeed, prescribe the way to identify or manipulate the object. But what the belief refers to is the object, not its own meaning, not the way in which we identify. (3) The habit or rule of action which constitutes the meaning of a belief that I hold is not necessarily a habit on my part — and in fact it cannot be a habit merely on my part. The very essence of Peirce's enterprise is to find a public criterion for clearness (and this may be said especially of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"). The rule of action (or formula for identification) that interprets the belief holds for anyone, regardless of the accident of how many or who happen to entertain the belief. Nothing is more prominently the target of Peirce's opposition than the conception of meaningfulness or clearness in private, individual, or biographical terms. One reason why Lovejoy goes astray on these fundamentals is that his scrutiny of Peirce's phrases and sentences leads him to the discovery of trees altogether unrelated to the forest, (a) He considers the most likely equivalent of Peirce's phrase "has reference to" to be "referent"; and (b) he thinks that in a phrase like "how we shall act" the "we" is significant and applies literally to particular believers. A glance at the passage on which he bases his interpretation easily shows the infelicity of his reading (I reproduce somewhat more of the context than Lovejoy does) : ". . . The whole function of thought is to produce habits of action; and . . . whatever there is connected with a thought, but irrelevant to its purpose, is an accretion to it, but no part of it. If there be a unity among our sensations which has no reference to how we shall act on a given occasion, as when we listen to a piece of music, why we do not call that thinking" (my italics). It is obvious that (a) the expression "has no reference to" is the colloquial equivalent not of "does not have as referent" but of "in no way affects." And (b) "how we shall act" (the same would hold for "our" sensations) is only a livelier and more direct way of bringing home to the reader the sense of the phrase "habit of action." The view thus found in Peirce by Lovejoy is not considered by him as paradoxical. What he does consider extravagantly paradoxical is an emphasis within this view with which I have thus far refrained from dealing. "Its

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PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y OF MEANING paradoxicality," he says, "lies in what may be called its futuristic and its activistic implications: (a) We have no ideas of, and therefore no beliefs about, anything except . . . future events or experiences; and, (b) We have no ideas of, or beliefs about, anything except active experiences." In order to support his contention that these are real "implications" of the 1878 essay, Lovejoy cites Peirce's statement in 1905 that "the rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future." And then he selects a statement from the second of the 1905 papers: "a belief that Christopher Columbus discovered America really refers to the future." Lovejoy adds that " a tendency to deny the meaningfulness of terms or sentences about past events, or events other than 'actions,' or both, is conspicuous in the subsequent development of pragmatism." Now what I have already said would by itself be enough to show the folly of this interpretation. By the "meaning" Peirce did not intend the object or referent; so that it is the mie of verification in which the "future reference" consists, not the object of the proposition. The pragmaticist, Peirce says in the first 1905 paper, "locates the meaning in future time" (my italics). Lovejoy thinks he is opposing Peirce when he says: "The fabric of natural science rests chiefly upon beliefs about remembered or recorded observations or experiments already performed. . . ." Had he quoted the context of the "Christopher Columbus" sentence, he would have found Peirce saying that "the Past is the storehouse of all our knowledge." The paper in which this is asserted is, in fact, largely concerned to point out the correlative emphases on past, present, and future that characterize pragmaticist theory. On more than one occasion Peirce criticized Comte for having allowed his conception of verifiability to overlook the significance of judgments about the past. " . . . Comte's definition, that a verifiable hypothesis is one whose substance is of such a nature as to be capable of being itself directly perceived, makes his maxim an arbitrary and indefensible limitation of useful knowledge. The past, for example, is of its nature incapable of being directly perceived "1 As for all propositions being about "actions," how many times will it yet have to be said that "action" for Peirce is an experimental term, not a biographical or moral one? Similarly with the word "practice." Under the influence of other pragmatists Peirce did often appropriate his own formulations to their interests, and he often succumbed to the use of terminology the usual associations of which he deplored. Lovejoy thinks the expression "has reference to how we shall act" can mean that we think only of what is "instrumental to our purposes"; that "no belief ever occurs which is not prompted by the intent to find a mode of action instrumental to some 'practical purpose' of the believer. . . ." That such an interpretation cannot possibly apply to Peirce is evident from the principal emphasis not only of "How

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BUCHLER to Make Our Ideas Clear" but of its immediate predecessor "The Fixation of Belief" — namely, that private interests, "practical purposes" on the part of the individual, have no significant connection whatever with the nature of meaning or of truth. Ten years earlier Peirce had emphasized that knowledge, properly speaking, was "independent of the vagaries of me and you," and that "the individual man . . . is only a negation." One of the central aims of the 1878 papers was to determine "clearness" on the basis of the procedure of the natural sciences; to interpret meaning in terms of the one method, the scientific, which rendered all private interests and private considerations irrelevant, and which decided all questions by appealing to the kind of evidence that is not "restricted in its influence to one individual" but that rather "affects, or might affect, every man." Lovejoy is puzzled by the fact that many of Peirce's statements say nothing about "habits of action" but rather emphasize "sensible effects." For instance: "it is impossible that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things." Whereupon Lovejoy concludes that "These propositions seem strangely out of line with the preceding versions of Peirce's theorem." Which, he asks, are the "referents" of beliefs; habits of action or sensible qualities of objects.? W e have seen that if one is to look upon the pragmaticist theory of meaning in terms of the "referents" it is alleged to prescribe, one is already hopelessly astray; and so it is plain why Lovejoy feels it necessary to reconcile these "forms" of Peirce's principle. And since he looks at the two "versions" as separate, he finds it possible to say, of the "sensible effects" emphasis, that "it is simply a species of sensationalism — a sensationalist or positivist theory of meaning." The fact that Peirce in many other contexts throughout his work goes to lengths to show the inadequacy of sensationalism does not in the least give Lovejoy pause or make him suspect that perhaps his detection of "sensationalism" may be rash or hasty. He does not say what his criterion is for determining the limits of a verbal context within which an interpretation shall be made. If his purpose is to understand pragmaticism and not simply to dissect its formulations for the sake of ingenuity, it is hard to see why he does not devise possible interpretations that reconcile the two "versions" along with those that find them antagonistic. Let me, in any event, suggest that what Peirce is saying is: Our ideas and beliefs are disguised rules or habits — rules for getting acquainted with, or of acting in some relation to, a group of sensible effects. This unified formulation must, even on the surface, appear to Lovejoy to be no less "possible" an interpretation than the other, even if we ignore the multifarious evidence (including the proximity in the same essay of the two "versions") for it. Peirce's view even in 1878 is strongly antisensationalistic ( a ) in its emphasis upon rule or habit, which has

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PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y OF MEANING the property of generality; and (b) in its conception of the "sensible effects" as universally and publicly identifiable. "My pragmatism," Peirce later said, has "nothing to do with qualities of feeling." The sign which constitutes the meaning or translation of a given thought-sign or belief is general; it consists of what Peirce once called the "would-acts" or "would-dos" of habitual behavior. There is no doubt that the phrase "sensible effects" was unfortunate — if only for the reason that James and Lovejoy could construe it in sensationalistic and particularistic terms rather than as denoting overt and universally identifiable traits. Peirce later saw fit to distinguish the "emotional interprétant" from the "logical interprétant" of a sign, and to declare that it was the latter that he had in mind when he talked about "meaning." His intent, however, had been apparent from the beginning, long before "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." His quest for an objective standard of clearness can best be regarded as a contribution to the theory of communication and representation — that is, to logic. Peirce's broad conception of logic interprets it as the analysis of the structure and function of all possible signs and signcombinations. When in 1903 in one of his letters ^ he wrote to James that "pragmatism . . . is one of the propositions of logic," it is this theory of logic, upon which he had long been working, that he had in mind. An objective standard of clearness meant, for Peirce, a technique for facilitating communication. His appeal to "sensible effects" is an appeal to what he sees as the ultimate basis of communication on a cognitive level. Lovejoy wants to know how Peirce accounts for our ideas of ideas, if he says that "our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects." Can we speak of sensible effects when we speak of "ideas" themselves? The answer for Peirce is simply, yes. An "idea" can be taken to mean either (a) a thoughtsign, communicable in language or symbols that have sensible characters; or (b) a mere sensation. And our idea of what "sensation" means is our idea of certain situations (a pin prick, a flame) correlated with certain typical responses (grimaces, verbal utterances). Along with these overt "sensible effects" we may each of us associate his own private feelings; but the latter alone would not constitute "an idea of" anything in the sense which Peirce intends. We must not "mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself." Calling attention to the fact that purely logical or syntactical terms like "hence" or "because" do not express ideas of sensible qualities, Lovejoy infers another exception to Peirce's formula about ideas. This is unquestionably an exception to the formula. Lovejoy explains it by supposing that "when he [Peirce] enunciated it [the formula] he had in mind only sensible objects, i.e., he was unconsciously reasoning in a circle." This would be circular reasoning. But why suppose this? Why not suppose, with at least as much reasonableness, that in enunciating the formula Peirce had in mind

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BUCHLER ideas purporting to be about things or facts, ideas expressible by descriptive terms ? It would then not have been circular or tautologous to have gone on to say that "our idea of anything [any thing, situation, fact, event] is our idea of its sensible effects." What has come to be, for better or worse, identified as the outstanding formula of Peircean pragmatism next occupies Lovejoy's attention: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." This is set forth by Peirce as "the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension," and Lovejoy at once complains that "clearness" is "undefined." Presumably he means by "undefined" "not defined in one sentence," for the entire essay is an elaborate, complex attempt to define "clearness." Lovejoy also says that the rule "presupposes degrees of 'clearness of apprehension'." But what Peirce calls "grades of clearness of apprehension" does not at all necessarily imply "degrees." No one can deny that the particular "maxim" in question is just about the most awkward and unhappy formulation imaginable. Yet its sense is plain from the succeeding pages of the essay, which give illustrations of what Peirce is saying. Lovejoy, divorcing consideration of the maxim from consideration of its sequel, starts by contending "either (a) that all the 'effects which an object has' have 'practical bearings' . . . or (b) that some of its 'effects' have such bearings and some do not." At once, focusing on grammar alone, Lovejoy is off on the wrong foot. The question whether there are "effects" without "practical bearings," or which effects have practical bearings, is here not just irrelevant but nonsensical. For Peirce means by "effects" that which "conceivably has practical bearings." In the redundant maxim he is using the latter phrase as parenthetically synonymous with "effects." The proof of this is that he does not even use the words "practical bearings" in the illustrative sequel, which comprises more than half of the entire essay. He uses only the expression "sensible effects." By "effects that have practical bearings" he means "sensible effects." And he is saying: Our conception of an object consists solely in a conception of sensible effects. He is not saying: Our conception of an object is a conception only of those among its effects which have "practical bearings" and not of those which do not. This would not only have been inherently contradictory but would have appeared so in advance and glaringly. It would have been to affirm that the whole conception of an object is a conception of sensible effects, and to affirm at the same time that we can conceive of an object as having effects which are not sensible. Elaborating on the role of "practical bearings" in Peirce, Lovejoy sees in the maxim the view that "we can think of nothing except of instruments for our action or our purposes"; the "odd notion that you can tell what a 30

PRAGMATICIST T H E O R Y OF MEANING thing is by telling what it does that is serviceable (or the contrary) to men's purposes and actions. . . ." He goes on to argue that this view makes only statements of a technological character meaningful and overlooks the meaning of purely theoretical statements. And against the absurd view he has thus attributed to Peirce, he offers his refutation: ". . . To apprehend the relation between . . . characters and the uses to which they can be put, you must first know the characters." Once again it is astonishing to me how anyone more than slightly familiar with Peirce's thought can even entertain such an interpretation. If anything is characteristic of the philosopher who wanted to base the whole theory of meaning on the model of scientific method, it is the statement that "True science is distinctively the study of useless things." He had no patience with men who "look upon science as a guide to conduct, that is, no longer as pure science but as an instrument for a practical end. . . . If a proposition is to be applied to action, it has to be embraced, or believed without reservation. There is no room for doubt, which can only paralyze action. But the scientific spirit requires a man to be at all times ready to dump his whole cartload of beliefs, the moment experience is against them." In these passages it is evident that terms like "practical" and "action" are being used in their more familiar moral and utilitarian sense; and when Peirce spoke in this sense he expressed his position unmistakably. All of the foregoing diverse "theorems," Lovejoy thinks, seem to have been for Peirce "only different ways of expressing a single Theorem." But Lovejoy adds that "it is possible to discern a dominant idea, a presupposition (already mentioned) which, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, underlies most of the variants of the Theorem. It is the assumption that thought exists for the sake of action — that 'the whole function or purpose of thought is to generate habits of action'." As Lovejoy sees it, this last quoted statement of Peirce "is an assertion about teleology, about what end a natural phenomenon is designed to serve, and such assertions have long been regarded as alien to science." If Peirce's statement about the function of thought were accurately rendered by the alleged equivalent which Lovejoy takes for granted — "thought exists for the sake of action" — there might be some substance to the latter's final conclusion. But the predominantly moral flavor of Lovejoy's rendition ("exists for the sake of") is in sharp contrast to Peirce's methodological analysis. This conclusion about pragmaticism reminds one, in its rashness, of Bertrand Russell's generalization about "pragmatists" — that they "prefer action to reason." "Function" to Lovejoy immediately suggests teleology; but Peirce is speaking of the logical or semiotic function of thought. "Function" in his mind means "functioning." This is abundantly clear from the 1868 papers, in which he tried to show that the "meaning," the "intellectual value" of any 31

BUCHLER thought consists "in what this thought may be connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts; so that the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual." As for "action," it is futile to continue to affirm the sense in which Peirce intended the word, or to reiterate that Peirce's experimental temper was always at odds with the kind of conclusion by which Lovejoy sums up pragmaticism. When on one occasion Peirce groped for a distinction between habit of action and habit of expectation, it must have been not only in the interest of accuracy but surely also to dispel the persistent abuse of his original term. I shall content myself with quoting an important passage from the first of the 1905 papers in the Monist, the purpose of which, as Peirce put it, was "to correct any misapprehension of pragmaticism." T o this paper, among others, it will be recalled, Lovejoy also turned for corroboration. . . . Of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to be called its very meaning? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances, nor when one entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most directly applicable to self-control under every situation, and to every purpose. This is why he locates the meaning in future time; for future conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control. But in order that that form of the proposition which is to be taken as its meaning should be applicable to every situation and to every purpose upon which the proposition has any bearing, it must be simply the general description of all the experimental phenomena which the assertion of the proposition virtually predicts. For an experimental phenomenon is the fact asserted by the proposition that action of a certain description will have a certain kind of experimental result; and experimental results are the only results that can affect human conduct. . . . Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies ma\es up its entire bearing upon human conduct. (My italics.) And then, a little later, as though anticipating the very phraseology which an interpreter like Lovejoy might employ, Peirce says: . . . If pragmaticism really made Doing to be the Be-all and the End-all of life, that would be its death. For to say that we live for the mere sake of action, as action, regardless of the thought it carries out, would be to say that there is no such thing as rational purport.

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3 Inquiry and Meaning BY D A N I E L J .

BRONSTEIN

"The Fixation of Belief" was written for a popular magazine over seventy years ago^ and it might seem for that reason not to merit critical scrutiny. Yet, it is not less rigorous than many of Peirce's writings on similar subjects. And although, as we shall see, he himself in later years expressed qualms concerning the validity of one of the basic arguments of the essay, this seems hardly to have been noticed; and the argument, containing the kernel of the pragmatic conception of truth,^ was destined to exert a marked influence on other pragmatists. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," which was published in the same journal two months later (January 1878) is perhaps even more famous than its predecessor, and the two papers together are the most celebrated of Peirce's writings. In this second paper Peirce elaborates the pragmatic theory of truth and reality, and introduces a new theory of meaning.® This pragmatic conception of meaning is one of the first formulations of the operational or empirical theory of meaning, a theory which gradually developed through the cooperation of scientists studying the foundations of science and philosophers influenced by modern developments in logic and physics. Peirce's theory of inquiry, briefly sketched in these two papers, is a mosaic of elements from biology, psychology, sociology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics. There is no one article or volume of the Collected Papers which fully develops even one of its many facets. Sometimes one factor, sometime another is predominant. Although it was a subject that occupied Peirce's attention all his life, the theory of inquiry was left in an unfinished condition. Certainly there is nothing approaching a systematic statement of his views. I shall not attempt to make a comprehensive study of this theory, but merely to indicate its characteristic features, some of Peirce's modifications of his early views, and what I consider its merits and shortcomings. Since the conception of belief is basic to his theory of inquiry, I shall begin with that. I . B E L I E F AND DOUBT

"Belief" is a vague term of ordinary language. Psychologists, who once had much to say about it, seem to have abandoned the term as too vague for

33

BRONSTEIN their purposes. A definition of such a term may be meant in two ways: (1) as an articulation of its essential characteristics as commonly used, or (2) as a proposal to substitute a new meaning to take the place of the old. In the first sense, a definition is an empirical statement, either true or false, depending on whether or not it is a correct transcript of ordinary usage. A definition which proposes a new meaning for an old term can hardly be called incorrect. And even if it turns out to be inconvenient, it may be so illuminating that it serves a useful purpose. Usually a definition of the second kind proposes a meaning which is sufficiently like the commonly accepted one to justify using the same term, and enough unlike to arrest attention by its departure from ordinary usage. Peirce's definition of "belief" has this character. H u m e referred to belief as "an act of the mind that has never yet been explained by any philosopher." His own view was that it is "nothing but a more forcible and vivid conception of an idea." O n this view, two beliefs could be distinguished f r o m each other because, being conceived and expressed differently, they appear as distinct elements of consciousness. Yet, so far as any effects they have are concerned, the two beliefs may be indistinguishable. Peirce regarded this as an imaginary distinction. O n Peirce's view, but not on Hume's, we could say that a m a n shows his beliefs by acting in determinate ways under given circumstances and by being consistent in his behavior, although he himself may not be conscious of what he believes. Peirce did say that a belief is "something that we are aware of" (5.397),* but it is more than an idea, for it must involve the establishment of a habit. A n d two beliefs can be differentiated only because they give rise to different modes of action. Sometimes Peirce says that a belief is a habit — a habit involving deliberation. Suppose a m a n decides, after reflection, that he is opposed to capital punishment. Does he have a belief? Peirce would say yes. But where is the habit in such a case? Peirce's answer is that habits are sometimes acquired without any previous reactions that are externally manifest. . . In the formation of habits of deliberate action, we may imagine the occurrence of the stimulus, and think out what the results of different actions will be. One of these will appear particularly satisfactory; and then an action of the soul takes place which is well described by saying that that mode of reaction "receives a deliberate stamp of approval." ® T h e situation, then, seems to be this. T o illuminate the notion of belief, Peirce uses the suggestive term "habit." But there are cases of belief where it is not at all apparent that any habit is involved, at least not in the usual sense of a mode of Ijehavior acquired through the repeated performance of a certain action. N o w , in order to show the element of habit in these beliefs, which

34

INQUIRY AND MEANING are apparently unaccompanied by any externally manifested action, Peirce simply stretches the term "habit," and assumes that in such cases "the habit" is produced by "an action of the soul." But this "action of the soul" is just what is most in need of explanation and what Hume said no philosopher had been able to explain. If we knew what it meant to say that "an action of the soul takes place" we would know what a belief is. The introduction of the term "habit," therefore, does not clarify the notion of belief, and Peirce's efforts to define belief along these lines must be judged unsatisfactory. A more satisfactory theory of belief, however, can be extracted from his writings. Suppose an individual "makes up his mind" to act in a certain way in a set of imagined circumstances, but changes his mind just before these circumstances occur. If we follow Peirce's dictum that "different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise," we would probably have to say that the original state of mind was not a genuine belief because it didn't give rise to any mode of action. I say "probably" because the term "mode of action" is just vague enough to make one uncertain of its proper application. A less vague and less crude definition of belief was given by Peirce in 1908, when he said that "to be deliberately and thoroughly prepared to shape one's conduct into conformity with a proposition is neither more nor less than the state of mind called Believing that proposition" (6.467). In this sense it is possible to understand how a man can have beliefs at a given time but not "act on them" at some future time. For a belief is a disposition to act in a certain way; but we have many different dispositions, and we may at any time lose some dispositions or acquire new ones. Also, it is quite possible that situations should occur in which we would have several incompatible dispositions, one of which might be strong enough to nullify the others. A disposition can be formulated as a subjunctive conditional; i.e., "A believes 'X' " shall mean that "if certain conditions were fulfilled, A would react in a certain anticipatible manner." For example, if A were asked whether " X " is true and he had no reason for lying or concealing anything, he would reply affirmatively. This is an application of Peirce's pragmatic maxim and, as we shall see, he advocates this formula "to make other ideas clear." Thus Peirce defines belief not as an awareness or thought, nor as a behavior pattern, but rather as a willingness to act in a certain way, or as a preparedness for an eventuality. For this idea Peirce gives credit to Nicholas St. John Green, "who urged the importance of applying Bain's definition of belief as 'that upon which a man is prepared to act.' " "From this definition," Peirce said, "pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him [Green] as the grandfather of pragmatism" (5.12). Another term that plays a prominent rôle in Peirce's theory of inquiry is

35

BRONSTEIN "doubt." How does doubt difíer from belief? Of the two major differences which Peirce cites, the first is that beliefs, but not doubts, "guide our desires and shape our actions" (5.371). T o illustrate this, one might say that Jones carried an umbrella because he believed it would rain, or that Smith increased his life insurance because he believed his health was failing. It would not be straining language, however, to say instead, that Jones doubted that the weather would stay clear, or that Smith began to have doubts about his health. A second difference, according to Peirce, is that one who doubts will be stimulated to inquire while one who believes will not, because he is already satisfied ( 5 . 3 7 2 ) Y e t someone who believes that a solution to a problem can be found will be more likely to search for it than one who doubts that a solution is possible. Thus doubts may either stimulate an inquiry or inhibit it. It all depends on what is being doubted. The possibility of this dual formulation suggests that the above distinctions made by Peirce between doubt and belief are not distinctions of fact, as he assumes, but of language. Peirce frequently referred to doubt as irritating and a source of dissatisfaction, and to belief as calm and satisfying. In "The Fixation of Belief" he went so far as to call belief "a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else." ^ But although doubt often does produce dissatisfaction, it does not always do so. We all have many doubts which are neither particularly irritating nor necessarily the source of inquiry because we know there is nothing we can do to resolve them. Beliefs are often pleasant and satisfying, but some beliefs can be very discomforting. The idea that belief is a satisfaction, always and without qualification, seems quite plainly false. A man who believes, on his doctor's authority, that he will die in six months will hardly derive any satisfaction from this belief; and if it should turn out that the doctor was mistaken, I don't think the patient would, in retrospect, regard his delusion as a satisfactory condition. When Peirce wrote "The Fixation of Belief" in 1877, his view was that inquiry, "a struggle to attain belief," is initiated because of "the irritation of doubt," and that its "sole object is the settlement of opinion [belief]." But as we have seen, the terms "doubt" and "belief" are often interchangeable in descriptions of human behavior. Consequently these terms are not in themselves adequate indications of the source and goal of inquiry. Peirce's theory of inquiry, therefore, had to be modified before it could be considered adequate. The needed modification was provided by Peirce himself in 1908 in an article in the Hibbert Journal (6.469). He says there that we are led to inquiry when something we confidently expect fails to occur, or when something we don't in the least expect does occur; in other words, when we are surprised. Peirce also refers to this initial condition of the inquirer as

36

INQUIRY AND MEANING "wonder," but "perplexity" seems even better. So that instead of saying, as he did in the early essay, that the stimulus to inquiry is doubt and its goal the settlement of belief, he now (1908) holds that the stimulus is perplexity, and the goal is to replace perplexity by understanding, which is accomplished by explanation. T h i s difference between Peirce's early theory of inquiry and his mature view might appear, at first glance, to be a question of terminology. But I shall try to show, in what follows, by an analysis and comparison of the two views, that the difference is much more than that. I I . T H E T H E O R Y OF I N Q U I R Y OF " Τ Η Ε F I X A T I O N OF

BELIEF*'

In " T h e Fixation of Belief" Peirce insists that " t h e sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion." H e continues: 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. (5.375) T h i s is characteristic of Peirce's early view. W h a t we are after, when we inquire, is to reach a belief. " T r u t h " can be shelved, at least temporarily, to emerge only after inquiry has been continued for an indefinitely long time. T h e results then attained are to be called "truth." T h i s is the official doctrine, but there is much in " T h e Fixation of Belief" that is hard to square with it. T h e principal difficulty facing one who would define " t r u t h " in terms of " i n q u i r y " is: how can " i n q u i r y " be defined, and what makes one inquiry better than another? In attempting to answer this question Peirce says that a man should consider that, after all, he wishes his opinions to coincide with the fact; . . . T o bring about this effect is the prerogative of the method of science. (5.387) Apparently then, the settlement of belief is not the only object of inquiry; we also wish our opinions to coincide with the fact. It is for this reason that we prefer the method of science to other methods, such as authority or intuition. But if our purpose were just to reach beliefs, "whether or not they are true," as Peirce had asserted, we would lose this basis for our preference. Again, toward the end of the essay, Peirce says: T h e person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by this, that, if acted on it should, on full consideration, carry us to the point we aim at and not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed. (5.387)

37

BRONSTEIN T h i s statement is not altogether clear. What does it mean to say that "truth should carry us to the point we aim a t ? " Of course, if we aim at the truth the statement is a tautology. But if what we desire is stable beliefs irrespective of their truth, the statement is not at all self-evident. Are true beliefs the only stable ones ? A n d how stable must a "stable belief" be ? T h e advocates of the method of authority would claim that their method has been successful in stabilizing beliefs, some of which have survived unchanged for centuries, while the scientists have modified their beliefs innumerable times. Whereas Peirce has previously asserted that what we seek, when we inquire, is an opinion, and that it is an idle fancy to imagine that what we are searching for is a true opinion, he now pities the inquirer who "dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it" and reminds him that since "he wishes his opinions to coincide with the fact" {i.e., to be true opinions), he should choose the method of science. As if this difficulty were not enough for an interpreter of Peirce to contend with, we are faced by still another in Peirce's remarks (1908) when criticizing James and Schiller for identifying the T r u e and the Satisfactory. Peirce then said : In that case, it is indispensable to say what is meant by the True; until this is done the statement has no meaning. I suppose that by the True is meant that at which inquiry aims. (5.555) Truth, which in 1878 was said to have nothing to do with the object of inquiry, is now, thirty years later, presumed to be that very object. T h e apparent inconsistency here can be resolved if a distinction is made between the immediate goal of the inquirer, which is to reach firm beliefs, and the ultimate goal of inquiry, which Peirce calls " T r u t h . " Although this distinction was not made by Peirce, it is an essential one; for without it, he would indeed be committed to the doctrine which he renounced, that the T r u e is the Satisfactory. For he maintained, at different times, that the object of inquiry is a firm belief, and that the object of inquiry is Truth. It follows that a firm belief is the same as the Truth. But since the characteristic of a firm belief is, in Peirce's words, that it is a satisfactory state of mind, it follows that the true is the satisfactory. Making a distinction between the immediate goal of the inquirer and the ultimate goal of inquiry would obviate such an unpalatable conclusion but it would present us with a new difficulty. For, if each inquirer is searching for a settled belief, which satisfies him when he attains it, "whether or not the belief is true," it would be somewhat puzzling to account for the fact that when all inquirers pursue their own beliefs, the final result should be one shared opinion, called the Truth. Such a use of the term " T r u t h " merits the same criticism which Peirce himself directed against James' and

38

INQUIRY A N D MEANING Schiller's identification of the true and the satisfactory, which was that it is not so much a doctrine of philosophy as a new contribution to English lexicography. At any rate, if T r u t h is to be a synonym for "the ultimate goal of inquiry," then "inquiry" cannot be defined as a process whose goal is to reach the Truth. Such a definition would amount to the unilluminating tautology: Inquiry is a process whose goal is to reach the goal of inquiry. How, then, can "inquiry" be defined? Concerning the definition in "The Fixation of Belief," that inquiry is a struggle to attain belief and that a belief, whether true or false, is its sole object, we have already seen that Peirce does not consistently adhere to it, since he admits that we wish our "opinions to coincide with the fact." And in later years he expressed his dissatisfaction with this theory of inquiry in the following passage: My original essay ["The Fixation of Belief"], having been written for a popular monthly, assumes, for no better reason than that real inquiry cannot begin until a state of real doubt arises and ends as soon as Belief is attained, that a "settlement of Belief," or, in other words, a state of satisfaction, is all that Truth, or the aim of inquiry, consists in. The reason I gave for this was so flimsy, while the inference was so nearly the gist of Pragmaticism, that I must confess the argument of that essay might with some justice be said to beg the question. The first part of the essay, however, is occupied with showing that, if Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue.® Peirce made these remarks in order to dissociate himself from the position of the pragmatists who were acknowledging him as the originator of their pragmatic theory of truth. If Truth is to be called a satisfaction, it must be a subjunctive conditional satisfaction. Peirce baptized this position "conditional idealism" (5.494). Actually, he had already developed a new theory of inquiry based on a different (nonpragmatic) conception of truth, as we shall see later. But it could still be contended that, even if Peirce was inconsistent and did later reject his early theory of inquiry, it is nevertheless a sound and tenable view. Why, then, was Peirce dissatisfied with his attempt to treat inquiry psychologically and without reference to truth? The answer is that, in that case, any inquiry which settles belief is as good as any other, and there is no way of showing that a settled belief will more likely "coincide with fact" than any other belief. And this coincidence with fact, as Peirce recognized even in "The Fixation of Belief," is the prime desideratum in inquiry. That is to say, there is a sense of the term "preferable" in which it is true to say that a belief that coincides with fact is preferable to any alternative belief

39

BRONSTEIN that does not coincide with fact, no matter how firm or satisfying the latter belief may be. In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce asks the following question : If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if beHef is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it? (5.377) That is a good question. And if the settlement of opinion were the sole object of inquiry, it would be unanswerable. Peirce admits as much when he says that if anybody chooses to adopt such a procedure, "I do not see what can be said against his doing so." He goes on to say that this method breaks down because "the social impulse is against it." But that is no answer because if the social impulse actually favored such a method, as it sometimes does, it would not thereby become a satisfactory method, no matter how convenient or satisfying it would be. I think Peirce revised his theory of inquiry because he realized that what we should demand of a method of attaining belief is that it should minimize error, not doubt. Even if doubt does produce dissatisfaction it is still preferable to credulity. This dissatisfaction and the need for removing the doubt are biological facts and these facts may cause men to adopt one or another method of fixing belief. But they tell us nothing about the validity of such a method. Even in "The Fixation of Belief" when it comes to choosing a method of fixing belief, the ground on which Peirce makes his choice for the method of science is that the latter, in contradistinction to the other methods, is self-corrective. But self-correctiveness is not a virtue if we are searching for stable beliefs whether or not they are true. It is a virtue if we desire to eliminate our errors and reach true opinions. I have been contending that, although Peirce officially espouses a pragmatic theory of truth in "The Fixation of Belief," he actually appeals to a correspondence theory ("coincidence with fact") to justify his preference for the experiential method, as he called it. It is also worth noting that the very decision that the method of science is self-corrective is based on a correspondence theory of truth. For what is the meaning of "self-corrective.''" Suppose that on the basis of new evidence or more refined techniques we revise our opinions. Why call this a correction rather than merely a change of opinion} It must be because we think our new opinion is true and the old one an error: or at least because the new opinion contains fewer errors than the old. In order to show that a method is self-corrective, then, we must be able to show that one opinion is true or contains fewer errors than another opinion. 40

INQUIRY AND MEANING In w h a t m e a n i n g is the t e r m " t r u e " u s e d h e r e ? Is the p r a g m a t i c c o n c e p t i o n of " t r u t h " as " t h e u l t i m a t e g o a l of i n q u i r y " the m e a n i n g in q u e s t i o n ? S i n c e w e w a n t to k n o w w h e t h e r o u r i n q u i r y h a s led u s to the t r u t h , it w o u l d p l a i n l y b e g the q u e s t i o n to a s s u m e that w e a r e a l w a y s a p p r o a c h i n g closer to o u r g o a l . D e w e y , i n t e r p r e t i n g Peirce, a n s w e r s t h a t w e m u s t s u b j e c t the

new

o p i n i o n to c o n t i n u e d i n q u i r i e s ; if it s t a n d s u p , t h e n it is a c c e p t a b l e . B u t o u r q u e s t i o n r e m a i n s ; w h y d o w e believe t h a t a n o p i n i o n w h i c h is s u s t a i n e d by f u r t h e r i n q u i r y is m o r e s a t i s f a c t o r y ( o r n e a r e r the t r u t h ) t h a n o n e w h i c h is w e e d e d o u t by p r o c e s s of inquiry.? B e c a u s e t h a t is the n a t u r e of o u r m e t h o d of i n q u i r y , w e a r e t o l d ; that is h o w it w o r k s . B u t h o w d o w e k n o w it w o r k s that way.? W h a t c o n v i n c e s u s t h a t o u r m e t h o d is s e l f 4 : o r r e c t i v e P a s t

ex-

p e r i e n c e w i t h the m e t h o d , w e a r e told, s h o w s t h a t it is " s u c c e s s f u l . " S u c c e s s f u l in d o i n g what.? " S u c c e s s f u l in l e a d i n g to results that f u t u r e i n q u i r i e s w i l l either c o r r o b o r a t e or r e c t i f y . " ® B u t this is b e g g i n g the q u e s t i o n a g a i n . T r u t h ( t h e c a p i t a l i z e d v e r s i o n ) is d e f i n e d as the g o a l of i n q u i r y — n o t a n y o l d inq u i r y , b u t a " c o m p e t e n t " i n q u i r y . A n d a c o m p e t e n t i n q u i r y is a self-corrective i n q u i r y . B u t h o w is self-correctiveness d e t e r m i n e d B y f u t u r e i n q u i r i e s . W e have gotten nowhere. W h e n w e say, t h e r e f o r e , that a self-corrective m e t h o d s u b s t i t u t e s

true

o p i n i o n s f o r f a l s e ones, the t e r m " t r u e " is n o t i n t e r p r e t a b l e in the p r a g m a t i c sense, i.e., as " t h e u l t i m a t e g o a l of i n q u i r y . " B u t as I shall try to s h o w , it c a n be, a n d w a s by Peirce, i n t e r p r e t e d in t e r m s of a c o r r e s p o n d e n c e theory. T h e a v e r s i o n w h i c h s o m e p r a g m a t i s t s h a v e f o r this theory rests o n a belief t h a t they a r e thereby c o m m i t t e d to a n " a n t e c e d e n t r e a l i t y " ; this they

consider

i n t o l e r a b l e b e c a u s e " k n o w l e d g e is to b e d e f i n e d in t e r m s of i n q u i r y , a n d n o t vice versai

B u t P e i r c e explicitly a f f i r m s t h a t the m e t h o d of science rests

o n a " f u n d a m e n t a l h y p o t h e s i s , " w h i c h is that " t h e r e a r e R e a l t h i n g s w h o s e c h a r a c t e r s are entirely i n d e p e n d e n t of o u r o p i n i o n s a b o u t t h e m ; these R e a l s a f f e c t o u r senses a c c o r d i n g to r e g u l a r l a w s . . . ." ( 5 . 3 8 4 ) . T h e

significance

of this h y p o t h e s i s is best seen in c o n n e c t i o n w i t h P e i r c e ' s p r a g m a t i c m a x i m . T h e s e t w o i d e a s e n a b l e u s to p r o v i d e a n i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the rôle of a corr e s p o n d e n c e theory in a n e m p i r i c a l theory of i n q u i r y , w h i c h is n o t p r i m a r i l y to f u r n i s h a d e f i n i t i o n of " t r u t h , " b u t to s h o w h o w w e c a n j u s t i f y o u r beHefs. I I I . T H E R E V I S E D V E R S I O N OF P E I R C E ' S T H E O R Y

OF

INQUIRY

A s w e h a v e a l r e a d y seen, the g o a l of i n q u i r y in P e i r c e ' s m a t u r e theory is to c o n s t r u c t a n e x p l a n a t o r y h y p o t h e s i s . T h i s h y p o t h e s i s m u s t , of course, exp l a i n the f a c t s . B u t it m u s t f u l f i l l a n o t h e r c o n d i t i o n , viz., " b y s u b j e c t i o n t o the test of e x p e r i m e n t , to l e a d to the a v o i d a n c e of all s u r p r i s e a n d t o the e s t a b l i s h m e n t of a p o s i t i v e e x p e c t a t i o n that shall n o t b e d i s a p p o i n t e d . " ^^ I n q u i r y is initiated by a p u z z l i n g s i t u a t i o n . T h e p u z z l e is r e s o l v e d by the con41

BRONSTEIN struction of a hypothesis, which, by enabUng us to anticipate the course of our experience, removes the element of surprise which would otherwise be present. The hypothesis, a tentative belief to start with, becomes a firm belief (or rather a firmer belief) when it is thus confirmed. And all beliefs, theoretical as well as practical, must, in Peirce's language, involve expectation as their very essence. What we expect is always some sensation or group of sensations upon the fulfillment of certain conditions. This is so whether the situation we are trying to explain concerns our own body or the distant stars. A man develops conjunctivitis and night-blindness. He has heard of the theory that such a condition can be produced by a deficiency of vitamin A . He takes vitamin A , expecting the return of normal sensations in his eyes. If this does happen he is relieved but not surprised because it is just what his hypothesis led him to expect. A farmer is told that if he adds a certain fertilizer to his soil it will increase his yield. He does so, and later notices that his crops are more abundant; his expectation has been fulfilled and the hypothesis confirmed. In each case the hypothesis is judged satisfactory because a prediction was made that certain sensations would occur, if certain actions were performed. And when these actions were performed, it was found that the sensations did occur. What we mean, then, by calling a belief true, can be analyzed as follows. The belief can be formulated in a conditional proposition whose antecedent specifies a course of action to be performed. The consequent describes certain sensations. If we understand this description we will be able to recognize when these sensations actually occur. We then perform the action specified, and subsequently we experience certain sensations; at the same time we perceive a correspondence between the description of these sensations and their occurrence. This correspondence is the criterion for the truth of our belief. The analysis just given serves to explain what Peirce meant when he spoke of a hypothesis as being "correct," or a belief as "coinciding with the fact." It has been claimed that we should not use the word "true" to describe a belief because we can never know with certainty that our belief is true. All that we are warranted in asserting, it is said, is that the belief is plausible, or confirmed, or probable, or something of the sort. N o w it is of course admitted that the procedure we have described cannot prove that a belief is true. And it would be quite possible, if we wished to do so, to eliminate the word "true" from our vocabulary, though with some inconvenience. But in spite of these admissions there is no good reason for avoiding the word "true" (or "correct") in describing a hypothesis or belief. The correspondence theory of truth is not a test of truth. Rather, it is an attempt to explain what we mean when we say that a statement or belief is true. As Carnap has pointed out,^^ the fact that we can never be certain that a proposition or belief is true, is not a good reason for abandoning the term "true," any more 42

INQUIRY AND MEANING than the fact that we can never be absolutely certain that a substance is alcohol is a good reason for abandoning the term "alcohol." The view that inquiry has no presuppositions and that "knowledge" and "truth" have no meaning except that which they achieve as the outcome of inquiry has often been attributed to Peirce. And it can be supported by some of the things he said in "The Fixation of Belief." But even there, as we have seen, he insisted that inquiry rests on a fundamental hypothesis — that there are real things whose characters are not determined by our inquiry. "If this hypothesis," he said, "is the sole support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry must not be used to support my hypothesis" (5.384). In the "Lectures on Pragmatism" (1903), while explaining the nature of Thirdness, he definitely takes a stand in favor of an "antecedent reality" and against the view that truth is to be defined as the result of inquiry. He said : Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. That truth consists in a conformity to something independent of his thinking it to be so, or of any man's opinion on that subject. But for the man who holds this second opinion [that thirdness is experimentally verifiable although it cannot be directly perceived] the only reality there could be, would be conformity to the ultimate result of inquiry. But there would not be any course of inquiry possible except in the sense that it would be easier for him to interpret the phenomenon; and ultimately he would be forced to say that there was no reality at all except that he now at this instant finds a certain way of thinking easier than any other. But that violates the very idea of reality and of truth. (5.211) What an inquiry presupposes, according to Peirce, is that there arc phenomena subject to law over which our thinking has no control. This subjection of Phenomena to law, he believed, was something we perceivc directly in the course of experimenting; it is not something introduced in the operation of knowing. If we wish, then, to explain the meaning of any empirical proposition, we shall invoke a subjunctive conditional, and if that proposition is true, there will be a law to which the object or event in question is subject. One of Peirce's favorite ways of formulating the essential character of pragmaticism, or experimentalism as he sometimes called it, or, on occasion, conditional idealism — for Peirce was no miser when it came to philosophical baptisms — was in terms of the conditional proposition: If a certain experiment description would ensue.

were performed,

then an experience of a given

This is a more satisfactory way of stating what Peirce attempted to formulate in the 1878 essay "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" and which he later called "the pragmatic maxim." In fact, the 1878 essay contains some errors which Peirce was able to correct later by means of the more adequate formulation of his ideas. Thus he says in the early essay:

43

BRONSTEIN . . . let us ask what we mean by calling a thing hard. Evidently that it will not be scratched by many other substances. The whole conception of this quality, as of every other, lies in its conceived effects. There is absolutely no difference between a hard thing and a soft thing so long as they are not brought to the test. (5.403) Now it just isn't true to say that what we mean by calling a thing "hard" is that it will not be scratched by many other substances. It is quite possible that there should be soft things that will never be scratched by any substances. What we do mean by calling a thing "hard" is that it is not scratcheWe by many other substances. And it makes no difference to the "hardness" of a hard thing whether the scratch test is actually performed on it or not. It does, of course, make a difference to our knowledge. The principal weakness of Peirce's early essays was his failure to distinguish adequately between a thing's being so and our knowing that it is so; between a belief's being true and our knowing that it is true. He later saw that a true belief would be true whether or not an inquiry is actually made which leads to the belief. What results from such an inquiry is not that the belief becomes true, but that we gain an additional piece of knowledge, for we then know, what we couldn't know without the inquiry, that the belief is justified. Even though this confusion between the truth and the justification of beliefs was remedied in Peirce's later writings, it has been perpetuated by other pragmatists, and is a principal source of disagreement between Dewey (and his followers) and other empiricists.^® I V . P E I R C E ' S C R I T I C I S M O F " H O W TO M A K E O U R I D E A S C L E A R " ^ ^

Let us see now why Peirce changed his mind and modified his interpretation of the pragmatic maxim. In 1878 he said: Suppose then that a diamond could be crystallized in the midst of a cushion of soft cotton, and should remain there until it was finally burned up. Would it be false to say that that diamond was soft? (5.403, HMIC) His answer is that it wouldn't be false, though it "would involve a modification in our usage of speech." Peirce's argument is far from clear and I am not at all sure I can reconstruct it. Perhaps he meant something like this: {ΐ) If the diamond in question had been given the scratch test, and the result had been positive, then it would be true to say that the diamond is hard. But since in fact the test has not been performed, the antecedent of (1) is false. Hence it is equally true to say that the diamond is hard or that the diamond is soft; for "there is no objection to a contradiction in what would result from a false supposition" (5.403, HMIC).

44

INQUIRY AND MEANING But this would be a mistake. Even if we interpret (1) as a material implication (which it is not), it would be incorrect to argue that since the antecedent is false, it follows that the diamond is hard and that it is soft. Nothing at all would follow concerning the hardness of the diamond. Another possibility is that Peirce meant his initial proposition to be the equivalence: (2) The diamond is hard if and only if the scratch test is on it and is positive.

performed

Now, if the scratch test is not performed, we could infer from (2) that the diamond is not hard. But (2) is not true, for the proposition that the diamond is hard does not imply that a scratch test was performed on it. A positive result in such a test is what justifies a belief that the diamond is hard. It is not what makes the diamond hard. Just why Peirce thought it would be true to say that the diamond is soft remains obscure. But if he had taken seriously his original statement that "what we mean by calling a thing hard is that it will not be scratched by many other substances" (5.403), he could only have said of the diamond that will never be scratched by anything, that it is hard. But, that this is not what we do mean by calling a thing hard is evident from the fact that if we accept this statement of the meaning of "hard," we would have to say of the cotton under similar circumstances that it was also hard. A recent attempt to explain the meaning of what are now called dispositional properties like hard, soluble, elastic, electrically charged, etc. would employ a formula like the following: {3) If this body is scratched, then it is hard if and only if the test result is positive. Although this method of introducing terms like "hard" is free from the difficulties of earlier formulations, I think it is a fair conjecture that Peirce would not have been satisfied with it; because while it explains what is meant by attributing hardness to bodies which have been scratched, it fails to assign any meaning to statements which attribute hardness (or any other property introduced in this way) to a body which has not been subjected to the test conditions. Unless the analysis is extended so as to include these statements, they would have to be classified as meaningless. This would be strange, since the very same statements would become meaningful once the test is performed. In 1903, twenty-five years after writing HMIC, Peirce criticized some of his early views and presented a new interpretation of the pragmatic theory of meaning. Here is one relevant quotation : Let us now take up the case of that diamond which, having been crystallized upon a cushion of jeweler's cotton, was accidentally consumed by fire before the 45

BRONSTEIN crystal of corundum that had been sent for had had time to arrive, and indeed without being subjected to any other pressure than that of the atmosphere and its own weight. The question is, was that diamond really hard? It is certain that no discernible actud fact determined it to be so. But is its hardness not, nevertheless, a red fact.·" To say, as the article of January 1878 seems to intend, that it is just as an arbitrary "usage of speech" chooses to arrange its thoughts, is as much as to decide against the reality of the property, since the real is that which is such as it is regardless of how it is, at any time, thought to be. Remember that this diamond's condition is not an isolated fact. There is no such thing; and an isolated fact could hardly be real. It is an unsevered, though presciss part of the unitary fact of nature. Being a diamond, it was a mass of pure carbon, in the form of a more or less transparent crystal (brittle, and of facile octahedral cleavage, unless it was of an unheard-of variety), which [etc. etc. etc.] . . . But however this may be, how can the hardness of all other diamonds fail to bespeak some real relation among the diamonds without which a piece of carbon would not be a diamond? Is it not a monstrous perversion of the word and concept red to say that the accident of the non-arrival of the corundum prevented the hardness of the diamond from having the redity which it otherwise, with little doubt, would have had? (5.457) T h e essential point which Peirce here emphasizes can, I think, be put as follows. An experimental verification of the assertion that the diamond is hard is our way o£ justifying it, but such a verification does not constitute the entire meaning o£ the assertion. Does it follow that Peirce is contending that hardness is a self-subsistent reality having meaning independently of its relation to sensible experience ? Not at all. At the same time, we must dismiss the idea that the occult state of things (be it a relation among atoms or something else), which constitutes the reality of a diamond's hardness can possibly consist in anything but in the truth of a general conditional proposition. For to what else does the entire teaching of chemistry relate except to the "behavior" of different possible kinds of material substance? And in what does that behavior consist except that if a substance of a certain kind should be exposed to an agency of a certain kind, a certain kind of sensible result would ensue, according to our experiences hitherto. As for the pragmaticist, it is precisely his position that nothing else than this can be so much as meant by saying that an object possesses a character. He is therefore obliged to subscribe to the doctrine of a real Modality, including real Necessity and real Possibility. (5.457) T o say that what we mean by calling a substance hard is that if it "should be exposed to an agency of a certain kind, a certain kind of sensible result would ensue," is quite a different view from the earlier one which had the consequence that "there is absolutely no difference between a hard thing and a soft thing so long as they are not brought to the test" (5.403).

46

INQUIRY AND MEANING According to Peirce's new view the meaning of a statement such as: "this substance is hard" is formulated in another statement which is a subjunctive conditional. Now it is possible to ask: what is the meaning of this subjunctive conditional? Can its meaning be expressed in another statement which is in the indicative mood? A number of contemporary writers have tackled this thorny question but so far without notable success. Peirce, it seems, believed that the subjunctive conditional was irreducible. At any rate he accepted it as the meaning of empirical statements attributing properties to objects of experience. He said that this view commits one to a belief in real Possibility, and to the proposition that there are real generals operative in nature. He had a number of impressive designations for this view — conditional idealism, scholastic realism, pragmaticism, and others. On occasion he tries to explain what he means by the commitment to real possibility or to the proposition that "general principles are really operative in nature," but what he does is to fall back on the subjunctive conditional (5.107). V. N O M I N A L I S M

AND

REALISM

I don't want to enter into an extended discussion of Peirce's realism. A few remarks on the subject, however, are called for to show the pertinence of realism to pragmaticism. Peirce liked to think of himself as a scholastic realist and at all who opposed his views he hurled, quite indiscriminately, the epithet "nominalist." But the fact that Kant is labeled a "nominalist" (cf., e.g., 1.19), and that an avowed "realist" like Peirce asserts that "it must be admitted that individuals alone exist" (5.429), and that "a law is in itself nothing but a general formula or symbol," shows the loose manner in which Peirce uses the terms "nominalism" and "realism." As a matter of fact I think these terms have long since outlived their usefulness and are now employed mainly to deride an opponent's view rather than to describe it. As far as the theory of inquiry is concerned, it is of special interest to note that Peirce did not consider his realism to be a doctrine of ontology which could be justified by a priori reasoning. He felt that his belief in real possibility and real generals rested on experimental evidence. He says that . . . some general objects are real. ( O f course, nobody ever thought that all generals were real; but the scholastics used to assume that generals were real when they had hardly any, or quite no, experiential evidence to support their assumption; and their fault lay just there, and not in holding that generals could be real.) ( 5 . 4 3 0 ) To say that the law of gravitation is a real general, then, would mean that the statement: "objects attract each other" can be experimentally verified. It is not an idea that occurred to someone in a dream having no pertinence to the real world. The "mode of being" of laws Peirce called Thirdness. To assert

47

BRONSTEIN of a certain knife that it is a dangerous weapon is not to assert that it ever has been, or even that it ever will be, used to inflict a wound; but rather that if circumstances presented themselves it could be so used with telling effect. Peirce would say that the statement asserts a real possibility, i.e., an imaginable event which would be realized under certain describable conditions. Although on his view only individuals have actual existence (Firstness), he held that the world would be a mere chaos if these individuals were not related to each other and also subject to laws which govern their behavior. A question arises concerning these views. Does Peirce think that when he asserts that there are real possibilities and real generals he is saying something more than when he asserts the truth of certain subjunctive conditional statements ? For example, when he asserts that the law, Unsupported

bodies

jail,

is a real general, does he think he is saying something more than when he says: If this or that body were unsupported, it would fall. And when he asserts that "hardness is really and truly in the hard things and is one in them all, as a description of habit, disposition, or behavior" (1.27 п.), does he think he is saying something more than that hard things (would) behave in ways distinguishable from things not hard, e.g., by reacting positively to a scratch test? Just what is meant by calling generality and possibility "modes of being"? Sometimes it seems clear that Peirce considers his belief in real possibility and generality as meaning no more than what is asserted by a corresponding subjunctive conditional. But there are passages in which it is not at all clear that Peirce recognizes this equivalence. He seems occasionally to think that in recognizing the "modes of being" of real possibles and real generals he is going beyond what is revealed by experiment or formulable in subjunctive conditional statements. Quotations supporting an experimentalist interpretation of the commitment to Secondness and Thirdness have already been cited.^^ An example of the nonexperimentalist approach to the categories occurs when Peirce tries hard to distinguish his position from that of the nominalists. These misguided creatures, it seems, are willing to admit the categories, Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness, as "mere conceptions" but not as "real constituents of the universe" (5.82). Now I should like very much to know what it means to say that Secondness or Thirdness, or for that matter, Firstness, is a real constituent of the universe. I suppose that even asking such a question qualifies me for inclusion in the black list of nominalists. If so, I should be in such good com-

48

INQUIRY A N D MEANING pany that it would be ungracious of me to decline the honor. But I could not really consider it an honor because I find the designation "nominalist" too vague to be significant. It does seem to me that while Peirce has made a signal contribution in his pragmaticism with its recognition of the importance of subjunctive conditionals for science and their irreducibility to material implication/® he has occasionally become a victim of his own propensity to coin phrases, convert them into "reals," and then foist them on the universe. But whenever Peirce forgets about the nominalists and really gets down to analyzing such statements as, e.g., that "the uniformity with which stones have fallen has been due to some active general principle," or that "hardness really is in the hard things," etc., he finds that they mean nothing but (and he uses the words "nothing but" too!) a statement to the effect that if certain conditions now absent were present, then a result now unrealized would occur. Is there a nominalist who would take exception to this? Suppose that A, a realist, believes that there is an active general principle, that stones fall when dropped, which principle is a real constitutent of the universe; and that B, a nominalist, believes simply that stones fall when dropped. Applying the usual pragmatic criterion, let us ask what difference it would make to the behavior of A and B, for them to hold these "different" beliefs. Would A be able to make any successful predictions about the universe that В could not match? Would the expectations of В in any concrete situation be disappointed where the expectations of A in the same situation would not ? In what respect, then, would A be wiser, or better off than В ? As a good pragmatist, Peirce would say that if the only difference between A and В is in the expressions they use, then, since this does not constitute a difference as far as concerns their beliefs (5.33), it will follow that their beliefs do not differ in any respect. But to acknowledge that there is no difference in their beliefs does not mean that the only difference between them is verbal. There is a significant difference which resides in their contrasting attitudes towards the objects of experience. The "realist" is attracted to and emphasizes continuities and uniformities, while the "nominalist" is apt to be more aware of dissimilarities, and to emphasize individualities. Each is likely to feel that what he thinks important is ignored by his opponent, and that what he considers secondary is overestimated. If this is so, then "nominalists" and "realists" are to be distinguished, not by their beliefs but by their attitudes and valuations. VI.

CONSEQUENCES

OF

CONDITIONAL

IDEALISM

But let us return, from this discussion of a tangential question, to Peirce's conditional idealism. We have yet to examine the relation between this theory of meaning (which is what conditional idealism essentially is), and Peirce's views about "real things."

49

BRONSTEIN As Peirce interprets his conditional idealism, it has as a consequence "that man is so completely hemmed in by the bounds of his possible practical experience . . . that he cannot . . . mean anything that transcends those limits" (5.536). What, then, are we to say of assertions concerning those "real things whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them," — assertions which we commonly make, and whose significance seems to transcend the limits of our own possible practical experience? It is not a question of how Peirce could justify, but what meaning he could assign, in terms of his theory of meaning, to statements about the remote past, the experience of other minds, et al. Are they meaningless ? Is conditional idealism a disguised form of subjective idealism or solipsism? Although some of Peirce's statements, mostly from his early papers, may appear to justify such a thesis, this was certainly not his opinion, or he would not have hesitated to say so flatly. Our choice, therefore, is either to find him guilty of inconsistency or to show how, on his theory of meaning, statements about the past and other minds are meaningful. This is not easy to do because his theory has many lacunae and unclarities.^" It is partly for this reason that I don't think the contention can be made good that he is committed to subjective idealism. In order to show how he might answer a few questions on this issue, it will be convenient to adopt the dialogue form which he himself liked to use to explain his ideas. Questioner. Doesn't your theory of meaning make nonsense of a great deal of what most people believe and assert ? Pragmaticist. Why should it? Questioner. Well, let us consider assertions about the past. Suppose I say that "Caesar died," or take your example, "Aristotle couldn't pronounce the letter R." When I assert this I am referring to a man who lived three hundred years before Christ. Surely, the significance of my statement transcends the limits of my practical experience, and yet I know perfectly well that it is not meaningless. Pragmaticist. Of course it is not meaningless. But are you sure its meaning transcends your possible practical experience? The question is, what does it mean ? "Let us distinguish between the proposition and the assertion of that proposition" (5.543). When you assert that proposition you make yourself responsible for it. It is as if you placed a wager on it. Now, if in the future it shall be ascertained that your assertion is correct, you win the wager. The rational meaning, then, or intellectual purport of your assertion lies in the future (5.543). Questioner. When you said that the meaningful cannot transcend our possible practical experience, did you mean "possible" to be taken quite strictly 50

INQUIRY AND MEANING — in such a sense that your assertion would amount to saying that something is meaningful if no logical contradiction would result from assuming it to have a bearing on our practical experience? If so, I don't see what's pragmatic about your theory. Secondly, do I understand rightly that your theory of meaning applies to ideas — i.e., someone's ideas — to assertions and beliefs, but not to propositions as such ? Pragmaticist. To answer your last question first, I would say, yes and no; it all depends on what you understand by a proposition. I did say (5.427) that "the rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future," but if you follow my analysis (5.470-5.493), you will see that the meaning of a proposition is always another proposition, which I call its "logical interprétant," and that this proposition is "in all cases a conditional future" (5.483); and that the "ultimate logical interprétant" is a "deliberately formed habit" (5.491). I thus trace the meaning of propositions, as well as assertions and beliefs, to deliberate conduct (5.543, 5.548). As for your first question, when you say you don't see why my theory is pragmatic, you are probably using that term in one of the senses made popular by James or Schiller. Questioner. But don't concepts have a meaning before they are entertained, and propositions before they are asserted or believed? Pragmaticist. As long as concepts are capable of being entertained or believed, they are also capable of having a bearing on conduct; you will recall, in this connection, that for me thinking is a form of conduct (5.534). Questioner. But it seems to me that the meaning of propositions about the past is constituted by past events, and not future events, as you would have it. Pragmaticist. That view is not tenable because if the meaning of a proposition about the past were constituted by the past events, the proposition would have to be true in order to be meaningful. When someone asserts that a certain event occurred in the past, according to my view, this is another way of saying that unless it shall be ascertained that such an event did occur, he will recognize that he is in error. Or, as I've said before, "it is evident that to guarantee that, if a piece of work has not already been done right, one will pay for it, and to guarantee that, if it shall be found not to have already been done right, one will pay for it, have one and the same meaning" (5.543). Questioner. But if A and В have the same meaning, one can just as well say that A is the meaning of B, as that В is the meaning of A. Why do you insist on the latter formulation ? As a matter of fact, doesn't your method of reasoning equally well show that the meaning of propositions about the future, lies in the past ? Pragmaticist. That would be strange. Questioner. Suppose a man says: I will pay a reward to anyone who will

BRONSTEIN find my lost d o g ; that means that if it can be shown that anyone has found his dog, he will pay the reward. Pragmaticist. T h e r e must be a joker somewhere. Questioner. Perhaps you have not really proved that the meaning of propositions about the past lies in the future, except in a very special sense of "meaning." Pragmaticist. Perhaps, but as I have said, a backwoodsman working alone in a wilderness cannot clear away all the underbrush. I have tried in this paper to analyze the fundamental ideas of Peirce's theory of inquiry and of meaning — and incidentally to show that his theories, though formulated in 1878, were revised as he thought about them. Thirty years after writing F B and H M I C , he was their severest critic, so that anyone who relies upon them for Peirce's definitive views is doing him an injustice. Part of my aim has been to explain why Peirce changed his mind. One interesting outcome of this comparison of Peirce's early and later writings, which is indicated but not developed in the paper, seems to be worth investigating further: that Peirce was closer to James and Dewey in 1878 than he was in 1908.

52

4 Peirce on to Make Our Ideas Clear" BY W I N S T O N H . F .

BARNES

Peirce combined the logician and the metaphysician in a high degree. His philosophical development is from the use of logic to clear up metaphysical disputes to the use of it to solve metaphysical questions. The transition is gradual, and the attack on metaphysics never ceased; but in the end it was metaphysics as it is and has been that was attacked, not metaphysics as it should be and will be. Clarification and construction proceed side by side in his later work. In this paper I propose to consider what Peirce meant by the principle of clarification which he laid down early in his life, and to which, interpreted in one way or another, he remained faithful. Peirce first referred to it as the pragmatic principle, but later withdrew this name to avoid confusion with the very different doctrines of James who had, in the meantime, appropriated the name of pragmatism. He then coined the term pragmaticism, but applied it somewhat loosely to this and other cognate principles which at this later date he had come to embrace. I will avoid these names, redolent as they are of a whole congeries of philosophical dogmas, and speak simply of Peirce's principle of clarification. Peirce enunciated it in 1878 in his famous paper "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" as follows:^ Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. T h e n , our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. ( 5 . 4 0 2 )

The paper had been first written in French and the principle appeared as follows : Considérer quels sont les effets pratiques que nous pensons pouvoir être produits par l'objet de notre conception. L a conception de tous ces effets est la conception complète de l'objet.^ ( 5 - 1 8 ) II

Before examining the principle I make two preliminary points : (1) Peirce refers to the principle as a "rule for attaining the third grade

53

BARNES of clearness of apprehension" (5.402). The first grade of clarity is familiarity with a notion, the second grade is the definition of it. The first and second grades of clearness, Peirce thinks, have been recognized, though imperfectly, by previous logicians when they have spoken of the need for clear and distinct ideas. Formal definition makes a concept clear by analyzing it into concepts of greater abstractness. The most abstract concepts for those who accept formal definition as clarification par excellence are clear in themselves. The fact remains, however, that it is precisely with highly abstract concepts, particularly those involved in metaphysics, that the demand for clarity is most imperative. Hence the need for the "third grade of clearness." The final clarification of an idea or a concept is to be sought in what is less abstract than itself. (2) The clarification to be attained by the use of the principle is of a highly sophisticated kind. For example, amongst the ideas Peirce attempts to clarify is the idea of hard. Only a philosopher, for example, would regard the idea hard as standing in need of clarification. If we ask what distinguishes the particular type of clarification which is offered from more ordinary procedures, I think we may say broadly that it so explains our use of words such as hard that we do not fall into erroneous metaphysical theories to which we are prone as long as they are not so explained. Hence, when Peirce wrote on "Pragmatism" for Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1902) he prefaced the statement of the principle of clarification (pragmatic principle) with this definition of pragmatism: The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: Consider . . . [etc.] (5.2) And again, writing on pragmatism in 1905, he said: But first, what is its purpose? What is it expected to accomplish? It is expected to bring to an end those prolonged disputes of philosophers which no observations of facts could settle, and yet in which each side claims to prove that the other side is in the wrong. Pragmatism maintains that in those cases the disputants must be at cross-purposes. They either attach different meanings to words, or else one side or the other (or both) uses a word without any definite meaning. What is wanted, therefore, is a method for ascertaining the real meaning of any concept, doctrine, proposition, word, or other sign.® Ill

I now turn to examine the principle itself. A rule for making our ideas clear might be expected to possess a high degree of clarity itself. This rule does not. Peirce himself, on one occasion, misunderstood its significance. Several interpretations fall to be considered. (1) Pragmatic Interpretation. "The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part" (5.397). "There

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PEIRCE ON "HOW TO MAKE OUR IDEAS CLEAR" is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice" (5.400). "Different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise" (5.398). These three statements all come from the paper on "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," in which the principle of clarification is laid down. It would not be difficult to attach to them the interpretation that a thought consists in the acts of will, or the actions, to which it gives rise. To impute such a view to Peirce would be a gross caricature, though, strangely enough, when he was writing the article on "Pragmatic" and "Pragmatism" for Baldwin's Dictionary (1902), he supposed that this was the view he had put forward. For he there wrote : The doctrine appears to assume that the end of man is action — a stoical axiom which, to the present writer at the age of sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly as it did at thirty. (5.3) In the same article Peirce gave his approval to what he claimed to be "the spirit of the maxim itself, which is that we must look to the upshot of our concepts in order rightly to apprehend them" {ibid.). In 1906, in an article entitled "Consequences of Pragmaticism," he wrote, withdrawing the self-criticism altogether: I did not, therefore, mean to say that acts, which are more strictly singular than anything, could constitute the purport, or adequate proper interpretation, of any symbol. I compared action to the finale of the symphony of thought, belief being a demi-cadence. Nobody conceives that the few bars at the end of a musical movement are the purpose of the movement. They may be called its upshot. (5.402, note з) The meaning of a concept, then, is not to be made clear merely in terms of the volitions or actions to which it gives rise. (2) Experiential Interpretation. "We can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses" (5.401). "Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects" {ibid.). These statements could be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that the meaning of a concept consists solely in effects upon the senses. This interpretation, however, was rightly repudiated by Peirce himself. In the "Consequences of Pragmaticism" (1906) Peirce, referring to the principle, comments on the number of times — five, to be precise — derivatives of concipere occur in it, which he contrasts with his normal reluctance to repeat a word. He goes on to say: This employment five times over of derivatives of concipere must then have had a purpose. In point of fact it had two. One was to show that I was speaking of meaning in no other sense than that of intellectual purport. The other was to avoid all danger of being understood as attempting to explain a concept by percepts, images, schemata, or by anything but concepts. (5.402, note 3)

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BARNES These two interpretations we have considered may be dismissed as excusable, but definite, misinterpretations. If the attempt to explain the meaning of a concept in terms either of ensuing actions or percepts is rejected, it still remains possible that it is to be explained in terms of conceiving of either (a) such actions or (b) such percepts. I will call these two views the Conceptual Pragmatic and the Conceptual Experiential interpretations. I consider first the Conceptual Experiential interpretation. IV

We are told to substitute for our conception of the object a conception of those effects of the object which might conceivably have practical bearings. By effects Peirce explains that he means "effects, direct or indirect, upon the senses" (5.401). What does this mean? Take the conception of chlorine. (1) By acting on the eyes chlorine produces in me a percept of a greenishyellow color; by acting on the nose, an irritating smell. These are direct sensible effects. (2) Brought into close contact with certain materials, it turns them white. That is an indirect sensible effect. (3) In proximity with hydrogen, it forms hydrochloric acid, a change revealed to me by certain sensible effects. These also are indirect sensible effects. Is Peirce saying that my conception of chlorine, if I know these facts, is my conception of these sensible effects? If so, it is somewhat misleading. I can sense the actual effects of chlorine, but I cannot conceive the actual effects. To conceive of the effects of chlorine is to conceive of the sort of effects that would under certain conditions be manifested. The French version of the principle comes nearer to showing what is meant by speaking of "les effets pratiques que nous pensons pouvoir être produits. . ." If this were the whole of what Peirce had to say, it would amount to the doctrine that we clarify the concept of X by conceiving of the sort of sensible effects, direct or indirect, that under certain conditions X would have. The principle would then be: Consider what sort of sensible effects, direct and indirect, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, etc., as such it would be not unlike the modern positivist principle that the meaning of a proposition is its method of verification. By comparison Peirce's principle would be inferior in continuing to speak misleadingly in terms of objects and their effects, and in referring to concepts rather than to propositions. Modernized it would become : "To clarify the thought that s is p, conceive of the sort of experiences that you would accept as verifying s is p." For example, to be thinking that the substance in the bottle is chlorine would be clarified by thinking that if one were to look at the bottle, one would see a greenishyellow liquid; if the substance were to come in contact with woven material it would bleach it; and so on. Peirce sometimes speaks as though this were the view which he was put-

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PEIRCE ON "HOW TO MAKE OUR IDEAS CLEAR" ting forward. At the time when the paper was written (1872) he was in constant contact with Chauncey Wright, whose philosophical views were much influenced by John Stuart Mill, and Peirce became to some extent infected with the same sensationalist outlook. That Peirce does not mean to commit himself to a purely sensationalist interpretation of the principle can be seen by reference to a remark he made in later years. In 1904 William James had used in a paper the statement : "The serious meaning of a concept lies in the concrete differences to some one which its being true will make." Peirce got the idea that the statement had been attributed by James to him, and in a letter to James wrote: "I do not think that I have often spoken of the 'meaning of a concept' whether 'serious' or not. I have said that the concept itself is nothing more than the concept, not of any concrete differences that will be made to someone, but is nothing more than the concept of the conceivable practical applications of it." * What does this mean ? When I am thinking that chlorine applied to my suit would have the effect of bleaching it, I am in a sense thinking of a conceivable practical application. Not that I am conceiving of any action I might take; but I am conceiving of a causal relationship between χ and y, and such a relationship might conceivably have practical bearings, since I might purpose to produce y. So interpreted, however, I need not, in thinking of chlorine, be thinking that I or anyone has or might have a purpose to engage in bleaching. On this interpretation the expression effects that might conceivably have practical bearings^ (5.402) is to be taken to mean effects that might possibly be relevant in the event of someone taking a decision how to act. The question might arise: Surely all sensible differences might be relevant in this way ? In which case the expression adds nothing to the meaning of the principle. Moreover, the word conceivably has nothing to do with conceiving but means merely possibly. In view of the importance which Peirce later attributed to the five derivatives from concipere occurring in the principle, it seems that another interpretation must be sought. For we must suppose that the clarification is to proceed in terms of conceiving the possible practical bearings of the concept to be clarified. This leads us to the Conceptual Pragmatic Interpretation.

Peirce writes: "The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise" (5.398). It is easy to see that this will not do as it stands. Suppose I believe "Chlorine is the best agent for bleaching"; then I might have the habit of always using chlorine to bleach things. But equally I might hold this belief and never use chlorine for bleaching because I never formed a purpose to bleach anything. (I might never use my knowledge, as we say.) What this shows, however, is that Peirce uses the word habit in a rather

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BARNES special way — and it is rather an unfortunate way — for what he also calls elsewhere a rule of action (5.397). Even "rule of action" is too vague for what he means to say. Rules of action may be classified (following Kant) as categorical, assertorie, and problematic. A categorical rule such as Always use chlorine on your clothes would have no place here. Nor would an assertorie rule Since you purpose to bleach clothes, use chlorine. A problematic rule is involved: If you should purpose to bleach clothes, use chlorine. Peirce later used the expression "a conceived conditional resolution" to describe the habit as it is explicated in consciousness. But the fact that the "resolution" is conditional not only upon an appropriate occasion arising, but also upon an appropriate purpose arising, makes the use of the term resolution inappropriate. I shall speak of the "conditional disposition" when I wish to speak of what Peirce calls the habit underlying a belief, and of the "conceived conditional disposition" when I want to speak of the disposition as it would be formulated in the mind to clarify the belief in question. In the example above we have a disposition to use a yellowish-green liquid with an irritating smell г/ and when one purposes to bleach something. More elaborately, what we have is a doubly conditional disposition, as follows: To use X, if X is a yellowish-green liquid, etc., if one wants to bleach clothes. Now, to have the concept of chlorine is to have this belief (and others), since to conceive of chlorine is to believe a compound proposition of the form Chlorine is yellowish-green, and irritating to the nose and capable of bleaching, etc. Hence, to clarify a concept on this view is to explicate the doubly conditional dispositions underlying it, i.e., bring them into consciousness in the form of conceived conditional dispositions. Underlying our single concept, of course, would be a multitude of doubly conditional dispositions corresponding to every way in which a possible purpose may arise regarding any use of chlorine. We may note that, whereas corresponding to a universal belief are doubly conditional dispositions, to a singular belief correspond singly conditional dispositions, e.g., to This is chlorine the disposition If I purposed to bleach something, I would use this. On this Conceptual Pragmatic Interpretation, then, the intellectual purport of a concept is a conceived (doubly) conditional disposition. More simply, we clarify our thought by making clear to ourselves how we would act on the occasion of certain perceptions if we purposed certain effects.® The occasion may never arise, we may never have the purpose·, hence we may never act in any way as a result of our belief. But the thought remains bound up with possible action. Thinking is planning for all emergencies, situational and emotional. VI

The difference between the Conceptual Experiential and the Conceptual Pragmatic interpretations may be brought out as follows: Take a singular

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P E I R C E ON " H O W TO MAKE OUR IDEAS C L E A R " belief such as These are coals, and suppose that combustibility is a part of the meaning of the concept of coal. Then, on the experiential theory I clarify These are coals by If these were in contact with flame, they would burn, a statement which states a conceived conditional expectation. On the pragmatic theory I clarify it by If 1 purposed to obtain heat I would bring these into contact with flame. In a later paper Peirce implicitly discussed the choice between these two accounts (which he did not clearly distinguish in the paper under discussion) under the form of the question whether the final logical interprétant of a concept is a concept, a desire, an expectation, or a habit. The logical interpretation of a concept must, he assumes, be general, like the concept it interprets. A concept, he argues, cannot be the final logical interprétant because it itself requires a logical interprétant. A desire is general only by association with a concept. The choice between expectation and habit is the choice between the experiential and pragmatic accounts of the principle of clarification. One reason Peirce gives for rejecting expectation is a bad one, viz., that it is not conditional (5.486). Of course, the meaning of a belief would need to be sought not in an absolute but in a conditional expectation, as expressed by a hypothetical statement. But to suppose that expectation cannot be conditional is surely wrong. I may be expecting that, if I succeed in getting away for a holiday, I shall enjoy myself. And that is a conditional expectation. Another reason he gives is that, hke desire, expectation is general only by association with a concept. If I understand Peirce aright here what he means is that whereas the conditional disposition exists as a fact, whether or not I explicate it in consciousness, the conditional expectation can exist only in consciousness. I am inclined to think that this is not so and that Peirce went astray here. For example, when I walk about and see horses and pavements and automobiles, I am not thin\ing that I shall go on seeing them but I am so disposed that if they vanished suddenly from my sight, I should be very, very surprised. It seems reasonable to regard my disposition as one of expectation. Could there be a conditional expectation below the level of consciousness? I think so. Suppose I am climbing a mountain. I may be thinking that, if I get to the top, I shall feel tired. Without actually thinking this, I may be in such a disposition that if I were to get to the top, I would be surprised by my not feeling tired; therefore I was "expecting" to be tired. At the same time, supposing I do not go to the top, I am not surprised by not being tired. Hence I had not an absolute but a conditional expectation of feeling tired in the future. It seems reasonable to hold that action is more primitive than thought. A perception would in the first place normally give rise to some action in respect of it. If action is deferred, observation may take its place, and expectation enter in. In a sense, also, action is more fundamental than thought.

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BARNES Both these considerations helped Peirce to lay more stress on the pragmatic than the experiential formula of clarification. In his later papers Peirce came to hold, without ever expressing himself very clearly, that the moral life was somehow bound up with conceptual generality. He connected the pragmatic interpretation with the growth of self-control.® He was therefore led to prefer it to a more purely theoretical interpretation. But this is a mistaken reason. The pragmatic interpretation is concerned only with conceived conditional dispositions. Because the dispositions are conditional, they do not imply the existence of any kind of purpose or desire. Hence they have nothing to do with moral conduct. By using the word resolutions, instead of dispositions, and also the word habit, Peirce was induced to forget that the conceptual pragmatic explication of a statement can never give rise to a resolution, habit, or intention in the ordinary sense, because purpose only enters into it conditionally. VII

In conclusion, the experiential interpretation of the principle of clarification, regarded as the conceptual explication of a conditional expectation, seems to have more plausibility as an account of our theoretical beliefs and concepts than the pragmatic interpretation. For it seems that we could have a conditional expectation without having a corresponding conditional disposition. For example, we could conceive of two shades of blue as looking differently even though we could conceive of no possible action for which the difference were relevant. On the pragmatic interpretation we should have to hold that this could not happen. If it is said that we always can conceive of some action for which the difference is relevant, e.g., matching a ribbon of one of the two shades, then it is very clear that the expectation is prior to the disposition. Perhaps we are so constituted that whenever we have a conditional expectation we also have a conditional disposition. But if we allow that there is such a thing as a conditional expectation, do we need to posit such a thing as a conditional disposition at all, i.e., a disposition doubly conditional both upon the occasion and the purpose ? It seems quite unnecessary. Given a conditional expectation, and my purposes as they arise, all the facts are explained. The kind of dispositions which are (a) practical in the sense that they are determinative of conduct and (b) not to be explained by any combination of conditional expectations and purposes, are the moral dispositions which find expression in such statements as Promises ought to be \ept. These are conditional upon the occasion, e.g., on a promise having been made, but not upon any purpose arising. They are practical beliefs proper, and it is precisely the absence of any expectation that distinguishes them from theoretical beliefs.®

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5 Peirce's Pragmaticism BY W . B.

GALLIE

The word "Pragmaticism" occurs in the titles of two papers which Peirce wrote in 1905 and in the texts of a number of other papers and fragments of the same period. In the present article I am going to group together under the title "The Pragmaticism Papers" all Peirce's writings on Pragmatism that belong to the 1905 period; and I shall discuss what seem to me the most important developments in Peirce's thought that these writings reveal. Except where I quote Peirce's actual words I shall discuss these developments in the familiar terms, "Pragmatism," "pragmatist," etc. Peirce tells us that the name Pragmaticism had "the precise purpose of expressing the original definition" ^ of Pragmatism; and certainly his motive for introducing it was to dissociate himself, and his original doctrine, from the popular and anti-intellectualist "Pragmatisms" of James, Schiller, Papini, and others. But among the gifts Peirce lacked was that of going over old ground without unearthing new riches — and puzzles — in it; consequently, the Pragmaticism Papers give us no mere restatement of his Pragmatism as formulated in 1878. In particular, it seems to me, they help us to see an ambiguity that was latent in Pragmatism from its first formulation, and to see how we can best remove this ambiguity; viz., by restricting Pragmatism's claim to provide a general criterion of empirical meaningfulness. Moreover, the Pragmaticism Papers indicate more clearly than any of Peirce's earlier writings the mutual implications of his Pragmatism, his "Scholastic Realism," and what is the main thread in all his best philosophizing, his "Interprétant Theory of Meaning." An Ambiguity in Pragmatism. Throughout Peirce's writings on Pragmatism two lines of interpretation can be distinguished. On the wider interpretation Pragmatism is described as a "method of logic," "a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and abstract conceptions," "a method of determining the meaning of intellectual concepts, that is, of those upon which reasoning may hinge." ^ As thus interpreted the Pragmatist maxim may be said to aim either at deciding whether a given concept or expression has any meaning ("That is, pragmatism proposes a certain maxim which, if sound, must render needless any further rule as to the admissibility of hypotheses to rank as hypotheses, that is to say, as explanations of phenomena held as 6i

GALLIE hopeful suggestions; . . or at deciding how any such meaning is to be distinguished from that of some other concept or expression ("A conception can have no logical effect or import differing from that of a second . . . except so far as, taken in connection with other conceptions and intentions, it might conceivably modify our practical conduct differently from that second conception.") * The first of these functions will tend to be emphasized when the Pragmatist maxim is applied to, e.g., metaphysical and theological conceptions, the second when it is applied to the "hard" conceptions of science (in Peirce's paper of 1878 it is applied to scientific, theological, and metaphysical conceptions) ; but in fact the two functions are logically inseparable. On the other hand, as indications of the second narrower interpretation of Pragmatism, we may recall that the 1878 series of papers was entitled "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (my italics), and that its main purpose was to describe "the method of scientific investigation" (5.385). Two passages from the Pragmaticism Papers bring this second interpretation into full relief. After describing his own acquaintance with "laboratory life" and his approval of those philosophical writings that recall "the ways of thinking of the laboratory," Peirce proceeds: (A) "Endeavoring, as a man of that type ['laboratory-minded'] naturally would, to formulate what he so approved, he [Peirce] framed the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it" (5.412). T o this we may add (B) "But (Pragmatism asserts) that the total meaning of the predication of an intellectual concept is contained in an affirmation that, under all conceivable circumstances of a given kind (or under this or that more or less indefinite part of the cases of their fulfillment, should the predication be modal) the subject of the predication would behave in a certain general way — that is, it [the predication] would be true under given experiential circumstances (or under a more or less definitely stated proportion of them, ta\en as they would occur . . . in experience)" (5.467). The first of these passages shows that there were times when Peirce equated "modifications of practical conduct" with "the lessons of experiment" conceived strictly on the model of laboratory experiment. The second passage shows Peirce equating "admissible" hypotheses with those that can be verified in the manner of the developed natural sciences. Taken together, the two passages amount to the claim that the "rational purport" of any word or other expression ® is to be determined by the same \ind of criteria as we apply to demonstrate the peculiar and proper {i.e., experimentally efficient) use of

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tElRCE'S

PRÁGMATICISM

any standard expression of the natural sciences.® Now nothing like this claim is made, or would appear to be implied, on the wider interpretation of Pragmatism, which leaves entirely open the question of how a given conception may "conceivably modify our practical conduct differently from a second conception." The ambiguity in Pragmatism, therefore, comes to this. Either it is a general maxim of logic, applicable doubtless in rather special (specially precise) ways to scientific expressions; or else it is that criterion of the distinctness of different scientific expressions, whose applicabiUty distinguishes these expressions as a class or genus from other forms of expression — with the implication that these others, to which Pragmatism does not apply, should be rejected as meaningless or recast to conform to scientific standards. This ambiguity has an obvious bearing on the Peirce-James conflict over the meaning of Pragmatism. Peirce came to emphasize the second narrower interpretation, though never exclusively or consistently; James, on the other hand, gives the wider interpretation free rein. The weakness of the wider interpretation is that it can be used to allow empirical meaning ("rational purport") to almost any expression that can be shown to modify practical conduct in any way. Consequently, it is the narrower interpretation that has found most favor in recent philosophy. But what seems to me of the greatest interest in Peirce's adherence to the narrower interpretation is the frank way in which (as we shall see) he faces up to some of the most paradoxical, and logically crucial, consequences of it. That he does so is a tribute to his clearheadedness and candor; but it leaves unexplained the curious fact that Peirce, the general tenor of whose philosophy is entirely free from narrow "scientismic" bias, should have preferred the narrower interpretation. In order to understand why he did so, we must, I think, pose a very obvious question around which much of Peirce's best thinking hovers, without, however, actually alighting on it. Why is the peculiar meaning of any given scientific expression so easily demonstrated by applying the Pragmatist maxim? Alternatively, why is the Pragmatist maxim so naturally and obviously suggested by the way scientific expressions are in fact used in advancing and presenting any one of the natural sciences.'' Evidently, because in the case of any given scientific expression, the "sum of its consequences" or "all the conceivable experimental phenomena which affirmation or denial of it would imply" are, so to say, collected and ready to hand, or at least "collectable" by the established methods of a particular science, at any given stage of its development. Beyond the range of these conceivable consequences a scientific expression is evidently without scientific interest; and I see no objection to saying, without scientific meaning. Now Peirce fully understood this situation; and he often saw that it is a very peculiar situation. (No one, for instance, has seen more clearly than he that it is the systematically self

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GALLIE limiting character of a body of experimental knowledge, and not the gross quantity of the inductive tests supporting it, that is of interest to the scientist; whereas it is the latter consideration that matters for practical life.)^ In general, we may say that whenever Peirce's thought ranges broadly over the relations between science and our everyday practical interests, he sees that it is scientific conceptions and expressions, with their rigorously self-limiting range of meaning, that are the exceptions, the oddities; and the natural conclusion from this would be that Pragmatism, on its narrower interpretation, cannot possibly provide a general criterion of empirical meaningfulness. On the other hand, when Peirce thinks precisely — when, as a logician, he seeks to formulate the conditions of the correct (peculiar) use of this or that form of expression — he succumbs to that last infirmity of logical minds: the temptation first to look for simplicity and system in these conditions, then to reduce them to the smallest number possible, and, ultimately, to reduce them to unity. In other words, Peirce, the logician, never questions the assumption that there can be a general criterion of empirical meaningfulness; he never stops to ask whether the conception of a single condition, or set of conditions, of the correct (peculiarly efficient) use of different empirical expressions, is itself a meaningful conception. Hence, having formulated a criterion which fulfills this function admirably in the case of standard scientific expressions, he proceeds at once to generalize it. And in this, as it seems to me, he differs from most of his logical empiricist followers in one respect only : viz., he gives careful attention to two classes of expression which appear to falsify this generalization. To these "exceptional cases" we may now turn. The Problem of Proper Names. (I) The first class of expressions to be considered is that of "proper names" or other "designations of individual objects" (5.429). Of these Peirce writes: "The pragmaticist grants that a proper name (although it is not customary to say that it has a meaning) has a certain denotative function peculiar, in each case, to that name and its equivalents; and . . . he grants that every assertion contains such a denotative or pointing-out function. In its peculiar individuality, the pragmaticist excludes this from the rational purport of the assertion, although the и\е of it, being common to all assertions, and so, being general and not individual, may enter into the pragmaticistic [rational] purport" (ibid.). This is an unhappily overcompressed statement. Nothing but confusion, I think, has resulted from discussing the functions of logically incomplete expressions such as proper names in isolation from the relatively complete expressions, e.g., sentences, in which they actually function. Peirce would, therefore, have done much better to state his position here in terms of "ostensive sentences," i.e., those whose grammatical subjects or objects consist in proper names or other directly designating symbols. Stated thus Peirce's claim would appear to be that no proper name or directly designating symbol contributes in any way

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P E I R C E ' S PRAGMATICISM to the empirical meaning of any sentence in which it figures. This does not imply, of course, that proper names, etc., could be quietly removed from the sentences in which they figure, leaving the latter semantically intact. What it does imply is that any ostensive sentence would retain its empirical meaning unaltered if, for the individual (person, thing, or event) to which it actually refers, there were substituted some other individual that is (sufficiently) "the li}{e" of it; and part of the meaning of this (assuming for the moment that it is not simply self-contradictory) is that whenever we use an ostensive sentence to refer to an individual, we refer to that individual as a sample of some "natural kind" or (in Peirce's sense) some "experimental phenomenon." Now whether, if this were the case, it would follow that "in its peculiar individuality" the denotative or pointing-out function should be excluded from the "rational purport" of any ostensive sentence, I am not quite certain; so many difficulties surround the notion of referring to an individual — but only as a sample of this or that natural \ind. But fortunately these difficulties need not here detain us; for the simple answer to Peirce in this connection is that we quite evidently do not always use ostensive sentences to refer to samples of natural kinds. When, for instance, I say, "This is my wife" I do not present a sample of the class (or genus) wives; I present an individual having a unique relation to me. In general, it seems perfectly obvious that we constantly thin\ of individuals (persons, things, or events) as individuals, or in respect of those properties, the simplest and commonest being spatio-temporal properties, which are unique to them. Again, it is perfectly possible to use two or more ostensive sentences as premisses in inference, without specifically thinking of the individuals referred to as being samples of this or that natural kind of experimental phenomenon. This happens, for instance, when we use the thought of two or more immediately remembered events to date a third event. We say, "This event happened before that, and that before the event under discussion, therefore. . . ." And in such a case, it seems clear, one thing we must think of in the premisses, if our inference is to have the required factual conclusion, is that it was just these individual events that took place in this order. But to admit this is to admit that an ostensive sentence "in its peculiar individuality" can contribute to "rational purport"; which is precisely what Peirce, in the passage we have been considering, wishes to deny. The most, then, that can be said for Peirce on this issue is that he explicitly recognizes one paradoxical consequence of Pragmatism on its narrower interpretation. He notices the paradox, but his attempt to explain it away is quite unsuccessful. If, however, we were to drop the assumption that there can be a general criterion of empirical meaningfulness and that Pragmatism provides this, the paradox would vanish. W e could then freely admit that "in their peculiar individuality" ostensive sentences, and hence proper names,

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GALLIE etc., contribute nothing to scientific meaning, whose only concern with individuals is as samples of natural kinds. On this interpretation, Pragmatism would provide a criterion of the peculiar meaning of any standard scientific expression, but not of all empirical expressions; and its great importance would lie in this, that it assists us to distinguish clearly the genius and modus operandi of scientific expressions from those of empirical expressions of other kinds. The Problem of Vague Predicates. (II) The second class of expressions to be considered is that of vague predicates. Peirce, in the Pragmaticism Papers, approaches the subject of vagueness from a number of different sides. He claims, for instance, that all our most deeply grounded and in practice indubitable beliefs are esentially vague (5.446) ; and this is true, in his opinion, both of particular "acritical" judgments of perception and of such highly general beliefs as that God (in some sense) is real, and that Nature is (in some sense) uniform.® On the "logic of vagueness" he has some remarkably acute and suggestive things to say, although nothing (as far as the Pragmaticism Papers or any other of his published writings show) that bears out his claim to have "worked out the logic of vagueness in something like completeness." Nevertheless, the main lines of such a "working out" are perhaps sufficiently suggested by the four following statements. (1) "Every utterance naturally leaves the right of further exposition to the utterer; and therefore, in so far as a sign is indeterminate, it is vague, unless it is expressly or by a well-understood convention rendered general" (5.447). (2) "A sign is objectively vague, in so far as, leaving its interpretation more or less indeterminate, it reserves for some other possible sign or experience [my italics] the function of completing the determination (5.505).® (3) "Every concept that is vague is liable to be self-contradictory in those respects in which it is vague. No concept, not even those of mathematics, is absolutely precise [nonvague] ; and some of the most important for everyday use are extremely vague" (6.496). (4) "Much . . . must be vague, because no man's interpretation of words is based on exactly the same experience as any other man's. . . . It should never be forgotten that our own thinking is carried on as a dialogue, and though mostly in a lesser degree, is subject to almost every imperfection of language" (5.506). The main mutual implications of these four statements could, I think, be expressed as follows. It is commonly thought that to use a language correctly involves using it consistently, i.e., in such a way that no inconsistency in our uses of a given expression will occur. But in so far as this is the case it is neither something "natural" nor something that has been achieved, for the most part, in con-

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PEIRCE'S PRAGMATICISM formity to a single design. It is, rather, the result of a piecemeal development in the course of which the "natural" associations of our predicate or general terms have been sometimes pruned away, and sometimes extended, in the interests of effective communication; and in the course of this development gains in generality have usually been achieved pari passu with gains in consistency and precision. This parallel advance is most obvious where language has been adapted to the special aims and interests of natural science, logic, the law, and other specialisms; but to consider our uses of language in these highly specialized fields as typical of all uses of language is a quite unwarranted assumption. Nevertheless, we do frequently think in this way, and consequently come to regard vagueness as a kind of regrettable accretion to certain parts, or certain uses, of language: something that results from blameworthy habits of thought and speech, whether on our own part or on the part of our ancestors. Against this way of thinking Peirce's statement (1) quoted above comes as a timely protest, of which perhaps the most important implications are those expressed in statements (2) and (3). T o elucidate these, we may begin by distinguishing two kinds of vague expression: those that are inevitably vague and those that are hopelessly vague. As examples of the latter sort we have the popular fortuneteller's gambits: "You are in some ways a quite unusual person" and "This is going to be a decisive year in your life." These statements are hopelessly vague just because they are too true : it is absolutely impossible to disprove them, whereas almost any fact one cares to mention might be taken to verify them. On the other hand, as a first and extreme case of the former sort, consider the statement: "Watch that fellow: there is something queer about him, though I can't say what." W e can easily imagine a psychiatrist thinking in just these words. What they say is very vague, but not hopelessly vague. It could be confirmed only by a relatively limited class of facts — e.g., the doing of some bizarre or heinous or heroic act by the individual in question; and it might quite easily be confuted, or withdrawn, in the light of later experience. W h a t is important, however, about a vague statement of this sort in that it evidently requires some further experience to articulate its meaning·, and that the speaker cannot, at the time of utterance, describe even in broadest outline what the required experience would be. N o w in some degree and in different specific ways, I would be willing to argue, almost all our everyday utterances are in this sense vague. This is, I think, quite obviously true of all our judgments about the motives and characters of other individuals, about the wisdom of particular decisions, the justice or efficacy of projects, policies, etc. ( T h e fact that we apply the word "judgment," rather than "prediction," to such cases suggests the presence of a vague, residual element in our meanings.) And, although on the present occasion I cannot develop this claim, I would say that the same

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GALLIE is true of all our judgments and statements about "mental facts" (states of mind, emotions, intentions, meanings, etc.) and of at least the great majority of our judgments and statements about "material facts" {i.e., judgments and estimates involving the classification of material objects by everyday rule-ofthumb, as opposed to scientific, standards). In all these cases I would say that, however clear we may be about some of the reasons that weigh with us and some of the tests that are relevant to the truth of our statements, we cannot possibly be clear — nay, we cannot even hope to indicate or suggest — all the possible kinds of consideration that weigh with us or all the possible tests or experimental situations that may be relevant. Now if this, or anything like it, be the case, then it would be useful to replace the question, "Why are some expressions inevitably vague?" by the question, "Why are certain expressions, to all appearances anyhow, altogether nonvagueV And it is just this suggested replacement that Peirce's statements (1) to (3) quoted above seem to me to imply. With a view to answering this second question, let us ask: under what general conditions could we reasonably claim that a given expression is altogether non vague.? We could reasonably claim this, I think, if and only if we could prescribe the sufEcient conditions of every correct use of the expression in question. And when are we in a position to do this ? I can think of only two cases: first, when the expression in question is an element in a deductive system, the axioms of which in a certain sense dejine the correct use of every expression the system contains; second, when the expression in question stands for an object or state of affairs the defining characteristics of which are (a) strictly limited in number, and (b) such that they can be identified in perception. These two conditions are to a large extent combined in the case of standard expressions of the best developed natural sciences. Thus at least a sufScient condition of the correct, i.e., consistent and experimentally effective use of any key concept in physics is provided in the intimately interconnected experimental contexts in which we find it used; at the same time the understanding of such (apparently) quite nonvague concepts as mass or length clearly presupposes the capacity to identify certain elementary physical properties and operations in perception. It would appear, then, that the familiar distinction between those subjects that are amenable to scientific treatment and those that are not, is equivalent to the distinction between those subjects that admit of nonvague description and those the descriptions of which (at any given stage of knowledge and linguistic skill) remain inevitably (but not therefore hopelessly) vague. And the bearings of this conclusion on the value and range of the Pragmatist criterion of meaning is clear. It reënforces our earlier explanation of why the Pragmatist criterion applies obviously to standard statements of science. But at the same time it shows clearly why the Pragmatist criterion

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PEIRCE'S PRAGMATICISM cannot be taken as a general criterion of empirical meaningfulness. In fact, it makes it clear that the request or search for such a criterion is an entirely mistaken one. Thus, paradoxically enough, the supreme value of Peirce's Pragmatism, as represented in the Pragmaticism Papers, is to show, once for all, that the criteria by which we establish the meaningfulness of scientific statements simply cannot be applied to the case of other, e.g., historical and everyday practical, statements. Moreover, we can now see why it is that Pragmatism, on Peirce's own confession, can give no account of the meaning of "proper names and other designations of individual objects." T h e reason for this is that our thought about any actual individual is bound to contain an element, indeed a nucleus, of vagueness. Just as an individual can never be defined, so its actual existence can of course never be deduced from a general formula, or set of definitions and axioms. (By contrast the requirement that any sample of such and such a kind shall manifest certain relational properties can be deduced). Consequently, in thinking of any individual as an individual we inevitably envisage it (or him) as, inter alia, the protagonist in a chapter of accidents. Indeed a thing's individuality or ultimate haecceity consists simply in the brute thereness or contingency of at least some of its actual relations to other individuals. Now no philosopher has ever been more powerfully aware of this than Peirce (see his account of his Second Category). But Peirce was unable to relate this part of his thinking to his insights into the nature and function of vague general terms. For this we can hardly blame him; for later philosophers have made remarkably few (illuminating) advances in this direction. W e are here faced, forty-odd years after Peirce's Pragmaticism Papers, with one of the most crucial and difficult growing points in contemporary philosophy. Peirce's statement (4), quoted above, remains for consideration. And if this statement is true — if all our conceptions, including those of mathematics, are in some degree vague, and if this vagueness is an inevitable result of the dialogic character of our thought and the "imperfections of language," — then our distinction between those statements (scientific statements) to which the Pragmatist criterion applies and those to which it does not, was, apparently, premature, or at least stands in need of considerable revision. Let us, then, try to see what Peirce must have had in mind in referring here to the dialogic character of thinking and the imperfections of language. A language cannot properly be counted imperfect simply because our actual (and let us assume) correct uses of it are liable to disappoint us. ( W e don't put the blame on ordinary language when an insufficiently precise telephone message leads to a serious railway disaster.) A language can be counted imperfect only relatively to certain standards and ideals — e.g., the ideals of generality and precision characteristic of physical science. Now, as used and refined for the purposes of science, ordinary language is, as it were,

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GALLIE drawn up towards these ideals. But in fact it never reaches them; and it is unthinkable that it should ever do so. It is unthinkable that any set of scientific expressions should ever be held up as an example of perfect, complete, and final generality and precision. And why? Primarily, and here the dialogic character of all our thinking becomes relevant, because we can never know that a body of scientific knowledge is complete; or, alternatively, because no set of scientific statements can preclude the possibility of further questions being asked. To put the same point in yet another way, it is only by a very arbitrary assumption that we think of a standard scientific statement as being essentially nonvague, i.e., such that the "sum of its consequences" renders its meaning altogether distinct and therefore, in a sense, complete. This way of thinking presupposes that we can, as it were, draw a line across the course of scientific investigation at any point we choose, and say: "At this stage in investigation the meaning of the concept is completely expressed in the following experimental results." But in fact scientific investigation, and the meaning of the formulae and theorems that express its results, require that science really has a future, comprised in currently developing procedures, vague projects for further experiments, etc.; and in relation to these and their as yet impredictable outcomes any standard scientific expression is vague, i.e., is such that, as actually used to develop investigation, it requires some further experience, whose character cannot as yet be predicted, to complete (but then only provisionally) its fully determinate meaning. Now as soon as we look at the matter from this angle, we reahze that vagueness, so far from being a regrettable accretion to certain parts or certain uses of language, is rather the inexhaustible matrix of every ideal development of language; or, to vary the metaphor, vagueness constitutes that elastic quality in our communication-media to which our thinking owes its resilience, including those occasional wild "bounces" which it is the task of genius to detect and pursue. If this elucidation of Peirce's statement (4) be correct, then what he is there saying is something of the first importance, both for the philosophy of language and for the philosophy of science. But while admitting this we may nevertheless insist that there is a world of difference between the vagueness that Peirce ascribes to the statement and conception of science and the vagueness which we have ascribed above to the statements and judgments of history and practical life. Vagueness, in these two cases, is either (as I am inclined to think) of quite different kinds (so that the word "vague" is itself either vague or ambiguous) ; or, if this is not so, then, to apply Bergson's pet metaphor, it is certainly "of different orders," Consequently, our previous conclusion regarding the value and range of the Pragmatist maxim can usefully be maintained.

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PEIRCE'S PRAGMATICISM Pragmatism, Scholastic Realism and the Interprétant Theory of Meaning. Pragmatism, Peirce tells us in the Pragmaticism Papers, strenuously insists on "the truth of scholastic realism (or a close approximation to [ i t ] , " (5.423) and "could hardly have entered a head that was not already convinced that there are real generals" (5.503). Now it is certainly a surprising fact that Peirce nowhere provides us with a clear and concise statement of his Logical ReaHsm.^" And this is all the more surprising since Pragmatism, at least to a superficial view, appears to favor the nominaHst thesis, (that is certainly the impression one would form from James's demand that all abstract conceptions shall be "cashed" in experiential terms) ; and since Peirce himself admits that a hasty reading of certain paragraphs of his paper of 1878 might lead to a suspicion that "it expressed . . . a nominalistic, materialistic, and utterly philistine state of thought." ^^ How does Peirce set about correcting this erroneous, if natural, impression ? He insists, in the first place, that by "experimental phenomena" (in terms of which Pragmatism defines the meaning of any abstract concept or general law) he means not "any particular event that did happen . . . but what surely will happen to everybody . . . who shall fulfill certain conditions." And to this he adds, "Do not overlook the fact that the pragmaticist maxim says nothing of single experiments . . . (for what is conditionally true in futuro can hardly be singular), but only speaks of general \inds of experimental phenomena. Its adherent does not shrink from speaking of general objects as real, since whatever is true represents a real. Now the laws of nature are true." ^^ The aim of this passage is, of course, to get the Nominalist to see that, as actually used, standard scientific expressions (terms or laws) are irreducibly general, i.e., not merely disguised colligations or résumés of actual (and, presumably, actually expected) observations. And this is certainly one of the best ways of getting the Nominalist to see the light. (Other variants of the same general method of persuasion would be to get him to see that every object of desire is essentially general (5.425), or get him to recognize the inevitable vagueness of all predicate terms that are not "by a well understood convention" rendered general.) But Logical Realism is not adequately defended by a mere removal of Nominalist prejudices and misunderstandings. The main difficulty that faces Realism is, not to establish the irreducible generality of many of our conceptions (a sane conceptualism, such as Kant's, will grant this), but to establish that there are "general connections" or "general states of affairs" or "real generals" that correspond to these conceptions. Do we ever actually know, or are we even in a position reasonably to believe or hope, that our conceptions, classifications, laws, are true to these "real generals"? Are not

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GALLIE all our general conceptions liable to revision, all our general laws subject to correction in the light of later experience? And if this be admitted (as Peirce "the fallibilist" must admit) can any meaning, on the Pragmatist criterion, be allowed to the claim that there are "real generals"? In the Pragmaticism Papers Peirce offers us two distinct (and I would be inclined to say incompatible) "official" answers to this line of criticism. Neither of these answers seems to me at all satisfactory. The outlines of a much more satisfactory defense of his Realism can, however, be inferred from his closely related account of the ultimate or final Logical Interprétant. (1) He sometimes invokes his "social" theory, or definition, of Truth and Reality — a theory which results, he claims, from applying the Pragmatist maxim to these two conceptions as they figure in our everyday thought. Now I cannot here enter on a close criticism of this theory, and shall simply offer my opinion that it does not state or define what the words "Truth" and "Reality" are ordinarily used to stand for, and that Peirce's erroneous belief on this score is due to his mistaken assumption that these two (in fact extremely vague) words are ordinarily used in the same kind of way as standard expressions of sciences are used; {i.e., Peirce assumes that we can attach a definite meaning to "the sum of the consequences" of correctly applying either word in any given context). But even if Peirce's "social theory" were acceptable — if, that is to say, we invariably meant by Truth "the last result to which the following out of the (experimental) method would ultimately carry us" (5.553), and if by a reality we invariably meant a state of affairs to a belief in which "investigation is destined to lead us if continued long enough" — would these definitions enable us to establish the Truth of Logical Realism ? Doubtless Peirce could claim that, granted these definitions, definite meaning can be attached to the statement that "some generals are real" and hence a hope, that some real generals are embodied in some of our actual beliefs, may reasonably be indulged. But since, on this account, the reality which some generals may possess is equated with the hypothetical result of inquiry, in certain fields, pursued indefinitely, is not the Realism for which Peirce contends suspiciously like a Kantian "Ideal of Reason"? And is not the reasonable hope which it allows him to indulge one that can be admitted — and, on the Pragmatist criterion, admitted in exactly the same sense — by an intellectual idealism or conceptualism, such as Kant's ? Now there are passages, both early and late, in Peirce's writings which show him content with this, somewhat paradoxically. Idealist interpretation of his Logical Realism. But as he grew older his thinking veered, albeit never with complete consistency, in a very different direction: Logical Realism came to mean for him the assertion that "generals" are (somehow) operative in nature, and in a way that we must somehow be able to describe. (2) Peirce's second "official" defense of his Realism is found in one of 72

PEIRCE'S P R A G M A T I C I S M the most loosely worded paragraphs he ever wrote (5.431). I shall, therefore, try to restate it in my own words, as follows. Men came to guess with surprising ease at certain highly general laws of nature, e.g., certain truths of mechanics. This fact calls for explanation; and it might be explained by an evolutionary hypothesis as to the general conditions to which minds or thoughts have to adapt themselves if they are to survive. N o w a truly general guess, or belief, can be efficient in the sense that it may inform purposes that are physically efficient; but this is possible only because every valid guess or belief is a "general idea of an action" that can be performed under certain conditions. If, then, we ask how and in what sense a truly general belief can be true, a possible answer, based on an inference that is in part analogical and in part causal, is that the conditions to which it is adapted and which render it true must themselves be governed by something that is а^ш to a "general idea of an action" to be fulfilled under such and such conditions. If this is Pcirce's argument, then it appears to rest (a) on a type-confusion between the conditions of the existence (and survival) of certain beliefs and the conditions of their being true, and (b) on a type-confusion between the mode of determination which belongs to a belief (or purpose) and the mode of determination that brings a belief or purpose into existence. N o w I am not sure that Peirce could not have restated or expanded this "evolutionary" argument so as to free it from the apparently gross faults which the above criticism implies. But in fact he never did so. And his more metaphysical developments of this line of thought (traces of which are to be found throughout his later writings) are, to say the least, far from encouraging. Let us now consider very briefly Peirce's account, found only in the Pragmaticism Papers, of what he calls ultimate or final Logical Interprétants (5.471 to 5.491), and see how this provides support for his Logical Realism. What is pecuHar to this account is, first, its terminology: the logical interprétant of a sign is no longer described in terms of the "consequences" of that sign or of (potential) sequences of other signs that "translate" it, but is described in terms of habits, habit-development, habit-change, habit-analysis, etc. Secondly, the new account is held to be "superior" to, though not calculated altogether to displace, his previous accounts of the logical interprétant. N o w the introduction of this habit-terminology does not indicate any confusion, on Peirce's part, of psychological and logical considerations: it is simply a way of emphasizing an obvious "common-sense" fact to which, curiously enough, very few philosophers have paid adequate attention. This is, that it is only habits or dispositions (of thought and action) that can be corrected by experience, articulated and refined as a result of questioning, and genuinely expanded or "made to grow" as a result of what Peirce calls "internal experiment." N o w it is generally agreed that one necessary

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GALLIE condition of the significance of, e.g., an informative sentence is that it shall be (theoretically) capable of correction, translation, analysis, generalization, etc.; in a word, that it shall be subject to logical criticism. But informative sentences and other signs do not exist and function in their own right: they exist and function only in the life of an organism or society of organisms. Their occurrence is (at least an essential part of) what we mean by calling a given organism a rational or thinking being; and their function is simply to evoke or express those habits of thought and action which are the ultimate subjects of logical criticism, and which Peirce therefore, in the present account, describes as ultimate logical interprétants. The relevance of this account to Peirce's Logical Realism is clear. A habit is essentially general, not merely in the sense of being a recurrent pattern of behavior, but inasmuch as it necessarily involves, in some degree, alternative ways and means of realizing certain results. Hence a habit is judged good or bad, useful or harmful, not by this or that particular result to which it may lead us, but by the way it adapts our actions to the endless (detailed) variety of a certain class of situations confronting us. But evidently a habit can be so judged only in so far as it molds our particular actions to conform to certain general features in the bewildering variety of the world. In other words, unless our habits were adjusted to certain truly general conditions — conditions that hold irrespective of any compulsion to come about in this or that particular way ^^ — no logically controlled conduct, that is, no habit of conduct evoked and expressed by symbols, would be possible. But we know that such conduct occurs : hence we know, as certainly as we know anything, that "generality is an indispensable ingredient in reality" (5.431). Peirce never pursued this line of thought with systematic thoroughness. Had he done so, he would, I am convinced, have been able to achieve an immense simplification in his theory of signs (or "wider logic") and hence in his metaphysics and philosophy of science. Nevertheless, inasmuch as he was able to show how three crucial problems in the philosophy of logic hang together, his thought here feeds directly into the main stream of the best contemporary philosophy. As usual, it is not the explicit conclusions he reaches but the kind of logica mens he develops on the way that give Peirce's thinking in these late papers the hallmark of philosophical greatness.

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6 Habit and the Logical Interprétant BY GEORGE G E N T R Y

This paper is divided into three parts. T h e first part is an exposition of a theory of the interpretative phase of "semiosis" or sign-action that Peirce developed most adequately in the paper, " A Survey of Pragmaticism." T h e second part is an analysis of an alternative treatment of this problem. T h e third part is devoted largely to a critical comparison of these versions of the interpretative process. T h e problem of the paper is set by the presence of these two theories in Peirce's writings and is essentially one of critical interpretation.

In clarifying the first of these theories it will be helpful to begin by taking note of some passages in the essay mentioned. An inspection of these will provide us a general frame of reference as well as throw light on the specific problem that Peirce was preoccupied with in that writing. T h e passages to be examined may be brought together under two headings. [1] For the proper significate outcome of a sign, I propose the name, the interprétant of the sign. . . . Whether the interprétant be necessarily a triadic result is a question of words, that is, of how we limit the extension of the term "sign"; but it seems to me convenient to make the triadic production of the interprétant essential to a "sign," calling the wider concept like a Jacquard loom, for example, a "quasi-sign." On these terms, it is very easy (not descending to niceties with which I will not annoy your readers) to see what the interprétant of a sign is. . . . (5.474) [2] Now the problem of what the "meaning" of an intellectual concept is can only be solved by the study of the interprétants, or proper significate effects, of signs. These we find to be of three general classes with some important subdivisions. The first proper significate effect of a sign is a feeling produced by it. There is almost always a feeling which we come to interpret as evidence that we comprehend the proper effect of the sign, although the foundation of truth in this is frequently very slight. This "emotional interprétant," as I call it, may amount to much more than that feeling of recognition; and in some cases, it is the only

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GENTRY proper significate effect that the sign produces. Thus, the performance of a piece of concerted music is a sign. It conveys, and is intended to convey, the composer's musical ideas; but these usually consist merely in a series of feelings. If a sign produces any further proper significate effect, it will do so through the mediation of the emotional interprétant, and such further effect will always involve an effort. I call it the energetic interprétant. The effort may be a muscular one, as it is in the case of the command to ground arms; but it is much more usually an exertion upon the Inner World, a mental effort. It can never be the meaning of an intellectual concept, since it is a single act, [while] such a concept is of a general nature. But what further kind of effect can there be.? (5.475). In advance of ascertaining the nature of this effect, it will be convenient to adopt a designation for it, and I will call it the logical interprétant, without as yet determining whether this term shall extend to anything beside the meaning of a general concept. . . . (5.476) Four opinions expressed in these passages need to be singled out. (a) The term "interprétant" refers to an effect produced in the interpreter by a sign. It designates a functional correlate of the sign, (b) There are three main types of such effects, or classes of interprétants, the emotional, the energetic, and the logical, (c) In one fundamental sense of the word, the interprétant of a sign is its meaning, (d) T h e meaning of an "intellectual" sign, its proper interprétant, is a significate effect distinct from either feeling or eßort, although such a sign may have both of these as functional correlates. This brings us to the point where we can turn directly to Peirce's major objective in the essay. His aim was to develop and justify a hypothesis as to the nature of the "significate effect" that constitutes the intellectual meaning or rational significance of a sign. The hypothesis is that the habit (or habits) of action functionally correlated with a sign constitutes its meaning in the definitive sense. Such a significate effect is the unconditional logical interprétant of the sign, i.e., its "final" or "ultimate" logical interprétant. No other type of sign correlate meets all the conditions. Making that provisional assumption, then, I ask myself, since we have already seen that the logical interprétant is general in its possibilities of reference {i.e., refers or is related to whatever there may be of a certain description), what categories of mental facts there be that are of general reference. I can find only these four: conceptions, desires (including hopes, fears, etc.), expectations, and habits. . . . Now it is no explanation of the nature of the logical interprétant (which, we already know, is a concept) to say that it is a concept. This objection applies also to desire and expectation, as explanations of the same interprétant; since neither of these is general otherwise than through connection with a concept. Besides, as to desire, it would be easy to show (were it worth the space), that the logical interprétant is an effect of the energetic interprétant, in the sense in which the latter is an effect of the emotional interprétant. Desire, however, is cause, not effect, of effort. As to expectation, it is excluded by the fact that it is not condi-

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HABIT AND THE LOGICAL INTERPRETANT tional. For that which might be mistaken for a conditional expectation is nothing but a judgment that, under certain conditions, there would be an expectation: there is no conditionahty in the expectation itself, such as there is in the logical interprétant after it is actually produced. Therefore, there remains only habit, as the essence of the logical interprétant. (5.486) The real and living logical conclusion is that habit; the verbal formulation merely expresses it. . . . The habit alone . . . is not a sign in that way in which that sign of which it is the logical interprétant is the sign. . . . The concept which is a logical interprétant is only imperfectly so. It somewhat partakes of the nature of a verbal definition, and is as inferior to the habit, and much in the same way, as a verbal definition is inferior to the real definition. The deliberately formed, self-analyzing habit — self-analyzing because formed by aid of analysis of the exercises that nourished it — is the living definition, the veritable and final logical interprétant. (5.491) Let us now focus attention on the rationale of this theory, «.