C.S. Peirce – “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”

Fixation of Belief: belief guides action and desire

The purpose of inquiry is to move from a condition of doubt to one of belief. Belief is a mental state in which there is no doubt. A belief may cease to be held and lead back to discomfort, so the best kind are the settled and stable beliefs.

There are many methods of attaining belief and some are better than others.

1. Tenacity – keep repeating it, ignore all other things that might disturb the belief. Can’t hold ground in practice. Will know that others think differently and their beliefs are just as good. This shakes confidence.
2. Authority – the state keeps correct doctrines, reiterates them – prevent contrary doctrines from being expressed. Mentally and morally superior to the method of tenacity. But even this won’t work because at least some people will realize that other people in other times have believed differently and they only believe now as they do by the accident of their teaching and society.
3. A priori rationalism – produces an impulse but also decides what proposition ought to be believed. Agreement with reason – that which we are inclined to believe. Basically the development of taste.
4. Empirical Science – all the previous are easy to fix beliefs, but they can’t prevent them becoming unfixed. They are not self-corrective. Scientific method is self-corrective and though it unsettles beliefs at first by exposing them to criticism, over the long run it brings us closer to beliefs that are settled because they correspond more with some “external permanency.”

There are real things independent of us. They affect our senses according to regular laws. Even though our sensations are all different, the laws of perception are the same and we can be led to the one True conclusion. We know that ther eis an external reality – as an hypothesis. You can’t use the method to prove Reality.

1. Investigation doesn’t show that it exists, but it doesn’t show that it doesn’t.

2. The feeling giving rise to a method of fixing belief is dissatisfaction at 2 repugnant propositions – doubt implies that we think there are reals – doubt wouldn’t bother us otherwise.

3. Scientific method is not used only when a person doesn’t know how.

4. Using scientific method has triumphed in settling opinion over and over again.

The reason scientific method works is that it is empirically verifiable.

The operational definition of truth – verifiability principle

Peirce was a realist in the sense that he held that there is a reality outside ourselves that is known by the effects in he world. Take causation as an example – we all expect things to fall when they are not supported and it happens over and over. Either causation is chance or it isn’t. It clearly isn’t. There are causal laws.

“How to Make Our Ideas Clear”

What is belief? 1. Aware of it. 2. Appeases the irritation of doubt. 3. Establishes a rule of action = practical.

The effects determine the meaning of a thing.

Who cares whether a stone in the ocean is of a brilliant color unless someone goes to get it?