Discussion of the philosophy of Charles Peirce

Clark Goble | 5 Dec 2007 05:38

Fwd: Peirce's theory of truth

On Dec 3, 2007, at 5:39 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

> I'm not sure what it means, since I haven't read the other  
> pragmatists. Did James or Dewey write some material and _call_ it a  
> "theory of truth"?  It's true that Peirce doesn't, at least so far  
> as I can recall, say something like "my theory of truth" or "the  
> pragmatic theory of truth" or whatever. He addresses truth and the  
> real as, first of all, questions of presuppositions of logic.

I guess it all depends upon what one means by a theory of truth.   
Rather than it being correspondence, coherence or something like that  
it is the belief fated to be believed if inquiry continues.  This is  
interesting since it rejects anything like a Fregean "in the air" kind  
of immaterial object being truth or a proposition (with truth being a  
property of the proposition)  Rather truth is the belief from this  
future.

I'd say that definitely constitutes a theory of truth and in some ways  
anticipates many criticisms of the views of truth from the late 20th  
century.

It seems to me that Peirce's conceptions of universals is all wrapped  
up in this.  A universal may, in some sense, be partially undetermined  
(and thus vague).  So universals are evolving in one sense.  But qua a  
universal they apply across time.  While I don't think, from what I've  
read, Peirce really engaged the temporal implications of this it is  
quite interesting.

I know earlier this year we briefly discussed here Paul Davies recent

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Benjamin Udell | 5 Dec 2007 23:26

Re: Peirce's theory of truth

> On Dec 3, 2007, at 5:39 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

>> I'm not sure what it means, since I haven't read the other pragmatists. Did James or Dewey write some
material and _call_ it a "theory of truth"?  It's true that Peirce doesn't, at least so far as I can recall,
say something like "my theory of truth" or "the pragmatic theory of truth" or whatever. He addresses truth
and the real as, first of all, questions of presuppositions of logic. 

> I guess it all depends upon what one means by a theory of truth.  Rather than it being correspondence,
coherence or something like that it is the belief fated to be believed if inquiry continues.  This is
interesting since it rejects anything like a Fregean "in the air" kind of immaterial object being truth or
a proposition (with truth being a property of the proposition). ....

I don't know about Frege, but Peirce's view doesn't reject the idea that truth is a general and is the
property of a proposition corresponding to its object. I'm not aware that Peirce opposes
hypostatization of terms, propositions, or arguments into some immaterial objects "in the air" and I
think that he would tend to support it, e.g., the sign "of" is a pure copulative sign which doesn't even
denominate or describe, but one could hypostatize relationships into a class of objects over which the
sign "of" extends in some sense. Peirce would just say that it needs to be kept sooner or later in context,
the context of inquiry, in which the configurations and terms of correspondence such as reality,
univocality, truth, validity, soundness, terms, propositions, arguments, etc., etc., arise in the
first place. Peirce's qualm is not over airy abstractions but rather abstractions which draw only from
the 2nd grade of clearness, the logicians' "distinctness", the clarity of a definition's parts. To
define truth as a sign's correspondence to its object is not so unlike to define "won't" as "will not" and
define "will" and "not." It doesn't get fruitfully to the heart of the matter, and Peirce agreed with Kant
that it was just a nominal or verbal definition, to be defended but not to be regarded as particularly deep
and fruitful for inquiry.

> .... Rather truth is the belief from this future. 

The "belief from the future" is from a conditional future, a would-be future.

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Clark Goble | 5 Dec 2007 23:50

Re: Peirce's theory of truth

On Dec 5, 2007, at 3:26 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

I don't know about Frege, but Peirce's view doesn't reject the idea that truth is a general and is the property of a proposition corresponding to its object.

Yes, but Peirce's position that it is real but not existent whereas Frege and the Platonists say universals of this sort "exist" in a sense. So Peirce is anti-Platonic in that sense. No immaterial entities of that sort. Further Peirce is careful to make a distinction in idealism between finite minds and the infinite community. I'd also say, as others have pointed out, that the relationship between proposition and original object is complex. That's why I said conforms rather than corresponds. (Even though I have to admit I say correspond a lot myself - I just think we have to distinguish Peirce from most correspondence theories)

I'm not aware that Peirce opposes hypostatization of terms, propositions, or arguments into some immaterial objects "in the air" and I think that he would tend to support it, e.g., the sign "of" is a pure copulative sign which doesn't even denominate or describe, but one could hypostatize relationships into a class of objects over which the sign "of" extends in some sense.

I admit I don't have a quote for this handy. Give me some time. I'm very sure that Peirce's distinction between reality and existence entails the rejection of the kind of Platonism you assert. It's wrapped up in how he reads Scotus, as I recall.

The "belief from the future" is from a conditional future, a would-be future.

Would-be in a certain sense. I think his conception of the evolution of the universe via agapism means that it has a true teleological function. So one has to be careful with how we take would-be here. It is a would-be that is destined in a very real sense.

Most of your other points I don't have quibbles with though.

I assume that, by "universal," you mean that which Peirce meant by "general." Peirce did bring time into it, though I'm not well versed in his writing on it.

It becomes a habit and thus is a general law. TIme enters in because it is part of the evolutionary development of the universe. I think Peirce's metaphysics of time may be problematic ultimately, but I don't think it matters much in this case. The point is that as a general it can be true of things in the past. There is simultaneously an atemporality about it (for it to function logically as a general) and a temporality (to handle his cosmology of evolution). I think Kelly Parker's writings here are quite illuminating.

So, how does one link up the time-reversible (universal) with the time-irreversible (e.g., inquiry). A law is a repeatably instantiated universal; inquiry moves from part toward whole in probing a universe which in a sense is a uniquely instantiated universal.

Well, I'm not sure it ultimately works. I seem to recall a quote with Peirce's scholastic distinction between relations in mind, relations in logic and relations in reality that deals with this. But my memory may be faulty here. My personal feeling is that while agapism and continuity get all the criticism it may well be that Peirce's concept of time ends up not being up to the tasks he sets for it.

Quine complains that Peirce's "nearer the truth" and "farther from the truth" mix numeric ideas with truth ideas, Sowa says theory lattices allow it.

Quine gets Peirce so wrong so regularly that it's hard to take what he says very seriously. I think he misreads Peirce on truth and knowledge quite badly. I'd have to break out my Sowa as I don't recall what he wrote about theory lattices - but wasn't this wrapped up with infinite ones?

Bottom line, it's a normative, regulative principle, one doesn't predict that actual science will steadily and asymptotically approach the truth, instead one gauges the health of actual science by a demonstrated closing in on truth.

Well it certainly is a regulative principle since the conditions in question regarding infinities simply don't apply to finite beings. Whether that means there could be not actuality to it I disagree with. I think he does feel it to be more than merely regulative. I'll see if I can't find some quotes along those lines tonight. (Once again Kelly Parker has discussed this a fair bit)

Well, there's no meaningful signal transmission, so no "meaningful" causality. Arguments over Bertlmann's socks. Also this has become how some people explain socks disappearing in the drier.

There's no causality at all. That's why I said we have to distinguish "determines" (i.e. moves from vagueness) from causality. Personally I think this key to the temporal aspects of generals.

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Joseph Ransdell | 6 Dec 2007 22:23

RE: Peirce's theory of truth

Given the reference to the Platonic character Thrasymachus, it would seem from the Peirce-Royce interchange that Royce regarded Peirce at this time as being a sophist! -- or at least as holding to a sophistic relativist view! If so, no wonder Peirce was so quick to jump to the defense or Frank Abbot a few years later! Royce subsequently changed his view of Peirce, of course. Actually, though, I doubt that this is how it should be regarded, though it is very tricky. For one thing, there is very little in this which is much like anything said by Thrasymachus in the Platonic dialogues and this was apparently intended by Royce to be a sort of imaginative restatement of something a sophist of that time might have said in defending sophistic relativism. Moreover, Royce's characterization of the supposed Thrasymachan view is not on the face of it much like Peirce's description of it in his reply! What this suggests to me is that there had been some face to face philosophical conversation between Royce and Peirce at some earlier time in which Peirce tried to explain his view to Royce, who didn't really get the hang of it, and then when Peirce read Royce's book he thought, perhaps correctly, that Royce really was intending to criticize his view but via a radical misunderstanding of it, and Peirce is simply maneuvering around in the bog of misunderstanding in such a way as to get his own view out there in spite of the misunderstanding of it by Royce, feeling no more obligation to be faithful to the Platonic character than Royce did since he didn't take Royce seriously in that respect in any case. Anyway, here is how Peirce had earlier -- several pages back -- characterized Royce's supposed characterization of Peirce's (i.e."Thrasymachus'") view:

* * * * * PEIRCE CP 8.41 * * * * *

A certain writer has suggested that reality, the fact that there is such a thing as a true answer to a question, consists in this: that human inquiries, -- human reasoning and observation -- tend toward the settlement of disputes and ultimate agreement in definite conclusions which are independent of the particular stand-points from which the different inquirers may have set out; so that the real is that which any man would believe in, and be ready to act upon, if his investigations were to be pushed sufficiently far. Upon the luckless putter-forth of this opinion Dr. Royce is extremely severe. He will not even name him (perhaps to spare the family), but refers to him by various satirical nick-names, especially as "Thrasymachus," a foolish character introduced into the Republic and another dialogue of Plato for the purpose of showing how vastly such an ignorant pretender to philosophy is inferior to Socrates (that is, to Plato himself) in every quality of mind and heart, and especially in good manners. But I must with shame confess that if I understand what the opinion of this poor, Royce-forsaken Thrasymachus is, I coincide with it exactly. .(CP 8.41) .

* * * * *END QUOTE* * * * *

And here is the way Royce actually states it:

* * * * * ROYCE * * * * *

If our argument were a Platonic dialogue, there would be hereabouts an interruption from some impatient Thrasymachus or Callicles or Polus, who would have been watching us, threatening and muttering, during all of the latter part of our discussion. At last, perhaps, sustrepsus heauton hosper therion, he would spring upon us, and would say: "Why, you nonsense-mongers, have you not bethought you of the alternative that represents the reality in this question of yours? Namely, an error is an error, neither to the thought that thinks it, nor of necessity to any higher inclusive thought, but only to a possible critical thought that should undertake afterwards to compare it with its object. An error is a thought such that if a critical thought did come and compare it with its object, it would be seen to be false. And it has an object for such a critical thought. This critical thought need not be real and actually include it, but may be only a possible judge of its truth. Hence your Infinite all-knower is no reality, only a logical possibility; and your insight amounts to this, that if all were known to an all-knower, he would judge error to be mistaken. And so error is what he would perceive to be error. What does all that amount to but worthless tautology? (Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Chapter 11, Sec. VIII)

* * * * * END QUOTE * * * * *

Joseph Ransdell
ransdell <at> cspeirce.com
ARISBE website: http://www.cspeirce.com/
PEIRCE-L archives: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/?forum=peirce-l

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Benjamin Udell | 6 Dec 2007 00:39

Re: Peirce's theory of truth

Clark, list,

>[Clark] On Dec 5, 2007, at 3:26 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

>>[Ben] I don't know about Frege, but Peirce's view doesn't reject the idea that truth is a general and is the property of a proposition corresponding to its object.

>[Clark] Yes, but Peirce's position that it is real but not existent whereas Frege and the Platonists say universals of this sort "exist" in a sense. So Peirce is anti-Platonic in that sense. No immaterial entities of that sort. Further Peirce is careful to make a distinction in idealism between finite minds and the infinite community. I'd also say, as others have pointed out, that the relationship between proposition and original object is complex. That's why I said conforms rather than corresponds. (Even though I have to admit I say correspond a lot myself - I just think we have to distinguish Peirce from most correspondence theories)

>>[Ben] I'm not aware that Peirce opposes hypostatization of terms, propositions, or arguments into some immaterial objects "in the air" and I think that he would tend to support it, e.g., the sign "of" is a pure copulative sign which doesn't even denominate or describe, but one could hypostatize relationships into a class of objects over which the sign "of" extends in some sense.

>[Clark] I admit I don't have a quote for this handy. Give me some time. I'm very sure that Peirce's distinction between reality and existence entails the rejection of the kind of Platonism you assert. It's wrapped up in how he reads Scotus, as I recall.

I'm using Peirce's definition of "object" -- anything that one can think of, not necessarily something actual. Peirce held that there are real non-existent objects.

>>[Ben] The "belief from the future" is from a conditional future, a would-be future.

>[Clark] Would-be in a certain sense. I think his conception of the evolution of the universe via agapism means that it has a true teleological function. So one has to be careful with how we take would-be here. It is a would-be that is destined in a very real sense.

It's not at all clear that Peirce sees a final end, within a finite time, of everything collectively.

>[Clark] Most of your other points I don't have quibbles with though.

>>[Ben] I assume that, by "universal," you mean that which Peirce meant by "general." Peirce did bring time into it, though I'm not well versed in his writing on it.

>[Clark] It becomes a habit and thus is a general law. TIme enters in because it is part of the evolutionary development of the universe. I think Peirce's metaphysics of time may be problematic ultimately, but I don't think it matters much in this case. The point is that as a general it can be true of things in the past. There is simultaneously an atemporality about it (for it to function logically as a general) and a temporality (to handle his cosmology of evolution). I think Kelly Parker's writings here are quite illuminating.

The involvement of time in many kinds of generality is clear in Peirce. Actually I got my editing mixed up. I meant that Peirce brings time even into "extreme" generality, i.e. Peircean continuity, which seems like a kind of universal to me. Anyway the kind of evolution that occurs in many generals doesn't seem paradoxical, if we're talking about the evolution of a somewhat elliptical proposition. Evolution in the sense of learning is not merely change but is instead cumulative as well. We don't adopt new theories that explain less well that which previous theories explained. A proposition or a theory can increase their longevity by, as Peirce says, making open account of their own fallibility and vagueness, and by not closing doors on issues that aren't soundly settled.

>>[Ben] So, how does one link up the time-reversible (universal) with the time-irreversible (e.g., inquiry). A law is a repeatably instantiated universal; inquiry moves from part toward whole in probing a universe which in a sense is a uniquely instantiated universal.

>[Clark] Well, I'm not sure it ultimately works. I seem to recall a quote with Peirce's scholastic distinction between relations in mind, relations in logic and relations in reality that deals with this. But my memory may be faulty here. My personal feeling is that while agapism and continuity get all the criticism it may well be that Peirce's concept of time ends up not being up to the tasks he sets for it.

I'm not sure whether you're keeping in mind that the inquirial time about which Peirce talks could possibly be infinite. If we talk about a finite time, then it seems that we talk about a finite community of investigators, and it is not with the final actual opinion of any finite, definite community of investigators, that Peirce identifies the final interpretant.

>>[Ben] Quine complains that Peirce's "nearer the truth" and "farther from the truth" mix numeric ideas with truth ideas, Sowa says theory lattices allow it.

>[Clark] Quine gets Peirce so wrong so regularly that it's hard to take what he says very seriously. I think he misreads Peirce on truth and knowledge quite badly. I'd have to break out my Sowa as I don't recall what he wrote about theory lattices - but wasn't this wrapped up with infinite ones?

I don't remember, my main point was that at the philosophical level one doesn't make predictions about how actual sciences will approach the truth, and it seems to me that some criticisms of Peirce's view of truth as an ideal limit have been based on a feeling that it implies that, if we just look around, we will see a smooth asymptotic approach to truth embodied in the actual sciences all around us, and nobody really expects to see that. To put it another way, I couldn't believe that Quine was merely objecting that Peirce hadn't formalized some notion of a theory's nearness to or farness from truth, but maybe that's really what he meant, I don't know.

>>[Ben] Bottom line, it's a normative, regulative principle, one doesn't predict that actual science will steadily and asymptotically approach the truth, instead one gauges the health of actual science by a demonstrated closing in on truth.

>[Clark] Well it certainly is a regulative principle since the conditions in question regarding infinities simply don't apply to finite beings.

Right.

>[Clark] Whether that means there could be not actuality to it I disagree with. I think he does feel it to be more than merely regulative. I'll see if I can't find some quotes along those lines tonight. (Once again Kelly Parker has discussed this a fair bit)

I think that he thinks that we can indeed find cases of it, just as we find cases of special phenomena that nicely and neatly embody general statistical principles. It's just that we have to do some special science, and not merely general statistical theory, in order to establish that those special phenomena are valid cases of the embodiment.

>> Well, there's no meaningful signal transmission, so no "meaningful" causality. Arguments over Bertlmann's socks. Also this has become how some people explain socks disappearing in the drier.

>[Clark] There's no causality at all. That's why I said we have to distinguish "determines" (i.e. moves from vagueness) from causality. Personally I think this key to the temporal aspects of generals.

[ADDED in subsequent post] >[Clark] To add, I think distinguishing between "determines" from "causes" is very important in Peirce's later conception of the Object of a Sign as it determines the sign. Far too many read this as a kind of efficient causation which I don't think is what Peirce intended.

It's not clear to me that the determination in your quantum example is an example of Peircean determination or somehow analogous to it.

Best, Ben

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Clark Goble | 5 Dec 2007 23:51

Re: Peirce's theory of truth

On Dec 5, 2007, at 3:50 PM, Clark Goble wrote:

> There's no causality at all.  That's why I said we have to  
> distinguish "determines" (i.e. moves from vagueness) from  
> causality.  Personally I think this key to the temporal aspects of  
> generals.
>

To add, I think distinguishing between "determines" from "causes" is  
very important in Peirce's later conception of the Object of a Sign as  
it determines the sign.  Far too many read this as a kind of efficient  
causation which I don't think is what Peirce intended.

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