Peirce and Idealism

Posted on April 15, 2008
Filed Under Peirce, Philosophy |

C. S. PeirceOver at Kenny Pearce was the 67th Philosopher’s Carnival. This time it was, for the most part, all about idealism. One problem with the term is that it tends to be a bit muddled and often only makes sense at particular times with a particular opposition. For instance in early 20th century American philosophy it seems like everyone was debating idealism vs. realism. This was basically the debate about whether the ultimate constituent stuff was ‘mind-like’ or ‘non-mind-like.’

Into this mess were the pragmatists who were trying to find a third way and were thus attacked by both sides in the debate.

Now I’ve discussed this topic a lot at the old blog. Peirce’s position basically was that reality was independent of how anyone individually thought. Which is basically the realist position in the anti-realism/realism debate. But he also wasn’t about to concede that there was nothing mind-like about the universe. Which was the idealism side in the idealism/realism debate.

So Peirce ended up in a kind of middle ground. He called this middle ground objective idealism. (A term he’d lifted from Schelling)

The reason for the ‘objective’ is that existence can’t be reduced to subjective elements. Representation can not be seen to exhaust reality. The idealism arises, for Peirce, because everything is understood in terms of signs. He also, contra Kant, rejected the very idea of a ‘thing-in-itself.’ In theory everything is knowable, albeit perhaps only in an infinite process of inquiry.

An other way to consider this, from the more idealist side, is that consciousness can never exhaust existence. One could see this as either a focus on ‘forgetfulness’ as inherent in reality or else as the unconscious as being an essential part of idealism.

From the realist or materialist side of things there must be ’something out there’ independent of us or any thinker. It’s not even merely ideas in the mind of God (as some idealists thought). This reality though always is fully knowable in principle and is always given to us in a world of signs. Further, for Peirce, this unveiling of reality, is tending towards stability. That is the community of inquirers (as opposed to any finite number of people) can know all things in principle. Reality is manifesting itself in signs.

For Peirce there thus was ultimately no difference between matter and mind. In a certain sense he was a monist and called matter “congealed mind” (or mind with stable habits) and mind as “effete matter” with effete meaning presumably something like plastic. Some, such as physicist Lee Smolin, see Peirce as an inspiration for how they do Quantum Mechanics and there certainly are some similarities there.

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