Peirce on Truth

Posted on July 1, 2008
Filed Under Peirce, Philosophy | 3 Comments

Three quotes by Peirce on truth that sound rather Heideggarian to me.

The purpose of every sign is to express “fact,” and by being joined with other signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, we may use this language) would be the very Universe. Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection or entelechy, which he never succeeds in making clear. We may adopt the word to mean the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so identical, – in such identity as a sign may have, with the very matter denoted united with the very form signified by it. The entelechy of the Universe of being, then, the Universe qua fact, will be that Universe in its aspect as a sign, the “Truth” of being. The “Truth,” the fact that is not abstracted but complete, is the ultimate interpretant of every sign. (“The New Elements”, EP 2:304)

Note that this quote depends upon a knowledge of Peirce’s terminology of signs. A sign is something that produces an interpretant for an object. The interpretant is usually an idea in a person’s mind however Peirce defines both interpretant and mind rather broadly. Much more broadly than mere consciousness. He’s anti-Cartesian in that sense. Thus the universe is perfused with signs.

The entelechy or perfection of of a sign is thus Truth which is the universe as it is given as an interpretant. Loosely, and perhaps somewhat misleadingly we can talk about it as the universe signified or reality as a gift.

Of Peirce there are two readings here.

One is that this notion is a mere regulative principle and unobtainable. It explains what truth means and not whether it is obtainable.

The other is that it is a necessity were inquiry to be continued by the ideal community of inquirers in the long run. That is it is the givenness of the universe as an interpretant to an ideal set of inquirers. Inquiry would be fated to result in a stable interpretation. But this would be only in a certain kind of infinite process – a process we finite beings could never experience. Thus truth is always an absent truth. It is a kind of messianic announcement of a messiah never to come.

These characters equally apply to pure mathematics. [---] A proposition is not a statement of perfectly pure mathematics until it is devoid of all definite meaning, and comes to this — that a property of a certain icon is pointed out and is declared to belong to anything like it, of which instances are given. The perfect truth cannot be stated, except in the sense that it confesses its imperfection. The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. [---] But whether there is any reality or not, the truth of the pure mathematical proposition is constituted by the impossibility of ever finding a case in which it fails. This, however, is only possible if we confess the impossibility of precisely defining it. (“Truth and Falsity and Error”, CP 5.567)

…to believe the absolute truth would be to have such a belief that under no circumstances, such as actually occur, should we find ourselves surprised (“Reason’s Conscience: A Practical Treatise on the Theory of Discovery; Wherein Logic Is Conceived as Semeiotic”, MS 693: 166)

This latter, one might object, is more akin to Levinas’ consideration of time as disruption rather than Heidegger’s sense of time as projection. Levinas (and Derrida) see time as providing novelty, surprise, and so forth. Strife is essentially a challenge from the outside. I think this is how Peirce sees it and indeed this is constitutive of his notion of secondness as action from the outside. I don’t wish to dispute this difference here. I tend to think Levinas is closer to Heidegger than many of the anti-Heidegger Levinasians think. (And I think Derrida tends to agree here) But I’m not sufficiently able to defend my readings of Levinas to argue that.

Let me instead argue that Heidegger’s notion of strife is still bound up in what Peirce is saying here. Especially Heidegger’s twofold division of Earth and World. The World is a kind of provisional sense and the Earth a kind of eseentially hidden sense. This is akin to the distinction Peirce makes with interpretants and object.

Any interpretant has an immediate sense as the sign acts on me now. This immediate presentation is called the immediate interpretant. Yet that new reaction engenders a further sign. And so on until one reaches the idealized sign or final interpretant. But that only occurs “in the long run” when some kind of stability is found.

Yet the sign is always the sign of an object. As with the immediate and ideal interpretant we can talk of the divisions of the object that is signified. The object as understood is the immediate object. The object as it is Peirce calls the dynamic object. Most of the dynamic object is hidden and is indicated only by a hint from the immediate object.

For Heidegger I think we have Earth being the object in a sign and the World being a provisional sense arising out of the Earth or roughly Peirce’s senses of interpretant. That is it is a step within the process of inquiry. Strife for Heidegger is this projection of the one interpretant onto the new. But what makes this strife function? Why this meaning?

I think Heidegger turns to a move that actually ends up entailing a lot that Levinas suggests.

Earth is that which comes forth and shelters. Earth, self-dependent, is effortless and untiring. Upon the earth and in it, historical man grounds his his dwelling in the world. In setting up a world, the work sets forth the earth. This setting forth must be thought here in the strict sense of the word. The work moves the earth itself into the Open of a world and keeps it there. The work lets the earth be an earth.

…It shows itself only when it remains undisclosed and unexplained. Earth thus shatters every attempt to penetrate into it. It causes every merely calculating importunity upon it to turn into destruction. This destruction may herald itself under the appearance of mastery and of progress in the form of the technical-scientific objectiviation of nature, but this mastery nevertheless remains an importence of will. The earth appears openly cleared as itself only when it is perceived and preserved as that which is by nature undisclosable, that which shrinks from every disclosure and constantly keeps itself closed up.. (“On the Origin of the Work of Art”, 46)

This sense of Earth as the object of a sign in its concealment – that is as the object as itself rather than as some sort of interpretant – acts on the inquirer. Even as we think we have mastery of the object it, as the object rather than as the representation, surprises us. The very idea of a perfect interpretant or truth is the idea of the Earth as dissolved. That is there would only be World or the conquest of the Earth by the World (or the object by the interpretant).

One can easily read Heidegger as implying this would be impossible. But one can also read him as not saying that. Merely as saying that the Earth as Earth by definition is concealed. What Heidegger calls “the work” and “the Open” here and in some other places relates very close to what Peirce conceives of as semiotics and how that relates to Truth.

Related posts:

  1. Language and the House of Being
  2. Peirce & Being
  3. Peirce on Reference
  4. Peirce & OOP
  5. Virtual Peirce
  6. Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind 2

Comments

3 Responses to “Peirce on Truth”
1 Michael Dorfman on July 2nd, 2008 7:01 am

Have you seen this, Clark?

I’ve seen it discussed on Peirce-L. I was originally going to pick it up but it was really pricey. Checking Amazon it is still $180. A tad too much for me. I keep hoping it’ll be out in a non-library oriented edition. However Springer is like Brill. Not exactly known for making their publications affordable.

I’ve been wanting the book for quite some time though. I keep hoping it comes out used at least. But the cheapest second hand price I’ve seen is $160. I think a lot of people want this book but are, like me, wanting it for themselves rather than a short rental from a library.

I hadn’t seen that review though. That’s interesting. Knowing that it focuses in part on the problems of the icon makes me want it even more since that has been the main theme running through my studies on Peirce and Derrida. (And indeed ends up being the main reason I find Derrida interesting rather than just sticking with Heidegger and Levinas)

I think there is general consensus that Peirce’s doctrine of continuity is key to understanding him. So most recent books take that approach. (Say Kelly Parker’s excellent introduction to Peirce, The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought or even the publication of his Harvard lectures as Reasoning and the Logic of Things which has two introductory essays by Hillary Putnam and Kenneth Ketner that both focus on infinities and continuity in Peirce’s thought) I think it was this doctrine, which Peirce termed Synechism, which was the crucial break between Peirce and the other pragmatists (especially Dewey and James). There were other issues, such as whether logic came before science to provide a clearing for science or whether (pace Dewey) logic arose out of science. But I think it was his Synechism and their discovering at the Harvard lectures that Peirce was so much closer to Hegel and Schelling than anyone expected. Of course it was in his doctrine of synechism that Peirce’s main difference from Hegel can be found.

I should also note that the classic paper on Husserl and Peirce is Joseph Ransdell’s “Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?” Unfortunately Ransdell considers only Husserlean styled phenomenology rather than the Heideggarian sort or what resulted when people such as Derrida looked at Hegel through a more Heideggarian or Levinasian lens.

As an aside I have on order Gadamer’s lectures on Hegel although who knows when I’ll find the time to get to them.

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