Doubt, Reasons and Imitating Mathematics

Posted on January 18, 2009
Filed Under Davidson, Peirce, Philosophy | 3 Comments

surrealglacier.jpgHere’s your Peirce quote of the day. This is from the early Peirce but it is a killer quote I like to go back to a lot.

…the whole history of thought shows that men cannot doubt at pleasure or merely because they find they have no positive reason for the belief they already hold. Reasons concern the man who is coming to believe, not the man who believes already. It has often been remarked that metaphysics is an imitation of mathematics; and it may be added that the philosophic doubt is an imitation of the absurd proceedure of elementary geometry, which begins by giving worthless demonstrations of propositions nobody ever questions. [...] I find myself in a world of forces which act upon me, and it is they and not the logical transformations of my thought which determine what I shall ultimately believe. (EP 1:237)

There’s so much great in there. (The part I left out in the middle is a bit of a rant against Hegelians)

The end really reminds me of Derrida.

I am not a pluralist and I would never say that every interpretation is equal but I do not select. The interpretations select themselves. I am a Nietzschean in that sense. You know that Nietzsche insisted on the fact that the principle of differentiation was in itself selective. The eternal return of the same was not repetition, it was a selection of more powerful forces. So I would not say that some interpretations are truer than others. I would say that some are more powerful than others. The hierarchy is between forces and not between true and false. There are interpretations which account for more meaning and this is the criterion.

[...]

Meaning is determined by a system of forces which is not personal. It does not depend on the subjective identity but on the field of different forces, the conflict of forces, which produce interpretations.

While I suspect Derrida wasn’t aware of this aspect of Peirce’s thought it’s worth noting that Peirce also sees the issue as the selection of more powerful forces which leads to our sense of truth. As inquiry continues in the long run the ideal community of inquirers will find themselves selected by more powerful forces as the universe acts on them. This will lead them to have beliefs that become stable. What those stable beliefs are is the Truth. You might also see some similarity to Davidson and his sense of coherency becoming a test for truth. Peirce’s ideal community of inquirers “in the long run” ends up being little more than Davidson’s radical interpreter.

As a matter of principle, then, meaning, and by its connection with meaing, belief also, are open to public determination. I shall take advantage of this fact in what follows and adopt the stance of a radical interpreter when asking about the nature of belief. What a fully informed interpreter could learn about what a speaker means is all there is to learn; the same goes for what the speaker believes. (“A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge”, 315)

What stands in the way of global skepticism of the senses is, in my view, the fact that we must, in the plainest and methodologically most basic cases, take the objects of a belief to be the causes of a belief. And what we, as interpreters, must take them to be is what they in fact are. Communication begins where causes converge: your utterance means what mine does if belief in its truth is systematically caused by the same events and objects. (ibid 317-8)

The other great part of the Peirce quote is its rejection of volitional belief and by extension volitional disbelief. This was key to Descartes method and Peirce has nothing but scorn for it.

Yet doubt is important for philosophy. As Peirce notes in my favorite part of the quote, reasons become important when we are coming to believe yet still doubt. This notion of doubt is important for Peirce and reminds me of the beginning of the Critchley book I mentioned last week. Doubt creates a drive for inquiry which allows new forces to be selected. Doubt creates a clearing place for these new forces to bring something new forth. It is a crack in the edifice which allows an eruption of the Real. (Thus the picture at the top I selected)

The final bit is the hilarious slam at geometry and mathematics being the ideal for philosophy. I think that was definitely true at the time he wrote. In these post-positivist times I don’t think it true at all. But looking at the history of philosophy I think its search for foundations arises out of choosing geometry as its founding metaphor.

Related posts:

  1. Peirce and Consciousness
  2. Religious Belief & Reformed Epistemology
  3. Davidson & Rational Animals
  4. Peirce on Philosophy of Mathematics
  5. Knowledge and the Dogmatism Paradox
  6. Strength of Belief

Comments

3 Responses to “Doubt, Reasons and Imitating Mathematics”

Great post, Clark.

Yes. I also liked the concept that reasons are only needed for those still developing their belief system. It answers in my mind why some people still followed Jimmy and Tammy Faye Baker and other fallen televangelists after their sins/crimes were exposed. For those who completely believe, no reasons (or few anyway) exist to cause them to depart their belief system.

It also explains why so many people still celebrate/mourn the death of Elvis…. Now if we could only explain the Elvis impersonators.

I’m not sure it does answer that. Rather the question becomes what causes doubt. I think there it can be created by reasons. For instance I can have a math problem and someone point out a problem in my reasoning and suddenly I am doubtful. I think though that the causes of doubt are external forces that end up being more complex. Indeed one of the great strengths of sophistry is to cause doubt independent of good reasons.

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