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Pragmatism and Ontology Peirce and James
Pragmatism and Ontology Peirce and James
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Philosophie
by SUSAN HAACK
l. Introduction
(l) The danger, according to Peirce, is of confusing a disease with its sympt
One may take it, then, that Peirce believes that one is driven to
realism by 'irreconcilable facts'. (And cf, 8.250,1897).
Peirce always treats 'nominalism' as covering both the view that
universals are in no way real, and to the view that universals have only
a mental reality ; his realism is opposed both to (what would nawadays
be called), nominalism and conceptualism. The key thesis of on
tological realism is the affirmation of the reality of universals, or
generals, in contrast to the nominalist's claim that these have no, or
only a mental, reality :
The question... is whether man, horse and other names of natural classes,
correspond with anything which all men, or all horses, really have in com
mon, independent of our thoughts, or whether these classes are con
stituted simply by a likeness in the way in which our minds are affected by
individual objects which have in themselves no resemblance... (8.12,
1871).
(3) Questions could be raised here about the sense in which nominalism is simpler ; for
it isn't obvious that a theory extravagant in ontology but economical in syntax, for
example, is more complex than a theory economical in ontology but extravagant in syn
tax. But I can't pursue these issues — promising as they are — at present. Cf. Sober
[1975] ch. 2.
holds that generals are real, though they don't exist. In claim
generals are real, Peirce is rejecting the nominalist/ conceptu
that horses, say, have nothing in common. In denying that
exist, Peirce is rejecting what he calls 'nominalistic platonism
1871), which treats generals as abstract individuals. The d
generals exist is, however, doubtfully consistent with anoth
which Peirce sometimes stresses : that generals are causally ef
If existence is reaction with the environment, what is ca
ficacious presumably exists. This creates tension between the
existence as reaction with the environment, and the view of e
as the mode of being of individuals, since individuals are
items which, in Peirce's view, may interact causally. This tens
the vagaries of usage of 'exists' and 'real', will prove signific
2. Exegetical interlude
(4) It seems plausible to speculate that (a) stands to (b) as Peirce's logical to his
phenomenological argument for the categories, and that the gap that threatens to open
between them corresponds to the danger that the two kinds of argument, may not lead
to just the same categories.
Even Duns Scotus is too nominalistic when he says that universals are
contracted to the mode of individuality in singulars (8.208, c. 1905).
It will prove significant, later, that Peirce goes on to observe that 'the
pragmaticist cannot admit' the doctrine of contraction, for this turns
out to relate to Peirce's shift from a more nominalistic to a more
realistic account of the pragmatic maxim of meaning. Of this, more
subsequently.
A second difference is that Peirce criticises Scotus for having
assumed, simply on the basis of the existence of the appropriate
general term, that there is a corresponding real common nature. The
reality of a common nature, Peirce argues, does not follow merely
from the existence of a suitable word ; it is a matter for scientific
discovery that things called by the same word really are similar. The
idea is, I think, that general terms might stand for either 'natural' or
'artificial' properties, there being, in the latter case, a real similarity
between the things to which the word is applied. (Cf. Boler, Qyinton).
In an analogous, and as we shall soon see, related way, Peirce would
distinguish between accidental uniformities and real laws.
A third, again connected, difference is that the 'generals' to which
Peirce ascribes reality are of a somewhat different character from
Scotus' universals (see Bastian, Moore [1953], Almeder [1973]). First,
Peirce is inclined to emphasise the real similarity between individuals
falling under a general term — his view of universals stresses relations
at least as much as properties. This is connected, no doubt, with his
work in the logic of relatives and his category of thirds. Second, the
pragmatic maxim explains general terms by means of conditionals ex
pressing dispositions : a diamond is hard if, if it were to be rubbed, it
would be scratched. The attribution of a disposition ('habit' or
'would-be' are Peirce's terms) to something requires, in turn, the
reality of laws concerning the behaviour of the thing, and laws require
appeal to possibilities, since to say that such and such is a law is to say
that it would happen in possible circumstances of the pertinent kind,
as well as that it does happen in actual circumstances of the pertinent
kind. Peirce's ontology of generals thus covers relations, dispositions,
laws and possibilities.
(iii) This realism which has been considered so far is ontological,
concerning the question, whether there really are 'generals'. But the
epistemological question also arises, whether these real generals are
perceptually accessible to us.
Murphey has argued that until relatively late Peirce maintained —
though not altogether unequivocally — a phenomenalism which in
volved denying epistemological, while accepting ontological, realism.
Eventually, however, according to Murphey, the strain which this com
bination of views placed on Peirce's conception of reality led him to
abandon phenomenalism and adopt epistemological realism. He con
nects this change with developments in Peirce's theory of multitudes.
O'Connor, in [1964], accepts Murphey's account of the change in
Peirce's view, but suggests that the most important factor leading to
Peirce's rejection of phenomenalism was due to the influence of F. E.
Abbot, whose influence on his own realism he frequently acknow
ledges.
(5) See Stearns [1968] for discussion of the first, and Freeman [1974] for disc
the second of these ambiguities.
Thus, he came to insist that the meaning of 'hard' is given by the sub
junctive conditional : 'if x were to be rubbed, it would, not be scratched'.
That, if it were to be rubbed, it would not be scratched, is a disposi
tion, habit, or would-be of the diamond ; the actual behaviour of the
diamond does not exhaust its dispositions : '... the will be's, the actually
is's, and the have been's are not the sum of the reals. They only cover
actuality. There are besides would be's and can be's that are real' (8. 216,
c. 1910). The point of moving from the indicative to the subjunctive
formulation is to allow that a diamond is hard even if it is never rub
bed ; and in consequence Peirce also regards the subjunctive con
ditional as requiring appeal to all possible rubbings and not just all ac
tual rubbings. In its subjunctive form, therefore, the maxim involves
an implicit appeal to possible but non-actual events.
It is in the context of arguing for the subjunctive version of the
maxim that Pierce observes that he goes beyond Scotus in denying the
contraction of the universal in the individual (8.208, c. 1905) ; for he
now claims that there is more to the habits of a thing than can be en
compassed by any statement about its behaviour on any number of ac
tual occasions. It is also now clear how his conception of the 'common
... Let the water represent the world of sensible facts, and let the air
above it represent the world of abstract ideas. Both worlds are real, of
course, and interact ; but they interact only at their boundary, and the
locus of everything that lives, and happens to us, so far as full experience
goes, is the water, (pp. 89-90).
(8) It is of some interest that Peirce comments on the difference between his
pragmatism and Comte's positivism that the letter is a sort of phenomenalistic
pragmatism (5.428, 1905 ; 8.13a fT., the review of Pearson's The Grammar of Science, 1901 ;
review of Levy-Bruhl, The Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 1904.
...a concretely possible chicken means : (1) that the idea of chicken con
tains no essential self-contradiction ; (2) that no boys, skunks or other
enemies are about ; and (3) that at least an actual egg exists. Possible
chicken means actual egg plus actual sitting hen, or incubator, or what
not. (p. 184).
The ontological disagreement between Peirce and James strikingly
resembles some modern disputes. First, Peirce connects a group of
notions : of kind, law, disposition, possibility, which subsequent writers
have also seen as related. Consider, for example, attempts to explain
the difference between lawlike and accidental generalisations by ap
peal to the formers' capacity to support counterfactuals ; appeal to
counterfactuals in explication of disposition statements ; appeal to
possibility to explicate counterfactuals. A significant feature of this
area, however, is that the appeal sometimes goes in one direction, and
sometimes in the other. Consider, for example, attempts to explain the
truth of countrfactuals as the derivability of their consequents from
their antecedents with the help of laws, and appeals to counterfactuals
to explain possibility. (According to Kripke, counterfactuals explain
possibility, according to D. K. Lewis, possible worlds explain coun
terfactuals). There seems to be a considerable degree of agreement
that these notions are intimately connected, but equally considerable
disagreement about which is fundamental.
Second, though Peirce's attitude to this group of notions is realist,
and James's nominalist, this doesn't mean that while Peirce holds that
there are real natural kinds, laws, dispositions, and possibilities,James
denies this. The difference is, rather, that, while Peirce holds them to
be irreducible, James believes that the real kinds, laws, dispositions,
possibilities can be reduced to particular, actual items. The disagree
ment, that is, is not so much whether laws etc. are real, but wha
of thing they are. (This, as I have argued elsewhere — Haack A
often the structure of ontological disputes : consider the di
about numbers which hinge on the (ir)reducibility of numbers to
or disputes about the reality of material objects which hinge on
(ir)reducibilty to sense-data). I shall offer, shortly, some sugges
for at least a partial reconciliation of this disagreement. First, th
I want to sketch some applications of ideas developed in Peir
tological work to current disputes.
5. Some morals.
(9) The account Qpine offers applies to mental dispositions ; it is clear that he would
approve its extension to dispositions in general.
Min, Yung Wha Kim. [1963] 'Pragmatism and realism in Peirce's philosphy',
M. A. thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana.
Moore, E. C. [1953] 'Prof. Bastian's comments on Peirce's scho
lasticism', Philosophy and Phenomenological Re
search, 14.
Moore, E. C. [1961] American Pragmatism, Columbia UP.
Moore, E. C. [1964] The influence of Duns Scotus on Peirce's, in
Moore and Robin, [1964].