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Home , Charles Sanders Peirce, Mats Bergman, Yann Toma

European Journal of and American

IX-2 | 2017 Pragmatism and Common-Sense

Gabriele Gava and Roberto Gronda (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1029 DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.1029 ISSN: 2036-4091

Publisher Associazione Pragma

Electronic reference Gabriele Gava and Roberto Gronda (dir.), European Journal of Pragmatism and , IX-2 | 2017, « Pragmatism and Common-Sense » [Online], Online since 29 December 2017, connection on 24 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1029 ; DOI : https://doi.org/ 10.4000/ejpap.1029

This text was automatically generated on 24 September 2020.

Author retains copyright and grants the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy right of frst publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Symposia. Pragmatism and Common-Sense

Introduction to Pragmatism and Common-Sense Gabriele Gava and Roberto Gronda

Peirce on Intuition, Instinct, & Kenneth Boyd and Diana Heney

Critical Reflection and Common-Sense Beliefs A Peircean Rapprochement Francesco Poggiani

Common Sense without a Common Language? Peirce and Reid on the Challenge of Linguistic Diversity Daniel J. Brunson

Attitudes of Knowledge and Common Sense Remarks on Reid and Dewey Claude Gautier

Judgment and Practice in Reid and Wittgenstein Patrick Rysiew

A Permissivist of Belief What Pragmatism May Learn from Common Sense Angélique Thébert

On The Pragmatic Content of and Common Sense Roberto Gronda and Giacomo Turbanti

Knowledge as Potential for Action Stephen Hetherington

Essays

Monism and Meliorism The Philosophical Origins of the Open Court Nicholas L. Guardiano

Consequences of Rorty’s Pragmatism in Science Nalliely Hernández

Book Review

Hans JOAS & Daniel R. HUEBNER (eds.), The Timeliness of Chicago, and , The University of Chicago Press, 2016, 349 pages Guido Baggio

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Ramón DEL CASTILLO, Ángel M. FAERNA, & Larry A. HICKMAN (eds.), Confines of Democracy. Essays on the Philosophy of Richard J. Bernstein Leiden-Boston, Brill Rodopi, 2015, 260 pages Michela Bella

Richard SHUSTERMAN (with Yann TOMA), The Adventures of the Man in Gold / Les aventures de l’Homme en Or (Bilingual Edition: English / French) , Hermann, 2017, 128 pages, 40 illustrations Stefano Marino

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Gabriele Gava and Roberto Gronda (dir.) Symposia. Pragmatism and Common-Sense

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Introduction to Pragmatism and Common-Sense

Gabriele Gava and Roberto Gronda

1 The topic of common sense is central to pragmatism, both classical and contemporary. In different ways, Peirce, James and Dewey all wrote extensively on this , highlighting its theoretical complexity as well as its heuristic function in philosophical . In more recent , to give only one noteworthy example, published a book titled Common Sense (2005) in which he argues against those philosophical approaches that downplay the epistemological importance of common sense and tries to provide “a fundamentally pragmatic construal of the conception of commonsense beliefs” (N. Rescher, Common Sense: A New Look at the Old Philosophical Tradition, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2005, 42). It can well be said, therefore, that common sense represents a pivotal term within the pragmatist tradition in that it intersects with many other key- such as the primacy of practice, , cognitive pluralism, the implicit knowledge required for action (know-how), the irreducibility of the ordinary world to the descriptions provided by the and pragmatic realism – to name only the most relevant ones.

2 However, pragmatism is far from the only tradition of that has stressed the importance of the of common sense for philosophical reflection. As is well known, and the so-called Scottish school of common sense rejected Locke and Hume’s new way of on the basis of the primacy of common sense; similarly, in his 1925 essay A Defence of Common Sense, G. E. Moore formulated a criticism of that starts from the assumption that a certain of commonsensical beliefs cannot be called into question; in On Certainty, discusses in detail Moore’s proposal and uses it as a springboard to formulate his particular version of , centered around the notion of hinges.

3 A question that is therefore crucial to understanding the pragmatist notion of common sense is whether there is anything specific in the use that the pragmatists have made of this . In this respect, one might argue that the classical pragmatists have simply inherited the position of the Scottish school. This approach was widely accepted in the when Peirce’s and James’s versions of pragmatism were in their emergent

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phase and it certainly exerted an important influence on all the classical pragmatists. Yet one might reply that the classical pragmatists did receive the Scottish notion of common Sense critically, introducing relevant changes. Notoriously, Peirce’s doctrine of critical common-sensism stems from a critical appropriation of this kind: in his later years, Peirce came to realize that some of Reid’s philosophy could be accommodated within an ‘evolutionist’ framework like the one that he was trying to develop. Of course, all this raises a further question regarding the relationship between the pragmatists’ notion of common sense and the approach that is distinctive of the Moore-Wittgenstein line. Still another question is whether the pragmatists, classical or otherwise, in defend a univocal notion of common sense.

4 Alternatively, one might also ask whether the avowal of common sense implies a certain kind of pragmatism even in figures who do not explicitly regard themselves as pragmatists. Put in this form, the question concerning the relationship of pragmatism and common sense is much broader in scope and is not limited to the consideration of the similarities and differences among different philosophical traditions. It is rather a question that goes to the of pragmatism itself. For if it is true that endorsing some sort of common sense principles involves the defense of a pragmatist viewpoint, this might point toward an essential feature of pragmatism as such, or at least toward a characteristic which is fundamental to a particular form of pragmatism.

5 But these are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of a complex set of problems. The aim of this special issue is precisely to investigate this broad area by presenting a range of views about the way in which pragmatism is able to understand and conceive of the of common sense, its role in human knowledge and its relevance for moral reasoning. The papers contained in this issue address the relationship between pragmatism and common sense both historically and systematically. They assess the historical influences on the pragmatist notion of common sense, in addition to the similarities and differences between the pragmatists and other traditions which have provided central importance to this topic. They also critically consider the conceptual relationships between common sense principles and a pragmatist standpoint on our belief and knowledge. No conclusive and comprehensive view is yet provided. Nor was this our . Rather, our task will be achieved if the contributions that make up this special issue foster new discussions on the topic.

AUTHORS

GABRIELE GAVA Goethe Universität gabriele.gava[at]gmail.com

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ROBERTO GRONDA Università di Pisa roberto.gronda[at]unipi.it

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Peirce on Intuition, Instinct, & Common Sense

Kenneth Boyd and Diana Heney

AUTHOR'S NOTE

We thank our audience at the 2017 Canadian Philosophical Association meeting at Ryerson University for a stimulating discussion of the main topics of this paper. Thanks also to our wonderful co-panelists on that occasion, who gathered with us to discuss prospects for pragmatism in the 21st century: Shannon Dea, Pierre-Luc Dostie Proulx, and Andrew Howat.

1 In addition to being a founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce was a scientist and an empiricist. Peirce’s methodological commitments are as readily on display in his philosophical endeavours as in his geodetic surveys. In both, and over the full course of his intellectual life, Peirce exhibits what he terms the laboratory attitude: “my attitude was always that of a dweller in a laboratory, eager to learn what I did not yet know, and not that of bred in theological seminaries, whose ruling impulse is to teach what they hold to be infallibly true” (CP 1.4). Alongside a scientific mindset and a commitment to the method of inquiry, where does common sense fit in? That Peirce is with the person contented with common sense “in the main” suggests that there is a place for common sense, systematized, in his account of inquiry – but not at the cost of critical examination.

2 Peirce does at times directly address common sense; however, those explicit engagements are relatively infrequent. In this paper, we argue that getting a firm grip on the role of common sense in Peirce’s philosophy requires a three-pronged investigation, targeting his treatment of common sense alongside his more numerous remarks on intuition and instinct. By excavating and developing Peirce’s concepts of instinct and intuition, we show that his respect for common sense coheres with his insistence on the methodological superiority of inquiry. We conclude that Peirce shows us the way to a distinctive epistemic position balancing and anti-scepticism,

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a pragmatist common sense position of considerable interest for contemporary epistemology given current interest in the of intuition and .

Common Sense, Take 1: A Tension

3 Peirce’s discussions of common sense are often accompanied by a comparison to the views of the “Scotch philosophers,” among whom Peirce predominantly includes Thomas Reid.1 This is not surprising: Reid was a significant influence on Peirce, and for Reid common sense played an important role in his epistemology and view of inquiry. Peirce takes his “critical common-sensism” to be a variant on the “common-sensism” that he ascribes to Reid, so much so that Peirce often feels the need to be explicit about how his view is different. Here, then, we want to start by looking briefly at Reid’s conception of common sense, and what Peirce took the main differences to be between it and his own views. As we will see, what makes Peirce’s view unique will also be the source of a number of tensions in his view.

4 For Reid, “common sense” is polysemous, insofar as it can apply both to the content of a particular judgment (what he will sometimes refer to as a “first ”) and to a faculty that he takes human to have that produces such judgments. Common sense judgments are not “common” in the sense in which most people have them, but are common insofar as they are the product of a faculty which everyone possesses. A significant aspect of Reid’s notion of common sense is the role he ascribes to it as a ground for inquiry. As John Greco (2011) argues, common sense for Reid has both an epistemic and methodological priority in inquiry: judgments delivered by common sense are epistemically prior insofar as they are known non-inferentially, and methodologically prior, given that they are first principles that act as a foundation for inquiry. With respect to the former, Reid says of beliefs delivered by common sense that “[t]here is no searching for evidence, no weighing of arguments; the proposition is not deduced or inferred from another; it has the light of in itself, and has no occasion to borrow it from another” (Essays VI, IV: 434); with respect to the latter, Reid argues that “all knowledge got by reasoning must be built upon first principles. This is as certain as that every house must have a foundation.” (Essays VI, IV: 435). Since reasoning must start somewhere, according to Reid, there must be some first principles, ones which are not themselves the product of reasoning. Furthermore, since these principles enjoy an epistemic priority, we can be assured that our inquiry has a solid foundation, and thus avoid the concerns of the skeptic.

5 In these broad terms we can see why Peirce would be attracted to a view like Reid’s. Peirce is, of course, adamant that inquiry must start from somewhere, and from a place that we have to accept as true, on the basis of beliefs that we do not doubt. So one might think that Peirce, too, is committed to some class of cognitions that possesses methodological and epistemic priority. But as we will shall see, despite surface similarities, their views are significantly different. Notably, Peirce does not grant common sense either epistemic or methodological priority, at least in Reid’s sense.

6 Peirce spends much of his 1905 “Issues of ” distinguishing his critical common-sensism from the view that he attributes to Reid. Here, Peirce agrees with Reid that inquiry must have as a starting point some indubitable propositions. He disagrees with Reid, however, about what these starting points are like: Reid considers them to be fixed and determinate (Peirce says that although the Scotch philosophers

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never wrote down all the “original beliefs,” they nevertheless thought “it a feasible thing, and that the list would hold good for the of all men from Adam down” (CP5.444)), but for Peirce such propositions are liable to change over (EP2: 349). That common sense is malleable in this way is at least partly the result of the fact that common sense judgments for Peirce are inherently vague and aspire to generality: we might have a common sense judgment that, for example, ‘Man is mortal,’ but since it is indeterminate what the predicate ‘mortal’ means, the content of the judgment is thus vague, and thus liable to change depending on how we think about mortality as we seek the broadest possible application of the judgment.

7 Peirce takes the second major point of departure between his view and that of the Scotch philosophers to be the role of doubt in inquiry and, in turn, the way in which common sense judgments have epistemic priority. For Peirce, common sense judgments, like any other kind of judgment, have to be able to withstand scrutiny without being liable to genuine doubt in order to be believed and in order to play a supporting role in inquiry. For Reid, however, first principles delivered by common sense have positive epistemic status even without them having withstood the scrutiny of doubt. This is not to say that they have such a status simply because they have not been doubted. As Peirce notes, this kind of “innocent until proven guilty” interpretation of Reid’s common sense judgments is mistaken, as it conflates two senses of “because” in the common-sensist’s statement that common sense judgments are believed because they have not been criticized: one sense in which a judgment not having been criticized is a reason to believe it, and another sense in which it is believed simply because one finds oneself believing it and has not bothered to criticize it. Peirce states that neither he nor the common-sensist accept the former, but that they both accept the latter (CP 5.523). Nevertheless, common sense judgments for Reid do still have epistemic priority, although in a different way. As Greco puts it, “Reid’s account of justification in general is that it arises from the proper functioning of our natural, non- fallacious cognitive faculties” (149), and since common sense for Reid is one such faculty, our common sense judgments are thus justified without having to withstand critical attention.

8 This is a significant point of departure for Peirce from Reid. As we will see in what follows, that Peirce is ambivalent about the epistemic status of common sense judgments is reflective of his view that there is no way for a judgment to acquire positive epistemic status without passing through the tribunal of doubt. Furthermore, we will see that Peirce does not ascribe the same kind of methodological priority to common sense that Reid does, as Peirce does not think that there is any such thing as a “first cognition” (something that Reid thinks is necessary in order to stop a potential infinite regress of cognitions).

9 Although we have seen that in contrasting his views with the common-sense Scotch philosophers Peirce says a lot of things about what is view of common sense is not, he does not say a lot about what common sense is. In fact, to the extent that Peirce’s grapple with the challenge of constructing his own account of common sense, they do so only in a piecemeal way. To make matters worse, the places where he does remark on common sense directly can offer a confusing picture. That common sense for Peirce lacks the kind stability and epistemic and methodological priority ascribed to it by Reid means that it will be difficult to determine when common sense can be trusted.2

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10 This brings us back our opening quotation, which clearly contains the tension between common sense and critical examination. Peirce is with the person who is contented with common sense – at least, “in the main.” This makes sense; after all, he has elsewhere described speculative as “puny, rickety, and scrofulous” (CP 6.6), and common sense as part of what’s needed to navigate our “workaday” world, where it “usually hits the nail on the head” (CP 1.647; W3 10-11). But in the same quotation, Peirce also affirms fallibilism with respect to both the operation and output of common sense: some of those beliefs and habits which get lumped under the umbrella of “common sense” are “merely obiter dictum.” The so-called ‘first principles’ of both metaphysics and common sense are open to, and must sometimes positively require, critical examination. Peirce’s scare quotes here seem quite intentional, for the principles taken as bedrock for practical purposes may, under scrutiny, reveal themselves to be the bogwalker’s ground – a position that is “only provisional,” where one must “find confirmations or else shift its footing. […] It still is not standing upon the bedrock of fact. It is walking upon a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay till it begins to give way.” (CP 5.589). We can conclude that, epistemically speaking, an appeal to common sense does not mean that we get decision principles for nothing and infallible beliefs for free. Nonetheless, common sense has some role to play.

11 Further examples add to the difficulty of pinning down his considered position on the role and nature of common sense. In one of Peirce’s best-known papers, “Fixation of Belief,” common sense is portrayed as deeply illogical: We can see that a thing is blue or green, but the of being blue and the quality of being green are not things which we see; they are products of logical reflection. The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of . (EP 1.113)

12 The charge here is that methodologically speaking, common sense is confused. Given the context – an argument in favour of inquiry by way of critique against other methods – we might dismiss this as part of a larger insistence that belief fixation should (in order to satisfy its own function and in a normative sense of ‘should’) be logical, rather than driven by fads, preferences, or temporary exigencies.

13 Nor is “Fixation” the only place where Peirce refers derisively to common sense. A similar kind of charge is made in the third of Peirce’s 1903 Harvard lectures: Suppose two witnesses A and B to have been examined, but by the law of evidence almost their whole testimony has been struck out except only this: A testifies that B’s testimony is true. B testifies that A’s testimony is false. Common sense would certainly declare that nothing whatever was testified to. But I cannot admit that judgments of common sense should have the slightest weight in scientific logic, whose duty it is to criticize common sense and correct it. (PPM 175)

14 While the 1898 Cambridge lectures are one of the most contentious texts in Peirce’s body of written work, the Harvard lectures do not have such a troubled interpretive history. We stand with other scholars who hold that Peirce is serious about much of what he says in the 1898 lectures (despite their often ornery tone),3 but there is no similar obstacle to taking the Harvard lectures seriously.4 So we must consider how common sense could be both unchosen and above reproach, but also open to and in need of correction.

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15 How can these criticisms of common sense be reconciled with Peirce’s remark there is no “direct profit in going behind common sense” – no point, we might say, in seeking to undermine it? It is clear that there is a tension here between the presentation of common sense as “those ideas and beliefs that man’s situation absolutely forces upon him” and common sense as a way of thinking “deeply imbued with […] bad logical quality,” standing in need of criticism and correction. How can what is forced upon one even be open to correction? Must we accept that some beliefs and ideas are forced, and that this places them beyond the purview of logic? Such a move would seem to bring Peirce much closer to James than he preferred to see himself.5 It would also seem to cut against what Peirce himself regarded as the highest good of human life, the growth of “concrete reasonableness” (CP 5.433; 8.138), which might fairly be regarded as unifying logical integrity with everyday reasoning – reasonableness, made concrete, could thereby be made common, as it would be instantiated in real and in regular of reasoning.

16 Despite this tension, we are cautiously optimistic that there is something here in Peirce’s thought concerning common sense which is important for the would-be Peircean; furthermore, by untangling the knots in Peirce’s portrayal of common sense we can apply his view to a related debate in contemporary metaphilosophy, namely that concerning whether we ought to rely on what we find intuitive when doing philosophy. In order to help untangle these knots we need to turn to a number of related concepts, ones that Peirce is not typically careful in distinguishing from one another: intuition, instinct, and il lume naturale. We argue that all of these concepts are importantly connected to common sense for Peirce. We start with Peirce’s view of intuition, which presents an interpretive puzzle of its own.

A Neighboring Puzzle: Common Sense Without Intuition

17 A 21st century reader might well expect something like the following line of reasoning: Peirce is a pragmatist; pragmatists care about how things happen in real social contexts; in such contexts people have shared funds of , which prime certain intuitions (and even make them fitting or beneficial); so: Peirce will offer an account of the place of intuition in guiding our situated epistemic practices. That reader will be disappointed. Instead, we find Peirce making the surprising claim that there are no intuitions at all.

18 This claim appears in Peirce’s earliest (and perhaps his most significant) discussion of intuition, in the 1868 “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed For Man.” Here, Peirce challenges the Cartesian foundationalist view that there exists a class of our cognitions whose do not depend on any other cognitions, which can be known immediately, and are indubitable. A member of this class of cognitions are what Peirce calls an intuition, or a “cognition not determined by a previous cognition of the same , and therefore so determined by something out of the consciousness” (CP 5.213; EP1: 11, 1868). Peirce’s main goal throughout the work, then, is to argue that, at least in the sense in which he presents it here, we do not have any intuitions.

19 To get to this conclusion we need to first make a distinction between two different questions: whether we have intuitions, and whether we have the faculty of intuition. These

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two questions go together: first, to have intuitions we would need to have a faculty of intuition, and if we had no reason to think that we had such a faculty we would then similarly lack any reason to think that we had intuitions; second, in order to have any reason to think that we have such a faculty we would need to have reason to think that we have such intuitions. Peirce thus attacks the existence of intuitions from two sides: first by asking whether we have a faculty of intuition, and second by asking whether we have intuitions at all. His answer to both questions is negative.

20 In arguing against a faculty of intuition, Peirce notes that, while we certainly feel as though some of our beliefs and judgments are ones that are the result of an intuitive faculty, we are generally not very good at determining where our cognitions come from. For instance, that we made in the past but for which we have forgotten our reasoning are ones that we may erroneously identify as the result of intuition. Peirce here provides examples of an eye-witness who thinks that they saw something with their own eyes but instead inferred it, and a child who thinks that they have always known how to speak their mother tongue, forgetting all the work it took to learn it in the first place. Indeed, Peirce notes that many things that we used to think we knew immediately by intuition we now know are actually the result of a kind of : some examples he provides are our inferring a three-dimensional world from the two-dimensional pictures that are projected on our retinas (CP 5.219), that we infer things about the world that are occluded from view by our visual blind spots (CP 5.220), and that the tones that we can distinguish depend on our comparing them to other tones that we hear (CP 5.222).

21 That the presence of our cognitions can be explained as the result of inferences we either forgot about or did not realize we made thus undercuts the need to posit the existence of a distinct faculty of intuition. Where intuition seems to play the largest role in our mental lives, Peirce claims, is in what seems to be our ability to intuitively distinguish different types of cognitions – for example, the difference between imagination and real experience – and in our ability to know things about ourselves immediately and non-inferentially. But in both cases, Peirce argues that we can explain the presence of our cognitions again by inference as opposed to intuition. Consider what appears to be our ability to intuit that one of our cognitions is the result of our imagination and another the result of our experience: surely we are able to tell fantasy from , and the way in which we do this at least seems to be immediately and non- inferentially. Not so, says Peirce: that we can tell the difference between fantasy and reality is the result not of intuition, but an inference on the basis of the character of those cognitions. In effect, cognitions produced by fantasy and cognitions produced by reality feel different, and so on the basis of those feelings we infer their source.

22 Denying the claim that we have an intuitive source of self-knowledge commits Peirce to something more radical, namely that we lack any power of introspection, as long as introspection is conceived of as a way of coming to have beliefs about ourselves and our mental lives directly and non-inferentially. Instead, all of our knowledge of our mental lives is again the product of inference, on the basis of “external ” (CP 5.244). That we can account for our self-knowledge through inference as opposed to introspection again removes the need to posit the existence of any kind of intuitive faculty.

23 Thus, Peirce’s argument is that if we can account for all of the cognitions that we previously thought we possessed as a result of intuition by appealing to inference then we lack reason to believe that we do possess such a faculty. There is, however, a more

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theoretical reason why we might think that we need to have intuitions. The reason is the same reason why Reid attributed methodological priority to common sense judgments: if all cognitions are determined by previous cognitions, then surely there must, at some point in the chain of determinations, be a first cognition, one that was not determined by anything before it, lest we admit of an infinite regress of cognitions. This regress appears vicious: if all cognitions require an infinite chain of previous cognitions, then it is hard to see how we could come to have any cognitions in the first place. Hence, we must have some intuitions, even if we cannot tell which cognitions are intuitions and which ones are not.

24 Peirce does not purport to solve this problem definitively; rather, he argues that the apparent regress is not a vicious one. He compares the problem to Zeno’s paradox – namely the problem of accounting for how Achilles can overtake a tortoise in a race, given that Achilles has to cover an infinite number of intervals in order to do so: that we do not have a definitive solution to this problem does not mean that Achilles cannot best a tortoise in a footrace. Similarly, although a cognition might require a chain of an infinite number of cognitions before it, that does not mean that we cannot have cognitions at all. If we accept that the necessity of an infinity of prior cognitions does not constitute a vicious regress, then there is no logical necessity in having a first cognition in order to explain the existence of cognitions. One of the consequences of this view, which Peirce spells out in his “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” is that “we have no power of intuition, but every cognition is determined logically by previous cognitions” (CP 5.265). Thus, cognitions arise not from singular previous cognitions, but by a “process of cognition” (CP 5.267). Here, then, we see again how Peirce’s view differs from Reid’s: there are no individual judgments that have methodological priority, because there is no need for a regress-stopper for cognitions.

25 Peirce, then, is unambiguous in denying the existence of intuitions at the end of the 1860s. So it is rather surprising that Peirce continues to discuss intuitions over the course of his writings, and not merely to remind us that they do not exist. Unsurprisingly, given other changes in the way Peirce’s system is articulated, his engagement with the possibility of intuition takes a different tone after the turn of the century. During this late stage, Peirce sometimes appears to defend the legitimacy of intuition, as in his 1902 “The Minute Logic”: I strongly suspect that you hold reasoning to be superior to intuition or instinctive uncritical processes of settling your opinions. What basis of fact is there for this opinion? (CP 2.129)

26 At other times, he seems ambivalent about them, as can be seen in his 1910 “Definition”: One of the old Scotch psychologists, whether it was Dugald Stewart or Reid or which other matters naught, mentions, as strikingly exhibiting the disparateness of different senses, that a certain man blind from birth asked of a person of normal vision whether the color scarlet was not something like the blare of a trumpet; and the evidently expects his readers to laugh with him over the incongruity of the notion. But what he really illustrates much more strikingly is the dullness of apprehension of those who, like himself, had only the conventional education of the eighteenth century and remained wholly uncultivated in comparing ideas that in their are very unlike. For everybody who has acquired the degree of susceptibility which is requisite in the more delicate branches of reasoning – those kinds of reasoning which our Scotch psychologist would have labelled “Intuitions” with a strong suspicion that they were delusions –

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will recognize at once so decided a likeness between a luminous and extremely chromatic scarlet, like that of the iodide of mercury as commonly sold under the name of scarlet [and the blare of a trumpet] that I would almost hazard a guess that the form of the chemical oscillations set up by this color in the observer will be found to resemble that of the acoustical waves of the trumpet’s blare. (CP 1.312)

27 What explains Peirce’s varying attitudes on the nature of intuition, given that he decisively rejects the existence of intuitions in his early work? The answer, we think, can be found in the different ways that Peirce discusses intuition after the 1860s. In the above passage from “The Minute Logic,” for instance, Peirce portrays intuition as a kind of “uncritical process” of settling opinions, one that is related to instinct. This also seems to be the sense under consideration in the 1910 passage, wherein intuitions might be misconstrued as delusions. It is no surprise, then, that Peirce would not consider an uncritical method of settling opinions suitable for deriving in mathematics. It is surprising, though, what Peirce says in his 1887 “A Guess at the Riddle”: Intuition is the regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatisation of ; that is the one sole method of valuable thought. Very shallow is the prevalent notion that this is something to be avoided. You might as well say at once that reasoning is to be avoided because it has led to so much error; quite in the same philistine line of thought would that be and so well in accord with the spirit of that I wonder some one does not put it forward. The true precept is not to abstain from hypostatisation, but to do it intelligently. (CP 1.383; EP1: 262)

28 Far from being untrusting of intuition, Peirce here puts it on the same level as reasoning, at least when it comes to being able to lead us to the truth. How can we reconcile the claims made in this passage with those Peirce makes elsewhere?

29 Here is our proposal: taking seriously the nominal definition that Peirce later gives of intuition as “uncritical processes of reasoning,”6 we can reconcile his earlier, primarily negative claims with the later, more nuanced treatment by isolating different ways in which “intuition” appears to be functioning in the passages that stand in tension with one another. The solution to the interpretive puzzle turns on a disambiguation between three related notions: intuition (in the sense of “first cognition”); instinct (which is often implicated in “intuitive” reasoning); and il lume naturale. Once we disentangle these senses, we will be able to see that ways in which instinct and il lume naturale can fit into the process of inquiry – respectively, by promoting the growth of concrete reasonableness and the maintenance of the epistemic attitude proper to inquiry.

“First Cognition”

30 The first thing to notice is that what Peirce is responding to in 1868 is explicitly a Cartesian account of how knowledge is acquired, and that the piece of the Cartesian puzzle singled out as “intuition” – and upon which scorn is thereafter heaped – is not intuition in the sense of uncritical processes of reasoning. Intuition as “first cognition” read through a Cartesian lens is more likely to be akin to clear and distinct apprehension of innate ideas. Given Peirce’s thoroughgoing , it is unsurprising that we should find him critical of intuition in that sense, which is not properly intuition at all. But the complaint is not simply that the Cartesian picture is insufficiently empiricist – which would be, after all, mere question-begging. Classical

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empiricists, such as , attempt to shift the burden of proof by arguing that there is no reason to posit innate ideas as part of the story of knowledge acquisition: “He that attentively considers the state of a child, at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge: It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them” (np.106). Locke goes on to argue that the ideas which appear to us as clear and distinct become so through our sustained attention (np.107).

31 Peirce takes a different angle. Of the doctrine of innate ideas, he remarks that The really unobjectionable word is innate; for that may be innate which is very abstruse, and which we can only find out with extreme difficulty. All those Cartesians who advocated innate ideas took this ground; and only Locke failed to see that learning something from experience, and having been fully aware of it since birth, did not exhaust all possibilities. (CP 4.92)

32 As we shall see when we turn to our discussion of instinct, Peirce is unperturbed by innate instincts playing a role in inquiry. What Descartes has critically missed out on in focusing on the doctrine of clear and distinct associated with innate ideas is the need for the pragmatic dimension of understanding. Peirce argues in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” that to understand a concept fully is not just to be able to grasp its instances and give it an analytic definition (what the dimensions of clarity and distinctness track), but also to be able to articulate the consequences of its appropriate use. “We must look to the upshot of our concepts in order rightly to apprehend them” (CP 5.3) – so, we cannot rightly apprehend a thing by a mode of cognition that operates quite apart from the use of concepts, which is what Peirce takes first cognition to be. On that understanding of what intuitions could be, we have no intuitions.

33 On Peirce’s view, Descartes’ mistake is not to think that there is some innate element operative in reasoning, but to think that innate ideas could be known with certainty through purely mental perception. As he puts it: It would be all very well to prefer an immediate instinctive judgment if there were such a thing; but there is no such instinct. What is taken for such is nothing but confused thought precisely along the line of the scientific analysis. It would be a somewhat extreme position to prefer confused to distinct thought, especially when one has only to listen to what the latter has to urge to find the former ready to withdraw its contention in the mildest acquiescence. (CP 2.174)

34 Cognition of this kind is not to be had. But while rejecting the existence of intuition qua first cognition, Peirce will still use “intuition” to pick out that uncritical mode of reasoning. Next we will see that this use of “intuition” is closely related to another concept that Peirce employs frequently throughout his writings, namely instinct.

Instinct

35 At first pass, examining Peirce’s views on instinct does not seem particularly helpful in making sense of his view of common sense, since his references to ‘instinct’ are also heterogeneous. But it is not altogether surprising that more than one thing is present under the umbrella of ‘instinct,’ nor is it so difficult to rule out the senses of ‘instinct’ that are not relevant to common sense. More interesting are the cases of instinct that are very sophisticated, such as cuckoo birds hiding their eggs in the nests of other birds, and the eusocial behaviour of bees and ants (CP 2.176).

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36 Peirce’s commitment to evolutionary shines through in his articulation of the relation of reason and instinct in “Reasoning and the Logic of Things,” where he recommends that “we should chiefly depend not upon that department of the which is most superficial and fallible, – I mean our reason, – but upon that department that is deep and sure, – which is instinct” (RLT 121). Instinct is more basic than reason, in the sense of more deeply embedded in our nature, as our sharing it with other living sentient creatures suggests. Reason, having arisen later and less commonly, has not had the long trial that instinct has successfully endured. This is why when the going gets tough, Peirce believes that instinct should take over: “reason, for all the frills it customarily wears, in vital crises, comes down upon its marrow-bones to beg the succor of instinct” (RLT 111).

37 Instinct is basic, but that does not mean that all instincts are “base,” or on the order of animal urges. In fact, Peirce is clear in stating that he believes the word “instinct” can refer equally well to an inborn disposition expressed as a habit or an acquired habit. As he puts it, “since it is difficult to make sure whether a habit is inherited or is due to infantile training and tradition, I shall ask leave to employ the word ‘instinct’ to cover both cases” (CP 2.170). Peirce is not being vague about there being two such cases here, but rather noting the epistemic difficulty: there are sentiments that we have always had and always habitually expressed, so far as we can tell, but whether they are rooted in instinct or in training is difficult to discern.7

38 Despite their origins being difficult to ascertain, Peirce sets out criteria for instinct as conscious. To his definition of instinct as inherited or developed habit, he adds that instincts are conscious, determined in some way toward an end (what he refers to a quasi-purpose), and capable of being refined by training. This set of features helps us to see how it is that reason can refine common sense qua instinctual response, and how common sense – insofar as it is rooted in instinct – can be capable of refinement at all. Such refinement takes the form of being “controlled by the deliberate exercise of imagination and reflection” (CP 7.381). Habits, being open to calibration and correction, can be refined. It is because instincts are habitual in nature that they are amenable to the intervention of reason.

39 Along with discussing sophisticated cases of instinct and its general features, Peirce also undertakes a classification of the instincts. Richard Atkins has carefully traced the development of this classification, which unfolds alongside Peirce’s continual work on the classification of the sciences – a project which did not reach its mature form until after the turn of the century. According to Atkins, Peirce may have explicitly undertaken the classification of the instincts to help to classify practical sciences (Atkins 2016: 55). This makes sense; the practical sciences target conduct in a variety of arenas, where being governed by an appropriate instinct may be requisite to performing well. Peirce’s classificatory scheme is triadic, presenting the of suicultual, civicultural, and specicultural instincts. The suicultual are those focused on the preservation and flourishing of one’s self, while the civicultural support the preservation and flourishing of one’s family or kin group.

40 For our investigation, the most important are the specicultural instincts, which concern the preservation and flourishing not of individuals or groups, but of ideas. Of these, the most interesting in the context of common sense are the grouping, graphic, and gnostic instincts.8 The grouping instinct is an instinct for association, for bringing things or ideas together in salient groupings (R1343; Atkins 2016: 62). Given Peirce’s

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interest in generals, this instinct must be operative in inquiry to the extent that truth- seeking is seeking the most generalizable indefeasible claims. It is also clear that its exercise can at least sometimes involve conscious activity, as it is the interpretive element present in all experience that pushes us past the “thisness” of an object and its experiential immediacy, toward judgment and of use to our community.

41 The graphic instinct is “a disposition to work energetically with ideas,” to “wake them up” (R 1343; Atkins 2016: 62). This connects with a tantalizing remark made elsewhere in Peirce’s more general classification of the sciences, where he claims that some ideas are so important that they take on a life of their own and move through generations – ideas such as “truth” and “right.” Such ideas, when woken up, have what Peirce called “generative life” (CP 1.219). When we consider the frequently realist character of so- called folk philosophical , we do see that standards of truth and right are often understood as constitutive.

42 The gnostic instinct is perhaps most directly implicated in the about reason and common sense. In one place, Peirce presents it simply as “curiosity” (CP 7.58). In Atkins’ words, the gnostic instinct “is an instinct to look beyond ideas to their upshot and purpose, which is the truth” (Atkins 2016: 62). That way of putting it demonstrates the gap between the idea of first cognition and what Peirce believes is necessary for truly understanding a concept – it is the gnostic instinct that moves us toward the pragmatic dimension.

43 All three of these instincts Peirce regards as conscious, purposive, and trainable, and all three might be thought of as guiding or supporting the instinctual use of our . But they are not the full story. Although instinct clearly has a place in the life of reason, it also has a limit. As he remarks in the incomplete “Minute Logic”: […] [F]ortunately (I say it advisedly) man is not so happy as to be provided with a full stock of instincts to meet all occasions, and so is forced upon the adventurous business of reasoning, where the many meet shipwreck and the few find, not old- fashioned happiness, but its splendid substitute, success. When one’s purpose lies in the line of novelty, invention, generalization, theory – in a word, improvement of the situation – by the side of which happiness appears a shabby old dud – instinct and the rule of thumb manifestly cease to be applicable. The best plan, then, on the whole, is to base our conduct as much as possible on Instinct, but when we do reason to reason with severely scientific logic. (CP 2.178)

44 Novelty, invention, generalization, theory – all gathered together as ways of improving the situation – require the successful adventure of reasoning well. As such, our attempts to improve our conduct and our situations will move through cycles of instinctual response and adventure in reasoning, with the latter helping to refine and calibrate the former.

45 In addition to there being situations where instinct simply runs out – Cornelius de Waal suggests that there are cases where instinct has produced governing sentiments that we now find odious, cases where our instinctual natures can produce conflicting intuitions or totally inadequate intuitions9 – instinct in at least some sense must be left at the laboratory door. For better or worse,10 Peirce maintains a distinction between theory and practice such that what he is willing to say of instinct in the practice of practical sciences is not echoed in his discussion of the theoretical: I would not allow to sentiment or instinct any weight whatsoever in theoretical matters, not the slightest. Right sentiment does not demand any such weight; and right reason would emphatically repudiate the claim if it were made. True, we are

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driven oftentimes in science to try the suggestions of instinct; but we only try them, we compare them with experience, we hold ourselves ready to throw them overboard at a moment’s notice from experience. If I allow the supremacy of sentiment in human affairs, I do so at the dictation of reason itself; and equally at the dictation of sentiment, in theoretical matters I refuse to allow sentiment any weight whatever. (CP 1. 634)

46 Instinct, or sentiment rooted in instinct, can serve as the supreme guide in everyday human affairs and on some scientific occasions as the groundswell of hypotheses. Right sentiment seeks no other role, and does not overstep its boundaries.

47 But there is a more robust sense of ‘instinct’ that goes beyond what happens around theoretical matters or at their points of origin, and can infiltrate inquiry itself – which is allowed in the laboratory door. That sense is what Peirce calls il lume naturale.

Il Lume Naturale

48 While Peirce’s views about the appropriateness of relying on intuition and instinct in inquiry will vary, there is another related concept – il lume naturale – which Peirce consistently presents as appropriate to rely on. Peirce makes reference to il lume naturale throughout all periods of his , although somewhat sparsely. This is perhaps surprising, first, because talking about reasoning by appealing to one’s “natural light” certainly sounds like an appeal kind of intuition or instinct, so that it is strange that Peirce should consistently hold it in high regard; and second, because performing inquiry by appealing to il lume naturale sounds similar to a method of fixing beliefs that Peirce is adamantly against, namely the method of the a priori. Indeed, the catalyst for his arguments in “The Fixation of Belief” stems from an apparent disillusionment with what Peirce saw as a dominant method of reasoning from early scientists, namely the appeal to an “interior illumination”: he describes ’s reasoning derisively, for example, when he says that Bacon thought that the best kind of experience was that which “teaches many things about Nature which the external senses could never discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread” (EP1: 110). Peirce argues that later scientists have improved their methods by turning to the world for confirmation of their experience, but he is explicit that reasoning solely by the light of one’s own interior is a poor substitute for the illumination of experience from the world, the former being dictated by intellectual fads and personal taste.

49 To figure out what’s going on here we need to look in more detail at what, exactly, Peirce thought “il lume naturale” referred to, and how it differed from other similar concepts like instinct and intuition. The best way to make sense of Peirce’s view of il lume naturale, we argue, is as a particular kind of instinct, one that is connected to the world in an important way.

50 Passages that contain discussions of il lume naturale will, almost invariably, make reference to Galileo.11 In Peirce’s 1891 “The Architecture of Theories,” for example, he praises Galileo’s development of dynamics while at the same time noting that, A modern physicist on examining Galileo’s works is surprised to find how little experiment had to do with the establishment of the foundations of mechanics. His principal appeal is to common sense and il lume naturale. (CP 6.10, EP1: 287)

51 Here, Peirce argues that not only are such appeals – at least in Galileo’s case – an acceptable way of furthering scientific inquiry, but that they are actually necessary to

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do so. This becomes apparent in his 1898 “The First Rule of Logic,” where Peirce argues that induction on the basis of facts can only take our reasoning so far: The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds, at once […] it finds I say that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. But in so far as it does this, the solid ground of fact fails it. It feels from that moment that its position is only provisional. It must then find confirmations or else shift its footing. Even if it does find confirmations, they are only partial. It still is not standing upon the bedrock of fact. It is walking upon a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay till it begins to give way. (CP 5.589)

52 Peirce argues for the same idea in a short passage from 1896: In examining the reasonings of those physicists who gave to modern science the initial propulsion which has insured its healthful life ever since, we are struck with the great, though not absolutely decisive, weight they allowed to instinctive judgments. Galileo appeals to il lume naturale at the most critical stages of his reasoning. Kepler, Gilbert, and Harvey – not to speak of Copernicus – substantially rely upon an inward power, not sufficient to reach the truth by itself, but yet supplying an essential factor to the influences carrying their minds to the truth. It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human and those which are concerned in the laws of nature. (CP 1.80)

53 In these passages, Peirce is arguing that in at least some cases, reasoning has to appeal at some point to something like il lume naturale in order for there to be scientific progress. In the above passage we see a potential reason why: one could reach any number of conclusions on the basis of a set of evidence through retroductive reasoning, so in order to decide which of these conclusions one ought to reach, one then needs to appeal to something beyond the evidence itself. Similarly, in the passage from “The First Rule of Logic,” Peirce claims that faces the same requirement: on the basis of a set of evidence there are many possible conclusions that one could reach as a result of induction, and so we need some other court of appeal for induction to work at all.

54 Note here that we have so far been discussing a role that Peirce saw il lume naturale playing for inquiry in the realm of science. Peirce does, however, make reference to il lume naturale as it pertains to vital matters, as well. Consider, for example, the following passage from “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life” (1898): Reasoning is of three kinds. The first is necessary, but it only professes to give us information concerning the matter of our own hypotheses and distinctly declares that, if we want to know anything else, we must go elsewhere. The second depends upon . The only cases in which it pretends to be of is where we have, like an insurance company, an endless multitude of insignificant risks. Wherever a vital interest is at stake, it clearly says, “Don’t ask me.” The third kind of reasoning tries what il lume naturale, which lit the footsteps of Galileo, can do. It is really an appeal to instinct. Thus reason, for all the frills it customarily wears, in vital crises, comes down upon its marrow-bones to beg the succour of instinct. (RLT 111)

55 However, as we have already seen in the above passages, begging “the succour of instinct” is not a practice exclusive to reasoning about vital matters. At least at the time of “Philosophy and the Conduct of Life,” though, Peirce is attempting to make a

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distinction between inquiry into scientific and vital matters by arguing that we have no but to rely on instinct in the case of the latter. But if induction and retroduction both require an appeal to il lume naturale, then why should Peirce think that there is really any important difference between the two areas of inquiry?

56 We think we can make sense of this puzzle by making a distinction that Peirce is himself not always careful in making, namely that between il lume naturale and instinct. As we have seen, Peirce is more often skeptical when it comes to appealing to instinct in inquiry, arguing that it is something that we ought to verify with experience, since it is something that we do not have any explicit reason to think will lead us to the truth. Peirce argues that il lume naturale, however, is more likely to lead us to the truth because those cognitions that come as the result of such seemingly natural light are both about the world and produced by the world. Consider how Peirce conceives of the role of il lume naturale as guiding Galileo in his development of the laws of dynamics, again from “The Architecture of Theories”: For instance, a body left to its own inertia moves in a straight line, and a straight line appears to us the simplest of curves. In itself, no curve is simpler than another […] But the straight line appears to us simple, because, as says, it lies evenly between its extremities; that is, because viewed endwise it appears as a point. That is, again, because light moves in straight lines. Now, light moves in straight lines because of the part which the straight line plays in the laws of dynamics. Thus it is that, our minds having been formed under the influence of phenomena governed by the laws of mechanics, certain conceptions entering into those laws become implanted in our minds, so that we readily guess at what the laws are. Without such a natural prompting, having to search blindfold for a law which would suit the phenomena, our chance of finding it would be as one to infinity. The further physical studies depart from phenomena which have directly influenced the growth of the mind, the less we can expect to find the laws which govern them “simple,” that is, composed of a few conceptions natural to our minds. (CP 6.10, emphasis ours)

57 Our minds, then, have been formed by natural processes, processes which themselves dictate the relevant laws that those like Euclid and Galileo were able to discern by appealing to the natural light. This means that il lume naturale does not constitute any kind of special faculty that is possessed only by great scientists like Galileo. Indeed, that those like Galileo were able to appeal to il lume naturale with such success pertained to the nature of the subject matter he studied: that the ways in which our minds were formed were dictated by the laws of mechanics gives us reason to think that our common sense beliefs regarding those laws are likely to be true.

58 In thinking about il lume naturale in this way, though, Peirce walks a thin line. While Galileo may have gotten things right, there is no guarantee that by appealing to my own natural light, or what I take to be the natural light, that I will similarly be led to true beliefs. Furthermore, justifying such beliefs by appealing to an apparent connection between the way that the world is and the way that my inner light guides me can lead us to lend credence to beliefs that perhaps do not deserve it. We can, however, now see the relationship between instinct and il lume naturale. As we have seen, instinct is not of much use when it comes to making novel arguments or advancing inquiry into complex scientific logic.12 We have also seen in our discussion of instinct that instincts are malleable and liable to change over time. When these instincts evolve in response to changes produced in us by nature, then, we are then dealing with il lume naturale.

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59 So far we have unpacked four related concepts: common sense, intuition, instinct, and il lume naturale. We have seen that Peirce is not always consistent in his use of these concepts, nor is he always careful in distinguishing them from one another. That being said, now that we have untangled some of the most significant interpretive knots we can return to the puzzle with which we started and say something about the role that common sense plays in Peirce’s philosophy.

Common Sense, Take 2: The Growth of Concrete Reasonableness

60 As a practicing scientist and logician, it is unsurprising that Peirce has rigorous expectations for method in philosophy. Although many parts of his philosophical system remain in for decades, his commitment to inquiry as “laboratory philosophy” requiring the experimental mindset never wavers. Yet it is now quite clear that intuition, carefully disambiguated, plays important roles in the life of a cognitive agent. Instinct and il lume naturale as we have understood them emerging in Peirce’s writings over time both play a role specifically in inquiry – the domain of reason – and in the exercise and systematization of common sense.

61 Our most basic instincts steer us smoothly when there are no doubts and there should be no doubts, thus saving us from ill-motivated inquiry. Our instincts that are specially tuned to reasoning – concerning association, giving life to ideas, and seeking the truth – suggest that our lives are really doxastic lives. But that this is so does not mean, on Peirce’s view, that we are constantly embroiled in theoretical enterprise. Quite the opposite: For the most part, theories do little or nothing for everyday business. Nobody fit to be at large would recommend a carpenter who had to put up a pigsty or an ordinary cottage to make an engineer’s statical diagram of the structure. In particular, applications of theories would be worse than useless where they would interfere with the operation of trained instincts. Who could play billiards by analytic mechanics? We all have a natural instinct for right reasoning, which, within the special business of each of us, has received a severe training by its conclusions being constantly brought into comparison with experiential results. Nay, we not only have a reasoning instinct, but […] we have an instinctive theory of reasoning, which gets corrected in the course of our experience. So, it would be most unreasonable to demand that the study of logic should supply an artificial method of doing the thinking that his regular business requires every man daily to do. (CP 2.3)

62 Common sense systematized is a knowledge conservation mechanism: it tells us what we should not doubt, for some doubts are paper and not to be taken seriously. There are times, when the sceptic comes calling, to simply sit back and keep your powder dry.

63 This is perfectly consistent with the inquirer’s status as a bog walker, where every step is provisional – for beliefs are not immune to revision on the basis of their common- sense designation, but rather on the basis of their performance in the wild. Even deeper, instincts are not immune to revision, but are similarly open to calibration and correction – to being refined or resisted. Just as we want our beliefs to stand up, but are open to the possibility that they may not, the same is true of the instincts that guide us in our practical lives – which are nonetheless the lives of generalizers, legislators, and would-be truth-seekers. In both belief and instinct, we seek to be concretely

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reasonable. Thus, the epistemic stance that Peirce commends us to is a mixture: a blend of what is new in our natures, the remarkable intelligence of human beings, and of what is old, the instincts that tell their own story of our evolution toward rationality. For instance, what Peirce calls the “abductive instinct” is the source of creativity in science, of the generation of hypotheses. What he recommends to us is also a blended stance, an epistemic attitude holding together conservatism and fallibilism.

64 Thus, we arrive at one upshot of considering Peirce’s account of common sense, namely that we can better appreciate why he is with it “in the main.” Common sense calls us to an epistemic attitude balancing conservatism and fallbilism, which is best for balancing our theoretical pursuits and our workaday affairs. The process of unpacking much of what Peirce had to say on the related notions of first cognition, instinct, and il lume naturale motivate us to close by extending this attitude in a metaphilosophical way, and into the 21st century. We now turn to intuitions and common sense in contemporary metaphilosophy, where we suggest that a Peircean intervention could prove illuminating.

The Take-Home: Grounded Intuitions

65 Peirce’s discussions of common sense and the related concepts of intuition and instinct are not of solely historical interest, especially given the recent resurgence in the interest of the role of the intuitive in philosophy. These are currently two main questions addressed in contemporary metaphilosophical debates: a descriptive question, which asks whether intuitions do, in fact, play a role in philosophical inquiry, and a normative question, which asks what role intuitions ought to play a role in such inquiry. As we will see, the contemporary metaphilosophical questions are of a kind with the questions that Peirce was concerned with in terms of the role of common sense and the intuitive in inquiry generally; both ask when, if at all, we should trust the intuitive. In this final section we will consider some of the main answers to these questions, and argue that Peirce’s views can contribute to the relevant debates.

66 That philosophers will at least sometimes appeal to intuitions in their arguments seems close to a truism. However, there have recently been a number of arguments that, despite appearances, philosophers do not actually rely on intuitions in philosophical inquiry at all. Herman Cappellen (2012) is perhaps the most prominent proponent of such a view: he argues that while philosophers will often write as if they are appealing to intuitions in support of their arguments, such appeals are merely linguistic hedges. Most other treatments of the question do not ask whether philosophers appeal to intuitions at all, but whether philosophers treat intuitions as evidence for or against a particular theory. Max Deutsch (2015), for example, answers this latter question in the negative, arguing that philosophers do not rely on intuitions as evidential support; Jonathan Ichikawa (2014) similarly argues that while intuitions play some role in philosophical inquiry, it is the propositions that are intuited that are treated as evidence, and not the intuitions themselves. On the other side of the debate there have been a number of responses targeting the kinds of negative descriptive arguments made by the above and other authors. Nevin Climenhaga (forthcoming), for example, defends the view that philosophers treat intuitions as evidence, citing the facts that philosophers tend to believe what they find intuitive, that they offer error-theories in attempts to explain away intuitions that conflict with their arguments, and that

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philosophers tend to increase their confidence in their views depending on the range of intuitions that support them. Richard Boyd (1988) has suggested that intuitions may be a species of trained judgment whose nature is between perceptual judgment and deliberate inference.

67 How might Peirce weigh in on the descriptive question? As we have seen, the answer to this question is not straightforward, given the various ways in which Peirce treated the notion of the intuitive. In the sense of “intuition” used as “first cognition” Peirce is adamant that no such thing exists, and thus in this sense Peirce would no doubt answer the descriptive question in the negative. We have also seen that what qualifies as the intuitive for Peirce is much more wide-ranging. If we take what contemporary philosophers thinks of as intuition to also include instinct, il lume naturale, and common sense, then Peirce holds the mainstream metaphilosophical view that intuitions do play a role in inquiry.

68 If philosophers do, in fact, rely on intuitions in philosophical inquiry, ought they to do so? We have seen that this normative problem is one that was frequently on Peirce’s mind, as is exemplified in his apparent ambivalence over the use of the intuitive in inquiry. Recently, there have been many worries raised with regards to philosophers’ reliance on intuitions. Carrie Jenkins (2014) summarizes some of the key problems as follows: (1) The nature, workings, target(s) and/or source(s) of intuitions are unclear. (2) Why should we think intuitions are reliable, epistemically trustworthy, a source of evidence, etc.? (3) Intuitions exhibit cultural variation/intra-personal instability/inter-personal clashes. (4) There is no way to calibrate intuitions against anything else. (5) It is not naturalistically respectable to give epistemic weight to intuitions.

69 Peirce raises a number of these concerns explicitly in his writings. He raises issues similar to (1) throughout his “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties,” where he argues that we are unable to distinguish what we take to be intuitive from what we take to be the result of processes of reasoning. As Peirce thinks that we are, at least sometimes, unable to correctly identify our intuitions, it will be difficult to identify their nature. We have seen that he has question (2) in mind throughout his writing on the intuitive, and how his ambivalence on the right way to answer it created a number of interpretive puzzles. In general, though, the view that the intuitive needs to be somehow verified by the empirical is a refrain that shows up in many places throughout Peirce’s work, and thus we get the view that much of the intuitive, if it is to be trusted at all, is only trustworthy insofar as it is confirmed by experience. Peirce raises worry (3) most explicitly in his “Fixation of Belief” when he challenges the method of the a priori: that reasoning according to such a method is not a good method for fixing beliefs is because such reasoning relies on what one finds intuitive, which is in turn influenced by what one has been taught or what is popular to think at the time.

70 It is less clear whether Peirce thinks that the intuitive can be calibrated. The metaphilosophical worry here is that while we recognize that our intuitions sometimes lead us to the truth and sometimes lead us astray, there is no obvious way in which we can attempt to hone our intuitions so that they do more of the former than the latter. That our instincts evolve and change over time implies that the intuitive, for Peirce, is capable of improving, and so it might, so to speak, self-calibrate insofar as false

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intuitive judgements will get weeded out over time. When it comes to individual , however, it’s not clear whether our intuitions can actually be improved, instead of merely checked up on.13 While Peirce seemed skeptical of the possibility of calibrating the intuitive when it came to matters such as “scientific logic,” there nevertheless did seem to be some other matters about which our intuitions come pre- calibrated, namely those produced in us by nature. Because such intuitions are provided to us by nature, and because that class of the intuitive has shown to lead us to the truth when applied in the right domains of inquiry, Peirce will disagree with (5): it is, at least sometimes, naturalistically appropriate to give epistemic weight to intuitions.

71 How, then, might Peirce answer the normative question generally? To get an idea it is perhaps most illustrative to look back at Peirce’s discussion of il lume naturale. As we saw above, il lume naturale is a source of truths because we have reason to believe that it produces intuitive beliefs about the world in the right way: as beings of the world ourselves, we are caused to believe facts about the world in virtue of the way that the world actually is. The natural light, then, is one that is provided by nature, and is reflective of nature. Call intuitive beliefs that result from this kind of process grounded: their content is about facts of the world, and they come about as a result of the way in which the world actually is.14 Il lume naturale represents one source of grounded intuitions for Peirce. But we can also see that instincts and common sense can be grounded for Peirce, as well.

72 Consider, for example, how Peirce discusses the conditions under which it is appropriate to rely on instinct: in his “Ten Pre-Logical Opinions,” the fifth is that we have the opinion that reason is superior to instinct and intuition. Peirce argues that this clearly is not always the case: there are times at which we rely on our instincts and they seem to lead us to the truth, and times at which our reasoning actually gets in our way, such that we are lead away from what our instinct was telling us was right the whole time. There are of course other times at which our instincts and intuitions can lead us very much astray, and in which we need to rely on reasoning to get back on track. Peirce seems to think that the cases in which we should rely on our instincts are those instances of decision making that have to do with the everyday banalities of life. On the other hand, When one’s purpose lies in the line of novelty, invention, generalization, theory – in a word, improvement of the situation – by the side of which happiness appears a shabby old dud – instinct and the rule of thumb manifestly cease to be applicable. (CP 2.178)

73 Peirce is fond of comparing the instincts that people have to those possessed by other animals: bees, for example, rely on instinct to great success, so why not think that people could do the same? That the instinct of bees should lead them to success is no doubt the product of their nature: evolution has guided their development in such a way to be responsive to their environment in a way that allows them to thrive. Of course, bees are not trying to develop complex theories about the nature of the world, nor are they engaged in any reasoning about scientific logic, and are presumably devoid of intellectual curiosity. We have seen that when it comes to novel arguments, complex mathematics, etc., Peirce argues that instinct is not well-suited to such pursuits precisely because we lack the “full stock of instincts” that one would need to employ in new situations and when thinking about new problems. This is not to say that we lack any kind of instinct or intuition when it comes to these matters; it is,

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however, in these more complex matters where instinct and intuition lead us astray – in which they fail to be grounded – and in which reasoning must take over.

74 Peirce is not alone in his view that we have some intuitive beliefs that are grounded, and thereby trustworthy. Consider, for, example, a view from Ernst Mach: Everything which we observe imprints itself uncomprehended and unanalyzed in our percepts and ideas, which then, in their turn, mimic the process of nature in their most general and most striking features. In these accumulated we possess a treasure-store which is ever close at hand, and of which only the smallest portion is embodied in clear articulate thought. The circumstance that it is far easier to resort to these experiences than it is to nature herself, and that they are, notwithstanding this, free, in the sense indicated, from all subjectivity, invests them with high value. (Mach 1960 [1883]: 36)

75 It is not clear that Peirce would agree with Mach that such ideas are free from “all subjectivity”; nevertheless, the kinds of ideas that Mach discusses are similar to those which Peirce discusses as examples of being grounded: the source of that which is intuitive and grounded is the way the world is, and thus is trustworthy. Jenkins (2008) presents a much more recent version of a similar view. She considers why intuition might be trustworthy when it comes specifically to mathematical reasoning: Our concepts are representations of the world; as such, they can serve as a kind of map of that world. Examining this conceptual map can – and probably often does – amount to thinking about the world and not about these representations of it. In doing conceptual examination we are allowing our concepts to guide us, but we need not be aware that they are what is guiding us in order to count as performing an examination of them in my intended sense […] By way of filling in the rest of the story, I want to suggest that, if our concepts are somehow sensitive to the way the independent world is, so that they successfully and accurately represent that world, then an examination of them may not merely be an examination of ourselves, but may rather amount to an examination of an accurate, on-board conceptual map of the independent world. And I want to suggest that we might well be able to acquire knowledge about the independent world by examining such a map. (Jenkins 2008: 124-6)

76 Jenkins suggests that our intuitions can be a source of truths about the world because they are related to the world in the same way in which a map is related to part of the world that it is meant to represent. Importantly for Jenkins, a map does not tell us something just about the map itself: in her example, looking at a map of England can tell us both what the map represents as being the distance from one city to another, as well as how far the two cities are actually apart. Intuitions are psychological entities, but by appealing to grounded intuitions, we do not merely appeal to some facts about our , but to facts about the actual world.

77 Thus, on our reading, Peirce maintains that there is some class of the intuitive that can, in fact, lead us to the truth, namely those grounded intuitions. Do grounded intuitions thus exhibit a kind of epistemic priority as defended by Reid, such that they have positive epistemic status in virtue of being grounded? Peirce’s comments on il lume naturale and instincts provided by nature do indeed sound similar to Reid’s view that common sense judgments are justified prior to scrutiny because they are the product of reliable sources. However, that grounded intuitions for Peirce are truth-conducive does not entail that they have any kind of epistemic priority in Reid’s sense. Again, since we are unable to tell just by introspection whether our judgments are the products of instinct, intuition, or reasoning, and since the dictates of common sense and its related concepts are malleable and evolve over time, Peirce cannot take an intuitive judgment

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to be, by itself, justified. Instead, grounded intuitions are the class of the intuitive that will survive the scrutiny generated by genuine doubt.

78 However, that there is a category of the intuitive that is plausibly trustworthy does not solve all of the problems that we faced when considering the role of intuitions in philosophical discourse. Consider, for example, two maps that disagree about the distance between two cities. On the basis of the maps alone there is no way to tell which one is actually correct; nor is there any way to become better at identifying correct maps in the future, provided we figure out which one is actually right in this particular instance. General worries about calibration will therefore persist. There is, however, another response to the normative problem that Peirce can provide – one that we think is unique, given Peirce’s view of the nature of inquiry.

79 The contemporary normative question is really two questions: “ought the fact that something is intuitive be considered evidence that a given view is true or false?” and “is the content of our intuitions likely to be true?” In contemporary debates these two questions are treated as one: if intuitions are not generally truth-conducive it does not seem like we ought to treat them as evidence, and if we ought to treat them as evidence then it seems that we ought to do so just because they are truth-conducive. But these questions can come apart for Peirce, given his views of the nature of inquiry. This is because for Peirce inquiry is a process of fixing beliefs to resolve doubt. What creates doubt, though, does not need to have a rational basis, nor generally be truth-conducive in order for it to motivate inquiry: as long as the doubt is genuine, it is something that we ought to try to resolve.

80 One potential source of doubt is our intuitions themselves: that a given theory has counterintuitive consequences is taken to be a reason to question that theory, as well as motivating us to either find a new theory without such consequences, or else to provide an error theory to explain why we might have the intuitions that we do without giving up the theory. But intuitions can play a dialectical role without thereby playing a corresponding evidential role: that we doubt whether p is true is not necessarily evidence that p is not true. That something can motivate our inquiry into p without being evidence for or against that p is a product of Peirce’s view of inquiry according to which genuine doubt, regardless of its source, ought to be taken seriously in inquiry. We have, then, a second answer to the normative question: we ought to take the intuitive seriously when it is a source of genuine doubt. While the contemporary debate is concerned primarily with whether we ought epistemically to rely on intuitions in philosophical inquiry, according to Peirce there is a separate sense in which their capacity to generate doubt means that we ought methodologically to be motivated by intuitions.

Conclusion

81 We started with a puzzle: Peirce both states his allegiance to the person who contents themselves with common sense and insists that common sense ought not have any role to play in many areas of inquiry. We have seen that this ambivalence arises numerous times, in various forms: Peirce calls himself a critical common-sensist, but does not ascribe to common sense the epistemic or methodological priority that Reid does; we can rely on common sense when it comes to everyday matters, but not when doing complicated science, except when it helps us with induction or retroduction; uncritical

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instincts and intuitions lead us to the truth just as often as reasoning does, but there are no cognitions that have positive epistemic status without having survived scrutiny; and so forth. Indeed, this ambivalence is reflective of a fundamental tension in Peirce’s epistemology, one that exists between the need to be a fallibilist and anti-skeptic simultaneously: we need something like common sense, the intuitive, or the instinctual to help us get inquiry going in the first place, all while recognizing that any or all of our assumptions could be shown to be false at a moment’s notice. We have shown that this problem has a contemporary analogue in the form of the metaphilosophical debate concerning reliance on intuitions: how can we reconcile the need to rely on the intuitive while at the same time realizing that our intuitions are highly fallible?

82 While we are necessarily bog-walkers according to Peirce, it is not as though we navigate the bog blindly. Experience is no doubt our primary guide, but common sense, intuition, and instinct also play a role, especially when it comes to mundane, uncreative matters. We have argued that Peirce held that the class of the intuitive that is likely to lead us to the truth is that which is grounded, namely those cognitions that are about and produced by the world, those cognitions given to us by nature.

83 What we can extract from this investigation is a way of understanding the Peircean pragmatist’s distinctive take on our epistemic position, which is both fallibilist as inquirer and commonsensically anti-sceptical. In light of the important distinction implicit in Peirce’s writings between intuition, instinct, and il lume naturale, here developed and made explicit, we conclude that a philosopher with the laboratory mindset can endorse common sense and ground her intuitions responsibly.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ATKINS Richard K., (2016), Peirce and the Conduct of Life: Sentiment and Instinct in Ethics and Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

BERGMAN Mats, (2010), “Serving Two Masters: Peirce on Pure Science, Useless Things, and Practical Applications,” in Mats Bergman, Sami Paavola, Ahti Veikko Pietarinen & Henrik Rydenfelt (eds.), Ideas in Action: Proceedings of the Applying Peirce Conference, Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 1, Helsinki, Nordic Pragmatism Network, 17-37.

BOYD Kenneth, (2012), “Levi’s Challenge and Peirce’s Theory/Practice Distinction,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 48.1, 51-70.

BOYD Kenneth & Diana HENEY, (2017), “Rascals, Triflers, and Pragmatists: Developing a Peircean Account of Assertion,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25.2, 1-22.

BOYD Richard, (1988), “How to be a Moral Realist,” in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (ed.), Essays on Moral Realism, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 181-228.

CAPPELEN Herman, (2012), Philosophy Without Intuitions, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

CLIMENHAGA Nevin, (forthcoming), “Intuitions are used as evidence in philosophy,” Mind.

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DE WAAL Cornelius (2012), “‘Who’s Afraid of Charles Sanders Peirce?’ Knocking Some Critical Common Sense ino Moral Philosophy,” in Cornelius de Waal & Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski (eds.), The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce, , Fordham University Press.

DEUTSCH Max, (2015), The Myth of the Intuitive, Cambridge, MIT Press.

GRECO John, (2011), “Common Sense in Thomas Reid,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41.1, 142-55.

HENEY Diana B., (2014), “Peirce on Science, Practice, and the Permissibility of ‘Stout Belief’,” in Torkild Thellefsen & Bent Sørensen (eds.), Charles S. Peirce in His Own Words – The Peirce Quote Volume, Mouton de Gruyter.

ICHIKAWA Jonathan, (2014), “Who Needs Intuitions? Two Experimentalist Critiques,” in Booth Anthony Robert & Darrell P. Rowbottom (eds.), Intuitions, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 232-55.

JENKINS Carrie, (2008), Grounding Concepts, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

JENKINS Carrie, (2014), “Intuition, ‘Intuition,’ Concepts and the A Priori,” in Booth Anthony Robert & Darrell P. Rowbottom (eds.), Intuitions, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 91-115.

LOCKE John, (1975 [1689]), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited and with an Introduction by Peter H. Nidditch, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

MACH Ernst, (1960 [1883]), The Science of Mechanics, LaSalle, IL, Open Court Publishing.

MASSECAR Aaron, (2016), Ethical Habits: A Peircean Perspective, Lexington Books.

MIGOTTI Mark, (2005), “The Key to Peirce’s View of the Role of Belief in Scientific Inquiry,” Cognitio, 6/1, 44-55.

NUBIOLA Jaime, (2004), “Il Lume Naturale: Abduction and God,” Semiotiche, 1/2, 91-102. E-print: [unav.es/users/LumeNaturale.html].

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, The Charles S. Peirce Manuscripts, Cambridge, MA, Houghton Library at . Citations are by manuscript number, per the Robin catalogue (1967, 1971).

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1900 - ), The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, E. Moore (ed.), Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Cited as W plus volume and page number.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1931-58), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, I-VI C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss (eds.); VII and VIII, A. Burks (ed.), Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press. Cited as CP plus volume and paragraph number.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1992), Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, Kenneth Ketner and (eds.), Harvard University Press. Cited as RLT plus page number.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1992-8), The Essential Peirce, 2 vols., Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel & the Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1997), Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking, Patricia Ann Turrisi (ed.), Albany, State University of New York Press. Cited as PPM plus page number.

REID Thomas, (1983), Thomas Reid, Philosophical Works, by H. M. Bracken (ed.), Hildesheim, Georg Olms.

ROBIN Richard, (1967), Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce, Amherst, The University of Massachusetts Press.

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ROBIN Richard, (1971), “The Peirce Papers: A Supplementary Catalogue,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 7/1, 37-57.

NOTES

1. Peirce also occasionally discusses Dugald Steward and William Hamilton, but Reid is his main stalking horse. 2. As we shall see, Peirce’s discussion of this difficulty puts his views in direct contact with contemporary metaphilosophical debates concerning intuition. We return to this point of contact in our “Take Home” section. 3. See, for example, Atkins 2016, Bergman 2010, Migotti 2005. 4. Although Peirce was once again in very dire straits, as he had been in 1898, the subject matter of the later lectures cannot be interpreted as a bad-tempered response to James – though they do offer a number of disambiguations between James’ pragmatism and Peirce’s pragmaticism. Heney 2014 has argued, following Turrisi 1997 (ed. Peirce), that the Harvard lectures are a critical text for the history of American philosophy. 5. Regarding James’ best-known account of what is permissible in the way of belief formation, Peirce wrote the following directly to James: “I thought your Will to Believe was a very exaggerated utterance, such as injures a serious man very much” (CWJ 12: 171; 1909). A key part of James’ position is that doxastically efficacious beliefs are permissible when one finds oneself in a situation where a decision about what to believe is, among other things, forced. 6. That definition can only be nominal, because the definition alone doesn’t capture all that there is to say about what allows us to isolate intuition according to a pragmatic grade of clarity. There are many uncritical processes which we wouldn’t call intuitive (or good, for that matter). 7. This does not mean that it is impossible to discern – Atkins makes this argument in response to de Waal (see Atkins 2016: 49-55). 8. Some of the relevant materials here are found only in the manuscripts, and for these Atkins 2016 is a very valuable guide. 9. See de Waal 2012. 10. In our view: for worse. We merely state our stance without argument here, though we say something of these and related matters in Boyd 2012, Boyd & Heney 2017. 11. As Jaime Nubiola (2004) notes, the editors of the Collected Papers attribute the phrase “il lume naturale” to Galileo himself, which would explain why Peirce’s discussions of il lume naturale so often accompany discussions of Galileo. As Nubiola also notes, however, the phrase does not appear to be one that Galileo used with any significant , nor in quite the same way that Peirce uses it. 12. The exception, depending on how one thinks about the advance of inquiry, is the use of instinct in generating hypotheses for (see CP 5.171). 13. Recall that the process of training one’s instincts up in a more reasonable direction can be sparked by a difficulty posed mid-inquiry, but such realignment is not something we should expect to accomplish swiftly. For a discussion of habituation in Peirce’s philosophy, see Massecar 2016. 14. A very stable feature of Peirce’s view as they unfold over time is that our experience of reality includes what he calls Secondness: “insistence upon being in some quite arbitrary way is Secondness, which is the characteristic of the actually existing thing” (CP 7.488). Perhaps attuned to the critic who will cry out that this is too metaphysical, Peirce gives his classic example of an idealist being punched in the face. “[A]n idealist of that stamp is lounging down Regent Street, thinking of the utter nonsense of the opinion of Reid, and especially of the foolish probatio

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ambulandi, when some drunken fellow who is staggering up the street unexpectedly lets fly his fist and knocks him in the eye. What has become of his philosophical reflections now?” (CP 5.539). Peirce suggests that the idealist will come to appreciate the “” of the unexpected, and rethink his stance on Reid.

ABSTRACTS

In addition to being a founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce was a scientist and an empiricist. A core aspect of his thoroughgoing empiricism was a mindset that treats all attitudes as revisable. His fallibilism seems to require us to constantly seek out new information, and to not be content holding any beliefs uncritically. At the same time, Peirce often states that common sense has an important role to play in both scientific and vital inquiry, and that there cannot be any “direct profit in going behind common sense.” Our question is the following: alongside a scientific mindset and a commitment to the method of inquiry, where does common sense fit in? Peirce does at times directly address common sense; however, those explicit engagements are relatively infrequent. In this paper, we argue that getting a firm grip on the role of common sense in Peirce’s philosophy requires a three-pronged investigation, targeting his treatment of common sense alongside his more numerous remarks on intuition and instinct. By excavating and developing Peirce’s concepts of instinct and intuition, we show that his respect for common sense coheres with his insistence on the methodological superiority of inquiry. We conclude that Peirce shows us the way to a distinctive epistemic position balancing fallibilism and anti-scepticism, a pragmatist common sense position of considerable interest for contemporary epistemology given current interest in the relation of intuition and reason.

AUTHORS

KENNETH BOYD , Scarborough kenneth.boyd[at]gmail.com

DIANA HENEY Fordham University dheney[at]fordham.edu

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Critical Reflection and Common- Sense Beliefs A Peircean Rapprochement

Francesco Poggiani

1. Introduction

1 Many philosophers hold a double standard when it comes to the normative standing of doubt and belief. While they regard “believing at will” to be both impossible and irrational, they often find “doubting at will,” by contrast, to be highly rewarding for any form of rational inquiry. In particular, they take it to be our moral obligation not only to question but also to suspend or discard those intellectual inclinations that cannot be “rationally grounded” – whether or not we can entertain any real doubt about them, and regardless of how irresistible they may appear.

2 According to an influential view,1 such “acritical” beliefs may not even be properly classified as beliefs. This is because genuine beliefs are thought to be essentially responsive to experiential input, which they can only be, according to this view, by regulating their behavioral output on the basis of clearly identifiable grounds. This is what makes them inherently normative even as they remain fallible; as opposed to our “uncontrollable” judgments, whose seemingly normative implications we can and ought to suspend. In what follows, I will introduce and elaborate on some aspects of C. S. Peirce’s pragmatism in order to articulate an alternative conception of belief.

3 Peirce’s opposition to Descartes’ method of hyperbolic doubt reflects the former’s conviction that, given the practical nature of a concept’s meaningful implications, inquiry should begin from doubts that are actually capable of disrupting our otherwise settled practical inclinations (which include inclinations governing theoretical inquiry, of course). If, as we shall see, the sole purpose of inquiry is the fixation of belief, there is no point in trying to “fix” habits of mind that are in fact already settled.2 At the same time, it seems as if Peirce was not always willing to embrace such a thoroughly pragmatic conception of inquiry. Not only he went so far as to claim that “beliefs,”

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regarded as dispositions upon which we are ready to act in everyday life, should not play any normative role in theoretical inquiry.3 He also constantly emphasized the risk of regarding as true whatever we find ourselves irresistibly inclined to believe by to the fleeting nature of many such irresistible, so-called “self-evident” beliefs. Thus, in the well-known essay in which he introduced his conception of inquiry, Peirce also criticized the “a priori” method for the fixation of belief: the idea that, in contrast to both the methods of “tenacity” and “authority,” we ought to reason on the basis of our natural ways of thinking or “inward light of reason,” as this is expressed by our duly considered feelings and inclinations.

4 The foregoing tension can be brought out with respect to the relationship between truth and conceivability. On the one hand, as I have already mentioned, Pierce was critical of the Cartesian requirement according to which inquiry should only begin from those propositions which we cannot conceivably doubt. Inquiry does and should, in addition, rely upon all those beliefs about which we do not entertain any genuine doubt. On the other hand, Peirce did not regard our incapacity to cast genuine doubts on any given belief as an indication of its validity. The inconceivability of a proposition’s negation cannot be, in and of itself, a valid criterion for endorsing that proposition. As a criterion or method of inquiry,4 the “test of inconceivability” is not only unreliable but also highly deceptive. If we cannot already imagine any way in which a proposition would be false, neither can we yet imagine any way of imagining it to be false. But for all that, the simplest little suggestion or information may at any moment put it into our power to imagine what no effort of thought could before enable us to imagine. (CP 2.30)

5 For instance, one could find it impossible to deny that a whole is greater than any one of its parts. And yet, as in the case of Columbus’ egg, it takes a quite simple suggestion to realize that while the collection of even numbers is only one part of the entire collection of integers, the former is as great as the latter. “For every integer number there is a separate and distinct double; and thus the doubles are as many as the integer numbers. But these doubles are all even numbers; and so, the partial collection is as great as the whole collection.” (CP 2.30).5

6 As a consequence, Peirce appeared ambivalent with respect to the degree of trust we should confer upon our intuitive judgments and natural inferences. There is indeed an interesting however rarely noted tension between Peirce’s pragmatic conception of reasoning and his rejection of psychologism and the a priori method. In what follows, I argue that Peirce’s “Critical common-sensism” is an attempt to resolve this tension by arguing that we should neither conclusively accept nor discard our “acritically indubitable” intellectual dispositions. Rather we must unreservedly rely on them for the sake of engaging in any form of rational inquiry.6 This is because, whether or not they are in fact (entirely) “true,” such dispositions provide us with the conceptual means to articulate both the very idea of rational inquiry and the opportunities of engaging in its pursuit. If, whenever you inquire into something, you have a general sense of what you are up to, this is because, insofar as you reason at all, you are striving to achieve that kind of intellectual stability (“fixation”) which is already vaguely provided by that “immense mass of cognition already formed, of which you cannot divest yourself […] and who knows whether, if you could, you would not have made all knowledge impossible to yourself?” (EP2: 336).

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7 Now, if deliberate reasoning aims at a thorough settlement of belief, this is because the aim of fixation is “constitutive” of belief itself, or intrinsic to its natural telos. Accordingly, the bulk of this essay (sections 4-6) consists in a defense of the claim that cognitive stability is the constitutive aim of believing something to be the case – and that “truth” can be regarded as partaking of such an aim only by expressing that more fundamental claim. More precisely, my thesis is that whenever you believe a proposition (or in order to believe it), you regard is as true with the aim of thereby accepting a thoroughly stable opinion.7

8 But if fixation is the constitutive aim of belief, our acritically indubitable judgments and inferences8 can be regarded as genuine beliefs. Consequently, our inability to become aware of a belief’s rational grounds is not by itself a sufficient reason to discard its meaningful implications. Before arguing for this conclusion, however, we must understand more precisely how acritically indubitable beliefs emerge and what role do they play in practical reasoning (sections 2-3).

2. Pragmatism and Self-Control

9 Peirce thought of pragmatism as a “method of reflexion” based upon an investigation of the phenomena of self-control. At the same time, he argued that “Critical common- sensism” is a necessary “consequence” of Pragmatism. These claims are importantly connected and can be best understood in light of each other.

10 “Critical common-sensism” consists in the claim that there are widely endorsed “propositions and inferences” which resemble perceptual judgments in being “acritical” (non deliberate or self-controlled), our non-intellectual dispositions in being “instinctive” (see EP2: 346-54), and our deepest insights in being “invariably vague.” By contrast, the requires us to clarify the of a proposition p by looking at its implications for self-controlled conduct, namely, by determining how I ought to act if I were to believe that p. Among such implications, there is the fact that rational self-control eventually comes to an end in judgments and inferences we cannot help acting upon (which include but are not limited to our perceptual judgments). Such “acritically indubitable” beliefs can thus be regarded at once as deriving from (“consequences” of) a concept’s pragmatic clarification and a legitimate basis for inquiry’s further developments.9 This is the sense in which, according to Peirce, the pragmatic method of inquiry entails high respect for our intuitive or commonsensical judgments and inferences. In this section I will elaborate upon this connection between self-control and common sense in light of Peirce’s conception of reasoning.

11 Writes Peirce in 1905: The term ‘reasoning’ ought to be confined to such fixation of one belief by another as is reasonable, deliberate, self-controlled. A reasoning must be conscious; and this consciousness is not mere ‘immediate consciousness’ […] but is in its ultimate nature (meaning in that characteristic element of it that is not reducible to anything simpler), a sense of taking a habit, or disposition to respond to a given kind of stimulus in a given kind of way. (5.540)

12 This conception of reasoning reflects the irreducible law-like generality involved in any rationally self-controlled resolution to think or act in one way or another – conversely, it points to what makes it impossible for us to understand any symbolic expression without taking up, consolidating, or modifying a habit of conduct.

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13 Yet, Peirce continues, “the secret of rational consciousness is not so much to be sought in the study of this one peculiar nucleolus,” namely self-conscious habit change, “as in the review of the process of self-control in its entirety” (EP2: 347). Given the density of the text in which it occurs, this passage could be understood in different ways. However, important clues are provided by what immediately follows it. After emphasizing the importance of imagination for the formation of habits, and its greater role in “logical” than “moral” self-control, Peirce writes: “Certain obvious features of the phenomena of self-control (and especially of habit) can be expressed compactly […] by saying that we have an occult nature of which and of its contents we can only judge by the conduct that it determines.” And to emphasize that he is talking of self-controlled conduct, Peirce adds: “According to the maxim of Pragmaticism, to say that determination affects our occult nature is to say that it is capable of affecting deliberate conduct […]” (EP2: 347, emphasis added).10 Now, what makes conduct deliberate?

14 As Peirce notes in the fifth of his 1903 Harvard lectures, since any rational inference involves a “qualitative approval” of the general class of arguments to which the inference belongs, it is our consciousness of the specific character of such an approval that makes the inference fully deliberate – even though we may not be able to resist our inclination to approve it. Accordingly, in 1905 Peirce writes that the pragmatic maxim “requires that in reasoning we should be conscious, not only of the conclusion, and of our deliberate approval of it, but also of its being the result of the premiss from which it does result, and furthermore that the inference is one of a possible class of inferences which conform to one guiding principle” (EP2: 348). Insofar as we are aware of the general guiding principle which guides our inferences, the latter can be rightly said to belong to a chain of deliberate or self-controlled reasoning. However, Peirce continues: There are […] cases in which we are conscious that a belief has been determined by another given belief, but are not conscious that it proceeds on any general principle. Such is St. Augustine’s ‘cogito, ergo sum.’ Such a process should be called, not a reasoning but an acritical inference. Again, there are cases in which one belief is determined by another, without our being at all aware of it. These should be called associational suggestions of belief. (EP2: 348)11

15 Presumably, then, a review of “the process of self-control in its entirety” should include a reflection on the nature and function of such non-thoroughly transparent inferences and beliefs.

16 To begin with, one might find Peirce’s classification of Augustine’s mode of inference inaccurate. I agree with Peirce’s implicit assumption that Descartes’ well-known inference is but a generalization of Augustine’s “Si fallor, sum.”12 But the latter does seem to be based on a deliberate (self-conscious) mode of reasoning. As Augustine writes in his treatise on the theological virtues: “by not positively affirming that they are alive, the skeptics ward off the appearance of error in themselves, yet they do make errors simply by showing themselves alive; one cannot err who is not alive. That we live is therefore not only true, but it is altogether certain as well.” The general guiding principle which governs the foregoing inference can be roughly formulated as follows: nobody can doubt a proposition whose truth must be presupposed by any attempt to deny it. That is, if (by reductio) I was mistaken in believing that I am alive, I would still be shown to be alive by the fact that I am mistaken. Whence it follows that I cannot be mistaken about the fact that I am alive.

17 Then why does Peirce claim that Augustine’s inference is “acritical,” namely, one in which “we are conscious that a belief has been determined by another given belief, but

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are not conscious that it proceeds on any general principle”? Peirce’s thought, I contend, might point to the fact that the rational strength of Augustine’s inference does not depend on any self-conscious guiding principle. Not only we may be unaware of any relevant principle governing the inference “si fallor, sum” in the act of drawing it, but also our subsequent justification might be less a description of our rational motivation for making that inference than an ad hoc rationalization. And yet our lack of awareness of the relevant guiding principle does not undermine the rational validity of the inference – even though it does diminish the degree of self-control under which it can be performed. By contrast when I say, “The ground is wet; it must have rained,” the rational validity of this inference does seem to depend on the vague apprehension of a more general principle, such as that every event must have a cause.

18 Augustine questioned the sincerity of those people (the “Academics”) who wonder “whether a wise man should ever affirm anything positively lest he be involved in the error of affirming as true what may be false.” The problem with such an “agnostic” approach could be expressed as follows. On the one hand, it legitimizes radical as a kind of default epistemological position against which all our criteria ought ideally to be measured. By so doing, it sets a standard that is widely found impossible to meet. On the other hand, the standard itself is not as innocent as it appears, at least insofar as it conflates the question of the normative standing of an inference with the question about the degree of self-control under which it can be performed (the kind of intellectual self-control which would be undermined by not doubting those beliefs, however inescapable, that cannot be rationally grounded). As a consequence it misrepresents, not so much that “particular nucleolus” (and highest expression) of deliberative rationality which consists in the possibility of drawing self- consciously guided rational inferences, as “the process of self-control regarded in its entirety” – namely, regarded from the broader perspective which includes the emergence of self-controlled inquiry from, and its gradual fulfillment toward, what is beyond our power to control.

19 Of course, “control may itself be controlled, criticism itself subjected to criticism; and ideally there is no obvious definite limit to the sequence.” And now it seems as if we were stuck between the horns of the : either there is no rationally acceptable limit to the regress, or such a limit could only be found in a combination of (something like) “sense impressions” and “self-evident” or a priori guiding principles. Peirce rejects this dilemma: If one seriously inquiries whether it is possible that a completed series of actual efforts should have been endless or beginningless […] I think he can only conclude that (with some vagueness as to what constitutes an effort) this must be regarded as impossible. It will be found to follow that three are, besides perceptual judgments, original (i.e., indubitable because uncriticized) beliefs of a general recurrent kind, as well as indubitable acritical inferences. (EP2: 348)

20 One might find it odd to group such suspiciously dubbed “indubitable” beliefs and inferences together with our more straightforward and seemingly less objectionable perpetual judgments. But in fact, Peirce thought of perceptual judgments as belonging to our “original” set of beliefs precisely because they are “acritically indubitable.” That is to say, what implicitly motivates us to classify a judgment as perceptual is precisely our incapacity to defend ourselves from its forceful insistence – our incapacity to resist it or withhold our assent to it. As Peirce writes in an unpublished manuscript, “I cannot doubt that what seems to be before my eyes does so seem” (R598:9, c.1902). Similarly,

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most of us cannot genuinely doubt, no matter how hard we try, non-strictly perceptual propositions such as “Fire burns the flesh,” “There is order in nature” (CP 5.508), “I am not alone in the universe” (R598:10), and “On the whole, memory is trustworthy” (R598:9).”13

3. The Basis of Pragmatism in the Doctrine of Common Sense

21 I have argued that Peirce’s focus on the notion of self-control expresses his desire to question, rather than endorse, the idea that the validity of an inference (or belief) is directly proportional to the degree of self-control under which it can be performed. This conclusion does not intend to minimize the crucial role played by fully deliberate processes in rational conduct. To the contrary, it follows from a more detailed examination of the nature and conditions of such processes. As Peirce points out, “the theory of Pragmatism was originally based, as anybody will see who examines the papers of November 1877 and January 1878, upon a study of the experience of the phenomena of self-control which is common to all grown men and women” (EP2: 348). As we read in another manuscript: My original exposition of pragmatism, which those who seek to depreciate it limit to one article in the Monthly of January 1878, although I have […] protested to each one of them personally that the argument is incomplete and insufficient without the article of November 1877 in the same journal [“The Fixation of Belief”] […] – in this original exposition, I laid down, in the very first place, the doctrine of Common Sense; namely, that there are some propositions that a man, as a fact, does not doubt; and what he does not doubt, he can, at most, make but a futile pretense to criticize.” (EP2: 432-3)

22 Curiously, “The Fixation of Belief” (hereafter Fixation) contains only one explicit reference to “common-sense,” and a negative one for that matter. And on a first reading of that essay, there is no of anything that might resemble an exposition or defense of the “doctrine of common-sense.” Was Peirce thinking of another of his early papers? Given the detailed referencing in the foregoing passage, this would be implausible. As it turns out, a closer reading of the first part of Fixation enables us to make sense of Peirce’s later remark.

23 The negative reference to common sense occurs at the end of a preliminary section on the nature and function of reasoning, at the apex of which we read: “A moment’s thought will show that a variety of facts are already assumed when the logical question is first asked.” The normative question about how we ought to reason incorporates within itself many implicit assumptions: It is implied, for instance, that there are such states of mind as doubt and belief – that a passage from one to the other is possible, the object of thought remaining the same, and that this transition is subject to some rules by which all minds are alike bound. As these are facts which we must already know before we can have any clear conception of reasoning at all, it cannot be supposed to be any longer of much interest to inquire into their truth or falsity. (EP1: 113)

24 What would be the point of reasoning about (the truth or falsity of) that which must be presupposed by all reasoning? Notice, however, that Peirce is not arguing from the “indispensability” of these facts to their incontrovertible truth. He is merely saying that, because we have to assume them in order to engage in any form of normative

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reasoning at all, it would be pointless to inquire into whether or not we ought to regard them as true. Besides it doesn’t follow, from the fact that an inquiry into their truth cannot be “any longer of much interest,” that these assumptions are uninteresting or insignificant in themselves: On the other hand, it is easy to believe that those rules of reasoning which are deduced from the very idea of the process [those rules which can be derived from the above-seen assumptions about the process of inquiry] are the ones which are the most essential; and, indeed, that so long as [reasoning] conforms to these it will, at least, not lead to false conclusions from true premisses. In point of fact, the importance of what may be deduced from the assumptions involved in the logical question turns out to be greater than might be supposed […]. (EP1: 113)

25 Whether or not the constitutive assumptions of normative reasoning are metaphysically correct, they are highly significant in their own right. Indeed, “it is easy to believe” that the guiding principles (“rules of reasoning”) deduced by them are the safest and “most essential.” Peirce’s “Illustrations of the Logic of Science” considered as a whole, so far as I can understand, are precisely an attempt to show “the importance of what may be deduced” from the constitutive assumptions of normative reasoning.14 At any rate, presumably the first part of such “deduction” would have to consist in the articulation of those constitutive assumptions. Accordingly, the last preliminary section of the Fixation contains a discussion of the correlative notions of doubt and belief.

26 First, Peirce observes, “we, know when we wish to ask a question and when we wish to pronounce a judgment” in virtue of a “dissimilarity between the sensation of doubting and that of believing.” But there is also a “practical” difference between doubt and belief, in that “the feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect.” Finally, a third point of difference is that “Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid” (W3: 247). In short, belief and doubt (1) are indicated by different sensations, (2) involve the presence and disruption of habits, and (3) are coeval with experiences of satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

27 It is only after the foregoing considerations that we find what we might regard as the actual introduction to the main bulk of Fixation. Peirce begins this new paragraph with the well-known claim: “the irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle inquiry […] That the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry is a very important proposition” (W3: 247). Notice however that this proposition, which amounts effectively to a preliminary characterization of “the very idea of the process” of normative reasoning (and which motivates and sets the tone for the rest of Fixation and the other “illustrations”), follows entirely from the preceding articulation of “those facts which are already assumed when the logical question is first asked” – in particular, our common sense understanding of doubt and belief. Only on the “assumption” that doubt is “an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief” does it make sense to define inquiry as aiming exclusively at the “settlement of opinion.”

28 It follows that “the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a real and living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle” (W3: 248). But in order for us to be able to

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translate such doubts into normative questions – questions about how we ought to go about satisfying our doubts – we must be able to start from equally “real and living” beliefs – not only perceptual judgments, but more generally all those acritically indubitable beliefs which make up our habitual and unproblematic, practical orientation to the world or “readiness to act.” Without such a-critical orientation we could never experience any real and living doubt, because the latter consists precisely in the privation of one or more of those habits which (used to) make up the former. In other words, living doubts and thus truly critical questions can be experienced and pursued only in virtue of acritically indubitable beliefs. Peirce’s oxymoronic expression “Critical Common-sensism,” according to this interpretation, captures the paradox represented by such reciprocal entailment between critical suspicion and practical conviction.15

29 This concludes my explication of Peirce’s retrospective remark to the effect that Fixation includes, “in the very first place,” a defense of “the doctrine of Common Sense; namely, that there are some propositions that a man, as a fact, does not doubt; and what he does not doubt, he can, at most, make but a futile pretense to criticize.” Such propositions, as we have seen, are not only necessary but also sufficient conditions for engaging in any form of rational inquiry. As Peirce writes, “an inquiry […] has only to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual doubt. If the premisses are not in fact doubted at all, they cannot be more satisfactory than they are.” (W3: 248).

4. Motivational vs. Truth-directed Accounts of Belief

30 Of course, Peirce’s “doctrine of common sense” is deeply at variance with a recognizable strain of modern philosophical common sense. According to the latter, not only some propositions are indeed a good deal more satisfactory than those, if there are any, which we cannot help believing or inferring; but also, and relatedly, no cognitive attitude should be classified as an instance of “belief” unless it can be endorsed on the basis of clearly identifiable grounds. And in fact, as Peirce writes in the above mentioned negative remark, “common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied” (W3: 246). Peirce’s doctrine of common sense was an attempt to clear up the “metaphysical” quality of those so-called “critical” habits of mind which raise above the level of the narrowly practical.16 But is Peirce’s attempt successful? Does it actually provide us with a more satisfactory account of rational inquiry?

31 Since Peirce’s pragmatist conception of inquiry is based on his account of belief, we may reasonably assume the validity of the former to be dependent on the latter. And Peirce himself is quite explicit about that not only in Fixation, but also in many of his later remarks – central among which we find the well-known acknowledgment that “pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary” of ’s definition of belief as “that upon which a man is prepared to act” (EP2: 399). On a first approximation, however, this definition sheds relatively little light on the distinctive nature of belief. All it says is that there seems to be a necessary connection between believing that p and being disposed (“prepared”) to act in light of p. But, as Peirce would be the first to point out, merely assuming something for the sake of argument is also connected to the

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practice of (theoretical) inquiry. And yet, there are important differences between the attitudes of believing and assuming a proposition.17

32 One might argue that a hypothesis can lead us to perform an experimental test only in conjunction with beliefs – concerning, for instance, the epistemic worth of the given hypothesis within the overall economy of inquiry. We could thus conclude that while believing, assuming, imagining, etc., are all different ways of accepting a proposition, or regarding it as true, belief is distinguished by other cognitive attitudes as the only kind of acceptance which has the power actually to motivate us to act. Of course, beliefs can lead us to act only under the realization of various other conditions, such as the presence of relevant desires and requisite motor skills. But the point of Bain’s definition, if interpreted so as to indicate the distinctive nature of belief, is that belief is the only condition for motivation which is both cognitive (as opposed to factual or conative) and necessary.

33 According to the foregoing “motivational” conception of belief, as David Velleman explains, “all that’s necessary for an attitude to qualify as a belief is that it dispose the subject to behave in ways that would promote the satisfaction of his desires if its content were true. An attitude’s tendency to cause behavioral output is thus conceived as sufficient to make it a belief.” (Velleman 2000: 255).18 For instance, if the content of my propositional attitude is “there is enough gas in the car to get home without refueling,” and I have a desire to get home as soon as possible, that attitude qualifies as belief insofar as it disposes me, in conjunction with this desire, to drive home without stopping at a gas station. The belief may be false, of course, in which case it won’t allow me to satisfy my desire to get home early. But all that is required by the motivational conception is that it would enable me to satisfy desires if its propositional content were true. What this conception doesn’t require is that beliefs be defined as being “truth- directed” in any strong or non-tautological sense of that expression, as I will shortly explain.

34 Admittedly, this conception of belief has much in common with the pragmatist view of the relationship between belief and truth. , for instance, defined truth as “whatever proves to be good in the way of belief” (James 1919: 42), which seems to presuppose that belief can indeed be defined prior to and independently of the concept of truth. The latter is something that “happens to an idea,” as he also wrote. Besides, conceiving of beliefs (or ideas) exclusively in terms of “behavioral output” seems a crucial step toward questioning what is viewed by many pragmatists as the unduly privileged status that has been traditionally accorded to the concept of (truthful) , by reinserting this concept within the broader experience of finding something to be good, useful, or satisfactory (in the broadest sense of these terms). Finally Peirce himself, after giving the above-seen definition of inquiry, emphasizes the superfluity of the idea of truth when it comes to defining the aim of inquiry. He writes: The sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. […] The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere to say so. (W3: 248)

35 As Velleman points out, in bearing this tautological relation to the notion of truth, “belief is just like any other propositional attitude, since wishing entails wishing

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something to be true, hoping entails hoping something to be true […] Hence the fact that believing entails believing-true doesn’t set belief apart from other attitudes.” (Velleman 2000: 247).

36 By contrast, Velleman favors a conception of belief whose constitutive relation to the truth does actually set it apart from other cognitive as well as conative attitudes. Believing, on his account, does not merely amount to accepting a proposition or regarding it as true, but accepting or so regarding it “with the aim of thereby accepting a truth” (Velleman 2000: 252), where “an acceptance has the aim of being the acceptance of a truth when it is regulated […] in ways designed to ensure that it is true.” This is what can explain, among other things, the difficulty of believing at will. While (a) assuming or (b) imagining a proposition to be true involves accepting a proposition for the sake of argument, or regardless of whether or not it is, in fact, true, (c) believing a proposition does not come that easy. The reason, according to Velleman, is that the aim with which we accept a proposition whenever we believe it is precisely the aim of (c) getting its right, “by regarding the proposition as true only if it really is” (Velleman 2000: 252). And the success conditions of such an aim are more restrictive than those which are involved in the aims of (a) considering the validity of a certain argument or, say, (b) exploring the imaginary limits of our cognitive faculties.

37 Velleman’s “truth-directed” conception implies that belief cannot be characterized exclusively by reference to its motivational role. In order for a cognitive attitude to be classified as an instance of belief, it is not enough for it to motivate us to act. It must also at the same time regulate our behavior “in ways designed to ensure” that its own propositional object is true – even though, as Velleman is careful to point out, our regulatory mechanisms are neither infallible (which accounts for the fact that our beliefs, as opposed to imaginings, can indeed be mistaken) nor do they need to operate in any overtly intentional or self-conscious way.

38 Accordingly, the main thrust of Velleman’s argument consists in showing why the capacity to dispose a person to act is not, after all, a distinctive feature of belief. As he persuasively argues, only by “smuggling” truth-directedness into their motivational account can philosophers deceive themselves into thinking that motivation is sufficient to characterize belief. For instance, if Bain’s above seen definition as “that upon which a person is prepared to act” seems to capture the most characteristic aspect of belief, it is because we tend to regard “action” as a synonym of realistic or goal-pursuing action – action oriented toward the satisfaction of realistic goals in virtue of “truth-directed” cognitions about the means that are necessary to pursue them. By so doing, however, we are led to interpret all instances of self-conscious behavior as being similarly realistically motivated. But that is clearly a mistake not only with respect to the widespread (especially among young children) phenomenon of make-believe, which is less a case of “purposeful simulation” of a wishful scenario than acting it out of one’s imagination, but also with respect to such “adult” behaviors as talking to ourselves and expressing our emotions through “body-images” (scratching our head when we are puzzled, clenching our fists in anger, yelling at the referee of a match we are watching on television, etc.).

39 In all these cases, as Velleman points out, “imagining can be characterized as having the same conditional disposition as belief; the only differences have to do with the satisfaction of the associated conditions.” For instance, unlike ordinary beliefs, “most deliberate imagining is accompanied by countervailing beliefs” which “exert their own

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motivational force,” competing “with that of the subject’s imagination” (Velleman 2000: 272). Thus, after yelling at the television, we don’t yell louder because the referee couldn’t hear us. And when talking to ourselves, we usually lower our voice. Now, “the fact that we talk to ourselves under our breaths suggests that the inhibition against unrealistic motivation is selective: it prevents behavior that would be inconvenient or self-destructive, but it permits behavior that is harmless, despite being unrealistic” (Velleman 2000: 265).

40 As it turns out, Peirce’s conception of the aim of belief is not far from Velleman’s. While pragmatism might be superficially characterized as promoting a purely motivational conception of belief, there are at least two facts which countervail this impression when it comes to Peirce’s account of inquiry. In the first place, theoretical inquiry does on his account have a distinctive aim – one which, as I have argued in the previous section, derives from Peirce’s reflection on the constitutive assumptions of normative reasoning, especially the idea that a belief cannot fully realize itself without finding repose in a sort of doubt-free state of “fixation.”

41 Furthermore, the classical pragmatists as a whole were quite sympathetic to the that ideas or propositions are never simply accepted – entertained, contemplated, etc. They are always accepted from a certain perspective, within a certain context, and for the sake of a more or less vaguely conceived purpose, where the aim of “fixation” or stability is only one among others. Thus, while I can entertain the idea of “being taller than I really am” for a variety of different purposes, I cannot believe this proposition, namely accept it with the aim of thereby accepting a thoroughly stable opinion. In order to do so, I would have to develop an attitude toward it which is unsettled by competing considerations – which, in this case, are made too plainly available by the believed proposition itself.

42 Finally, as I will argue in the next section, Peirce constantly emphasized the essential role of imagination in any form of intentional conduct.19 In particular, he was interested in what he thought to be an irreducible connection between imagination and theoretical inquiry. After exploring this connection, we will be able to answer the question of how Peirce’s conception of belief differs from Velleman’s, and why this difference is so significant.

5. The Role of Imagination in the Formation of Belief

When a man desires ardently to know the truth, his first effort will be to imagine what that truth can be. […] there is, after all, nothing but imagination that can ever supply him an inkling of the truth. He can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. […] It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. (CP 1.46-7)

43 This intuition is intimately related to Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, which he defined as the “method” of tracing out “in the imagination the conceivable practical consequences, – that is, the consequences for deliberate, self-controlled conduct – of the affirmation or denial of the concept” (4.6) which is to be clarified. While we might already be familiar with a given concept or proposition, the only way to make our vague ideas about it clearer (the only way to turn the concept into a conception, as we might also say) is to imagine ourselves believing or doubting (affirming or negating)

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that proposition within various conceivable circumstances and, on this basis, determine what habits of action we ought to endorse, modify, or discard.

44 Now, if we can engage in this kind of deliberate imagination of a belief’s practical bearings, it is because belief is a habit of thought which is already to some extent “active in the imagination” – whereby clarifying it through the pragmatic maxim consists in further articulating its imaginary (“conceivable”) implications. Peirce explains this point by drawing a contrast between the habit of “putting my left leg into my trouser before the right” and a belief-habit such as that fire is dangerous. If I have the first kind of habits, “when I imagine that I put on my trousers, I shall probably not definitely think of putting the left leg on first. But if I believe that fire is dangerous, and I imagine a fire bursting out close beside me, I shall also imagine that I jump back.” (CP 2.148). That is to say, while I may or may not be able to remember (imagine) the structure of my seemingly “automatic” or compulsive habits of conduct, a person simply cannot be said to believe anything or have an intellectual habit unless the imagination of relevant circumstances didn’t prompt the imagination of the appropriate inferential conclusions. Imagination, in this sense, is an essential ingredient of all beliefs – it is, indeed, “what particularly distinguishes” it from other kinds of habit.

45 Of course, defining belief in terms of the imagination’s role in its formation, operation, and explication does not yield an answer to Velleman’s question about what distinguishes belief, not only from other kinds of habit but also from other cognitive attitudes such as assumption and imagination itself. Perhaps, however, if belief cannot be defined independently of imagination, neither might we be able to understand the latter independently of the former.

46 This may seem counterintuitive. Aren’t we capable of imagining and (to some extent at least) acting upon things which we know to be utterly fantastic? There is no doubt about that. But the question is precisely what is it that we are doing whenever we engage in the activity of imagining things irrespectively of what we know (believe) to be the case. One possibility, in light of the foregoing, is to think of “mere” imagination as a kind of wishful laboratory for the formation and clarification of beliefs. According to this assumption, a child who make-believes to be a mother is exploring the limits and possibilities of that fictional world which surrounds her and is in several ways related to the actual world by which she is nonetheless aware to be constrained. A person who talks with herself may be going through the inherently dialogical process of making up her mind upon something. After all, “thinking always proceeds in the form of a dialogue – a dialogue between different phases of the ego – so that, being dialogical, it is essentially composed of signs” (CP 4.6). Finally, many of our non-communicative gestures may express nothing more (or less) than a somewhat ironical and self- defeating attempt to enact and defend ourselves from the impenetrability of our emotions.

47 This is not to say that all our imaginings are realistically motivated. On the one hand, our most realistic pursuits can never do without imagination, because they rely upon it for the formation and maintenance of the habits by which they are to be governed. On the other hand, imagination is not the thoroughly boundless activity we conceive it to be. Even our most purely “wishful” forms of thought (imaginings motivated by cravings for things we know or assume to be unattainable) usually entail more than pointless or “atelic” play of thought. Writes Peirce:

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It is a familiar experience to every human being to wish for something quite beyond his present means, and to follow that wish by the question, “Should I wish for that thing just the same, if I had ample means to gratify it?” To answer that question, he searches his heart […] He makes in his imagination a sort of skeleton diagram […] of himself, considers what modifications the hypothetical state of things would require to be made in that picture, and then examines it, that is, observes what he has imagined, to see whether the same ardent desire is there to be discerned. (CP 2.227)

48 This passage seems to conflate realistic and unrealistic conations (desires and wishes). And yet, Peirce is here pointing to a more fundamental distinction: that between a trivial wish (or desire) and an ardently felt, self-identifying one. As we need imagination for clarifying an idea of which we have but a vague understanding, similarly do we need it to determine the actual significance of what might initially appear as a trifling whim.

49 Of course, one might construe the foregoing example as resulting from the intersection of two quite independent phenomena: a “mere” wish and a normative question as to whether or not we should endorse it as expressive of who we aspire to be. However, notice how “naturally” this question tends to follow from such wishful representations. 20 Consider another example: I may fancy to become a well-known and highly esteemed thinker. And yet, I could not even begin to clarify this wishful scenario without articulating some of the practical and normatively relevant differences its realization would introduce in my life. How would it change the way I work? Would it fulfill or exasperate my desire for recognition? In what respects would it make me happier or better as a person? Would it humble me or fuel my vanity? Eventually, a more determinate picture of that ideal would engage my normative attitudes of approval or rejection, thereby influencing my self-controlled conduct on relevant occasions.21

50 As Peirce puts it, “a mere imagination of reacting in a particular way seems to be capable after numerous repetitions of causing the imagined kind of reaction really to take place upon subsequent occurrences of the stimulus.” But this also entails, as he writes elsewhere, that “no imagination is mere. ‘More than all that is in thy custody, watch over thy phantasy,’ said Solomon, ‘For out of it are the issues of life’.” (CP 6.286). There is a sort of unbroken development from the initial representation of a wishful scenario, passing through the articulation and normative evaluation of its practical implications, to the resulting shape of our motivational dispositions. If our wildest phantasies contribute to the emergence and “fixation” of belief (whether trivial or about “the issues of life”), such a tendency toward intellectual stability may be an essential ingredient of all imagination. Peirce himself seems to gesture toward this conclusion in the following passage: There must be some degree of steadiness in this imagination, or else we could not think about and ask whether there was an object having any positive suchness. Now this steadiness […] consists in this, that if our mental manipulation is delicate enough, the hypothesis will resist being changed. Now there can be no resistance where there is nothing of the nature of struggle or forceful action. (CP 1.322)

51 That is to say, either there is such a degree of steadiness in our imagination, which implies a struggle however slight with something other than our imagining attitude, or there is nothing at all that we are imagining. And it is not just the initial formation of the imaginary hypothesis that entails this irreducibly dual experience of struggle and resistance. It is also our subsequent manipulation of the hypothesis that may lead us to become genuinely surprised by the effects of our mental experiments.22

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6. Peirce’s Account of the Aim of Belief

52 The foregoing discussion of the nature of imagination and its constitutive role for belief-formation enables us to cast new light on the question concerning the distinctive nature of belief. As we have seen above, Peirce’s conception is similar to Velleman’s when it comes to the idea that belief must have something like a constitutive aim. At the same time, it involves a possibly different understanding of such an aim. In some cases, the difference points to nothing deeper than a difference of perspectives. As Peirce writes in Fixation, “The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is some one thing which a proposition should represent.” (EP1: 120).23 Conversely, the persuasion that truth-directedness alone enables us to explain the impossibility of believing at will reflects a concession to the reciprocal entailment between the truth and stability of our intellectual dispositions.

53 But there is at least one category of beliefs with respect to which the issue is not merely terminological. That is the case of what Peirce dubs “acritically indubitable” beliefs – judgments and inferences we cannot help making and acting upon, despite our inability to grasp their rational grounds (whether these be guiding principles governing our inferences or ideas taken as premises of our judgments). The question is whether Velleman’s truth-directed account would permit classifying such a-critical attitudes as beliefs. Now, insofar his account depicts belief as entailing a regulation “designed to ensure” the truth of its propositional object, indubitable beliefs do not seem to be able to fulfill this condition. Taking ‘believing to be right in regarding something as true’ as a condition of belief sanctions the impossibility “believing” a proposition without grasping its evidential grounds. If the notion of “fixation” is to characterize the distinctive aim of belief, we cannot rely on Velleman’s idea of truth-directedness in order to explicate it.

54 Now, Velleman argues that once we agree to think of beliefs as being “constitutively regulated by input,” it follows as a conceptual implication of this normative picture that truth and falsity are the requisite normative standards of belief. In other words, if beliefs, in order to count as such, must not only generate output but also be regulated on the basis of input, nothing but “truth” can be the aim toward which such a regulation is actually directed. He writes: “False beliefs are necessarily faulty or mistaken […] antecedently to and independent of any untoward practical consequences.” But now “the fact that beliefs are conceived do be faulty when false indicates that the regulation conceived to be constitutive of them is regulation for truth. Truth-directedness thus appears to be enshrined in our [normative] concept of belief.” (Velleman 2000: 277-8).

55 Yet one might grant this conclusion while wanting to unpack the concept of truth so as to explain its intimate connection with belief. That is exactly Peirce’s strategy.24 If truth can be properly regarded as the aim of belief, it is because all our belief-like attitudes aim at a final and unconditional settlement. If a child is playing at being the mother of her baby doll, she probably won’t care if you tell her that she is not enacting a truthful or objective conception of motherhood. But she will be intrigued if we joined her game by playing in a fundamentally different way, thus questioning her implicit understanding of how a mother should treat her own baby. Whether or not a person

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has mastered the concept of objective truth, her beliefs aim at that sort of stability which tends to be obstructed by conflicting opinions – especially if these come from significant others.

56 Indeed, as Peirce points out, a pragmatic clarification of the concept of truth, conceived as the of beliefs whose objects are real, leads us to conclude that “the only effect which real things have is to cause [full-fledged or thoroughly stable] belief.” That is to say, “the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is .” It follows that truth-directedness is “enshrined in our concept of belief” only in virtue of the conceptual mediation provided by the aim of a final, “predestined” settlement of opinion (or intellectual satisfaction).25

57 The difference between rationally grounded and indubitable belief-habits does not consist in the “aim” by which they are regulated, but in the greater role played by self- controlled imagination in the formation and maintenance of the former. At the same time, only by leading us to satisfy those doubts which have been able to unsettle our otherwise stable mental inclinations can our imaginative variations contribute to the deliberate formation of rationally grounded beliefs. The constitutive aim of belief, accordingly, is to achieve the kind of intellectual stability which is already vaguely entailed by our acritically indubitable beliefs.26 To believe something amounts to accepting a proposition, or regarding it as true, with the aim of thereby establishing a thoroughly stable habit of conduct.

7. Conclusion

58 The foregoing conclusion might seem to contradict Peirce’s insistence that our incapacity to doubt a proposition, or imagine ways in which it could be doubted, cannot be a conclusive reason for endorsing it.27 In light of the foregoing, however, we can draw the following distinction. It is one thing conclusively to accept a proposition on the ground of our incapacity to imagine how it could be false. Acknowledging a pervasive intellectual inclination and, after having clarified it through the pragmatic maxim, relying upon it on account of its continued insistence is quite another. As Peirce observes, neither the philosophy of Common-Sense nor the man who holds it accepts any belief on the ground that it has not been criticized. For […] such [acritical] beliefs are not “accepted.” What happens is that one comes to recognize that one has had the belief-habit as long as one can remember; and to say that no doubt of it has ever arisen is only another way of saying the same thing. (CP 5.523)

59 It is the significance of this fact that Peirce was most interested in articulating.

60 In light of the foregoing, two ideas are worth emphasizing. There are certain (“acritically indubitable”) beliefs which, regardless of whether or not they are in fact true, (1) give us a sense of what any intellectual habit would have to be like in order to develop in accordance with its natue telos. And, (2) insofar as they provide us with the very terms to articulate our doubts, such beliefs constitute the “first premises” of all cognitive inquiry. “This does not deny that what cannot be conceived today may be conceivable tomorrow. But just as long as we cannot help adopting a mode of thought, so long it must be thoroughly accepted as true” – hence trusted or relied upon. “Any doubt of it is idle make-believe and irredeemable paper.” It follows that when Peirce

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says that a proposition which is not doubted at all cannot be more satisfactory than it is, he is not being hyperbolic. He is pointing to the fact that we can develop no coherent idea of the aim of inquiry in from those “perfectly self-satisfied” habits of action whose “privation” sets us in “a condition of erratic activity that in some way must get superseded by a [new] habit” (EP2: 336-7). Indeed, since those habits are “mostly (at least) unconscious,” it is precisely in virtue of their interruption that we can become aware of the kind of satisfaction at which we aim.

61 Consequently, while the notion of “inconceivability” is problematic as a criterion of truth, it is perfectly legitimate and indeed necessary as an element of its definition (at least when it comes to the truth of necessary propositions). Writes Peirce in his Minute Logic (1902): A reasonable disputant disputes because he hopes […] that both parties will at length find themselves forced to a common belief which will be definitive and final. For otherwise, why dispute? To reach a final and compulsory belief is, therefore, what the reasonable disputant aims at. […] If, then, you can prove to him that a necessary proposition is such that there will be a final, unshakable compulsion preventing him from imagining it to be false, you have proved to him that it has those characters which he expresses by saying that the proposition is true. (CP 2.29) Even though “the teems with inconceivabilities which have been conquered,” the inconceivability of the opposite remains a definitive mark of the truth of necessary propositions. Only, it is required “that ‘inconceivable’ should mean not merely unrealizable in imagination today but unrealizable after indefinite training and education,” or eternally so. By implication, even though contingent propositions can be imagined to be false, it is our critically endorsed incapacity seriously to entertain contrasting hypotheses that sets our belief-like attitudes toward those propositions apart from others.

62 One might object that, regardless of whether or not Peirce actually held this conception of belief, conceiving the latter as aiming at such a “compulsion” as would prevent us from regarding it to be false is not only deeply unattractive but also inherently self- defeating. While I cannot fully address this important objection in a few words, I want to say something about the idea that aiming to “settle” our opinions would lead us to deceive ourselves about their rational stability. Many people seem steadily attached to opinions which would become unstable the moment they began asking questions about their own meaning and implications. How, then, can aiming at a final compulsion of thought prevent our beliefs from undermining their rational vocation? If, as the objection goes, the aim of belief is supposed to explain their capacity to be “responsive to input,” fixation seems exactly the kind of aim we would have to exclude from consideration. Either belief, as I conceive it, is irremediably self-defeating, or we must have hit upon a mistaken conception of them.

63 As it turns out, Peirce seemed to be well aware of this kind of objection. This is what, in my understanding, actually motivated his ironical selection of the “methods” for the fixation of belief. The first two methods – tenaciously clinging to our current beliefs and regarding their validity as being dependent upon ratification of a cultural or political authority – are based, at least in part, on the self-centered vices of laziness and fear. The “method of science,” by contrast, is based on the virtues of courage and selfless dedication to an indefinitely prolonged course of experimentation. The irony can be expressed as follows: on the one hand, one could not find two attitudes more strikingly opposed to each other than believing something out of fear, or laziness, and

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indefinitely suspending one’s belief for the sake of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, and this is the central point of Peirce’s argument (as I read it), both attitudes are rooted in a common desire to “reach a final and compulsory belief” – whence it follows that the problem with the first two methods does not consist in aiming solely at a conclusive settlement of belief, but in not aiming at it passionately enough. What determines the failure of the first two methods, as we might also say, is a lack of imagination: an incapacity to imagine ways in which our belief-habit might break down under conceivable circumstances. But this, in turn, derives precisely from a sort of unwillingness to believe – or, which amounts to the same thing, from our willingness to settle for merely half-hearted or pretend beliefs.28

64 What deceives us into believing opinions which are genuinely doubtful is not our “will to believe.” It is, on the contrary, our attempt to defend ourselves from such a thoroughly wishful,29 and yet seemingly ineradicable impulse. It is this desire to believe that should be seen as characterizing us as rational agents, namely as beings who can only fulfill their rational vocation by striving to act as they must. And there is no more effective and self-deceiving way to defend ourselves from this drive toward “normative necessity” than aiming to think as we feel we should, which, in Peirce’s classification, characterizes the third “a priori” method for the fixation of belief. The problem with this method does not consist in the high respect it pays to the “natural” development of our intellectual inclinations. Rather, the problem consists in our characteristically modern inability to see how such development can best be served by loving the truth (what we are fated to believe) more than our preconceptions about the conditions that would make our believing it rationally acceptable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AGLER David W., (2011), “Polanyi and Peirce on the Critical Method,” Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical, 38 (3), 13-30.

COLAPIETRO Vincent, (1999), “Peirce’s Guess at the Riddle of Rationality: Deliberative Imagination as the Personal Locus of Human Practice,” in Sandra B. Rosenthal, Carl R. Hausman & Douglas R. Anderson (eds.), Classical American Pragmatism: Its Contemporary Vitality, Urbana, University of Illinois Press.

FABBRICHESI LEO Rossella, (2004), “Peirce and Wittgenstein on Common Sense,” Cognitio, 5 (2), 180-93.

FRIEDMAN Lesley, (1999), “Doubt & Inquiry: Peirce and Descartes Revisited,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 35 (4), 724-46.

HAACK Susan, (1982), “Descartes, Peirce and the Cognitive Community,” , 65 (2), 156-81.

HOOKWAY Christopher, (2000), Truth, Rationality, and Pragmatism: Themes from Peirce, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

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HOOKWAY Christopher, (2012), The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

JAMES William, (1919 [1907]), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Reprint, New York, Longmans, Green and Co.

KASSER Jeffrey L., (2011), “How Settled are Settled Beliefs in ‘The Fixation of Belief’?,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 47 (2), 226-47.

LOEB Louis E., (1998), “Sextus, Descartes, Hume, and Peirce: On Securing Settled Doxastic States,” Noûs, 32 (2), 205-30.

MADDALENA Giovanni, (2010), “Peirce’s Theory of Assent,” Ideas in Action, Helsinki, Nordic Studies in Pragmatism, 211-23.

MISAK Cheryl, (2016), Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

PEIRCE Charles S., (1960), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

PEIRCE Charles S., (1982), Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

PEIRCE Charles S., (1992), The Essential Peirce, Vol. 1, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

PEIRCE Charles S., (1998), The Essential Peirce, Vol 2, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

POGGIANI Francesco, (2012), “What Makes a Reasoning Sound?: C. S. Peirce’s Normative Foundation of Logic,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 48 (1), 31-50.

POGGIANI Francesco, (2014), “Truth and Satisfaction: The Gist of Pragmaticism,” in Torkild Thellefsen & Bent Sorensen (eds.), Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words: 100 Years of , and Cognition (vol. 14), Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co, KG.

POLLOCK Ryan & David W. AGLER, (2016), “Hume and Peirce on the Ultimate Stability of Belief,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 97 (2), 245-69.

SHAH Nishi & James David VELLEMAN, (2005), “Doxastic Deliberation,” The Philosophical Review, 114 (4), 497-534.

SHORT Thomas L., (2000), “Peirce on the Aim of Inquiry: Another Reading of ‘Fixation’,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 36 (1), 1-23.

VELLEMAN James David, (2000), The Possibility of Practical Reason, Oxford, Clarendon.

VELLEMAN James David, (2004), “Replies to Discussion on ‘The Possibility of Practical Reason’,” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 121 (3), 277-98.

NOTES

1. I will discuss below one influential variant of this view, which, in contemporary epistemology, goes by the name of “evidentialism.” is the most prominent among Peirce’s scholars to propose an evidentialist reading of his conception of belief (see Misak 2016). 2. This account of Peirce’s criticism of the Cartesian method is based on ’s pivotal study (1982).

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3. “What is properly and usually called belief […] has no place in science at all” (CP 1.635; RLT: 112). 4. Peirce defines a “criterion” as “a method of experiment by which something is ascertained which is a sure indication of whether or not something different, and less easy otherwise to find out, is true” (CP 2.29). 5. “The difficulty is that the opinions which today seem most unshakable are found tomorrow to be out of fashion. They are really far more changeable than they appear to a hasty reader to be.” (CP 5.382n). 6. Christopher Hookway (2000) has interpreted the “critical” nature of Peirce’s endorsement of common sense along similar lines. He writes: “It thus seems that we should try to doubt propositions that seem self-evident; and, even if they escape criticism, we must allow that they could still succumb in the future. In these remarks we find the germs of ‘critical’ common-sensism.” (Hookway 2000: 204). I will argue that, in order to make sense of such critical emphasis without sinking back “into a Cartesian mire from which [Peirce’s] common-sensism was supposed to offer escape (209), such a “high esteem for doubt” (5.514) should be placed within the broader context of Peirce’s conception of belief. In other words, in order to understand what makes Peirce’s philosophy of common sense critical, we must first come to terms with his esteem for common sense beliefs. 7. Cf. Kasser 2011. 8. As we shall see below, Peirce distinguishes between “acritical inferences” and “associational suggestions of belief.” Since belief is itself, on his own account, a habit of mind, the relevant difference might be more properly expressed as one between acts (as opposed to attitudes): the act of judging x to be the case, without being aware of x’s grounds, and the act of inferring x from y, without being aware of any relevant inferential principle. In what follows, I will often use the term indubitable belief somewhat loosely to indicate both acritical judgments and inferences. While the difference between such acts does not have any immediate implication for my argument, it fits nicely with the picture of self-control I will provide below, according to which self-control is a matter degree of awareness of our beliefs’ normative grounds. 9. Evidence for this admittedly tentative interpretation of the connection between pragmatism and critical common-sensism can be gathered by the following passage. “That veritably indubitable beliefs are especially vague could be proved a priori. But proof not being aimed at today, it will be simpler to say that the Critical Common- sensist’s personal experience is that a suitable line of reflexion, accompanied by imaginary experimentation, always excites doubt of any very broad proposition if it be defined with precision. Yet there are beliefs of which such a critical sifting invariably leaves a certain vague residuum unaffected.” (5.507). 10. This might sound surprising. Doesn’t the character of our “occult nature,” at least in some important cases, emerge more clearly in those actions which are, so to speak, brought about despite our effort to control them? Isn’t “who we truly are” more clearly and honestly revealed by what we end up doing “when the chips are down,” regardless of our previous deliberation on the relevant issues? But in fact, Peirce’s point is that there is a much more intimate connection between human nature and self-control than we are inclined to think. Of course, if by nature we mean whatever we are in abstraction from the desire to act (or constitute ourselves) as we ought, Peirce’s remark does indeed sound implausible. But given the often emphasized centrality of the idea of deliberative freedom for an adequate understanding of human agency, it is that terminological

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stipulation which should be questioned. Be that as it may, for the purpose of arriving at a more accurate understanding of (practical) rationality, the most important anthropological question is what to think of our “occult nature” once we acknowledge the primacy of the deliberative perspective. 11. In a rejected manuscript page, Peirce explains: “It should be understood that Common-sensism recognizes two classes of indubitable, which, because they are indubitable, are uncriticizable. The one class consists of propositions of whose falsity one cannot imagine any case. The other class consists of conscious determinations of one belief by another, without any consciousness of any principle guiding the causation. Such is St. Augustine’s Cogito, ergo sum. I do not call these reasonings, but I call them acritical inferences; for there has always been a tendency to use inference in a wider sense than reasoning. It is of the essence of reasoning to be reasonable, deliberate, self-controlled. To that end, it must recognize and approve [its own guiding] principle. In acritical inference one is quite conscious that it is that which the premiss asserts which renders the conclusion evidently certain or probable, as the case may be.” (R290:16x-17). 12. See De Civitate Dei, Book XI. 13. The important question remains as to what is it, specifically, that moves us to regard only some of our indubitable beliefs as perceptual, as opposed to intellectual, volitional, etc. But whatever the answer to that question, we cannot appeal to any more original contact with reality than whatever is already afforded by the foregoing experience of “brute” reaction. In the end, our sense that “perceptual judgments” are capable of reflecting more directly the appearances of a reality which surrounds us might be due to the cultural prevalence of a quite narrow or univocal conception of reality. 14. Christopher Hookway proposes a similar reading of Peirce’s Illustrations considered as a whole (see Hoowkay 2000: 35). 15. My reading of Peirce, in this respect, is influenced by the epistemological insights of . For a comparison between Pierce and Polanyi’s criticisms of the “critical method,” see Agler 2011. 16. The purpose of this paper is not to give a full account of what makes Peirce’s common-sensism critical. I rather want to show why Peirce’s critical common-sensism is not an attempt to strike a balance between Descartes’ method Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense. On the one hand, a “mark of the Critical Common-sensist is that he has a high esteem for doubt. He may almost be said to have a sacra fames for it. Only, his hunger is not to be appeased with paper doubts: he must have the heavy and noble metal, or else belief.” (CP 5.514). On the other hand, our capacity to distinguish between paper and genuine doubts cannot be taken for granted. Part of the problem is that what might appear as genuine doubts often result from inadequate common sense “critical” presuppositions about the way in which we ought to think – this is, among other things, what grounds the need for a truly critical approach to common sense. 17. For an insightful account of Peirce’s distinction between practical and theoretical belief, see Hookway (2000: 21-43). 18. Velleman’s more sophisticated view, in Shah & Velleman 2005. I will focus on Velleman’s original exposition because it is more immediately relevant to the purposes of this essay.

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19. The following account of the centrality of imagination in deliberate processes of belief formation is deeply indebted to Vincent Colapietro’s influential work. See, for instance, Colapietro 1999. 20. T. L. Short reads Peirce in a similar vein: “Normative questions arise naturally, and they are not reducible to questions of fact. They do not reduce to questions of fact, because their resolution depends on human choice. But human , though they can be arbitrary, cannot be sustained regardless of human nature or regardless of the nature of the world in which we exist.” (Short 2000: 10). 21. “A mere imagination of reacting in a particular way seems to be capable after numerous repetitions of causing the imagined kind of reaction really to take place upon subsequent occurrences of the stimulus. In the formation of habits of deliberate action, we may imagine the occurrence of the stimulus, and think out what the results of different actions will be. One of these will appear particularly satisfactory; and then an action of the soul takes place which is well described by saying that that mode of reaction ‘receives a deliberate stamp of approval.’ The result will be that when a similar occasion actually arises for the first time it will be found that the habit of really reacting in that way is already established.” (CP 5.538). 22. See CP 5.567. 23. Consider also the following passage from Fixation: “what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and […] to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous” (EP1: 123). 24. As Short points out, the strategy of Peirce’s argument, in Fixation, is to begin from denying that “truth” has anything to do with the aim of inquiry only in order to “bring out the basis on which we have made impersonal truth inquiry’s aim, and on which we ought to continue doing so” (Short 2000: 9). 25. See Poggiani 2012 and 2014. 26. In this connection, Peirce writes: “It is easy to be certain – he writes – one has only to be sufficiently vague.” (CP 4.237). For an excellent overview of the way in which Peirce’s understanding of common sense beliefs relates to Wittgenstein’s, see Fabbrichesi 2004. Cf. also Maddalena 2010. 27. For an insightful account of Peirce’s rejection of psychologism, see Hookway 2012. 28. This conclusion is consistent with, and partly inspired by, Lesley Friedman’s account of Peirce’s critique of the Cartesian “psychological strategy necessary for suspending those claims about which we have a firm conviction” (Friedman 1999: 725). 29. In this connection, it might be helpful to emphasize Peirce’s insistence that inquiry be based on a “hope” that it will eventually achieve its purpose. And if inquiry can, in fact, be motivated by nothing more substantial than such a hope, then perhaps we should revise our common sense understanding of the relationship between hope and certainty. See, for instance, CP 7.78. For an insightful account of Peirce’s “optimism” about the objective of inquiry, see Loeb 1998. But cf. Pollock & Agler 2016.

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ABSTRACTS

I explore the connection between pragmatism and common sense by reflecting upon two seemingly contrasting Peircean remarks about the pragmatic method: (a) its “basis on the doctrine of common sense” and (b) the recommendation that a proposition p be explicated in light of critical, deliberate, or “self-controlled” conduct ensuing from a belief that p. I show that Peirce’s focus on phenomena of self-control is situated within his broader interest in the nature of reasoning. The “secret of rational consciousness,” according to Peirce, does not consist in the reflective or self-conscious nature of our most deliberate forms of conduct, per se, “as in the review of the process of self-control in its entirety.” The rationality of an inference consists in its capacity to restore the stability our “acritical” beliefs enjoyed before being unsettled by doubts. On this view, Peirce’s pragmatic theory of rational inquiry as aiming at the fixation of belief depends on a conception of belief as constituted by a tendency toward stability. In the rest of the paper, I argue that this conception avoids the shortcoming of purely “motivational” accounts of belief without denying this status of belief to our acritical intellectual dispositions – a denial which is often implied by standard “truth-directed” accounts.

AUTHOR

FRANCESCO POGGIANI Pennsylvania State University fup109[at]psu.edu

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Common Sense without a Common Language? Peirce and Reid on the Challenge of Linguistic Diversity

Daniel J. Brunson

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I would like to thank the attendees of the 2017 Atlantic Coast Pragmatist Workshop for their encouraging response to the initial presentation of these ideas. Additional gratitude goes to Vincent Colapietro, Seth Vannatta, and the two anonymous reviewers for the helpful feedback on earlier drafts. Any remaining flaws are due to the limitations of my language. “Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the thought.” (CP 5.314) “Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine scire.” [“Quintus Ennius said of himself he had three hearts, because he knew how to speak Greek, Oscan, and Latin.”] (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 17.17.1)

Introduction

1 Charles Peirce, a thinker greatly interested in classification, presents a problem of classification himself. That is, the breadth of his philosophical interests, commitment to an ethics of terminology, deep engagement with the history of philosophy, and experimentalist temperament, can make it difficult to determine which positions he actually held, and at which times. Famously, he re-christened his pragmatism ‘pragmaticism’ to make it safe from kidnappers, but perhaps less generally known is his characterization of his thought as a ‘Critical Common-sensism’ – an effort to mediate or

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moderate the Kantian and Reidian reactions to Hume.1 Peirce offers two overlapping sets of marks distinguishing his Critical Common-sensism, mostly directed against the Common Sense School. However, there is an element of Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense that Peirce, and most other commentators, neglect: his appeals to grammatical features as evidence for common sense beliefs concerning cognition. In other contexts, though, Peirce is as critical of appeals to language as he is of appeals to psychology. Thus, Peirce’s rejection of what may be called linguisticism, as part of his rejection of psychologism, serves as an additional distinguishing mark of his Critical Common-sensism.2

2 In what follows I will briefly discuss Peirce’s Critical Common-sensism, and then turn to Reid’s use of language as a key form of evidence for his account of Common Sense. Then, I will review Peirce’s consistent critique of the ‘Procrustean bed of Latin grammar’; in particular, how philosophers have limited their study to a small, and in Peirce’s assessment ‘peculiar,’ set of world languages. This Procrustean Bed has constrained how speakers of European languages have thought about logical topics, especially the nature of propositions, and the tendency to force other grammars to fit into Latin categories has hidden the diversity of language. Furthermore, Peirce often suggests some form of linguistic or relativity; at minimum, that language conditions thought. Thus, while philosophy is independent of for Peirce, it is not independent of language, and the question remains what is left of common sense once we appreciate how different languages can be.

Peirce’s Characters of Critical Common-Sensism

3 Peirce’s 1905 “What Pragmatism Is” opens with both a restatement of how ‘pragmatism’ grew out of his own experiences as an experimental scientist and an appeal that philosophers adopt an ethics of terminology: […] the general feeling shall be that he who introduces a new conception into philosophy is under an obligation to invent acceptable terms to express it, and that when he has done so, the duty of his fellow-students is to accept those terms, and to resent any wresting of them from their original meanings, as not only a gross discourtesy to him to whom philosophy was indebted for each conception, but also as an injury to philosophy itself.3

4 This general feeling, plus the suggestion to use -ci as an infix indicating a more specific form of a doctrine, gives birth to ‘pragmaticism’ as a doctrine related to, yet distinct from, those of William James and Ferdinand Schiller, and even more distinct from its abuse by the literary. What makes pragmaticism more specific? It both limits itself to a maxim for determining the meaning of a concept, which Peirce believes provides a better possibility of developing a critical proof, and connects to at least two other doctrines: Critical Common-sensism and Scholastic Realism.

5 In the next article of the series, “Issues of Pragmaticism,” Peirce asserts these two doctrines “[…] were defended by the writer about nine years before the formulation of pragmaticism [but] may be treated as consequences of the latter belief.”4 He then offers six distinguishing characters: Character I: “Critical Common-sensism admits that there not only are indubitable propositions but also that there are indubitable inferences.”5 Character II: A list of indubitable propositions could be drawn up, with only slight changes from generation to generation.6

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Character III: “[…] one thing the Scotch failed to recognize is that the original beliefs only remain indubitable in their application to affairs that resemble those of a primitive mode of life.”7 Character IV: Acritically indubitable beliefs are invariably vague.8 Character V: These indubitable beliefs must be subject to rigorous examination, and even after be regarded as fallible. Character VI: “Critical Common-sensism may fairly lay claim to this title for two sorts of ; namely, that on the one hand it subjects four opinions to rigid criticism: its own; that of the Scotch school; that of those who would base logic or metaphysics on psychology or any other special science, the least tenable of all the philosophical opinions that have any vogue; and that of Kant; while on the other hand it has besides some claim to be called Critical from the fact that it is but a modification of Kantism.”9

6 Peirce must offer these modifications both to represent his own position and to allay the fears of critics convinced that these two doctrines, “[…] the two rival and opposed ways of answering Hume, are at internecine war, impacificable.”10 At this point, it may seem that Critical Common-sensism is more distinct from the Philosophy of Common Sense than Kant’s Critical Philosophy, but Peirce offers a potentially severe caveat: “The Kantist has only to abjure from the bottom of his heart the proposition that a thing-in-itself can, however indirectly, be conceived; and then correct the details of Kant’s doctrine accordingly, and he will find himself to have become a Critical Common-sensist.”11 That is, removing the ding-an-sich from Kant’s project might demand a complete overhaul rather than a tidying up of details.12

7 This focus on Reid is due, in part, to Peirce’s own shifting preferences.13 In 1864 he wrote that “I hold the Doctrine of Common Sense to be well fitted to Reid’s philosophical caliber and about as effective against any of the honored systems of philosophy as a potato-pop-gun’s contents might be against Gibraltar.”14 Five years later he added “Scotch school of philosophy […] is too old a tree to bear good fruit.”15 However, by 1905 Peirce had revised his assessment and held Reid to be a “subtle but well-balanced intellect […] in the matter of Common Sense.”16 While subtle and well- balanced, Reid lacked Peirce’s logical skill, especially concerning the logic of relatives and the logic of vagueness, and an appreciation for evolution. Our original beliefs, and acritical inferences, are of the nature of instincts; in particular, instincts developed in ‘primitive modes’ of life. This should not be taken to mean only the plains of Africa, as in simplistic forms of evolutionary psychology, as Peirce notes that some of our common sense beliefs “of such a character that they can hardly have entered the minds, say, of Neanderthal men”17 Peirce suggests these ‘primitive’ ways of life are simply our everyday embodied world of “moderate-sized specimens of dry goods.”18 However, “[m]odern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, […] has put us into quite another world […]” and this new world surpasses the adequacy of our common sense beliefs, at least without just criticism.19 Thus, we risk illegitimately importing the practical certainty of our common sense beliefs into domains where they are ill-suited. Furthermore, Reid perhaps overestimates the reliability of our common sense beliefs even within their proper domain, because of his commitment to a form of Providential .20 After Darwin, though, we are on safer ground considering people adequately endowed by evolution, rather than well-endowed by our Creator.

8 In short, Peirce considered Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense insufficiently fallibilist, in large part due to coming before intellectual and scientific developments with which Peirce was intimately familiar.21 However, there is another element of Reid’s

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characterization and defense of Common Sense of which Peirce could have been more critical: his appeals to language.

Reid’s Common Sense as Grammatical Universals

9 As suggested above, Peirce’s pragmaticism deserves the specifying infix in part because it is not a doctrine of metaphysics – “It is merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts.”22 Furthermore, Peirce advocates an ethics of terminology modeled on the taxonomic sciences because he sees this as one key to their successful advancement. Reid believes this as well: “There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science, and disputes which are carried on from age to age, without being brought to an issue.”23 Reid considers philosophers especially prone to this error, as they create ambiguity through using common sense words in uncommon senses: But if [a philosopher] puts a different meaning upon a word, without observing it himself, or giving warning to others; he abuses language, and disgraces philosophy, without doing service to truth: as if a man should exchange the meaning of the words daughter and cow, and then endeavor to prove to his plain neighbor, that is cow is his daughter, and his daughter his cow.24

10 This care for language is an important element of Reid’s critique of the “way of ideas” as a philosophy contrary to Common Sense. For example, “Perhaps it was unfortunate for Mr Locke that he used the word idea so very frequently as to make it very difficult to give the attention necessary to put it always to the same meaning.”25 In particular, while Locke does note that he includes phantasm, notion, and species under idea, on Reid’s view he fails to note that this equivocation collapses common sense distinctions between the activity of thought and its external objects under the philosophical conception of idea as an immediate or internal object. This Lockean legerdemain culminates in Hume’s contention that there is nothing but ideas ( distinguished into impressions and ideas only by their own force and vivacity). Again, for Reid this violates the common sense belief that thinkers are distinct from the activity of thought, and both are distinct from the external objects of thought.

11 However, what interests us here is one of the forms of evidence to which Reid appeals – not only is this tripartite distinction an instinctive common sense belief, but also “It is impossible to trace the origin of this opinion in history: for all languages it interwoven in their original construction.”26 That is, we know this to be a universal judgment of humanity because it is represented in all languages.27 This claim is from Reid’s Inquiry, but he expands upon it in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man: In all ages, and in all languages, ancient and modern, the various modes of thinking have been expressed by words of active signification, such as seeing, hearing, reasoning, willing, and the like. It seems, therefore, to be the natural judgment of mankind that the mind is active in its various ways of thinking; and for this reason they are called its operations, and are expressed by active verbs.28

12 Furthermore: Such operations are, in all languages, expressed by active transitive verbs; and we know that, in all languages, such verbs require a thing or person, which is the agent, and a noun following in an oblique case, which is the object. Whence it is evident that all mankind, both those who have contrived language, and those who

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use it with understanding, have distinguished these three things as different, – to wit, the operations of the mind, which are expressed by active verbs, the mind itself, which is the nominative to those verbs, and the object, which is, in the oblique case, governed by them.29

13 Again, Reid finds definitive evidence against the ‘way of ideas’ not only in his version of phenomenology, or in instinctive beliefs, but in the grammar of “all languages.” Thus, Locke and other modern philosophers violate common sense both in their use of words in some philosophical meaning rather than their common sense one, with inevitable tacit sliding across these meanings, but also cause confusion by using these words within grammars that presuppose common sense distinctions among act, agent, and patient.

14 One more example: “There are philosophers who maintain […] that a body is nothing but a collection of what we call sensible qualities; and that they neither have nor need any subject.”30 Here Reid’s directly targets Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Hume, and characteristically he rejects their belief “that there should be without any thing extended” as an absurdity contrary to a self-evident dictate of his nature.31 However, Reid is not arguing for a some subjective idealism here, as Berkeley would at least accept that these sensible qualities require a perceiving subject. Instead, the ‘subject’ needed is a grammatical one, corresponding to an external object: And that it is the belief of all mankind appears in the structures of all languages; which we find adjective nouns used to express sensible qualities. It is well known that every adjective in language must belong to some substantive expressed or understood; that is, every quality must belong to some subject.32

15 Furthermore, Reid contends that if ascribing sensible qualities to subjects were a prejudice, and not an innate principle of our nature, we should see not only individual variation in this belief, but also variations across ages and nations: “[…] but we find no such difference among men. What one man accounts a quality, all men do, and ever did.”33 Perhaps Reid is overstating his case here, for Berkeley and Hume do deny this ‘self-evident’ principle. More generally, Reid acknowledges abnormal variations (‘lunacy’) in belief, but considers these disorders irrelevant to the overall reliability of our senses and common sense judgments.34 In the more polemical voice of his Inquiry, Reid even sides with the vulgar against those philosophers who deny an external world: “[…] too much learning is apt to make men mad; and that the man who seriously entertains this belief, though in other respects he may be a very good man, as a man may be who believes that he is made of glass; yet surely he hath a soft place in his understanding, and hath been hurt by much thinking.”35 Of course, we do not have to go so far, and even Reid notes approvingly that Hume backs away from from such skeptical conclusions.36 While Berkeley and Hume are not on par with a man who believes he is made of glass, they do misuse language.

16 Reid’s commitment to language is strong enough that he makes it one of his fundamental methodological principles. The chief source of knowledge about mind is introspective or phenomenological – “accurate” or “attentive” reflection, in Reid’s parlance. However, there are two subsidiary sources of knowledge: “attention to the structure of language” and “a due attention to the course of human actions and opinions.”37 Commentators on Reid typically focus on his distinction between acquired and natural language, the latter being a universally comprehensible set of natural signs (facial expressions, gestures, and vocal tones), to the neglect of his appeals to universal grammatical features.38 Reid is clear that this is a fallible source of knowledge regarding

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the human mind, given the variations in languages, “[b]ut whatever we find common to all languages must have a common cause; must be owing to some common notion or sentiment of the human mind.”39 Finally, this principle returns in the essay on Judgment as part of the third means of determining what is a First Principle: There are other opinions that appear to be universal, from what is common in the structure of all languages. Language is the express image and picture of human ; and from the picture we may draw some certain conclusions concerning the original. We find in all languages the same parts of ; we find nouns, substantive and adjective; verbs, active and passive, in their various tenses, numbers, and moods. Some rules of syntax are the same in all languages.40

17 Unfortunately, Reid provides no particular examples of these cross-linguistic universals, in the sense of actual comparative linguistics. Furthermore, I have found no indication that Reid was familiar with languages beyond Scots, English, and the philosophical quartet of French, German, Greek, and Latin. This is unsurprising, as in Reid’s day linguistics was just developing as its own field, and philology remained largely devoted to Biblical and Classical texts. In contrast, Peirce was an accomplished, though amateur, linguist, who studied non-Indo-European languages ranging from Arabic to Tagalog.41 His linguistic pursuits led Peirce to a different conclusion regarding the value of linguistics for philosophy, as we shall now see.

Peirce and Linguistics

18 Articulating Peirce’s conception of common sense, and thereby his Critical Common- sensism, requires understanding his rejection of psychologism, the notion that logic rests upon psychology. We may first distinguish between two forms of psychologism: the first concerns grounding logic (solely) upon psychological facts, and the second concerns grounding logic upon psychological results; i.e., psychology as a special science. Regarding the former, Peirce’s illustrative target is Christoph Sigwart, who “says that the question of what is good logic and what bad must be in the last resort come down to the question of how we feel: it is a matter of Gefühl, that is, a Quality of Feeling.”42 Peirce consistently lambasts the “German logicians,” again, of which Sigwart is a key example, for reducing logical necessity to a psychological compulsion. While this is not the place to examine Peirce’s arguments against this view, it is important to note his characterization of the forces with which he aligns himself: In reasoning, however, your opinion [student of logic] is that we have the singular phenomenon of a physiological function which is open to approval and disapproval. In this you are supported by universal common sense, by the traditional logic, and by English logicians as a body. But you are in opposition to German logicians generally, who seldom notice fallacy, conceiving human reason to be an ultimate tribunal which cannot err.43

19 There is no particular reason to think Peirce is appealing to Reid here, but in Reidian style he contends the German tendency to reduce logicality to feeling violates “universal common sense.”

20 The first form of psychologism thoroughly subjectivizes logic by reducing validity to feeling, while maintaining a veneer of objective necessity by allowing no tribunal other than feeling. The second form of psychologism also threatens logic’s autonomy by basing it upon the scientific results of psychology, in violation of Peirce’s principles of classification.44 For Peirce, both German (e.g., Wolff) and English (e.g., Mill) logicians

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make the error of reducing logic to psychology, an error which confounds how we ought to reason with how we must reason, or at least with how an immature science thinks we must reason.45 These elements of Peirce’s anti-psychologism are well known.46 Less remarked upon, however, is his rejection of what may be called linguisticism, or the tendency to base logic upon linguistics.47 Again, this is a mistake made by Sigwart, “who holds that logical questions must ultimately be decided by immediate feeling, and that the usages of the German language are the best evidence of what that feeling is.”48 As Peirce notes, this appeal to language causes several problems, starting at the level of vocabulary: “The difficulty of the, at best, difficult problem of the essential nature of a Proposition has been increased, for the Germans, by their Urtheil, confounding, under one designation, the mental assertion with the assertible.”49 In other words, this term confounds the psychological act of judgment with the logical nature of a proposition, which may be asserted – judged to be true – or not. In Peirce’s estimation, English, though a “pirate-lingo” deficient in some areas compared to French and German, provides more accurate terminology because it maintains distinctions drawn from the Scholastics even in common speech.50 However, the particular strengths of English can be diluted by translations based upon similar spellings rather than similar meanings.51 Confusing the form of a word with its content can even happen within the same language, especially over time: “[…] modern readers forget that two or three centuries ago words still familiar suggested quite different ideas from those the same words now suggest.”52 Again, clarifying the meaning of words so as to ensure proper use is one of Peirce’s abiding concerns, as seen in his ethics of terminology and the pragmatic maxim itself. Indeed, since Peirce adopts a dialogic view of the self, attention to language is not only important for communication with others, but also for communicating with ourselves: “[…] so it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is of the essence of it.”53

21 Thus far, Peirce has much in common with Reid. That is, both criticize other philosophers for insufficient attention to terminology, thereby causing confusion in at least two ways: 1) Putting idiosyncratic meanings on common words, whether explicitly or not.54 2) Neglecting changes or differences in meanings across languages or over time due to similar spellings, as when Locke blends the Platonic ἰδέᾱ , Cartesian idée, and English idea.55

22 These semantic confusions are compounded by the use of common expressions and metaphors, as when ideas are in our mind, though minds are supposedly nothing more than a bundle of perceptions. Likewise, how can ideas present themselves before us when they are passive copies of impressions? For Reid, the near-impossibility of discussing the mind without using subjects, actions, and objects, even by those committed to collapsing these distinctions, supports Common Sense over philosophy. Finally, Peirce was not immune to Reidian appeals to linguistic universals, such as the following: 1) All languages have (largely) replaced mimicry with conventional auditory signs.56 2) All languages must have proper nouns and pronouns.57 3) All languages use a metaphor of ‘inclusion’ to express logical entailment.58 4) All languages make cardinals the fundamental numbers: “Any person whose head is not cracked by too much study of logic will say without hesitation that the cardinals are the original numbers. It is common-sense, and common-sense is the safest guide.”59

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23 Nonetheless, even if common-sense is the safest guide, overall Peirce was as skeptical of appealing to language to sort out philosophical issues as he was of appealing to psychology: Appeals to the usages of language are extremely common. They are made even by those who use algebraical notation in logic “in order to free the mind from the trammels of speech” (Schröder, Logik, i. p. iii). It is difficult to see what can be hoped for from such a proceeding, unless it be to establish a psychological proposition valid for all minds. But to do this, it would be necessary to look beyond the small and very peculiar class of Aryan languages, to which the linguistic knowledge of most of those writers is confined. The Semitic languages, with which some of them are acquainted, are too similar to the Aryan greatly to enlarge their horizon. Moreover, even if other languages are examined, the value of any logical inferences from them is much diminished by the custom of our grammarians of violently fitting them to the Procrustean bed of Aryan grammar.60 Accordingly, Peirce in principle agrees with Reid’s appeal to universal grammatical features, if there are any – but no one has made a truly universal survey of languages. Instead, a half dozen European languages, with perhaps Aramaic or Hebrew as , have been taken as a sufficient basis for universal claims. I will say more about why these languages are peculiar, by Peirce’s estimation, below. Peirce, characteristically, sought to remedy in himself a flaw he saw in the reasoning of others, and did attempt to study languages outside of the Indo-European family, including Arabic, Basque, Burmese, Chinese, Nama, Ngarrindjeri, Tagalog, Thai, Tibetan, Sakha, and Xhosa.61 Nonetheless, Peirce was well aware of his limitations as a linguist – “I have not the learning requisite for the subject.”62 In addition to being only an amateur linguist, Peirce recognized that studying languages from grammar books is insufficient because of the ever-present Procrustean bed of Latin grammar. That is, even if one were to study a language such as Xhosa, our entry into that language is affected both by our native grammar and the tendency of European grammarians to cut or stretch other languages to fit within Latin categories. “For that reason, it will not suffice to get one’s idea of an uninflected language from any mere grammar. It is necessary to have some real, living acquaintance with it, in order to appreciate its modes of thought, especially since these will be most difficult for us to grasp.”63 Note again that Peirce suggests an intimate relation between language and modes of thought, a key point to which I will return in the final section.

24 I have claimed that Peirce goes beyond Reid’s concern with vocabulary to include grammatical structures, with the common ‘philosophical’ languages being ‘peculiar’ by Peirce’s account. Furthermore, these peculiarities delegitimize appeals to language in logic, and perhaps philosophy more broadly: “To treat [propositions] just as they are expressed in this or that language (as Hoppe and some others do) makes of logic a philological, not a philosophical, study. But the canonical forms chosen have been suggested by the usage of a narrow class of languages, and are calculated to lead philosophy astray.”64 Thus, what makes these languages peculiar? Peirce consistently highlights the prevalence of putting subjects in a nominative case. However, he also notes that exceptions to this are readily found even in European languages: “[…] although within that group they would find modes of thought that would somewhat embarrass them, such as the usage of the Gaelic and Old Irish of putting the subject of a sentence in the genitive.”65 He continues by asserting that determining “necessities of thought” from this small group of European languages is “like judging of botanical possibilities by phanerogamous plants.”66 Ignorant of other modes of thought, those

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who would base logic or philosophy upon language make a necessity out of their own peculiar contingency. What are some consequences of having a strong nominative case? Peirce remarks upon at least three: first, the belief that a proposition has only one subject, and second, the belief that subjects must be nouns. Regarding the first, Peirce contends against the grammarians that a proposition has one predicate, but can have an indefinite number of subjects.67 Regarding the second, conceiving of subjects as common nouns or substantive adjectives hides both the essential role of indices in forming propositions, and the broader nature of indices: “Often, too, the index is not of the nature of a noun. It may be, as we have seen, a mere look or gesture.”68 Third, Peirce will even go so far as to point out superfluousness of the copula, as seen by its absence in many other languages.69 These three considerations are fatal to the traditional conception that the essence of a proposition, and therefore the essence of thought by common supposition, is “S is P” and its various concatenations. Peirce asserts that a desire to find some support for this supposed universal motivates his interest in linguistics: “The author (though with no pretension to being a linguist), has fumbled the grammars of many languages in the search for a language constructed at all in the way in which the logicians go out of their way to teach that all men think.”70 The only candidate he can find is Basque, which has a minimal number of verbs, but this is only one language that almost meets ‘the logicians’ standard, out of dozens Peirce ‘fumbled,’ and thousands in the world; “[t]his seems to refute the logicians’ psychology.”71 In short, the grammatical predispositions of European languages delayed the development of both the logic of relatives and a broader conception of logic as semeiotic.

25 The peculiarity of European languages is not all negative for Peirce. Indeed, he claims that the development of common nouns and abstract nouns makes logical and mathematical thinking easier. Unfortunately, he also claims that speakers of language without common nouns are incapable of triadic thought: “With the exercise of a little it is possible to express anything in these languages, provided no higher relations than dyadic ones enter. Only very simple propositions can be expressed involving higher relations; and those whose mental education is limited by the powers of these languages are unable to grasp the meaning of a complex triple relation.”72 This is a bizarre claim, but one Peirce takes seriously. For example, in his “The Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents,” he offers a speculative biography of Pythagoras as one of three applications of his method. The details need not concern us here, other than the novel claim that Pythagoras traveled near the borders of . This exposure to Indian thought (and mathematics) influenced Pythagoras’ devotion to numbers, in part because of a misunderstanding caused by translation from a non- Aryan language into an Aryan one. Specifically, Peirce suggests the most abstract ideas in this non-Aryan language were numbers, but this idea became substantivized when put into Greek. “[The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers] is not mysticism, then, not devotion to chimeras, but an attempt to interpret an infantile philosophy of some non- Aryan, non-Shemitic thinker.”73 This may be improbable, and Peirce himself offers it as a mere hypothesis, an example of “abduction under difficulties.” Nonetheless, we do not have to agree with Peirce to work through his ideas, and it is consistent with claims about language and thought he makes elsewhere.

26 The “S is P” structure of categorical logic was made common sense by European grammars, which brings us to a provocative question: What if had been a

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Mexican?74 Here is the context: “When Sayce says that ‘had Aristotle been a Mexican, his system of logic would have assumed a wholly different form,’ I am willing to admit that there is a good deal of truth in that. It is lucky that Aristotle’s only language was one that led him into as few errors as did the Greek.”75 Here Peirce considers linguists who claim that logic must rest upon linguistics; in particular, Heymann Steinthal (1823-99) and Reverend Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933). Peirce quotes volume 2 of Sayce’s 1880 An Introduction to the Science of Language, which includes gems such as “The philosophy of speech, in the hands of the Greeks, suffered from the introduction of logic into grammar, and revenge was taken by grounding logic upon the definitions of an imperfect grammar.”76 Sayce highlights some of the same imperfections as Peirce, such as “[t]he division of a sentence into two parts, the subject and the predicate, is a mere accident.”77 Not only would Aristotle’s logic been wholly different if he were a Mexican (in this context, Sayce probably means a Nahuan, an indigenous Mesoamerican), if he spoke a language from the Ural-Altaic family he would not have incorrectly analyzed negative propositions!78 However, Sayce goes too far when he implies that logic should rest upon even comparative philology. Instead, Peirce concludes that appeals to language are “inadequate and deceptive evidence” of human psychology, and even if we could determine human psychology by studying language the results would be “utterly useless for the investigation of logical questions.”79

Conclusion

27 How does this bear upon common sense? As I showed above, Thomas Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense rests, in part, on appeals to supposed linguistics universals. In contrast, Peirce’s Critical Common-sensism must be critical of any such claims. This is one reason why Peirce’s phenomenology, the first division of philosophy, “[…] contents itself with so much of experience as pours in upon every man during every hour of his waking life.”80 Furthermore, it offers another reason for re-christening his phenomenology as phaneroscopy. Hegel’s conception of phenomenology, to which the ethics of terminology suggests we should defer, runs the risk of articulating the development of Geist along the logic of German prepositions. 81 In contrast, Peirce’s phaneroscopy is a more humble affair, concerning no more – but also no less – than the cenopythagorean categories. Philosophy, especially a philosophy of Critical Common Sense, is a cenoscopic science that rests upon observing daily normal experience, and so while it may “[glance] now and then” at idioscopic sciences like psychology and linguistics, it cannot be justified by those sciences.82

28 Perhaps Reid intended his appeals to universal linguistic features as merely indications of common sense beliefs, rather than a justification for particular common sense beliefs. However, this is in clear tension with his making it one of the primary sources of knowledge regarding the human mind. In addition, it is unclear whether there are any linguistic universals.83 Even Peirce’s own example of a vague common sense belief – “fire burns” – utilizes the very subject-predicate structure he sees as holding back the development of logic. That is, this simple proposition presupposes an in which fire is a thing distinct from the action of burning. This grammatically-supported intuition led to phlogiston, “[t]he most unhappy of physical theories.”84 Fire is not a thing, but rather a process. Furthermore, it is doubtful this ‘common sense’ belief could be directly translated into every other language, for either semantic or syntactic

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reasons. We are on sturdier ground with the set of experiences denoted by this proposition, but if our ‘modes of thought’ are conditioned by our language, as Peirce consistently claims, then ‘our’ interpretation of this set of experiences may not be the same as those conditioned by different grammars.85 Again, “fire burns” is vague enough to be indubitable, and yet still determined by English grammar to mislead as to the nature of propositions.

29 Peirce is clear that logic, and philosophy in general, cannot rely upon linguistics. However, philosophy must inevitably rely upon language. This paper opens with Peirce’s claim that “my language is the sum total of myself” and throughout I have emphasized other claims committing Peirce to some form of linguistic determinism (e.g., the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”).86 Here is one more: “A person who has learned to think in beta graphs has ideas of the utmost clearness and precision which it is practically impossible to communicate to the mind of a person who has not that advantage.”87 Regardless of how we answer the question of Peirce’s linguistic determinism, we must reckon with how his Critical Common-sensism differs from Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense in not only coming after Darwin, but also in coming after Humboldt. While we should not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our linguistic hearts, it is unclear how much common sense is left when we recognize how diverse languages, and therefore thinkers, are. Of course, this is a call for further inquiry, as diagnosing a problem is only one step in possibly solving it. I think it also shows that a truly Critical Common-sensism requires a call for further inquirers, especially from cultures and languages underrepresented, if not simply ignored, in philosophy. Our charitable interest in an indefinite community of inquiry should not fail to include people past and present while hoping for those to come.88

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KOOPMAN Colin, (2007), “Language is a Form of Experience: Reconciling Classical Pragmatism and ,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 43.4, 694-727.

KOOPMAN Colin, (2011), “Rorty’s Linguistic Turn: Why (More Than) Language Matters to Philosophy,” Contemporary Pragmatism, 8.1., 61-84.

LUNDESTAD Erik, (2006), “The Skeptic and the Madman: The Proto-Pragmatism of Thomas Reid,” The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 4.2, 125-37.

MAGNUS Philip D., (2008), “Reid’s Defense of Common Sense,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 8.3, 1-14.

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NÖTH Winfried, (2000), “Charles Sanders Peirce, Pathfinder in Linguistics,” in Mats Bergman, Sami Paavola & João Queiroz (eds.), The Commens Encyclopedia: The Digital Encyclopedia of Peirce Studies, New Edition, Pub. 121017-1105a. Retrieved from [http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/ nöth-winfried-charles-sanders-peirce-pathfinder-linguistics].

PELLETIER Francis, ELIO Renée & Philip HANSON, (2008), “Is Logic All in Our Heads? From Naturalism to Psychologism,” Studie Logica: An International Journal for Symbolic Logic, 88.1, 3-66.

PIETARINEN Ahti-Veikko, (2004), “Grice in the Wake of Peirce,” and Cognition 12.2, 295-316.

POTE R. G., (1857), “Stonehenge,” in Notes and Queries: A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc., Second Series, Volume Fourth, London, Bell & Daldy, 326.

REID Thomas, (1869 [1763]), An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, and Co. Cited as IHM Chapter.Section, [https://books.google.com/ books?id=No5eAAAAcAAJ].

REID Thomas, (1852 [1785]), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. J. Bartlett. Cited as EIP Essay.Chapter.Section, [https://books.google.com/books?id=3AcQAAAAYAAJ]

RELLSTAB Daniel Hugo, (2008), “Peirce for Linguistic Pragmaticists,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 44.2, 312-45.

ROCKMORE Tom, (1999), “Hegel, Peirce, and Knowledge,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series 13.3, 166-84.

RYSIEW Patrick, (2002), “Reid and Epistemic Naturalism,” The Philosophical Quarterly 52.209, 437-56.

SACKSON Adrian, (2014), “Avoiding Broken Noses: How ‘Pragmatic’ was the Philosophy of Thomas Reid?,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 6.2, 287-303, [https:// journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1065].

SAYCE Archibald Henry, (1880), Introduction to the Science of Language, Volume 2. C. K. Paul & Company, Abbreviated ISL, [https://books.google.com/books?id=02oSAAAAIAAJ&dq].

SHURMAN Jacob Gould, CREIGHTON James Edwin & Frank THILLY, (1943), [unknown title] The Philosophical Review, [unknown pages].

STERN Robert, (2005), “Peirce on Hegel: Nominalist or Realist?,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 41.1, 65-99.

STERN Robert, (2007), “Peirce, Hegel, and the Category of Secondness,” Inquiry, 50.2, 123-55.

VIOLA Tullio, (2011), “Philosophy and the Second Person: Peirce, Humboldt, Benveniste, and Personal Pronouns as Universals of Communication,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 47.4, 389-420.

WIERZBICKA Anna, (2015), “Can there be Common Knowledge Without a Common Language? German Pflicht English Duty,” Common Knowledge, 21.1, 141-71.

ZIEMKOWSKI Joshua, (2008), Peirce’s Esthetics and the Problem of Normativity, The Pennsylvania State University, Diss.

NOTES

1. See Haack 1994.

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2. “For two centuries we have been affixing -ist and -ism to words, in order to note sects which exalt the importance of those elements which the stemwords signify” (CP 7.565). The earliest use of “linguisticism” I have found is by R. G. Pote in 1857, but there it refers to phonetic dating. The earliest use in roughly the sense meant here seems to be (Shurman et al., 1943): “These are the sophisms of our day: psychologism, sociologism, historicism, linguisticism — pseudo- claiming the support of science, itself the acme of human wisdom” (208). Colin Koopman uses ‘linguisticism’ to mark Rorty’s neopragmatism as distinct from the focus on experience by the ‘primapragmatists’; e.g.: “A number of pragmatists have as a result come dangerously near to in relying on a metaphysics of experience to guard themselves against Rorty’s linguisticism” (Koopman 2007: 699; see also Koopman 2011). Alexander and Koopman use “lingualism,” following Brandom, in a European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy symposium on “Language or Experience” in American pragmatism (see Hildebrand 2014). This is an important set of essays concerning some of the questions I raise here, though I cover much different ground. 3. CP 5.413 [1905]. For more on Peirce’s ethics of terminology, see Haack 2009. 4. CP 5.439 [1905]. Accepting “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878) as the first explicit formulation of the pragmatic maxim leads us to expect to find Critical Common-sensism (though not by that name) and Scholastic Realism in the 1868-9 Journal of Speculative Philosophy series. However, if Peirce here refers to his 1871 Berkeley review, or meetings of around that time, Critical Common-sensism could be found in the early 1860s. Indeed, some elements appear in manuscripts such as “A Treatise on Metaphysics” (W1:57-84, 1861-2) and “On the Doctrine of Immediate Perception” (W1:153-5, 1864). Despite this, on Peirce’s own account he defended Scholastic Realism in “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” (1869) and the 1871 Berkeley Review “[…] before he had formulated, even in his own mind, the principle of pragmaticism […]” (CP 5.453 [1905]), so these earlier manuscripts are likely excluded. 5. CP 5.440 [1905]. 6. CP 5.444 [1905]. 7. CP 5.445 [1905]. 8. CP 5.446 [1905]. 9. CP 5.452 [1905]. 10. CP 5.505 [c. 1905]. Peirce’s imaginary interlocutor, Doctor Y., later adds: “[…] one cannot help seeing that Criticism and Common-sense are so immiscible that to plunge into either is to lose all touch with the other” (ibid.). Karl Ameriks has also rejected this supposed immiscibility, though without reference to Peirce: “[…] the overall strategy of the Critical philosophy involves an effective apologist methodology remarkably similar to what is best in Reid’s commonsense approach” (Ameriks 2005: 19). 11. CP 5.452 [1905]. In an alternate draft, Peirce makes this point with the claim “Kant (whom I more than admire) is nothing but a somewhat confused Pragmatist” (CP 5.525 [c. 1905]). 12. I would like to thank Vincent Colapietro for pushing this . 13. Kant’s own relation to linguistics and philosophy of language is a complicated affair; see Forster 2012 for one survey. 14. W2:153 [1864]. 15. W2:278, [1869]. 16. CP 5.444 [1905]. See Sackson 2014 for an excellent summary of views on Reid’s relation to pragmatism, as well as new arguments for considering Reid as part of the pragmatist tradition. 17. CP 5.512 [c. 1905]. 18. Austin (1964: 8). 19. CP 5.513 [c. 1905].

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20. See Lundestad 2006. Rysiew 2002 is more critical of the role Providential Naturalism plays in Reid’s epistemology. 21. “But fallibilism cannot be appreciated in anything like its true significancy until evolution has been considered” (CP 1.17). However, see Alston 1985 for a defense of fallibilism as one of Reid’s distinctive contributions to epistemology. 22. CP 5.464 23. EIP I.I, p. 1. 24. IHM VIII.II. 25. EIP II.V.VII, p. 99. 26. IHM II.7, p. 38. 27. Most commentators on Reid focus on his defense of common sense via an account of sensation, perception, and belief, even when looking beyond his Inquiry; for example, Magnus 2008. Jacquette 2003 does remark upon Reid’s distinction between artificial signs (language) and natural signs, but focuses on the latter. 28. EIP I.I.3, p. 6. 29. EIP I.I.4, p. 8. 30. EIP II.IX, p. 169. 31. EIP II.IX, p. 169. 32. EIP II.IX, p. 169. 33. EIP II.IX, p. 170. 34. EIP II.XII.II, p. 209-10. 35. IHM V.7, p. 82. 36. THN 1.4.2: “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.” 37. EIP I.IV.I.1 & 2, p. 23-4. 38. EIP VI.III.III.7, p. 391-5. 39. EIP I.IV.I.1, p. 24. Here Reid makes a concession similar to Peirce’s third character of Critical Common-sensism: “We can only expect, in the structure of all languages, those distinctions which all mankind in the common business of life have occasion to make.” Reid includes “business” in one of his definitions of “common sense”: “this is called common sense because it is common to all men whom we can transact business with, or call to account for their conduct” (EIP VI.II, p. 352). However, he also suggests our “natural language” of facial expressions, gestures, and vocal tones suffices for transacting business in the absence of shared “acquired language.” 40. EIP VI.III.II, p. 377. 41. See Nöth 2000 for a summary of Peirce’s contributions to linguistics. 42. CP 5.85. See also CP 2.19-20; 2.209; 2.389; 3.432; 5.85-87; 7.175. 43. CP 2.152. Fleshing out Peirce’s opposition to the ‘German logicians’ on this point requires the details of his general argument against hedonism, as well as the Jamesian equivocation of the true and the satisfactory. See CP 5.555-5.64, and Ziemkowski 2008. 44. “Psychology must depend in its beginnings upon logic, in order to be psychology and to avoid being largely logical analysis. If then logic is to depend upon psychology in its turn, the two sciences, left without any support whatever, are liable to roll in on slough of error and confusion” (CP 2.51). Beverly Kent (1987) remains essential for understanding Peirce’s classification(s) of the sciences, but also see Ambrosio 2016 for a more historically-grounded account. 45. CP 2.39-50.

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46. See Brockhaus 1991 and Pelletier et al. 2008 for historical surveys of psychologism; unfortunately, both neglect to include Peirce. See Kasser 1999, Colapietro 2003, and Bellucci 2016 for works specifically on Peirce and psychologism. Colapietro also acknowledges that Peirce’s anti-psychologism applies to other sciences: “In sum, Peirce was committed to maintaining a sharp distinction between the de jure questions characteristic of logical investigation and the de facto ones definitive of such experimental investigations as psychology, anthropology, and linguistics. The grammars reconstructed by linguistics are one thing, the grammar of thought at the fountainhead of logic quite another.” (2003: 163). 47. The influence of Peirce’s logic, conceived as semeiotic, upon subsequent linguistics and philosophy of language is a separate issue. See Atkin 2008, Pietarinen 2004, and Rellstab 2008, among others. 48. CP 2.389. See also CP 8.189: “Those whom we may roughly call the German school of logicians […] make truth, which is a matter of fact, to be a matter of a way of thinking or even of linguistic expression.” 49. CP 5.424 Fn P1. One more vocabulary example: Anna Wierzbicka argues against the ‘cultural anglocentrism’ of most English interpretations of Kant: “Further, the essay shows how the German word Pflicht, central to Kant’s ethics, does not correspond in meaning to the English word duty, whose cultural roots lie in English Puritanism” (2015: 141). 50. CP 7.494; see 6.287 for ‘pirate-lingo.’ 51. E.g., “As a philosophical term [presupposition] translates the German Voraussetzung, and is presumably prefered to ‘postulate’ by Germans and others imperfectly acquainted with the English language, because they suppose that postulate in English has the same meaning as Postulat in German, which is not true; for the English retains the old meaning, while the German has generally adopted the conception of Wolff” (CP 3.635). 52. CP 5.611. 53. CP 2.220. 54. “[…] if it is meant that True and Satisfactory are synonyms, it strikes me that it not so much a doctrine of philosophy as it is a new contribution to English lexicography” (CP 5.555). 55. EIP II.V.VII, p. 1oo. Again, compare CP 7.494. 56. CP 2.280. This neglects signed languages, though Peirce acknowledges their existence at least once: “This seventh Genus [linguistics] is stupendous, embracing not only Speech, but all modes of communication, such as Sign Language, and under speech studying all dialects, not merely in their grammar and vocabulary, but also in their styles of composition” (MS 472 slide 881 [1902]). 57. CP 3.459. 58. CP 4.435. 59. CP 4.658. 60. CP 2.211. Peirce quotes Volume 1 of Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (1890) by his friend the logician Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Ernst Schröder (1841-1902). 61. I derived this list from MS 427 [c. 1902], though I have updated Peirce’s terminology. Here are his original terms, in the order above: Arabic, Basque, Burmese, Chinese, Hottentot, “Adelaide language,” Tagala, Siamese, Thibetan, Yakut, and Kaffir. My identification of Peirce’s “Adelaide language” rests upon geography, but also the publication of a Ngarrindjeri Bible by Reverend George Taplin (1831-79) in 1864. Earlier in this manuscript Peirce claims his knowledge of ‘Kaffir’ came from studying a translated Bible (slide 891), which suggests a similar source for his exposure to Ngarrindjeri. I must note that the names ‘Hottentot’ and ‘Kaffir,’ though largely neutral anthropological terms in Peirce’s day, were imposed by colonizers, and became even more intense racial slurs under Apartheid. Indeed, both are considered hate speech in post- Apartheid South Africa. This portion of manuscript, while one of the most detailed sources of evidence for Peirce’s study of comparative linguistics, is unpublished in the Collected Papers. This is so perhaps because it begins with the question of whether the White race originated

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independently or was “a mongrel composed of black and yellow” (slide 883). Here is the editorial note: “We omit a long section on linguistics and anthropology” (CP 7.385 Fn 22). 62. MS 427 slide 909. 63. CP 2.69. In a footnote to CP 4.48 Peirce notes the time he spent with Edward Henry Palmer (1840-82), an English explorer fluent in Arabic – fluent enough to resist the siren call of Latin grammar: “It gave me great pleasure after [Palmer’s] death to find a super-learned Regius Professor find fault with Palmer’s Arabic grammar because it followed the system which seemed right to those whose vernacular Arabic was, instead of ‘following the Greek and Latin methods’.” Peirce offers at least one more specification of what having a “real, living acquaintance” with a language requires: “But one has not mastered a language as long as one has to think about it in another language. One must learn to think in it about facts.” (CP 4.475). 64. CP 2.338. This appears to be Janus Hoppe (unknown dates), who published Die Gesammte Logik (in two parts) in 1868, and Die Kleine Logik in 1869. It is not clear which of these Peirce read, as he only cites “Hoppe, Logik §§256, 257” (CP 6.627). However, Die Kleine Logik ends with §254. See CP 2.400 Fn P2 for Peirce’s other brief mention of Hoppe. 65. CP 2.68. See also CP 2.338, 4.438 Fn P1, and 8.242. Old Irish did have a nominative case, though this might be a case of the Procrustean Bed. However, Modern Irish does not have a nominative, with a ‘common case’ taking the role of both nominative and accusative. 66. CP 2.68; ‘phaneragamous’ is an old name for spermatophytes, or seed plants. Under current classifications, seed plants compose some 90% of the 300,000 species in Kingdom Plantae, but in Peirce’s time ‘plant’ include algae (tens of thousands of species) and fungi (millions of species). At CP 4.48 he makes a similar claim, and also compares the Indo-European languages to languages in general as “the vertebrates to all animals” With current numbers, that would mean limiting what “animal” meant to 66,000 species while ignoring over a million invertebrate species. Specific numbers aside, Peirce’s point is clear. 67. “But from a logical point of view the terminology of the older grammarians was better, who spoke of the subject nominative and the subject accusative. I do not know that they spoke of the subject dative; but in the proposition, ‘Anthony gave a ring to Cleopatra,’ Cleopatra is as much a subject of what is meant and expressed as is the ring or Anthony. A proposition, then, has one predicate and any number of subjects.” (CP 5.542). In other words, grammar inclines us to conceive the subject as both an agent (what “does the verb”), and primary (typically comes first, and also the “most important”). In contrast, logically the predicate is primary, and ascribes a relationship to subjects. It is probably no accident that Peirce uses the verb ‘give’ here, as it is his consistent example of a genuine triadic relation: “The word gives refers to the same sort of fact [as donation], but its meaning is such that that meaning is felt to be incomplete unless those items are, at least formally, specified; as they are in ‘Somebody gives something to some person (real or artificial)’.” (CP 4.543; see also CP 1.345, 1.371, 1.474, 1.520, 2.86, 3.424, 3.464, 4.438 Fn P1, 5.89, 5.469, 6.323, 8.331). “Anthony gives” is grammatically fine, but is logically incomplete, at best, without the “what” given and the “whom” receiving. 68. CP 2.338. 69. “In the Old Egyptian language, which seems to come within earshot of the origin of speech, the most explicit expression of the copula is by means of a word, really the relative pronoun, which. Now to one who regards a sentence from the Indo-European point of view, it is a puzzle how ‘which’ can possibly serve the purpose in place of ‘is.’ Yet nothing is more natural.” (CP 4.49 ; original emphasis). See also CP 2.319, 2.328. 2.354, 4.41. See Kammerzell et al. 2016 for a thorough review and critique of Peirce’s study of Ancient Egypt in light of current science. 70. CP 2.328. 71. CP 2.328. 72. CP 7.385 Fn 22. 73. MS 690: 160-1.

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74. Though perhaps not so common, as seen in the need to explicitly teach undergraduates how to translate ordinary language into categorical forms. 75. CP 2.69. 76. ISL 327. 77. ISL 328-9. Sayce identifies Hegel as one who also made this criticism: “Hegel long ago pointed out that the analysis [of the proposition] was an empirical one dependent upon the observation of the individual thinker, and the criticism of Hegel is supplemented by the teaching of comparative philology” (328). 78. ISL 329-30. This is because languages in the Ural-Altaic family have negative conjugations. 79. CP 2.70. 80. CP 5.13 Fn P1. Peirce does not doubt the universality of this experience: “If you ask present when, and to whose mind, I reply that I leave these questions unanswered, never having entertained a doubt that those features of the phaneron that I have found in my mind are present at all times and to all minds” (CP 1.284). We critical common-sensists might be critical of this claim, but neurodiversity is a topic for another paper. 81. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-82) coined the term Phänomenologie, but Hegel’s use is the most prominent before Husserl adopted the term. Peirce’s relationship with Hegel is characteristically complex: “I reject his philosophy in toto” (CP 1.368), but also “Hegel, in some respects the greatest philosopher that ever lived […]” (CP 1.524). See also Rockmore 1999, Stern 2005, Stern 2007. 82. “If philosophy glances now and then at the results of special sciences, it is only as a sort of condiment to excite its own proper observation” (CP 1.241). 83. Joseph Greenberg (1915-2001) offers a list of 45 universals, but nearly all of these are implicative (if a language has feature X, then it has feature Y), with the most clearly absolute being “All languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers” (Greenberg 1963: 108). However, this list comes from comparing only 30 languages. Tullio Viola explores Peirce’s early interest in the English personal pronouns I, It, and Thou. In particular, Viola’s study complements my own by bringing Peirce into dialogue with a tradition originating with Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). “I would like to argue here that Peirce’s affinities with Humboldt, as well as the possible direct links with his work, can be taken as the starting point for an inquiry into the broader relationship between Peirce and that tradition of studies on personal pronouns as universals of language” (Viola 2011: 398). 84. CP 2.150. 85. As a consequence, Peirce’s speculative grammar must be truly speculative: “This will amount to what called speculative grammar. For it must analyse an assertion into its essential elements, independently of the structure of the language in which it may happen to be expressed.” (CP 3.430). See also CP 4.438 Fn P1. 86. CP 5.314. See also CP 2.220, 2.69, CP 7.385 Fn 22, MS 690: 160-161. “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” is a misnomer, as Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) never co- authored. Again, for understanding Peirce the most salient proponent of linguistic determinism, or linguistic relativity, is Humboldt. For more specifically on “man” as a language or sign, see Burks 1980, Colapietro 1988, and Fairbanks 1976. 87. CP 4.150. 88. CP 2.655.

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ABSTRACTS

A variety of commentators have explored the similarities between pragmatism and Thomas Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense. Peirce himself claims his version of pragmatism either (loosely) is, or entails, a Critical Common-sensism, a blend of what is best in Kant and Reid. In this paper I argue for a neglected aspect of the relation between Peirce and Reid, and of each to common sense: linguistics. First, I summarize Peirce’s account of what distinguishes his common- sensism from Reid’s. Second, I argue for the importance of appeals to linguistic universals by Reid as both a source for identifying common sense beliefs, and a basis for justifying them. While Peirce is occasionally tempted by such appeals, overall he is critical of appeals to language, especially as most Western philosophers have been familiar with a small set of (Indo-)European languages; say, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin. This leads to the third section, which concerns Peirce’s familiarity with major nineteenth century linguists, and his contention that the ‘peculiarity’ of Western European languages has impeded the development of logic and philosophy. In particular, I look at unpublished manuscripts where Peirce summarizes his own study of non-European languages, ranging from Arabic, to Ngarrindjeri, to Xhosa. Peirce was only an amateur linguist, and also aware of the challenges of doing cross-cultural linguistics through comparative grammar; e.g., the temptation to force unfamiliar languages onto the “Procrustean Bed of Aryan grammar” (CP 2.211). Nonetheless, this study left him suspicious of any claims of linguistic universals, and supported his anti-psychologism. That is, not only should logic and philosophy not be based upon psychology (at least as a special science), they should also be independent of linguistics. However, Peirce also advances something like the so-called Sapir- Whorf hypothesis, that language determines, or at least conditions, thought. The question now becomes what is the nature of a philosophy of common sense, even a critical one, without a common language, or possibly no commonalities across languages?

AUTHOR

DANIEL J. BRUNSON Morgan State University daniel.brunson[at]morgan.edu

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Attitudes of Knowledge and Common Sense Remarks on Reid and Dewey

Claude Gautier

1 In the works of , common sense appeared as a cross-disciplinary theme, often implicated in considerations of epistemology,1 logic,2 ethics3 and politics.4 There are however a number of texts where the question is addressed more directly. Amongst these can be mentioned: one of the introductory chapters of Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938):5 “Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry” (LW 12: 66-s.); an article published in The Journal of Philosophy in 1948 titled “Common Sense and Science: Their Respective Frames of References”;6 and an essay in the collection Knowing and the Known (1949)7 co- published with A. Bentley, which appeared under the title of “Common Sense and Science,” which took up again the 1948a article.

2 However, the limited corpus that is directly implicated should not be misleading. It is one occasion amongst others to deploy the consequences of the pragmatist “attitude.”8 Amongst those, reaffirming the necessity of understanding that the analysis of common sense does not spring from the specialised field of ‘the epistemological industry,’9 but de jure, from ethics and politics. This is the reason for which envisaging common sense per se would be an error (LW 16: 242-3).

3 Thus, while the theory of knowledge is useful to this analysis, it is only on condition that it is admitted that the knowledge implied in and by common sense is determined by its instrumental character10 and that, by way of consequence, studying its domain imposes relating it to that which it distinguishes itself from – knowledge specific to science or philosophy for example – but also, understanding the type of reality to which it refers and which it contributes to the fashioning of. This explicitly suggests the title of the 1948 article: “Common Sense and Science: Their Respective Frames of Reference.”

4 Finally, the instrumental character of said knowledge allows us to envisage the effects it produces – whether in the case of common sense or in science – on the

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transformation of current and future conditions of experience and action, that is to say on the improvement of the material and cultural conditions of human existence.

5 The relations between XIXth century American philosophy and Scottish Common Sense need no further proving;11 no more than the juncture between this and the first pragmatism.12 The following study retains John Dewey, and to more exactly identify the connection between pragmatism and the philosophy of common sense, will propose elements of comparison with the philosophy of Thomas Reid (1710-96).

6 Several reasons justify this choice. Dewey explicitly cites Reid and Stewart in regard to one of the two definitions of common sense that he comments on taken from the Oxford Dictionary (LW 12: 68), and he takes up, in his own manner, one of the Reidian acceptances of this concept. But, beyond this very marginal reference, there is a deeper reason that supports this possible comparison.

7 One of the objectives of the philosophy of Thomas Reid is to fight against scepticism as a philosophical “attitude,” radically embodied in Hume. This criticism thus implies the plan of an ethos and it does so in a specific manner: by confronting sceptical behaviour with ordinary behaviours which are related to common sense, it being understood that this confrontation bears on the status of reality from which the experience of knowledge – the “powers of intelligence” and human actions – “active powers” find their validity and their operativity.

8 As if the question of academic knowledge, natural philosophy and moral philosophy supposed, so as to be recognised in its pretensions, the proof of common sense.13 The interest of this confrontation is thus to show the importance of the relation that must be rebuilt between common sense and attitude of knowledge – in this occurrence, that of non-sceptical philosophy. Not just to affirm that a link should exist between the two types of knowledge, but also because the relation has a function which could, although this is not in Reid’s vocabulary, be an aspect of a certain type of “control.”

9 This confrontation of attitudes thus constitutes the method and principle of a general criticism of a certain ethos of knowledge which means to radicalise the separation of knowledge of “common sense,” and knowledge of “science.”

10 One of the aspects of the analysis proposed by John Dewey equally articulates attitude of knowledge, relevant to common sense, with criticism of “intellectualism,” which, through fallacies of the rationalist type,14 detaches itself from experience, and makes returns to experience a problem which it cannot manage to resolve. The taking into account of common sense, of the world of ordinary experiences, is for Dewey, as it is for Reid, the occasion to disqualify this type of attitude of knowledge. Of course, it remains that, beyond this convergence, the arguments and the context of problematisation should not mask the differences.

11 The discussion of common sense, in Dewey, does not only involve placing a relation between two types of attitude, it also implies, and in a more systematic fashion, the posing of the question of the relation between the development of common sense and the development of sciences. Often understood in terms of a divergence – which can express itself as a dualist opposition between common knowledge and scientific knowledge, theoretical and practical knowledge, academic and ordinary knowledge, etc. – the question of relation needs to be re-examined, according to Dewey, to identify two problems: on the one hand, to understand the manner and the reasons for which, while maintaining empirically manifest relations, the domains of common sense and

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science appear to oppose each other to this point, at the least being more and more independent: and on the other hand, to found the political and ethical imperative of the reconstruction of a deliberate and controlled “return”15 from the domain of science back to the domain of common sense.

12 The question of divergence also has a dimension which is not just epistemological in the usual sense, but moral: indicating the possible pathways of control of the dynamics of the domain of science when it is a case of considering the material, social and cultural consequences that it certainly produces in the common world of life.

13 The domain of the sciences finds in the conditions of experience relevant to the domain of common sense a source of nourishment for part of its development. In return, the progress which stems from this is not without consequences that are often imposed on and not controlled by those affected by them. This is reason for which it is necessary to become fully aware of these relationships, and even more so, to work towards directing them so as to better control the effects.

14 This last type of questioning, of course, is not found in an explicit manner in Reid. It supposes, historically, the intensification of the effects produced by the dynamics of technical progress and sciences, which became more and more visible in the United States from the start of the second part of the XIXth century.

15 I will distinguish two moments in this presentation. In one part, I will return to the manner in which the critical qualification of an attitude of knowledge permits the posing in specific terms of the “domain”16 of common sense. In the case of Reid, it is in regard to criticism of modern scepticism in general and of Hume in particular, that this way of proceeding intervenes. In the case of Dewey, it is in regard to the criticism of intellectualism.

16 In both cases, relating to common sense allows the identification of a break, the radicalisation of which contains an aporia: the impossibility of admitting truly the existence of a knowledge of the world that is practical, and in a certain sense, realist. It is thus by the placing in relationship of a type of experience which furnishes ordinary life, and a description of experience, here most often brought to the terms of an exclusive experience of knowledge, that the implication of common sense finds part of its critical function.

17 In other terms, the reference to common sense allows us to bring out one first determinant distinction through which it becomes possible to reformulate the more general problem of knowledge: “knowledge for action”17 on one side, and on the other, “knowledge for knowledge.” While this distinction is very clear in Dewey, it will be shown that it is no less easily identifiable in Reid, even if it is not thematised as such.

18 In another part, and this will be the second moment in this presentation, I will consider in a more specific manner the problem of relations between common sense and science, not so as to treat them in general and exhaustively, but to emphasise that that which is interesting in the point of view of Dewey resides in the placing in relation to each other of the epistemological, ethical and political dimensions of the problem. This means proposing a different reading of the divergence and effective autonomisation of progress in techniques and sciences.

19 The position of the problem in Dewey aims at the explicitation of the nature and the extent of the consequences that are certainly produced by the autonomisation of progress in sciences and the privatisation of the interests which govern it. This way of

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making the “return-wave” a problem that is equally moral and political, thus allows the situation of a place for possible social control of the progress of sciences.

20 This last supposes the making explicit of the types of consequences produced by the logic of progress in sciences and techniques, and making possible the socialisation of the interests to which this progress can respond, in such a way that in distinguishing the dynamics proper to common sense and to science they can remain connected. The moral and political demand for a certain control bearing on these linked dynamics should therefore set itself the task of seeing that these relationships are no longer univocal and unilaterally determined, but that they become true interactions.

21 From then on, with such a control, progress of techniques and sciences would no longer impose itself as a unilateral constraint of adaptation, making the human race a species which is ontologically retarded.

Sceptical and Intellectualist Attitudes and the Common Sense Test

22 If it is admitted that what supports the possible comparison between Reid and Dewey bears principally upon the disqualification of an attitude of knowledge and on the manner of mobilising the aid of common sense as a principle of analysis, one can start from the statement of the problem in the first to attempt, afterwards, to understand how it is translated and transformed in the second.

23 It is important, however, to specify that this study absolutely does not pretend to an exhaustive analysis of the positions of Reid in regard to common sense as well as all their theoretical and practical implications.18 Methodological usage of the comparison allows me to limit what I borrow to that which emphasises the importance of the connection between the philosophy of common sense and the pragmatist reading of common sense, which surely verifies once again that which James could affirm regarding relationships between modern British empiricism and pragmatist philosophy, the reactivation of “the older English lines.”19

Common Sense Against Scepticism

24 The practical orientation which underlies a large number of remarks bearing on the disqualification of the sceptical attitude consists, amongst other things, of valorising, in Reid, the common of the man of common sense and the philosopher. Some propositions taken from An Inquiry Into The Human Mind of The Principles of Common Sense (1764)20 easily allow us to be convinced of this: By our constitution, we have a strong propensity to trace particular facts and to general rules, and to apply such general rules to account for other effects, or to direct us un the production of them. This procedure of the understanding is familiar to every human creature in the common affaires of life, and it is the only one by which any real discovery in philosophy can be made.21

25 From Inquiry onwards, the question of attitude of knowledge is posed in terms of “constitutions,” “propensities,” that is to say of tendencies, the origin of which comes from a constitution. The ordinary pathway of a given type of knowledge proceeds from the particular to the general, it is inductive. And this inductive character is not first determined by an overlying reason, but is made by an acquisition supported by

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experiences, these being the same as those which, in ordinary life, confront us always with particular cases from which operate a certain need for generalisation.

26 Induction before being logically characterised – as opposed to deduction or – is the expression of a form of the “relation” of exchange which the ordinary man in the common affairs of life – “reasoning on common life” – knits with his environment of action and experience. It is the form of an attitude which permits practical inferences which, like those of the craftsman, confront particular cases to render them operative in other situations of action or of experience.

27 However, Reid says something else: that inference as a propensity is borne by the search for effects, for consequences (“to show us how to produce them (effects)”). To put it in another way, the demand for generalisation, here, is not given for itself, but is implied by the sequence which aims at identification of certain effects, of their “production.”

28 The consequence of this is clearly formulated: it is this attitude which must serve as the departure point for the practice of all types of knowledge (“it is the only one by which any real discovery in philosophy can be made”). It is therefore the same attitude which must prevail for the two types of knowledge, that which aims at the improvement of affairs in life, and that which aims at the elaboration of a distinct knowledge, that which is called “philosophy.”22 The man who first discovered that cold freezes water, and that heat turns it into vapour, proceeded on the same general principles, and in the same method, by which Newton discovered the law of gravitation and the properties of light. His Regulæ philosophandi are maxims of common sense, and are practised every day in common life; and he who philosophizes by other rules, either concerning the material system, or the mind, mistakes his aim.23

29 Thus, continuity between the two attitudes is claimed even more explicitly, Reid affirming that the method which allowed Newton to discover the universal laws of is drawn from the “maxims of common sense,” those which are daily “practised.”

30 The general form of inference is thus common and it is this that characterises all the attitudes of knowledge, whether they bear on affairs of life or upon more complex questions – “the material system or the mind.” It is indeed the identity of nature of complexities implied in the activity of knowledge which supports this commonality.

31 So there is no reason here to make a difference between “the craftsman in his shop” and the “philosopher,” Hume restates.24 Both of them find in this that it is possible to improve the precision of that which is known in ignorance of first causes, final causes, or “first principles.” On that level, nothing distinguishes the two attitudes ontologically.

32 It is unfounded will to install a rupture which characterises sceptical philosophy. Common sense and our education are there to resist this: And if common sense or the principles of education happen not to be stubborn, it is odds but we end in absolute scepticism.25

33 “Our” common sense, the consolidation of which is permitted by education, gives the means to avoid giving up to an “absolute scepticism.” Common sense is thus not just the specific domain of practical life and of a type of knowledge – that of ordinary experiences – it is equally acting under the form of an array of incorporated dispositions, which, by their consolidation (“the results of our upbringing”), resist the corrosive power of this other inclination “doubting.” This spontaneous, and then

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controlled resistance is therefore that which allows rupture to be avoided with all of its vertiginous consequences.

34 Common sense, as an “environment” and as an “array of propensities” is thus links in a vital manner to human attitudes, since defective relationships with its domain condemns those concerned to madness. Once again, here is what Reid says with regard to the hyperbolic doubt of Descartes: A man that disbelieves his own existence, is surely as unfit to be reasoned with, as a man that believes he is made of glass. There may be disorders in the human frame that may produce such extravagancies, but they will never be cured by reasoning.26

35 Two errors thus define the posture of cogito. On the one hand, it implies going against a natural tendency which is precisely that of a “confidence” in, and a “conscience” of the witness of the senses.27 On the other hand, and in supposing that such principles of “constitution of our nature” are lacking, it is certainly not reason that will be able to re- establish them. There is in this defiance of doubt something vital which engages – through the consistent and stubborn character of common sense rendered active by the bias of certain of our dispositions or propensities – all our constitution without which self-preservation and the possibility of action find themselves in question.

36 In what manner does such a liaison between “confidence,” “conscience” and “constitution of our nature” operate? Precisely through common and ordinary actions. I’ll cite Reid: Descartes, Malebranche and Locke, have all employed their genius and skill to prove the existence of a material world; and with very bad success. Poor untaught mortals believe undoubtedly, that there is a sun, moon and ; an , which we inhabit; country, friends, and relations, which we enjoy; land, houses, and moveables, which we possess. But philosophers, pitying the credulity of the vulgar, resolve to have no faith but what is founded upon reason.28

37 The sceptical attitude and the attitude guided by common sense separate from each other here on the manner of consolidating, by experience, action and belief where, precisely, the sceptic interrupts this sequence to limit it to the sole moment of belief which corrosive reason questions and places in doubt: It is a bold philosophy that rejects, without ceremony, principles which irresistibly govern the belief and the conduct of all mankind in the common concerns of life; and to which the philosopher himself must yield, after he imagines he hath confuted them. Such principles are older, and of more authority, than Philosophy: she rests upon them as her basis, not they upon her.29

38 The sceptical attitude disassociates knowledge from action; it separates the immediate end and immediately practical, which makes the knowledge, or this type of knowledge, a means of action, a means without which action is quite simply unrealisable. However, man doted with common sense believes in the existence of the earth because he lives there; he believes in his friends because they are a source of joys and pleasures; in the same manner, he possesses the house and furniture in which he lives and for which there is no practical reason to doubt in their existence, etc.

39 It is thus the ordinary relation – daily reiterated, confirmed and consolidated – of given forms of action and experience which allow the indubitable character of the world to be placed. The exteriority and reality of the world without which action is quite simply impossible. From there, and from the point of view of common sense, experience and action are conducts which support each other to accomplish their movements and arrive at their ends, at a reality from which they proceed and of which there is no

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reason to doubt. The age and authority of these principles – “the belief and the conduct of all mankind in the common affairs of life” – are the foundation of all practical knowledge, and, as the last citation suggests, should equally be so for philosophy.

40 Thence, the sceptical attitude, embodied by Berkeley and radicalised by Hume, installs an insuperable breach between the two domains – that of practical knowledge and that of philosophy understood here as science –; the major consequence is the impossible affirmation, from the point of view of reason, of the reality of the exterior world and the human mind: […] and as the Bishop (Berkeley) undid the whole material world, this author (Hume) upon the same grounds, undoes the world of spirits, and leaves nothing in nature but ideas and impressions, without any subject on which they may be impressed.30

41 The conclusion of this reasoning is this: if one adopts the attitude of sceptical philosophy, of which Hume would be the most complete expression according to Reid, two worlds find themselves resolutely separated, no longer allowing common sense to take hold. On one side, there would be men acting, motivated and directed by unfounded beliefs in a common and ordinary, but illusory, world. On the other side, there would be philosophers who strive to found in reason what could be the reality of an exterior world and which is forever out of their reach.

42 What Reid’s thesis shows, is that there really is, on one hand, a world of common sense where the experiences of perception and human actions daily come to confirm its external reality and consistence, and on the other hand, a world of sceptical philosophy, of which the illegitimately extended usage of reason leads to making the external world into something elusive and inaccessible, and thus reducing common experiences and beliefs into nothing but vain fancies.31

43 In that, the sceptical attitude is really that which destroys the world, the mind, and the identity of the subject. In that, equally, to return to common sense, to restore the legitimacy and the legality of its domain, is to prove the sophist character of an attitude of knowledge which, in the name of excessive pretensions bearing on the powers of reason, separates that which is “irresistibly” linked: to act and to believe by the intermediary of the senses, in the reality of the exterior world.

44 In that, therefore, the philosophy of common sense such as it is here claimed by Reid, is really the condition of the possible reconstruction of a certain realism: that of the world of ordinary life, that of vital relationships between knowledge and practices, that of sequences that are reiterated between experiences of knowledge as resources “in view of” human action and conservation.

45 The rehabilitation of common sense appears in Reid as the occasion to reveal the idealist character of the sceptical posture which renders the world unreal – by the criticism of matter in Berkeley – and casts into doubt as far as the very existence of a subject of perception – by the reduction of the real in the world of impressions and ideas in Hume.

46 Scepticism is thus to Reid an idealism, since it manages to destroy even the evidence of the reality of the exterior world without which there is no conservation of a “self.” It poses as problematic the general form of a stable relationship between the world of common sense and the world of critical or philosophical knowledge, which comes back to saying that the sceptical attitude renders the two worlds incommensurable, that of practice and common sense, and that of academic knowledge and science.

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47 If the question of the specific interpretation of the sceptical theses of Hume is put to one side it will be accorded, therefore, that the problematic of common sense such as it is formulated in Reid, at least in that which we have retained here, allows a triple result: (1) revealing the fallacious character of the question of realism where it raises a certain philosophical attitude; (2) giving back a hold to practice and action for which a certain type of knowledge is indispensable and legitimate; (3) restoring the unity, that is to say the effectiveness of the relationship between the domain of common sense and the domain of science which the paradigmatic example remains, in the eyes of this Scot, that of Newton.

48 I wish to show that some of the considerations of John Dewey on common sense can be situated in a comparable manner. Put another way, taking account of the fashion in which the statement of this question finds part of its pertinence in the criticism of a philosophical attitude which is that of “intellectualism,” and which is supported by the reconsideration of the nature of experience and its relation to knowledge.

Common Sense Against Intellectualism

49 In the first chapter of Experience and Nature,32 Dewey attaches himself to the distinction of what he terms “philosophical method” from “empirical method.” What is at stake in this comparison is the aptitude of these methods to take account of experience, all experience and all experiences. By “intellectualism” as an indictment is meant the theory that all experiencing is a mode of knowing, and that all subject-matter, all nature, is, in principle, to be reduced and transformed till it is defined in terms identical with the characteristics presented by refined objects of science as such. The assumption of “intellectualism” goes contrary to the facts of what is primarily experienced. For things are objects to be treated, used, acted upon and with, enjoyed and endured, even more than things to be known. They are things had before they are things cognized.33

50 The accusation of intellectualism thus designates a precise theoretical gesture: the fact of having an experience finds itself assigned to the exclusive function of knowledge and “things,” which, in the ordinary course of experience, are also “means” or “instruments” for action, implied in the sensations, affections and wishes, which find themselves, by an effect of posture, reduced to the status of an “object” of knowledge. This reduction operates on two levels: it transforms the “thing” into an object for knowledge; it brings back the content of the experience to the status of an exclusive instrument of knowledge.34 Which therefore implies that: When intellectual experience and its material are taken to be primary, the cord that binds experience and nature is cut.35

51 Experience so understood thus introduces a breach with nature. It renders the activity of knowledge foreign to nature and makes nature into an exteriority which always escapes experience, with which it has no relations. The relation “act – be affected by,” which is the first form of the relation of exchange between nature and an organism, certainly contains a dimension which is originally cognitive, but this is not however always already an effective knowledge.36 The problem, for the “empirical philosopher” will be to understand how it can become one in the movement itself of experience. So as not to break the continuum “nature/experience” and to avoid supernatural explanations, good philosophical method must therefore admit that cognition is only one dimension amongst others of the fact of experiencing.

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52 However the breach “nature” – “experience,” which is the fact of the intellectualist posture, brings with it other consequences which return to the question of common sense. We are thus exposed to disregarding other dimensions of reality of the world which we experience: When real objects are identified, point for point, with knowledge-objects, all affectional and volitional objects are inevitably excluded from the “real” world, and are compelled to find refuge in the privacy of an experiencing subject or mind.37

53 In effect, the primacy accorded to reason leads to the ignorance of what the most ordinary experiences do, within which are implied affectivity, will, etc.: But in ordinary matters and in scientific inquiries, we always retain the sense that the material chosen is selected for a purpose; there is no idea of denying what is left out, for what is omitted is merely that which is not relevant to the particular problem and purpose in hand.38

54 The posture of the intellectualist philosopher is built upon the disqualification of a whole world of experience which is also the world of common sense, at least, a world where the question of knowledge is not posed as an end in itself.

55 Passing from the “philosophical method” to the “empirical method” in the sense already given, is not to make a difference of nature between the posture of the “philosopher” that John Dewey designates by the expression of “empirical philosophy,”39 that of the “scientist” and that of the “ordinary man.” That community of nature engages in the same way, the agent implied in a concrete or practical action, the scientist and/or technician leading an enquiry to experiment certain types of consequence in a situation deliberately chosen and constructed, and finally the philosopher, who pretends to identify the specificity of knowledge for itself.

56 In every case, the choices thus operated do not equivalate to the denial of that which is put aside from reality. This is still partially determined, that is to say valorised, by a type of sought outcome. From there, the constitution of an “empirical philosophy” cannot rest upon the radicalisation of the breach between experience and nature because such a breach envelopes, in the same gesture, all that which separates the domain of common sense from that of science.

57 If in Reid, the direct confrontation of the sceptical attitude with the conduct of common sense allows the display of the manner in which scepticism leads illegitimately to rendering the world unreal, the world of things and matter in Berkeley, that of conscience and identity in Hume, in Dewey the criticism of intellectualism allows the display of the manner in which this attitude drives out a whole part of reality, notably by the ontological disqualification of everything which ordinarily is made of experience, of everything that commonly supports the movement of our actions. To encapsulate, everything that bears upon “ordinary matters.”

58 Intellectualism is therefore an idealism that subsumes a trait or a character of real experience to make of it the of all experience. And as an idealism, it disqualifies the domain of common sense which, from that fact, remains bogged down in a world that is ontologically incomplete, unfinished and devalued, since it does not conform to that which is posed from the point of view of reason.

59 As James says in defining “rational fallacy”: The rationalist’s fallacy here is exactly like the sentimentalist’s. Both extract a quality from the muddy particulars of experience, and find it so pure when

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extracted that they contrast it with each and all its muddy instances as an opposite and higher nature. All the while it is their nature.40

60 The critique of the intellectualist attitude allows the adoption of the “empirical method” precisely because it starts from experience, all experience, and returns to experience. It is the only method which permits the positive consideration of “common sense” as a domain of reality which is experienced. But this rehabilitation does not aim at common sense such as it is. Making it the object of the empiric method thus supposes that it be put in relationship, related to, notably through , with science.

61 It is thus that it can be admitted that the scientist, to make his inquiry, makes deliberate choices, which does not at all mean that he denies the reality of that which he puts to one side. Just as the man of common sense accesses a type of practical knowledge linked to an end, itself also practical, and of which the articulation means/ end leads to other choices. Is only the philosopher, or at least one that adopts the intellectual attitude, is to be dispensed from such conduct, instituting his choices in a “pure” and “absolute” reality?41

62 In the essay “Common Sense and Science: Their Respective Frames of References,” Dewey takes the example of water to show all the multiplicity of “references” engaged in the multiplicity of experiences bearing on these “ordinary matters”: How, for example, should the water of direct and familiar acquaintance (as distinct from H2O of the scientific frame) be described save as that which quenches thirst, cleanses the body and soiled articles, in which one swims, which may drown us, which supports boats, which as rain furthers growth of crops, which in contemporary community life runs machinery, including locomotives, etc.?42

63 To experience, to act, supposes therefore really choices through the bias of a “selective emphasis.”43 That which is retained or put to the side is different because it is always directed by different interests to reply to different goals. It is in that that the three attitudes, of the ordinary man, the scientist, and the philosopher, should be compared. They are part of a common “ethology.”44

64 The reduction of the thing to an object of knowledge is thus acceptable, for the philosopher, as for the scientist, on the double condition of not forgetting that it is a case here of a valorisation which answers to a choice and that that choice always implies the exclusion of other “characteristics,”45 other determinations of the thing and therefore other elements of the real which can be experienced. In the frame of another type of experience, and of another attitude, that which has previously been removed will be retained as “indispensable” and as equally “real,” (LW 1: 31).

65 If it is to be found that in the course of ordinary experiences, this principle of selection, often ignored, does not lend itself to consequence because of the diversity of interests which are given to things, it is not the same for philosophy which, again emphasises Dewey, proves itself to have a regressive attachment to that particular moment of experience which is that of its dimension of knowledge, (LW 1: 31).

66 The “empirical method” (LW 1: 34), analogically constituted on the model of experimental empiricism, thus renders explicit the consequences which result from a “choice,” will reconstruct the singularity of the path which goes from this choice until the obtained result, and will test the relative value of it.46

67 Critical demands belonging to the empirical method which permit the validation of its exactitude, therefore redirect the movement of knowledge towards the elucidation of the course of ordinary experience:

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What empirical method exacts of philosophy is two things: First, that refined methods and products be traced back to their origin in primary experience, in all its heterogeneity and fullness; so that the needs and problems out of which they arise and which they have to satisfy be acknowledged. Secondly, that the secondary methods and conclusions be brought back to the things of ordinary experience, in all their coarseness and crudity, for verification.47

68 The empirical method, in philosophy, should permit the reestablishment of the continuity between knowledge and the ordinary course of experience, or, as he says several pages late: There is a special service which the study of philosophy may render. Empirically pursued it will not be a study of philosophy but a study, by means of philosophy, of life-experience.48

69 The “empirical method,” in its experimentalist dimension, thus becomes again a means, an instrument, and not, as in the intellectualist attitude, a finality which expects to relive philosophically problems which are philosophical or for philosophers. It is indeed in this reversal that the passage from one to the other of philosophical attitudes resides, a passage which thus permits making of “ordinary matters” and the domain of common sense a privileged object of all philosophy.

Between Common Sense and Science: The Demand for an Attitude of Control

Science is not Independent of Common Sense in Reid

70 Analysis of the relationships and implications between science and common sense is not a specific object of Reid’s critical approach; however, scattered considerations can be found there which permit the defining, by omission, of certain principles of that analysis.

71 If common sense could act as a critical proof with regard to the sceptical attitude,49 if the man of common sense is gifted with dispositions which permit him, spontaneously or through education, to resist doubt when he is engaged in the affairs of ordinary life – and he is permanently – disqualification of scepticism does not ipso facto bring with it the disqualification of science. Between the two domains, there exist more than one possible continuity. In the introductory chapter to his Inquiry, Reid recalls that the inferential and inductive procedure which allowed Newton to establish the laws of gravitation is analogous to that which is employed in the reasoning of common sense.50 Without doubt it must be added, in a formulation which this time I borrow from Dewey, that: in fact science practiced today began only when the work was refined and extended by adoption of material devices and technological operations.51

72 Sciences intervenes as an instrumental mediation which has as a possible consequence the invention and the construction of new systems of observation, which come to modify, enlarge, and extend the capacities of experimentation of that which is given in the universe of common sense, at least at first.

73 This modified continuity of the relationship between common sense and philosophy52 is emphasised. It is implied in a recurrent fashion in Inquiry, where notably the faculties

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of perception are analysed and the distinction of principle between “sensation” and “quality” is posed. An example amongst others: It is the business of philosophers to investigate, by proper experiments and induction, what heat and cold are in bodies; […] these questions are within the province of philosophy; for common sense says nothing on the one side or the other.53

74 So philosophy intervenes as a prolongation of certain experiences of common sense, even if the questions that they pose are not its own. This disjuncture between the two types of questioning is not however a breach. To say nothing about the “qualities” of hot and cold in the body does not forbid a practical and reasoned usage of our perceptions of hot and cold and, therefore, guidance of a number of actions and experiences partly determined by such “qualities.”

75 Even if the question is not drawn immediately from what common sense could have to say, it can be estimated however that for the actions and experiences that operate in the world of common sense, there is indeed something to do with the answer given to this question.

76 Forcing himself to identify what these qualities consist of, from the point of view of the natural philosopher, indeed remains for Reid a specific and distinct preoccupation, but the practical implications – that is to say the consequences – linked with the responses brought by science to these questions, have something to do with the domain of common sense and can modify it.

77 This point is explicitly affirmed by Reid who, with regard to sight and perception in general, reminds us in these terms of the relationships between “common understanding” and “science”: The more obvious conclusions drawn from our perceptions, by reason, make what we call common understanding; by which men conduct themselves in the common affairs of life, and by which they are distinguished from idiots. The more remote conclusions which are drawn from our perceptions, by reason, make what we commonly call science in the various parts of nature, whether in agriculture, medicine, mechanics, or any part of natural philosophy.54

78 The distinction between the two understandings permits the identification of two types of complementary reasoning. On one hand, that of the man of the common sense which is borne by the epistemology of practical evidence: the inference there is brief, directly articulated to the realisation of a practical end, to the way in which the artisan seeks to modify his practice in view of obtaining a subsequent result which has to be improved. The evidence is thereby borne by the fact of a perception and a realisation conferred by practice which is easily verifiable and adjustable.

79 On this level, the limit is not between illusion or the falsehood of a belief and the truth of the point of view of philosophy, it is between the possibility of sane judgement and faulty judgement or idiocy (Inquiry, VI, 20, ibid.). Reid recalls this once more when he evokes the belief accorded to the information given us by nature: And now when I reflect upon what is past, I do not find that I have been imposed upon by this belief. I find, that without it I must have perished by a thousand accidents. I find, that without it I should have been no wiser now than when I was born.55

80 The frontier which permits to thus mark out this epistemology of the evidence is brought by the taking into consideration of the consequences that the beliefs which support it permit to produce or to avoid. The evidence is only the statement on an

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epistemological level of the operative and primary character of the anthropological principal of conservation.

81 On the other hand, the growth of the distances covered by inductive inference and the indirect character of the results associated with it allow the domain of understanding of science to be defined. It distinguishes itself from common understanding as does close from far, as does the immediate from the mediate.

82 These distinctions underline the complementarity that is found in the listing of diverse sciences coming from the domain of science: agriculture, medicine, etc. The growth of knowledge is thus not without effect upon the common world of experience and human conducts.

83 While Reid does not say so explicitly, it can nonetheless be understood, here, that the development of the arts and sciences is indeed a general factor in the improvement of the conditions of life in society. The two understandings, being distinct, are therefore no less linked together: the forms of the ordinary practice of men of common sense are influenced and modified by the enlargement of knowledge produced by the sciences.

84 The question thus bounded by the means of the distinction of understandings allows the recognition of all the positive side of a knowledge borne by observation and experience.56 A knowledge which, in its turn, produces fortunate effects – civilisation, notably – upon the ordinary conduct of life.

85 So there is no reason to think that, in Reid, the practical and continuous reference to common sense in the ordinary course of human actions and experiences as a practical mode of verification of the value of beliefs to consequences produced by the spontaneous character of the “attitude” of resistance to doubt leads towards a substantial conception of common sense and its domain.

86 The evocation of the relationships between common sense and science, the recognition of the progress of knowledge, largely display the dynamic character of the domains of common sense and of science. The naturalist argument that here supports a part of the Reidian epistemology of the evidence is thus not in contradiction with a certain historical reading of the contents and the limits of the world of common sense.

The Necessary Control of Interactions Between Science and Common Sense in Dewey

87 As I have since the start of this study, I will limit my subject to the question of attitudes of knowledge. It has been shown that it is not on the level of “logic”57 that the methods of knowledge coming from common sense and science can be distinguished. From this point of view, it suffices to “unify” them once more (LW 12: 84) for this is the paradigm of the inquiry which prevails both here and there.

88 This continuity, thus underlined by the logical unity of the investigatory method, is equally supported by another common property: in the domains of common sense and science, it is “human affairs.” I begin by saying that however the case stands, they are not to be distinguished from one another on the ground that science is not a human concern, affair, occupation.58

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89 This community of nature should be enough to make it understood that in reality common sense and science are always effectively linked together. To talk of the autonomisation of the sciences is therefore an error: A part of the problem involved (an important part) being how it happened that the which began a few short centuries ago has had as one outcome a general failure to recognize science as itself an important human concern, so that, as already remarked, it is often treated as a peculiar sort of entity on its own account.59

90 So the question is not so much of independence than of the explanation of the real dependence which exists between the two domains and, by way of consequence, the reasons for which such a dependence, whilst being acknowledged, is not truly perceived.

91 To reply to these questions is to understand that it is important to be conscious of the necessary character of this dependence on one hand, and on the other, to make of this necessity, not something which imposes itself as a fatum but something upon which one should be able to act, something which can be oriented more deliberately, that is say consciously or knowingly.

92 To render explicit the relationship of dependence that is necessary between the dynamic of science and the development of consequences upon and in the domain of common sense is thus to adopt a point of view which is not longer only that of epistemology; it is also to recognise that the question is equally moral and political.

93 In this sense, the attitudes of knowledge which determine these different domains are attitudes which must be oriented by values.60 The ethology of conducts of knowledge envelope in one same and sole orientation the whole of these epistemological, methodological, ethical and political demands.

94 The apparent autonomisation of dynamics, which rests upon the separation of the domains of common sense and science, should therefore be historically justified to be able to envisage the practical and political means for a reunification. This is the sense that it is possible to give to this practical demand for control: to link together the domains and reunify the dynamics or act upon the manner in which relationships are formed between science and common sense.

95 But to speak here of apparent autonomisation does not signify that there is not, historically factors which have permitted, beyond all functional distinction, the detachment of the two domains. As he often does, Dewey returns to what has marked, from the start, the manner in which the separation operated between an activity of knowledge posed as pure and detached from all implication in ordinary life, and an ensemble of practical activities, riveted to the demands of life, to the demands of change;61 and how that distinction has progressively corresponded to the ontological disqualification of practical knowledge vis-a-vis theoretical knowledge.

96 Notably, Dewey comes back to the emergence and consolidation of specialised groups having a special vocation in the domains of knowledge for its own sake.62 The distinction of a necessary social division of labour emerges: Scientific inquiry as a particular kind of work is engaged in by a group of persons who have undergone a highly specialized training to fit them for doing that particular kind of work.63

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97 The division widens until it poses the activity of knowledge as a distinctive mark, “a self-enclosed entity.”64 From there, it can find in itself the mainspring of its own development and, thus, give the appearance of complete autonomy.

98 All which precedes does not however come back to affirming that the dynamics of common sense and science must cover each other. It is not at all a case of defending an idealistic position which would have as its counterpart the disqualification of science as such.65 It is a case of understanding that the demand for control rests principally upon just appreciation and valorisation of their distinction: (T)hey are not to be distinguished from one another on the ground that science is not a human concern, affair, occupation. For that is what it decidedly is. The issue to be discussed is that of the kind of concern or care which marks off scientific activity from those forms of human behaviour that fall within the scope of common sense.66

99 If, in both cases the attitudes of “doing” and “knowing” prevail as much as each other, it remains that their articulation differs and that for science, the attitudes are deployed with the motive of advancing the “system of knowings” and the “system of knowns.”67 Which should not lead us to forget that: (W)hat science is of is about what common sense subject-matter is of, (and that this fact) is disguised from ready recognition when science becomes so highly developed that the immediate subject of inquiry consists of what has previously been found out. 68

100 Several factors lead thence to see as radically autonomous and separate that which stems from the dynamic of the sciences. There is the fact that the growth of specialisation nourishes by itself the demand for knowledge: it is a case of replying to the demands belonging to the results, which are always provisional, of the inquiry that is in course. If the movement is envisaged in its temporal continuity, then that which precedes implies a part of that which will succeed it.

101 The articulation of the present and the future is, at least in part, borne by the fact that the given and actual state of a type of knowledge conditions the future and potential development of the knowledge. This is what the use emphasised by Dewey here of adverbs of time such as “immediately” and “previously” suggests. This internal and external dimension of the progress of knowledge, for science, should not mask the fact that the point of departure remains that of “common sense subject-matter(s).”

102 To this first fact is added another which is determinant. There are always specific interests of knowledge, and these interests are neither general nor universal. Because knowing scientifically is a fundamentally human affair, it is erroneous and dangerous to believe that scientific growth did not develop in the perspective of primordially human affairs.

103 The problems that are chosen to be resolved, in a word, the interests of knowledge, do not emerge in a contingent manner; they are tributary to circumstances and relationships of strength. Because the problems to be resolved do not select themselves, there is really a specific direction given to the development of knowledge and the organisation of the inquiries which are linked to it. Inquiries are thus influenced in their orientation and their achievement by human factors and dominant interests.69

104 There are thus indeed relationships between science and human affairs, between the interests of science and the interests of the group. These are precisely the relations

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which are masked and it is there that resides, for Dewey, the philosophical nature of the problem of relationships between common sense and sciences: In any case, it is harmful as well as stupid to refuse to note that scientific knowing is one human concern growing out of and returning into other more primary human concerns. […] There is, then, a problem that is of philosophical concern in this matter of the relation of the concerns of common sense and of science with each other.70

105 From there, the difficulty is really that which consists of admitting that although science finds its origin in the of activities of common sense, its return is not evident. As Kennedy reminds us in his gloss, “Science takes its departure from common sense but the return road has been blocked.”71

106 The autonomisation of dynamics is therefore not real, that of science is really determined by private interests and the whole philosophical and political question is to socialise the interests in the name of which such a dynamic of development of scientific knowledge can be reorientated. Here is the perfectly explicit statement of the moral and political problem which is raised by the articulation between common sense and science from the point of view of attitudes of knowledge: The problem, then, concerns the possibility of giving direction to this return-wave so as to minimize evil consequences and to intensify and extend good consequences, and, if it is possible, to find out how such return is to be accomplished.72

107 The political question is thus double: firstly, it supposes the explicitness, historically and empirically, of the particular interests which direct the problems treated and the inquiries put in place. It means avowing the always-dependent character of the progress of that knowledge, and making appear the relationship between attitudes of knowledge and the accomplishment of situated and private particular interests. Even knowledge for its own sake is a situated knowledge which envelopes the taking into account of conditions of space and time which make of its progress a specifically oriented progress.

108 It is a case, next, starting from a non-idealistic and non-moralising concept of the development of science, of showing that it is not the principle itself of the relationship of all knowledge with specific interests that must be condemned or brought into question. It is an enlargement or socialisation of interests that must be achieved so as to not block the “return-wave” in the direction of common sense.

109 Such a socialisation being finally one of the essential conditions to rediscover that which equally defines the attitude of scientific knowledge, its liberative power: The liberative outcome of the abstraction that is supremely manifested in scientific activity is the transformation of the affairs of common sense concern which has come about through the vast return wave of the methods and conclusions of scientific concern into the uses and enjoyments (and sufferings) of everyday affairs; together with an accompanying transformation of judgment and of the emotional affections, preferences, and aversions of everyday human beings.73

110 The problem of common sense and the paths of its controlled transformation thus reside in the extension of the interests which support the development of knowledge in the domain of the sciences, and in the manner of generalising the interests in the name of which such a domain develops. It is only in this context that the knowledge allows its liberative power to be shared.

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111 The problem is thus not only philosophical, it is political and practical. It supposes a transformation in the organisation of society which brings back into cause the private character of the interests which support the development of science.

112 Because the affairs of science are human affairs, because the control of the conditions in which men act and make experiments is the only path to take with the direction of improvement of the conditions of life, the completely academic question of interactions between “common sense” and “science” should be reformulated in the terms of a practical question.

113 This question engages, on one hand, the elucidation of the respective attitudes of knowledge in terms of what they have in common and in how they are distinct, and on the other hand, reaffirms the political necessity to orientate the flux of the “return- wave” towards the shared transformation of the “world,” that is to say of the “common sense environment.”74

To Conclude…

114 The pragmatist analysis of common sense in Dewey that we have proposed does not pretend to synthesise all the problems that it raises. It seems to us enlightening, on one hand, to show that a certain number of the preoccupations that define the approach of Dewey, are echoed in the tradition of Anglo-Scottish modern empiricism.

115 In this sense the comparison with Reid should not be understood as a historiographical effort to reconstruct a lineage – the criticisms levelled by Dewey towards modern empiricism are sufficiently recurrent to avoid this error.

116 It aims rather, by a methodological alignment, to indicate a certain convergence of preoccupations. It is starting from the ethos of knowledge that it seems possible to understand how the test of common sense permits the relativisation of the critical pretensions of the sceptical attitude, and to avow the illegitimate pretension of the intellectualist attitude.

117 In both cases, this test was also the occasion for a requalification of reason which must be admitted to support all experiment, whether it be implicated in the practical movement of actions “in view of” or in the specific form of an activity of knowledge for itself. Common sense, realism, and attitudes of knowledge thus support an approach in terms of relationships which I think I have shown it is possible to find traces of in Reid.

118 It is thus possible to understand, starting from this, that the problem of common sense cannot be separated from that of the qualification of the relationships that it holds with science and its development. From there, the question of the attitude of knowledge must be linked together with that of the interests of knowledge. The question is not only raised from epistemology, it implies a moral and political range and makes, now, of the world of common sense, that which should be reconstructed as the complete and integral destination of the “return-wave.”

119 It is just because the environment of common sense is not the destination of progress in the sciences that it finds itself transformed without the flux which transforms it being truly controlled so as to make it the occasion for a larger and shared improvement of the ordinary conditions of life and experience.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BENTLEY A. & John DEWEY, ([1949] 1991), “Common Sense and Science,” in John Dewey, chapter 10, LW 16, Ann Boydston (ed.), Introduction T. Z. Lavine, Nagel, Southern Illinois University Press, 242-s.

DEWEY John, ([1899] 1986), “Consciousness and Experience,” The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 1, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (MW 1).

DEWEY John, (1905), “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 11 (15), in The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 3, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (MW 3), 158-67.

DEWEY John, (1910; 1933), How We Think?, The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 12, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, MW 12; The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 8, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 8).

DEWEY John, (1910), The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays, The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 6, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (MW 6).

DEWEY John, ([1925] 1981), Experience and Nature, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 1, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 1).

DEWEY John, (1927-46), The Public and its Problems, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 2, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 2).

DEWEY John, ([1929] 2008), The Quest for Certainty, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 4, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 4).

DEWEY John, ([1938] 1991), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 12, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, ( (LW 12).

DEWEY John, ([1939] 1991), The Theory of Valuation, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 13, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 13).

DEWEY John, (1948a), “Common Sense and Science: Their Respective Frames of Reference,” The Journal of Philosophy, 45, 8.

DEWEY John, (1948b), Essay “The Revolt Against Science,” The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 15, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 15).

DEWEY John, (1949), The Knowing and the Known, The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 16, J. A. Boydston, ed., Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, (LW 16).

HUME David, ([1739-40] 2007), A Treatise of Human Nature : A Critical Edition, David Fate Norton & Mary J. Norton (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press (“The Clarendon Edition of Works of ”).

HUME David, ([1748] 1999), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Tom L. Beauchamp (ed.), Oxford, Oxford University Press (“Oxford Philosophical Texts”).

HUME David, ([1779] 2007), Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and Other Writings, Dorothy Coleman (ed.), Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press (“Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy”).

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JAMES William, (1907; 1975), “Pragmatism and Common Sense,” Pragmatism, The Works of William James, Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, Vol. 1.

KENNEDY Gail, (1954), “Science and the Transformation of Common Sense: The Basic Problem of Dewey’s Philosophy,” The Journal of Philosophy, 51, 11, May 27.

MILL John-Stuart, (1994 [1843]), The Logic of the Moral Sciences, Open Court Publishing Company, USA.

REID Thomas, (1764; 1995; 2015), An Inquiry Into The Human Mind of The Principles of Common Sense, The Edition of Thomas Reid, Derek R. Brooks (ed.), Oxford, Oxford University Press.

RENAULT Emmanuel, (2015), “Dewey et la connaissance comme expérience. Sens et enjeux de la distinction entre ‘cognitive,’ ‘cognitional’ et ‘cognized’ ou ‘known’,” Philosophical Inquiries. Revue des Philosophies anglophones, Vol. 5, 19-43.

SEGREST Scott Philipp, (2009), America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense, “The Eric Voegelin Series in Political Philosophy,” Columbia and London, University of Missouri Press.

SOMERVILLE James, (1987), “Reid’s Conception of Common Sense,” The Monist, Oct. 1, 70-4.

NOTES

1. For example, it can be considered that the analysis proposed by How We Think? (MW 12: 77-s.; LW 8: 105-s.) in Chapter 15 “From the Concrete to the Abstract” (LW 8: 193-s.) directly implies the question of common sense: 196 especially. 2. Dewey (LW 12, I: 7-102). As well (LW 4: 8). “The Naturalization of Intelligence,” 156-s., 9. “The Supremacy of Method,” 178-s. 3. Dewey (LW 13, IV). “Propositions of Appraisal,” 208-s. 4. See Segrest 2009. 5. Dewey (LW 12: 66-85). 6. Dewey, (1948a: 197-208). 7. Bentley & Dewey 1949, in Dewey (1991: chapter 10, LW 16: 242-s.). 8. Dewey (MW 6, “Preface”: ix-xii); Essay “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy”: 17-8. 9. Dewey (MW 1: 122). 10. “In the concerns of common sense knowing is as necessary, as important, as in those of science. But knowing is there, for the sake of agenda the what and the how of which have to be studied and to be learned – in short, known in order that the necessary affairs of every day life be carried on.” (LW 16, my emphasizes). 11. Scot Ph. Segrest 2009, already cited, thus shows the important role which figures such as John Witherspoon (1723-94) and James McCosh (1811-94) played in the importation and appropriation of Scottish Common Sense in America. (Segrest 2009: 3. “Witherspoon’s ‘Plain Common Sense’,” 64- s.; 4. “McCosh’s Scientific Intuitionism,” 101-s.) Starting from an analysis of the corpus of William James, he gives an account of the connection between this tradition of common sense and the first pragmatism (Segrest 2009: 3-s. and 5. “The Common Sense Basis of James’s Pragmatic Radical Empiricism,” 133-s.). 12. See, for example, James 1907: “Pragmatism and Common Sense” in Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, in 1975: Pragmatism, The Works of William James. 13. For a first approach to the different significances of the occurrences of “common sense” in Thomas Reid, see Somerville (1987: 418-29). 14. So as to take up the typology proposed by James (1907), Pragmatism, Lecture VI “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth,” in The Works of William James, 1: 109-s.

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15. The expression employed by Dewey, notably in (1948: 207-s.; LW 16: 255), with regard to this “return” of consequence – from the domain of science towards that of common sense – is that of the “return-wave.” 16. The designation of this “domain” leads to real terminological proliferation in the articles of Dewey. So, just to take the example of “Common Sense and Science: Their Respective Frames of References” (LW 16: 242-57), Dewey talks of “traits of Common Sense,” of “subjects-matters of Common Sense,” but also of “Common Sense frame,” of “framework of Common Sense,” etc. He also talks of “domain.” It is this last term that I retain here. 17. “Such (common sense) inquiries are, accordingly, different from those which have knowledge as their goal. The attainment of knowledge of some things is necessarily involved in common sense inquiries, but it occurs for the sake of settlement of some issue of use and enjoyment, and not, as in scientific inquiry, for its own sake,” LW 12: 66-7. 18. In the same way, I won’t enter here the discussion of knowing if the Reidian reading of Hume is exact. It would be possible to show, that from many angles, the objections made to Hume’s scepticism can be nuanced, and that Hume is not that far from the demands of a methodological scepticism founded upon a reading that insists as much on the articulation necessary between the principles of practical life and philosophical knowledge. I’d use as a proof this citation, amongst others, that is found in the First Part of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: “That the larger experience we acquire, and the stronger reason we are endowed with, we always render our principles the more general and comprehensive; and that what we call philosophy is nothing but a more regular and methodical operation of the same kind. To philosophize on such subjects is nothing essentially different from reasoning on common life.” Hume (2007 [1779], Part I: 10; my emphasis). 19. “The true line of philosophic progress lies, in short, it seems to me, not so much through Kant as round him to the point where now we stand. Philosophy can perfectly well outflank him, and build herself up into adequate fullness by prolonging more directly the older English lines.” (James 1975 [1907], Vol. 1, Pragmatism, Appendixes, I “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” 269; my emphasis). 20. Reid (1995; 2015). From now: Inquiry. 21. Inquiry, Introduction: 1. “The Importance of the Subject, and the Means of Prosecuting It,” 11-2. My emphasis. 22. “Philosophy” in this text is used in a broad sense in which it also covers science. 23. Inquiry: Ibid.: 12. My emphasis. 24. “But if this impossibility of explaining ultimate principles shou’d be esteem’d a defect in the science of man, I will venture to affirm, tha ‘tis a defect common to it with all the sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, whether they be shops of the meanest artizans. None of them can go beyond experience, or establish any principles which are not founded on that authority.” Hume, (2007 [1739-40], Vol. 1, § 10: 5-6). 25. Inquiry: Introduction, 3. “The Present State of this Part of Philosophy. Of Des Cartes, Malebranche, and Locke,” 16; my emphasis. 26. Inquiry: Ibid.: 16; my emphasis. 27. Still with regard to Descartes, “But why didn’t he prove the existence of his thought (‘I think, therefore I exist’)? You may say ‘Consciousness assures him of that.’ But who assures him that consciousness is truthful? Can any man prove that his consciousness can’t deceive him? No man can; and we can’t give a better reason for trusting consciousness than that every man, while his mind is sound, is caused by the constitution of his nature to believe it unquestioningly, and to laugh at or pity anyone who doubts its testimony,” Ibid. 28. Inquiry: 17-8; my emphasis. 29. Inquiry: Introduction, V. “Of Bishop Berkeley; the Treatise of Human Nature; and of Scepticism,” 21.

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30. Inquiry: 20. Here again, it is not a question of discussing Reid’s reading of Hume. A number of considerations close to this can be found. Quite simply because Reid refuses to make a distinction between a excessive scepticism – that which he talks of – and a mitigated scepticism, at least, methodologically contained which can also be understood as a principle of epistemological vigilance. See, on this point, the distinction proposed by Hume (1999 [1748], 12). “Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy,” 200-2. 31. “That the votaries of this Philosophy, from a natural prejudice in her favour, have endeavoured to extend her jurisdiction beyond its just limits, and to call to her bar the dictates of Common Sense,” Inquiry, I. Introduction, 4. “Apology for Those Philosophers,” 19; my emphasis. 32. Dewey LW 1, I. “Experience and Philosophic Method,” 10-s. 33. LW 1: 28; my emphasis. 34. See Dewey (1905), “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism,” in MW 3: 158-67. 35. LW 1: 29; my emphasis. 36. See Renault (2015: 19-44). 37. LW 1: 30. My emphasis. 38. LW 1: 31. My emphasis. 39. See LW 1: 40; 61; etc. 40. James ([1907] 1975, Lecture VI: 110; my emphasis). De facto, he poses the same question on the distinction between “pragmatism” and “intellectualism.” 41. Unity of attitude thus sustained by the exigency of a common method in the three domains, which is of the enquiry: “The attainment of unified method means that the fundamental unity of the structure of inquiry in common sense and science be recognized, their difference being one in the problems with which they are directly concerned, not to their respective .”(LW 12: 84; my emphasis). 42. LW 16: 245. 43. LW 1: 34. 44. I’m speaking here of “ethology” in the sense where in his System of Logic (1843), more precisely in Book IV “The Logic of the Moral Sciences,” poses the principle of an ethological science which, as it articulates between the general psychological laws of the human mind on one hand, and on the other historical and empirical regularities, confers to the study of characters the function of linking the psychological level and the empirical level. (See Mill, 1994; see 5. “Of Ethology, or the Science of the Formation of Character,” 61-s.) As such it is an analysis of “dispositions.” By , I am speaking here of an ethology to designate the common ethos which must link together the attitudes of the scientist, the ordinary man, and the philosopher. Here again the emphasis is placed on the aspects of a certain ethos. 45. LW 1: 30. 46. Emphasised here – without going any further – is the community of preoccupation: the demand for the reconstruction of philosophy in Dewey implied the methodological of the model of the inquiry such as it operated in the universe of the experimental sciences of his time. Just as the search for greater scientific rigour, in Bourdieu, supposed leaving behind the generalist and complacent gestures of a certain fashionable philosophy, and implied, in his eyes, turning towards positive science which could be sociology and/or anthropology. 47. LW 1: 39. 48. LW 1: 41. 49. On philosophy: “Thus, the wisdom of philosophy is set in opposition to the common sense of mankind. The first pretends to demonstrate a priori, that there can be no such thing as a material world; that sun, moon, stars, and earth, vegetable and animal bodies, are, and can be nothing else, but sensations in the mind, or images of those sensations in the memory and imagination; […] This opposition betwist philosophy and common sense, is apt to have a very unhappy influence upon the philosopher himself. […] He considers himself, and the rest of his species, as

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born under a necessity of believing ten thousand absurdities and contradictions, and endowed with a pittance of reason, as is just sufficient to make this unhappy discovery […].” Inquiry, V, 7. “Of the Existence of a Material World,” 67-8; original emphasis. 50. Inquiry, I. Introduction, 1 “The Importance of the Subject, and the Means of Prosecuting it,” 12-3. 51. LW 16. 52. Which in Reid includes natural philosophy, thus science. 53. Inquiry, V “Touch,” 1. “Of Heat and Cold,” 55. 54. Inquiry, Chap. VI “Of Seeing,” 20. “Of Perception in General,” 172. 55. Inquiry, VI, 20: 170. 56. As Hume states in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) when he claims, in the “Introduction”: “And as the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation.” Hume (2007: 4; my emphasis). 57. As Dewey defines it, specially in his Logic. Theory of Enquiry, LW 12: I-5 “The Needed Reform of Logic,” 86-s. 58. LW 16: 250. 59. LW 16: 250-1. 60. I will leave this point partly to one side for reasons of coherence. Reference can be made for an example of presentation to Gail Kennedy (1954: 313-5). 61. Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, LW 4, 1. “Escape from Peril,” 20-1. 62. “In the first place, it is a work and a work carried on by a distinct group or set of human beings constituting a profession having a special vocation, exactly as is the case with those engaged in law or medicine,” LW 16: 250. 63. LW 16: 250. 64. LW 16: 251. 65. See Dewey (1948b): “Upon the side of theory, of pseudo-philosophy, the attack (against science) rests upon calling the sciences ‘materialistic’ while literary subjects are identified with whatever is idealistic and ‘spiritual’ in our traditions and institutions. This position rests back upon belief in the separation of man from nature,” in LW 15: 188. 66. LW 16: 250; my emphasis. 67. LW 16: 251. 68. LW 16: 252; original emphasis. 69. This question of the privatisation of the interests of knowledge is a recurrent theme that is found in many texts in Dewey. Its importance can be shown, for example in Dewey (1927-46), The Public and its Problems. See, for example, the developments of chapter IV “Eclipse of the Public,” LW 2: 304-s. 70. LW, 16: 255. 71. Kennedy (1954: 314). 72. LW 16: 255-6; original emphasis. 73. LW 16: 253. 74. LW 12: 66.

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ABSTRACTS

Throughout his intellectual career, John Dewey was asking the question of relationships between knowledge of common sense and scientific knowledge. We propose to examine these relations in the light of a comparison with Thomas Reid, one of the founding authors of the of common sense. This comparison tries to set up what should be considered as a closer formulation of what knowledge consists in: a matter of attitudes, a set of dispositions. Such a convergent formulation equally means not to bring into conflict or contradiction – in the style of a “dualism” – what are common sense and scientific knowledge. In so doing, it is thus necessary to reshape an operative distinction between those two kinds of “attitudes”; and this distinction is not ontological but decisively methodological, epistemological and, on a practical level, political.

AUTHOR

CLAUDE GAUTIER École Normale Supérieure de claude.gautier[at]ens-lyon.fr

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Judgment and Practice in Reid and Wittgenstein

Patrick Rysiew

1. Introduction

1 This paper considers the views of two figures whose work falls on either side of the heyday of American pragmatism, Thomas Reid (1710-96) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The broad similarities between Reid’s and (the later) Wittgenstein’s views, and in particular their epistemological views, has been well documented (see n. 22 below). Here, I argue that such similarities extend to the relation in their work between common sense and the presence of elements in their thought that can be considered pragmatist in some interesting and important respect.

2 Beginning with Reid, I argue that some specific theses commonly associated with pragmatism – e.g., that meaning, truth, or the justifiedness of a belief is a matter of practical effects or efficacy – clearly run counter to his stated views, and stand in tension with the well-known common sense character of his work. At the same time, however, and as others have noted, other pragmatist themes and ideas – e.g., about the close relations between belief (and doubt) and action, theory and practice, and facts and values – do have a clear precedent in Reid (§2). Most fundamentally, however, Reid’s epistemological views in particular display an adherence to the idea that practice is somehow primary – an idea that’s central to pragmatism ‘broadly conceived’, as Brandom calls it and, according to some others (e.g., Putnam, Cavell), to pragmatism per se. What’s more, once we are clear on the respects in which Reid’s views do incorporate an important pragmatist element, it becomes clear that far from being at odds with, or needing supplementation by, the latter, common sense is in fact inseparable from it (§3).

3 Finally, I turn (§4) to Wittgenstein, and suggest that the same close connection between pragmatist elements and common sense as we find in Reid is present here as well: like Reid, Wittgenstein rejects several ‘narrow’ pragmatist theses; but he too ascribes practice a crucial role. And while he seldom explicitly refers to common sense, the

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notions of good judgment, and of the reasonable person – hallmarks of common sense, as Reid conceives of it – are at the heart of Wittgenstein’s later epistemological views.

2. Reid (and Peirce) on Belief and Doubt

4 One respect of similarity between Reid’s views and ideas closely associated with the pragmatist tradition concerns his treatment of belief and, relatedly, of doubt. To set the stage here, it’s useful to consider the criticism of Reid that he attributes to us – that is, to normal humans – beliefs that it is in fact doubtful that we all hold.

5 Central to Reid’s common sense philosophy is the idea of ‘first principles,’ which he divides into First Principles of Necessary Truths, and First Principles of Contingent Truths (1785: 6.5-6.6, pp. 467-512). The former include metaphysical principles such as that whatever begins to exist must have a cause, through to moral principles such as that an unjust action has more demerit than an ungenerous one. The latter include such propositions as that nature is uniform, that the things of which I am conscious, and those which I distinctly remember or perceive, do exist, that testimony is a fundamental source of evidence, and that the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious. Among Reid’s claims here are that such principles are “universally believed” (1785: 1.2, pp. 44-6; 6.4, pp. 465-6), and indeed that they “are no sooner understood than they are believed. The judgment follows the apprehension of them necessarily, and both are equally the work of nature, and the result of our original powers” (1785: 6.4, p. 452).

6 But are these principles such that we all – at least, all of us who are sane, and who understand them – believe them? Some have found that incredible. Thus, for example, Nicolas Wolterstorff has argued that, while (normal) humans may indeed all take for granted Reid’s first principles, we shouldn’t conflate this point, as Reid does, with the dubious idea that they are universally believed: most people surely don’t actually believe those propositions that all those of us who are normal adults must take for granted in our living of life in the everyday. Most people haven’t even so much as entertained them, let alone believed them. (Wolterstorff 2001: 225; cf. 2004: 93)

7 Notice, however, that this objection requires that we think of belief at its most explicit – as involving conscious consideration of the belief’s object or content. But that beliefs are generally like that is clearly not Reid’s view. For example, speaking of the seventh first principle of contingent truths – “That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious” (1785: 6.5, p. 480) – Reid says: We may here take notice of a property of the principle under consideration, that seems to be common to it with many other first principles […]; and that is, that in most men it produces its effect without ever being attended to, or made an object of thought. No man ever thinks of this principle, unless when he considers the grounds of scepticism; yet it invariably governs his opinions. (1785: 6.5, pp. 481-2)

8 More generally, belief is not simply a specific type of ‘attitude towards a proposition’ for Reid. Belief must indeed “have an object,” Reid says: “he that believes must believe something; and that which he believes, is called the object of his belief” (1785: 2.20, p. 227). When we specify or make explicit the belief’s object – or, as we would say, its content – we do so by using a complete sentence, in subject-predicate form. As Reid puts it, belief “is always expressed in language by a proposition,1 wherein something is affirmed or denied.” (1785: 2.20, p. 228). However, as Angélique Thébert observes, most

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often our beliefs are not so expressed (2015: 203); and – as already noted, and as the above passage makes clear – a belief or its content (or “object”) need not for Reid be something to which we reflectively attend. So we can agree with Wolterstorff that “[m]ost people haven’t even so much as entertained” the propositions by which Reid expresses his first principles. Even so, they may well have the relevant beliefs. Belief is the “the main spring in the life of a man” (1785: 2.20, p. 228); our beliefs are manifested in our thoughts and actions.2 And Reid frequently speaks of our thought and conduct as manifesting an ‘implicit belief’ (e.g., 1764: 1.3, p. 16; 6.20, p. 170; 1788: 3.1.2, p. 87), an ‘instinctive belief’ (1788: 3.1.2, p. 87), an ‘implied conviction’ (1785: 6.5, p. 479), an ‘inward conviction’ (1785: 6.5, p. 482), or an ‘implicit faith’ (1785: 6.5, p. 477), in the first principles:3 Our ordinary conduct in life is built upon first principles, as well as our speculations in philosophy; and every motive to action supposes some belief […]. (1785: 6.4, p. 464) Who can doubt […] whether mankind have, in all ages, believed the existence of a material world, and that those things which they see and handle are real, and not mere illusions and apparitions? Who can doubt whether mankind have universally believed that everything that begins to exist, and every change that happens in nature, must have a cause? Who can doubt whether mankind have been universally persuaded that there is a right and a wrong in human conduct? – some – things which, in certain circumstances, they ought to do, and other things which they ought not to do? The universality of these opinions, and of many such that might be named, is sufficiently evident, from the whole tenor of men’s conduct, as far as our acquaintance reaches, and from the records of history, in all ages and nations, that are transmitted to us. (1785: 1.2, p. 45)

9 As noted above, the picture of belief that emerges here has obvious affinities to the pragmatists’, and perhaps most especially to the views of C. S. Peirce, who characterizes belief as “a rule active in us” (CP 2.643), “a general principle working in man’s nature to determine how he will act” (CP 2.170), and as “something on which a man is prepared to act and…therefore, in a general sense, a habit” (CP 2.148).4, 5 The intimate connection between belief and action, moreover, lies behind Reid’s frequent criticisms of the sceptic as somehow insincere – criticisms that Peirce would later echo with his well- known distinction between real and merely professed or “paper” doubt (e.g., CP 5.514; see Lundestad 2008: 177). Thus, the sceptic is, as Peirce would say, a “breath holder” (CP 5.499); or, as Reid puts it, scepticism is a “chamber exercise” or “hobby-horse” (1764: 2.6-7, p. 36) that no sane person can actually maintain: even those who reject [one or another first principle] in speculation, find themselves under a necessity of being governed by it in their practice. (1785: 6.5, p. 480) I never heard that any sceptic run his head against a post, or stepped into a kennel, because he did not believe his eyes. (1785: 1.2, p. 46) If a man pretends to be a sceptic with regard to the of sense, and yet prudently keeps out of harm’s way as other men do, he must excuse my suspicion, that he either acts the hypocrite, or imposes upon himself. For, if the scale of his belief were so evenly poised as to lean no more to one side than to the contrary, it is impossible that his actions could be directed by any rules of common prudence. (1764: 6.20, p. 170)

10 Common sense philosophy, with its appeal to features of our everyday practice, has often met with the charge of philosophical irrelevance,6 and Reid’s claims here are no exception. Thus, for example, Lynd Forguson argues that the point Reid is making in passages such as the foregoing is “nothing more than an ad hominem: the sceptic does

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not, and cannot, practice what he preaches, an observation which Hume freely admitted” (Forguson 1989: 112). Likewise, Philip de Bary argues that Reid’s frequent claims that sceptics “do not practice what they preach” are “shallow” (2002: 7) and not a proper part of his response to scepticism.7 De Bary writes: one of Reid’s favourite objections to scepticism – that sceptical conduct is deplorably inconsistent with sceptical principle – is superficial. Reid is disingenuous in his characterization of both the conduct and the principle; and it seems fair to conclude that his accusations of inconsistency between them are part of his polemic, not his reasoned arguments, against scepticism. (De Bary 2002: 12)

11 As several commentators have argued, however, this dismissal seems too quick; arguably, it rests on a mistaken view of just what Reid’s point here is. Specifically, and as with Wolterstorff’s objection above, the present criticism overlooks how Reid conceives of belief and its relation to action. For, given Reid’s views on the latter, his point is not merely that the sceptic’s practice is inconsistent with his theory; it is, rather, that the sceptic’s behavior manifests an inconsistency among beliefs.8 This is not because, as Reid sees it, for some first-order proposition such as that there is a cup on the table the sceptic believes p in practice but, at the level of theory, believes not-p (Ferreira 1986: 129). As has been pointed out, sceptical doubts aren’t typically directed at such first-order propositions at all. What the sceptic means to call into question is whether those beliefs are reliably formed, justified, or apt to constitute knowledge.9 But it is precisely here, it has been suggested, that Reid means to locate the inconsistency in question: not only must – as hardly anyone denies – the sceptic form the relevant first- order beliefs, he cannot sustain the theoretical metabelief about such first-order beliefs’ supposed lack of justification (Ferreira 1986: 129). For the formation of a given perceptual belief carries with it an implicit commitment to the trustworthiness of the testimony of the senses:10 We are born under a necessity of trusting to our reasoning and judging powers; and a real belief of their being fallacious cannot be maintained for any considerable time by the greatest sceptic, because it is doing violence to our constitution. It is like a man’s walking upon his hands, a feat which some men upon occasion can exhibit; but no man ever made a long journey in this manner. Cease to admire his dexterity, and he will, like other men, betake himself to his legs. (Reid 1785: 6.5, p. 481)

12 D. D. Todd summarizes the point as follows: Reid’s […] view is that belief and practice are conceptually so related that any practice will have a necessary connection with some belief or other so that the pragmatic inconsistency between the sceptics’ second-order philosophical belief (that our first-order common-sense beliefs are all unjustifiable) and his first-order practice (cum belief) is really an inconsistency between belief and belief, i.e., the sceptics’ pragmatic inconsistency is a form of concealed logical inconsistency. (Todd 1992: 168)

13 Suppose that this is correct. Suppose, that is, that we are “born under a necessity of trusting to our reasoning and judging powers,” and that this shows that the sceptic will inevitably confront an intra-theoretical inconsistency – an inconsistency, that is, between his explicit theory, and the implicit theory manifested in his practice (Ferreira 1986: 133). Now, a further objection arises: even if we can’t help believing that our faculties are reliable and/or that they issue in justified beliefs, and so even if any sceptic who puts forward a theory suggesting otherwise is bound to have inconsistent beliefs, that does not show that the former belief, or the particular beliefs formed in

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accordance with the first principles, are justified. In short, what positive reason do we have for regarding such beliefs as justified? Hookway expresses just this concern in response to Peirce’s well-known claim that “[w]e cannot begin with complete doubt,” and that any attempt to do so “will be mere self-deception” (CP 5.265): [such claims] appear to be psychological statements about how we describe and conduct inquiries: unless supplemented by further argument, they do not establish that so conducting them is legitimate […]. [A] common-sense philosophy must explain why it is legitimate to trust these certainties. This is the fundamental difficulty facing a philosophical appeal to common-sense. (Hookway 1990: 398-9)11

14 As we’ve just seen, the same concern arises in the case of Reid; and, according to some, he never provides any satisfactory response to it. Thus, for example, Galen Strawson writes: On this, as on so many questions, there is a sense in which Reid merely rotates Hume through 90 degrees: a fact noted by Sir James Mackintosh in 1812, when he remarked to Thomas Brown that on the question of the existence of the external world Reid and Hume “differed more in words than in opinion.” “Yes,” answered Brown. “Reid bawled out, We must believe an outward world; but added in a whisper, We can give no reason for our belief. Hume cries out, We can give no reason for such a notion and whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it.” (Strawson 1990: 15)

15 As against such an assessment, however, many have seen Reid as offering a real and positive advance beyond the position of Hume, and a real justification of the first principles. Among such interpreters, some have seen Reid’s position on this score as having a significant pragmatist element, and one that goes beyond the Peircean ideas about belief and doubt already scouted. In the next §, we’ll consider several such suggestions, and I’ll enter my own proposal as to the real, and most fundamental, respect in which Reid’s epistemological views exhibit a pragmatic character.

3. Pragmatism, Narrow and Broad12

16 Just what pragmatism amounts to is a matter of much dispute, partly owing to the fact that its proponents have held some subtle views, and on a whole broad range of topics, with plenty of significant disagreements among them. Here, Robert Brandom provides a helpful suggestion: Pragmatism can be thought of narrowly: as a philosophical school of thought centered on evaluating beliefs by their tendency to promote success at the satisfaction of wants, whose paradigmatic practitioners were the classical American triumvirate of Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey. But pragmatism can also be thought of more broadly: as a movement centered on the primacy of the practical. (Brandom 2002: 40)

17 The latter idea – what we might call the primacy of practice – figures centrally as well in Hilary Putnam’s discussions of pragmatism. According to Putnam, along with an anti-sceptical and fallibilist outlook, and a suspiciousness of any fundamental fact/ value dichotomy, what’s most attractive and worth retaining in pragmatism is “the thesis that, in a certain sense, practice is primary in philosophy” (Putnam 1994: 52; cf. 1995: 42-52). Stanley Cavell concurs: “I think we must agree that something like this emphasis [viz., on the primacy of practice] is definitive for pragmatism” (Cavell 1998: 76).

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18 Now, in terms of Brandom’s distinction between narrow and broad conceptions of pragmatism, in providing a justification for the first principles and the beliefs formed in accordance with them, some have seen Reid as relying upon, suggesting, or needing help from, an element of pragmatism narrowly conceived. That is, it has been suggested that Reid relies upon (or suggests, or needs) the idea that we should evaluate beliefs, or meaning, in terms of practical success. As we’ll see, each such suggestion faces difficulties, opening up space for understanding Reid as relying upon pragmatist ideas broadly construed – that is, upon the idea that practice is primary.

19 To begin here, consider the following passage in which, having noted that it is not in his power to distrust his senses, Reid writes: I think it would not be prudent to throw off this belief, if it were in my power […] I resolve not to believe my senses. I break my nose against a post that comes in my way; I step into a dirty kennel; and, after twenty such wise rational actions, I am taken up and clapped into a mad-house. Now, I confess I would rather make one of the credulous fools whom Nature imposes upon, than of those wise and rational philosophers who resolve to withhold assent at all this expense. (Reid 1764: 6.20, p. 170)

20 Clearly, this passage is thought by Reid to have anti-sceptical import. But why, exactly? One suggestion is that Reid is here not really offering an epistemological justification for the relevant beliefs at all. According to Peter Baumann, for example, “Reid’s theory of common sense implicitly contains a dilemma” (Baumann 1999: 47). Since the first principles are first principles, we cannot argue for them directly – at least, not on the basis of anything more fundamental.13 But it doesn’t follow that any such principles are true; and neither, as we saw above, does the inevitability of the relevant beliefs put scepticism to rest. So, we face a dilemma: we can continue to make truth and knowledge claims about the first principles of common sense, while acknowledging that we have no justification for doing so (dogmatism), or we can refrain from making any such claims and content ourselves with believing these things, perhaps inevitably, without any pretense to our being justified in doing so (scepticism) (Baumann 1999: 51). Clearly, neither of these options will be attractive for Reid. So, Baumann says, “[t]here must be a third way for him” (Baumann 1999: 52). According to Baumann, this third way, of which there are “hints” in Reid, is “the pragmatist way out” (Baumann 1999: 52): Even if we cannot give justifying reasons for our principles of knowledge, we can give a totally different kind of justification: a pragmatic justification. The principles of common sense enable us to build theories which guide our actions and let us attain our goals. Insofar as they fulfill this function, they are justified and there is no place for a different kind of justification, no need to talk about truth or knowledge. (Baumann 1999: 53)

21 Of course, as Baumann says, Reid “does not make this last step” (ibid.). But “he is very close to this kind of pragmatism” (ibid.), and something like ‘the pragmatist way out’ is needed here, given our inability to provide a non-pragmatic, epistemic justification for the first principles.

22 Baumann’s proposal is not without its problems. For one, Reid does seem to regard the first principles as epistemically, and not merely pragmatically, justified. For another, that the principles of common sense are practically useful is itself an empirical claim, the epistemic standing of which is as open to sceptical questioning as any. In response to the latter concern, Baumann clarifies that his argument “does not involve any […]

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claims about the factual usefulness of common sense” (Baumann 2004: 75). All that’s required are conditional judgments: “If the external world exists, then it is a more dangerous place for sceptics than for the followers of common sense. Given that we prefer not to break our noses, common sense is better off – given the existence of the external world – than scepticism. If the external world does not exist, then there is no difference between the two positions in terms of practical outcomes. Hence, common sense ‘dominates’ scepticism.” (Baumann 2004: p. 75). Once again, however, it’s likely that Reid would see this argument as putting things in the wrong light. For Reid emphasizes the fact that the first principles are all on a par (e.g., 1764: 6.20, pp. 168-9; 1785: 6.4, pp. 463-4). Whereas, the propounding of the decision-theoretic argument for trusting our perceptual faculties, even if it aims only at pragmatic justification, takes the reliability of reasoning in particular for granted. But, Reid asks: Why, sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception? – they came both out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another? (1764: 6.20, p. 169)

23 A different proposal as to the pragmatic character of Reid’s response to scepticism is discussed by Adrian Sackson.14 The proposal is that, in passages like that cited above, Reid is implicitly relying upon something like Peirce’s famous ‘prope-positivist’ maxim: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (e.g., CP 5.2, 5.402, 5.438)

24 Thus, as applied to the present case: “Even if nature is actually ‘imposing’ on me this is irrelevant, since my interactions with the ‘incorrectly’ perceived world around me can still cause me very tangible suffering – for instance, in the form of a broken nose.” (Sackson 2014: §6). But if there is no practical difference in outcome hinging on whether scepticism is true, then “there is no justification in speaking of a difference in the concepts” (ibid.: §16). On this reading, then, Reid’s argument “amounts to a pragmatist rejection of any distinction between Scepticism and anti-Scepticism which entails no difference in practical effects” (ibid.: §30).

25 It is doubtful, however, that Reid would accept this construal of his argument, taken at the letter. Reid does hold that ordinary use is “the arbiter of language” (Reid 1785: 1.1, p. 35); but this falls far short of the idea that the meaning of a term or concept – much less, in the manner of William James, whether a given belief is true15 – is to be understood in terms of practical effects.16 So too, as we’ve seen, Reid does distinguish between real and merely professed doubt, and he thinks that genuine sceptics are an extremely rare breed. We could, if we like, cast this as a point about whether the views of one who (merely) professes scepticism are really ‘meaningful,’ in a more colloquial sense of the term. We could wonder, that is, whether scepticism is a ‘real position’ (i.e., one that’s seriously believed by its proponents), and not a merely theoretical or “paper” view. But this, on its own, falls short of a face-value application of the prope- positivist maxim.

26 As I am understanding Reid, then, when he says, “I would rather make one of the credulous fools whom Nature imposes upon, than of those wise and rational philosophers who resolve to withhold assent at all this expense” (Reid 1764: 6.20, p. 170), the claim is heavy with irony, even ridicule.17 I’d rather be ‘imposed upon,’ he’s saying, as some (misguided) philosophers worry I might be – that is, I’d rather believe my senses and not come to harm – than be ‘wise and rational’ and end up injured and/or institutionalized.

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If we are massively deceived, however, all is not still well. For instance, of the idea that our sensations suggest something external, Reid says: “The belief of it, and the very conception of it, are equally parts of our constitution. If we are deceived in it, we are deceived by Him that made us, and there is no remedy.” (Reid 1764: 5.7, p. 72). Not, note, there’s no real difference here, since I’d still suffer harms if I don’t trust my senses; but, there is no remedy.

27 In short, whatever its merits, the prope-positivist semantic rejection of scepticism, like a purely pragmatic justification based on the (presumed) utility of acting in a non- sceptical manner, seems far removed from Reid’s own views.

28 In light of the results of this § thus far, it’s not surprising that some have seen the pragmatic character of Reid’s philosophy as extending only so far. Thus, for example, Eric Lundestad argues that Reid’s philosophy does contain real ‘proto-pragmatic’ elements, especially ones present in Peirce’s ‘critical common-sensism’ – for instance, a distinction between real versus merely professed doubt (Lundestad 2006: 131; 2008: 177), an insistence that the lack of a positive justification for certain beliefs does not itself imply doubt (Lundestad 2006: 130), and the observation that inquiry in any form arises and is carried out against the background of certain theories, beliefs and methods – certain practices (Lundestad 2006: 131). According to Lundestad, however, both a genuine pragmatism and the avoidance of of the sort Baumann describes are not possible from within a Reidian common sense framework, which “explicitly encourages dogmatism” (Lundestad 2006: 128), and ignores the distinction between “the quaestio facti and the quaestio juris” (Lundestad 2008: 179). However, if we move away from the Reidian idea “that commonsensical beliefs may be taken as true because they are inherent to our nature” (Lundestad 2006: 132) and adopt “the pragmatic shift from theory to practice,” the latter distinction becomes one that is drawn within experience: some practices ‘work,’ others do not; the former receive ‘corroboration.’ When a practice proves problematic, we may then make it an object of attention, and “the validity of this belief can only be settled by way of justification” in terms of its practical efficacy. This non-Reidian approach may not be without its problems, Lundestad says, but “there is no other way of overcoming the stalemate of common sense than by continuing to develop it” (Lundestad 2008: 184-6).

29 What should we to make of this? Does responding to scepticism require a shift away from Reidian common sensism, and towards a more thoroughgoing pragmatism? Only, I want now to suggest, if we are thinking of pragmatism in the narrow sense, as described above – i.e., only if we are thinking of pragmatism chiefly in terms of a focus on ‘practical’ matters such as the apparent benefits or effects of certain ways of acting. If we’re thinking of things in this way, then the presence, or addition, of a significant pragmatist element – again, narrowly conceived – is bound to run counter to Reid’s stated views in one or another way. Whereas, if we think of pragmatism more broadly, as a movement centered on the idea that practice is somehow primary, it becomes clear that what’s perhaps the strongest strain of pragmatism in Reid is continuous with, and in fact inseparable from, his stated views – including, and especially, his views on common sense.

30 To begin, consider common sense. Colloquially, ‘common sense’ is often used to refer to whatever it is that’s widely regarded as true (‘vulgar opinion,’ as Reid sometimes calls it). But Reid intends something rather narrower than this. In our discussion thus far, both Reid and his critics often speak of common sense as a specific of our

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naturally-held beliefs, or as those things that are so believed. But even this is not what’s fundamental for Reid. According to Reid, ‘sense’ is closely connected with judgment: “in common language, sense always implies judgment. A man of sense is a man of judgment. Good sense is good judgment” (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 424). On the relation between common sense and reason, Reid says that common sense is a “degree” of reason – specifically, that it is that degree of reason which is requisite for judging “of things self-evident,” including the first principles, and which entitles humans “to the denomination of reasonable creatures” (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 433). So, common sense is a specific capacity for judgment, and shouldn’t be identified with the judgments and beliefs that flow from it, or with the propositions thus believed.

31 Already, note, we have the suggestion of the mixing of facts and values that Putnam associates with pragmatism (see above): ‘common sense’ is not merely descriptive – it suggests reasonableness, for instance. Also notable, especially in connection with a consideration of Reid’s relation to pragmatism, is the fact that common sense straddles – in fact, it unifies – the theory/practice distinction. Common sense enables us to judge “of things self-evident”; but a reasonable person is just as much one who “live[s] and act[s] according to the rules of common prudence” (Reid 1785: 1.2, p. 39) and is “capable of managing his own affairs, and answerable for his conduct towards others” (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 433); it is “that degree of judgment which is common to men with whom we can converse and transact business” (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 424). As far as common sense goes, then, there is no neat division between theory and practice, practical and theoretical rationality, or the standards of reasonableness that govern everyday life and those that the philosopher should observe: The same degree of understanding which makes a man capable of acting with common prudence in the conduct of life, makes him capable of discovering what is true and what is false in matters that are self-evident, and which he distinctly apprehends. (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 426) [W]hat is absurd at the bar is so in the philosopher’s chair. What would be ridiculous, if delivered to a jury of honest sensible citizens, is no less so when delivered gravely in a philosophical dissertation. (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 475)

32 The mixing of psychological and normative ideas that characterizes Reid’s conception of common sense is present as well in his views on evidence (Rysiew 2005, 2011a). When Reid says that the different kinds of evidence “are all fitted by nature to produce belief in the human mind” (Reid 1785: 2.20, p. 229), he clearly means that they produce belief in the sound or healthy human mind. However, it seems to be Reid’s view we have no standard of cognitive ‘health,’ or of the properly functioning subject, that’s completely independent of our most deeply held beliefs and our most fundamental epistemic practices: a significant departures from the first principles, or a failure to form beliefs in accordance with them, is not just unusual; it disqualifies one from being a “reasonable creature” – it’s madness: A remarkable deviation from [such natural and original judgments which constitute the principles of common sense], arising from a disorder in the constitution, is what we call lunacy […]. (Reid 1764: 7, p. 215)18

33 Nor is this just a stipulative matter. For, in the absence of any reasonable (i.e., evidence-based) doubt as to their truth, we have no reasonable alternative to accepting the dictates of common sense. And since any evidence as to the fallaciousness of one or all of our faculties would have to presume the veracity of at least one of them, given that the first principles are all on a par, such evidence would in fact undermine the

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attempted argument. (So, there is an inconsistency among such a sceptic’s commitments here as well.) In this sense, there could not be any reasonable (evidence- based) doubt as to the truth of the first principles.19 In this way, the first principles are constitutive principles (Rysiew 2002): accepting them is a condition – for us, given our nature – of cognizing at all. And insofar as it is rational to act on and believe that to which there is not – indeed, could not be – any reasonable alternative, it’s rational for us to hold to the first principles of common sense.

34 Are the first principles really ‘self-evident,’ however, as Reid claims? “Can we really,” Alston asks doubtfully, “see them to be true just by understanding their content?” (Alston 1985: 439). Or is there not, in Reid, simply a failure to observe the distinction “between self-evidence and being strongly inclined to believe the proposition without question” (Alston 1986: 4)? Once again, however, and independently of whether Reid’s first principles really are ‘self-evident’ “in the classical sense” of the term, as van Woudenberg (2013: 87) puts it, a further possibility is that Reid’s view is, as Alston himself elsewhere puts it, that “in a sense, there is no appeal beyond the practices we find ourselves engaged in” (Alston 1993: 130; cf. 1989). Thus, while the distinction between self-evidence and merely being strongly inclined to believe a proposition is real, and is easy to draw at the level of non-basic propositions (e.g., whether I’m going to win the lottery), since the first principles are first principles, their being self-evident and our all being strongly inclined to believe them are, as one might expect, not in practice separable. And so too, on this reading, for our accepting the first principles and our being justified in accepting them: they typify, even define, what (self-)evidentness is for us, given our constitution. The simple (apparent) manifestness of certain things, the bruteness of certain such judgments, is in the end the final court of epistemic appeal. Both the sceptic and the dogmatist fail to see this, however: both hold, if only implicitly, that epistemic justification requires an appeal to something deeper – hence their common belief that the first principles and the beliefs they undergird are without justification.

35 It’s a large and important question how plausible the view I’ve just sketched is, both as a reading of Reid, and as an independently plausible position.20 For present purposes, however, what’s most important is that, insofar as that view has some prima facie plausibility as an interpretation of Reid, it provides an understanding of his relation to pragmatism, and of the relation of common sense to the pragmatist elements of his views, that differs significantly from the discussions canvassed above. Specifically, as with pragmatism broadly construed, along with his anti-scepticism and his regarding certain central epistemic notions having both descriptive and normative aspects, there is a good sense in which practice – in particular, our natural and basic ways of forming and evaluating beliefs; what Alston (1989) calls our ‘doxastic practices’ – is primary for Reid. But common sense, as we’ve seen, is deeply implicated in those fundamental practices: it supplies the ‘good judgment’ that leads us to accept the first principles, to form beliefs in accordance with them, and to think and act the part of reasonable creatures.21 Thus, far from being at odds with, or needing supplementation by, the relevant pragmatist elements in Reid, common sense is inseparable therefrom.

36 In the next §, I present a preliminary case that something very much like this is true of Wittgenstein’s later work as well. While the discussion will be briefer than the preceding discussion of Reid, it’s hoped that it will be plausible and interesting enough to suggest that the ideas therein merit further investigation.

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4. Judgment and Practice in Wittgenstein

37 A number of writers22 have noted significant similarities to Reid in Wittgenstein’s later philosophical works, and especially in the notes collected and published posthumously under the title On Certainty. In the latter work, Wittgenstein’s concern is to get clear on the nature and epistemic status of propositions of the sort that Moore (1925, 1939), famously, sought to defend. Whether these notes contain a single and cohesive philosophical view, and if so the precise character thereof, is of course a matter of much controversy. Here, I don’t pretend to be offering anything like a systematic treatment of the relevant writings, the correct interpretation of which is a matter of lively debate. The concern, rather, is with some quite general and clearly discernable features of that work – and, in particular, with the general such features that constitute significant points of agreement with Reidian ideas described above.

38 Thus, just as, for familiar regress-related reasons, Reid takes it as obvious that there must be ‘first principles’ (e.g., 1785: 1.2, p. 39), and just as he rejects as both impossible and unreasonable the demands of Cartesian epistemology, Wittgenstein thinks that complete doubt makes no sense – in any inquiry, there must among our starting points be some things of which we are certain: If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty. (Wittgenstein 1969: §115; cf. §§114, 315, 322, 354, 450, 519) A doubt without an end is not even a doubt. (Wittgenstein 1969: §625) If the shopkeeper wanted to investigate each of his apples without any reason, for the sake of being certain about everything, why doesn’t he have to investigate the investigation? (Wittgenstein 1969: §459)23

39 So, as with Reid (and Peirce), the mere possibility of error is not a reason to doubt (1969: §4): “we are not in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt” (Wittgenstein 1953: §84). Rather, it must be that one doubts on specific grounds (Wittgenstein 1969: §§458, 122, 323, 519). And those grounds, in turn, must be grounded on things we do not doubt: “the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn” (Wittgenstein 1969: §341); “We just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.” (Wittgenstein 1969: §343). Further, the preceding are not merely descriptive points. Rather, our pretheoretic certainties have a certain type of authority, in that serious departures from them aren’t just atypical, indeed not merely mistakes, but madness: If Moore were to pronounce the opposite of those propositions which he declares certain, we should not just not share his opinion: we should regard him as demented. (Wittgenstein 1969: §155; cf. § 71) In order to make a mistake, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind. (Wittgenstein 1969: §156) This does indeed point to one kind of use for “I know.” “I know it is so” then means: It is so, or else I’m crazy. (Wittgenstein 1981: §408)

40 As with Reid’s first principles, the relevant propositions are seldom made the object of thought – most likely, we think of them only when a philosopher brings them to our attention. Even so, they implicitly govern the relevant forms of activity, cognitive and otherwise. So too, just as Reid says that “[m]en need not be taught” (Reid 1785: 1.2,

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p. 39) the first principles, the relevant propositions according to Wittgenstein are not things in which we’re instructed (Wittgenstein 1969: §§152-3, e.g.), and are not the product of experience (Wittgenstein 1969: §§130-1). Rather, they are ‘swallowed down,’ as consequences, in the course of learning the things we do (Wittgenstein 1969: §143). The propositions in question make up the ‘frame of reference’ (Wittgenstein 1969: §83) or ‘inherited background’ (Wittgenstein 1969: §94) in terms of which we learn, make sense of experiences, and so forth. There is nothing more certain that could serve as reason either for or against them. (“What is to be tested by what?” [Wittgenstein 1969: §125].) Because they have such a fundamental status, if we could doubt any of Moore’s propositions, we would have no reason not to doubt anything else, including the reliability of our senses: If a blind man were to ask me “Have you got two hands?” I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don’t know why I should trust my eyes. For why shouldn’t I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my two hands? (Wittgenstein 1969: §125; cf. 1953: 221)

41 Here, the entire framework within which we raise doubts and answer them would collapse – it would be an “annihilation of all yardsticks” (Wittgenstein 1969: §492; cf. §§125, 234, 308, 419, 490, 506, 507, 514, 613, 614, 672). The fact is, though, that the “reasonable man does not have certain doubts” (Wittgenstein 1969: §220).

42 As noted above, as with the specific character of Reid’s epistemology, ‘the epistemology of hinges’ is a matter of lively debate, with similar issues at the center of each. Thus, just as with Reid’s first principles, there is debate about our attitude towards hinge propositions – whether it is one of belief and, if so, whether such beliefs are propositional; so too, and again as with Reid, there is debate as to the epistemic standing of the relevant attitude – whether/why it is warranted, exactly, whether it constitutes knowledge, and so on.24 Once again, however, of special interest here are the apparent broad similarities between Reid and (the later) Wittgenstein as regards pragmatism and common sense. Beginning with the former, while many have found “a distinct pragmatic streak” in Wittgenstein’s later work (Passmore 1966: 424),25 it’s fairly clear that Wittgenstein, like Reid, rejects the view – and so, e.g., the response to scepticism – that meaning or truth is a matter of utility or practical effects. Very briefly: while he had earlier (1961) taken naming to be the model of meaning, in his later philosophy Wittgenstein recommends that, in most cases, the meaning of a term is best explained by describing its use (Wittgenstein 1953: §43). But this is distinct from a general identification of meaning and use; much less is it an identification of meaning with practical effects.

43 Wittgenstein also explicitly rejects a Jamesian conception of truth: But you aren’t a pragmatist? No. For I am not saying that a proposition is true if it is useful. (Wittgenstein 1980: §266)

44 And he likewise denies that ‘hinge propositions,’ and/or the practices in which they figure, have an essentially pragmatic justification: No, experience is not the ground for our game of judging. Nor is its outstanding success. (Wittgenstein 1969: §131) This game proves its worth. That may be the cause of its being played, but it is not the ground. (Wittgenstein 1969: §474)

45 In short, in terms of Brandom’s distinction, Wittgenstein, no less than Reid, seems not to accept pragmatism narrowly conceived (cf. Goodman 1998: 102-3; Moyal-Sharrock 2004: 171). Yet – and again, as with Reid – there does seem to be a heavy strain of the

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broad form of pragmatism discussed earlier (cf. Moyal-Sharrock 2004: 172).26 Thus, while (as in some of the passages above) Wittgenstein like Reid often speaks of the special character of certain propositions, as in Reid this is not separable from the role they play in action (cf. Goodman 1998: 94; e.g., Wittgenstein 1969: §§120, 144, 204, 342, 402). Further, it is not particular actions, but rather the more general practices in which they are embedded – our taking certain sorts of things but not others to constitute evidence, grounds for doubt, legitimate forms of inquiry, and so on (e.g., Wittgenstein 1969: §§105, 151, 185, 231, 497, 608) – on which both explanations and justifications ultimately ground out: the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting. (Wittgenstein 1969: §110) If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.” (Wittgenstein 1953: §217) What has to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life. (Wittgenstein 1953: 226) Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at what happens as a ‘proto-phenomenon.’ That is, where we ought to have said: this language-game is played. (Wittgenstein 1953: §654) The danger here, I believe, is one of giving a justification of our procedure when there is no such thing as a justification and we ought simply to have said: that’s how we do it. (Wittgenstein 1967: II, §74) The essence of the language game is a practical method (a way of acting) – not speculation, not chatter. (Wittgenstein 1993: §399)

46 Thus, while Wittgenstein’s concern is to get clear on the nature and epistemic status of propositions of the sort that Moore sought to defend, his own view is that such propositions are not themselves what’s fundamental. Even if they have a special status therein, ‘hinges’ are not separable from our practices; in fact, in some good sense they owe their special status to the latter: “hinges are what they are in virtue of a human practice that has developed as it has” (Coliva 2016: 94); they are “rooted, albeit not ratiocinatively, in our human form of life and in the various forms of human life” (Moyal-Sharrock 2016: 110).

47 Of course, we have yet to mention common sense here. In fact, as Nyíri (2015) notes, Wittgenstein does not use ‘common sense’ – or its German equivalent – in On Certainty (though he does in other places).27 But that common sense is not an explicit part of the story doesn’t mean that it’s not deeply implicated therein. On the contrary: if, as I’ve just suggested, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy illustrates ‘the primacy of practice,’ the latter in turn is inseparable from what, to a reader of Reid, would look very much like the latter’s common sense – that is, a capacity for good judgment that operates in both thought and action and entitles us “to the denomination of reasonable creatures” (Reid 1785: 6.2, p. 433).

48 Thus, in attempting to clarify the status of Moore-style propositions, Wittgenstein frequently invokes the idea of the reasonable person as somehow fundamental. For instance, There cannot be any doubt about it for me as a reasonable person. – That’s it. – (Wittgenstein 1969: §219) The reasonable man does not have certain doubts. (Wittgenstein 1969: §220) Our not doubting [Moore-style propositions] is simply our manner of judging, and therefore of acting. (Wittgenstein 1969: §232)

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49 The latter passage, note, no less that the earlier-noted emphasis on action, makes clear that there’s no hard-and-fast theory/practice distinction here – like the most-often implicit beliefs Reid speaks of, the relevant judgments for Wittgenstein are not mere dry intellectual verdicts; they govern our actions, cognitive and otherwise. The passages just above also illustrate the close connection between the idea of the reasonable person and the fundamentality of certain shared judgments, including ‘agreements in judgment’ (Wittgenstein 1953: §§241-242) as to what is to count as certain, as evidence, or as reason to doubt (cf. Ferreira 1986: 118). As Wittgenstein puts it, “We use judgments as principles of judgment” (Wittgenstein 1969: §124). I am not more certain of the meaning of my words than I am of certain judgments […]. (Wittgenstein 1969: §126) From a child on up I learnt to judge like this. This is judging. (Wittgenstein 1969: §128) This is how I learned to judge; this I got to know as judgment. (Wittgenstein 1969: §129; cf. §§140, 149)

50 In short, as was suggested earlier in the case of Reid, it seems to be Wittgenstein’s view that we have no standard of cognitive ‘health,’ reasonableness, or good judgment, that’s prior to and independent of our firmest judgments, most deeply held commitments, and our most fundamental epistemic practices. A significant departure from the latter, or a failure to form beliefs in accordance with them, is not just a mistake; it disqualifies one from being a “reasonable creature.” Thus, while the language of ‘common sense’ is not employed, something very much like the Reidian conception thereof is naturally seen as operative, even central, here.

51 In spite of these apparent similarities between Reid’s and Wittgenstein’s views, it might seem as though there’s an obvious difference. For Reid’s first principles – that certain types of things exist, that our natural faculties are not fallacious, etc. – appear to be quite general. Relatedly, and setting aside the worry of whether they really are believed (see above), they appear to be the sort of thing a commitment to which really could be common. The latter is a feature Reid stresses: the commonness of common sense itself, and of the first principles for which it vouches, is what explains our being able to communicate, argue, and transact business with one another (e.g., 1785: 1.2, p. 39; 6.4, pp. 459-60). Whereas, many of the propositions Wittgenstein discusses as having a special status – that one lives in a certain city (Wittgenstein 1969: §67), or at a certain address (Wittgenstein 1969: §70); that one has never been to Asia Minor (Wittgenstein 1969: §116), etc. – clearly won’t have that status for all: some have been to Asia Minor, some haven’t; and that I [in my case: Patrick Rysiew] am a human being is something that has no part in the vast majority of human lives.28 In short, there appears to be much more variation, and much less common-ness, amongst Wittgenstein’s ‘hinges’ than there is in the case of Reid’s first principles. And if there’s no common-ness, what’s the point of speaking of common sense?

52 The response is, I take it, clear enough. While many of the relevant propositions are stated in the first person, Wittgenstein holds that “[t]here is something universal here; not just something personal” (Wittgenstein 1969: §440; Greco 2016: 310-1). (“We might speak of fundamental principles of human enquiry,” Wittgenstein says (1969: §670).) For example, that I [PR] am a human being is such that, if I know it of myself, every person knows it of him/herself (Wittgenstein 1969: §100). In the same manner, that I’ve never been to Asia Minor is something such that, if I know it of myself, then so does every normal, sane person who’s had the relevant similar life experiences. And then too,

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there are some ‘hinges’ that are more obviously impersonal and shared – e.g., that there are physical objects (Wittgenstein 1969: §35), or that what has always happened will happen again (or something like it) (Wittgenstein 1969: §135); and these in turn can ground more specific judgments (e.g., that if I light a fire, it will warm us up), which might themselves function as certainties in more local contexts. In short, it’s natural to see the more specific-seeming hinges as being under-written by more general ones, with the latter being more obviously held in common by all reasonable people, just as Reid’s first principles are said to be.29

5. Conclusion

53 As we began by noting, a number of philosophers have remarked on the close affinity between the epistemological views of Reid and those of the later Wittgenstein. Here, while doing my best to remain neutral as to the specific character of their respective positions, I have suggested that these similarities include a shared commitment to an idea that, according to several commentators, is central to pragmatism, broadly understood – the idea, namely, that practice is somehow primary. Further, I have argued that while the commitment to common sense is, as one might expect, much more explicit in Reid, Wittgenstein too gives fundamental place to the ideas of the reasonable person and of good judgment, as manifested in both thought and action. No doubt, plenty of questions remain about the details of Reid’s and Wittgenstein’s views; and no doubt too, there may be important differences between them. Nevertheless, in both figures’ work there appears to be a close connection between common sense and the elements in their thought that can be considered pragmatist in some interesting and important respect.

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NOTES

1. In Reid’s usage, a ‘proposition’ is neither an abstract object nor some complex of concrete objects and properties; it is simply a complete sentence (see 1785: 1.8, pp. 69-70). 2. That, indeed, is why Reid thought that while ‘an anatomy of the human mind’ should be based chiefly on accurate reflection upon the operations of one’s own mind, further vital sources of evidence as to the mind’s basic powers and principles are the structure of language and human conduct generally (1785: 1.5, pp. 56-57). 3. Cf. Van Cleve: “When we take for granted that a faculty is reliable, we need not believe in any explicit way that the faculty is reliable. We need only have a disposition to believe its deliverances.” (Van Cleve 2004: 414; emphases added). Elsewhere, van Cleve seems to allow that the latter, dispositional idea affords “one plausible sense in which ordinary subjects believe in

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the reliability of their faculties” (Van Cleve 2003: 161). Sosa, meanwhile (2009: 63-67), suggests that it does not much matter whether we call the relevant states or commitments beliefs; “[w]hat is important is that [the] relevant states be evaluable epistemically in the usual ways” (Sosa 2009: 66). 4. The latter are among the passages Engel-Tiercelin (1989) cites in her discussion of the similarities between Reid’s and Peirce’s views of belief. 5. Peirce attributes to Alexander Bain (1818-1903) the definition of a belief as “that upon which a man is prepared to act” (CP 5.12). 6. A famous instance is Kant’s dismissal of an appeal to common sense as “one of the subtle discoveries of recent times, whereby the dullest windbag can confidently take on the most profound thinker and hold his own with him” (Kant 2004: 9). 7. As we’ll see shortly, it’s arguable that Forguson and de Bary mischaracterize Reid’s anti- sceptical point. Note, however, that even if his argument is, or involves, an ad hominem, that would not in his view undercut its philosophical worth. Reid is explicit, for example, that arguments ad hominem can be a legitimate means of establishing that something is a genuine first principle (1785: 6.4, p. 463). 8. In addition to Ferreira and Todd (see below), this has been argued by Cuneo 2004 and Somerville 2002. 9. See, for example, Newman’s distinction, on behalf of Descartes (and as against Peirce), between belief-defeating and justification-defeating doubts (Newman 2016: §2.2). Meyers (1967: 19ff.) makes essentially the same point. 10. Pritchard makes a related point: “Beliefs […] are propositional attitudes that by their nature are responsive to rational considerations […]. This is not to say that beliefs are by their nature rational, of course, as this is manifestly false. It is rather to say that there are certain minimal, but constitutive nonetheless, connections between belief and truth such that a propositional attitude that didn’t satisfy them simply would not count as a belief, but would be a different propositional attitude entirely. In particular, it makes no sense, for example, for there to be an agent who believes that p while taking herself to have no reason whatsoever for thinking p to be true.” (Pritchard 2016: 90). 11. Compare de Bary, on what he describes as “the most crucial interpretative question about Reid’s response to scepticism”: “Reid may be as correct as you please, descriptively speaking, about the range of beliefs that people instinctively hold true; and he may have arrived, by abstraction, at unerring criteria for identifying these innate beliefs. But, as the sceptic will quickly point out, such psychological description is beside the epistemological point. In the absence of some link between […] ‘the Innateness Claim’ and ‘the Truth Claim’ for first principles, the sceptical challenge to their warrant will not have been met.” (2002: 37). 12. The ideas of the § are presented more fully in Rysiew 2015a, which itself draws on some earlier work. For some complementary discussion, see Jackson 2014. 13. Which is not to say that we cannot argue for them at all: some have suggested that, though they are not what give specific faculties their status as sources of evidence, ‘track record’ arguments for their reliability are still possible, and that Reid himself allows for such (e.g., Lemos 2004, Thébert 2015, Van Cleve 2015); and Poore 2015, e.g., argues that the justification of a first principle can, for Reid, be enhanced by coherence-style arguments from other first principles of the same standing. 14. Sackson associates this proposal with P. D. Magnus’ ‘argument from practical commitment.’ According to the latter, “the so-called sceptic betrays a belief in the real world by managing their affairs just as common folk do” (Magnus 2004: 71). “If sceptics see that their practice implies certain beliefs, then they are left with a choice of abstaining from their practice or accepting the beliefs. Reid’s argument cannot force their choice, but it makes them pay a higher price if they cleave to scepticism” (ibid.; cf. Magnus 2008: 6-7). As I understand it, Magnus’ argument does not

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rely on any controversial claims about the (literal) meaningfulness of scepticism. The central claim, rather, recalls the discussion of the previous § as to the tenability or reasonableness of the view – which, we have been supposing, does not itself yield a positive justification for the relevant beliefs. 15. “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons” (James 1907: 42). 16. Reid’s views on meaning, and on language generally, are discussed in Rysiew 2015b. 17. Note that, as Giovanni Grandi 2008 has argued, Reid rejects non-epistemic conceptions of ridicule: according to Reid, it involves not just feeling but judgment, and is an important and legitimate tool of criticism. 18. The passage continues, in a manner recalling the discussion of the previous §: “When a man suffers himself to be reasoned out of the principles of common sense, by metaphysical arguments, we may call this metaphysical lunacy; which differs from the other species of the distemper in this, that it is not continued, but intermittent it is apt to seize the patient in solitary and speculative moments; but, when he enters into society, Common Sense recovers her authority.” (Ibid.). 19. Which is not to say that it’s impossible, as Reid puts it, “for what is only a vulgar prejudice [to] be mistaken for a first principle” (Reid 1785: 1.2, p. 41). In general, Reid readily embraces both our fallibility and fallibilism about epistemic matters. 20. Elsewhere (2002, 2005, 2011a, forthcoming), I’ve begun to make a case that it is both of these things. Note that while the above reflections concerning the nature and status of the first principles may have implications for how best to interpret Reid’s specific epistemological views (i.e., whether he is a reliabilist, a proper functionalist, an evidentialist, or what have you), they do not themselves determine the latter. (Compare Alston 1989: 24ff.) 21. Common sense, then, is implicated as well in the phenomena discussed in the previous § – i.e., in the sceptic’s (alleged) inability to maintain consistency amongst his beliefs, and in the distinction between real and merely apparent or professed doubt. 22. Wolterstorff, e.g., speaks of “the striking similarities between Reid’s and Wittgenstein’s discussion of what we all do and must take for granted” (Wolterstorff 2001: 241). Others who have noted the kinship include Alston 1989, 1993; Plant 2003; Nyíri 2015; Todd 1989; and Ferreira 1986. 23. The allusion here is to Descartes’ well-known analogical defense of the method doubt: “Suppose [a person] had a basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. How would he proceed? Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others?” (Replies 7, AT 7: 481; 1988: 123). 24. Van Cleve (2015: Chapters 11-3) and Coliva 2016 are good entry points to the relevant literatures concerning Reid and Wittgenstein, respectively. 25. On Wittgenstein and pragmatism, in addition to other works cited herein, see e.g. those listed in Haack (1982: 171, n. 8), and the papers appearing in Vol. 4, No. 2 (2012) of this journal. 26. Cavell 1998 objects to Putnam’s 1995 so reading Wittgenstein. For a response, see Hensley (2012: 30-1). 27. One example: “The philosopher is the man who has to cure himself of many sicknesses of the understanding before he can arrive at the notions of the sound human understanding [gesunden Menschenverstandes].” (Wittgenstein 1967: IV, §53). Another (reported) occurrence is this: “During this lecture Wittgenstein referred to his slogan. ‘Don’t treat your commonsense like an umbrella. When you come into a room to philosophize, don’t leave it outside but bring it in with you.’” (Wittgenstein 1976: 68).

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28. Moyal-Sharrock (2004: 101-4), e.g., recommends a four-fold taxonomy of ‘hinges,’ as linguistic, personal, local and universal. It’s worth noting here that while Reid’s list of first principles are most naturally read as quite general, he sometimes refers, as first principles, both to their specific instances or applications (e.g., “The truths immediately testified by the external senses are the first principles from which we reason, with regard to the material world, and from which all our knowledge of it is deduced” [1788: 3.3.6, p. 176]), and to more specific (but still general) principles (e.g., “In games of chance, it is a first principle that every side of a die has an equal chance to be turned up; and that, in a lottery, every ticket has an equal chance of being drawn out” [1785: 6.4, p. 456]), which themselves are arguably grounded upon the more general first principles Reid lists. 29. According to Pritchard, the most general such hinge – “the über hinge” – is “that one is not radically and fundamentally mistaken in one’s beliefs” (2016: 95). This corresponds to Reid’s seventh first principle of contingent truths mentioned above – viz., that the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious (1785: 6.5, p. 480) – which Reid himself accords a special status (on which, see Rysiew 2011b). Compare here too Moyal-Sharrock’s view of ‘universal hinges’ as “delimit[ing] the universal bounds of sense for us: they are ungiveupable certainties for all normal human beings” (Moyal-Sharrock 2004: 103), and Wolterstorff’s (2000, 2001) discussion of ‘maximally ingressed’ beliefs as indubitable (though not infallible), with some being “deeply ingressed in the belief systems of all (normal adult) human beings” (2000: 510). A further issue is whether Wittgenstein holds, with Reid, that it is “the constitution of our nature” which leads us to hold the relevant beliefs (e.g., 1764: 2.6, p. 33). Wolterstorff thinks not; he sees Wittgenstein as someone “who tries as long as possible to make do without appealing to a shared human nature” (Wolterstorff 2000: 512). In response, Plant (2003) has argued that on this matter too Reid and Wittgenstein are, in fact, much closer than is often supposed.

ABSTRACTS

This paper considers the views of two figures whose work falls on either side of the heyday of American pragmatism, Thomas Reid (1710-96) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The broad similarities between Reid’s and (the later) Wittgenstein’s views, and in particular their epistemological views, has been well documented. Here, I argue that such similarities extend to the relation in their work between common sense and the presence of elements in their thought that can be considered pragmatist in some important respect. Beginning with Reid, I argue that some specific theses commonly associated with pragmatism – e.g., that meaning, truth, or the justifiedness of a belief in a matter of practical effects or efficacy – clearly run counter to his stated views, and stand in tension with the well-known common sense character of his work. At the same time, however, and as others have noted, other pragmatist themes and ideas – e.g., about the close relations between belief (and doubt) and action, theory and practice, and facts and values – do have a clear precedent in Reid (§2). Most fundamentally, however, Reid’s epistemological views in particular display an adherence to the idea that practice is somehow primary – an idea that’s central to pragmatism ‘broadly conceived’, as Brandom calls it and, according to some others (e.g., Putnam, Cavell), to pragmatism per se. What’s more, once we are clear on the respect(s) in which Reid’s views do incorporate an important pragmatist element, it becomes clear that far from being at odds with, or needing supplementation by, the latter, common sense is in fact inseparable from it (§3).

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Finally, I turn (§4) to Wittgenstein, and suggest that the same close connection between pragmatist elements and common sense as we find in Reid is present here as well: like Reid, Wittgenstein rejects several ‘narrow’ pragmatist theses; but he too ascribes practice a crucial role. And while he seldom explicitly refers to common sense, the notions of good judgment, and of the reasonable person – hallmarks of common sense, as Reid conceives of it – are at the heart of Wittgenstein’s later epistemological views as well.

AUTHOR

PATRICK RYSIEW University of Victoria rysiew[at]uvic.ca

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A Permissivist Ethics of Belief What Pragmatism May Learn from Common Sense

Angélique Thébert

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I thank the two reviewers for their helpful comments. “We cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith.” James, The Sentiment of Rationality “As faith in things divine is represented as the main spring in the life of a Christian, so belief in general is the main spring in the life of a man.” Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

1 In a letter to Schiller, James wrote that “from the pragmatistic point of view an ode has yet to be written to common sense.”1 James knew that pragmatism inherited some of the concepts and methods of common sense. But he apparently did not refer to the Scottish common sense championed by Reid. When he alludes to the “philosophy of the Scottish school,” he underlines the lack of “prestige” of this eclectic philosophy, which is a “thing of compromises.”2

2 Yet Reid’s common sense philosophy and James’s pragmatism partake of the same spirit of reconciliation. No doubt Reid would have endorsed James’s description of pragmatism. For the latter, philosophy is not torn between science, empirical facts, scepticism and pessimism on the one hand, religion, first principles, dogmatism and optimism on the other hand. The challenge that pragmatism should take up is to reconcile “the scientific loyalty to facts” with “the old confidence in human values” (P, 1, p. 20). In other words, pragmatism must “be a happy harmonizer of empiricist ways of thinking with the more religious demands of human beings” (P, 2, p. 69). The same may be said for common sense philosophy: “let us remember how common the folly is, of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite.”3 Reid pledges allegiance to the principles of experimental philosophy, but he is also highly sensitive to our propensity to trust. Common sense and pragmatism both develop a kind of “mediating

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philosophy” which should not tear men into parts, but should try to reconcile their different aspirations.

3 However some aspirations seem difficult to reconcile. This is the case for beliefs. On the one hand, we consider that we should not believe on the basis of insufficient evidence; but on the other hand, we hold many beliefs despite the lack of evidence. Are we irrational? When epistemic evidence is lacking, can our beliefs be grounded on practical reasons? If so, may we not suspect that these practical reasons miss the point, that they do not bring us what we want, namely reasons in favour of the epistemic accuracy of our beliefs?

4 My contention is that the Reidian answer, while compatible with a pragmatist perspective, may get some hearing from evidentialism. Reid and James share the same suspicion towards the requirement not to believe anything beyond the evidence at hand. In this respect, they subscribe to a kind of anti-evidentialism and, in the contemporary debate between evidentialism and pragmatism, they take a stand for the last: when there is no definitive and proper evidence that supports the belief that p, non evidential considerations may nevertheless constitute genuine reasons to believe that p.

5 For James, this is the case of empirical beliefs, but also of moral and religious beliefs. For Reid, it concerns empirical beliefs as well as epistemic principles.4 I intend to test how far James’s view on these beliefs is similar to Reid’s view. James’s strategy against the scientist may indeed be compared to Reid’s way with the sceptic. At first sight, the Jamesian dilemma (for instance, either you embrace the hypothesis of God’s existence, or you refuse it; either you accept that you will climb the mountain, or you dismiss this possibility) is analogous to the Reidian one (either you stick to your confidence in your faculties, or you suspend your judgment). In both cases, we must choose on insufficient evidence. And to some extent, Reid and James offer the same type of answer: for want of sufficient evidence, it is practically rational to hold these beliefs if they play a central role in our lives.

6 But Reid’s strategy differs from James’s in decisive ways. James’s dilemma supposes that we are in a position to choose. But when the reliability of our faculties is at stake, are we really in a position to choose? Moreover, is pragmatism the inevitable consequence of the abandonment of the evidentialist requirement? If some of Reid’s arguments are pragmatist in spirit, his argumentative strategy cannot be reduced to it. Actually, Reid subscribes to a kind of evidentialism. He does not simply leave the epistemic scene in favour of a different (practical) perspective. To put it metaphorically, he cultivates evidentialism in an externalist garden. Finally, if Reid and James both insist on the role of trust which is so robust that it outdoes sceptical doubts, they do not have in mind the same kind of trust.

7 Thus Reid and James share the same anti-intellectualist approach. They subscribe to a permissivist ethics of belief. I begin to outline this line of thought (I). Then I show that their views are not motivated by the same conception of evidence (II) and trust (III).

I. What is a Permissivist Ethics of Belief?

8 At first sight, a “permissivist ethics of belief” has a contradictory ring to it. An ethics of belief supposes there are norms for belief-formation we should strive to respect. To be

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permissive in matters of beliefs seems to imply that we need do nothing for our beliefs to be well-grounded. They are all welcome, even though we do not hold them in virtue of the consideration of specific norms.

9 Yet being permissive in matters of belief does not entail doxastic slackness. To make it clear, let’s consider the evidentialist rule: even if Reid and James have serious reservations about it, that does not sound the death knell for an ethics of belief.

I.1 The Evidentialist Principle

10 Basically, according to evidentialism, a belief is well-grounded if and only if it is based on adequate evidence.5 (Evidentialism) “A belief that p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if S has evidence that p at t.”

11 As such, evidentalism is a mere descriptive thesis. It does not prescribe any attitude to the subject. Moreover, it does not specify what it means for a subject “to have evidence” (does it imply that he holds that p in virtue of his consideration of the available evidence?). Finally, it does not specify how far the belief that p must fit the evidence the subject has for p for it to be epistemically justified.

12 To be sure, Reid and James are not reluctant to accept evidentialism. As Reid notes: “We give the name of evidence to whatever is a ground of belief. To believe without evidence is a weakness which every man is concerned to avoid, and which every man wishes to avoid.” (EIP, 2, 20, p. 228). Reid states a minimal rule: we should avoid to believe without evidence, which does not imply that we should avoid to believe on insufficient evidence. Later, James acknowledges that “as far as the facts will allow,” our beliefs must not be influenced by something extraneous to the “coercive evidence.”6

13 Reid and James are not critical about evidentialism per se, but about evidentialism construed as a prescriptive thesis that should be applied anywhere at any time. This kind of evidentialism is vigorously expressed by two philosophers they discuss with circumspection: John Locke and William K. Clifford. Locke and Clifford tie evidentialism so strongly to a deontic conception of epistemic justification, and they state it so firmly in an absolutist language, that it is thought to be its paradigmatic form. The evidentialist norm is cast in such a deontic and universal mould in Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief: (Clifford’s Principle) “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

14 It is morally and epistemically wrong to believe anything with a degree of firmness that is not proportioned to the available evidence. What matters for our concerns is that the evidentialist norm aims solely at truth. For Locke, we must obey it for the love of truth, “for truth’s sake,” and not for the sake of our passions or interests. In this respect, evidentialism is a species of alethism: (Alethism) The only normative reasons there are for or against believing any proposition are epistemic ones – i.e. reasons that are in some way relevant to getting at the truth and avoiding falsity.7

15 What counts as a reason to believe is necessarily something which connects the belief to its truth. Any consideration related to our affections is a disturber of truth and must not be taken into account. More specifically, we must proportion our assent according to the evidence (Essay, IV, 15, §5, p. 579). This rule of proportionality requires that we

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make “as full and exact an inquiry as [we] can make” (Essay, IV, 16, §1, p. 581). A rational belief results from an uncompromising inquiry, during which the mind examines all sides of the question and leaves no evidence unseen. It is only if we realise this preliminary investigation, that we will have the assurance that there is no surplus of assent and that we have done our epistemic best.

16 In order to integrate these elements, let’s distinguish the simple evidentialist thesis (which corresponds to what I have so far labelled evidentialism) from the strong evidentialist thesis. (Strong Evidentialism) Anyone must always, everywhere, proportion his assent to the available evidence. It is forbidden to give one’s assent upon insufficient evidence.

I.2 The Non-Evidentialist Alternative

17 If evidence alone should regulate our beliefs, what should we do in case we do not possess sufficient evidence?

18 According to strong evidentialism, we must obey the “agnostic imperative” and suspend our assent. As James presents it: “Follow intellectualist advice: wait for evidence; and while waiting, do nothing.”8

19 For James, we should on the contrary give our assent. In the case of many beliefs, we cannot wait until we have sufficient evidence in their favour, because the suspension of our assent amounts to rejecting them practically (“not to act on one belief, is often equivalent to acting as if the opposite belief were true, so inaction would not always be as “passive” as the intellectualists assume,” SPP, p. 223). So we cannot take refuge behind the curtain of ignorance. We have to make a decision for or against the belief. And if the belief is practically appealing (because it is an “invaluable instrument of action,” P, 6, p. 201-2), to decide against it would be irrational from a practical point of view.

20 According to Reid, the first option is not only irrational from a practical point of view, it is also psychologically impossible. For immediate beliefs,9 we cannot but stick to the second option. Though the sceptic scolds him (“you ought to resolve firmly to withhold assent, and to throw off this belief of external objects, which may be all delusion,” IHM, 6, 20, p. 169), Reid is not impressed by such a recommendation: “I will never attempt to throw it off […] because it is not in my power […] My belief is carried along by perception, as irresistibly as my body by the earth.” (IHM, 6, 20, p. 169). It is psychologically unrealistic to pretend that we could give our assent only after due consideration of the evidence. Most of our beliefs are the natural products of our constitution. Moreover they are so essential to our lives that we cannot but live according to them right now.

21 So Reid’s and James’s non-evidentialism comes to this: (Non-Evidentialism) For some beliefs, we are allowed to believe that p, even if we lack the support of definitive and conclusive evidence for the belief that p.

22 Non-evidentialism allows a permissivist ethics of belief: that is to say, it allows us to hold a belief even if we do not possess sufficient conclusive evidence. Facing a lack of epistemic evidence, a strong evidentialist recommends us not to give our assent, while a permissivist allows us to go on with our beliefs. For instance, you have an important date, but while hurrying up in the street, you realise that you have lost your watch. You ask the time to a passer-by, who – after a mere glimpse at his watch – gives you the

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time. In such a situation, strong evidentialism requires you to rely on sufficient evidence for your belief to be justified, and here it is clearly not sufficient (you don’t have the assurance that his watch is in good working order, he may want to mislead you, etc.), as a consequence, the strong evidentialist prudential rule requires you not to believe what he tells you. But in a permissivist epistemology you are entitled to believe what the passer- by tells you, even if you have not submitted his watch to the thorough investigation of an expert or even if you don’t have the guarantee of his trustworthiness.

23 For an epistemic permissivist, the challenge is to show that a permissivist ethics of belief does not amount to promoting doxastic laxity. And as it happens, it is not deprived of epistemic norms. These norms boil down to four principles:

I.2.1 The Ultimate Epistemic End is to Hit the Truth

24 Reid and James both take upon trust that we are so made as to know truths (“The postulate that there is truth, and that it is the destiny of our minds to attain it, we are deliberately resolving to make” WB, p. 12 ; “the truth and fidelity of our faculty of judging is, and must be taken for granted in every judgment,” EIP, 7, 4, p. 570). In such a climate of confidence, the epistemic requirement is to maximise our chance to hit truths. The strong evidentialist veto is driven by a different ultimate end: it is motivated by the fear of being mistaken. The wish to escape error is stronger than the appetite for truth. In this climate of suspicion, everything must be submitted to the evidentialist test, even if it means that we miss some truths that do not pass the test.

25 As a consequence, the more weight we give to the goal of “avoiding error,” the more sensitive we will be to reasons to doubt. We are also more likely to suspend our judgement. On the contrary, the more weight we give to the goal of “knowing the truth,” the more liberal we will be towards how much evidence is sufficient to justify our belief that p. We will not wait to have overwhelming evidence to consider that we are justified in believing that p. Depending on our cognitive goals, we do not respond in the same way to the same body of evidence: a strong evidentialist withholds a belief, while an epistemic permissivist swallows it.10

I.2.2 Our Beliefs Are Innocent Until Proven Guilty

26 In a permissivist ethics of belief, a belief is justified if nothing speaks against it. It is presumed epistemically innocent (that is to say: true) until it is proven guilty (until there emerges a reason to doubt it). As we can see, a permissivist ethics of belief also recommends that we make sure that our belief that p fits the available evidence. But the “available evidence” does not correspond to a piece of evidence that definitively establishes that p, it corresponds to a defeater for p. Depending on the doxastic policy, we are not required to be sensitive to the same data.

27 What is more, when we subscribe to a permissivist ethics of belief, we do not refer to obligating or coercive norms, but to permissive norms. These norms entitle us to keep our beliefs so long as we are not aware of anything that rebut them. Reid resolutely takes this permissive path. First principles, on which we find a universal agreement, are taken for granted until we can show a specific reason to doubt them. A consent of ages and nations, of the learned and vulgar, ought, at least, to have great authority, unless we can show some prejudice, as universal as that consent is, which might be the cause of it. (EIP, 1, 2, p. 44, my emphasis)

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28 Thus Reid appears to endorse a kind of conservatism, that leaves our doxastic set as it is. (Conservative non-evidentialism)11 We are justified in believing that p, if we do believe that p and if we are not aware of any defeaters for p.

29 The no-defeater condition is decisive. It helps stifle an objection. Indeed Reid keeps on noting that many beliefs naturally arise (“It is not in our power to judge as we will. The judgement is carried along necessarily by the evidence, real or seeming, which appears to us at the time.” EIP, 6, 4, 452). Our assent seems to function like an epistemic thermometer which naturally covaries with what we take as evidence. But how can we be epistemically responsible if we are swept along by evidence?

30 Actually, even if some beliefs do not obtain their rationality after a hard fight, we are still required to be attentive to the presence of undermining evidence. We are bound to question our beliefs, if we face good reasons to doubt them. “When this can be shewn to be the case” that the presupposition that human faculties are truth-tailored is erroneous, “I acknowledge it ought to have its due weight” (EIP, 6, 4, p. 466). But as long as we are deprived of such proof, this presupposition is prima facie justified. The absence of any cogent reason to doubt amounts to an “epistemic pass.” On this matter, the burden of proof is on the sceptic’s side. As Reid claims about testimony: It is evident, that, in the matter of testimony, the balance of human judgment is by nature inclined to the side of belief; and turns to that side of itself, when there is nothing put into the opposite scale. (IHM, 6, 24, p. 194, my emphasis)

31 Nature has equipped our minds so that we will not have to wait for a positive and distinct piece of evidence that our interlocutor has spoken truth to be entitled to believe him. If it were not so, we would be in a condition of intellectual and practical paralysis. To be allowed to believe their veracity, being unaware of a reason to doubt is sufficient. By way of compensation, “when there is something put into the opposite scale” (in the scale of disbelief), we have to adjust our assent. This is made easy by the fact that we are highly sensitive to the loss of evidence: it is not “in a man’s power to believe any thing longer than he thinks he has evidence” (EIP, 2, 20, p. 228). If we realise we no longer have evidence for a belief, we do not keep it (which does not amount to say that we cannot believe anything unless we think we have sufficient evidence for it).

32 On the whole, the entitlement to believe in the absence of positive epistemic evidence does not make the justification of beliefs an all-too-easy matter. A permissivist ethics of belief commits the agent to the epistemic duty to be vigilant for the presence of potential defeaters. It does not state a norm for belief-formation, but a norm for belief- relinquishment. Its function is to revise prima facie justified beliefs.

33 Some beliefs need not be based on positive evidential support to be justified. As Reid remarks about first principles: “There’s no searching of evidence, no weighing of arguments.” (EIP, 6, 4, p. 452). These principles immediately impose on us. Although they do not result from a specific epistemic achievement, we deserve some credit for them. Our responsibility lies in our being open to the possibility of facing some factor which leads us to consider anew their epistemic status. We do not pretend that those things that are laid down as first principles may not be examined, and that we ought not to have our ears open to what may be pleaded against their being admitted as such. Let us deal with them, as an upright judge does with a witness who has a fair character. He pays a regard to the testimony of

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such a witness, while this character is unimpeached. But if it can be shown that he is suborned, or that he is influenced by malice or partial favour, his testimony loses all its credit, and is justly rejected. (EIP, I, 2, p. 46-7)

34 We find the same doxastic conservatism in James’s writings: our beliefs resist change, they possess “a kind of inertia” (“in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives,” P, 2, p. 60). It does not mean that they may not be rejected in the face of new facts. But so long as we do not have any positive reasons to disturb them, we are allowed to preserve them. As a matter of fact, we generally believe “for no reasons worthy of the name” (WB, p. 9). To be epistemically entitled, it is sufficient that “our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them” (P, 6, p. 207). We do not possess any positive and singular fact in favour of them, “the negative fact that nothing contradictory […] comes to interfere” (P, 6, p. 213) is sufficient to give us the right to integrate them in our doxastic set. The absence of any “clash and contradiction” of our beliefs with our experience and well-entrenched beliefs amounts to an “indirect verification” (P, 6, p. 215).

I.2.3 The Evidentialist Requirement is not to be Applied Always, Everywhere and for Anyone

35 The permissivist ethics of belief is pluralist, for the way we respond to epistemic evidence is context-sensitive. What is problematic with Clifford’s injunction is that it is stated from an abstract and transcendent point of view, without taking into account the specificity of the context and the beliefs.

36 In ordinary contexts, the strong evidentialist standard does not rule our doxastic practices. “No man thinks of asking himself what reason he has to believe that his neighbour is a living creature.” (EIP, 6, 5, p. 483). Yet he is convinced of this. It is only in a well-circumscribed context, in which specific reasons to doubt emerge, that we may look for evidence to determine whether we should maintain this belief or not (let’s say, if we evolve among android creatures like “hubots,” human robots). But in normal circumstances, though we may be aware of “the weakness of the reasons [we give] for [our] belief,” it does not “make [us] in the least doubtful” (EIP, 6, 5, p. 483).

37 If our belief does not waver, it is because it “stands upon another foundation than that of reasoning.” Reid is sensitive to the plurality of our beliefs: we must distinguish “things which require proof, from things which […] being self-evident, do not admit of proof” (EIP, 1, 2, p. 41). The mistake of the strong evidentialist demand is to put all the beliefs on the same level. On the contrary we should give a specific consideration to immediate beliefs which are not governed by evidence in the same way as derived beliefs. The strong evidentialist requirement is relevant for beliefs which are grounded upon reasoning, but ineffective for immediate beliefs. It supposes that evidence gives epistemic support to beliefs which are otherwise in bad epistemic standing. However, in the case of immediate beliefs, “their evidence is not demonstrative, but intuitive” (EIP, 1, 2, p. 41). As a consequence, there is no separate evidence to bring out. I seem to want that evidence which I can best comprehend, and which gives perfect satisfaction to an inquisitive mind. (EIP, 2, 20, p. 233)

38 Reid blames the “inquisitive minds” for making us feel guilty when we do not manage to give the so-called appropriate reasons for our beliefs. There are some beliefs which we do not hold in virtue of the consideration of specific and conclusive evidence.12 As

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we will see, it does not mean they are believed without evidence. We lack a certain type of evidence, but we do not lack evidence altogether.

39 On his part, James underlines that in some cases we have the right to endorse beliefs even though the evidence does not sufficiently speak for them. In such situations, the available evidence is not sufficient to decide between two hypotheses (let’s say between agnosticism and Christianity if you wonder whether God exists, or between believing that “it is on the right” or “that is is on the left” if you wonder where the guesthouse is located, while you are at a junction in a desert land). In such cases, contradictory beliefs may be compatible with the same body of indeterminate evidence. To settle the question, something else must step in: “our passional and volitive nature” (WB, p. 4). The evidence is outstripped by “personal preferences,” some “good will” (SPP, p. 221-2) or what James also calls our “faith-tendencies” (SPP, p. 224). When the strong evidentialist requirement leaves us at a loss, our willing nature completes the evidence and enables us to decide between one of the two horns of the dilemma.

40 So Reid and James are both sensitive to the fact that, even if some beliefs cannot play the strong evidentialist game, we are not irrational to hold them. For such beliefs, there is no process of “evidence searching.” As Wittgenstein says, they “lie apart from the route traveled by inquiry” (OC, §88).

I.2.4 Fallibilism

41 The fact that some propositions are off the route of inquiry does not make them eternally immune from reasons to doubt. Propositions of common sense, though strongly held, are defeasible. Reid and James admit that what we take as “petrified” truths (P, 2, p. 66) may be questioned. In other words, the permissivist ethics of belief shared by common sense and pragmatism is a fallibilist one.

42 To be sure, fallibilism is acknowledged at varying degrees. It has even been questioned whether Reid’s epistemology is fallibilist.13 Yet, Reid is ready to admit that our system of first principles may evolve. He recognises the tentative character of his set of first principles and aims at a “clear explication and enumeration of” them (IHM, 7, p. 216). It is precisely in the course of settling controversies about them that we may discover that, because of some extended prejudice or bias of the mind, what we took so far as a first principle was only an honoured opinion. When we try to distinguish real first principles from fakes, first principles are put under scrutiny and the flavour of dogmatism (which often sticks to common sense) fades away: first principles are not taken as granted any more, they are proposed to our understanding and they wait for our assent.

43 We then face a paradox: the enumeration of first principles is a necessary step for the improvement of knowledge, but when we do this, first principles do not immediately commend our assent and lose their privileged status. Reid admits it when he distinguishes the ordinary context, in which first principles “force assent in particular instances,” from the philosophical context in which – while they are “turned into a general proposition” (EIP, 6, 5, 482, my emphasis) – they force our assent less powerfully. This is why, in the context of a discussion with a sceptic, when they are considered as truths to be verified, their evidence is less compelling. It is probably in such an artificial context that there is some movement in the river-bed, some of the channels becoming momentarily fluid. During the discussion with the sceptic, the

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desired stability of our system of knowledge looks more like a moving stability. Nevertheless, we can presume that its overall integrity is saved, as long as first principles are not challenged all at the same time and are not expressed in general propositions all at the same time. If there is some leeway for fallibilism in Reid’s epistemology, it is restrained, since all first principles cannot be at the same time in the foreground, functioning as propositions to be tested, and in the background, functioning as channels for empirical judgments.14

44 James’s distinction between our “stock of old opinions” and “new opinions” is concordant with the Reidian perspective.15 Our old opinions are generally left “untouched,” but new ones may “graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter” (P, 2, p. 60). James calls these long and fondly held beliefs “beliefs of common sense.” It is as if some thoughts were so sedimented that it would be impossible to throw them out. He describes them in the fifth lesson of Pragmatism, entitled “Pragmatism and Common Sense.” In this lesson, common sense is associated with a “stage of thought” which delivers tried and tested useful concepts (like “thing,” “minds,” “bodies,” “causal influences”). These concepts have efficaciously linked parts of our experience for ages. They constitute a kind of metaphysical instinct which has resisted changes. Like Reid’s first principles of truth, James’s categories of common sense may be cast in a propositional form: “Things do exist, even when we do not see them” (P, 5, p. 181), there is one Space “in which each thing has its position” (P, 5, p. 177), etc.

45 At first sight, the stock of beliefs of common sense can only grow. James speaks of a “process of truth’s growth” that is “an addition that involves no alteration in the old beliefs” (P, 2, p. 62). But although our beliefs are like “primitive ways of thinking” (p. 169), they are not infallible. Common sense categories may be modified with the advance of science and philosophical thought. Their “consolidation” and “augustness” are not “decisive marks of truth” (P, 5, p. 188). James’s thought seems even more attuned with fallibilism than Reid’s: he admits a degree of slack in our system of fundamental beliefs (“To a certain degree, therefore, everything here is plastic,” P, 2, p. 61). If our beliefs “pass so long as nothing challenges them,” we must be ready to let a challenger override them (“we have to live today by what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood,” P, 6, p. 223)

46 So, Reid’s and James’s non-evidentialism frees us from the all-too-stringent requirement not to believe anything on insufficient evidence. It is a matter of necessity and rationality: if we stuck to this requirement, we could neither act nor reason. It would be the symptom of a “lunacy” (Reid) or a “morbid mind” (James, P, 8, p. 201). But there are still some questions to elucidate: 1. What does it mean for a subject to have sufficient evidence? Must he have a reflective access to it? And what is the nature of this evidence (demonstrative proof, mental state, or anything a belief is responsive to, including facts that are not in the head)? 2. Do Reid and James hold the same kind of permissivist ethics of belief? Between a rule that entitles us to believe in the absence of sufficient evidence (Reid), and one that prompts us to believe in spite of the lack of evidence (James), there is some leeway. Moreover, a rule that allows us to believe while we are not conscious of a sufficient amount of epistemic evidence does not entail that the only remaining option is to believe for practical reasons.

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47 As we can see, to settle the debate between evidentialism and pragmatism, the appeal to permissivism is not the end of the story. Epistemic permissivism can indeed be applied in two different ways. It divides in two trends: a pragmatic permissivism and a common-sensist permissivism. As a consequence, the rejection of evidentialism in favour of permissivism does not automatically commit one to pragmatism (construed as a thesis about our reasons to believe). Let’s see how they differ.

II. Two Views on Epistemic Permissivism

48 When Reid notes that some beliefs are “guided by instinct, that is, by a natural and blind impulse,”16 it seems that evidence is totally absent. Yet, as we shall see, he does not promote a crude non-evidentialism. What about James?

II.1 James: Practical and Epistemic Reasons

49 As previously noted, James thinks that for some beliefs, we must go ahead of evidence. In such cases, the positive consequences of the beliefs constitute practical reasons to believe. Practical reasons are subjective reasons which have a positive impact on our moral and emotional state. Sometimes they greatly outweigh our epistemic reasons which are ludicrously weak. So construed, pragmatism corresponds to practical non- evidentialism: (Practical non-evidentialism) Non evidential reasons can count as reasons for beliefs. If believing that p has benefits for you, you are allowed to believe that p.

50 Practical non-evidentialism breaks with alethism: pragmatism has “no prejudices whatever, no obstructive dogmas, no rigid canons of what shall count as proof” (P, 2, p. 79). Anything can count as a good reason to believe, as long as it enhances our life. If we face a lack of epistemic evidence, we are not condemned to withold our assent, we are allowed to go on with a belief… but not for no reasons at all, or simply in virtue of the available evidence. We are allowed to hold a belief for practical reasons. For instance, I am allowed to believe that “I will recover,” in spite of the lack of sufficient medical data to ground my belief. I give my assent for a practical reason (my desire to see my daughter grow up). What is more, I am conscious of this reason, at least in the sense that I notice that the mere consideration of it has positive emotional consequences on me (it triggers my will to act, to struggle against the disease and to conscientiously follow the medical advice).

51 Practical non-evidentialism does not fall into irrationalism: what prompts the belief that p is the fact that its mere contemplation raises a “sentiment of rationality.” It is a sentiment of harmony and unity which triggers our active impulses. It is a “strong feeling of ease, peace, rest” which enables us “to think with perfect fluency.”17 Rationality does not consist in intrinsic properties of reasoning but in subjective affections. A belief is rational if it “fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality’s whole setting” (P, 4, p. 213).

52 Though striking, we must not be misled by statements like these: “As a rule, we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use” (WB, p. 10), we must believe “what pays” (P, 6, p. 230). James circumscribes the conditions under which we are allowed to believe that p when the evidence is not complete. He neither licences any

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belief nor recognises a right to believe ad libitum. We have the right to believe that p, we are even required to believe that p,18 if the belief is justified from a practical point of view, that is to say if it is a live hypothesis which triggers our willingness to act and gives us a sentiment of rationality. As we can see, the belief that p is “good” for “definite, assignable reasons” (P, 2, p. 76). We are not allowed to believe what we want: our belief must still be compatible with the body of epistemic evidence at hand; and it is only when this body of evidence is compatible with a living, forced and momentous option, that practical reasons come in (“Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons.” P, 6, p. 217). It is precisely on this point that pragmatism appears as a kind or sub-set of permissivism. Like permissivism, practical non- evidentialism (or pragmatism construed as a thesis on our reasons to believe) considers that there is no unique way for a belief to be rational or justified. They both reject uniqueness, that is to say the idea that – given one’s available evidence – we can adopt only one rational doxastic attitude towards any proposition.19 On the contrary, given the epistemic available evidence, if the latter is not sufficient, someone may adopt a belief while another may not, and both be rational. Pragmatism adds: it depends on the practical reasons you have. In any case, given the same available evidence, there are different ways to hold a rational belief. Evidentialism is not the unique route to rationality.20

53 According to evidentialism, this move to the sphere of “subjective reasons” in effect excludes epistemic considerations from doxastic deliberation.

54 Indeed, beliefs are not examined according to the sole criterion of truth, independently of the criterion of action. Actually, truth and action are interwoven. For James, a belief is true if it makes us go ahead. Truth is defined in terms of potential for action. It is “an affair of leading” (P, 6, p. 210). More precisely, to determine whether a belief is true, we have to examine its consequences, not its ground (“Not where it comes from but what it leads to is to decide,” WB, p. 17). A belief is true if it satisfactorily links one part of our experience to another, if it coheres with other facts and enlarges our doxastic set. On the contrary, evidentialists consider that “the attractiveness of a belief does not tell for or against the truth of p” (Shah 2006: 487) and that to determine whether to believe that p, we must only determine whether it is the case that p, independently of the question whether it is in our interest to believe that p.

55 Of course, practical reasons are not totally indifferent to the norm of truth. For instance, when I believe that p (“I will succeed in a perilous leap”),21 I believe that p not only because I consider that it will have a positive effect on me (and make me succeed my leap), but also because I think that it is at least possible that p. My bet is far from being truth-irrelevant. But as James makes clear, in such cases we are deprived of relevant evidence (“Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully,” SR, p. 96). As a consequence, we cannot determine whether p. Even if it is plausible that p (for instance if I am not well known for my susceptibility to vertigo), it remains the case that nothing warrants the truth of p (because I do not know anything about my capacity to make such a jump). If epistemic reasons are not a pure nothing, they are therefore prior but withered and insufficient evidence which must be completed by practical and overwhelming reasons.22

56 Finally, what is presented as a fault by the intellectualist, is turned by James into a rare quality, possessed by some lucky geniuses. Far from being the symptom of an

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inattentive mind, the capacity to “outstrip ” (SR, p. 96) may be the sign of an acute responsiveness to evidence. Some people are able to extend a certain body of evidence. Why shouldn’t they make use of this capacity just because of the “mental nullity” of other men (SR, p. 93)? But what is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? […] In short, if I am born with such a superior general reaction to evidence that I can guess right and act accordingly, and gain all that comes of right action, while my less gifted neighbor (paralyzed by his scruples and waiting for more evidence which he dares not anticipate, much as he longs to) still stand shivering on the brink, by what law shall I be forbidden to reap the advantages of my superior native sensitiveness? (SR, p. 92-94, my emphasis)

57 For James, believing for practical reasons is not the symptom of epistemic carelessness, it is often the capacity of some well-endowed minds to see beyond the mere tentative epistemic evidence. These minds are so sensitive to evidence that they are able to perceive the possibilities of action it outlines. When the strong evidentialist sees dumb evidence, the practical non-evidentialist sees a project, a future.

II.2 Reid: External and Internal Evidence

58 As for James, Reid notes that practical reasons may be a substitute for epistemic reasons, when the latter are wanting.

II.2.1 The Pragmatist Argument

59 When he comes to epistemic principles, Reid notes that even if we do not believe them for specific reasons, we are allowed to take them for granted. To the insistent sceptic who asks for a reason, Reid answers that “although the sober part of mankind will not be very anxious to know [his] reasons,” he indulges in giving some (IHM, 6, 20, p. 169). One of them is that we are entitled to hold these beliefs from a practical point of view. To enlighten this point, Reid appeals to the thought experiment of someone deprived of these beliefs. What would have happened if, as a child, I had not believed them? And what would happen now if I resolved to throw them off? Reid shows that it would have resulted (or would result) in epistemic and practical disaster. These beliefs are indeed necessary to the development of our reasoning faculties and thanks to them we gain considerable social benefits. Had we the power to withhold them, we would be required not to do so, at least for prudential reasons. I think it would not be prudent to throw off this belief, if it were in my power. If Nature intended to deceive me, and impose upon me by false appearances, and I, by my great cunning and profound logic, have discovered the imposture; prudence would dictate to me in this case, even to put up this indignity done me, as quietly as I could […]. For what do I gain by resenting this injury? You ought at least not to believe what she says. This indeed seems reasonable, if she intends to impose upon me. But what is the consequence? I resolve not to believe my senses. I break my nose against a post that comes in my way; I step into a dirty kennel; and, after twenty such wise and rational actions, I am taken up and clapt into a mad-house. Now, I confess I would rather make one of the credulous fools whom Nature imposes upon, than of those wise and rational philosophers who resolve to withhold assent at all this expence. (IHM, 6, 20, 169-170, my emphasis)

60 So even if we discovered that Nature deceives us, it would be rational (from a practical point of view) to keep on believing. For we would not gain anything by intellectual

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integrity. Worse, we would lose a lot: our sanity. And the state of madness is simply not a live hypothesis for us. The same conclusion is drawn from consideration of children’s education. Were our belief to be withheld till we are capable, in any degree, of weighing evidence, we should lose all the benefit of that instruction and information, without which we could never attain the use of our rational faculties. (EAP, 3, 1, 2, p. 111)

61 It makes a significant practical difference for us to stick to our beliefs of common sense rather than refrain from them.

62 These considerations sound extremely pragmatic, but they are not without difficulty.

63 Firstly, it seems that we cannot qualify as “rational” for holding a belief we could not have chosen not to accept. The pragmatist argument presupposes a “decision- theoretic” model. For practical reasons to be efficient, we must really have the power to decide between accepting a belief or refusing it. Yet in what sense could we be rational in believing things we cannot prevent ourselves from believing? The Reidian thought experiment comes only to asking “whether it would be rational for us to stick with what we have, if we had a choice” (Alston 1991: 168). Its purport is therefore limited. It is nevertheless one of our sole argumentative resorts until we have new faculties “to sit in judgment upon the old” (EIP, 7, 4, p. 571).

64 As it happens, Reid moves to the pragmatist argument, because he is well aware of the epistemic circularity involved in any attempt to give an epistemic reason for an epistemic principle.23 Indeed, what epistemic reason could he give to someone who challenges – let’s say – the epistemic principle of perception? If we are committed to this epistemic principle, it determines the kind of evidence we are sensitive to. So it is no surprise that the epistemic reason we will give to our objector for adopting it (for instance, cases of correct perceptions) will not be recognised as valid by him: the sceptic will consider it as stamped by the very epistemic principle he wants to be independently justified. In such cases, we might as well give a practical reason. However, the pragmatic “way out” will not satisfy someone asking for an epistemic justification. Practical reasons do not show how epistemic principles are linked to truth.24 Is it not theoretically frustrating to content ourselves with practical rationality?

65 According to Lynch, “these reasons may not be the glittering diamonds of certainty that Descartes dreamed of by his fire, but they are reasons, and human” (2013: 359). They are human because being a human is being an epistemic and a practical agent. One cannot, it appears, be an epistemic agent without at the same time also being a practical agent. At the root level, your practical and epistemic commitments cannot be disentangled. […] if we enter epistemology through the doorway of epistemic agency […] we find that epistemology involves norms that are intertwined with practical norms. (Lynch 2013: 359)

66 I think that Reid has precisely seized this point. When he describes common sense, he presents it as a degree of judgment which especially manifests through our actions (“Common sense is that degree of judgment which is common to men with whom we can converse and transact business,” “It is this degree of reason, and this only, that makes a man capable of managing his own affairs, and answerable for his conduct towards others,” EIP, 6, 2, p. 424, p. 433). Common sense is inseparably theoretical and practical, it is what makes us deal with our fellows and the world. Being endowed with common sense means being both an epistemic and a practical agent. It does not mean

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being a pure intellectual mind. As a consequence, practical rationality is tied to epistemic rationality. And since epistemic principles are the products of common sense, it is not inopportune to mention practical reasons to justify them.25

II.2.2 The Evidentialist Argument

67 Actually Reid does not put much stress on practical reasons either. As we have seen, in normal circumstances, people are not “anxious” to know their reasons to believe. His view is that immediate beliefs are well-grounded although they are not held for any reason. How is it possible?

68 As it happens, Reid opposes strong evidentialism because, as it is promoted by Locke, it is tied to internalism. This is the universal requirement of this feature that Reid rejects. By “internalism,” I refer here to an epistemological theory about the type of access we have to evidence. According to it, a belief that p is justified for a subject if and only if the evidence for p is accessible (actually or potentially) from the subject’s perspective.26 Strong evidentialism presupposes this awareness requirement. The motivation for it is to prescribe the possibility of having beliefs “we don’t know how,” beliefs which could as well have been acquired accidentally. But Reid’s simple evidentialism is not unconditionally tied to the awareness requirement. So if Reid is not “anxious” to spell his evidence for his immediate beliefs, it is not that evidence is not there, it is simply because we do not have access to it.

69 Our immediate beliefs are indeed the effects of our constitution, they come “from the Mint of Nature” (IHM, 6, 20, p. 168-9), and we do not have access to Nature’s core. In accordance to his mysterianism, Reid notes that the natural principles from which immediate beliefs result are not disclosed to ourselves. On this matter, we are left in an “impenetrable darkness.” We can only state that such principles are “parts of our constitution” (“That our sensations of touch indicate something external, extended, figured, hard or soft, is not a deduction of reason, but a natural principle. The belief of it, and the very conception of it, are equally parts of our constitution,” IHM, 5, 7, p. 72). Once this is stated, there is nothing else to say. Our immediate beliefs are grounded on our constitution, but we do not have God’s eyes to testify that our constitution is attuned to the world (“If we are deceived in it, we are deceived by Him that made us, and there is no remedy,” IHM, 5, 7, p. 72).

70 However, this externalist feature does not tell the whole story about Reid’s way with evidence. Actually, Reid interweaves externalist considerations with internalist ones. In a few words, he develops strands of internalism in an externalist framework. When certain beliefs are at stake, we must have a specific access to their evidence in order to be entitled to hold them. This is the case of beliefs which are the conclusions of a demonstration. In all reasoning, there must be one or more premises, and a conclusion drawn from them. And the premises are called the reason why we must believe the conclusion which we see to follow from them. That the evidence of sense is of a different kind, needs little proof. No man seeks a reason for believing what he sees or feels; and if he did, it would be difficult to find one. (EIP, 2, 20, p. 230)

71 The evidence of sense does not work in the same way as the evidence of reasoning: it supports perceptual beliefs even if the subject is not able to specify it. Of course, in order to believe that “the magnolia is blooming,” I have to perceive the blooming magnolia. My belief is grounded on a sensation, and I am aware of that sensation. Yet

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this awareness is not a stringent requirement: apart from mentioning the fact that “I distinctly see the magnolia in the garden,” I can say nothing more (“This is all I can say,” EIP, 3, 2, p. 256). I do not know how this sensation functions as evidence. I cannot explain why it induces me to believe that “the magnolia is blooming.” After all, this sensation could have been designed so as to be the sign of something else (let’s say of a rough table). Moreover this evidence does not testify for itself: it does not show that it proceeds from a reliable power of mind. Now if I were being asked why I believe that what I see really exists as I see it, I should prove that my sense perception is reliable. However, I do not apprehend this fact of my nature independently from its outputs. Therefore a man “can give no reason for believing his senses” (EIP, 2, 20, p. 230). He cannot give an independent and decisive reason for it, he does not have a reflective access to “the work of the Almighty,” a fact that should be laid before his eyes in order to answer the sceptic’s demand.

72 Things are different when we deal with the conclusion of a demonstration: here, the evidence of reasoning must be “fairly laid before” the subject in the premises (EIP, 2, 20, p. 229). To sum up, “for Reid, not all types of […] evidence work the same way. Some types […] require conscious awareness if they are to function as evidence for certain beliefs and if they are to produce the beliefs. But other types of evidence do not.”27 Thus, in a demonstration, evidence takes the form of an argument that must be specifically considered by an attentive mind. But evidence can also prompt the assent without being examined in a preliminary step. This is how the evidence of sense mostly works. For instance, if some sensory evidence must appear to us in order to be entitled to believe that “the magnolia is blooming,” we do not have access to the proper functioning of our constitution, and this is yet what accounts for the connection between the sensation and the belief. Part of the belief’s ground is left hidden to us.

73 What should be clear now is that Reid does not oppose evidentialism per se, he opposes the strong evidentialist’s requirement to always have a reflective access to the main part of one’s evidence. We are entitled to hold immediate beliefs, even though it is not in virtue of the specific consideration of their main evidence. It does not preclude evidence from being there and doing its grounding-job.

74 Reid’s common-sensism constitutes a second kind or sub-set of permissivism: according to it, there are some beliefs (the immediate products of our consciousness, memory and perception) which we are justified to hold even if we don’t have access to the whole body of epistemic evidence that grounds them. This insufficiency is not compensated by invoking explicit practical reasons, but by instinctively trusting the veracity of our intellectual faculties.28

III. Two Views on Trust

75 Reid and James both underline that we are rational to hold some beliefs in spite of the lack of evidence. But while James considers that evidence is wanting because such beliefs cannot “be decided on intellectual grounds” (WB, p. 11), for Reid evidence is there but simply not discerned. What remains to be shown is what will take over and complete the wanting grounds (for James), or the absence of awareness of the grounds (for Reid).

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III.1 James: Trust as a Leap of Faith

76 For James, there are some circumstances in which “our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions.” It is the case “whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds” (WB, p. 11). We have to do with a genuine option when we are faced with an option “of the forced, living, and momentous kind” (p. 3): there are two hypotheses which have some appeal to us, we cannot but choose between them, and the choice has significant consequences for our life. This is the case with moral and religious options (like between being vegetarian or carnivorous, agnostic or a Christian), but also with more trivial empirical beliefs (when for instance I have to decide between someone loving me or someone not loving me). While we face such a tremendous choice, if we are deprived of sufficient scientific evidence to make a decision with full knowledge of the facts, our “passional character” gives us the strength to bet for one hypothesis. This passional nature acts like a motive for our will. It includes our subjective preferences and emotions and corresponds to what James calls “faith.” Our faith gives us courage to “run ahead of scientific evidence” (p. 25) and to bet on the hypothesis which seems to enlarge our potentialities of action. Thanks to this “trusting spirit,” we are bold enough to “take a leap in the dark” (p. 31).

77 As we can see, this leap of faith is an affair of human temper: whereas a pessimistic temperament craves for security and definitive truths, a confident and passionate temperament dares venture in indeterminate matters, without any assurance. Better to be endowed with such a passional nature because life in its entirety is a risky matter (“In the total game of life we stake our persons all the while,” SR, p. 94). Thanks to this “precursive trust,” we dare “jump with both feet off the ground into or towards [this] world” (SPP, p. 230) and we are hopeful that our jump will be met by the world. Faith makes us act unhesitatingly, even when the success of the action is not warranted. Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible; […] faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance. […] In the average man, […] the power to trust, to risk a little beyond the literal evidence is an essential function. (SR, p. 90-1).

78 Faith compensates the lack of evidence. It is the human way to fill the evidential gap and trump epistemic reasons. Insofar as we constantly face risky situations, faith is not a frivolous attitude but “one of the inalienable birthrights of our mind” (SPP, p. 225). It is the germ of our “most elevated” beliefs. For such beliefs, the will is a “complement” to evidence: “as regards this kind of truths faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable” (SR, p. 96).

III.2 Reid: Trust as a Natural Propensity to Take Things for Granted

79 Reid also underlines the constitutive role of faith. Yet for him, faith is not an impulsion of the will to bet for a peculiar hypothesis: it is a natural propensity to take general principles for granted.

80 Firstly, faith is not an attitude specific to a kind of temperament: it is a universally shared tendency inherited from infancy. By growing up, this extensive faith is progressively adjusted and corrected.

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81 Secondly, trust is “implicit” and “instinctive” (IHM, 6, 20, p. 170): it is not a conscious and explicit commitment. We do not decide to trust, but we find ourselves trusting.

82 Thirdly, trust sustains our most general and shared beliefs, like the beliefs that “our intellectual faculties are truth-oriented” or that “our parents speak truth.” It supports necessary beliefs, not one hypothesis among others.

83 Fourthly, when we trust the veracity of our parents or the fidelity of our intellectual faculties, we do not make any bold step. We do not hope our faculties will be attuned to reality. We do not muster all our courage so as to venture in risky situations. We rather act and judge on this ground with complete peace of mind. This presupposition, held with assurance, is not a specific belief for which we explicitly take a stand. It is the background of our judgments and actions. Trust is not a supplementary act of the mind that gives us the impulsion to adopt a belief instead of another. It is a default disposition which is tied to the powers of our mind. It is a kind of primitive attitude.

84 This animal trust is epistemic, not only because its object (the reliability of our faculties, the veracity of men) is epistemic, or because it is a means to an epistemic end (to gain truths), but also because it is embedded in our powers of knowledge. We cannot make use of any intellectual power without taking its reliability for granted. This taking for granted does not result from reasoning or patient observation. Our faith in the reliability of our judging faculties is not a superadded propositional attitude towards our faculties: it is the way we make use of them. We are constituted so that when we act and judge, we are committed to such a belief. Being committed to the epistemic principle that “our sense perception is reliable” means therefore to trust our sense perception. This is the way human beings use their sense perception. As it were, trust is fused into the foundations of our intellectual powers.

85 Finally, trust is not what compensates the lack of evidence. Evidence is indeed mostly there, but it is not discerned. Trust is what enables us to think and act until our intellectual faculties become more mature and we put a specific attention on the available evidence. Trust makes us act and think with certainty in spite of our lack of attention to evidence. When we consider man as a rational creature, it may seem right that he should have no belief but what is grounded upon evidence […]. If this be so, the consequence is, that, in no case, can there be any belief, till we find evidence, or at least, what to our judgement appears to be evidence. I suspect it is not so; but that, on the contrary, before we grow up to the full use of our rational faculties, we do believe, and must believe many things without any evidence at all. […] If there be any instinctive belief in man, it is probably of the same kind with that which we ascribe to brutes, and may be specifically different from that rational belief which is grounded on evidence ; but that there is something in man which we call belief, which is not grounded on evidence, I think, must be granted. We need to be informed of many things before we are capable of discerning the evidence on which they rest. […] Children have every thing to learn; and, in order to learn, they must believe their instructors. They need a greater stock of faith from infancy to twelve or fourteen, than ever after. But how shall they get this stock so necessary to them? If their faith depends upon evidence, the stock of evidence, real or apparent, must bear proportion to their faith. But such, in reality, is their situation, that when their faith must be greatest, the evidence is least. They believe a thousand things before they ever spend a thought upon evidence. Nature supplies the want of evidence, and gives them an instinctive kind of faith without evidence. (EAP, 3, 1, 2, p. 110-2, my emphasis)

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86 We may be quite disturbed by Reid’s statement that “we do believe, and must believe many things without any evidence at all.” Actually he means that we do believe and must believe without discerned evidence. We do not have a reflective access to evidence, but it does not imply that our beliefs are not grounded on any evidence. This is what makes the difference between instinctive beliefs and rational beliefs: they are based on the same body of evidence, but it remains undiscerned in the first case. Instinctive beliefs make us act and think so long as our rational faculties (our powers of attention and reasoning) have not developed. We are irrational in this respect, but it is rational for us to believe without waiting for the growing of our rational faculties.

87 Therefore, faith supplies the want of discerned evidence. As Reid notices, faith does not progressively proceed from evidence, it is not gained through the collection of different reasons to trust. It is the other way around: faith supplies the want of evidence, that is to say the want of discerned evidence. Evidence is there, but we do not “spend a thought” on it. That’s why our faith is the “greatest” when “the evidence is least”: when we do not have the power to discern evidence, our faith is at its utmost. It bridges the gap of “evidence awareness.”

88 Of course, when one is aware of the evidence, faith does not disappear. On the contrary, it gains support from the new (discerned) evidence. When we use our reason, we yield to epistemic principles “not from instinct only, but from confidence and trust in a faithful and beneficent Monitor, grounded upon the experience of his paternal care and goodness” (IHM, 6, 20, p. 170). It is no more an instinctive and primitive faith, but a conscious and reflective faith. Afterwards, we are able to give reasons to hold epistemic principles, even if we have not held them for any reason so far.

Conclusion

89 Reid and James both propose a permissivist ethics of belief, according to which it is rational to hold some beliefs on insufficient evidence. I have shown that, even though they agree on this core point, they do not for the same reasons.

90 For James, the permissivist policy mainly concerns beliefs which are a matter of choice and which (given the epistemic evidence) are undecidable. When the strong evidentialist method leaves us indeterminate between two hypotheses, the “subjective method, the method of belief based on desire” (SR, p. 97) gives us assistance and makes us choose thanks to a leap of faith.

91 For Reid, there is no “leap” because he is concerned with immediate beliefs. With such beliefs, we are not in a situation of epistemic indifference at all. Our assent is weighed down with evidence, though undiscerned. As a consequence, we are not in a position to decide to hold them for non evidential reasons, because we are simply not in a position to choose.

92 Thanks to his subtle view on evidence, Reid is able to counter some evidentialist attacks. Whereas James considers that we are entitled to hold a belief that p for practical reasons, evidentialists do not recognise practical reasons as genuine reasons to believe that p is true. This is where their profound disagreement with pragmatism lies. Although Reid’s permissivist ethics of belief integrates pragmatist aspects, it is liable to convince the evidentialist camp. Briefly, for Reid as for James, it is rational to

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hold some beliefs even if we do not hold them for epistemic reasons. But, according to Reid:

93 1. It is not because epistemic reasons are absent: they are there, they are simply not yet discerned. Reid’s way of construing evidence is qualified: by “evidence,” he does not necessarily refer to a ground of belief we are aware of.

94 2. Practical reasons do not substitute for epistemic reasons to believe. Even if we can give practical reasons for our immediate beliefs, we do not hold them for practical considerations. Reid does not break with alethism; and far from triggering our beliefs, practical reasons only serve to enlighten the indispensable role of epistemic principles in our epistemic and practical lives.

95 3. Instinctive trust substitutes for the absence of discerned evidence. Trust is not an act of the will that gives us the impulse to accept a belief, it is a natural propensity to take some things for granted. For James, trust is like a springboard to jump into the unknown. Its connexion with our willing and emotional nature is obviously what frightens evidentialists. For Reid, trust is not a subjective component of the mind, it belongs to the human constitution. What lies at the bottom of our doxastic practices are not particularly heroic and courageous actions. Instinctive trust is an implicit attitude which impregnates our behaviour and mental atmosphere so much that the possibility of other alternatives does not occur to us. It is neither a risk-taking behaviour nor a personal run-up. It is the pre-reflective background of our beliefs and actions, and it can do without any reason.

96 On the whole, Reid’s ethics of belief may help escape the contemporary stalemate between evidentialism and pragmatism. Far from simply dismissing the evidentialist demand, it combines a subtle evidentialism with pragmatist strands. What is more, Reid’s view is in some sense more permissive than the evidentialist’s (because it allows beliefs to be justified, even though we don’t have access to a specific evidence that grounds them), while being less permissive than the pragmatist’s (because it allows some cases29 that James is interested in, while showing that they have undiscerned evidence behind them after all). This middle way is made possible because Reid abandons the internalist aspect of the evidentialist demand, whereas James still ties evidentialism to internalism and considers that practical reasons meet the internalist requirement. This is on this score that pragmatism may learn from common sense: Reid’s common sense teaches the externalist lesson.

97 If pragmatism is currently held to “cast valuable light on the philosophy of common sense”30 (ridding it of its dogmatic flavour), I conclude the other way around: the Reidian epistemology of common sense, while compatible with pragmatism, gets round the danger of a loose ethics of belief. Epistemic permissivism does not open the floodgates to subjective and idiosyncratic beliefs.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

AIKIN Scott F., (2014), Evidentialism and , London, New York, Bloomsbury Academic.

ALSTON William P., (1991), Perceiving God. The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press.

BAUMANN Peter, (1999), “The Scottish Pragmatist? The Dilemma of Common Sense and the Pragmatist Way Out,” Reid Studies, 2, 47-57.

BAUMANN Peter, (2004), “On the Subtleties of Reidian Pragmatism. A Reply to Magnus,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2 (1), 73-7.

CHIGNELL Andrew, (2016), “The Ethics of Belief,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), [https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ethics-belief/].

CLIFFORD William K., (1999 [1877]), The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays, New York, Prometheus Books.

CONEE Earl & Richard FELDMAN, (2000), Evidentialism, Essays in Epistemology, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

HOOKWAY Christopher, (2011), “James’s Epistemology and the Will to Believe,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, III-1, [http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/865 - tocto1n4].

JAMES William, (1912 [1897]), The Will to Believe and Others Essays in Popular Philosophy, New York, Longmans, Green and Co.

JAMES William, (1922 [1907]), Pragmatism: A New Way for Some Old Ways of Thinking, New York, Longmans, Green and Co.

JAMES William, (1916 [1911]), Some Problems of Philosophy. A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy, New York, Longmans, Green and Co.

KELLY Thomas, (2014), “Evidence can be Permissive,” in Steup Mathias, Terry John & Sosa Ernest (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 298-313.

LEARY Stephanie, (2016), “In Defense of Practical Reasons for Belief,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1-14.

LEMOS Noah, (2004), Common Sense. A Contemporary Defense, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

LOCKE John, (1997), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. R. Woolhouse, Penguin Books.

LUNDESTAD Erik, (2006), “The Sceptic and the Madman: The Proto-Pragmatism of Thomas Reid,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 4 (2), 125-38.

LUNDESTAD Erik, (2008), “The Necessity of Pragmatism: Overcoming the Stalemate of Common Sense,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 6 (2), 175-87.

LYNCH Michael P., (2013), “Epistemic Commitments, Epistemic Agency and Practical Reasons,” Philosophical Issues, 23, 343-62.

MOORE George E., (1959 [1939]), “Proof of an External World,” Philosophical Papers, London, George Allen & Unwin.

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PERRY R. B., (1935), The Thought and Character of William James, Boston, Little, Brown and Company.

REID Thomas, ([1764] 1997), Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. D. R. Brookes, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park.

REID Thomas, ([1785] 2002), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. D. R. Brookes, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park.

REID Thomas, ([1788] 1969), Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, Cambridge (Mass.), London, The M.I.T. Press.

RINARD Susanna, (2015), “Against the New Evidentialists,” Philosophical Issues, 25, 208-23.

RYSIEW Patrick, (2015), “Pragmatism and Reid’s ‘Third Way’,” in Rebecca Copenhaver & Todd Buras (eds.), Thomas Reid on Mind, Knowledge and Value, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

SACKSON Adrian, (2014), “Avoiding Broken Noses: How ‘Pragmatic’ was the Philosophy of Thomas Reid?,” European Journal of Pragmatism And American Philosophy, VI (2), [https:// journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1065].

SHAH Nishi, (2006), “A New Argument for Evidentialism,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 56 (225), 481-98.

VAN WOUDENBERG René, (2013), “Thomas Reid Between Externalism and Internalism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 51 (1), 75-92.

WHITE Roger, (2005), “Epistemic Permissiveness,” Philosophical Perspectives, 19, 445-59.

WITTGENSTEIN Ludwig, (1969), On Certainty, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

NOTES

1. (10 September 1903) Perry (1935: 501). 2. P, 1, p. 18 (P = Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking). 3. EIP, 6, 4, p. 464 (EIP = Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man). 4. Epistemic principles (“first principles of truth”) state the good-working laws of our intellectual powers. We find for instance the principle of perception (“those things do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive them to be,” EIP, 6, 5, p. 476), the principle of reliability (“the natural faculties by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious,” EIP, 6, 5, p. 480), the principles of veracity and credulity (men have “a propensity to speak truth” and “a disposition to confide in the veracity of others,” IHM, 6, 24, p. 193-4 [IHM = An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense]). 5. The most famous contemporary defence of evidentialism is in Conee & Feldman 2000. 6. WB, p. 19, p. 22. WB = The Will To Believe. 7. See Leary 2016. For a defence of evidentialism construed as implying alethism, see Shah 2006. For a criticism of this brand of evidentialism, see Rinard 2015, Leary 2016: they defend the view according to which practical reasons may be genuine reasons to believe that p. In the following, I take pragmatism to be a thesis on the nature of our reasons to believe. Briefly, it is the view according to which purely pragmatic considerations can constitute genuine reasons to believe. We are not constrained to evidential or epistemic reasons. 8. SPP, p. 229. (SPP = Some Problems of Philosophy [Appendix: Faith and the Right to Believe]). 9. Immediate beliefs are beliefs which are not grounded on antecedent belief or reasoning. They include epistemic principles (like “my sense perception is reliable”) and corresponding natural

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judgments (the immediate doxastic outputs of consciousness, memory and perception, like “There is a table in front of me”). 10. See Kelly 2014. 11. The terminology is from Chignell 2016. 12. Reid’s distinction may be compared to Wittgenstein’s warning not to consider all the propositions in a uniform way. In On Certainty (= OC), Wittgenstein distinguishes hinge propositions which constitute our “picture of the world against which [we] distinguish between true and false” (OC, §94), from empirical propositions which may be tested or refuted. It is senseless to ask for a reason to believe the first. Hinge propositions are like “hardened propositions” which function “as channels for empirical propositions” (OC, §96). This background makes possible the evidentialist quest of reasons, but it is itself taken away from such a quest. 13. According to Lundestadt (2006: 135) Reid sticks to infallibilism, and therefore his philosophy is unpragmatic. Sackson (2014: §§36-42) contests this point: Reid hopes that men will come to unanimity about first principles, although it is probable that there will always be disagreements. Rysiew (2015: 190) recognises a fallibilist strand in Reid’s philosophy: Reid is ready to admit that what we are strongly inclined to believe may be false. Thus Putnam is wrong to consider that “the unique insight of American pragmatism” is perhaps that “one can be both fallibilistic and antiskeptical.” Reid saw that too! According to Baumann (1999; 54), the more Reid’s theory of common sense is compatible with fallibilism, the more it escapes the dilemma between dogmatism and scepticism. 14. Reid alludes to this in EIP, 6, 4, p. 460-1: when the truth of first principles is the object of a controversy, it “labours under a peculiar disadvantage.” For if we want to test the tester, we need another tester. The test consists in showing the connexion or repugnancy of a proposition with first principles. 15. Of course, James’s talk of beliefs of common sense as ways of thinking which are “discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors” (P, 5, p. 170) can seem at odds with Reid’s taking the first principles as part of the human constitution. But we should not take James too literally. In accordance with his openness to the evolutionary thought, such “discoveries” are better thought as “fortuitous adaptations,” so that they are as much part of the human constitution for James as they are for Reid. 16. EAP, 3, 1, 2, p. 110-1 (EAP = Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind). 17. SR, p. 63-4 (SR = The Sentiment of Rationality) 18. Truth is “what would be better for us to believe” (“It comes very near to saying ‘what we ought to believe’”), P, 2, p. 77. 19. See White (2005: 445) for a presentation and a defence of Uniqueness. 20. For a criticism of Uniqueness and a defence of a permissivist ethics of belief, see Kelly 2014. Kelly presents permissivism as the view according to which there are cases where there may be some “slack” between the available evidence and what it is reasonable to believe given the evidence. In other words, our rational beliefs may exceed what the evidentialist rule allows. 21. James’s example: “Suppose, for instance, that you are climbing a mountain…” (SR, p. 96). 22. As a matter of fact, there is no settled opinion on Jame’s position in The Will to Believe. For a view which attributes practical non-evidentialism to James (and criticises it in the name of evidentialism), see Aikin 2014. For a view which shows the import of Jame’s essay to contemporary epistemological issues (contextualism, conservatism and virtue epistemology), see Hookway 2011. 23. “It is evident, that every argument offered to prove the truth and fidelity of our faculties, takes for granted the things in question, and is therefore that kind of sophism which Logicians call petitio principii” (EIP, 7, 4, p. 571). 24. See Baumann (2004: 75).

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25. According to Rysiew (2015: 189), Reid’s point is that the fact that epistemic principles play a central role in our epistemic lives amounts to a kind of epistemic justification. Practical considerations are not “entirely cut off from epistemic ones.” Their epistemic justification lies in what they enable us to do as epistemic agents. They are like the “fixed point” upon which our cognising rests (EIP, 6, 4, p. 454). 26. Internalism may also refer to an ontological theory about the nature of evidence, according to which evidence is a mental state. One may accept the epistemological theory without subscribing to the ontological theory (though it seems easier to have access to evidence if evidence is a mental state – a belief, a sensation, etc. – that can be apprehended. For Reid, the different forms of evidence cannot be reduced to “any common nature” (EIP, 2, 20, p. 229). Consequently, evidence may be internal or external to our mind: it may be some propositions, states of consciousness, sensations, memories, somebody’s saying, or facts of the external world. If the sort of thing which is evidence is not necessarily mental, it gives support to the idea that evidence – though present – is not necessarily something one is aware of. 27. Van Woudenberg (2013: 83). 28. I also think that if common-sense epistemology is in tune with permissivism, it is due to its particularist twist. Briefly, particularism is a thesis about the aim we pursue in epistemology. According to it, we don’t start with epistemic norms and go on to measure the extent of our knowledge, but we start with what we know, that is to say with particular judgments we take as instances of knowledge, and then we formulate criteria of knowledge. I guess that the adoption of this methodological starting point paves the way for permissivism. Indeed, common-sense philosophers (like Reid, Moore in “Proof of an External World”) take their certainty of some particular judgments as that from which they evaluate the plausibility or the absurdity of a thesis or philosophical argument. And as they take many natural empirical judgments as well-grounded independently of considering whether they have sufficient epistemic evidence for them, this very fact discredits the strong evidentialist requirement. On this aspect of common-sense philosophy, see Lemos (2004, chap. 1 and chap. 6). 29. Probably not all the cases that James is interested in (like specific moral and existential beliefs), but at least many ordinary empirical beliefs. 30. Lundestadt (2008: 175).

ABSTRACTS

We generally consider that we should not believe on the basis of insufficient evidence. Yet there are many beliefs which are deprived of adequate epistemic evidence. In such cases, James recommends the “subjective method” which allows us to hold beliefs for practical reasons. This pragmatist move is rejected by evidentialists who think that beliefs must be grounded on adequate epistemic evidence. My contention is that Reid’s approach to irresistible beliefs we do not hold for epistemic reasons offers a persuasive means to escape the contemporary stalemate between evidentialism and pragmatism. Are we rational in holding beliefs for which we don’t possess sufficient epistemic evidence? Reid and James subscribe to a permissivist ethics of belief, according to which we are allowed to hold a belief even if we cannot show its epistemic credentials. Yet I show that the abandonment of the stringent evidentialist requirement (which is tied to a form of internalism) does not necessarily commit one to a pure form of pragmatism (which offers practical reasons instead of

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epistemic ones). If Reid proposes arguments built on a pragmatist line, he does not reject the evidentialist demand per se, only its internalist form. Moreover, in his view, immediate beliefs are carried by a kind of instinctive epistemic trust. On the whole, pragmatism and common sense do not defend the same kind of epistemic permissivism.

AUTHOR

ANGÉLIQUE THÉBERT Université de Nantes angelique.thebert[at]univ-nantes.fr

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On The Pragmatic Content of Science and Common Sense

Roberto Gronda and Giacomo Turbanti

1. Introduction

1 The relationship between science and common sense has traditionally been a major concern in the history of pragmatist philosophy. Starting from Dewey, pragmatists have devoted great deal of attention to the ways in which science and common sense can interact, their proposal being that of defusing the possible elements of conflict between what they conceived as two attitudes towards the world. In the fourth chapter of his Logic: Theory of Inquiry, Dewey identified common sense with those situations in which “human beings are directly involved” (common sense world), as well as with the “inquiries that take place in making the required adjustments in behavior” (common sense inquiries) (Dewey 1938: 66). Common sense inquiries, he argued, differ from scientific ones in that the former are “concerned with qualitative matter and operations,” while the meanings and significances that are used in the latter are determined “on the ground of their systematic relations of coherence and consistency with one another,” that is, they are intra-theoretically defined (Dewey 1938: 71). In doing so, Dewey did not conceive of science and common sense as opposites, but rather as two different and equally legitimate ways of framing and dealing with ultimately practical problems. Consequently, he completely eschewed the widespread idea of the intrinsic conflict between science and common sense, thus making room for a plurality of approaches to the world.

2 The goal of our paper is to revisit and refresh such a pragmatist, pluralist insight. Our analysis will follow two distinct, yet strictly interrelated paths. On the one hand, it will take into account the structure of two normative spaces – one in the framework of common sense, the other in the framework of science – in order to highlight their different principles of constitution of objectivity. By adapting Wilfrid Sellars’ terms, we will call these two normative spaces, respectively, the manifest image and the scientific image, and we will hold that the difference in their structures can be expressed in

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terms of the different kinds of inferences that the two normative spaces allow us to make.1 Such an approach, which may be called structural, emphasizes the differences between science and common sense rather than their continuity. It provides us with a picture that somehow crystallizes into a static ‘essence’ (the structure) the outcome of a long and complex process of conceptual refinement. Since we believe inferences can be analyzed as sets of sentences – that is, inferences can be treated as relations between linguistic sentences without loss of explanatory import – the investigation into the normative structures of common sense and science can be profitably conceived of as an attempt to reconstruct and clarify the different languages – or vocabularies, in Rortyian terms – of the manifest and the scientific image.

3 On the other hand, our analysis will also focus on the concrete practices that underlie the languages of science and common sense, and make it possible for us to use them properly. We take concepts to be determined by the ways in which they are applied in certain normative practices. Of course the application of concepts in judgments is part of these practices. In this sense, we say that linguistic expressions have a pragmatic content that is grounded on certain normative practices. Contrary to the linguistic, structural account of the manifest and the scientific image, the analysis of manifest and scientific practices results in a more continuous picture of the relationship between the two normative spaces. Such a picture preserves the platitudinous intuition that science did not come out of nowhere. Historically speaking, indeed, there is a strong continuity between mechanical arts and the methods of scientific research: scientific practice is commonly seen as a refinement and amelioration of the tools and crafts of artisans. It is worth noting, however, that that process of refinement does not simply come down to a technical improvement of the instruments that come to be adopted in the scientific practice. The relevant point is rather that, by being inserted into a new context, i.e., the laboratory, the tools and crafts of artisans undergo a process of recharacterization that goes hand in hand with the elaboration of new standards and new ends that rule scientific practice. Dewey depicted the relation between the two kinds of practices as a shift from empirical experience to experimental experience.2 Consequently, our insistence on the continuity between manifest and scientific practices does not flatten the differences that exist between the two; rather, it places them in a historical and material continuum that makes it possible to tell a story about the genesis of the scientific image from the manifest image. This is similar to what Dewey had in mind when sketching a natural history of logical thinking. We believe that the adoption of a perspective of this sort enhances the of our account.

4 As is well known, in recent years much has been written on the “language versus experience” debate.3 Scholars more inclined towards classical pragmatism have privileged the latter over the former, while contemporary pragmatists have stuck to the linguistic turn, and have suggested jettisoning the concept of experience because it lacks clarity. However, as Mark Johnson has correctly remarked, it is obvious that “any strong contrast between experience and language is just one more big dichotomy” (Johnson 2014: 14); consequently, this way of framing the issue is unwarranted from a pragmatist perspective. Our account is in accord with Johnson’s line of reasoning, and in doing so it aims to preserve the best of both approaches: if asked whether we privilege language over practice (we take “practice” as synonymous with “experience”), or viceversa, our answer would be “Both!” We take language and practice to be two aspects of a broader and encompassing whole, namely a normative space like the scientific and the manifest image. Mimicking Kant, it may therefore be said that,

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within the scientific or the manifest image, language without practice is empty, whereas practice without language is blind.4

5 The three main sections that make up the present article will be devoted to investigating the different relationships that hold between science and common sense. In the next section we will introduce the topic by presenting Sellars’ well-known distinction between the manifest and the scientific image. Sellars’ analysis is by far the most influential account of the relationship between science and common sense. We rely on his distinction to develop our own analytical tools, which we will use to clarify the kind of relation between science and common sense that interest us. First, we take this relation into account at the level of language. Then in section 3, that same relation is investigated at the level of practices. Our goal is to articulate the pragmatist insight that the ability to apply conceptual contents is grounded on normative practices. Finally in section 4, we utilize Brandom’s meaning-use analysis to systematize the complex net of relations between science and common sense highlighted in the two previous sections.

2. Ways of Representing the World

6 An iconic picture of the complex interrelation between science and common sense was drawn by Wilfrid Sellars in his now classic Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man (1962), where he introduced the distinction between the scientific image and the manifest image. Both images are ideal types in which complete representations of the world are provided. In the manifest image the world is commonsensically represented “as we encounter it in perception and self-awareness” (Sellars 1962: 14); objects have intrinsic properties that determine their behavior. The way in which Sellars characterizes the ontology of the manifest image is quite interesting: he argues that its primary objects can be thought of in terms of the category of person. He suggests that the manifest image can be described as the categorial refinement of an original, mythical image in which all objects are in fact treated as real persons and all events are explained as intentional actions. So, for instance, in order to explain why the wind took off the hut one could answer “because it is angry at us,” or “because it intended to push clouds away and it didn’t notice us.” The categories of the manifest image would then derive from such original image through a process “of a gradual pruning of the implications of saying with respect to what we would call an inanimate object, that it did something” (Sellars 1962: 12): in the manifest image, objects do not have and do not act, but their behavior is still explained in terms of their character or nature. In other words, in the manifest image the correlations between properties and events that explain the behavior of things in the world are thought of in terms of the powers and dispositions of person-like objects. In order to exemplify what he has in mind, Sellars often refers to Aristotle’s theory of being and substance (Sellars 1975: I. 29): the nature of a substance can be thought of as its form or essence. In a sense, the manifest image is clearly characteristic of common sense.5 Nonetheless, the manifest image is quite “scientifically sophisticated” as far as its empirical and conceptual resources are concerned. So, for instance, Sellars includes in the manifest image complex inductive methods such as , which can be used to investigate correlations between properties of things in the world. What definitionally distinguishes the manifest from the scientific image, for Sellars, is the fact that only in

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the latter we are allowed to use postulational methods: while explanations in the manifest image purely correlate manifest properties of manifest objects, explanations in the scientific image involve “the postulation of imperceptible entities” (Sellars 1962: 7). In order to highlight this distinction, Sellars suggests thinking about the difference between two kinds of explanation for the fact that a balloon has expanded, the one in terms of the Boyle-Charles law for an ideal gas, the other in terms of the kinetic theory of gases (Sellars 1956: 150). The first one establishes a correlation between manifest properties of gases: if the temperature remains constant, the pressure exerted by the mass of the gas is inversely proportional to its volume. The second one postulates imperceptible particles, atoms and molecules, which the gas consists of, so that the properties of the latter can be accounted for in terms of the behavior of these particles as defined by the kinetic laws that govern their motion: pressure consists of the particle hitting the surface of the container of the gas, so – as long as the kinetic energy of the particle is held constant – if the volume of the container is smaller, then the frequency with which the particles hit its surface is higher. Notice that the kind of explanation provided in the scientific image strips away the ontology of the manifest image: as Sellars points out, “it is because a gas is – in some sense of ‘is’ – a cloud of molecules which are behaving in certain theoretically defined ways, that it obeys the empirical Boyle-Charles law” (Sellars 1961: 121).

7 A few remarks are necessary at this point, in order to explain how we intend to build on these Sellarsian materials. There are two aspects of Sellars’ account that, at least for our purposes, need further elaboration. First, we accept the distinction between the manifest and the scientific image in terms of the notion of postulation, but we believe that it requires some qualification because Sellars never really gives an explicit analysis of it. Second, the distinction between the two images was originally introduced by Sellars in relation to the problem of discussing the clash between the manifest concept of man as a rational subject of intentional states and the (at the time mainly non- cognitivist) scientific concept of man as a complex system of physical, physiological and neurophysiological states. In this sense both the manifest and the scientific image are thought by Sellars as images of man-in-the-world. The fortune of the Sellarsian distinction, however, corresponds to a somewhat more liberal use of it: the two images have been taken as images of the world. Following such a use, we will exploit the distinction between the two ideal types of the manifest and the scientific image as a technical tool for the investigation of the more general frameworks of science and common sense. In order to do so, we introduce the labels MI and SI to designate these two technical notions – the normative spaces of the manifest and the scientific image respectively.

8 Since our use of the notions of MI and SI does not coincide with Sellars’ original one we should say a few more words about it. In the first place, it is worth emphasizing that by MI and SI we refer to normative spaces. A normative space determines the conditions for concept application, in the sense that the way in which conceptual contents can be articulated and ultimately determined depends on the structure of a normative space. A collection of concepts that can be coherently applied together forms a conceptual repertoire. Therefore, a conceptual repertoire is not a normative space; rather, a conceptual repertoire is possible only within a normative space, and the same normative space can accommodate different conceptual repertoires. Similarly, a

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normative space must be carefully distinguished from the representation of things in the world that can be provided in terms of a conceptual repertoire.

9 In the second place, it is equally important to remark that, even if we utilize the notions of MI and SI to discuss the relations between common sense and science, MI does not entirely coincide with common sense, nor does SI entirely coincide with science. Both MI and SI stem from a theoretical refinement of some elements of the two frameworks. Science, for instance, is much more complicated than SI. Actual, concrete science is not merely postulational: part of the scientific activity in effect consists of searching for empirical correlations, and thus it belongs to MI. Moreover, the sociology of science has shown how many external factors take part in the process of constitution of scientific objectivity (Latour & Woolgar 1979). As a consequence of the practical turn in , we can no longer conceive of all those factors as something merely external to scientific activity, a kind of scaffolding that supports scientific research without interfering with it. The same holds true for the distinction between MI and common sense. To give only an example, the latter has a moral and aesthetic dimension which is completely lacking in MI.

10 At this point, however, a possible objection should be addressed. One might wonder why we choose to focus on these normative spaces if our purpose is to discuss the relation between science and common sense. The answer is methodological and theoretical at the same time. It is sensible for anyone preparing for an investigation in this area to acknowledge that science and common sense are both heavily overloaded categories: they are deployed in so many diverse fields and characterized in so many different ways that it is almost impossible to simply call them up without engendering anything but confusion. Thus, our dealing with MI and SI is expedient to mark off more precisely the topic of our analysis: such topic is the comparison between the pragmatic content of science and common sense. We employ the notion of ‘pragmatic content’ to refer to the fact that linguistic contents are grounded on normative practices.6 In fact, we believe that our characterization of MI and SI highlights just a few of the distinctive features that are essential to the more general frameworks of common sense and science respectively.

11 All this being said, we must now finally clarify the postulational nature of SI. Following Sellars, we define the distinction between MI and SI in terms of the postulational explanatory methods that are allowed in the latter but not in the former. The activity that is distinctive of MI is the search for empirical correlations. On the contrary, SI revolves around the act of postulating entities to explain why MI objects are subjected to those MI correlations. According to this characterization, any explanation that is based on a framework of postulated entities presents itself as a candidate for SI.7 It is worth noting, however, that the relevant qualification is not much sheer postulation, but rather the construction of an explanatory framework in which the postulated entities account for the behavior of MI objects without recourse to their powers and dispositions.

12 It may be useful here to distinguish between two different forms of postulation: ‘spurious’ and ‘genuine’ postulation. So, for instance, one could try to explain why opium makes one sleep by postulating a virtus dormitiva. This is clearly an instance of spurious postulation. Indeed, the postulation of the opium’s sleeping power does not qualify as a scientific explanation in SI. Notoriously, the problem with the virtus dormitiva is that it has no real explanatory power. Notice however that there are

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examples of spurious postulation that in effect provide satisfactory explanations, even if they do not qualify for SI. So, for instance, a person’s behavior can be explained by postulating traits of her character: if you ask me, “Why did John yell at me?,” I could answer “Because he has an irascible character and you provoked him.” In doing so, I postulate a new entity, a character trait, that accounts for an MI behavior. These sorts of postulation typically introduce other layers of correlational explanations; so, in the case in point, the postulation of irascibility explains John’s yelling because irascible characters regularly produce violent reactions if provoked. The explanation may be considered a good one because that character trait supports different correlations. While the postulation of a virtus dormitiva only allows us to predict that opium makes one sleep in every situation, the postulation of character traits allows to predict different behaviors in different contexts: e.g. irascible people yell at friends if provoked, are assertive if contradicted, smash things if they do not work as they expect, and so on. However, since the only explanation that this kind of postulation provides is of the correlational sort, it squarely belongs to MI. This is the reason why we call them spurious.

13 SI postulated entities, instead, are explanatory in a genuine sense. They are theoretically autonomous from MI objects in that they are subject to a different kind of normativity: they obey only statistical laws rather than dispositional regularities. Consequently, they do not go proxy for dispositions of MI objects. In other words, SI postulated entities are autonomous because they are not constituted according to the category of person, which is the fundamental category of MI. The determination of a new normative space is integral to the genuine postulation of the SI entities. When an entity is postulated, the normative space within which the postulated entity is defined is concomitantly established and constituted. “Concomitantly” here should be taken in a logical rather than temporal sense: postulated entities and the normative spaces to which they belong are intrinsically and essentially related. The explanatory power of those entities depends on their belonging to a normative space constituted by specific rules and principles. A normative space allows us to draw inferences that articulate the content of the sentences where reference to postulated entities occurs, thus providing a of explanation which, in turn, ultimately accounts for the behavior of MI objects. The intrinsic and essential relation between postulated entities and their underlying normative space is a pivotal feature of our account of postulation.

14 It is important to stress that the distinction between spurious and genuine postulation does not correspond to the distinction between the postulation of ostensible and real entities. It might be argued that the difference between the two should come down to the fact that genuinely postulated entities are real if the corresponding theory is true, while spuriously postulated entities are merely fictional. This reading of the distinction is based on an assumption that we reject, for a twofold reason. That assumption is the idea that the qualifications ‘genuine’ and ‘spurious’ have to do with truth. Firstly, it is not correct to say that spuriously postulated entities are not real: actually, they are real within MI, if the corresponding theory is true, since they are adequately constructed according to the fundamental category of that normative space, namely the category of person. Secondly, the postulation of entities may be genuine even in the case in which the corresponding theory is false. Such a distinction is therefore preliminary and independent from the empirical investigation about the reality of postulated entities.

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To say that entities are genuinely postulated is noncommittal with respect to the adoption of a realist or an instrumentalist stance towards them.

15 It is important to see clearly why the normative space of SI genuinely postulated entities cannot be integrated within the normative space of MI. As we have already pointed out, we rely on Sellars’ insight that the basic ontological category of MI can be characterized in terms of the concept of person, and the normativity of the correlations that articulate its explanatory framework in terms of the powers and dispositions of person-like substances. So consider, for instance, the MI statement “Light bulbs light up when crossed by electric current.” This commonsensical principle expresses a correlation between some manifest properties of certain substances, where the correlation essentially depends on their form. So, in our example, a light bulb is a substance that has the potentiality to light up when acted upon by another substance, the electric current (a spuriously postulated entity). SI statements, instead, do not primarily ascribe properties to substances. In a general sense, to define a is to define a collection of laws. Such a definition is possible only within a normative space articulated in terms of inferential relations.8 Obviously, a collection of laws may or may not have models. The objects of a scientific theory are the entities in the domain of the structures that satisfy it. Satisfaction here is, of course, a semantic notion rather than an empirical one. In this sense, the objects of a scientific theory essentially belong to the normative space of the theory itself and do not have any essence independent of it. Accordingly, they just cannot be integrated in the normative space of MI. The question whether or not the new postulated entities exist is of course an ontological one. Now, both the manifest and the scientific image are intended to accommodate complete representations of the world in the sense that, ideally, they should both provide the resources to give an explanation of the same events. Therefore, since they have different , the two images are incompatible. It is important to notice, however, that while such an incompatibility more strikingly comes to light as a clash between different sorts of ontologies when models for manifest and scientific theories are considered, nonetheless it lies primarily in the structure of the manifest and the scientific normative space. In our view, ontological issues are traced back to normative ones.

16 Up to this point, we have taken into account the logical structure of postulation from the point of view of the inferences that the act of postulation allows us to make. In doing so, we have been concerned with the language of SI and MI, since inferences are relations between sentences or propositions. From a pragmatist point of view, however, it is not enough to investigate the distinctive features of the final result or outcome of a certain act; it is also necessary to state the problems that such act is expected to tackle. In this sense, it is important not only to understand what postulation consists of and what its consequences are, but also why one should avail oneself of it. As may be expected, the answer is that postulation is required when correlational explanation is not enough to provide a satisfactory account of why something is the case. In Peircean terms, postulation is a necessity of inquiry when doubt cannot be appeased by purely correlational means. The source of doubt can take different forms. One might bump into a contradictory situation, just like when the result of an experiment contradicts a law. Or one might simply wonder how something really works, as when the reasons why a certain law is valid are investigated. Often, it is a bit of both. Consider again, for instance, the Boyle-Charles law. It was originally proved by Boyle in the 17th century on purely by correlating variations of volume and pressure in gases

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at a fixed temperature. The law, in effect, is valid only for ideal gases, but the fact that the behavior of real gases diverts from it can be appreciated only when the law is tested at particularly low temperature or high pressure. Such results were not originally available to Boyle and yet, once they became apparent, they obviously required a different explanation. Such an explanation was in fact provided in 1738 by Bernoulli, who first defined the basis of the kinetic theory of gases by postulating that gases are composed by imperceptible particles, whose motion determines their macroscopic properties and behavior. Quite interestingly, Bernoulli’s approach was completely adopted only a century later, when physicists gained clarity about the relation between heat and kinetic energy.

3. Ways of Practicing the World

3.1. An Elucidation of Pragmatic Content

17 The distinction between MI and SI was introduced in the previous section as a tool for the analysis of the relations between common sense and science. Such a distinction was defined in terms of the sort of explanation that is available in the two images: while MI only relies on correlational methods, the distinctive feature of SI is the genuine postulation of entities in order to account for the reason why macroscopic objects behave like they do. Such a distinction, however, was not primarily displayed on an ontological frame. The two images were in fact characterized as normative spaces where conceptual repertoires can be developed to represent how things are in the world. It was also claimed that conceptual repertoires are determined by the inferential articulation of these normative spaces rather than by the models that satisfy them.

18 This approach apparently poses a series of semantic problems. First, how can conceptual contents be defined in terms of inferentially articulated norms only? Second, even assuming that such a definition were available, how can conceptual repertoires that are not model-theoretically defined be endowed with representational content? We believe that, for our purposes, both questions find a satisfactory answer in a pragmatist reading of normative inferentialism (Brandom 1994, 2000, 2008).9

19 According to normative inferentialism, our social practices as human beings are characteristically bound by norms. The correctness of what we do or not do is subject to the independent valuation of our social peers. As social practitioners, we are provided with normative statuses that specify what we are allowed to do and what we are committed to doing. This normative social environment that we inhabit is responsible for the sort of cultural learning that, together with the biological that we inherited through evolution, accounts for our multifarious abilities to cope with the world (see also Dewey 1938; Margolis 2016, in particular Chapter 1). Concept application is one such ability that allows us to track things in the world, acquire and modify information about them, predict their behavior, and so on. The practices involving concept applications are governed by social norms as much as any other. In this sense, what distinguishes my ability to make observational judgments about colors from a trained parrot’s reliable disposition to croak “that’s red” when confronted with red surfaces is that I can handle the normative premises and consequences of my judgment: e.g. that I am not entitled to apply the concept red in a dark room feebly illuminated by a candle as I apply it in daylight, that I am committed

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to apply the concept colored to anything to which I have applied the concept red, and so on. As it is easy to see, this is but a pragmatist presentation of Wilfrid Sellars’ seminal notion of the space of reasons, “of justifying and being able to justify what one says” (Sellars 1956: 169). In this context, justification is not a merely linguistic affair, but is to be construed as the vindication of the entitlement to the commitments that one has endorsed.

20 It is also easy to see, at this point, how the normative articulation of the practices that involve concept application determines conceptual contents. In fact, the content of a specific concept can be functionally defined in terms of the normative relations that are practically established between its applications and the applications of other concepts. When the expressive resources of logical vocabularies are available, these normative relations can also be made explicit in terms of inferential relations between sentences. Hence, an inferentialist semantic analysis can be introduced: the content of a sentence is determined according to its inferential role as the couple made of the set of the sets of premises from which it can be inferred and the set of the sets of consequences that can be inferred from it together with other sets of sentences.10

21 This should be enough to envision how an answer can be given to the first of the questions considered above. In fact, conceptual contents can be functionally determined in terms of the web of normative relations that govern them. A semantic definition of this sort, however, is not representational.11 It might still not be clear, then, how the judgments in which conceptual contents thus defined are applied can be about things in the world; it is therefore worth saying a few words about this point. To begin with, the reason why this seems to be an easy hurdle to clear for a representationalist semantics is that such a semantics is based on the view that to be meaningful is just to have representational content. However, representationalist semantics obtains this result at the cost of taking for granted the notion of representation. In other words, it guarantees that expressions have representational contents, but, in fact, it does not really explain what it is for an expression to represent something in the world. In our approach, conceptual contents are defined in terms of the normative relations that are established in a practice. In this sense it is a decisively anti-representationalist approach.12

22 There is, however, another sense in which our approach is entirely compatible with the idea that sentences have representational content. To begin with, we obviously agree that collections of laws expressed in the language of a theory may have models, and that models can play the role of semantic representations for the conceptual contents defined by the laws. We merely contend that it is normative practices rather than the existence of models that make a theory meaningful. We also do not deny that the objects in the domain of the models of a theory might be said to really exist, on the basis of a Quinean metaontology. We simply do not think that the ontology of the language of theories is the proper framework in which to approach the problem of the objectivity of a conceptual repertoire developed within a normative space. Instead, we believe that normative spaces and the real world make contact through ‘thick’ normative practices. By the expression ‘make contact’ we refer to the fact that the language of theories spins in the void – it cannot grasp the world conceptually – if it is not intrinsically related to, and supplemented by, normative practices in which we are directly confronted with the world. Such direct confrontation typically takes the form of physical manipulation, instrumental interference, and so on. We label ‘thick’ those

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practices that essentially involve a concrete, manipulative transaction with things in the world.13 It is easy to realize how this is the case for MI practices. Accordingly, we proceed to show that the same holds for SI practices.

3.2. A Grammar of Scientific Practices

23 Hasok Chang has done a large amount of preliminary work in the way of highlighting what he calls the grammar of scientific practice. In a series of articles devoted to assessing the recent practical turn in philosophy of science, Chang has claimed that the traditional practicalist approach aimed at singling out the various, different elements – i.e. the various, different syntactic operations, as well as the laboratory’s material equipment – that enter into experimental practice should be integrated with an analysis of the ways in which they concretely combine and interact with each other (Chang 2011, 2014). We cannot rest satisfied with a taxonomy of experimental practice put in linguistic terms, he argues; what we need to know is the life of those elements. The structure of such life is what Chang refers to with the label ‘grammar of practice,’ which consists in the possible ways – ‘possible’ here is not intended in a strictly logical sense, but rather in a material and functional sense, like when one lists the possible ways of building a house or cultivating a cornfield – in which a complex group of epistemic activities may consistently work. We take the idea of groups of epistemic activities to be synonymous with our notion of SI practices.

24 Chang’s goal is similar to ours; he also aims to avoid the disconnection between science and its practice. The kind of disconnection that Chang has in mind is the by-product of the habit of focusing on the results of scientific investigation rather than on the processes that yield them, with that habit representing the standard view among analytic philosophers of science. According to this view, scientific theories are bodies of propositions, and philosophical problems about them can be assessed by investigating the logical relationships between those propositions. Therefore, the role of SI practices in bringing about SI languages is almost completely neglected: as a consequence of that move, the concrete life of science is substituted with a logical or mathematical analysis of the relations holding between the elements of the theories – whether conceived of in terms of linguistic propositions or set-theoretic structures.

25 It is very interesting that, as a possible way of defusing the threat of disconnection, Chang suggests shifting the attention from nouns to verbs. So, for instance, take ‘representation’ and think of it as ‘representing,’ take ‘’ and think of it as ‘causing,’ and so on. In doing so, the active character of scientific knowledge is brought under the spotlight. While ‘representation’ seems to entail a sort of simple, direct relation to the thing represented, ‘representing’ implies a more complex network of relations, centered on the role and function of the epistemic agent engaged in the activity of representing a state of affairs for a specific purpose in a specific context. This move sounds very Deweyan in spirit. It was Dewey who firstly suggested to treat adjectives and nouns as adverbs: let’s not talk of intelligence or rationality, but rather of an intelligently conducted activity; let’s not talk of a true belief, but rather of a truly reconstructed situation.14 Thanks to that shift of perspective, the issue can be framed in a radically different manner, and new questions emerge and wait to be answered. Those questions concern the epistemic activity of the knowing subject: “who is doing what, why, how, and in what context?”

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26 Nonetheless, focusing on verbs (or adverbs) rather than on nouns (or adjectives) is not enough to grasp the concrete reality of the practices that comprise scientific activity: the point is that, by talking of representing instead of representation, we remain on a purely linguistic level. At best, we succeed in providing an extremely ethereal account of the epistemic activities involved in SI practices, grounded on the triviality that to speak is to act. An account of this kind could be labeled ‘pragmatist’ only in a minimal and wholly uninteresting sense. Consequently, a further step should be taken, which brings to the fore the concrete set of epistemic activities associated with a certain verb.

27 We are brought back to the idea of the thickness of SI practices. In a functionalist and pragmatist fashion, Chang states that “all scientific work, including pure theorizing, consists of actions – physical, mental, and ‘paper-and-pencil’ operations” (Chang 2011: 208). This is a genuinely pragmatist move in that it draws attention on the material conditions of possibility of SI sentences. The production of SI sentences is part of the SI practices in which the agent is engaged. On the one hand, SI sentences are proffered at a certain moment, for a specific purpose. Usually, they are proffered with an eye to the consequences that can be brought about by their utterances – i.e. to record an event, to describe a particular phenomenon, to establish an experimental setting, and so on. On the other hand, the utterances of SI sentences are checked and controlled by the other operations with which they continuously interact. It is for this very reason that a taxonomy of the elements of the scientific practice is not enough to understand what scientific activity is. Without a normative framework in which operations are performed and interact with each other, providing a list of the elements that compose a scientific practice is not explanatory at all. It is like listing the elements in a toolbox without providing any information about their function and forms of employment; such knowledge would be blatantly insufficient. Coherent sets of epistemic activities are the overall normative context in which operations are performed and can exert their functions. For a set of epistemic activities to be coherent, it has to be directed towards a certain end – paradigmatically, the acquisition of a certain bit of knowledge or, to put it in pragmatist terms, the solution of a specific problematic situation – in accordance with some set of discernible rules.15 As Chang remarks, “[b]ecause activities are rule- bound systems of actions, they are inherently normative in the sense that the actions within an activity are continually evaluated in terms of their conformity to the rules” (Chang 2011: 209).

28 We agree with Chang on all these points, but we are ready to take a step further. The point we would like to stress is that the insistence on the complex nature of SI practices paves the way for a globally consistent anti-representationalist account of the semantic content of scientific concepts. The difference between our two approaches can be highlighted by an example. Speaking of how the nature of a definition should be conceived once we take a practical turn, Chang says: [I]nstead of thinking about the nature of a definition, we can consider what one has to do in defining a scientific term: formulate formal conditions, physical instruments and procedures for , round people up on a committee to monitor the agreed uses of the concept, and devise methods to punish people who do not adhere to the agreed uses. (Chang 2011: 208)

29 In our view, this set of epistemic activities establishes the normative rules for the use of an SI concept. We are concerned with the conditions of possibility of SI definitions, and we trace them back to the SI practices that are necessary to master the use of the concept. In more general terms, we hold that the complex set of syntactic operations,

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practical skills needed to carry out scientific experiments in a laboratory context, and ‘institutional capabilities’ that make it possible for a researcher to be part of a community (scientific, technological and democratic) is all that is necessary to use an SI concept. So, for instance, to fully master the SI concept of atom one must (1) handle in a competent manner the mathematical and syntactical tools necessary to formulate the best atomic theory available; (2) master the laboratory equipment required to detect or modify the behavior of atoms; (3) be aware of the rules governing the different communities to which she belongs as a scientist, as a citizen, as a possible patent holder, etc.16

30 A qualification here is needed: we have said that to fully master an SI concept one must display three different kinds of capacities. It is important to properly understand what is conveyed by the adverb ‘fully.’ ‘Fully’ here does not mean completely: that would amount to a too restrictive clause. It would entail that, in order to use in a normatively adequate way the concept of atom (and the corresponding linguistic expression), one should possess perfectly developed capacities in many different fields. If that were the case, nobody could be said to master the SI concept of atom, which is an undesired skeptical result. What we have in mind here is something like Collins and Evans’ distinction between contributory and interactional experts. In their book Rethinking Expertise, Collins and Evans stress the difference between contributory expertise, which is required to do an activity with competence, and interactional expertise, which is “the ability to master the language of a specialist domain in the absence of practical competence” (Collins & Evans 2007: 14). Similarly, we argue that it is possible to master some parts of the SI language without fully mastering them, that is, without mastering the practices that establish the normative conditions for the use of SI concepts. The ‘interactional’ use of SI language, so to say, is therefore parasitic to the ‘contributory’ use consisting in the mastery of SI practices.

31 Before moving on to the next section, where a comprehensive account of the relationships between MI and SI is provided, we would like to address an issue which has been left untouched until now. In section 2 we have acknowledged the introduction of postulated entities for explanatory reasons as the distinctive feature of the SI normative space. In that context, we have argued that the distinction between MI and SI normative spaces consists precisely of the fact that SI language allows and supports genuine postulational activity, a postulational activity being genuine when the entities it introduces are not conceived in terms of the categories of MI. What remains to be done is therefore to highlight how such a postulational activity shows up at the level of practices, thus marking a difference between SI and MI practices.

32 We should be careful, however, not to overemphasize the elements of discontinuity. Because of the very structure of a practice, the clear-cut differences that can be easily detected at the linguistic level are inevitably blurred at the level of practices. In the last analysis, every practice, no matter how complicated and abstract it might be, comes down to a manipulation – both physical and symbolic – of natural objects, events and worldly states of affairs. SI practices are particularly complex because they are made of extremely refined epistemic activities, such as testing, constructing models, measuring, calculating, writing, classifying, and so on; however, they are not essentially different from MI practices. Ultimately, SI practices are human activities which stem from the technological, formal and normative refinement of the artifactual, linguistic and social resources of common sense. The difference between MI and SI practices is therefore, in

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a sense, a matter of degree: SI practices can be (and indeed have been) elaborated from MI practices. Clearly, the recognition of a certain continuity does not imply the thesis that there is no difference between them; there is, as everybody who ever took part to the activity of a scientific laboratory knows perfectly well! We do not want to deny the differences between MI and SI practices; our point is simply that the clear discontinuity that exists between SI and MI languages cannot be found among MI and SI practices.

33 With this in mind, we go back to the issue concerning the form taken by postulational activity in SI practices. Our solution is inspired by Hacking’s experimental conception of effects or phenomena. In Representing and Intervening Hacking remarks that phenomena should be conceived of as regularities which are consequences of the laws of nature formulated in our theories. Contrary to the philosophical sense of the word ‘phenomenon,’ Hacking does not use it to refer to something private, but rather to “something public, regular, possibly law-like, but perhaps exceptional” (Hacking 1983: 222). When a phenomenon is particularly interesting and instructive, scientists call it an effect. Consequently, a phenomenon is the result of an experimental SI activity that alters more or less dramatically the course of nature, thus creating a regularity that would be otherwise inaccessible through MI practices.

34 What is relevant to note is that, according to Hacking, effects do not exist “outside of certain kinds of apparatus.” “In nature,” he argues, “there is just complexity, which we are remarkably able to analyse. We do so by distinguishing, in the mind, numerous different laws. We also do so, by presenting, in the laboratory, pure, isolated, phenomena” (Hacking 1983: 226). What ‘exists’ (holds) independently of our experimental SI practices are the laws of nature; on the contrary, effects and phenomena do not exist until an experimenter discovers how to disentangle a particular arrangement which exemplifies – rather than merely instantiates17 – a particular effect or phenomenon by purifying it from other intervening and interfering causes.

35 Following up on Hacking’s insight, we argue that an interesting way to think of the postulational activity at the level of SI practices is in terms of Cartwright’s ‘nomological machines,’18 i.e., in terms of the construction of experimental settings which make it possible to produce effects or phenomena in a laboratory context. Such a comparison is warranted by the fact that the construction of an experimental setting is a kind of activity which is structurally similar to the act of postulation, since in the former a modification of some natural conditions is produced in order to account for correlations that would be left otherwise unexplained. In both cases, the search for correlations is supplemented by the introduction of some factors that dramatically enhance the explanatory power of scientific activity – nomological machines at the level of SI practices, and postulated entities at the level of SI languages. There are two more similarities that are worthy of note. First of all, the construction of an experimental setting cannot be severed from the theory that allows the particular, specific regularity exemplified by that arrangement. Consequently, it is reasonable to argue that they share the same structural complexity. Secondly, both the postulated entities and the nomological machines do not exist or hold outside of a well-defined context, respectively the SI language of the theory and the laboratory SI practices.19

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4. Meaning-Use Analysis

36 In sections 2 and 3 we have analyzed the languages and the practices of science and common sense as they come into view in MI and SI. We have also discussed the pragmatic significance of the conceptual contents that are expressed in these languages and we have maintained that practices are fundamental to their determination. In fact, the way in which normative spaces have been presented prefigures an analysis of languages and practices as deeply intertwined. In this section we will try to offer a sharper picture of the relations between the various components of MI and SI. In order to do that, we will exploit the expressive resources of Brandom’s so called “meaning-use analysis,” which is essentially a collection of theoretical tools designed to provide a pragmatist analysis of languages and their semantic contents (Brandom 2008).

37 Our purpose is to argue that in a normative inferentialist approach, like the one we have endorsed here, the traditional ontological conflict between science and common sense is shifted from the level of the semantic analysis of languages to the level of the analysis of normative practices. One of the most efficacious illustrations of such a conflict is Eddington’s example of the two tables. Eddington suggested that if the ontological commitments of science and common sense are taken at face value, then it must be acknowledged that for every common sense object there exists a scientific duplicate that is distinct from it. Consider a table, for instance. On the one hand there is the table of common sense, an MI object with phenomenological properties like extension, color, shape, impenetrability, weight, etc. On the other hand there is the table of science, a mostly empty space in which many electric charges move around. Whereas the MI table is a substance with properties, the SI table is hardly something at all. There is an unquestionable ontological distinction between the two tables. The problem arises when the representational content of our assertions about tables is taken into account: when we talk about tables, do we refer to the MI or the SI one? Since we cannot refer to both, in establishing whether our assertions are true or false should we adopt the ontology of common sense or the ontology of science? This is what the problem is usually taken to be.

38 The most common and accredited interpretation of Eddington’s example admits that the references to the two tables are in effect semantically incompatible, because the objects they refer to are ontologically incompatible with each other. Once this is acknowledged, however, one seems to be forced to choose one table or the other. So, on the one hand, scientific realists acknowledge the existence of the SI table only and lessen the ontology of common sense as . On the other hand, those who stick to the MI table – like, for instance, phenomenologists who vindicate the primacy of the life-world – endorse an instrumentalist approach to scientific theories, according to which the latter are nothing but tools useful to cope with the world, which can be legitimately employed only with the proviso that they allow us to save the phenomena. Although Eddington’s picture describes a sound ontological dilemma, we believe nonetheless that the conflict between science and common sense cannot be settled by picking one of its horns. We suggest, instead, that a better understanding of the relationship between these two frameworks can be achieved by opting out of the ontological plan altogether. In order to do that, we need to investigate more in depth how the MI and SI normative spaces are interrelated.

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39 As remarked above, the two main components that characterize a normative space are a language and a practice. We thus distinguish, on the one side, the language and the

practice of MI (LM and PM) and, on the other side, the language and the practice of SI (LS

and PS). Here, LM is the language in which we talk about tables and their colors, the language in which we formulate the Boyle-Charles law for gases, and so on. On the

other hand, the practice PM is the ordinary practice of dealing with these substances and their properties, in the peculiar way that characterizes us as rational human beings

and that consists in having the responsibility to justify what we do. Similarly, LS is the language of science in which we talk about atoms and report gravitational waves, while

PS is the thick scientific practice that we have described in the previous section. 40 The first kinds of relation that we want to single out connect languages and practices inside the same normative space. We have argued that practices are fundamental to the determination of the conceptual contents expressed in MI and SI languages. As a consequence, in order to be treated as being able to meaningfully deploy the

vocabularies of LM and LS, one must already be able to engage in the correspondent

practices PM and PS. This is a relation that Brandom calls “practice-vocabulary- sufficiency” (PV-Sufficiency), because it holds when the condition of engaging in a certain practice is sufficient for the meaningful deployment of a certain language. In

this sense we have both that PM is PV-Sufficient with respect to LM and that PS is PV-

Sufficient with respect to LS. 41 Another relation that Brandom considers is the inverse “vocabulary-practice- sufficiency” (VP-Sufficiency), which holds between a certain language and a certain practice when the language contains the expressive resources to specify what one must be able to do in order to engage in the practice. Since both MI and SI are ideal types that contain the resources to accommodate complete representations of the world, the

languages LM and LS in effect must have enough expressive power to specify what it is to

engage respectively in PM and PS. Thus LM is VP-Sufficient with respect to PM and LS is

VP-Sufficient with respect to PS. 42 Let’s pause to take stock. So far we have defined VP-Sufficiency, an expressive relation between languages and practices, and PV-Sufficiency, a semantically grounding relation between practices and languages. These few instruments already allow us to ask an interesting question: What if a language L' is VP-Sufficient with respect to a practice P that in turn is PV-sufficient with respect to a language L''? This question invites to reason about a scenario in which a language L' is expressive enough to specify a practice P, the engaging in which is sufficient for the meaningful deployment of another language L''. In this scenario a composite relation between the languages L' and L'' can be envisaged, one that is mediated by the practice P. Here, in a sense, L' allows to express the contents of L'', to the extent that it allows to specify the practice that establishes them. And yet, L' is not a semantic metavocabulary for L'', because it does not talk about the expressions of L''. Thus Brandom calls L' a “pragmatic metavocabulary” for L''. Notice that it is not necessary for L' and L'' to be different

languages. In fact, it is easy to verify that both LM and LS are pragmatic metavocabularies of themselves. This should not be surprising: since the languages of MI and SI in our analysis must be expressively complete, they contain the resources to specify the practices that ground their contents.20

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43 We can then proceed to consider whether there are relations holding between the

different normative spaces of SI and MI. If we focus just on LM and LS, however, the picture is not really encouraging. Eddington’s example suggests that the languages of the two images are on the whole semantically autonomous. Surely, there is no semantic reduction between them. So, for instance, reference to tables can be reduced to reference to electric charges with kinetic energy only at the price of obliterating the whole MI as a normative space.

44 The overview however changes substantially when practices are taken into account. For it is easy to see that the language of SI has the expressive power to specify the practices of MI. Consider the following example. To be able to apply the MI concept of a light bulb is, among other things, to acknowledge that flipping the light switch will turn the light bulb on. The expression ‘flipping the light switch will turn the light bulb

on’ is a norm expressed in LM that governs the practice of application of the concept of

light bulb. Such a norm, however, can also be specified in LS. In order to do that, the lighting of the light bulb is to be represented in SI. Physicists explain that the electrons that are accelerated by the electric field created by flipping the switch collide with the atoms of the filament in the light bulb. The electrons of these excited atoms transition into higher energy levels. Quantum electrodynamics says that atoms may spontaneously transition back to their ground state: when they do so, electromagnetic radiation is emitted in the form of photons. The wavelength of the emitted photons depends on the distance between the energy levels of the atomic transition. The material and the mass of the filament inside a light bulb are such that the of photons being emitted in the visible wavelengths is high enough for the light bulb to glow. One can then specify what it is to be able to apply the MI concept of a light bulb in

LS by saying that it involves, among other things, acknowledging that, when the light switch is flipped, an electric field excites the atoms of the filament in the light bulb that spontaneously emit photons in visible wavelengths when they jump back to their

ground state. Notice that although it is specified in LS, the practice of turning on light

bulbs is not a scientific one. This example illustrates that it is possible to say in LS what

one does when one engages in PM. In this sense, then, LS can be deployed as a pragmatic

metavocabulary for LM. So, while it is not possible to reduce the contents of the

language of MI to the contents of the language of SI, it is still possible to use LS to talk

about the practices that establish the norms that determine the contents of LM. 45 The pragmatic point of view also allows to see that there are interesting relations

between PM and PS too. As far as the analysis of the conflict between MI and SI is

concerned, the most interesting relation that we want to single out is the one from PM

to PS. As was explained in the previous section, we see PS as characterized by the complex collection of epistemic activities that allow for the formulation and testing of scientific theories. The normative space of SI only obtains when these activities are up and running in scientific practices. However, the development of all the formal, material and social resources required to start and sustain them is a complex process. Such a process consists, among other things, in defining languages and theories with new expressive power, in constructing new instruments and equipment and learning how to use them, in establishing new social groups and normative statuses. It is important to realize that the development of all these heavily relies on the resources

that are available in PM. Let us start with the most obvious case: although experimental equipment enables SI abilities, they are in effect macroscopic objects, so designing,

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constructing and operating them requires a whole series of MI abilities. Similarly, the ability to ascribe SI normative statuses to scientific communities and institutions requires the ability to ascribe MI normative statuses to people. The case of the development of SI formal resources is slightly more ponderous. We will present it by means of an example: consider the notion of integral, which is employed to express wave functions in the definition of particles like electrons. Integrals do not belong to MI. By contrast they are part of the expressive resources required to engage in SI practices. If we look at the history of the notion, however, we clearly see how the development of the ability to deploy the concept of integral consists in a progressive elaboration of other abilities that were previously available in MI. Leibniz, for instance, thought of integration as an infinite sum of ordinates with abscissas.21

46 Admittedly, these remarks are only of an introductory character, but they are enough to outline the relation of elaboration between the practices of MI and SI that we want

to focus on. This relation holds between PM and PS because the resources required by

the epistemic activities that characterize PS can be elaborated from the resources that

are already available in PM. Although it is a very peculiar relation specific to PM and PS, it is clearly a species of the more general genus that Brandom calls PP-Sufficiency relations. These hold, he explains, “when having acquired one set of abilities means one can already do everything one needs to do, in principle, to be able to do something else” (Brandom 2008: 26). For want of a better word, we will simply refer to the sort of

elaboration that we have described of PS from PM as PP-Sufficiency. In this case PM is PP-

sufficient for PS. 47 In order to wrap this all up, all the relations that have been described here are depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1: meaning-use analysis

48 If we now look at the whole picture drawn by this analysis, we can see that is has several points of strength. First of all, it acknowledges that the evident ontological clash between SI and MI is a sound one. The conflict follows from the fact that the

semantic analyses of LS and LM are incompatible in the strong sense that the models that

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make LS sentences true are not isomorphic to the models that make LM sentences true.

In a Quinean metaontology, this means that LS and LM talk about different things: if LS

sentences are true then wave functions exist, if LM sentences are true then instead tables exist. And since SI and MI are ideally complete representations, wave functions

and tables cannot exist both. So, either LS or LM sentences must not be really true. In our analysis, however, while model-theoretic semantics is accepted as an essential expressive resource, it does not play a foundational role with respect to the meaning of

the expressions of a language. In particular, the conceptual contents of LS and LM are construed as determined by the inferential articulation of the norms established in the

respective practices PS and PM.

49 Hence, since the practices of science and common sense are clearly intertwined, our analysis also allows one to account for the continuity between the two frameworks. In particular, it makes room for an explanation of the process of development and enrichment of common sense. Here we have sketched some of the lines along which it

is possible to investigate how a common sense practice like PM can be elaborated into a

scientific one like PS. At the same time, however, we have not blurred the distinction between the practices of science and common sense. While MI can make use of methods that are usually taken to be characteristic of scientific activity, like idealization, induction, abduction and statistical inference, SI is still distinguished, both on the level of practices and on the level of languages, by its distinctive postulational activity.

5. Conclusions

50 In this paper we have presented a pragmatist approach to the analysis of the relations between science and common sense. In particular, we have been concerned with the structure that can be given to a comparison between the two frameworks. Therefore, we have focused on a specific area in which they overlap, an area that we have delimited in terms of the notions of SI and MI and that we believe may paradigmatically highlight the shape of their connection. As we have defined them, SI and MI are normative spaces that are differently characterized by practically established norms. These norms functionally determine the conceptual contents which are applied to give linguistic representations of things in the world. Traditionally, the comparison between science and common sense has been drawn at the level of these linguistic representations. And since these linguistic representations are semantically incompatible, the two frameworks have been regarded as mutually exclusive. In our approach, instead, we suggest investigating the conflict between science and common sense at the level of the practices. Thus, we give an analysis of SI and MI practices that accounts for the distinction between the postulational character of the former and the merely correlational norms of the latter. At the same time, we show how SI practices can be elaborated from MI ones and are therefore continuous with them. By focusing on practices, our approach also allows us to shed a different light on the relation between the languages of science and common sense. In fact, we note that SI language is a pragmatic metavocabulary for MI language, in the sense that it is possible to specify in the former what one must be able to do in order to engage in the practice that semantically grounds the latter.

51 Of course, all this only scratches the surface of the relationship between the practices of science and common sense, and we think that a lot of promising work is still to be

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done in this area.22 We also believe that the very possibility of reorienting the focus of such investigation away from ontological conflicts and towards their practical roots is a relevant contribution of our pragmatist approach. Among the values of such an approach we also count the fact that it keeps together different conflicting intuitions that all seem to be valid. In particular it allows to acknowledge the incompatibility between conceptual repertoires of science and common sense, but it also allows us to treat such incompatibility as non-malicious, one that can be resolved by taking into account the continuity of practices. Accordingly, it suggests that there is no need to look for an alleged fixed group of theses which are essential to MI: common sense evolves and is permeable to the results of scientific investigations. Finally, since it moves from the assumption of a continuity between science and common sense, our account may provide some elements to explain why in the history of science phenomenological laws have proved to be quite independent from the scientific explanations that were given for them. The point is that phenomenological laws belong to common sense, being correlations between manifest properties of manifest objects. That suggestion paves the way for a pragmatist analysis of the relations between operational practices – such as measurement – and SI languages, much in the spirit of Chang’s recent reappraisal of operationalism (Chang 2004, 2012, 2017).

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NOTES

1. As will be more thoroughly explained in the body of the paper, we take the norms that define a normative space to be expressed and articulated in terms of inferences. However, we do not take a position on the idea that pure and simple inferential rules could make it possible to distinguish between the normative spaces of science and common sense. 2. The distinction between an empirical and an experimental conception of experience is drawn by Dewey in the 1906 essay Experience and Objective Idealism. 3. For a recent assessment of this issue, see the Symposium Language or Experience. Charting Pragmatism’s Course for 21st Century, edited by D. Hildebrand on this journal, Volume 6, Number 2, 2014. 4. This is an acceptable characterization as long as practice and language are correctly conceived. It is important to avoid a possible misunderstanding here. We do not want to convey the idea that practice is not linguistic, or that language is not practical. That view would fly in the face of the overall approach adopted in the present article. Our approach is pragmatist precisely because and insofar as it attempts to take the relation between language and practice seriously: in fact, the very possibility of such relation – although it would be better to talk of ‘interrelation’ or ‘intrinsic relation’ – puts some normative constraints on how practice and language should be conceived. They could not enter into relation with one another if they were completely dissimilar. Accordingly, every practice is linguistic through and through, otherwise it would be epistemically irrelevant. At the same time, language is “fraught with oughts,” as Sellars put it, in that a discursive practice is needed in order for linguistic expressions to have semantic content. 5. It’s worth stressing that the manifest image is only one of the normative spaces in the framework of common sense. Some of these spaces – like e.g. religion, morals or esthetics – have simply nothing to do with science. See below for further discussion. 6. The notion of pragmatic content inverts the relationship between objectivity and representation. ‘Pragmatic content’ is therefore the technical notion on which our anti- representationalism relies. For a further discussion of our anti-representationalist approach, see Section 3. 7. In the philosophy of science, the objects of scientific theories are usually referred to as “theoretical entities.” Throughout this paper we intentionally refrain from the use of such an expression for two reasons. First, the notion of “theoretical” objects is too often characterized in contrast to the notion of “observational” ones. This opposition, however, is only tangential to our concerns: in fact, we abstain from the use of “observational” as well. Second, if the notion of theoretical objects is not characterized in terms of this opposition (or in terms of other

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oppositions we are not concerned with here), then it simply amounts to the notion of the object of a theory, which is rather uninformative. 8. When we say that a normative space is required for the definition of a collection of laws we are not committing to any substantial characterization (syntactical, semantical, structural, etc.) of normative spaces. In other words, we do not have a metatheory of normative spaces. Rather, we are interested in the practices that support them. 9. For an analysis of Brandom’s normative inferentialism see Turbanti 2017. 10. The seminal idea of an inferentialist semantics is usually traced back to Frege’s account of conceptual content (“Begriffliche Inhalt”) in the Begriffsschrift (Frege 1879). The very same idea is originally utilized by Carnap (1939) in his logical analysis of syntax. The inferentialist approach to the analysis of the content of logical expressions has been carried out in particular in proof theory. Such a tradition stems out of Gentzen’s work (Gentzen 1934-5) and has been developed eminently by Dag Prawitz (see e.g. Prawitz 1965, 2006). Proof-theoretic semantics is a now ongoing enterprise (Francez 2015). In philosophy, inferentialist semantics has been largely investigated in particular by Dummett (1977, 1991) and by Brandom (1994, 2000, 2008). See also Peregrin (2014) for a recent attempt to further develop the subject. 11. It may be worth clarifying that to say that conceptual contents are determined by the norms established in practices is not to say that the content of a concept is the practice that establishes the norms for its use. In other words, the inferentialist semantics that we are presenting is just not representational at all. In particular, it does not deal with truth-makers. However, it is compatible with standard representational semantics (provided that it is used for semantic analysis only). So, for instance, while we claim that the content of the SI concept of electron is determined by the norms established in a certain SI practice, we also accept that the truth-maker of a sentence in which the concept of electron is applied is not the bundle of practices that provide the sufficient and necessary conditions for the use of the concept (nor these conditions themselves), but, as one would rightly expect, a certain fact about electrons (or something else, depending on one’s theoretical preferences about truth-makers). 12. It is even more so than other possible pragmatist approaches that might be considered as opposing representationalism. The point we would like to stress in this regard is that the idea of problem-solving is not enough to dismantle semantic representationalism. Indeed, one may hold that knowledge is what is achieved at the end of the process of inquiry, and that inquiry is a problem-solving activity; nonetheless, this way of framing the issue – which is clearly anti- representionalist in the minimal sense that true and justified beliefs do not depict or represent something given before and independently of the inquiry – does not tell anything about how the semantic content of concepts is established. It may well be that the semantic content of the concepts used in the process of inquiry is still defined in purely representationalist terms, even though the purpose of their applications contradicts some of the main assumptions of representationalism. A position of this sort would be a half-hearted anti-representationalism. From this perspective, Dewey’s instrumentalist account of concepts counts as a full-blown form of semantic anti-representationalism. 13. The label ‘thick’ is also used by Brandom to refer to those feedback-governed practices that “essentially involve objects, events and worldly states of affairs” (Brandom 2008: 180; Brandom 2011: 17). In his view, these are practices that cannot be specified without also specifying what they refer to: so, for instance, one cannot specify what hammering is without mentioning hammers and nails. We adopt a thoroughly pragmatist point of view, and by ‘thick practices’ we mean those practices that involve active coping with the non-linguistic world. 14. As Dewey writes, “[t]he adverb ‘truly’ is more fundamental than either the adjective, true, or the noun, truth,” and he specifies that the reason why the adverb is fundamental is that it “expresses a way, a mode of acting” (Dewey 1920: 182). What Dewey wants to say is that, in order

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to understand what a concept means, we should look at the practices in which that concept originates and is applied. Clearly, that thesis is a corollary of the pragmatic maxim. 15. The coherence at stake here is not logical consistency: it is a less technical notion, which simply requires that the different operations cooperate towards to a realization of a final end, loosely defined. 16. The third point on this list may seem by far the least important: one may think that it only concerns the socio-political and cultural context in which scientific activity is carried out, that is, something external to the essential core of the SI practice. We disagree. Indeed, we believe that it would sound very strange if a scientist who claims to be an expert in atomic theory were completely ignorant of the impact of her discoveries on scientific communities, as well as of the socio-political bearings that such discoveries may have on the life of his fellow citizens – or, at least, of the possibility that her discoveries may have indirect socio-political consequences. Intuitively, the capacity to locate her work in the different ‘institutional’ contexts that it may affect is part of what we mean with ‘knowing how to use the concept of atom.’ 17. On the distinction between instantiate and exemplify, see (Rouse 2015: 295-6). 18. “What is a nomological machine? It is a fixed (enough) arrangement of components, or factors, with stable (enough) capacities that in the right sort of stable (enough) environment will, with repeated operation, give rise to the kind of regular behavior that we represent in our scientific laws.” (Cartwright 1999: 50). 19. We are well aware that these remarks only show, at best, that there are some interesting structural similarities between nomological machines and postulational activity in SI. However, we are not committed with a strong identity claim; we are content with the weaker hypothesis that they play a similar role in scientific explanation. We leave the issue open for further discussion. 20. The notion of pragmatic metavocabulary is certainly one of the most interesting results of Brandom’s meaning-use analysis. To the contrary of what we do here, however, Brandom never considers languages that are pragmatic metavocabularies of themselves. This is because he is mainly interested in the different expressive power of pragmatically related languages, as e.g. logical vocabularies. In this sense, languages like LM and LS and practices like PM and PS are too coarse-grained for his analysis. Notice that pragmatic metavocabularies do not involve paradoxes of self reference like those pointed out by Tarski for semantic metavocabularies. 21. This latter sort of practical elaboration of expressive resources is akin to what Brandom has in mind when he talks about the algorithmic elaboration of new abilities “where exercising the target ability just is exercising the right basic abilities in the right order and under the right circumstances” (Brandom 2008: 26). Of course, this is the basic idea of a computable function in computability theory. Brandom however applies it also to expressive resources. So, for instance, he argues that the ability to deploy conditionals can be algorithmically elaborated from the “primitive abilities to make assertions and to sort inferences into those that are and those that are not materially good ones” (Brandom 2008: 44): in effect, the conditional “A→B” can be asserted if and only if the inference from A to B is sorted out as a good one. 22. So, for instance, as far as we can see there is at least another very interesting relation holding from PS to PM. Scientific practice in fact may have a deep impact on the practices of common sense through technology. We have not dwelt on technological elaboration in this paper and we defer it to another occasion.

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ABSTRACTS

In our paper we aim to update and revise the pragmatist conception of the relationship between science and common sense. First of all, we introduce two technical notions (MI and SI), with which we identify the normative spaces of the manifest and the scientific image, and we highlight the differences between these two notions and their Sellarsian cognates. Secondly, within each normative space we investigate the connections between languages and practices: we ground linguistic contents on the normative relations that are established in the practices of the corresponding normative space. Finally, we rely on Brandom’s meaning-use analysis to provide a representation of the different ways in which MI and SI practices and languages may interact. Our pragmatist proposal is to trace back the ontological conflict that is usually believed to exist between scientific and common sense objects to the differences between scientific and common sense practices.

AUTHORS

ROBERTO GRONDA Università di Pisa roberto.gronda[at]unipi.it

GIACOMO TURBANTI Università di Trento turbanti.giacomo[at]gmail.com

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Knowledge as Potential for Action

Stephen Hetherington

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Brent Madison made very helpful comments on a draft of this paper, as did audiences at Soochow University, Australian Catholic University, and Cambridge University.

1. A Question

1 Western epistemology has long had a focus upon knowledge-that – knowledge of a truth or fact – when discussing knowledge at all. Within contemporary epistemology in particular, definitional analyses of knowledge-that have abounded, especially since Edmund Gettier’s (1963) philosophical bee-sting. He set off a rash of epistemological agreement – allergy-like in its intensity and its speedy spread of the conviction that there is more to knowing than having a true and well justified belief; and putative stories about that ‘more’ have proliferated. In general, though, even those post-Gettier attempts to understand knowledge’s nature1 have not attempted to do so in terms of knowledge-how.

2 Perhaps the closest they have come to doing so2 has been within some versions of a virtue epistemology. Ernest Sosa (e.g. 2007, 2011, 2015, 2016) has emphasized the potential role of cognitive virtues within the production of an individual’s knowledge. These may be regarded as cognitive skills on the part of the person – skills that could in turn be conceived of as instances of knowledge-how. Knowledge-how would thus be involved in at least a person’s gaining some knowledge-that.

3 But should we contemplate an even stronger link than that causally productive one between knowledge-how and knowledge-that? Might the knowing-how be literally a part of the knowing-that, even after the knowledge-that has been produced through the agency that is inherent in activating and applying the pertinent knowledge-how? That

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metaphysically (not merely causally) constitutive possibility – about how knowledge- how might be a vital part even of the nature of knowledge-that – is this paper’s concern.

2. A Traditional Interpretation: Persisting Belief

4 We can ease into that discussion by asking about knowledge and belief. And initially we can do this via an example. It describes a familiar sort of situation, involving an array of cognitively charged actions. What might it indicate about knowledge, about belief, and about any potentially constitutive relations between those two?

5 Imagine being asked whether you know that 58 + 68 = 126. You reflect for a moment, consciously performing a simple calculation, before replying that, yes, you do have that knowledge. Are you thereby committed to the view also that you believe that 58 + 68 = 126? You may well claim so. Yet what would be your evidence for those views of yourself?

6 At this moment, when you actively ponder those two questions – Do you know? Do you believe? – what you are most manifestly aware of are some actions on your part. You notice your engaging in some calculating. You monitor this activity. You might feel yourself accepting the result of that calculating. Then you give voice to – by asserting – that result: ‘126. That’s the answer.’ You hear yourself giving that answer, perhaps as anyone else hears your words, although maybe as only you could hear them.3

7 Yet where in all of this have you espied a belief – in the robust sense of a persisting or continuing belief? Presumably, no such belief is identical with any of those actions by you. Is the belief therefore something beyond or behind these actions, maybe underlying them? You have no direct awareness of interacting with a belief like that. Indeed, you cannot have such an awareness. For you cannot introspectively observe the persisting existence of the belief beyond its being interacted with by you. Even if somehow you experience a content within yourself, you experience it only in its capacity as a content present at that time of being experienced. Again, where within this experience is the persisting belief?

8 For that matter, where – within all of this – is your knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126? For instance, is it wherever the belief is (wherever that is), due to knowledge’s always being a kind of belief? Many would say so, in tune with the epistemologically entrenched view – perhaps bequeathed to contemporary philosophy by Plato’s Meno (97e-98a) – that any instance of knowledge is a kind of belief, an epistemically enriched belief. The belief (they will say, in explaining that view) is the metaphysically describable ‘stuff’ or substance that, once it is epistemically enriched, is the ‘thing’ that is the knowledge. The belief is the ‘thing’ in which the knowledge’s further required properties – those that are enriching the belief epistemically, properties such as being true and being epistemically justified – ‘inhere’ or to which they ‘attach.’ Accordingly, is it possible, at least in principle, to describe your belief’s presence in this situation in advance of ascertaining whether you also have the knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126?

9 Yet how would that happen (if indeed it can)? For example, could you find the belief indirectly, maybe by inference from some of your self-observations in this setting? Various of your actions, such as the calculating, could be said to be generating the belief’s presence. Other actions, such as your accepting or your asserting, would likely be taken to be reflecting or arising from the belief’s presence. The presence of any or all

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of these actions would supposedly either explain or be explained by the belief’s own presence. In that spirit, should we say that the best explanation of these actions would mention the belief’s presence?4 Not only that; are such actions also best explained – in almost the same breath – as somehow generating and/or reflecting or arising from your knowing that 58 + 68 = 126? If knowledge is always a form of belief, then these actions reflect the belief that 58 + 68 = 126, for example, only if they also reflect – even if possibly not in quite the same way – the knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126.

10 Still, is knowledge always a form of belief? For a start, not all of philosophy’s relevant history insists that it is. What, indeed, of the strongly contrary picture, on which knowledge and belief are metaphysically disjoint, so that to know that p is not, even in part, to believe that p? That contrary picture was also first painted for us by Plato, this time in the Republic (475b-480). On this picture, belief and knowledge are taken to be so deeply distinct in nature as to underlie the idiom, ‘No, I don’t believe it; I know it.’ And if this disjointness thesis is correct, how should we interpret your actions, described in this section, as indications of your believing – or, distinctly, of your knowing – that 58 + 68 = 126?

11 § 9 will discuss this issue more fully, by attending to a recent argument – from Blake Myers-Schulz and Eric Schwitzgebel (2013) – for the disjointness thesis. Until then, however, let us stay with the knowledge-as-a-kind-of-belief picture, given its being the most widely accepted view among contemporary epistemologists as to what kind of thing an instance of knowledge is.

3. An Alternative Interpretation: Inner Actions

12 The line of questioning introduced in § 2 might remind us of a famous argument by David Hume (1978 [1739-40]: book I, part IV, sec. VI). I have in mind his objection to the thesis that within each person there exists an identifiable, distinct, and persisting personal substance – with its continuing existence being an essential explanatory element of a person’s numerical identity over time. In presenting his argument, Hume conducted the same sort of self-search as I asked you to perform a moment ago.

13 So, look within – for your self (asks Hume) or for your belief (this is my request). Seek that privately persisting substance or that persisting belief. In neither case will you succeed: all that you will clearly meet are experiences occurring at that time of their being uncovered by your inner investigation. And whatever else, if anything, these are at a moment of being met by your inner explorations, you can meet such an experience only in its capacity as something itself active, something happening and alive.

14 An experience can have a content adverting to more than this moment. And often you may feel that you are meeting within you a persisting attitude to that content. But that feeling could be misleading. What you meet at that moment is an attitude present at least at that time; and you do not thereby meet something present at another time. Even if the attitude you meet has a content that you feel yourself to be accepting also for other times, you are not meeting it while it is functioning as an object of acceptance at other times. As Hume says (1978: 252): when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for

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any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.

15 Is that merely a Humean eccentricity? Far from it; the similarity of this Humean reasoning to Descartes’ Cogito, no less, is striking. In perhaps modern ’s most famous reasoning, Descartes reassured himself that, so long as he was thinking (even if only by doubting), he knew himself to exist – but only as that active thinking. He could not know himself within that setting – ‘Meditation II’ – as a persisting and independently existing substance, even when restricting his known features to mental ones. And with this assessment of what he can know and what he cannot know, Descartes claimed to answer his metaphysically foundational question, ‘But what then am I?’ (1984 [1641]: 18, 19, 22): I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist. […] But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions. […] But what am I to say about this mind, or about myself? (So far, remember, I am not admitting that there is anything else in me except a mind.)

16 And so far I am saying something similar about your inner experienced self as a knower. You cannot ever know that you are finding within you (at least by introspection) a persisting and independently existing epistemic substance – such as a continuing state of belief – able to be the metaphysical ‘stuff’ of your knowing that 58 + 68 = 126.5 Only inner actions – cognitive ones – existing at the time of the introspective search will be knowingly encountered. Yet this should not be surprising. Only by acting could you know, as a result of effort at that time, something present within you at that same time. Such acting cannot know that it has found anything inner beyond something existing as an object of such acting. (Some acting is being known, we may suppose. And in order to know something inner and beyond that acting, one has to continue one’s inner acting; with which effort, you continue meeting only what is thereby, at any such moment, not existing at any further moment.)

4. Knowledge-that as Knowledge-how

17 Is that a worrying picture? Does it confront us with a reason never to regard ourselves as believers, or even as knowers?

18 Not if we are prepared to make some correlative conceptual adjustments. Specifically, we can respond to that line of thought about knowledge somewhat as Hume responded to his own about persons. He proposed a reconception of the fundamental nature of personal identity. What is a person? Hume’s answer was that each of us is a republic or commonwealth of experiences (1978: 261), a bundle of ideas and impressions (1978: 252). What persists as a person’s persisting is the bundle as such – not necessarily its particular members, and not a further inner substance underlying and binding together those phenomena. Might an analogous picture illuminate the relationship between a person’s persisting knowledge, such as her knowing that 58 + 68 = 126, and her related cognitive actions (such as calculating, accepting, and asserting)? This possibility merits attention.6

19 First, let me describe it a little less schematically.

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20 Let those cognitive actions – your calculating, your accepting, your asserting – be expressions or manifestations, in their different ways, of your knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126. But let them be expressing or manifesting this knowledge, precisely as actions can express or manifest knowledge-how.7 For now, we may think of this as the actions expressing or manifesting associated abilities or skills.8 (Thus, you would be calculating aptly as an expression of your knowing how to do so. The same would be true of the subsequent actions of your accepting, and your asserting, that 58 + 68 = 126.) Finally, we may also propose or hypothesize that this knowledge-how – this collection of skills – would be your knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126. To describe the knowledge-how would be to describe all that there is in having the knowledge-that.

21 Notice how the relationship being described as obtaining between your actions and your knowledge-how is metaphysically constitutive. Your cognitive actions, in being the actions they are, express or manifest those attendant abilities or skills, the accompanying knowledge-how. Their nature as those actions is to be such expressions or manifestations. They are not merely caused by your having the associated knowledge-how.

22 Notice also how a single case of knowledge-how can encompass several – maybe many – distinct kinds of action: knowing-how can be multi-twined in that way. It is a picture with a Peircean tenor. Think of C. S. Peirce’s (1931-58: vol. V, para. 265) conception of evidential support: Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premises which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.9

23 Your calculating, your accepting, your asserting: these are actions expressing or manifesting your knowing that 58 + 68 = 126. Equally, they are ways of expressing some or all of whatever skills are jointly constituting a commonwealth or bundle of your associated abilities. That commonwealth or bundle may then be regarded as some complex knowledge-how: you have some specific knowledge insofar as you have some pertinent abilities, each of which is such that an action expressing or manifesting it is thereby an expression or manifestation of knowing.

24 And so we have this explanatory hypothesis: Actions that seem to reflect knowledge-that are expressions of knowledge-how; and to note this is to explain all that would be explained in positing the knowledge-that. Hence, if we insist on knowledge-that’s being present, we are free to regard the knowledge-that as the knowledge-how. In short, knowledge-that is knowledge-how and nothing else.

5. The Order-of-Explanation Objection and Intellectualism

25 But is that proposed order of explanation actually the reverse of what it should be? The objection generating this question would insist (as follows) that the knowledge-that’s presence explains the knowledge-how’s presence; and not vice versa: You know how to reach, accept, and assert ‘126’ as an answer to our mathematical question (and hence, other things being equal, you do provide this answer) in a way

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that is recognizably knowledgeable – only in part because, independently and already, you know that 58 + 68 = 126. You can perform those actions – calculating, accepting, asserting – as expressions or manifestations of the knowledge-how, only because you have the knowledge-that. Those skills – your abilities to calculate, accept, and assert in this circumstance – are means only of putting into effect your knowledge-that. The knowledge-how that enters this simple story amounts only to being your knowing how to manifest or give expression to what is already and independently your knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126.

26 This is the order-of-explanation objection. It bespeaks what is for many people a natural conception of how knowledge and action coalesce. The objection gives voice to what (1949, 1971) called intellectualism. It was Ryle who brought to epistemology’s attention the potential categorial difference between knowledge-that and knowledge-how – their being irreconcilably different kinds of knowledge. Whether there is that metaphysically deep difference between them depends upon whether intellectualism is true. Like Ryle, I say that intellectualism is false – demonstrably false.

27 Intellectualism concerns what Ryle called intelligent actions – what we have been referring to as exemplifications or manifestations of knowledge-how; what Jason Stanley (2011) calls skilful actions. How do these come to exist as actions with this epistemic character? According to intellectualism, they are guided into existence by some knowledge-that, perhaps regulative knowledge-that describing a method or technique. So, go ahead: climb aboard that bicycle. Then start riding. In doing so, you will be applying your knowledge that B – for some proposition B describing enough of what would suffice for successfully riding a bicycle. You will be putting into practice some practical knowledge – your knowledge how to ride a bicycle. But intellectualism claims that you can do this only in part through possessing, and being guided by, some already-present and independently constituted propositional or theoretical knowledge – in this case, your knowledge that B.

28 Nonetheless, here is one way in which, by taking our cue from Ryle, we might argue against any such intellectualist picture.

29 The intellectualist hears of your riding the bicycle skilfully. She infers that you must have applied some knowledge-that, such as the knowledge that B. But your applying the knowledge that B is itself a further intelligent action. (Although it is perhaps not consciously applied, it is at least reliably directed. And it is relevantly different to digesting, which is also reliably directed yet which you never learnt, for example.) Somehow, you skilfully apply your knowledge that B. However, this will likewise attract the intellectualist’s attention: she must posit a further piece of knowledge – this time,

your knowledge that B1 – as being applied by you. B1 is knowledge of some means of applying your knowledge that B (your knowledge of a way of riding a bicycle). Can the intellectualist’s analysis end there? Not if this further knowledge has also been applied skilfully. And surely it has; in which case, intellectualism requires you to have been

applying yet another piece of knowledge – call it knowledge that B2. As before, this new knowledge will be guiding into action the previously hypothesized knowledge – this

time, the knowledge that B1. And so on: in turn, you will be required to have known

that B3, to have known that B4, etc. More and more knowledge is thus being expected from you, unendingly and impossibly, even to explain just a single intelligent action on your part. For Ryle, the reason for this unwelcome result was evident: namely, intellectualism is false.

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30 In what follows, I will assume for argument’s sake that Ryle was right about this – because he might well have been, and because I am asking what conceptual possibilities are realistic if he was right. If he was, then the following possibility is available as we try to understand how knowledge and action intermingle: There can be intelligent actions – ones manifesting or expressing knowledge-how – that need not have been guided into existence by knowledge-that.

31 This implies that it is possible for at least some knowledge-how not to include knowledge-that within itself. If in each case knowledge-that was to be part of the knowledge-how, then manifesting the knowledge-how would include manifesting the contained knowledge-that. But Ryle’s form of reasoning implies that it is possible for an intelligent action to be performed – knowledge-how thereby being manifested – without any involvement by knowledge-that.

6. Knowing Actions

32 I am hypothesizing that all knowledge-that is knowledge-how, not that all knowledge- how is knowledge-that. Accordingly, not all intelligent actions – even though they express or manifest knowledge-how – express or manifest knowledge-that. Still, we must face the question of whether all knowing actions (as I call them) do so.

33 Knowing actions encompass such actions as those that we imagined you performing in response to the question, ‘What is 58 + 68?’ – your calculating, your accepting, your asserting. Any knowing action has an apparent point of manifesting or expressing knowledge. We may parse this as the knowing action’s point being that of conveying knowledge. Riding a bicycle, for example, is an intelligent action without being a knowing action. In contrast, answering the question ‘What is 58 + 68?’ with ‘126’ does occur with the aim of conveying knowledge. Hence, it is a knowing action.10

34 Nonetheless, knowing actions remain a kind of intelligent action (in Ryle’s sense of the latter). So, at this stage of our thinking, we have no reason not to apply Ryle’s general anti-intellectualist argument to them. Courtesy of Ryle, therefore, we may infer this: Even when knowledge-how is being manifested by a knowing action, this need not be occurring because of some knowledge-that’s guidance. (Yes, a knowing action typically has a point of conveying knowledge. Even this does not entail knowledge- that’s also guiding the action.) In which case, equally, the knowing action need not be occurring under the guiding influence of some knowledge-that’s presence. (For according to intellectualism, the pertinent point of the knowledge-that’s presence would be precisely to provide such guidance. If – as is shown by Ryle’s anti- intellectualism argument – guidance by knowledge-that is not needed, then neither is the presence of knowledge-that.)

35 Correlatively, too, we need not posit the existence of some knowledge-that as accompanying the knowing action. Doing so would be explanatorily idle. I am not saying that no knowledge-that could be present. But there need not be any, even given the occurrence of knowing actions. The latter actions can be knowing ones, given simply some accompanying knowledge-how.

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7. Knowledge in Action

36 Yet § 6’s picture of how we can act knowingly could well sound implausible, along the following lines: Maybe Ryle was right to deny that an intelligent action such as riding a bicycle must be accompanied, let alone guided, by some knowledge-that. Surely, however, when the intelligent action is also a knowing action in particular – such as your asserting an answer of ‘126’ to the question, ‘What is 58 + 68?’ – knowledge-that does need to be present, playing some causal role in the knowing action’s coming into existence.

37 Not only that (continues the objection); presumably some epistemologists will object that if no knowledge-that is present then the actions are knowing ones only in a distressingly weak way. These would be knowing actions only in the sense of being intended to convey knowledge.

38 But that objection begs the central question to which my proposal is offering an alternative answer. That answer begins by clarifying Ryle’s result, as follows.

39 What he showed (when his point is formulated more precisely) is that intelligent actions are not guided into existence by some categorially distinct knowledge-that. Nor, therefore (I infer), are knowing actions. And the significance of that added precision is its revealing how we have conceptual room for interpreting such actions (intelligent actions in general; knowing actions in particular) as able to exist as expressions or manifestations of knowledge-how – and thereby of knowledge-that. The knowledge-that would now not be categorially distinct from knowledge-how. So, we may say that, whenever a knowing action occurs, there is knowledge accompanying it. However, this knowledge is the knowledge-how that is being manifested or expressed by the knowing action.

40 And we can distinguish these cases of knowledge-how – the ones that are knowledge- that – from other cases of knowledge-how. We do this, not categorially, but by attending to the content of the respective intelligent actions that would be expressions or manifestations of the knowledge-how in question. Your knowledge that 58 + 68 = 126 is a complex of abilities, each of which aims at conveying a truth. Your knowledge how to ride a bicycle is a complex of abilities, probably none of which aims at conveying a truth.

41 Knowing actions are thus instances of knowledge in action. Each such action is an instance of knowledge activated – knowledge being activated. In general, though, knowledge-how can exist even when it is not activated. After all, abilities need not be manifested – put into action – in order to exist.11 And this is as it should be: much of your knowledge does not disappear when you sleep, even when all of your manifestations of that knowledge – the knowing actions distinctive of the knowledge in question – do so.12 So knowledge is inactive or unactivated other than when knowing actions are expressing or manifesting it. Then it is activated, at least for a while. Your accepting the right answer; your uttering the right answer: each of these is your putting into action the knowledge-how that is your knowing that 58 + 68 = 126. The knowledge as such, though, remains knowledge-how.13

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8. Perceptual Knowledge

42 We have focused upon a case of mathematical knowledge. How does my account apply to perceptual knowledge?

43 Elegantly so. Imagine being outside a field, looking at what seems to be a barn; as indeed it is. So you think to yourself that it is a barn. You do not also consciously note its roof being red. Nevertheless, you can know that the barn’s roof is red, by having pertinent abilities. Are you able to picture, if asked, the colour of the barn’s roof? Are you able, if asked, to describe that colour? If you have one or both of those abilities, you have the knowledge – even if you are never asked those questions.

44 However, this knowledge could remain inactive if those questions are never posed. In that sense, the knowledge – by being knowledge-how – is a potentiality within you. It is your having a potential for many knowing actions, both inner ones and outer ones. It is a potential for answering questions and/or for forming questions and/or for consciously describing an aspect of the surroundings and/or for drawing that aspect and/or etc. If the knowledge was to be activated (such as if you were to be asked about the roof’s colour), you might proceed to have a consciously held experience of believing about the roof’s colour. Even so, this would not be your knowledge of the roof’s colour. Your inner experience – even if it feels to you like it is the mere ‘tip’ of an inner persisting belief – would instead be only a manifestation or expression of the perceptual knowledge, the perceptual knowledge-how.

9. Knowledge and Belief

45 I have been outlining how we might begin to conceive of all knowledge as being knowledge-how. The idea has been that, in general, any instance of knowledge that p is a complex instance of knowledge-how – complex in the range and number of specific skills or abilities that are somehow bundled together within it, each of them bearing relevantly upon p. That idea should now be tested by our trying to answer the question – mentioned in § 2 – of where belief fits into this picture of knowledge.

46 The question is pressing because many philosophers would say that the complex potentiality that, on my view, is the given instance of knowledge is present only because, in turn, knowledge is a kind of belief. More fully, the potentiality that, I have suggested, is part of an instance of knowing is actually part of the belief that is (by being suitably embellished) the instance of knowledge. And if so, there is no motivation to conceive of knowledge in practicalist terms. Rather (say those epistemologists), we could rest content with a traditional view simply of belief – as a required element within knowledge – as a dispositional state: that is, if confronted by a pertinent circumstance (such as one’s being asked whether it is true that p), one would respond in a p-affirming or p-reflecting way.14 Such an action could be an intelligent action, in Ryle’s sense. It could also be a knowing action, in my sense. Is a dispositional conception of belief therefore already adequate for capturing the potentialities that I have described as constituting knowledge (and thus as motivating a move to a knowledge-practicalism)? If it is, then maybe knowledge could still be thought of in more traditional terms, as being a form of belief (albeit an epistemically blessed or

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augmented form). Consequently, we would not need to reach – in the less traditional way that I have been advocating – for a practicalism about knowledge’s nature.

47 I grant that a belief-manifesting action, say, can also be a knowing action. Hence, I also grant, at least some of the dispositionality within believing could be at least part of the potentiality within a given instance of knowing. But this does not entail that the former dispositionality ever – let alone always – exhausts the latter potentiality. After all, there is an alternative explanation of this apparent overlap of potentialities – one that preserves a knowledge-practicalism. This alternative explanation also offers us a middle way between the Republic-Platonic disjointness thesis – whereby to believe that p is to not know that p, and to know that p is to not believe that p – and the Meno-Platonic tradition – whereby any instance of knowledge is at least a true opinion or true belief, bolstered by a logos (an account, an understanding).

48 Ryle is suggestive here (1949: 133-4):15 ‘Know’ is a capacity verb, and a capacity verb of that special sort that is used for signifying that the person described can bring things off, or get things right. ‘Believe’, on the other hand, is a tendency verb and one which does not connote that anything is brought off or got right. […] Roughly, ‘believe’ is of the same family as motive words, where ‘know’ is of the same family as skill words; so we ask how a person knows this, but only why a person believes that […] Skills have methods, where habits and inclinations have sources. Similarly, we ask what makes people believe or dread things but not what makes them know or achieve things.

49 Ryle thus emphasizes a standard sense in which knowledge strengthens belief. One has a success-relationship to a fact that p in knowing that p, a relationship that one need not have in believing that p: knowledge is always factive, while belief is not.

50 Nonetheless, Ryle overlooks a sense – a practicalist one – in which the converse strengthening relation can obtain: believing can strengthen knowing. Specifically, when one both knows and believes that p, the belief, even if dispositionally so, opens up some possible ways of using the knowledge. By having a belief that p, I suggest, one is able – indeed, one could be well able – to perform various actions that (i) can also be manifestations or expressions of the knowledge that p, (ii) do not exhaust the range of possible manifestations or expressions of the knowledge, and (iii) could be unavailable to one in the absence of the belief.

51 In support of that picture, we may consider the cases with which Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (2013: 374-7) have argued that there can be instances of knowledge without an accompanying belief. Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel offer five cases (‘the unconfident examinee,’ ‘the absent-minded driver,’ ‘the prejudiced professor,’ ‘the freaked-out movie-watcher,’ ‘the self-deceived husband’) – using these cases as experimental philosophers would. But we can also use the cases a priori, while engaging with this question: ‘Is there something missing from what the knowledge could be, insofar as the knowledge is present yet the belief is not?’

52 The first case will suffice here. It is an adaptation of Colin Radford’s (1966) oft-cited case. Myers-Shulz and Schwitzgebel imagine someone, Kate, being asked, in an exam, ‘In what year did Queen Elizabeth I die?’ Kate has studied for the exam; but this question arises for her only when the exam period has almost expired – as the teacher announces. Hearing the announcement, Kate panics, tries to recall the answer, fails – and writes, albeit with no confidence, the correct answer. Is that answer knowledge on Kate’s part? Is she lacking belief (in the correctness of her answer) at that moment? A

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significant proportion of respondents surveyed by Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel attributed knowledge but not belief to Kate; as would I. For the sake of argument, therefore, I will accept that Kate has knowledge – not belief, though – as to Queen Elizabeth’s dying in 1603.

53 And what does Kate – as that knower – lose by not having that belief? In particular, does she lose anything relevantly epistemic? Indeed she does. For example, deprived of the belief in the way described by Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel, she would lack the confidence to express consciously the knowledge, at least in many situations. Seemingly, she would qualify or weaken her answer of ‘1603’ if that action was available to her. And, if not for being forced by the exam’s strictures to provide an answer, she might well have opted not to do so. Clearly, there is a respect in which, by lacking the belief in this way, Kate lacks some meta-knowledge: she does not know that she knows the year of Queen Elizabeth’s death, even though she does (I am assuming) have the latter knowledge, the knowledge directly about Queen Elizabeth. And the lack of that meta- knowledge, given its both reflecting and expressing itself for her in a conscious lack of confidence in her having the knowledge about Queen Elizabeth, will itself affect her ability to respond aptly in various circumstances where the latter knowledge is being investigated or sought. So, the lack of belief – as manifested in Kate’s lack of conscious confidence – does weaken her epistemically in this setting. Even if it does not deprive her of the underlying knowledge, it could deprive her of at least some knowing actions, ones that would – by expressing the belief – express or manifest the knowledge. It thereby weakens the knowledge’s power for her, at least in practise. Again, though, this is not to say that the knowledge is absent: there are still knowing actions that she will perform (such as providing, if forced, the correct answer in the exam). But there are others that she will not perform.

54 My practicalist suggestion, then, is that, insofar as knowledge that p is present without belief that p, a person can do less of what would count as manifesting or expressing the knowledge. In not believing that p, she loses the ability – the capacity – to perform, in at least some ways in at least some situations, actions that would be natural expressions or manifestations of the knowledge that p. Nonetheless, this remains consistent with her having enough other abilities that suffice for her having the knowledge. To believe is thus to have an ability, perhaps dispositional in nature, that can be present as part of having some knowledge – even if its being so is not essential for the knowledge’s being present. Other things being equal, a given instance of knowledge’s potential for producing knowing actions can be strengthened by including a belief among the sub-abilities that happen to jointly constitute it as being the complex potentiality that it is. Yet the knowledge that p’s being stronger in this way than it might have been is not essential to its mere presence; what it is essential to is knowledge’s having a specific epistemic strength as knowledge that p. It is not essential to the complex potentiality’s being strong enough (however strong that is) 16 simply to be present as knowledge that p.

10. The State of Knowing

55 Implicit in this paper’s practicalism is a metaphysics of knowing, one element of which is the following.

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56 Insofar as all knowing is knowledge-how, we are free to maintain a view of knowing – and, for that matter, of believing – as a state.17 That is a traditional picture, as far as it goes. But not everyone would accept it. §1 mentioned Ernest Sosa’s recent attempts to develop a virtue-theoretic conception of knowledge. On that conception, both knowledge and belief are kinds of epistemic performance.18 If such a conception succeeds, then epistemic norms – of behaviour, of action – are applicable; which is indeed what Sosa deems to be the case. Such a conception goes further in that direction than my practicalism does, in that it treats knowledge, say, as an action, whereas I treat knowledge only as potential for actions.

57 I take heart, then, from the linguistic data’s being against Sosa in this respect. Matthew Chrisman (2012: 601) explains: The basic result is that belief and knowledge attributions seem, by virtue of their meaning, to be about something nondynamic, whereas paradigmatic performance descriptions (for example, of arrow shootings [an example used often by Sosa]) seem to be about something dynamic and so nonstative. I think this shows that Sosa’s suggestion that belief is a performance – which when successful (true) because skillful (justified) is apt and so a kind of knowledge – involves him in a sort of metaphysical category mistake in the way he uses these words.

58 Again, on my picture believing and knowing are states. A belief that p, when present as part of some knowledge that p, brings with it various possibilities for action; and some of these (as we saw in §9) are possible actions that knowledge-without-belief would not ground. So, a belief-state can enrich a knowledge-state. It is not a mere part of a knowledge-state: to believe is to have more possible actions – specifically, further knowing actions – available to one, other things being equal.

59 Nevertheless, I am saying that, even when a person does both know that p and believe that p, the knowledge is not itself the belief. The contrary tradition – the Meno-Platonic one – tells us that knowledge is a belief, so long as the belief has various epistemically welcome features. Proponents of that tradition are using, in effect, a substance-attribute model of what knowledge is. They are treating the belief as needing to be present, and as amounting to some ‘metaphysical unit’ that is the knowledge, so long as it also has various epistemically pertinent features, such as being supported by good evidence. I am arguing, however, that this traditional metaphysical picture is optional at best. I am offering instead a potentialities model of knowledge. On this model, all that constitutes the knowing is the person’s potential, however this is realised or grounded, for various suitably related actions.19 I have explained that these actions may be conceived of as knowing actions: like other Rylean intelligent actions, they are manifestations or expressions of the knowledge, given its being knowledge-how; unlike some Rylean intelligent actions, though (such as riding a bicycle), these are ones whose point is at least to convey or express the knowledge.

60 These knowing actions can be useful, in turn, for further ends. But in all such circumstances this is because the actions express knowledge. C. I. Lewis’s words are apposite here (1946: 3): The primary and pervasive significance of knowledge lies in its guidance of action: knowing is for the sake of doing. […] [O]nly an active being could have knowledge […] A creature which did not enter into the process of reality to alter in some part the future content of it, could apprehend a world only in the sense of intuitive or esthetic contemplation; and such contemplation would not possess the significance of knowledge but only that of enjoying and suffering.

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61 I concur; and I extend Lewis’s pragmatist point. His pragmatism is not as far-reaching as it could be, in that he retains the Meno-Platonic structuring – what contemporary epistemologists usually call the conceptual analysis – of knowledge. He tells us (1946: 9) that knowledge is ‘an assertive state of mind’: that is, knowledge is at least a belief, of some or other form. Surrounding this, he holds in place the standard substance- attribute model that I described above. He says (ibid.) this: ‘Knowledge is belief which not only is true but also is justified in its believing attitude.’ In contrast, I say, knowledge is only a potential that can include whatever potential is inherent in believing; knowledge is not automatically in part an instance of believing.

11. Truth in Action

62 If we are to conceive of knowledge-that as a kind of knowledge-how, it is imperative that we answer this question: How radical a reconception of knowledge is being contemplated? Which of knowledge’s constitutive properties (as these have formerly been envisaged by epistemologists) will stay? Which will depart?

63 I have already argued that belief – persisting belief – is not essential within knowledge. (I have hypothesized that knowledge is knowledge-how, having argued that knowledge need not include a persisting belief.) What now of truth? Where is it to be located within this alternative picture – what I have elsewhere (e.g. 2011a) called a practicalism about the nature of knowledge-that?

64 Certainly we expect knowledge to incorporate truth. But this requirement must be formulated carefully. Suppose we say that part of your knowing that 58 + 68 = 126 is its being true that 58 + 68 = 126. Well, it remains true that 58 + 68 = 126, regardless of what it is to know this truth. So, that formulation was not quite correct. The question is one of how the specific truth is to be part of the knowledge – included in the knowledge – rather than of how the truth is to obtain regardless of the knowledge’s nature. Traditional accounts of knowledge say that knowledge includes truth because knowledge includes a belief (or something similar) and because this belief’s content is true. How will my practicalist analysis replace that supposed explanation? On my picture, what within the person is true (if not necessarily a belief)? I have not said that believing is never present within a case of knowledge. I have denied only that it always need be present: believing is just one of the possible ways of manifesting or expressing the knowledge in question.20 When believing is present, it could be true – making the knowledge true – in the usual way. Nonetheless, that is not an adequate explanation, on my conception of knowledge. I need a more general account of truth’s presence, covering also the other possible manifestations or expressions of the knowledge-how that is the knowledge-that.

65 Accordingly, I welcome Richard Campbell’s (2011) discussion of the concept of truth. His key contention is that we need not restrict ourselves to what he calls the linguistic conception of truth (ibid.: ch. 2); for that is not the most fundamental or general conception of truth. A traditionally motivated focus upon belief-contents as the only way in which truth can be part of knowledge would reflect only that more restrictive conception of truth. Campbell argues (ibid.: chs. 4, 5) that we may think of truth first and foremost as a feature of actions (and only derivatively as a feature of believings, say). Reflect on how readily we do speak of an action’s being true. Let us take such talk

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literally, by saying that an action is true when it is reliable or faithful. (For example, a kick can be true, as can a swimming stroke – in each case, pure and clean and effective and thus what it should ideally be, other things being equal.) We may then extend that insight. A true friend, for instance, is likewise reliable and faithful (ibid.: 104). She can be relied upon in her actions, or she will be faithful in her actions – all of this, given her character (ibid.: 110-1). We thus begin to understand how truth can be a property of actions and even of their agents. An action is true insofar as it treats – rather than represents – things as they are (ibid.: 123).

66 We may thereby speak similarly of your knowledge-how – including the particular knowledge-how that is your knowing that 58 + 68 = 126 – being reliable and faithful. This will be part of your being reliable and faithful in relevant respects. You can be relied upon, and you will be faithful, in how you act when in relevant situations – all of this, when you are asked related questions, when you undertake to think about them, when you offer answers, etc. Such actions – including knowing actions – by you will thus be true. Hence, this knowledge-how of yours can incorporate truth. It would be true as a friend is true. It would be true in a ‘larger’ way. More technically: it would be true in a supervaluational way, by at least most21 of its actual or possible manifestations – the knowing actions expressing it – being true. These would be true by treating the world aptly. And all of this is so, on any of the more specific ways in which the knowledge-how could be expressed or manifested by a knowing action.22

12. Conclusion

67 Arguments by Hume, Descartes, Ryle, and Peirce helped to motivate this paper’s reasoning. I will close with another pattern of welcome historical resonance.

68 Berkeley’s idealism about physical matter is surprisingly relevant. He faced the conceptual challenge of accounting for the nature of unobserved physical matter. How does a tree in the quadrangle continue to exist once no one observes it? We are aware of Berkeley’s answer: God observes the tree even when none of us does so.23 We are also aware of John Stuart Mill’s phenomenalist attempt to preserve Berkeley’s idealist emphasis upon acts of perceiving, without relying on any Berkeleian talk of God. This was Mill’s suggestion (1979 [1865]: 183): ‘Matter may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation.’ Matter thus has a modal dimension – this inescapable sort of permanent possibility. That dimension constitutes the ’s persistence, when the object is not being perceived.

69 I regard knowledge in similar terms. I have been advocating an analogue of a Millian phenomenalism – mine is about knowledge-that as knowledge-how – built upon an analogue of a Humean bundling – mine is of manifestations or expressions of the knowledge-how that is the knowledge-that. That combination has generated the following picture.

70 Whenever you have a particular piece of knowledge-that, there are various actual and/ or possible knowing actions standing to your knowledge much as various actual and/or possible perceptual experiences stand to an object’s physicality. The knowledge is partly potential – a permanent possibility of being manifested or expressed. The knowledge is thus modal in its metaphysics, even if not its content; for it is knowledge- how; which is a more or less complex skill or ability; which will or can typically be manifested or expressed by various knowing actions; but which also might never be

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manifested or expressed. Still, when those actions do occur, they amount to the knowledge in action – that is, to activated knowledge. There need not be anything beyond those actions, uniting them, other than the particular knowledge-how to produce them – that particular potential for such performances. This is what knowledge is; or so I am proposing.

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HETHERINGTON Stephen, (2011a), How To Know: A Practicalist Conception of Knowledge, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell.

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PEIRCE Charles Sanders, (1931-58), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols I-VI, ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, and vols VII-VIII, ed. A. W. Burks. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

RADFORD Colin, (1966), “Knowledge – by Examples,” Analysis 27, 1-11.

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ZAGZEBSKI Linda Trinkaus, (1996), Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

NOTES

1. For overviews of these attempts, see Shope 1983, Lycan 2006, and Hetherington 2016a. 2. Apart, that is, from Stanley & Williamson 2001 and those epistemologists responding to them. Stanley and Williamson’s aim was to understand knowledge-how as knowledge-that. (See also Stanley 2011.) §8 will discuss that issue. 3. Here, I am thinking of Anscombe’s account (1963) of one’s knowledge of one’s own intentional actions: perhaps only you know qua intentional action what you are asserting. (Of course, you might have uttered your words inwardly, too, perhaps rehearsing before giving them a public performance. That would be a distinct way in which only you would know of your words.) 4. And could one use that sort of explanation in a special way, in crediting oneself with having a continuing belief? I have two responses to that question. (1) Such a way of reaching an attribution of persisting belief to oneself is an onlooker’s way, an external way. It bespeaks no pre-theoretical hint of privileged access. It could not be one’s knowing of one’s inner belief in a way that is possible only for oneself. (2) If we are restricted to such onlooker’s knowledge of our persisting beliefs, we have a perspective from which the alternative account proposed in this paper is even better supported. I will be talking of a person’s ability to do this or that. Such an account (i) can accommodate the same data as would be explained by talking of a persisting belief, and (ii) fortunately has no pretension – unlike beliefs – to being able to be known introspectively. 5. I mention introspection here because it was what Hume and Descartes were using. 6. Here is a possibly significant aspect of it upon which I will not dwell (partly because it arises as a general question about Hume’s picture):How could one know introspectively that there is a bundle present at all, since one does not introspect the bundle’s limits or boundaries? I have two tentative suggestions. You could observe (i) some bundling, if memory is available to you when you are introspecting, and/or (ii) a bundle as it is present so far, even if perhaps not thereby what might be the completed or final bundle. 7. Stanley (2011) talks at times of various actions as manifesting some knowledge-that. But actions more clearly manifest knowledge-how than knowledge-that, since knowledge-how is knowledge how to perform some sort of action. In any case, we will soon return to this issue, when we discuss what I call knowing actions. 8. On this way of conceiving of knowledge-how, see Hetherington (e.g. 2008, 2011a, 2011b, 2015) and Glick 2012. 9. That advice is from Peirce’s 1868 paper, ‘Some consequences of four incapacities’. An echo of it, apparently, drives Wittgenstein’s (1958: para. 67) concept of family resemblance:“Why do we call something a ‘number’? Well, perhaps because it has a – direct – relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.” Importantly for this paper’s conception of knowledge, Wittgenstein continues thus: “But if someone wished to say: ‘There is something common to all these constructions – namely the disjunction of all their common properties’ – I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: ‘Something runs through the whole thread – namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres’.”

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10. ‘But is your calculating intended to convey knowledge? Or is its aim instead to reach the knowledge?’ The latter could be parsed as the action’s aiming to convey the agent to the knowledge. I will not complicate my presentation with this detail. 11. ‘Yet how could one know that one has a persisting ability to perform such actions, if (as was argued earlier) one cannot know introspectively of one’s having a persisting belief?’ I have noted that abilities are in general not aspects of oneself that we would pre-theoretically expect to be known introspectively. In contrast, people do expect to be able to access purely by introspection at least many of their beliefs. (In my terms, though, that expectation misleads them. They self- attribute a persisting belief when what they experience is at most an active manifestation of what would be such a belief. Still, the expectation is present.) But an ability, by definition, is not like that. We expect in general that an ability’s presence is known, if at all, not purely introspectively at a given time. This is so, even for cognitive abilities. 12. Elsewhere (2011b), I have argued for a distinction between knowledge and knowing. But in this paper I am not relying upon the details of that distinction. 13. I am not sure that Ryle himself saw this. He does say (1949: 134) that, when one knows that p, one acts in related ways. He also says (ibid.: 135) that, for example, to say of someone“who keeps to the edge, [that he does so] because he knows that the ice is thin, is to employ quite a different sense of ‘because’ […] from that conveyed by saying that he keeps to the edge because he believes that the ice is thin.” Could this ‘because’ in the person’s knowing be due to the actions being more an expression of the knowledge than, say a mere consequence of it? Ryle does not say. Kremer (2017) portrays Ryle as offering a picture of knowledge-that and knowledge-how as inter-related. But the relations described by Ryle (and by Kremer on Ryle’s behalf) are only causal, not metaphysically constitutive. My focus is on the question of whether there are metaphysically constitutive relations here that reveal at least part of what it is to know even a particular truth. 14. For this traditional conception of belief, see Cohen 1992, for example. 15. For discussion of Ryle on this issue, see Scheffler 1968, Myers-Schulz & Schwitzgebel 2013, and Kremer 2017. 16. See Hetherington (2011a: ch. 1) on the many respects in which traditional epistemology has side-stepped answering this implicit question. See Hetherington 2001 on the general idea of some knowledge that p’s admitting of being better or worse – stronger or weaker – as knowledge that p. 17. Is that state only ever of a person – and of nothing else in addition? For the idea of some knowing being attributable not only to the person, but to the person plus some epistemically pertinent factors, see Hetherington 2012. 18. See, for example, Sosa (2011, 2015, 2016) for statements of this approach. Reed (2016: 108) accommodates it in this way: ‘even if knowledge is not itself an action, this is no bar to its being action-like in important ways.’ 19. And because it could be a potential grounded in the person as such (I have said nothing to the contrary, at least), the potentialities model has the capacity to preserve what, for some, is an insight that belongs with virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge – the idea that the virtues in question are whole-person rather than more narrowly cognitive. That idea is particularly prominent within character-based forms of virtue epistemology, such as Zagzebski’s 1996. But it is also part of Sosa’s reliabilist form of virtue epistemology: see Reed 2016 for an elegant explanation and expansion of its role within Sosa’s approach. 20. ‘How does a belief – which is a state, not an event, let alone an action – express or manifest knowledge-how?’ From §2’s argument: what we find, when introspecting to ascertain what we believe, are believings – actions or occurrences to which we may choose to apply the term ‘belief’ but whose continued life past our interacting with them we are not experiencing. They are, in effect, themselves expressions or manifestations of belief.

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21. An infallibilist would replace this ‘at least most’ with ‘all.’ My formulation is thus fallibilist. For more on the nature and viability of knowledge-fallibilism, see Hetherington (1999, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2013, 2016b). 22. There is a noteworthy overlap between this conception of the truth condition within knowledge, and Craig’s 1990 influential view of our concept of knowledge. He regards that concept as reflecting our needs for reliable informants – people upon whom we can rely as we seek information. In Campbell’s sense, Craig’s approved informants are true, in that they are reliable and faithful in what they convey to us. 23. God is at least aware of the tree. Does He ever really observe it? Apart from our having to use a physical perceptual mechanism, we must await the tree’s presence before we can observe it. Unlike God, we are partly dependent on contingent aspects of the tree, aspects beyond our making or our control. If that is perception, God does not perceive.

ABSTRACTS

Can we conceive cogently of all knowledge – in particular, all knowledge of truths – as being knowledge-how? This paper provides reasons for thinking not only that is this possible, but that it is conceptually advantageous and suggestive. Those reasons include adaptations of, and responses to, some classic philosophical arguments and ideas, from Descartes, Hume, Peirce, Mill, and Ryle. The paper’s position is thus a practicalism – a kind of pragmatism – about the nature of knowledge, arguing that all knowledge is knowledge-how to act – to do this, to do that. Such a conception can include, too, a distinctive view of the metaphysical relation between knowledge and belief. We see that, contrary to what most contemporary epistemologists say, knowledge need not be a form of belief. Instead, a belief that p can be a way simply of enriching or strengthening knowledge that p. It can do this in a paracticalist way, by allowing one to do more with the knowledge.

AUTHOR

STEPHEN HETHERINGTON University of New South Wales s.hetherington[at]unsw.edu.au

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Essays

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Monism and Meliorism The Philosophical Origins of the Open Court

Nicholas L. Guardiano

1. Monism as Raison d’Être

1 The philosophic journal The Monist of the Open Court Publishing Company had not surprisingly its origin in monism, that is, in the philosophy of monism. From the inception of the journal in 1890 by its proprietor Edward C. Hegeler – a wealthy zinc industrialist – this worldview emphasizing unity or oneness in the world governed the journal’s contents and editorial practices. Perhaps more surprising, however, is that monism played a major role in the founding and general mission of the Open Court company over all. The establishment of the publishing company was catalyzed by Hegeler’s motive to promote his personal philosophic, religious, and moral ideas, which he believed the philosophy of monism summed up. As he bluntly stated in a letter to his first editor Benjamin F. Underwood, written in 1887 during the planning phases of the company: “To me it is an earnest effort to give to the world a philosophy in harmony with all facts (a monistic philosophy) which will gradually become a new religion to it, as it has to me.”1

2 Hegeler’s agenda in the founding of his publishing company also involved the goal of promoting a “religion of science” or of “conciliating religion with science.” The latter phrase would become the subtitle of the company’s first publication, a biweekly magazine, named The Open Court. The program of “conciliation” involved – in this case by definition and by intent – having a group of thinkers come to an agreement on a specific idea. Hegeler further explains his motive to Underwood: What leads me in this undertaking is not so much a sense of liberality, as a desire to communicate my ideas to others, to see them further developed, and also to have them contested. I feel they will be strengthened by contest, and look forward to it with pleasure […]. The character of the journal must be such as to win the confidence of these specialists, and no effort or money be spared to secure their co- operation.2

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The conciliation sought by Hegeler was the agreement of multiple persons on a single idea, and that idea was monism. His strategic plan was to recruit a mix of specialists in science, religion, philosophy, and other disciplines in order to set them on the common task of developing the doctrine of monism. And given that doctrine was of a religious nature to him, he proposed that “the first case before the [open] court is to be the ‘Monistic Idea’ vs. the ‘Agnostic Idea’.”3

3 Although this early history of the founding of the Open Court is unambiguous about its mission, that mission began with only little support from its editorial staff. Prior to the publication of The Monist as its flagship journal in 1890, Hegeler had recommended its title as the name of his company’s first publication. Writing to Underwood in December 1886, two months before the release of their first issue, he says: I learn that the time has come when we have to publish the name and the programme of the new magazine we are about to found, and I here give you the conclusions I have come to: I adhere to the name, “The Monist,” as that conveys most truly the leading idea I have in regard to this undertaking.4 The suggestion met with resistance by Underwood and his associate editor and wife Sara Underwood. The two were outspoken liberal writers involved with the freethought movement in the northeastern United States. Mr. Underwood – at the time completing his sixth year as editor of the leftist weekly The Index run by Boston’s Free Religious Association – promoted a secularism and agnosticism (borderline atheism) while engaging in frequent public debates with clergymen. Meanwhile, Mrs. Underwood was a prominent feminist and woman’s suffragist.5 Given their strong intellectual commitments, the Underwoods had serious reservations about the appropriateness of Hegeler’s new title for reflecting the mission of the journal. The name they offered instead was the one that would stick, “The Open Court,” which Sara originally thought up. It conveyed to the married couple a truly liberal agenda that was non-partisan and welcomed all points of view. Mr. Underwood explained his reasoning to Hegeler: [L]et us not narrow [the journal] at the outset by giving it a name which stands for only a school or class of thinkers [monism or monist] […]. Let the name be comprehensive enough to include in its scope the consideration of every school and system of philosophy.6 Hegeler attempted to compromise by proposing in return “The Monist’s Open Court,” yet, since this title still made monism central, it also was not well received.

4 After a series of letters, Hegeler would eventually concede to the Underwoods regarding the title of the magazine, although without conceding his mission. He directed the Underwoods to include in the forthcoming pages of The Open Court a standing notice maintaining an explicit statement about its monistic religious mission. Its first paragraph would read: The leading object of THE OPEN COURT is to continue the work of The Index, that is, to establish religion on the basis of Science and in connection therewith it will present the Monistic philosophy. The founder of this journal believes this will furnish to others what it has to him, a religion which embraces all that is true and good in the religion that was taught in childhood to them and him.7 This statement or a version of it appeared in the journal throughout its early history, and thus Hegeler’s ideological intentions were publically made known from the beginning of his publishing career. Meanwhile, the remaining of the standing notice attempts to incorporate some of the views of the editors, that is, the Underwoods. It proposes to synthesize monism and agnosticism, and to substitute “for blind faith rational religious views, for unreasoning bigotry a liberal spirit, for sectarianism a

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broad and generous humanitarianism.” All the while, the “Contributors are expected to express freely their own views, [and] the Editors are responsible only for editorial matter.”8

5 Hegeler did not remain alone for long in the pursuit of his monistic agenda. When he was attempting to establish his publishing company in La Salle, Illinois from 1886-7, he sought a partner who agreed on the main doctrines of monism and would further them as the raison d’être of the company. That is, while he needed a competent editor for his business enterprise, he moreover needed an intellectual ally for his cause. Here the Underwoods fell short. They were experienced and capable editors, but not advocates for monism, especially not if it involved establishing any kind of religion. Soon enough, Hegeler came to see them as dangerous agnostics possessing a liberal viewpoint antithetical to his monism.9 The disconnect resulted in them resigning their positions after less than one year, and Hegeler immediately filling the editorship enthusiastically with the German philosopher and fellow German-American immigrant .

6 Hegeler found an ideal intellectual partner in Carus: someone whose philosophical proclivities seemed commensurate with his own ideological inclinations. Prior to meeting Carus – who was residing in New York at the time – his excitement was peeked upon reading Carus’s philosophical treatise Monism and Meliorism: A Philosophical Essay on Causality and Ethics (1885) and soon thereafter the short collection of poems Ein Leben in Leidern: Gedichte eines Heimathlosen (A Life in Song: Poems of a Homeless Person, 1886). These writings so captured Hegeler’s attention that they compelled him to invite Carus to La Salle in order to help with The Open Court, as well as with the education of his children. Hegeler’s first contact with Carus was by a letter written on 21 January 1887, only days before the opening release of the magazine. Its message would change their lives and the future of the publishing company. Dear Sir – By the kind sending of your poems through our mutual friend, Mr. Underwood, you have given me much pleasure. The poems have brought you much nearer to me. After I had already known you through your treatise “Monism and Meliorism,” to receive poems from you was quite unexpected by me. I should like much to have you nearer La Salle, in order to have your help and advice in the work on the new journal, and I have been thinking if not a suitable position could be found for you in this vicinity. I must also mention that recently Mr. Salter spoke of you as qualified to bring my religious-philosophical ideas into shape for publication. I do not know how you are situated at present; philosophical occupation alone would probably not fill your time satisfactorily; perhaps you would take charge of the education of older children. If so, there would be an opportunity for this here […]. Again, many thanks for your poems, also for your treatise “Monism and Meliorism” which struck me very sympathetically, though I as a realist am but little acquainted with philosophic terms. I shall be glad to hear from you soon.10 Carus had given expression to the philosophy of monism that Hegeler – a practically- minded, “realist” entrepreneur and engineer – had deeply felt but could not sufficiently articulate. In finding Carus, Hegeler found a voice in a professionally trained philosopher. Hence, Hegeler made the impetuous decision to ask a man, whom he had never before met, to move across the country and take a leading role in his personal business and family life – all in the name of monism.

7 On the other hand, Carus found an intellectual ally and willing benefactor in Hegeler. Carus had been forced to resign from his first career as an instructor in his homeland

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Germany in 1881 upon falling out of favor with school authorities due to his unorthodox religious views. He then became an “exile” (exile) and “homeless person” (heimathlosen) – in his words – emigrating to , England, and then to the eastern United States, with his activities consisting in a mix of teaching, lecturing, and editing. Thus, after a trying six-year period without consistent employment or residence, Carus finally found a welcomed home in La Salle with the Hegeler family.11 This would provide a permanent place to settle down and an environment for the development of his ideas.

8 Carus accepted Hegeler’s invitation, relocated from New York to Illinois, and began work in his new capacities with the Open Court and Hegeler family. He was in La Salle by March 1887, in time to help with the first volume of The Open Court. He contributed an article to the second issue of the magazine of March 3rd and contributed other articles to seven of the remaining twenty publications that year. In addition to his contributions as an author, he was immediately assisting with editorial matters. Thus, by December when the Underwoods decided to resign, Carus was literally waiting in the wings of the editorial office. Moreover, Carus had made a very personal and intimate connection with the Hegeler family during his first year in La Salle. He had become romantically involved with Mr. Hegeler’s daughter, Mary Hegeler, and asked her hand in marriage.12 Come March the following year, the two were husband and wife, and Carus was now Mr. Hegeler’s son-in-law.

9 The new position as editor-in-chief and his relationship as a new family member would sufficiently solidify his partnership with Hegeler. They set out during the coming years to work together to ground the Open Court on the principle of monism. The revised standing notice of The Open Court appearing in the first issue under Carus’s editorship succinctly expresses the intellectual terms of the partnership: “The Journal is devoted to the work of conciliating Religion with Science. The founder and editor have found this conciliation in Monism, to present and defend which will be the main object of THE OPEN COURT.”13 These two sentences make a direct and unapologetic statement in comparison to the multi-paragraph original standing notice, which winds together tenuously the ideas of religion, science, monism, agnosticism, liberalism, and humanism. With the Underwoods out of the picture, Hegeler need no longer compromise and could move forward unimpeded with his decided agenda for his publishing company.

2. The Open Court Philosophy

10 Monism was the ideological or philosophical ground of the Open Court Publishing Company; it served as the catalyst bringing together Hegeler and Carus as colleagues in a joint effort. But, why monism, that is, what was significant about this philosophy over others? Moreover, to what specific kind of monism did Hegeler and Carus mutually subscribe?

11 Carus’s book Monism and Meliorism is an ideal source for arriving at an understanding of the monism of the Open Court. His biographer Harold Henderson says that the book “is the best evidence we have of the thoughts that Paul Carus brought to La Salle and that appealed to Edward C. Hegeler.”14 Hegeler found his own intellectual sentiments expressed in the text and for this reason became convinced that Carus possessed the qualifications to give proper shape to his personal worldview.

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12 The book was Carus’s first in English, written during his early years as a philosopher. Carus’s philosophical career may be summed up as representing two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) theoretical poles: monism and the philosophy of form.15 With Monism and Meliorism published in 1885 and The Philosophy of Form published in 1911, these texts amount to culminating expressions in the evolution of his philosophy. From the time of receiving his doctorate from the University of Tübingen (1876) through his early tenure with the Open Court in the United States, the monistic philosophy was at the core of his thinking. In addition to the book Monism and Meliorism, we see Carus’s preoccupation with a monistic worldview across many writings: Metaphysik in Wissenshaft, Ethik und Religion: Eine Philosophische Untersuchung (1881), Ursache, Grund und Zweck: Eine Philosophische Untersuchung zur Klärung der Begriffe (1883), Principles of Art, from the Standpoint of Monism and Meliorism (1886), “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism” (1887), “Monism and Religion” (1888),” “The Oneness of Man and Nature” (1888), “The Religious Character of Monism: In Reply to the Criticism of Dr. Gustav Carus” (1888), “The Foundation of Monism” in Fundamental Problems: The Method of Philosophy as a Systematic Arrangement of Knowledge (1889), Monism its Scope and Import: A Review of the Work of the Monist (1891-2), “Monism Not Mechanism: Comments upon Prof. Ernst Haeckel’s Position” (1892), and “Professor Haeckel’s Monism” (1892). As early as Metaphysik in Wissenshaft, Ethik und Religion – composed soon after receiving his doctorate and while still in – Carus argues for the preeminent place of monism over other systems of metaphysics.16 Likewise, in Ursache, Grund und Zweck, he boldly states that monism is no less than “den wichtigsten Grundpfeiler einer philosophisch- wissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung” (“the most important cornerstone of a philosophical- scientific worldview”).17

13 Another notable text for our purposes, among the many listed here, is the article “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism.” It appeared in The Open Court only two months after Carus arrived in La Salle and is his first presentation of monism within the pages of the journal. Moreover, it was written under Hegeler’s close guidance. Hegeler had helped prepare the article by proof reading and editing drafts prior to Carus submitting it to Underwood for publication.18 In this way it was the first philosophical collaboration between Carus and Hegeler and was Carus’s first attempt at using his expertise in order to give voice to Hegeler’s beliefs.

14 Throughout his writings on monism, Carus provides explicit definitions of the philosophy and frequently returns over the course of his discussions to its most fundamental tenets. One definition appears on the opening page of the preface to Monism and Meliorism. It states: “We define Monism as a conception of the world which traces all things back to one source, thus explaining all problems from one principle.”19 This simple statement is almost tautological since it does not describe a unique kind of monism. Rather, it indicates the general position common to all forms of monism, which is the grounding of a multiplicity in some kind of unity. The definition also does not inform us about the nature of the presumed monistic source, principle, or what have you. However, later in the book, Carus fleshes out his view by arguing that the universal principle governing the world is causality. By the law of causality Carus in effect distinguishes his position from other versions of monism. This is one of two of his major theses. The other is meliorism, which is an ethical position theoretically interconnected with monism. Together the two doctrines comprise the systematic plan of the text: “Causality is the beginning, ethics the aim and end of this philosophy. These

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two points being fixed, the whole system is sketched in its outlines.”20 I will address each of these theories in turn. However, first it is necessary to discuss the introductory chapter, where Carus presents the historical background he believes serves as foundation or “pedestal” for his systematic philosophy.21

15 Monism and Meliorism begins by putting forth a quintessential philosophical problem: the problem of dualism. An examination of Carus’s criticism of dualism allows for a proper understanding of his more positive doctrines, since he proposes these as necessary solutions. Dualism commits itself to two distinct fundamental principles or forms of reality. A classic historical example is Cartesian dualism that proposes that the human being consists in mind and body and that the world as a whole is populated by the two substances of mind and matter. These substances are incommensurate because the former is a thinking, non-extended being and the latter is an extended, non- thinking being. Carus will reject this dualism (among others) because it does not account for the interaction between the two entities given that they are ontologically distinct. However, in his book, he primarily focuses his critical efforts on the dualistic tendencies not of Descartes, but of those that he believes are present in Kant’s philosophical system. Some of the dualisms that Carus identifies here consist in the following pairs: subject/object, reason/feeling, scientific inquiry/religious faith, a priori knowledge/a posteriori knowledge, optimism/pessimism, ideal/real, necessity/ freedom, natural law/moral obligation. A major goal for Carus is to expunge these dualistic flaws from Kant’s revolutionary philosophy, so to advance a progressive reconstruction of it in a philosophy of monism.

16 Carus’s motives here have an important historical context in the philosophical currents of the second half of the German nineteenth-century. His student years and subsequent teaching career in the 1870s and 1880s overlapped with the rise of neo-Kantianism in Germany. During his residence at the universities of Greifswald, Strasbourg, and Tübingen, as a student, and then subsequently in gymnasia and the military academy in Dresden, as a teacher, academicians of the likes of Kuno Fischer (1824-1907), Friedrich Lange (1828-75), and Otto Liebmann (1840-1912) had been actively laying the foundations for a new approach to Kant.22 They and their peers were motivated by a strong reaction against two major ideological trends that had become popular following Kant: on the one hand, the speculative idealism of such thinkers as Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, and, on the other hand, the dogmatic scientific of such figures as Karl Vogt (1817-95), Heinrich Czolbe (1819-73), and Ludwig Büchner (1824-99). In light of the perceived failings of these developments since Kant, Fisher and Liebmann advocated for a return to the writings of the Sage of Königsberg and a reassessment of their actual doctrines and critical methods. As a sign of the times, Liebmann in his book Kant und die Epigonen (1865) ended each chapter with the emphatic refrain: “Thus we must go back to Kant.” Following upon such impulse, by the 1890s two schools of neo-Kantianism would emerge, each advocating their own way of returning to Kant: the Marburg School with its predecessor Lange and main representatives Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and Paul Natorp (1854-1924); and the Southwest or Baden School with its predecessors Fischer and (1816-81) and main representatives (1848-1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936). From a historiographical perspective, albeit a generalization, the two schools can be seen in opposition whereby the former attempted to clarify Kant’s views

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and adhere to his methodical practices, and the latter attempted to explore the wider implications of Kant’s ideas to contemporary culture.23

17 Carus left his native homeland in 1881, before the establishment of any distinct school of neo-Kantianism, which would continue into the first two decades of the twentieth century. For this reason alone, he is not a card-carrying “neo-Kantian.” Furthermore, despite Carus’s time in Germany overlapping with the rise of the movement, his early writings make almost no explicit reference to its figures, texts, or internal academic debates, which were numerous and created fierce forms of partisanship across the universities. Nevertheless, when assessing Carus’s relationship to neo-Kantianism and its origins, we should keep in mind Klaus Köhnke’s observation that, viewed from within, the rising movement was hardly perceptible and consisted in heterogeneous currents flowing together of which “not one of the active participants in this process understood itself as part of a more comprehensive movement.”24 The bottom line is that Carus’s first philosophical ideas were born out of the same intellectual, social, and political milieu that came to define the neo-Kantians, and, as we might expect, they share with the neo-Kantian program the effort to make recourse to Kant while critically assessing the philosophical trends post-Kant.

18 A general spirit of neo-Kantianism is evident in Monism and Meliorism that takes Kant’s philosophy as its starting point. The first chapter is a review of Kant’s critical project – both its theoretical and practical sides – in historical perspective, as a response to the insights of Enlightenment philosophy. Carus there echoes one of Kant’s most influential ideas by cautioning against the dangers of speculative reason and by showing a commitment to grounding scientific knowledge on a priori truths. The idea was a major point of emphasis with his German contemporaries who focused on epistemology as a systematic concern. Notably, Fischer in his influential writings on Kant sought to define the precise boundaries of reason using a critical idealism that attacked the materialistic presuppositions of natural science and attempted to reground scientific knowledge exclusively on the a priori forms of cognition.25 However, for Carus, even Fischer, “who is perhaps the most impartial interpreter” of Kant, does not recognize one of the fundamental principles of Kant’s philosophy; this is its dualism. 26 Carus explains that Fischer among other scholars overlook the combination of the “antagonistic principles” of “Materialism” and “Spiritualism” inherent in the Kantian system. These drive the contrary worldviews of the and Critique of Practical Reason, that is, the contrast between a thoroughly deterministic physical world, on the one hand, and a practical world of freedom that also admits God and the immortality of the soul, on the other hand. Prior to Kant, the history of these antagonistic principles lead to the opposition between British skepticism – stemming from Locke and Hume – and German dogmatism – stemming from Leibnitz and Wolf. And now in the post- Kantian era, they reappear, “though more moderately […] in the Realism of modern science and the Idealism of transcendental philosophy.”27

19 Putting aside the question of the accuracy or novelty of Carus’s interpretations of Kant and of the history of philosophy, his views nonetheless inform his philosophy of monism. This is because he believes that Kant’s dualism has precipitated a state of partisan with conflicting and one-sided interpretations, thus setting the stage for a unifying voice. In order to overcome our disagreements and truly reap the benefits of Kant’s insights, we must first acknowledge that his philosophy is truly dualistic and second strive to reconcile its opposing elements. Thuswise Carus explains

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that Kant successfully “incorporated the antagonistic principles of his time in his philosophy, [yet] he left the working out of the solution to posterity.”28 That solution Carus envisions is the unification of the principles in a theory of monism. To achieve this is the aim of his book. On the other hand, the method of achieving the goal is Kant’s own method, which is “actually a principle of justice.”29 This method preserves each side of an issue and treats neither as inferior nor superior to the others. Hence, Carus concludes his first chapter with the following plan of action: The following articles try to realize this ideal, and will prove, let us hope, that there is more unity in the general plan of human reason than Kant supposed. Our monism results in a contemplation of the world by which so many seemingly contradictory truths are reconciled with each other: the ideal on the one side, with the real on the other, logical deduction with empirical induction, religious faith with philosophic and scientific inquiry, the inflexible causality with a higher , and the rigid law of necessity with freedom of will and morality.30

20 The specific dualism of religion and science that Carus names in his monistic reconstruction of Kant’s philosophy is especially relevant to his future role as editor of The Open Court. “Conciliating religion with science” was the stated aim of the magazine, appearing in the subtitle and standing notice, and it was part of Hegeler’s mission in founding the publishing company. Carus’s attention to this problem must have appealed to Hegeler when reading Monism and Meliorism. As future business partners, the two men will both insist on the imperative to reconcile this dualism, along with the parallel dualism of feeling and reason. As Carus puts it in his book, the reconciliation is necessary in order to avoid falling into an extremism of either “radicalism” or “dogmatism,” each prioritizing one aspect of the dualistic pair over its counterpart. Radicalism, for Carus, is the atheistic view rejecting religious faith in an over commitment to reason. On the other hand, dogmatism is the superstitious view rejecting scientific truths in an over commitment to feeling. These alternative positions are furthermore expressions of the greater historical antagonisms of Materialism/ Spiritualism and Realism/Idealism, opposing worldviews brought into full relief by Kant’s varying approaches in his Critiques. In accordance with the “method of justice,” Carus takes neither of these views to be satisfactory alone, and instead seeks a balanced position in establishing a scientific-religious philosophy that holds a comprehensive view of human nature.

21 Carus’s solution to dualism that equally incorporates two fundamental principles may be deemed “neutralism,” recalling Charles Peirce’s description of neutralism as a kind of faux monism. From at least 1890 onward, Peirce was attentive to the happenings of the Open Court and the philosophical efforts made by Carus; he found he shared similar ideas with Carus, yet also had critical objections to others. In his 1891 article “The Architecture of Theories” for The Monist, Peirce describes neutralism as that brand of monism that holds physical law and psychical law to be both independent and primordial. Furthermore, he rejects the theory stating: “Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known as Ockham’s razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a par, it seems to render both primordial.”31 Peirce’s own metaphysics, rather, is a monism of “objective idealism.” Unlike neutralism and materialism (the third version of monism), objective idealism is the “one intelligible theory of the universe”; it holds psychical law to be primordial to physical law and “matter is effete mind.”32 Although Peirce does not name Carus or anyone in particular

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as a neutralist, his remark in “The Architecture of Theories” has a not minimal probability of having him in mind amongst others, since the two were by then corresponding on philosophical issues. In addition, Peirce’s explicit comment on Carus’s monism in his review of the first issue of The Monist published in The Nation shows that he finds Carus’s position to share a point of confusion similar to the doctrine of neutralism. There he claims that Carus’s definition of monism is “no definition of monism at all” and that it inappropriately opposes itself to idealism and materialism, whose meanings Carus misunderstands.33

22 There is more to Carus’s monism that “traces all things back to one source” than a mere diplomatic perspective that adjudicates a middle ground between theoretical extremes. For him, there is a monistic source of all things, that is, there is an ontological principle of unity. The article “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism” makes this clear: monism is the “conception of the world which traces being and thinking, the object and the subject, matter and force back to one source, thus explaining all problems from one principle.”34 What is this one “source” or “principle”? Carus’s answer is causality, which he submits as a positive solution to the reductive extremes that stem from dualistic thinking. “Causality is the keystone of all philosophic difficulty, and all other problems depend upon the solution of this query […]. There is no problem in the empire of the human mind, which is not more or less connected with causality.”35 Also, the nature of causality is foremost an objective and universal law strictly governing all events necessarily. It governs not only physical interactions but also mental processes. In addition to this ontological role, Carus understands causality to play an epistemological role. Causality in this sense is the basis on which we reason in our efforts to discover truths about the world. This is because knowledge, in the physical sciences, psychological sciences, and other disciplines, consists in identifying causal relationships.

23 These two senses of causality appear in Carus’s synopsis of the three essential doctrines of monism. The so-called “trinity of monism” states: Monism means, 1. a unity of source to which it traces the origin and explanation of all things and phenomena both spiritual and material, 2. a unity of principle animating the whole world, arranging the order of motion or the mechanics of causality, and 3. a unity of its finis [end]. There is everywhere the same goal, whither the development of evolution tends.36 This trinity covers the scope of monism as a systematic enterprise, referring to its method, metaphysics, and ethics, respectively.37 The first aspect I have already discussed, and the third aspect I will address below in terms of the doctrine of meliorism. At any rate, all three aspects make evident that a causal monism is Carus’s answer to the problem of dualism. The unities of “source,” “principle,” and “finis” each indicate a unity of causality. For instance, the unity of the principle of causality has a universal presence in the world and thus unites under one natural law the diversity of beings both physical and psychical. In this way Carus imagines his monistic thesis to achieve a fully comprehensive theory of the universe.

24 Carus’s pronouncements on a causal monism in Monism and Meliorism follow up his claims made in Metaphysik in Wissenshaft, Ethik und Religion on the deeper metaphysical nature of causality. In section 14, “Das Metaphysische,” he assumes the traditional Kantian distinction between two worlds: “the metaphysical” world as an unknowable thing-in-itself and the phenomenal world of physical objects in space and time. He notes that the thing-in-itself has been variously interpreted in the history of

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philosophy as Spinoza’s causa sui, Hegel’s Absolute, and the mystic’s God. Although Carus tells us that it is the height of human arrogance to speculate about it – like the “flight of Icarus” – he does not altogether dismiss the thing-in-itself as a nonsensical idea. Rather, he maintains its reality and states it is “das ‘An sich’ und der letzte Grund der Dinge” (“the ‘In-itself’ and the ultimate Ground of Things”). 38 He adds that the metaphysical world “becomes the physical” world, and as “the common Root” of the forms of space, time, and the laws of nature, it is “Necessity” or “Causality.”39 These speculative metaphysical remarks about causality go well beyond a statement of its mere epistemological role in structuring experience and grounding knowledge. In the Kantian-inspired treatise on metaphysics, causality is associated with – whether successfully or unsuccessfully – the necessary relationships between phenomenal events in space and time, as well as with the primordial relationship between the phenomenal and metaphysical worlds, whereby the latter is the ultimate source of the former.

25 Carus’s deterministic worldview was no passing thought. While Metaphysik shows his interest in causal determinism prior to writing Monism and Meliorisim, his publications in the 1890s and beyond continue to do the same. For instance, he emphatically returns to it in several articles published in The Monist from 1892-3. In these articles he passionately defends his position against challenges made by Peirce. Peirce’s own view is that an element of absolute chance or spontaneity with no degree of conformity to law is inherent in the world – a doctrine he calls “” from the Greek word for “chance.” He supports this position in his Monist article “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” (April 1892), which presents a series of arguments intended to refute “necessitarianism” (Peirce’s term for determinism). Despite Peirce’s cogent arguments that show necessitarianism to be untenable, Carus was stalwart in his position. As a result, the two philosophers began to debate the issue back and forth in a series of letters and Monist articles. Initially, Carus countered Peirce by publishing “Mr. Charles S. Peirce’s Onslaught on the Doctrine of Necessity” (July 1892), and then three months later publishing “The Idea of Necessity: Its Basis and Its Scope” (October 1892). The following year, Peirce would respond with “Reply to the Necessitarians: Rejoinder to Dr. Carus” (July 1893) and Carus immediately again with “The Founder of Tychism, His Methods, Philosophy, and Criticisms: In Reply to Mr. Charles S. Peirce” (July 1893), both published in the same issue of The Monist.

26 The debate covering five articles and a total of 165 printed pages is too complex to fully consider here – it duly deserves a complete study unto itself40 – yet a quality of Carus’s defensive posturing is noteworthy. While distinguishing his philosophy from Peirce’s, he expresses the strength of his commitment to a traditional Kantian view of causality. In “Onslaught” he entrenches himself in a kind of Kantian a priori argument in order to justify his necessitarianism. The doctrine of necessity, let us not be afraid to pronounce it clearly, is of an a priori nature. The scientist assumes a priori, i. e. even before he makes his observations or experiments, as a general law applicable to every process which takes place, that, whatever happens, happens of necessity in consequence of a cause and in conformity to law, so that the same cause under the same circumstances will produce the same effects.41 All natural laws, including the law of causality, Carus claims are known a priori, not as a “natural belief” or “innate idea,” but as “simply and solely formal knowledge, such as 2 x 2 = 4, to which we attribute universality and necessity.”42 As a consequence of the a

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priori character of natural laws, they furthermore are “eternal,” unchanging forms of the knowing subject, or facts of nature known “sub specie aeternitatis.”43 On these grounds, Carus also contradistinguishes his position from Peirce’s view of natural laws as products of evolutionary growth existing as regularities or “habits” of the universe.

27 In an effort to thoroughly cover his basis against Peirce, Carus also adds that his a priori method of fixing the truth of necessitarianism is not equivalent to the “a priori method” of inquiry Peirce features in “The Fixation of Belief” (1877). There Peirce shows that the “a priori method” is unscientific because it determines conclusions in accordance with one’s subjective inclinations, rather than in accordance with a community of like-minded inquirers. Carus concurs that such a method would not settle upon a set of consistent and reliable beliefs, given the multitude of individuals with their varying interests. Hence, he accordingly chastises it for bringing about the death of science, philosophy, morality, and, worst of all, for leading to the dreadful position of agnosticism.44 Ironically and despite his passionate tone here, Carus’s response appears not to recognize that the validity of his own a priori method remains under the burden of proving itself other than subjective. The question remains: What evidence is there for a deterministic universe beyond Carus’s own personal inclinations for the truth of his causal monism? Or, in terms of his Kantian presuppositions: What proof is there that we possess an indubitable formal knowledge of the absolute law of causality?

28 Carus remained a committed determinist to the end of his life. As the decades passed, he never ceased his contention with Peirce’s tychism. In a letter to Peirce written in 1913, when Carus was 61 years of age, he expresses his interest to republish their Monist debate as a standalone volume.45 Also, in his final systematic work The Philosophy of Form, he continues to present a Newtonian conception of an objective world order that is strictly governed by universal and eternal laws. Consequently he would hastily dismiss as incredulous Einstein’s revision of Newtonian mechanics and theory of special relativity with its relativistic views of space, time, and matter.46

29 The third important way in which Carus understands causality, beyond its ontological and epistemological modes, constitutes the third part of his “trinity of monism.” It conceives causality as a force guiding the ends toward which phenomena are directed. That is, it is a theory of final causality, and Carus applies it to ethics. The concept of final causality historically traces back to Aristotle, who spoke of final causes in nature when, for instance, referring to the natural places toward which the elements move. Kant also employed the idea when describing the intentionality of human action and the “purposiveness” of natural organisms. Following Kant, the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel used final causality in his account of human history as teleological. These philosophers and others who believe in the reality of final causality make up the historical background to Carus’s appropriation of it to his ethics of meliorism.

30 The final chapter of Monism and Meliorism covers this last leg that completes the system of monism. Just as Carus seeks to overcome the dualisms between Materialism/ Spiritualism and Realism/Idealism, he seeks to overcome any split between philosophies that limit themselves to admitting the reality of only one of the two opposing types of causality, namely causa efficientes and causa finales. The theoretical move once again follows the neutralistic program of promoting a balanced perspective, in this case by comprehensively admitting the reality of both types of causes.

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31 Carus’s position here will ground his ethical claims, and he makes it palpably clear while distinguishing his brand of monism from the monism of Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel’s naturalism rejects the existence of all spiritual entities and supernatural powers; it affirms all that exists are nature and mind, the physical and psychical, and these are united under one set of natural laws. Consequently, Haeckel considers the knowable world to form a single unitary whole for scientific inquiry. To this extent, Haeckel’s monism is similar to Carus’s. However, Carus diverges from Haeckel regarding Haeckel’s “mechanicalism” or mechanism, which only admits the reality of efficient causality throughout the operations of the universe. Haeckel assumes that not only physical things but psychical things, as well – biological organisms, life, feelings, and ideas – are reducible to mechanistic processes exclusively governed by efficient causes. Haeckel’s naturalism thus fits the profile of “materialism,” as defined by Peirce’s list of three possible forms of monism: materialism takes “the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law alone as primordial.”47 Carus’s neutral monism, on the other hand, accepts the reality of both mechanical and purposive processes, efficient and final causes. For him, the two types of causes coexist in the universe and are compatible by each having their own domain of application: efficient causality applying to the mechanistic world of physical bodies, and final causality applying to the psychical world of ideas and feelings. The latter, for Carus, are subjective states of consciousness and not merely of the physical brain, as Haeckel claims.48

32 Given this systematic background of Carus’s theory of causality, we can best understand the specific doctrines of his ethics. Meliorism holds a unity of final cause shared by all. That is, the world populated by all its diverse beings moving in all their diverse ways naturally possesses “a unity of its finis [end]. There is everywhere the same goal, whither the development of evolution tends.” Moreover, this final end will be “the amelioration of the present state,” that is, a future state that is superior to past states.49 The presence of such a melioristic or progressive trend in the universe is most evident in the historical growth of human civilization. This historicist idea was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, and Carus and Hegeler converged on it in their separate ways. Hegeler also presents the view in his lecture “The Basis of Ethics,” which was delivered before the Society for Ethical Culture in Chicago and later published as an article in the first issue of The Open Court. He states that the “greatest good” is to “[p]reserve and evolve the human form of life,” and scientifically defends the thesis on the basis of the physiological structure of the brain.50 As colleagues working together to establish an Open Court philosophy, both men thus jointly envisioned a natural course of history in which the overall condition of civilization and the human form is steadily improving.

33 Furthermore, the two thinkers concur that the final amelioration is not in the form of an increase in personal happiness but in the form of an increase in the general moral state of humanity. Carus says: We do not live to be happy. Our inmost nature compels us to perform some tasks in the service of some thing higher than our personal existence, be it in the field of science or art, be it by inventions or by extending trade and commerce or by the propagation and education of posterity; in one word, be it by any progress or improvement, we are compelled to do some thing in the service of humanity.51 Hence, the ethics promulgated by the Open Court does not advocate individuals seek personal pleasure or engage in creative pursuits for themselves. Rather, it advocates

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individuals serve the greater good of humanity in the long run, whether or not their efforts happen to benefit their present lives.

34 The ethics of meliorism reveals another dimension of Carus’s reconstruction of Kant’s philosophy and dualistic tendencies. There is a unity of principle to the ethical life by moral progress existing simultaneously as a natural law and practical imperative. Whereas Kant draws a divide between the phenomenal and noumenal realms on the basis of his dichotomous concepts of nature and morality, Carus aims to unite these dualisms. That is, whereas the Kantian philosophy claims that nature is exclusively governed by necessary laws and that morality is exclusively governed by freedom of will, the monistic philosophy strives to unify the (seeming) disparity. As Carus puts it: monism is the theory of the unity of the “must” and “ought.” The “must” corresponds to the necessary path that history must follow toward its ameliorative end. It is fixed by an unbreakable law, rather than open to the arbitrary decisions of human beings. The “ought,” on the other hand, corresponds to the ethical demand ordaining that human beings should strive to bring about that higher end of history regardless of the immediate consequences. Thus, the right thing to do is to work diligently to achieve the moral progress of humanity, whereas it is wrong to pursue one’s personal benefit or to live a life of moral indifference. For a life worthy to be lived is one that is full of active aspiration, for something higher and better; and such a contemplation of the world we call meliorism. Let the world be bad! our duty is to work with steady labor for its improvement.52

35 Carus and Hegeler in their co-written article “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism” saw that one consequence of such a monistic ethics is that it is against “individualism”: the belief that the “individual soul is an ultimate unit,” a “little God.”53 Rather than monads in possession of their own substantial nature, single individuals are transient things which consist of the ideas they think and the ideals they aspire for […]. It is not the individual who is an independent existence, but humanity which lives in the individual; and the great ALL lives in humanity. The individual is only one insignificant and transient state of the great development of human kind, it is one little link in the unmeasurable chain of life.54 From the perspective of meliorism, the individual is subordinate to the greater development of humankind; it is merely a means for the universal growth of humanity. Historical precedence for this idea is found in Hegel’s teleological view of history. For Hegel history is the concrete embodiment of the development of geist, which strictly follows a rational plan toward a fixed end. The specific individuals appearing in history are inconsequential to the deterministic process that advances along discrete stages and types of Western society. While Hegel admits the existence of a few special “World- historical individuals” who are representatives of geist at a particular stage, even they are ultimately reducible to the societal norms and greater spiritual forces of world history.

36 As with the monism of the Open Court, the meliorism of the Open Court was not a unique innovation in the history of philosophy. In addition to its theoretical affinities with Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, it shares a family resemblance to an American strand of meliorism. Meliorism was a live idea in the United States in the nineteenth and subsequent twentieth centuries, as witnessed in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, the abolitionists, Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane Addams, W. E. B. du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., , Cornel West, and numerous other philosophers and progressive

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thinkers. A well-known formulation of the doctrine appears in James’s Pragmatism and affirms the power of human action to affect positive change in an inherently imperfect world. Specifically, for James, meliorism consists in an attitude midway between the extremes of optimism and pessimism, between a “tender-minded” and a “tough- minded” disposition. Whereas the former believes the salvation of the world is inevitable and the latter believes the salvation of the world is impossible, the meliorist believes in the possibility of improving the conditions of life from a cautiously optimistic point of view.55 The family resemblance between James’s meliorism centered on human psychology and Carus’s meliorism centered on a cosmological principle of final causality only goes so far. James’s anti-fatalistic presupposition and focus on the power of the individual psyche contrasts with Carus’s historical determinism, anti- individualism, and general Kantian framework of a deontological ethics based on duty. A limited resemblance is also the case with the action-oriented pragmatists after James. While challenging traditional conceptions of domestic life, labor relations, race, gender roles, and other societal norms, they sought to reform problematic living conditions for the betterment of society. As with James, they promoted self-control in the shaping of one’s personal destiny, rather than abeyance to a foreordained historical fate.

37 Beyond these psychological and social-political forms of meliorism, a metaphysical form appears in Peirce’s philosophy. While exchanging ideas with Carus over his 1890 Monist articles, Peirce was formulating an evolutionary of his own on the basis of his tychism. Peirce hypothesizes at the end of “The Architecture of Theories” that the universe as a whole is growing from a state of pure indeterminacy to a state of determinacy, “a chaos of unpersonalized feeling” sporting in arbitrariness to an absolute reign of law and reason.56 Fueled by the spontaneous energy of tychism, the growth of the universe is “hyperbolic,” that is, always in a state of incipiency with the potential to develop in novel ways. In addition, its growth is “variescent” by the generation of an endless variety of novel forms, which themselves flourish forth in the stimulation of more and more novel forms, ad infinitum. In this evolutionary universe, individuals may partake in the creative process by embodying its results in the discovery of new scientific ideas, expressions of works of art, innovations in technology, and the establishment of new ways of life.57

38 Once again Peirce proves a formidable interlocutor for Carus on the metaphysical underpinnings of his philosophy. In contrast to Peirce’s hyperbolic universe, Carus’s “parabolic” universe is strictly determined and a closed system, tending on the whole toward a single foreordained state. Explicitly calling out Carus by name, Peirce in the final article of his Monist series, “Evolutionary Love,” critiques Carus’s melioristic universe as a degenerate form of evolution.58 For Peirce, there are three historical modes of evolution: (1) evolution by fortuitous variation (tychasm – Darwin), (2) evolution by mechanical necessity (anancasm – Hegel, Carus), and (3) evolution by creative love (agapasm – Henry James Sr., Peirce). The essential flaw of anancasm, such as found in Carus’s meliorism, is that it does not admit a “living freedom” in its conception of reality as intrinsically good. It also lacks a guiding principle of love to advance its forward progress by self-less acts, instead operating on the basis of a principle that austerely deals out pre-established destinies. Peirce’s agapism, on the contrary, makes central a cosmic principle of love that nurtures the seeds of living freedom and supports the formation of new evolutionary forms as unique autonomous creations.59

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39 Meliorism provides the final leg of Carus’s monism as he formulated it at the time of the founding of the Open Court. As we have seen, Hegeler agreed with and embraced Carus’s philosophy, and this lead him to nominate Carus as his personal ambassador for establishing monism as the ideological foundation of his publishing company. However, prior to meeting Carus and discovering his philosophical writings, Hegeler had already arrived at an idea of monism through his own amateurish reflections and made independent attempts to explain it in writing. An examination of the writings by the owner of the Open Court further fleshes out the company’s philosophical origins.

40 Hegeler expresses his view of monism in a few different places: his early planning letters to Underwood, the original standing notice of The Open Court, and two Open Court articles, “The Basis of Ethics” (1887) and “What the Monistic Religion is to Me” (1888). These writings make one thing clear: that a defining factor of Hegeler’s interest in monism is his personal religious belief. He candidly tells Underwood in one of his planning letters: The programme of the paper we should be perfectly clear about. To me it is an earnest effort to give to the world a philosophy in harmony with all facts (a monistic philosophy) which will gradually become a new religion to it, as it has to me.60 This religious intention Hegeler goes on to voice publically in the first standing notice of The Open Court. There he states that the mission of the journal is to recruit the principles of monism in order to “establish religion on the basis of Science.” This original form of the mission statement contains a subtle difference from the one expressed in the revised standing notice, as well as in the journal’s subtitle, appearing under Carus’s editorship, that simply seeks “conciliating Religion with Science.” The original suggests a goal that is more blatantly religious than the revision that suggests a goal that is more neutral or impartial toward religion and science.

41 While corresponding with Underwood, Hegeler also takes a stab at articulating a metaphysical theology that would ground his “new religion” while interpreting a passage from the Christian Bible. He explains that the name, “The Monist,” conveys the idea given in the New Testament in the passage, “For in Him we live and move and have our being,” when the meaning of the word Him or God, which is that of a person or individual, that is a limited being is enlarged in accord with our present knowledge to that of the continuous “All,” which includes everything, also ourselves.61 Hegeler’s interpretation suggests a kind of pantheistic worldview that takes human beings and all other natural beings as immanently residing in the divine substance. In other words, creation is one with the creator, the world one with God, and as such the two form a continuous whole or “All.”62 Hegeler returns to this view in his article “What the Monistic Religion is to Me,” which argues that the dualistic presuppositions implicit in our language are false. Terminological distinctions between “God” and “the universe,” “soul” and “body,” “force” and “matter” are merely “,” whereas the truth is that these “complementary parts […] together form the whole reality.”63 Hence, “All that exists, ourselves included, forms a great interacting whole, the most satisfactory name for which to me is the ‘All.’ Our relation to the All is like that of a snow-crystal to the ocean.”64 Although Hegeler will say that the best way to describe the ultimate monistic reality is to use the term “All” rather than “God,” he nonetheless continues to give it a religious : “Religion, I was taught, is the union between ourselves and God through God.”65

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42 The religious aspect of Hegeler’s monism also appears in his articulation of the ethics of meliorism. He describes the theory in his own words in “The Basis of Ethics,” which probably was in part influenced by his reading of Carus’s Monism and Meliorism around the time of its composition.66 Hegeler argues that the human race is undergoing an evolutionary development and that the greatest good takes the form of a kind of spiritual “immortality” in which our ideas are preserved by future generations. In this manner the human “soul” attains new heights from generation to generation. Moreover, Hegeler believes that science “gives us the conviction […] that evolution is taking place throughout the universe – that God and the universe are one – are the continuous ALL of which man is a limited part and phenomenon.”67 On this cosmological model, the progressive development of humankind is part of a greater world theodicy, and our finite contribution at any moment in history amounts to doing the will of God. Hegeler thus believes that “fundamentally the old religious dogma ‘that is good or right which is the will of God’ is true.”68

43 Last but not least, Hegeler’s religiosity occurs in his emphatic disdain for agnosticism. In the title of his article, jointly composed with Carus, “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism,” he names his arch-enemy, while Carus names dualism as Carus’s. For Hegeler, the problem with agnosticism is that it denies the possibility of knowledge of a spiritual reality, and thus it is the ultimate antithesis to his faith in religion and consequently his religious monism. From the very beginnings of the Open Court, he drew a line in the sand between agnosticism and monism. The dichotomy would serve to frame his initial discontent of and final antagonism toward Underwood, with his liberalism and non-commitment ideology. Hegeler had accused Underwood of being agnostic throughout the entire time of their business partnership. This was despite Underwood defending his philosophical proclivities as partially monistic. When the two were disagreeing over the name for the journal, Underwood once wrote Hegeler explaining: I believe that all phenomena, distinguished as mental and material have a common basis, in the ultimate nature of things. But when I say that I do not know what this ultimate nature is, I am in the company with Spencer and Huxley, with Haeckel and Buechner, even, as well as with Kant.69 This sort of skeptical monism was not good enough for Hegeler. Dispatching Underwood after a year for his designs in “the agnostic character of the paper,” he tells the readers of The Open Court that agnosticism is “detrimental to the progress of knowledge and injurious to mankind in general. That I wanted to eradicate this idea, I had prominently pointed out to Mr. Underwood.”70

44 Hegeler’s religious monism adds to our account of the philosophical origins of the Open Court, although it is not precisely commensurate with Carus’s causal monism. In Monism and Meliorism and surrounding writings, God and spirituality do not prominently feature in Carus’s solution of a world thoroughly and necessarily governed by the laws of cause and effect. “Causality is the law of cause and effect, and nothing else,” Carus unambiguously states with no qualifications.71 While his conclusion is clear, it seems to fall short of his stated goal to equally incorporate the ideas of science and religion in a reconstruction of Kant’s dualistic philosophy. Carus’s own father Gustav Carus – a Lutheran pastor and church superintendent – was of the same opinion concerning his son’s philosophy. He inveighed against Paul’s monism for being irreligious, as well as for accepting certain unknowables, that is, for being agnostic!72 Statements made in Monism and Meliorism further contrast with Hegeler’s views, such as

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its criticism of “dogmatism,” the one-sided religious perspective departing from the impartial conciliation of religion with science on equal terms. Hegeler’s zeal for a “new religion” of monism and reluctance to seriously entertain non-religious viewpoints arguably cross the line into dogmatism defined as such. In general, thus, Hegeler’s interest in monism combines with a religious perspective that is in some ways at variance with Carus’s sense of monism. It involves a deep existential commitment not found in Carus’s formal philosophical presentations and diplomatic approaches to religion and science.

45 Nonetheless, Carus and Hegeler at the time of them becoming business partners recognized that they shared similar monistic worldviews – and indeed they did. The two men were committed to metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical principles unifying the multiplicity of the world: they sought to neither deny nor subordinate the rational or emotional aspects of human nature; believed that, at least in principle, religion and science were compatible; and held a faith in the moral evolution of the human race toward an ameliorative end. Their partnership in managing the Open Court was formed on these intellectual grounds, and as the business moved forward over the years, Carus would take the lead in promoting their shared philosophical views and defending them against their adversaries.

3. Epilogue: A Lesson in Meliorism

46 One final thought will round out the study of the philosophical origins of the Open Court. It concerns the impact of Carus’s career as staff-philosopher of the Open Court on his own philosophical development. What impact, if any, did his service to the company to promote its monistic mission have on his actual philosophical proclivities? As it turns out, the impact was significant.

47 Upon assuming his position as editor, Carus would immediately amend his earlier statements on monism to better reflect Hegeler’s religious stance and antagonism toward agnosticism. This is evident by a mere examination of the titles of his new publications following his hiring: “Science and Religion” (1887), “Monism and Religion” (1888), “The Religious Character of Monism: In Reply to the Criticism of Dr. Gustav Carus” (1888), and The Idea of God (1888). These publications were all released as follow ups to his first article under Hegeler’s tutelage, “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism,” and before the end of his first year as editor-in-chief. Starting with these texts, Carus, loyal to Hegeler, took hold of a flag promoting a new “religion of science” while fighting off all forms of faithless agnosticism.73 This marked a new phase in Carus’s philosophical development. Although the topic of religion was not entirely absent from his early career writings composed in Germany, it became a central topic of his research in the 1890s and beyond.74 As is well known, he became a major advocate for the validity of different world religions and he supported an international dialogue between representatives of Western and Eastern faiths, as conceived in his Religious Parliament Extension, successor of The World’s Parliament of Religions. He also amended his philosophical theories, such as by logically coordinating the idea of God within his theory of causality. In The Idea of God and “The Religious Character of Monism,” he defines God as the immanent “omnipresent order of the ” and “a law of Nature.”75 Henderson explains that Carus “redefined ‘God’ as the universal system of necessary laws discovered by science.”76

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48 Yet, Carus simultaneously seemed aware that he was sacrificing some of his own personal values while advocating for what he called Hegeler’s more “positive” agenda. In a candid letter to Peirce in 1892, he explains that his duties to Hegeler conflict with his own standards as a philosopher and an editor: Mr. Hegeler is not narrower than I am, but I should say that he is more positive. I would restrain editorial interference to matters of principle only, and leave the working out of our aim to the contributors, admitting, however, the editor as one of the contributors. As such I would often abide my time longer than I do. So, for instance, my proposition was to name the new quarterly “THOUGHT” and not “THE MONIST”; but in Mr. Hegeler’s opinion, the name “THOUGHT” was unmeaning. He regarded it as an attempt at being non-committal. He wants to have the solution which he arrived at expressed unequivocally. The name of the journal is to him the flag; while to me it would be an invitation to the class of people who are welcome to contribute. Mr. Hegeler had the same objection to the name, “THE OPEN COURT.” I shall be pleased to have your article for the Fall number of the MONIST.77 Peirce responded that Thought “would have been a superb” title.78 That name for Peirce reflected the essence of an ideal community of inquirers who collectively pursue the truth in and for itself, without any ulterior motives. Peirce and Carus both fancied themselves as participating in such a community. Testament to this is Carus’s welcoming disposition to receive a new article by Peirce’s hand for the fall issue of the The Monist. That gesture was made in May, the time precisely after the publication of “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” and in the midst of the two philosophers quarreling over the truth of determinism. Thus, despite vehemently disagreeing with Peirce on the topic, Carus would not silence Peirce’s opinion and even welcomed its expression as one live-option amongst the community of inquirers.

49 Carus’s candid admissions to Peirce about his relationship with Hegeler and his compromises as an editor reveal his true feelings about his assignment to promote an Open Court philosophy. There is serious irony in Carus reiterating the same liberal positions as his predecessor Underwood with regard to the name of the Open Court journal and to its editorial practices. As we know, such a stance did not end well for Underwood. Carus, however, managed to remain Hegeler’s right-hand man for the long run. This was in part because, of course, his writings helped inspire and articulate the monistic platform of the Open Court from its inception. Yet, it also seems it was due to him making a necessary and personal act of conciliation in sacrificing some of his intellectual autonomy for a vision of the greater good. By this act he was in accordance with the “must” and “ought” of the melioristic improvement of the human race demanded by his and Hegeler’s ethics – an ethics of monism, then, that more than theoretically grounded the founding of the Open Court.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BECK Lewis White, (1996), “Neo-Kantianism,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York, Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 5-6, 468-73.

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CARUS Gustav, (1888), “Christianity and Monism: A Criticism of the Work of ‘The Open Court’,” The Open Court, 2, 44, 1381-4.

CARUS Paul, (1881), Metaphysik in Wissenshaft, Ethik und Religion: Eine Philosophische Untersuchung, Dresden, R. von Grumbkow, Hof-Verlag.

CARUS Paul, (1883), Ursache, Grund und Zweck: Eine Philosophische Untersuchung zur Klärung der Begriffe, Dresden, R. von Grumbkow, Hof-Verlag.

CARUS Paul, (1885), Monism and Meliorism: A Philosophical Essay on Causality and Ethics, New York, F. W. Christern.

CARUS Paul, (1887), “Monism, Dualism, and Agnosticism,” The Open Court, 1, 8, 209-12.

CARUS Paul, (1888), “The Religious Character of Monism: In Reply to the Criticism of Dr. Gustav Carus,” The Open Court, 2, 44, 1381-4.

CARUS Paul, (1889), Fundamental Problems: The Method of Philosophy as a Systematic Arrangement of Knowledge, Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company.

CARUS Paul, (1890), “The Vocation,” The Open Court, 3, 46, 2027-8.

CARUS Paul, (1891-2), Monism its Scope and Import: A Review of the Work of the Monist, Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company.

CARUS Paul, (1892a), “Monism not Mechanism: Comments upon Prof. Ernst Haeckel’s Position,” The Monist, 2, 3, 438-42.

CARUS Paul, (1892b), “Charles S. Peirce’s Onslaught on the Doctrine of Necessity,” The Monist, 2, 4, 560-82.

CARUS Paul, (1892c), “Professor Haeckel’s Monism,” The Monist, 2, 4, 598-600.

CARUS Paul, (1896 [1888]), The Idea of God, Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company.

CARUS Paul, (1913), “The Monism of ‘The Monist’: Compared with Professor Haeckel’s Monism,” The Monist, 23, 3, 435-9.

THE CHARLES S. PEIRCE PAPERS, Houghton Library, Cambridge.

FLYNN Tom, (2007), “Underwood, Benjamin Franklin (1839-1914),” The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Amherst, Prometheus, 775.

GOEBEL Julius, (1919), “Paul Carus,” The Open Court, 33, 9, 513-21.

GUARDIANO Nicholas L., (2011), “The Intelligibility of Peirce’s Metaphysics of Objective Idealism,” Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia, 12, 2, 187-204.

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GUARDIANO Nicholas L., HACKBART-DEAN Pamela & Aaron C. LISEC, (2017b), An Independence of Ideas and Thought: The Life of Mary Hegeler Carus, Carbondale, Saluki Press.

HAY William H., (1956), “Paul Carus: A Case-Study of Philosophy on the Frontier,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 17, 4, 498-510.

HEGELER Edward C., (1887a), “The Basis of Ethics,” The Open Court, 1, 1, 20-1.

HEGELER Edward C., (1887b), “To the Readers of the Open Court,” The Open Court, 1, 22, 621-40.

HEGELER Edward C., (1888), “What the Monistic Religion is to Me,” The Open Court, 1, 25, 725-6.

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HENDERSON Harold, (1993), Catalyst for Controversy: Paul Carus of Open Court, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press.

HENDERSON Harold & André W. CARUS, (2005), “Carus, Paul (1852-1919),” The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, Bristol, Thoemmes Continuum, 1, 445-9.

HOLTON Gerard, (1993), “From the to Harvard Square: The Americanization of a European World Conception,” in Stadler Friedrich (ed.), Scientific Philosophy: Origins and Developments, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

HOLZHEY Helmut & Vilem MUDROCH, (2005), Historical Dictionary of Kant and Kantianism, Lanham, The Scarecrow Press.

JENSEN Anthony K., (2017), “Neo-Kantianism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/neo-kant/, September 8, 2017.

KÖHNKE Klaus Christian, (1991), The Rise of Neo-Kantianism: German Academic Philosophy between Idealism and , Hollingdale R. J. trans., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

LOHNE Raymond, (2012), “Mary Hegeler Carus (1861-1936),” Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German- American Business Biographies, 4, [http://immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=109].

OLLIG Hans-Ludwig, (1998), “Neo-Kantianism,” Michael J. & Walker N. trans., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 6, London, Routledge, 776-92.

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY RECORDS, Morris Library, Carbondale.

RUETENIK Tadd, (2008), “Meliorism,” American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia, New York, Routledge, 498-500.

RYAN W. F., (1985), “Underwood, Benjamin Franklin (1839-1914),” The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Buffalo, Prometheus, 2, 677-9.

SHIN Kee Soo, (1973), “Paul Carus’s ‘Positive Monism’ and Critique of Other Types of Monism (Mach, Haeckel, Peirce),” Ph.D. diss., Temple University.

URBAS Joseph, (2016), Emerson’s Metaphysics: A Song of Laws and Causes, Lanham, Lexington University Press.

WILLEY Thomas E., (1978), Back to Kant: The Revival of Kantianism in German Social and Historical Thought, 1860-1914, Detroit, Wayne State University Press.

THE WORKS OF WILLIAM JAMES, 19 vols., ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1975-88).

WRITINGS OF C. S. PEIRCE: A CHRONOLOGICAL EDITION, 7 vols. published, ed. by M. Fisch et al., Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1982-.

NOTES

1. Hegeler (1887b: 624), Edward C. Hegeler to Benjamin F. Underwood, 19 September 1886. 2. Hegeler (1887b: 627-8), Hegeler to Underwood, 7 December 1886. 3. Hegeler (1887b: 627), Hegeler to Underwood, 3 December 1886. 4. Hegeler (1887b: 627), Hegeler to Underwood, 3 December 1886. 5. For biographical information on the Underwoods, see Ryan 1985 and Flynn 2007. 6. Hegeler (1887b: 629), Underwood to Hegeler, 7 December 1886. 7. Hegeler (1887a: 15).

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8. Ibid. 9. In section 3 below, I return to Hegeler’s disdain for agnosticism in his relationship with the Underwoods. 10. Hegeler (1887b: 639), Hegeler to Paul Carus, 21 January 1887. 11. For biographical accounts of Carus’s early life, see Shin (1973: 18-32), Henderson (1993: 7-11), and Henderson & Carus 2005. 12. Mary Hegeler Carus was an exceptional person in her own right and broke through many gender barriers of her time. She oversaw as a young girl some of the operations of the zinc smelters at her father’s business, the Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Company; was the first woman to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in from the University of Michigan; was one of the first two women to be admitted to and to complete a degree from – despite not being awarded it because of her gender – the Bergakadamie Freiberg, a prestigious mining school in Germany; became the president of the M&H Zinc Company upon her father’s death; and became the editor-in-chief of the Open Court upon her husband’s death. For a biography of her life, see Lohne 2012 and Guardiano et al. 2017b. 13. Hegeler (1887b: 621). This first appearance of the new standing notice in the issue of 22 December 1887 was the final issue of the year. 14. Henderson (1993: 14). 15. See Henderson & Carus (2005: 447). For a succinct account of Carus’s monism in relation to his later writings and philosophy of form, see Hay 1956. 16. See esp. Carus (1881: sec. 17). 17. Carus (1883: 43); my translation. 18. See Hegeler (1887b: 636), and Henderson (1993: 37). 19. Carus (1885: 5). 20. Carus (1885: 7). 21. Ibid. 22. On Carus’s education and teaching career, see Henderson (1993: 4-5) and Goebel (1919: 513). 23. For more on the rise of neo-Kantianism, its schools, and main figures, see Willey 1978, Köhnke 1991, Beck 1996, Ollig 1998, Holzhey & Mudroch 2005, and Jensen 2017. 24. Köhnke (1991: 137). 25. See Köhnke (1991: 124-35). Carus will also reject materialism in his early writings; see Carus (1881: sec. 17) and Carus (1885: 80). 26. Carus (1885: 12). 27. Ibid. For more on Carus’s understanding of the terms materialism, spiritualism, idealism, realism, and others, see the appendix of definitions in Carus (1885: 78-83). 28. Carus (1885: 12-3). 29. Carus (1885: 15). 30. Carus (1885: 27-8). 31. W8: 106. 32. Ibid. 33. W8: 43. For more on Peirce’s critique of neutralism, including its possible further identification with the philosophies of Ernst Mach and , see Guardiano 2011. Mach had an extensive correspondence with Carus and published numerous articles and books with the Open Court. For a brief note on their relationship, see Holton (1993: 48-50). Holton brings to light Carus’s generosity as an editor by promoting Mach’s writings to America and the English- speaking world. However, in his excitement to show that Carus “clearly revered” Mach, he hastily associates Carus’s philosophy with Mach’s positivistic and anti-metaphysical stance, and even claims that Carus held an agnostic monistic worldview. On the contrary, Carus’s monism is a form of neutralism incorporating both scientific and religious sentiments. Furthermore, as we have seen, he promoted the Open Court’s primary agenda of conciliating religion with science,

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and in this regard was indispensable ally to Hegeler, who took agnosticism as scourge of his publishing company. 34. Carus (1887: 209). 35. Carus (1885: 29). 36. Carus (1885: 62). 37. See Shin (1973: 103), which explains the theoretical comprehensiveness of monism under these three aspects. 38. Carus (1881: 24); my translation. 39. Carus (1881: 25); and see Carus (1881: secs. 2 and 17). Contrary to Carus, the neo-Kantians Fisher and Leibmann reject the idea of the thing-in-itself as a nonsensical idea. Carus’s view thus appears closer to those of Hermann von Helmholtz and Lange who take the objects of experience to exist as products of the metaphysical thing-in-itself interacting with the sense and cognitive capacities of the human organism. On the neo-Kantian history here, see Beck (1996: 469) and Köhnke (1991: 163-4). 40. Shin (1973: chap. 5) makes a start of a complete study. 41. Carus (1892b: 563). 42. Carus (1892b: 564). 43. Carus (1892b: 578). 44. See Carus (1892b: 569-72). 45. See Paul Carus to Charles S. Peirce, 10 September 1913, The Charles S. Peirce Papers (L77: 251-2); and Paul Carus to Francis C. Russell, 5 January 1918, letterpress of original, The Open Court Publishing Company Records (box 91, folder 7). 46. See Henderson (1993: 146-7). 47. W8: 105. 48. See the following articles published in The Monist for Carus’s debate with Haeckel on the theory of monism: Carus 1892a, Carus 1892c, and Carus 1913. Also, Shin treats at length the subject of Carus’s monism vis-à-vis Haeckel’s monism in Shin (1973: chap. 3). 49. Carus (1885: 53). 50. Hegeler (1887a: 20-1). This article, originally delivered as a lecture on 14 January 1887, was printed with revisions in the first issue of The Open Court on 17 February 1887. Although its composition occurred prior to Carus arriving in La Salle, it is highly probable that Hegeler’s ideas were directly influenced by Carus’s ethical discussions in Monism and Meliorism, since the week after the lecture on 21 January Hegeler first wrote to Carus praising his book. 51. Carus (1885: 69). 52. Carus (1885: 71). 53. Carus (1887: 211). 54. Ibid. 55. See WWJ1: 12-4, 60-1, and 136-8. For a general discussion of the topic of meliorism in the greater pragmatist tradition, also see Ruetenik 2008. 56. W8: 110. 57. For a full discussion of these creative aspects of Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology, see Guardiano (2017a: chap. 3). 58. See W8: 192, footnote 2. 59. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cosmic meliorism shares much in common with Peirce’s agapism. It is a metaphysics of cosmic proportions involving the metamorphic ascension of things towards higher and higher forms. For a trenchant account of it, see Urbas (2016: 163-4); also, see Guardiano (2017a: chap. 1, sec. 3). 60. Hegeler (1887b: 624), Hegeler to Underwood, 19 September 1886; my emphasis. 61. Hegeler (1887b: 627), Hegeler to Underwood, 3 December 1886.

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62. Carus at a later date while articulating the theological underpinnings of his and Hegeler’s joint philosophical perspective will reject pantheism although not panentheism. Pantheism takes God to be one with creation, in the sense that God’s entire being is exhausted by the reality of nature, whereas panentheism takes God’s being to ultimately extend beyond the reality of nature. See e.g. Carus (1885: 63) and Carus (1896: 26-33). 63. Hegeler (1888: 725). Carus likewise takes the opposing elements of dualism to be merely conceptual “abstractions” from an original unitary reality; see e.g. Carus (1891-2: 7) and Carus (1889: 18). 64. Hegeler (1888: 725). 65. Ibid. 66. See n. 50 above. 67. Hegeler (1887a: 21). 68. Hegeler (1888: 725). 69. Hegeler (1887b: 629), Underwood to Hegeler, 7 December 1886. 70. Hegeler (1887b: 636). 71. Carus (1885: 45). One exception in this text occurs during Carus’s argument against the idea of God as first cause of the universe. There he seems amenable to associating God with the principle of causality itself. He states: “We reject and condemn, therefore, the idea of a first cause in the sense of Creator, as a contradiction in itself. And those who call God the first cause have either a vague idea of what they mean, or they intend to say that God is the final principle of the world, the most general law, governing the whole universe, the fundamental basis, and, so to speak, the ground on which everything rests, from which all existences spring and originate, and the ultimate reason to which we trace the existence of the cosmos. Such a principle, or whatever other name you may be pleased to give it [read: e.g. “God”], is not a passing cause, which happens once and exists no longer, but a living presence, which pervades the whole world, and is the operating force in all causes and the causation in causality” (ibid.: 46). For a similar comment appearing in a text after Monism and Meliorism, see Carus (1889: 17) where Carus equates the “cosmical order of the Universe” with God. 72. Gustav’s views are expressed in his article Carus G. 1888. 73. For this transition in Carus’s career, see Henderson (1993: 45-7) and Carus (1890: 2027-8). 74. Carus discusses religion in his early career writings Metaphysik in Wissenschaft, Ethik und Religion (1881), Quid est Veritas? Eine Religiöse Entwicklung in Gedichten (1881), and Lieder eines Buddhisten (1882). 75. Carus (1896: 27), and Carus (1888: 1384). 76. Henderson (1993: 47). 77. Paul Carus to Charles S. Peirce, 31 May 1892, The Charles S. Peirce Papers (L77: 16). A letterpress made from the original letter is in The Open Court Publishing Company Records (box 91, folder 11). 78. Charles S. Peirce to Paul Carus, 3 June 1892, The Open Court Publishing Company Records (box 91, folder 11).

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ABSTRACTS

In 1887 the Open Court Publishing Company had its founding in a philosophy of monism. The company’s proprietor Edward C. Hegeler began the enterprise in an effort to promote his personal philosophic, religious, and moral ideas. He believed that these ideas could be conciliated with the growing scientific trends of the late nineteenth century, and that monism was the intellectual framework for doing so. Paul Carus, the editor of the journals The Open Court and The Monist, joined Hegeler as an intellectual ally in this regard. For thirty years he openly defended the doctrines of monism in countless articles and books, successfully grounding the Open Court on this philosophy. This paper uncovers the historical development of the philosophical origin of the Open Court as it began with Hegeler’s personal religious motives, his ideological tension with the original editor Benjamin Underwood, and his embrace of the monistic writings of Paul Carus. It also examines Hegeler’s and Carus’s publications and personal letters from the 1880s and 1890s in order to determine the fundamental doctrines of their unique sense of monism. In Carus’s writings in particular is proposed a monism of causality that is compatible with a deterministic worldview and a unitary conception of the sciences. Also, both Carus and Hegeler propose a monistic ethics of meliorism that conceives the diverse periods of human history to be evolving toward the one final end of the moral improvement of humankind. While these are the positive doctrines that they accept, they further reject the antitheses of philosophical dualism and irreligious attitude of agnosticism of all varieties.

AUTHOR

NICHOLAS L. GUARDIANO Southern Illinois University Carbondale nguardia[at]siu.edu

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Consequences of Rorty’s Pragmatism in Science

Nalliely Hernández

The Rortyan Conception of Science

1 Even though the conception of science was a topic very often analysed in Rorty’s writings, his approach always attempted to overcome a science-centred perspective of philosophy and culture. Thus, Rorty insisted on characterising science and knowledge instrumentally, although he was never particularly interested in deepening into these perspectives to construct an explicit and systematic philosophy of science and its consequences for the practices and conceptions of science itself. Nonetheless, his epistemological reflections on science are fundamental and extensive enough to develop a philosophical viewpoint of it with a pragmatist and post-positivist character. Such viewpoint allows us to dissolve a substantial part of the philosophical problems of scientific practice becoming a useful tool to deal with contemporary challenges and issues. At the same time, it concurs with the most interesting contemporary proposals which avoid some classical dichotomies in the field.

2 Throughout his work, there are two main sources to outline the image of science that Rorty provides us in his philosophy. The first and more general source is his well- known epistemological analysis of Modernity and Contemporary Philosophy. The second one is his particular characterization of scientific nature when he suggests a healthy and convenient relation between science and culture.

3 In the former, the American philosopher reveals the historical and optional nature of the modern epistemological problems and perspectives. He further contends that the metaphysics resulting from such a tradition is exhausted after the copious and unsolved epistemological discussions about truth or rationality and the historical and sociological studies of science during the twentieth century. As a result, Rorty replaces the representational character of knowledge with an instrumental view, which does not need a philosophical theory. He goes on to assert a deflationist perspective of truth,

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an anti-essentialist assessment of reality and an ethnocentric viewpoint of justification and rationality.

4 Consistent with these perspectives, Rorty provides a picture of science drawn from his Peircean description of beliefs and inquiry as habits of action, and it is specified in his notions of , rationality and objectivity. All these conceptions together lead us to the rejection of empiricism as a foundation of scientific knowledge, and to the embracement of a fuzzy, practical and sociological frontier of science. In short, what Cornel West calls Rorty’s “Emersonian sensibilities” undermines the authority of science by demythologizing the tradition that provides it a culturally privileged position (West 1989: 204).

5 As I said, Rorty, following Peirce, conceives beliefs as habits of action that we attribute to organisms (people) to predict or retrodict their behaviour. In this way, beliefs guide actions, which produce more actions and then more beliefs in an endless process. Some of the new beliefs create tensions or contradictions with the old ones, so we can eliminate some other belief or create a new one to reduce or avoid these tensions. Therefore, beliefs are guides of actions, which compose a web of relations that is constantly evolving and reweaving these relations (Rorty 1991a: 93). Consequently, every object is always contextualized because it is part of such a web. This process also explains the nature of inquiry. Inquiry implies a large-scale and deliberate reweaving of our beliefs to integrate new ones. In his words: “They (beliefs) may lead to ‘reflex’ actions or they may initiate scientific breakthroughs.” (Rorty 1991a: 94). Then, if the number of changes in the web continues to increase, at some point we can speak of the “recontextualization” of the object. This recontextualization can be perfectly conceived as a new scientific theory, the development and description of which implies a radical reconfiguration of the positivistic conception of science.

6 In particular, Rorty points out how philosophy since Modernity has been looking for a philosophical explanation of scientific success. The metaphor that provided an attractive yet ambiguous answer to this question involves the Galilean idea that a mathematical and reductionist vocabulary was the discovery of Nature’s own language, and thus, it is an image of the way things really and truly are. Then, this philosophical tradition interpreted the success and usefulness of Galileo’s ultimate terminology as a signal of its intrinsic reality because of its lack of human interest or moral significance (Rorty 1982: 191-3). In this way, scientific generalizations embracing efficient provided a philosophical content to the conception of scientific method. Since then, , control and what Rorty calls Galilean axiological neutrality become a metaphysical process which screens subjective aspects of our descriptions, even if it is unclear in the history of science which general but not trivial procedures compose such a method (Rorty 1982: 194).

7 Unlike this philosophical view, and according to the concrete development of scientific theories, Rorty says, scientists use the same obvious procedures that everybody uses in many activities. They sometimes overlook counterexamples, contradict a criterion, make assumptions and guesses, etc. Of course, they also make interesting inferences and try to follow organized and clear procedures for testing their ideas, but this is quite different from having a reductionist and/or formal language without evaluative terms as a token of scientificity and reality, which seems to remain an impossible task. In his words:

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In that sense, to have a method was simply to have a good comprehensive list of topics or headings-to have, so to speak, an efficient filing system. In its post- Cartesian philosophical sense, however, it does not mean simply ordering one’s thoughts, but filtering them in order to eliminate “subjective” or “noncognitive” or “confused” elements, leaving only the thoughts which are Nature’s Own. (Rorty 1982: 194)

8 In contrast, according to him, there is no specific logic of scientific method, only instituted and historical procedures that influence our choice of theories at any given stage of inquiry. This statement embodies the idea that there is no distinctive scientific rationality that justifies a special relation of science with reality. In this sense, one of the main goals in philosophy of science became that of achieving a precise theory of scientific reasoning and argumentation; a theory that would abstract general patterns from the debates “over genes and spectra and fields and delinquency” (Rorty 1991b: 53), guiding as independent criteria for a scientific demarcation.

9 However, as the history of science has shown us from Kuhn or Feyerabend’s studies, it seems that there are no such properly scientific general patterns as a set of abstract criteria for applying. Decisions that scientists make that generate changes in theories are reweaves of beliefs to attain better control and prediction of phenomena, but this is not a specific kind of intelligibility. They are familiar procedures of justification used by a given discipline or community. Indeed, for Rorty, rationality is not a matter of abstractly applying criteria. Consistent with this perspective, we can explain observations, theories and decisions made by scientists by reference to the intellectual and social history, as well as by reference to their respective psychologies, sensibilities and context.

10 In the same way, Rorty states that following the metaphor initiated by Galileo, Newtonian Physical Science became a model for the intellectual of modernity, so this prototype of knowledge should be followed by the establishment of social, political and economic institutions because of its access to nature and its correspondence to reality itself. Therefore, parallel to the method and scientific traditional conceptions, objectivity means that we must “step outside our community” in the light of something that transcends it. In other words, as long as scientific inquiry is understood as a way to find the “underlying structures” or “culturally invariant factors” or “biologically determined patterns” of reality, objectivity is understood as something common with every other possible human community or independent of any particular community (Rorty 1991c: 22).

11 Nonetheless, once he had dismissed the epistemological distinctions of method and rationality, objectivity is reduced to intersubjectivity. It is grounded in as broad a community agreement as possible. Thus, the tools of science are not less “merely” human than those, which make beauty or justice possible (Rorty 1991b: 58). This means that objectivity works the same way for physics as for literary theory, because the difference between them is relative to the goal of each discipline, and science requires more agreement than arts according to its predictive intentions (Rorty 1998: 139). Indeed, Rorty dissociates this possibility of control of phenomena from being non perspectival or mind-independent.

12 Now, even though Rorty redefined these notions involved in scientific development, we can still contend that experience has a crucial role to play in science that it does not have in other languages or practices. Contemporary philosophy usually preserves a very intuitive and common idea that science deals with hard facts. According to this

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popular empiricist perspective, this hardness of facts is a properly scientific distinction. However, Rorty follows the viewpoint that connects Sellars to Brandom, which proposes substituting the conception of perceptive experience for the conception of non-inferential statements caused by the physiological conditions of the sensorial organs, this is, that physical stimuli have a causal rather than rational role in the production of beliefs.

13 In this way Rorty (1991d) offers an analysis of science that understands the supposed hardness of facts as a result of previous agreements within a community. We respect the rules of a certain language game whose purposes require broad agreement and homogeneity, and those rules are cultural products.

14 As a result, there are no epistemological distinctions between scientific procedures or objects and other social practices and stuffs. Rorty makes a description in which every fact is a social institution and, at the same time, it is not arbitrary or merely conventional as opposed to natural, because science is not natural in kind. In the same way, some of these institutions are more internally diverse, more complicated or, as he says, “more quarrelsome about desiderata” (Rorty 1991d: 84). Most of the time, science has more instituted procedures, but this is explained by its focus on control and prediction, as I stated above. Even so, it can also be as revolutionary and as inventive as politics and arts. It has a practical and sociological boundary; therefore, the questions about the sentences that are “made true by the world or reality” are definitely discarded and, then, “literary texts are not squishier than molecules” (Rorty 1991e: 40).

Science as Power: Rortyan Connections and Usefulness

15 Knowledge as a web of useful beliefs that are justified in a particular time is relative to the different purposes a culture or a community is engaged with. However, the ends or purposes are always evolving, mainly according to a set of values and forms of social organization. Consequently, from this perspective there is an imminent and fundamental shift in concerns from epistemological to ethical-political in scientific practice. This shift is mostly consistent with Feyerabend’s perspective of scientific nature as well as with the Baconian perspective that knowledge is not separable from power, and so, it also resonates with the Foucaultian epistemes.

16 Therefore, this whole framework provides us not only with a new and clearly enclosed place of science in cultural development, but also with a new perspective for describing and explaining scientific theories and their connection with other vocabularies as a part of a cultural politics. Rorty clearly states that if reductionist and mathematical language has been a useful tool for prediction, there can be better options of means and ends in arts, politics, or morals. As a result, he rather supports a healthy plurality of languages, which affords different tools for each new aim.

17 One of the most important political implications of this fuzziness of science and its constraint to some specific goals in social life is a reformulation of the Deweyan of the culture-nature distinction.1 If science is not a natural kind, and there is no reality in itself, then there is also no human nature in itself. Therefore, according to Rorty (2004), the old question about our natural or cultural nature became irrelevant or sterile, and science cannot (or should not) provide us with a definitive

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answer about what we really are. As he emphatically states in his article “Philosphy- envy,” physical, chemical and biological discoveries can tell us interesting things about how our bodies and brains work, but they cannot tell us “what sort of behaviour [to] encourage” (Rorty 2004: 21) or how we should live, nor can it provide a foundation for organizing our social lives. From this post-positivistic perspective of science, the latter has worn-out its usefulness for political ends because it is not the foundation of culture, and it is neither an example of social cooperation nor public deliberation different from any other discipline.2

18 In this way Rorty is partially connecting the Deweyan and Foucaultian perspectives,3 refusing the traditional conceptions of knowledge, science, and its epistemological categories, and redefining them as a product of history and social processes. If there are no universal structures of reality, science becomes a set of traits of power arrangements that can be desirable or undesirable according to different purposes, and in natural or social science their genealogical narratives are useful for lightening and valuing means as well as ends. In this new light we can explore scientific narratives, structures and their close connections to social development by exposing different key cultural features that condition and predetermine it. At the same time, we can also show how some scientific vocabularies justified a specific political project, legitimized by putative traditional scientific objectivity and rationality.

19 In addition, this Rortyan perspective of science is quite close to the most interesting contemporary proposals in philosophy of science. In recent decades, taking historicism and the sociological perspectives inherited from Kuhn and Feyerabend’s views seriously, an important amount of work has been made. However, even though many authors have been exploring and recognize science as a value-laden activity,4 many of them insist on an external role of non-epistemic values in the stages of science. This external-internal distinction in scientific development implies that scientific development demands a rational critique independent of the social context, and subsequently, this context is only contingently involved in it.5 Nonetheless, other authors such as Heather Douglas (2007) state that the epistemic–non-epistemic distinction is not clear enough to support a normative difference in scientific practice. According to her, non-epistemic values are logically needed for reasoning in science, even in the internal states of the process. This allows her to argue that there is nothing necessary about the link between axiological neutrality and objectivity, so that we can discard the value-free meaning of the latter (Douglas 2007: 131). Moreover, such a perspective enables her to develop a conception of objectivity in science taking into account different scientific virtues in different situations, just as Rorty does.

20 On the other hand, Arthur Fine (1986) in what he calls the “Natural Ontological Attitude” tries to reject the assumptions of the debates on and anti- realism that bring unnecessary and unjustified philosophical interpretations of science, and according to Rorty this attitude is closely connected to his own suggestion that “Reality as it is in itself” is just another way to insist on God’s authority, or that the idea “that Physics gets you closer to reality than morals as an updated version of the priests’ claim to be in closer touch with God than the laity” (Rorty 2007: 134). Thus, his view of science implies that it is not philosophically different from the rest of culture in any meaningful way.6 In a similar way, Lawrence Sklar (2000) contends that the best arguments are local and contextual, and they do not appeal to universal philosophical principles.

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21 However, perhaps one of the most radical and closest approaches to Rortyan perspective is Harold Kincaid’s contextualism (2007). In it, he states that there are no global criteria for deciding which beliefs or principles of inference have epistemic priority. Justification in science is relative to a specific context specified by the questions to be answered. Just as Rorty, he rejects foundationalist approaches in epistemology and he contends an anti-essentialist view about theories. As a result, there is no special set of rules with an inherent epistemological status (Kincaid 2007: 223).

22 Likewise, Hugh Lacey develops the interesting idea that objects are simultaneously objects of materialist understanding and objects of social values; so that we structure the world in ways that partially represent the embodiment of such social values (Lacey 1999: 106-7). In particular, he states that adopting modern values of control and prediction has been reinforcing the idea of gaining understanding under materialist strategies, so that objects are grasped in order to become “objects of control,” thereby subordinating other social values, such as moral values, and implicitly informing practices that serve some kind of specific values, for example, economic values. This reinforcement consolidated control and prediction values and their materialist characterization as features of how the world “really is.” In this way, he says, “exercising control over things has become considered as a value unsubordinated to other social values” (Lacey 1999: 112), and daily life and institutions have become dominated by it. Conversely, he states similarly to Rorty that: “Not every effective intentional interaction with the world is an instance of control.” (Lacey 1999: 111). As both of them state, there is no argument independent of success for interpreting science as greater comprehensiveness of reality. Moreover, prediction and control as signs of reality ignores other fundamental dimensions of reality, and it easily hides social, ethical or political possibilities embodied in them (Lacey 1999: 137).

23 In summary, the Rortyan perspective implies an ethical and political turn, which connects to the latter specific perspectives on science with a broader post positivistic conception of culture, creating a useful tool for analysing scientific theories in such often ignored dimensions. It also shows what Cornel West (1989) named post- structuralist resonances, but complementing it with an insightful perspective of scientific activity and its legitimation.

Some Scientific Examples in the Rortyan Landscape

24 Finally, I analyse some examples that illuminate the accuracy and usefulness of this perspective. These examples show in different dimensions and in particular cases, some of the statements about science I previously pointed out from Rorty’s writings and its consequences.

25 The first example involves the origin of the Principle of Complementarity in Quantum Mechanics. This principle, along with the Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy, is the core of the Copenhaguen Interpretation of Quantum Physics, and was elaborated by Niels Bohr in 1927. At the end of 1925 there were two different well-founded mathematical structures that accounted for atomic phenomena: the wave and matrix mechanics. However, those structures had different guiding principles and methods; moreover, they emphasized different features of atomic events, especially continuity

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and discontinuity, an intuitive visualization and an anti-intuitive abstraction, respectively (Schrödinger 1982: 45).

26 In addition, the use of the classical conceptions of wave and particle for describing atomic results led to unavoidable contradictions because the same object sometimes seemed to be a particle and sometimes seemed to be a wave. This scenario was completely confusing for physicists because Nature seemed to have an irrational and inconsistent behavior.7 Heisenberg remembered the question he repeated to himself again and again: “‘Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seems to us in these atomic experiments?” (Moore 1966: 147). Eventually, it became clear that quantum equations lack an interpretation using the ordinary and classical concepts and images (Cassidy 1992: 227). In this context, Bohr elaborated the Principles of Complementarity to provide Quantum Theory with a new logical and conceptual framework for interpreting atomic events. That principle establishes the wave and particle duality, such that both conceptions are necessary but mutually exclusive to account for the electron’s behaviour: it is corpuscular or wavelike depending on the experimental device we use to measure it.8

27 The origin of this principle can be traced back to formalism and empirical results. However, they are necessary but insufficient conditions to explain its occurrence. Indeed, through his writings after 1927 Bohr develops his original philosophical perspective concerning his general conceptions of nature, experience, language, phenomena or knowledge, as well as his conceptions of objectivity and truth.9 In particular, he states that experience allows us to establish laws for understanding natural phenomena; however, these laws usually modify the guidelines which order the very experience. Therefore, a conceptual framework does not have a structure or configuration that cannot be modified. For him, science does not look for an a priori and determined reality, but it develops methods to expand and arrange human experience in a consistent and unambiguous way (Bohr 1958). This is the basis of objective knowledge. He is also convinced that we need classical categories of wave and particle to make an intuitive description of quantum events, because our necessary and normal forms of perception are in the classical language (Feyerabend 1962: 228-31). These general ideas allowed him to develop the idea of Complementarity.

28 Thus, in different authors connect the Principle of Complementarity with different ideas of Bohr’s psychological and . Some scholars of Bohr have established different influences from psychology and philosophy that allowed him to formulate this Principle. Particularly, the influence of the philosopher Harald Høffding is noteworthy, and through him, there are important traces of Kant, Kierkegaard or James’ ideas.10 For example, Rui Moreira develops the thesis that Høffding elaborated a principle of complementarity in psychology between a priori Kantian sensibility and understanding in a similar way to what Bohr made in Physics, as incompatible but necessary categories. He also conceives that continuity and discontinuity are incompatible necessities of spirit. This combination between irreconcilable and necessary features of reality is what distinguishes Høffding’s perspective and characterises Bohr’s interpretations of atomic events.11 In addition, another possible influence, even if it is less clear, is from William James. In his Principles of Psychology he states a principle of complementarity between conscious and subconscious, also in a way that is analogous to the Bohrian complementarity.12 Even if Bohr used this relation as an analogy to elaborate his quantum interpretation,

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there is no clear evidence that he had read James’ ideas before he stated the principle of complementarity. Still, Bohr, as well as his colleague Werner Heisenberg, has an empiricist attitude in which Quantum Theory only explains or accounts for observable events, so there is no ontology beyond measurable entities. This attitude has often been connected to a Pragmatist criterion of truth in the Copenhagen Interpretation.

29 In summary, those studies outline Bohr’s interpretation of quantum events as a framework influenced by a philosophical and psychological attitude that was a result of his cultural and intellectual environment, thereby supporting the Rortyan statement that there is no explanation in science directly stemming from hard facts; physical stimuli on atomic experience had a causal role in the production of beliefs; experiments and predictions were not enough to give a consistent interpretation of atomic events; the use of additional assumptions and relations was, indeed, necessary. Similarly, these examples show that justification comes from particular rules that are followed in a specific context. The best evidence for this statement is the permanent opposition that Complementarity has faced and the diverse interpretations in conflict that Quantum Mechanics has had so far.13

30 The second example, and perhaps the most politically interesting, concerns the origin of molecular biology and in particular of genetics.14 This origin has been widely studied by historians and philosophers alike. They have pointed out a set of social factors which had an major influence on the institutionalization of the gene’s paradigm during the first half of the twentieth century. Although the results are controversial, an important part of these studies use the Foucaultian relation between truth and power to account for the economical and ideological factors which promoted this model.15 Some of these analyses suggest that a technocratic environment in a liberal and pragmatic American society enabled, through different structures and institutions, its epistemological hegemony.

31 Maybe the most often mentioned and analysed institution is the Rockefeller Foundation, which sponsored numerous life sciences projects during the 1930s, pervading in the academic perspectives, strategies and politics which guided the scientific development in this field. According to Lily E. Kay (1993), the Foundation had, on the one hand, an economic interest in the nuclear model of inheritance for pushing the productivity growth through crossbreeding of plants and animals, and on the other, an ideological interest for achieving a social control through inheritance to guide human behaviour according to a system of Protestant and conservative values. The Foundation and some groups close to it were looking to realize a world of social prosperity and progress using human engineering.

32 It is well known that the model of the gene as the building-block of life obeyed an ontological and methodological analogy with the model which takes the atom as the building-block of matter in a reductionist and mechanistic view of life, which emphasised its conceptual unity. The gene is defined as the fundamental unity of life, and is explored through mutations and discontinuous changes. Thus, all the biological diversity is the result of a set of a few laws and principles. In this sense, there was a subtle association of these epistemological and ontological features of genes, perceived as direct causes of the macroscopic characteristics (physiological or psychological) of every living creature, with some ideological perspectives of social life. For example, for some Marxist scientists the was associated with the capitalist contradictions in the social system. However, for the most conservative perspectives,

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such as that of the Rockefeller Foundation, it portrayed psycho- and socio-biology as a of control and social progress because it allowed connecting, albeit potentially and ambiguously, small material unities to the personality control conceived by genetics. Some perspectives supported a social physics in a Comptian sense and this reductionist and mechanistic model linked the “atom” of life to these psycho- and socio-biological perspectives which resulted more attractive than the holistic and more complex alternatives.

33 Likewise, some cognitive preferences between holism or reductionism depended upon the scientific cultures in different countries, such as the French nationalism, which supported a and a more physiological perspective of inheritance, the American liberalism more committed to nuclear genetics, and the German statism connected to an embryologist point of view. This gives a partial account of the French and German opposition to the reductionism of the nuclear model in spite of its predictive success (Mayr 1982: 732).

34 Nonetheless, this explanation of the social and empirical success of the nuclear model can be complemented with the legitimation that it had due to its similarity with the atomic model in physics. In that way, the chromosomal theory of inheritance was linked to an ideal of neutral science founded on the scientific metaphysical tradition to support its objective nature, even though it was connected with a set of social values, as the aforementioned historical and sociological studies show. In summary, the nuclear epistemological frame resulted in a useful language for some social perspectives, mainly in America. It was a vocabulary that envisioned and impelled economic profit as a result of the crossbreeding of plants and animals as well as the ideological project of human engineering intended to develop a psycho- and socio-biology for ruling social organization, this is, the eugenic perspective to avoid undesired features in human behaviour.16 Thus, this conception of life enabled some particular goals and these goals outlined a conception of life. In summary, the outlined epistemological model of the gene supported, indirectly and not unequivocally, some values in different ways: from the conception of objectivity and scientific rigor traditionally attributed to physical science to the different social aims of some groups that this model seems to make easier. At the same time, some cultural environments seemed to facilitate more one model than other.

35 The former elements outline a general anatomy of the conversion of some ideological factors into cultural and socio-political ones that promote a given model. It can be seen how social and epistemic values are interconnected in this scientific episode, and how the conception of the gene became, during its early development, a set of both facts and values at the same time. This resonance between facts and values supports the Rortyan critique to the intended axiological neutrality in scientific language and illuminates the shift to the ethical and political perspective of science.

36 This case is particularly interesting and important in the current biotechnological discussions concerning the transgenic debate, the psychochemical approach to human behaviour, and all the ethical issues about genetics and biology in general (nutrition, psychiatry, etc.). The Rortyan perspective in connection with the other proposals I pointed out allows a wide and complete analysis of science in those dimensions inherent to basic science that is unavoidably connected with ethical and political ends, and it avoids a simplified, neutral and objective picture of it that is only well or poorly implemented in our societies. At the same time, and most important, it confines

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scientific utility to some particular human projects, becoming clear that for some vocabularies or practices, such as morals or politics it is better to attain different goals from prediction and control.

37 I think that Rorty missed some of the consequences of his own perspective, perhaps because he was not interested in specificities about science, or perhaps because he was more optimistic or naive in relation to power than other thinkers. But as I said at the beginning of this article, his proposal suggests an interesting way of analysing scientific practices, theories, and public policies of it that is more radical and advantageous than other perspectives. It also successfully connects the most interesting external and internal proposals of contemporary scientific views in philosophy and provides a fresh reference for us to better understand the way contemporary scientific views are embodied in our network of beliefs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOHR Niels, (1934a), Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

BOHR Niels, (1934b), “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” in Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 52-91.

BOHR Niels, (1958), Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, New York, John Wiley & Sons.

BOHR Niels, (1963), Essays 1958-1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, New York, John Wiley & Sons.

CASSIDY David C., (1992), Uncertainty. The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg, New York, Freeman.

DOPPELT Gerald D., (2007), “The Value Ladenness of Scientific Knowledge,” in Kincaid Harold, Dupré John & Wylie Alison (eds.), Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions, New York, Oxford University Press, 188-217.

DOUGLAS Heather, (2007), “Rejecting the Ideal of Value-Free Science,” in Kincaid Harold, Dupré John & Wylie Alison (eds.), Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions, New York, Oxford University Press, 120-39.

FEYERABEND Paul, (1962) “Problems of Mycrophysics,” in Colodny Robert G. (ed.), Frontiers of Science and Philosphy, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 189-283.

FINE Arthur, (1986), “The Natural Ontological Attitude,” in The Shaky Game, Chicago, 112-35.

HERNÁNDEZ Nalliely, (2017), “Una defensa de la ‘prioridad ontológica de lo social’: epistemología e ideología en el modelo nuclear de la herencia y en el origen de la biología molecular,” Contrastes. Revista Internacional de filosofia, XXII (2), 39-58.

JAMES William, (2007), The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1, New York, Cosimo.

JAMMER Max, (1966), The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, New York, McGraw Hill.

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KAY Lily E., (1993), The Molecular Vision of Life. Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rise of the New Biology, New York, Oxford University Press.

KAY Lily E., (1997), “Rethinking Institutions: Philanthropy as an Historiographic Problem of Knowledge and Power,” Minerva 35 (3), 283-93.

KINCAID Harold, (2007), “Contextualist Morals and Science,” in Kincaid Harold, Dupré John & Wylie Alison (eds.), Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions, New York, Oxford University Press, 218-38.

KINCAID Harold, DUPRÉ John & Alison WYLIE (eds.), (2007), Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions, New York, Oxford University Press.

LACEY Hugh, (1999), Is Science Value Free? Values and Scientific Understanding, New York, Routledge.

MAYR Ernst, (1982), The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity Evolution, and Inheritance, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.

MOORE Ruth Ellen, (1966), Niels Bohr: The Man, His Science, and The World They Changed, Cambridge, MIT Press.

MOREIRA Rui, (2004), “Ciência e Irracionalidade,” in Chitas Eduardo & Serrão Adriana Verissimo (eds.), Razão e Espírito Científico, Lisboa, Edições Duarte Reis, 63-74.

RIOJA Ana, (2002), “Sobre Ondas y Corpúsculos: Un Punto de Vista Lingüístico,” in Rivadulla A. & Mataix C. (eds.), Física Cuántica Y Realidad, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 135-54.

RORTY Richard, (1982), “Method, Social Science and Social Hope,” in Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 191-209.

RORTY Richard, (1991a), “Inquiry as recontextualization: An anti-dualist account of interpretation,” in Objectivity, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 93-110.

RORTY Richard, (1991b), “Is Natural Science a Natural Kind?,” in Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 46-62.

RORTY Richard, (1991c), “Solidarity or Objectivity,” in Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 21-34.

RORTY Richard, (1991d), “Text and Lumps,” in Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 78-92.

RORTY Richard, (1991e), “Science as Solidarity,” in Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 35-45.

RORTY Richard, (1998), “The Very Idea of Human Answerability to the World: John McDowell’s Version of Empiricism,” in Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers Volume 3, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 138-52.

RORTY Richard, (2004), “Philosophy-Envy,” Daedalus, 133, 4, 18-24 (doi:10.1162/0011526042365537).

RORTY Richard, (2007a), “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre,” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers 4, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 89-104.

RORTY Richard, (2007b), “A Pragmatist View of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy,” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers 4, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 133-46.

SAPP Jan, (1987), Beyond the Gene. Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics, New York, Oxford University Press.

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SCHRÖDINGER Erwin, (1982), Collected Papers on Wave Mechanics, New York, Chelsea Publishing Company.

SKLAR Lawrence, (2000), Theory and Truth: Philosophical Critique within Foundational Science, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

TORRES Aalejandro Gabriel & Charles A. HOBBS, (2015), “The Intertwining of Culture and Nature: Franz Boas, John Dewey, and Deweyan Strands of American Anthropology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 76 (1), 139-62.

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NOTES

1. The culture-nature relationship is a theme found throughout Dewey’s works, from at least as early as the 1890s to his last writings in the early ’50s. However, the culture-nature unity assumed by the philosopher was particularly evident in works of Dewey from the early and mid-1920s, including Human Nature and Conduct and Experience and Nature (See also: Torres & Hobbs 2015). 2. Rorty explains that a good example of social cooperation and public deliberation can come in the same way from engineers, carpenters as well as from scientists in: Rorty 2007a. 3. See: Rorty 1982. 4. For example, see: Kincaid , Dupré & Wylie 2007. 5. See: Doppelt 2007. 6. Even though Rorty disagrees with Fine that the realist is irrational or lacks rational support such as the theist does, and he does not share his idea of ontological commitment (for the discussion of Rorty about Fine’s perspective, see: Rorty 2007b. 7. To see the problems of the wave and corpuscular interpretation of quantum mathematical structures see: Rioja 2002. 8. According to Bohr, this complementary nature of quantum events is quantitatively expressed in the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg. To see the complete explanation of Complementarity: Bohr 1934b. 9. The intellectual development of Bohr’s ideas is chronologically collected in three collections of writings: Bohr 1934a, 1958, 1963. 10. Jammer points out the importance of Kierkegaard’s idea, elaborated by Høffding, that humans cannot be an impartial spectator or an impersonal observer, because we are always active participators of knowledge: (Jammer 1966: 173). 11. To see all the connections between Høffding and Complementarity: Moreira 2004. 12. In the section of his book about unconsciousness of hysterics, James states that there are some cases in which conscience can be split in two coexistent parts, which share the same object of knowledge, but mutually ignore each other. See: (James 2007: 200-6). 13. For example: supporters of Bohmian Mechanics or supporters of the statistical interpretation of Quantum Theory. 14. I develop this example in extensively in my article (2017). 15. For example: Sapp 1987. 16. However, these are not the only values connected to the model, but the most obvious.

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ABSTRACTS

The aim of this article is to outline a pragmatist image of science following Rorty’s discussions and critics of epistemology and to develop some consequences of it in the and its relations to culture. I will deal with some aspects of how scientific practice is construed and understood, and also outline the shift in Philosophy of Science from epistemological to ethical-political concerns that are implied in his proposal. I will contend that this perspective suggests an interesting way of analysing scientific practices, theories, and public policies of it. Furthermore, I will suggest that it successfully connects the most interesting proposals of contemporary scientific views in philosophy. Finally, I will use some examples in physics and biology to illustrate my assertions.

AUTHOR

NALLIELY HERNÁNDEZ Universidad de Guadalajara nallie3112[at]hotmail.com

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Book Review

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Hans JOAS & Daniel R. HUEBNER (eds.), The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead Chicago, and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2016, 349 pages

Guido Baggio

REFERENCES

Hans JOAS & Daniel R. HUEBNER (eds.), The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead, Chicago, and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2016, 349 pages

1 The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead is a significant contribution to the recent “Mead renaissance.” It gathers some contributions first presented at the conference celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of George Herbert Mead held in April 2013 at the University of Chicago and organized by Hans Joas, Andrew Abbott, Daniel Huebner, and Christopher Takacs. The volume brings scholarship on G. H. Mead up to date highlighting Mead’s relevance for areas of research completely ignored by past Mead’s scholars who were mainly concentrated on Mead’s contributions to sociological disciplines. The volume is structured in three parts devoted to the three main areas in which, according to the editors, Mead’s work is currently inspiring contemporary scholars: “History, Historiography, Historical Sociology;” “Nature, Environment, Process;” “Cognition, Conscience, Language.” The five contributions of the first part deal with the potential of Mead’s work for fields of historical research and to new historical contextualization of Mead’s thinking. The four studies on “Nature, Environment, Process” which form the second part of the volume are devoted to Mead’s relevance for the history and philosophy of nature. The third part on “Cognition, Conscience, Language” is the largest of the volume, it gathers six contributions devoted to the increasing relevance of Mead’s work for cognitive science.

2 Among the impressive contributions of the first part, Camic’s first chapter puts in lights the importance Mead gave in Movements to “research method” and the “concept of modern science” as his first topics. Whereas in the second chapter of the volume

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Daniel Huebner deals with Mead’s relevance for the history of science. In particular, Huebner broadly refers to Mead’s archival materials and secondary sources to shows how Mead’s interest in the history of science was always intertwined to his pedagogical convictions. In “Pragmatism and Historicism: Mead’s Philosophy of Temporality and the Logic of Historiography,” the third chapter of the first part, Hans Joas explores the similarities between American pragmatism and German historicism, claiming that pragmatists developed ideas that allow us to overcome the dichotomy between objectivism and relativism in historiography. In chapter four, Robert Westbrook shows Mead’s contributions to the idea of democratic inclusiveness superior even to Dewey’s views, whereas Karl-Siegbert Rehberg focuses the fifth chapter to a reevaluation of the relationship between Mead and the intellectual traditions that include phenomenologists like Max Scheler and philosophical anthropologists like Helmut Plessner and . Particularly noteworthy is Charles Camic’s first chapter, “Changing ‘Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century’: Historical Text and Historical Context,” which focuses on Mead’s Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. This volume is a posthumous compilation of notes based on some lectures Mead gave in 1928 in a course with the same title and subsequently edited into book form by Merritt H. Moore. This is one of the most neglected texts by Mead’s scholars, although, as Camic correctly argues, the circumstance that Movements is the result of edited course stenographic notes would hardly seem enough to relegate this work to the interpretative sideline, since the most famous Mind, Self, and Society is likewise the result of edited course notes. According to Camic, the reason for such scholars’ reluctance to tackle Movements is mainly attributable to “the book’s seemingly small payoff for readers interested in the fundamental Meadian topics of the self, the inter- subjective foundations of the social self, the role of language in social interaction, and so on […] but not concerned with considering these subjects in relation to Mead’s claim that human thought is fundamentally historical” (17-8). Camic traces back to the lectures Dewey gave at the University of Michigan in 1891-2 with the same title of Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, and which would be transplanted at the University of Chicago after 1894. He aims at reconstructing the genealogy of Mead’s 1915 and 1928 courses and identifying “what is historically specific about this course” (18). He then juxtaposes the three versions, using Dewey’s 1891-2 as the “historical baseline from which to understand how the course changed in Mead’s hands in connection with various contextual changes that occurred” (25). The most apparent overarching difference that Camic notes is that in both Mead courses the strongly teleological account of Dewey’s 1891-2 course is replaced with “an account cast in terms of historical contingency and structured in terms of the pragmatist view of history” (26). In particular, Mead’s pragmatist premise is that progress is not toward a known goal, rather it takes place through the appearance of problems and their solutions, the latter deriving from the creative capacity of human agents. In addition to this difference, Camic points other three changes across the three versions of the lectures. The first change is “the significantly increasing role occupied by science, as a research-based activity, among the principal movements of modern thought” (26). While Dewey speaks about the organized unity of intelligence which has mostly given way to specialized scientific research (according to his Hegelian narrative structure of the time), Mead’s 1915 and 1928 lectures draw out the implications of the movement of scientific thought in the nineteenth century by explaining that modern philosophy emphasized on method, not on metaphysics. As he claims, “the history of science since the Renaissance is really a

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history of research process.” In this view, pragmatism is emphasized by Mead as a system of philosophy out of the scientific method. The second change Camic suggests is “the growing presence and increasingly positive evaluation of the Darwinian idea of evolution” (27). Different from Dewey’s 1891-92 course Mead’s lectures are devoted to a description of Hegelian and Darwinian ideas of evolution, but if Hegel’s views are presented in a more critical light, those of Darwin are accepted and become in 1928 even more fundamental to Mead’s picture. Accordingly, Darwin’s doctrine of evolution is characterized as the principal result of the application of the proper scientific method and the guiding idea that modern science has undertaken in all investigations. A third change is “the declining stature of past efforts to produce knowledge of society” (28). In particular, Camic notes that Dewey and Mead devote roughly the same proportion of lectures to past social thinkers, but while Dewey’s tone is respectful to the various earlier social thinkers, Mead’s comments, on the contrary, are in line with a devaluation of the nineteenth-century social thinkers. He distinguishes between dogmatic theories and modern research science and relegates most of the earlier social writings to the ash heap of dogma. As Camic puts it: Mead’s dismissal is “his way of sweeping aside the pseudo ‘social science’ of the past, so as to clear the ground for the genuinely social- scientific work that is on the horizon” (30). Strictly related to this last point Camic addresses the question of local historical context in which Mead operated, claiming that the academic context that gave voice to an evolutionary consensus was particularly pervasive at the University of Chicago, probably more than at any other institution. In particular, there was the shared view among faculty members that, “the time had arrived for the so-called social sciences to become sciences by adopting the method of the modern research-based sciences” (33). This idea is openly expressed, for instance, by ’s question: “Why is not an Evolutionary Science?” (1898), elaborated during the years he was at the University of Chicago. Now, I find Camic’s juxtapositions of Dewey’s and Mead’s lectures useful and illuminating for understanding the connections between the two colleagues’ approaches to the history of thought as well as for pointing out the autonomous modifications and developments Mead gave to the course. However, one has to take into account that such changes were strictly related to a changing perspective occurred to Mead well before the ‘turning point’ of 1910, and in particular after 1892, when Mead and Dewey began to work together on both the theory of emotions and the theory of “organic circuit.” With this clarification in mind, it seems plausible to suppose that if Dewey had to teach again the same course on Movements after 1894, he would have a pragmatist point of view akin to the one Mead had in his 1915 and 1928 lectures.

3 Trevor Pearce’s “Naturalism and Despair: George Herbert Mead and Evolution in the 1880s” opens the second part of the volume, devoted to Mead’s relevance for the history and philosophy of nature. Pearce examines Mead’s encounter with evolution. He argues that Mead could fully embrace the evolutionary perspective as essential to philosophy, and not just as a gateway to agnosticism, only after he found in the work of and Hermann Lotze the “models for reconciliation of evolutionary science and traditional notions of what it meant to be human” (133). The sociologists Bradley H. Berwster and Antony J. Puddephatt devote their chapter to the original socio- environmental impulse of Mead’s work, aiming at exploring the potential of Mead’s ideas for environmental sociology. In particular, they argue that Mead’s theory of self- development, based on his creative re-conceptualization of dualities in their continual interdependent mutual relations, implies the possibility of a more ecological conception

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of self. In continuity with Berwster and Puddephatt, in chapter eight Daniel Cefaï presents a detailed analysis of numerous dissertations of sociologists trained at the University of Chicago in 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, showing the theoretical complexity of ecologies of social words. Cefaï finds in Mead’s understanding of ecology an important counterpoint to the human ecology practiced in Chicago in 1920s which, if extended to a political analysis of public problems, would also be a good starting point for a sociology of democracy. The last chapter of the second part is Michael L. Thomas’s “Mead, Whitehead, and the Sociality of Nature.” Thomas’s contribution is devoted to comparing Mead’s and Whitehead’s idea of reality as a temporal, constructive process, as well as their concepts of the present, sociality, and the common world. He aims to give the ground to new questions about the role of social sciences in creating social change and the function of the sciences “in cultivating the creativity of action” (188).

4 The third part, “Cognition, Conscience, Language” is the largest part of the volume. It gathers six contributions devoted to the increasing relevance of Mead’s work for cognitive science. The more recent pragmatist turn in has shed light to pragmatists’ importance to the field of research that broadly includes neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics and it is approximating more and more to an understanding of the social nature of mind and self. Until recent times, however, James’s and Dewey’s works more than Mead’s work have been considered useful tools to deal with the social nature of mind in embodied cognitive science. The contributions gathered in the third part of “The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead” show, instead, how more fruitful would be to reexamine the work of Mead. Most of these works are in fact sign of a germinal attention to Mead. For instance, Ryan McVeigh’s tenth chapter on “Mead, the Theory of Mind, and the Problem of Others” pays attention to the contribution of Mead’s theory of mind and self to overcome the problem of other minds. Kelvin Jay Booth’s eleventh chapter examines some claims on imitation and mind reading in apes, and he shows that there is no clear evidence for either and maintaining that Mead’s theory of gestural communication offers much more plausible and fruitful interpretation of apparent mind reading. More specifically, in his impressive contribution Booth argues that there is no substantial evidence for the presence of imitation or a theory of mind in non-human primates. Nothing in research on animal imitation shows that Mead is wrong in claiming that non-human animals do not imitate in the sense that a gesture itself calls out the same gesture in another individual. These abilities are distinctively human. And while, contrary to Mead, “there is strong evidence for imitation in young children that becomes the basis for taking the attitude of role of the other,” Mead was right in arguing that this is not an imitation instinct but rather a tendency for children to synchronize their movements with adults. According to Booth’s hypothesis, these abilities are the product of a “lack of structure and an openness to being structured by repeating the actions of others. Rather than instinct, it is more like a lack of instinct” (247). To explain his point of view on the matter Booth makes use of the idea developed by Marcel Kinsbourne of an interaction synchrony between infants and adults based on human brains’ predisposition to adopt rhythms that accord with those of others. More specifically, infants tend to synchronize their movements with the faces and voices of caregivers. This synchrony is based on the enjoyment of rhythm within repetition. It is particularly evident, as Booth maintains, in rhythmic music and in effectiveness of chants and rituals in which repetition brings structure to activity. Now, although Booth does not refer to Mead’s embryonic physiological explanation of emotion and Dewey’s behavioral theory of

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emotion, his hypothesis is especially noteworthy for its being in line with Mead's and Dewey’s theory. Rhythmical aspect is in fact for both Mead and Dewey at the basis of human actions. More specifically, according to Mead the arising of emotional tones of consciousness lies in the physiological reply to symbolic stimuli connected to the rhythmical repetition of physiological stimulation. These stimuli have an esthetic value expressed in war and love dances, and the instinctive acts on their basis, which call out a vaso-motor process connected to the sensorimotor system. This explanation seems akin to Booth’s idea that “we like rhythms and rituals” (242). It also seems useful in favor of Booth’s proposal to see imitation as “self-imitation” as well as a repetition of the behavior of others and a mutual doing. Furthermore, Booth’s referring to the abilities of children to synchronize their movements with adults as a lack of instincts, seems to be in line with Mead’s using the notion of “impulse” as distinct from instinct.

5 In chapter twelve Frithjof Nungesser takes up a comparison of Tomasello and Mead, focusing on the transition from animal to human-specific communication. Behind Nungesser’s proposal, there is a need to re-evaluate the transdisciplinary perspective of Mead’s work overcoming the tendency of nowadays to sever the connections between the diverse fields integrated into Mead’s arguments to the natural sciences. Thereby, his aim is double. On the one hand, he wants to show that Tomasello’s studies “can contribute to an empirically saturated and refined account of both the evolutionary and ontogenetic logic of cognitive development described by Mead” (254). On the other hand, he claims that Tomasello fails to “decouple the phylogenetic explanation of the emergence of human-specific social cognition and motivation in situations of cooperation from a systematic account of the intrinsic sociality of all human action” (267-8). The conclusion reached is that Tomasello’s conceptualization of human action must be revised in the light of Mead’s pragmatist principles. The thirteenth chapter, namely Joshua Daniel’s “Conscience as Ecological Participation and the Maintenance of Moral Perplexity,” is instead devoted to Mead’s conception of self, in particular to the I/Me distinction, and to its possible contribution to an understanding of conscience as related to situations of moral perplexity. In his essay, Daniel argues in favor of the maintenance of the moral perplexity related to moral problems resulting from plural, competing interests, thus moving away from Mead’s confidence about the possibility of the rational resolution of moral dilemmas.

6 Particularly noteworthy is Roman Madzia’s “Presentation and Re-Presentation: Language, Content, and the Reconstruction of Experience.” Madzia aims to problematize the neo-pragmatists original conviction that our relation to the world is at every instant mediated by language, so that “our primary relation to the world is the relation of a disembodied mind to an omnipresent linguistically structured content” (297). He does it demonstrating how Mead’s theory of symbolically constituted self and the world, together with the currently flourishing area of situated cognition, present “an interesting and empirically responsible alternative to the increasingly untenable contemporary positions of various forms of neo-pragmatist” (297). In particular, he argues that Mead “tried to think the cognition not primarily as a mental but bodily activity. In other words, we are bodies whose ways of conduct are, among other things, pre-structured by shareable significant practices (propositional language being just one of them)” (312). In the last chapter, Timothy Gallagher shows how Mead’s writings fit with the conceptual framework known as “Tinbergen’s Four Questions,” which informs research today on the nature of human speech. Gallagher maintains that Mead fares

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well on the four issues, going beyond them by developing a non-dualistic and non- reductionist theory of the relationship between language and consciousness.

7 In short, the contributions gathered in The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead testify that Mead’s work is still informing scholarship from different fields of knowledge, from the philosophy of history to sociology and social psychology, from anthropology and ethology to neurosciences, showing that no sharp lines are traceable between the different fields of research. The three areas of scholarship in the volume provide a detailed analysis of Mead’s importance to innovative areas of scholarship – as cognitive science, environmental studies, social ethics, historiography, history of the natural and social sciences, democratic epistemology and social ethics. They highlight the relevance of Mead’s interdisciplinary approach to the complexities of questions and problems of language, consciousness, natural and social evolution, offering original and unorthodox approaches to Mead, and testifying to the theoretical and methodological contribution that his thought still provides in various fields of knowledge.

AUTHORS

GUIDO BAGGIO Università degli Studi Roma Tre guido.baggio[at]uniroma3.it

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Ramón DEL CASTILLO, Ángel M. FAERNA, & Larry A. HICKMAN (eds.), Confines of Democracy. Essays on the Philosophy of Richard J. Bernstein Leiden-Boston, Brill Rodopi, 2015, 260 pages

Michela Bella

REFERENCES

Ramón DEL CASTILLO, Ángel M. FAERNA, & Larry A. HICKMAN (eds.), Confines of Democracy. Essays on the Philosophy of Richard J. Bernstein, Leiden-Boston, Brill Rodopi, 2015, 260 pages

1 This significant book is the main outcome of an international research program on “Public Sphere, Value-Conflict, and Social Experience: A Pragmatist Approach,” conducted in 2008-11 by Ramón del Castillo. Within this framework, the editors of the book organized, in 2010, an international conference on the philosophy of Richard J. Bernstein. The conference became the highlight of the program as far as the American philosopher not only represents a key-figure of the American philosophical tradition, but he also embodies the core intuition of the program. His philosophical style is a paradigm, and a source of inspiration, for contemporary philosophical reflections on ethical, social, and political “confines” issues.

2 The book is a collection of fifteen essays by international scholars accompanied by separate replies from Bernstein. It is subdivided into four sections; each one is focused on a specific aspect of his work or a confrontation with a particular author. The topics are chosen among the plurilateral and multifaceted reflections of Bernstein on democracy. The first section addresses the relationship between “Bernstein and American Pragmatism,” particularly focusing on his association with Richard Rorty.

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Robert Westbrook tells an affectionate tale of these two philosophers (“A Tale of Two Dicks”). His close examination of their biographical and intellectual background arrives at pointing out shared convictions and significant disagreements. In particular, considering Rorty’s and Bernstein’s presidential addresses, respectively given in 1979 and 1988 to the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, Westbrook argues that the essential components of their views can be gathered under the label of a “pragmatic ethos” (6). They both subscribed anti-foundationalism, as a way to deny that knowledge can be founded upon fix basements and that we have a special faculty to intuit these foundations; fallibilism as a constitutive element of inquiry that enables us to correct and enhance our “beliefs and thesis” through a continuous process of interpretation and criticism. Then, sociality, as a constitutive aspect of the self as well as a necessary requisite for scientific inquiries; and the pragmatist attention toward the radical contingency and pluralism that mark our lives and universe. As to the persistent differences that ‘make the difference’ between Bernstein’s and Rorty’s perspectives, Westbrook includes the aversion of Bernstein for Rorty’s insistent critiques against representationalist view of knowledge and traditional epistemology. This was only the pars destruens of the task indicated by Dewey to reconstruct philosophy. But in Westbrook’s view, the words of Bernstein hide both a more profound agreement and a more profound disagreement with Rorty’s claim for the abandonment of the concept of “experience.” Bernstein not only believed that Rorty had to move on to a constructive phase, but he was also worried by his friend’s too unkind treatment of the “realist intuitions” (7). In fact, Rorty was deeply concerned by the possible revive of foundationalist claims through pragmatism concepts. Bernstein and others worried that Rorty fell easy prey to the accusation of “bad relativism” by pressing pragmatism in the direction of a radical linguistic constructionism, or “linguistic idealism” (8). Relying upon Davidson, James, and Dewey’s conceptions of the relationship between causal pressures from non-human world and beliefs, Westbrook considers Rorty’s position as neither naïve nor at odds with Bernstein’s criticism of the misleading confusion between brute constraint and epistemic authority. The more profound disagreement was more general than the measure in which independent-world plays a constraint role in the formation of beliefs. Rorty’s insistence on epistemological concerns, in Bernstein and Westbrook’s reading, went hand in hand with “a misleading conception of human being-in-the-world as ubiquitously a knowledge-affair” (9). Bernstein claimed for an “enriched pragmatism” in the line of James, Dewey, and Mead, thus sharing the classic pragmatists’ insistence on the priority of conduct upon knowing.

3 The second main disagreement focused by Westbrook between Rorty and Bernstein regards their views of politics. As known, Rorty’s liberalism was at odds with Bernstein’s democratic stance. In his review of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Bernstein even went so far to assimilate Rorty’s irony to Mussolini’s cynism. Quite apart from inexact exaggerations, as he explains in his reply to Westbrook, anti- authoritarianism and creative private self-fulfillment were fundamental aspects of Rorty’s thinking. Bernstein instead confirms the description of himself made by Westbrook as an egalitarian democrat in the first instance. Unlike Rorty, his temperament and his engagement in Civil Rights movement, anti-Vietnam war movement, etc. testimony his faith in “creative participatory democracy.” Bernstein suggests that his commitment to democracy goes back not only to Dewey’s understanding of democracy as “primarily an individual way of life in a dialogical

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community” (43) but in a way also to his liberal Jewish background. In his essay, Gregory Pappas sharply criticizes Bernstein’s recently more conciliatory stance toward the neopragmatism of Rorty and Brandom. The desirable possibility to recollect classic and neo-pragmatism under the same umbrella is complicated, as aforementioned, for the radical stance of the latter against the notion of experience. Pappas sees two parties confronting on hardly reconcilable positions so that his opinion about the possibility of fostering a constructive conversation is less optimistic. In this respect, Bernstein reaffirms his pragmatist anti-dichotomist stance. He agrees with Pappas on the necessity of the concept of experience to pragmatism but does not abandon the contention he made in The Pragmatic Turn (2010). The task of the young scholars is now to look for creative ways to rethink and overcome theoretical conflicts internal to pragmatism. Integration, not division is the real challenge in the next future.

4 In the second section, on Epistemology and Hermeneutics, Núria Sara Miras Boronat recovers Bernstein’s diagnosis of the Cartesian pathology affecting modern epistemology. In his masterpiece, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (1983), Bernstein warned against the paralyzing effects on philosophical practices of a dichotomist interpretation of these terms. He uses Adorno’s metaphor of constellation and that of conversation as therapy to the single approach to philosophical issues adopted by modern thinkers. The individualistic examination of traditions, opinions, and prejudices affecting our perspectives is only apparently dissolved in the “linguistic turn” of the Twentieth Century. The “Cartesian anxiety” to reach foundational certainties through solipsistic investigation risks to be merely replaced by what may be called a “cultural ” in the linguistic turn epistemology. Boronat introduces here her original argument about the negative and positive connotations of the “ontology of community.” On the one hand, she uses Alexander’s label to criticize the “theoretical reification of a communal identity” (126) for it makes impossible to overcome the confines of our culture. On the other, she offers positive examples of philosophical hermeneutics’ use of this label that moves in the opposite direction. This direction is that of a pluralistic and dynamic transformation of communities according to Bernstein’s invitation to a philosophical pragmatic turn, and to Dewey’s precedent claim for a creative reconstruction of democracy. Following Bernstein’s encouragement to elaborate a “new conception of practical reason, more fallible and praxis-rooted” (130), Boronat’s anti-Cartesian strategy is to put in conversation theoretical conceptions useful to outline creative, pluralistic, and dynamic reconstructions of democracy. In particular, she uses Wittgenstein’s conception of “form of life” to reduce knowledge to a human practice among other human practices and to show our ease with the ordinary paradox to “act exercising reason without possessing ultimate reasons” (128). Against the claim of traditional epistemology, Gadamer denied the essential identification of truth and method (1960). His notion of “tradition” as something fluid and dialogical is another important notion of bearing in mind to avoid negative reification of communities. The last theoretical tool considered is Bernstein’s pluralism. As Boronat concludes, the lesson that Bernstein learned from pragmatism, and also from Arendt is crucial and adds personal responsibility and commitment. An “engaged fallibilistic pluralism” is the way to escape ideological pluralism as well as to cope with the irreducibility of human conditions.

5 The issue of the Cartesian anxiety is also addressed in Heidi Salaverría’s essay on “Critical Common Sense, Exemplary Doubting, and Reflective Judgment.” This essay is part of the third section of the book: “Good, Evil and Judgment.” Moving from

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Bernstein’s claim that uncertainty and fallibility are respectively requirements of a coherent epistemology and a responsible action, Salaverría proposes to investigate, from a pragmatist perspective, the relationship between uncertainty and responsible action. To this extent, she shows significant interconnections existing between the three subjects mentioned in the title as elaborated by the pragmatist tradition, Hanna Arendt, and Kant. The dynamic tension between common sense beliefs and doubting – what Peirce called critical commonsensism – is a powerful antidote against any form of dogmatic thinking, but leave us in the ordinary paradoxical situation of establishing criteria for judgment within our contingent and fallible common sense view. Salaverría explores through pragmatist glasses the state of uncertainty, “best described as exemplary doubting,” as investigated by Bernstein, Arendt, and Kant. She aims to develop the “enabling dimensions” (158) of uncertainty by showing its profound connection with common sense and reflective judgment. In this regard, the tension between action and contemplation that Bernstein detected in Arendt’s analysis of judgment results in an “ethical punchline” (159). Arendt’s hermeneutic interpretation of Kant’s sensus communis is relevant, and it might have been interesting to compare her view with Meads’s notion of “generalized other.” However, like Dewey, Arendt extends Kant’s aesthetic judgment to other fields of human life. Salaverría points out similarities and differences of Kant’s description of reflective judgment in uncertain situations concerning Dewey’s practical judgment and Peirce’s abduction. In particular, she stresses the enjoyment of the uncertain situation, and the function of exemplarity of the reflective judgment taken as a “whole situation, including the self” (163). Within the concrete context of the sensus communis, the experience of exemplarity brings in personal responsibility towards others as well as the connected problem of the identification of the self with a common sense view. Bernstein’s pragmatic interpretation of Arendt opened the way for a closer reading of Kant’s Third Critique by pragmatist scholars. Salaverría reaffirms the need to use Kant’s Third Critique, and Arendt’s reading of sensus communis, to deepen the enjoyable dimension of doubting as a way to change commons sense.

6 In his reply, Bernstein agrees with Salaverría that Kant’s Criticism of Judgment is too often overlooked by pragmatism scholars. As known, the quarrel about if and how Kantianism is compatible with pragmatism fundamental statements is a matter of current debate. Their common suggestion is to look for more consistent connections in another direction.

7 In the fourth and last part, on Democratic Vistas, Alicia García Ruiz opens her essay “Reconstruction of Democratic Experience” with a core question: “What does it mean to call oneself a democrat?” (199). According to Wendy Brown, democracy is now “an empty signifier to which one and all can attach their dreams and hopes.” This harsh conviction is the starting point of García Ruiz’s attempt to put Bernstein and Lefort in a dialogue. She points out three main features of Bernstein’s political view that seem to meet Lefort’s view. Democracy, for Bernstein, is “antifoundationalist, radical and creative” (202). By developing these characters, García Ruiz specifies that Bernstein’s abandonment of the quest for certainty is different from Rorty’s antifoundationalist view of democracy. The nature of radicalism deals instead with the kind of liberalism that a democrat should endorse. In this regard, Bernstein and Lefort’ analysis of the contemporary connection between democracy and a degenerated form of liberalism tackle a crucial point of current debate. At last, for Bernstein, the Deweyan aspect of creativity claims for personal ethical engagement in democracy. Institutions are not

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divinities, and our responsibility is an unavoidable factor if we take democracy as a praxis to endorse.

8 The book is included in the Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS), published by Brill Rodopi. This series collected some titles that explore contemporary problems of values and valuation in their embeddedness within particular fields and contexts. The editorial intention of the book is not merely to pay tribute to a great American philosopher. From the passionate style of the contributors’ essays, that is conveyed by the careful attention with which they confronted Bernstein’s works, as well as from Bernstein’s intense and honest replies, it is evident that a serious philosophical conversation continues to advance. The typical forward-looking attitude of Bernstein on democracy and social and political issues is in the line of Dewey. He envisioned democracy as a “task” to accomplish in creative ways and to pursue looking at its possible future steps. This classic American philosophical tradition finds a most convenient application in this book. A famous title of James’s works returns to my mind. What if to consider this book as Essays in Democracy or Essays in the Philosophy of Bernstein? According to a genuine Deweyan style – one that Bernstein declares to be most affectionate to as having influenced his reflections since he was writing his thesis – democracy is a “life style” and therefore a narrative, social, and dialogical style of dealing with human problems, precisely as Bernstein keeps doing in his life and work. His reflections on the confines of social and political terms as the public sphere, the role of knowledge and technology, the relationship between identity and community all go in the direction of anti-dichotomist pragmatism approach. As shown in this book, his lifelong efforts to bridge different continents of tradition, with a critical look, encourage younger scholars to walk his ways in favor of always more concrete, engaged, and passionate confrontation with different contextual aspects of the human life from an unavoidable, and fallible, pluralism of perspectives.

AUTHORS

MICHELA BELLA Università degli Studi di Roma Tre mica_mb[at]hotmail.it

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Richard SHUSTERMAN (with Yann TOMA), The Adventures of the Man in Gold / Les aventures de l’Homme en Or (Bilingual Edition: English / French) Paris, Hermann, 2017, 128 pages, 40 illustrations

Stefano Marino

REFERENCES

Richard SHUSTERMAN (with Yann TOMA), The Adventures of the Man in Gold / Les aventures de l’Homme en Or (Bilingual Edition: English / French), Hermann, Paris 2017, 128 pages, 40 illustrations

1 The Adventures of the Man in Gold / Les aventures de l’Homme en Or is an interesting, original and, to some extent, also “strange” or “bizarre” book by the American philosopher Richard Shusterman. The book appears in bilingual edition, with Shusterman’s text published both in the original English version and in French translation, and is structured in a very clear way: Preface, three chapters, biographies of the author and all contributors, and acknowledgments. The book is also enriched by many illustrations of the French visual artist Yann Toma (defined by Shusterman as “a faithful guide, playful companion, and creative co-conspirator,” 39), who provided the images for this “hybrid” book. Indeed, Toma’s illustrations – consisting of video stills and photographs taken with an original artistic technique developed by him and called Radiant Flux: “a form of drawing with light” (22) – are essential to the book’s overall meaning and significance that, in turn, is quite multilayered and complex.

2 As is well-known, Shusterman is a philosopher working in the pragmatist tradition, especially in the field of pragmatist aesthetics that he has also developed since the late 1990s in the direction of a specifically body-centred or body-focused philosophy,

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eventually “baptized” with the name of somaesthetics in the tenth chapter of the second edition of Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (2000) and elaborated in subsequent works such as Performing Live (2000), Body Consciousness (2008), and Thinking through the Body (2012). Defined as the critical, meliorative study of the experience and use of one’s body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aisthesis) and creative self-fashioning, and also as a discipline of theory and practice, somaesthetics may be the ultimate achievement of Shusterman’s long-time quest for a broadening of the field of aesthetics beyond the traditional limits of the philosophy of fine art – as aesthetics has been often understood since the early nineteenth century and is still understood today in analytic philosophy, for example. But to some extent somaesthetics also stems from Shusterman’s dissatisfaction with certain trends in pragmatist philosophy itself, as testified for example by the ninth chapter of Pragmatist Aesthetics in which he, against Rorty’s model of a postmodern art of living that is focused only on the textualist figures of the intellectual ironist and the strong poet, rather advocates a more embodied pragmatist aesthetic aimed at living beauty: that is, a kind of pragmatism that does not ignore the sensual bodily pleasures and the pursuit of somatic well-being, and may potentially include an aesthetics of full-bodied enjoying, an aesthetic life that also cultivates the pleasures and disciplines of the body. At the same time, as many of his articles and books clearly show, pragmatism, in general, and somaesthetics, in particular, are understood by Shusterman in a very broad and open-minded way, namely as disciplinary frameworks that can prove useful to structurally link and fruitfully unify different body-related perspectives and studies, also originated from different contemporary traditions (phenomenology, post- , etc.) or non-Western philosophical-religious cultures (Buddhism, Daoism, etc.).

3 It is important to bear all this in mind in order to properly understand the particular enterprise undertaken by Shusterman (and Toma) in The Adventures of the Man in Gold. As a matter of fact, I have previously used such terms as “strange,” “bizarre,” “hybrid” and “multilayered” precisely to emphasize the unconventional and pluralistic nature of this book, which – to use the rap terminology that Shusterman himself sometimes adopts – represents a sort of “new remix” of philosophy, autobiography, narrative fiction and visual art. In particular, what the reader experiences since the very first pages is the doubling, so to speak, of the main character of the book, inasmuch as the narrative that constitutes the principal text of this book is centred on both Richard Shusterman and the Man in Gold, i.e. the character impersonated by Shusterman when he wears a particular skin-tight golden suit provided by Toma and metaphorically called “magic skin” in the book. So, on the one hand, the book provides an accurate account of the dates and places where Shusterman incarnated the Man in Gold’s performances, but on the other hand, combined with this precise chronology, the narrative also presents the “poetic” or “mystical” view of the same events from the Man in Gold’s own perspective.

4 As Shusterman explains, “the text began as an effort to simply record the history of [his] artistic collaboration with Yann [Toma] for a possible art show,” but then “the Man in Gold’s perspective [kept] insistently intruding itself into the narrative, and its romantic energy soon overwhelmed [him], taking control of the storyline while respecting the mundane chronology of the facts” (7-8). The book actually rests upon this kind of intertwinement between the autobiographical and rational perspective of the first-person authorial voice, on the one side, and the narrative-fictional and

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somehow mystical perspective of the Man in Gold’s experiences from his first appearance until his final manifestation, on the other. So, if I have previously used the verb “to impersonate” to describe Shusterman’s act of wearing a skin-tight golden suit (“magic skin”) in order to prepare himself for making the poses and performances that Toma captures in artistic photos and videos, I must now add that this experience is often referred to by Shusterman as a sort of strange possession, as if during those performances it was actually the Man in Gold who “impersonated” him. Consider, for example, the episode of the Man in Gold’s birth dramatically narrated on pages 30-2: “something inside me bristled at my confinement […]. I could no longer stay motionless. Some inner force compelled me to quiver and shake with irrepressible energy […]. I no longer knew what I was doing. More precisely, I was no longer I […]. I lost my sense of self as the Man in Gold possessed me.” One philosophical theme of the book is the idea of “the instability and transformational potential of the self through the powers of possession” (8), which Shusterman highlights through such concepts as “transfiguration” and through “lend[ing] his own silent body as the somatic medium for the Man in Gold” (19-21).

5 Notwithstanding the fundamental intertwinement of the two perspectives (namely, Shusterman’s and the Man in Gold’s) on which the book’s whole structure and meaning rest, it is useful for the explanatory purposes of this review to distinguish them. The book begins with a Preface from Shusterman’s first-person perspective explaining the three main factors that led him to engage in his adventures with performance art and his collaboration with Toma. The second factor involves an intimate romantic encounter that resulted in the beginning of the end of a good marriage (12), while the third factor simply consists of Shusterman’s encounter with Toma, who already knew his “experimental and somatic approach to philosophy” and thus thought Shusterman “might enjoy experimenting with his photographic art of Flux Radiants, in which he tries to capture and visually represent the energy or aura of a person by tracing it with lights” (13). The first factor, instead, is strictly philosophical and actually fully understandable in the spirit of the kind of Deweyan pragmatism that Shusterman favours. In fact, a persistent question he repeatedly had to face in the various art schools where he lectured about somaesthetics and/or gave practical workshops in its methods was: “How does somaesthetics apply to contemporary art?” But Shusterman’s usual line of response – namely, “that the soma (with its sensory, motor, and affective resources) is the medium through which we both create and appreciate works of art and that therefore improved somatic mastery could generate better aesthetic experience” – did not completely satisfy the artists, who wanted “a more concrete and practical application of [his] theory in contemporary artistic creation.” Collaborating with a visual artist like Toma gave Shusterman the possibility of making his pragmatist aesthetics and somaesthetics “more complete by including also the artist’s experience,” beside obviously accounting also for “the observer’s or interpreter’s point of view” (9-10).

6 After having made explicit these basic presuppositions in the Preface, in the three chapters of the book Shusterman provides detailed information and explanation about the “mysterious birth” of l’Homme en Or, i.e. about his first performance in June 2010 at the medieval abbey of Royaumont (17 ff.), and also about his subsequent appearances, or better – as if he was a ghost or an extraterrestrial alien (42) – his “apparitions.” The list of the Man in Gold’s performances includes those that actually took place in Royaumont and Paris (June 2010 and February 2011), in Cartagena (April 2011), along

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South Florida’s Atlantic coast (January 2012), again in Paris (May 2012), and finally in Denmark (May 2014). Shusterman’s narration is accurate and – as far as his literary style is concerned – enjoyable, and the experience of the reader is similar to that of being progressively guided through the various moments and passages of a stimulating journey. It is worth noting that the narrative of the Man in Gold’s performances all around the world is also backed up with a few funny anecdotes about people’s amused or sometimes shocked reactions at the sight of a “60-year old philosopher’s figure in a glitzy skin-tight body stocking that had been designed for lithe young dancers,” “an ordinary middle-aged philosopher [transformed] into a golden work of art” (21-2). These humorous elements show Shusterman to be also a philosopher gifted with the quality of a certain self-irony.

7 The events – both internal and external, i.e. both inner sensations and moods, and encounters with things and other people too – experienced by the Man in Gold, and thus told from a third-person perspective by Shusterman (who functions here both as an omniscient narrator and as the individual whose body “hosts” the bizarre creature immortalized by Toma’s “somaflux” photographic art), constitute a series of adventures that form a sort of reunification journey, indeed a twofold reunification. First, it involves a personal reconciliation of the sometimes all-too rational Western thinker with some of his unconscious thoughts (“some people believe [the Man in Gold] gave birth to himself by inseminating the dreams of the philosopher, whose sense of identity he profoundly and quite visibly unsettled,” 18), along with insights coming from the Asian philosophical theories and practices Shusterman studied. Second, this philosophical tale involves a sort of family reunification with the imaginary figures of the Man in Gold’s progenitors, more specifically with the imaginary character he claims as his mother: Wu Xiaoxing, a tiny dancing goddess, whose beauty and love the Man in Gold seems to long for throughout the whole book. As for the Man in Gold’s father, Shusterman briefly explains: “He likes to think he has none” (18). The desire and struggle for reunification with the motherly figure of Wu Xiaoxing permeate many passages of the book. We see this, for example when Shusterman informs the reader about the Man in Gold’s feeling, in one of his performances, to be “as if he were back in his beautiful mother’s womb” (94), or about his fundamental tendency to express himself in gesture and posture (“gestural communication [being] far more dramatic and potently expressive than any words” and thus leading to his defining identity as “a philosopher without words”), or his desire “to emulate the dancing beauties that he loves and learns from, incarnations of the divine Wu Xiaoxing” (58). The mythical mother’s presence also pervades the book’s dramatic and romantic final episode where the Man in Gold finally meets the “treasured beauty” of a sculpted maiden named Wanmei, “excell[ing] all others in loveliness and spirit,” and described as an “ideal archetype” for female beauty and also as “the long-sought incarnation of the loving loveliness he saw in his mother but had never held in his arms” (89).

8 In developing this artistic identity and fictional narrative of the Man in Gold, Shusterman reasserts the importance of the soma in his version of pragmatism while elaborating on some basic philosophical themes that shape this creature’s complex personality. The Man in Gold is driven by two great forces: love and fear, in turn divided into love of beauty and love of knowledge; while his fear is of rejection, of being denied recognition or misunderstood. These themes, along with the Man in Gold’s eschewing of “discursive language, recognizing it as the glory of philosophy but also an imprisoning source of its oppressive folly” (61), are all also connected, in Shusterman’s

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narration, to the unconscious desire for reconciliation with his alter ego’s mother: “the love that is his hope and mission […] provides the shining energy that radiates from his golden skin. With her divine knowledge of mystic Wu Xiaoxing extracted the base elements of desire buried in my pragmatist mind and then refined them into a golden elixir of love which she poured into the Man in Gold’s heart and also hammered into his finely gilded suit, a shining coat of armor to shape and animate his soma, directing it toward purity of passion” (64).

9 In conclusion, The Adventures of the Man in Gold is a book that surely connects back to Shusterman’s strictly philosophical work but can also be interpreted as a potential and indeed promising new orientation for it. More precisely, it is a further development of his tendency – that has always been quintessential to pragmatism as such – to overcome any strong and supposedly insurmountable barrier between theory and practice, and rather build new bridges to fill the gap between them, without for this reason abruptly suppressing the distinction itself but actually reinterpreting it in a more functional way rather than as an ontological dichotomy. In this specific case, the difference between theory and practice is embodied by that between philosophical aesthetics – which, because of its very nature, is a theoretical enterprise – and artistic experimentation – which, instead, is essentially practical, or more precisely “poietic,” “productive” (adapting here for my purposes Aristotle’s famous praxis/poiesis distinction). The multilayered character of The Adventures of the Man in Gold, as I have tried to show, seems to go precisely in the direction of a fruitful intersection between philosophy, narrative fiction and visual art – thus proving to be fully consistent with Shusterman’s pragmatist mission of trying to use to do philosophy and to introduce artistic experimentation into philosophical aesthetics.

AUTHORS

STEFANO MARINO Università degli Studi di Bologna stefano.marino4[at]unibo.it

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, IX-2 | 2017