Showing papers in "Transactions of The Charles S Peirce Society in 2019"

Beyond the Instinct-Inference Dichotomy: A Unified Interpretation of Peirce's Theory of Abduction

Abstract: I examine and resolve an exegetical dichotomy between two main interpretations of Peirce’s theory of abduction, namely, the Generative Interpretation and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation. According to the former, abduction is the instinctive process of generating explanatory hypotheses through a mental faculty called insight. According to the latter, abduction is a rule-governed procedure for determining the relative pursuitworthiness of available hypotheses and adopting the worthiest one for further investigation—such as empirical tests—based on economic considerations. It is shown that the Generative Interpretation is inconsistent with a fundamental fact of logic for Peirce—i.e., abduction is a kind of inference—and the Pursuitworthiness Interpretation is flawed and inconsistent with Peirce’s naturalistic explanation for the possibility of science and his view about the limitations of classical scientific method. Changing the exegetical locus classicus from the logical form of abduction to insight and economy of research, I argue for the Unified Interpretation according to which abduction includes both instinctive hypotheses-generation and rule-governed hypotheses-ranking. I show that the Unified Interpretation is immune to the objections raised successfully against the Generative and the Pursuitworthiness interpretations.

Democracy and Moral Inquiry: Problems of the Methodological Argument

Abstract: Recent decades have seen the rise of arguments for democracy based on the ​epistemic ​goods that democratic societies, institutions, and decision-making are supposed to provide. Within contemporary pragmatism, Cheryl Misak has proposed the most extensive and carefully argued defense of democracy in this vein. At the center of this argument is a methodological principle that Misak derives from pragmatist sources, notably from Charles S. Peirce. I will argue that this methodological principle rests on an implausibly narrow notion of belief. To explain its ​prima facie ​appeal, I will distinguish three considerations concerning the connection between belief and evidence, on the one hand, and belief and experience, on the other. Finally, I will point out that these problems are not limited to the methodological argument but extend to many similar arguments for democracy on epistemic grounds.

Normativity and Naturalism in “The Fixation of Belief”

Abstract: Abstract:Cheryl Misak has presented a reading of Peirce's \"The Fixation of Belief \" that preserves both the essay's ambitious naturalism (reflected in the thesis that inquiry aims only at the settlement of opinion) and its sensible normativism (reflected in the thesis that belief aims at the truth in some important sense). This essay fleshes out Misak's proposal, formulates some challenges to it, and articulates an alternative. Misak's argument rests on the plausible claim that \"it is very hard really to settle beliefs.\" As she interprets this claim, it could also be expressed as \"it is very hard really to settle beliefs.\" Misak extracts a potentially strong source of normativity from Peirce's notion of belief; that concept, she argues, has sensitivity to experience and argumentation built into it. This paper criticizes Misak's interpretation and proposes to do without the sensitivity condition on which she relies. It instead proposes to stick closely to the surface reading of Peirce's paper, according to which the needed normativity can and must be drawn from the notion of stable or settled belief.

"My Inordinate Reluctance to Repeat a Word." A Lexicometric Report on Peirce's Collected Papers

Abstract: Abstract:In this report, we present the results of two lexicometric analyses performed on a digitalized version of Charles S. Peirce's Collected Papers. We calculated the most frequently cited terms in the corpus and its most overrepresented terms, as compared with a sample of the Corpus of Historical American. Combining both analyses allowed us to produce a shorter list of the \"most important terms\" of the Collected Papers, deemed to be distinctive of Peirce's philosophical interests. One of the most significant findings is the quantitative evidence that Peirce's work is primarily concerned with truth and propositions. We suggest that such statistical analyses offer an interesting overview of Peirce's philosophical interests in an unprecedented way.