Genuine Belief and Genuine Doubt in Peirce (original) (raw)

Confidence, Evidential Weight, and the Theory-Practice Divide in Peirce

Peirce is articulate and emphatic about the need for inquirers to remain ready to learn while also resisting disabling and fraudulent versions of skepticism. The need to learn and the need to believe do not, however, combine readily. Peirce sometimes copes with this tension by distinguishing sharply between science, in which the will to learn reigns supreme, and practice, in which the need for confidence predominates. As several recent commentators have noted, this strategy carries costs of its own. Distinguishing too sharply between theory and practice can itself seem implausible and can leave Peirce with an excessively Cartesian approach to science and an excessively tenacious approach to matters of vital importance. But without such a distinction, the tension with which we began threatens to return. After a critical engagement with recent treatments of the theory-practice divide in Peirce, this essay suggests that the task has been somewhat misconceived. Instead of trying to figure out how to combine the right amount of pure doubt with the right amount of pure belief, we can make progress by recognizing that the doubt-belief theory allows for motivated variations in the confidence with which beliefs are held. This recognition allows Peirce the flexibility needed to motivate sensibly distinct norms governing science and practice. Peirce’s innovative discussion of weight of evidence in “The Probability of Induction,” I suggest, helps us to see that, even in 1878, Peirce’s theory of inquiry contained resources that help render this tension tractable.

Peirce and the Logic of Scepticism

This was my undergraduate thesis. I am happy to share if you'd like. Please just get in touch. The takeaway is that to have a problem is to already have certain constraints. Science is only possible for those who believe there is a world out there to learn about. A starting assumption that proves fruitful.

Genuine Doubt and the Community in Peirce's Theory of Inquiry

Southwest Philosophy Review, 1996

"Genuine Doubt and the Community in Peirce's Theory of Inquiry." Southwest Philosophy Review (Spring 1996) Peirce defined "inquiry" as the passage from genuine doubt to settled belief; in the long run, a properly-functioning scientific community's inquiries must converge toward Truth. To explain why Peirce believed such convergence is necessary, I examine two notions: community and genuine doubt. Genuine doubt, I find, not only makes convergence possible, but also constitutes the starting point of most inquiries. The exception is philosophical inquiry, where, increasingly in Peirce's later writings, "genuine doubt" is supplanted by "cultivated doubt." This shift creates a tension in his general account of inquiry which I attempt to moderate by offering two interpretations.

Two Conceptions of Weight of Evidence in Peirce's *Illustrations of the Logic of Science*

Weight of evidence continues to be a powerful metaphor within formal approaches to epistemology. But attempts to construe the metaphor in precise and useful ways have encountered formidable obstacles. This paper shows that two quite different understandings of evidential weight can be traced back to one 1878 article by C.S. Peirce. One conception, often associated with I.J. Good, measures the balance or net weight of evidence, while the other, generally associated with J.M. Keynes, measures the gross weight of evidence. Conflations of these two notions have contributed to misunderstandings in the literature on weight. This paper shows why Peirce developed each conception of weight, why he distinguished them, and why they are easily mistaken for one another.

A New Peircean Response to Radical Skepticism

Contemporary Pragmatism, 2018

The radical skeptic argues that I have no knowledge of things I ordinarily claim to know because I have no evidence for or against the possibility of being systematically fed illusions. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in pragmatic responses to skepticism inspired by C. S. Peirce. This essay challenges one such influential response and presents a better Peircean way to refute the skeptic. The account I develop holds that although I do not know whether the skeptical hypothesis is true, I still know things I ordinarily claim to know. Although it will emerge that this reply appears similar to a classic contextualist response to radical skepticism, it avoids two central problems facing that response.

The role of emotional interpretants in Peirce's theory of belief and doubt

The theory of emotional interpretant is mentioned only a few times in Peirce's works. My hypothesis is that if Peirce did not develop this concept through and through, and reflected on it only very late in his writings, it is because it had been implicit in almost all his previous epistemological and semiotic works. The qualitative nature which defines belief and doubt makes the whole theory of inquiry rely on feelings, and is a consistent part of the characterization of beliefs as dispositions. In spite of this, objectivity is still preserved.

Review of Peirce's Illustrations of the Logic of Science

Finally someone has saved future Peirce scholars from having to piece together for themselves the comparative points in Peirce's development as it concerns his most widely read essays. The significance of the Popular Science Monthly articles of 1877–78 for pragmatism and for Peirce's thought is universally known. Cornelis de Waal here brings together the comprehensive story of these articles and their eventual fate. He documents it in a way that anyone can grasp, and through careful study of this text, many essentials relating to the development of Peirce's thought can be learned.

Plato, Peirce and the Fixation of Belief

This paper advances two claims that run against the grain of recent scholarship on the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. First, it argues that Peirce's "The Fixation of Belief" is not to be understood exclusively in terms of its epistemic import but provides key insights into how moral ideals might be fixed in an ethical theory constructed along pragmatic lines. This argument stands in contrast to the prevailing sense that Peirce-as opposed to the majority of figures in the American philosophical canon-had precious little to contribute to a discussion of ethics. Second, it suggests that the ethical import of "The Fixation of Belief" can be seen by way of a comparison between Peirce's essay and the Euthyphro, in which Plato asks a similar question concerning the justification of ethico-religious belief