The Being thread didn’t really go as far as I expected, although I know many people are out of town right now. (And I will be next week) I thought I’d raise a different topic.
At various times people have been discussing Peirce and religion. I’ll confess I’ve not followed such exchanges closely. My interest in the Neglected Argument tends to be towards how it illuminates abduction rather than God. It’s always struck me that while Peirce considers himself Christian his beliefs are much closer to an odd mix of Buddhism and deism. An example of this is the writing on miracles and in particular immortality. Say for example CP 6.553: Besides, scientific studies have taught us that human testimony, when not hedged about with elaborate checks, is a weak kind of evidence. In short, the utter unlikeness of an immortal soul to anything we cannot doubt, and the slightness of all the old arguments of its existence, appear to me to have tremendous weight. The question I’d ask is less about Peirce’s religious beliefs than his more epistemological stances. Let’s say he has a recurring encounter with a ghost (or pick any other entity we don’t have compelling scientific evidence for like aliens to avoid the religious connotations). At what point does he think that it’s true there is a ghost present? My sense is that Peirce’s epistemology more or less boils down to we have to believe what we can’t doubt. While in various places he does distinguish this from epistemology proper, it seems that what can’t be doubted after sufficient inquiry is justified belief. So Peirce writes for instance, Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must regard as infallible, absolute truth. (“What Pragmatism Is” CP 5.416) The argument against this as epistemology is that we can draw a fairly clear distinction between being unable to doubt and being justified in ones beliefs. That is Peirce’s focus is the state of our mind with doubt. But justification in epistemology is much more about ethics and whether one should doubt. The old ought vs is distinction would seem to apply here. One solution is that the ethics is not tied to some static conception of justification but having done ones duty in terms of inquiry. The other, more common, view is to apply to Peirce an externalist epistemology. (Maybe not the same as Alston’s or Plantinga’s but in the same general area) One sort of externalism is to tie epistemology not to the individual but to the community (as Peirce does in his Critical Common Sensism) The problem with more traditional epistemology of the “justified true belief” sort is that elements of justification could only be such if the knower knew them. But to know them entails some connection with doubt. Once we make that move it seems justification doesn’t add anything not already encompassed by conditions of doubt. That is we get an context-sensitive epistemology where the context sensitivity is to knowledge of the very conditions of knowledge. My sense is that that which we don’t doubt is to be considered epistemologically justified but not infallible. This from Peirce’s famous statement “It is possible that two plus two is not equal to four, but we do not doubt it for a moment. Mathematical reasoning is beyond all doubt, but fallible." (CP 2.197) Of course this is uncontroversial in epistemology where conditions of justification typically don’t guarantee truth in non-foundationalist epistemologies. (Which these days is nearly all epistemology) This takes me back to the immortality statement. Peirce might be having it both ways there. It’s one thing to acknowledge human witnesses are untrustworthy. But of course the individual themselves typically can’t doubt their own testimony which is their beliefs. How is this to be reconciled?
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