Over the years I’ve gone back and forth in terms of how to think of Peirce’s conception of truth. I’m here speaking of the notion of truth and less the historical question of what Peirce believe at which times. What brought this about was our discussion off and on over the past few months of Peirce’s modal realism starting in the late 1890’s. Prior to that time while he recognized the need to switch to counterfactual discussions in say the Pragmatic Maxim he didn’t fully embrace modal realism until quite late.
The question is what his modal realism does for his conception of truth as what inquiry would lead to in the long run with an idealized community. Way back years ago when I was much more of a novice in Peirce my gut tended to read this “in the long run” as something actual. Then over time (primarily due to arguments made here) I switched over to just thinking of it as a regulative notion. That is we can talk about what we mean by truth but there’s not some actual truth that grounds our statements as true. This is the way I suspect the majority of Peirceans think about it. However with modal realism, if continued inquiry and continuity are possible, they are real as possible. This means that this “in the long” run of the universe acting has as a real possibility this ‘end.’ It might not be actual but it is real. (In a way analogous to how Peirce treats God) Does this seem about right?
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