Continuing from Lowell Lecture 1.5 (CP 1.608, EP2:251):
609. There is also such a thing as a general logical intention. But it is not emphasized for the reason that the will does not enter so violently into reasoning as it does into moral conduct. I have already mentioned the logical norms, which correspond to moral laws. In taking up any difficult problem of reasoning we formulate to ourselves a logical resolution; but here again, because the will is not at such high tension in reasoning as it often is in self-controlled conduct, these resolutions are not very prominent phenomena. Owing to this circumstance, the efficient determination of our nature, which causes us to reason in each case as we do, has less relation to resolutions than to logical norms. The act itself is, at the instant, irresistible in both cases. But immediately after, it is subjected to self-criticism by comparison with a previous standard which is always the norm, or rule, in the case of reasoning, although in the case of outward conduct we are too often content to compare the act with the resolution. In the case of general conduct, the lesson of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is frequently not much taken to heart and little influences future conduct. But in the case of reasoning an inference which self-criticism disapproves is always instantly annulled, because there is no difficulty in doing this. Finally, all the different feelings which, as we noticed, accompanied the different operations of self-controlled conduct equally accompany those of reasoning, although they are not quite so vivid. 610. The parallelism is thus perfect. Nor, I repeat, could it fail to be so, if our description of the phenomena of controlled conduct was true, since reasoning is only a special kind of controlled conduct. The next section, omitted in CP 1, is from EP2:251-2. Let us now consider the defendant argument. It rests on two premisses, to wit: first, that it is unthinkable that a conclusion should be drawn for any other reason than that it will be accompanied by a feeling of logicality; second, that if all reasoning is determined by our feeling of logicality, there can be no distinction of good and bad reasoning. But both these premisses are false. Even if our reasonings were all determined by a feeling of logicality, still so long as we were able to compare them with norms based on the consideration of the relation of our thoughts to facts, in case the norms were not satisfied, our feeling of logicality would instantly be reversed. In no way could the distinction of good and bad reasoning be destroyed short of destroying the power of comparing it, after it was made, with such norms. The truth is that the defendants confound the judgment of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the norms which is made subsequent to the act of inference with a feeling accompanying that act. The first premiss is still more manifestly false. Nothing can be more monstrous than to say that it is unthinkable that a reasoning should be based on anything but a feeling of logicality which is a part of it. How can an act be caused by a feeling which does not exist until the act exists? Or who ever reasons, "This seems to me true and therefore it must be true"? Yet even this is not adopting the reasoning because that very reasoning seems sound. That is a thing too absurd to be formulated in words. The only thing without which it is unthinkable that reasoning should take place is a determination of one's nature causing it. But the defendants confound this with that feeling in the act which they also confound with the judgment of satisfaction of the norm. Besides this principal fault of the defendant argument, there is another that I cannot pass over. When it is said that all inference "assumes that what seems to be good reasoning is so," there is an inaccuracy of expression. For an inference assumes nothing but its premisses. But if we understand this to mean that no reasoning would be sound unless what seemed to be good reasoning were good reasoning, I reply that according to my description of the phenomena of reasoning, the only fact which the soundness of all reasoning and the truth of all human thought really depends [on] is that a man's conjectures are somewhat better than purely random propositions. The idea that the criticism of the criticism of reasoning involves some new reasoning overlooks the fact that the criticism is sustained by the original inference. "Reasoning," says Hobbes, "is computation," and although this is extravagant, yet it is quite true that the criticism of the criticism of reasoning simply repeats the process, like adding up a column of figures a second time. It is conceivable that a blunder should be repeated, but after the column has been added, say ten times, and always with the same result, the arithmetician has no longer any discernible doubt to be quieted; and to add the column an eleventh time would be quite purposeless. In a strict theoretical sense, it is not certain that twice two are four, since it is conceivable that a blunder that might occur once has occurred every time the addition has been performed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think you will agree that the defendant argument is a thoroughly bad one, and in particular that the question of what is good reasoning and what bad is not a question of whether the mind approves it or not, but is a question of fact. A method that tends to carry us toward the truth more speedily than we could otherwise progress is good; a method that has a tendency to carry us away from the truth is utterly bad, whether we naturally approve of it or not. This great fallacy once overthrown which governs more or less the German logics, CP 1.611 begins here (EP2:252). 611. what does right reasoning consist in? It consists in such reasoning as shall be conducive to our ultimate aim. What, then, is our ultimate aim? Perhaps it is not necessary that the logician should answer this question. Perhaps it might be possible to deduce the correct rules of reasoning from the mere assumption that we have some ultimate aim. But I cannot see how this could be done. If we had, for example, no other aim than the pleasure of the moment, we should fall back into the same absence of any logic that the fallacious argument would lead to. We should have no ideal of reasoning, and consequently no norm. It seems to me that the logician ought to recognize what our ultimate aim is. It would seem to be the business of the moralist to find this out, and that the logician has to accept the teaching of ethics in this regard. But the moralist, as far as I can make it out, merely tells us that we have a power of self-control, that no narrow or selfish aim can ever prove satisfactory, that the only satisfactory aim is the broadest, highest, and most general possible aim; and for any more definite information, as I conceive the matter, he has to refer us to the esthetician, whose business it is to say what is the state of things which is most admirable in itself regardless of any ulterior reason. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903
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