[peirce-l] Re: What

[Clark Goble]

On Oct 8, 2006, at 7:52 PM, Juffras, Angelo wrote: Tenacity is not a method of inquiry. A person who is tenacious does not doubt and hence has no annoying disturbance that would require him to inquire. He knows. I'm not sure that is true.  There are those who doubt in many ways but their tenacity in effect "blocks" the practical effects of this doubt.  One could I suppose call this a kind of double-belief.  Exactly how Peirce would treat it I'm not sure.  But I think we all know examples of this.  The classic one I use as an example is a person who knows their spouse is cheating on them but is tenacious in stating and defending the fidelity of their spouse.   I honestly don't recall Peirce addressing the problem of competing and contradictory beliefs.  Does anyone know off the top of their head anything along those lines?  The closest I can think of is the passage of 1908 to Lady Welby where he talks about the three modalities of being.  Relative to the first, that of possibility, he talks of Ideas.  One might say that the *idea* of infidelity, for example, can be accepted as well as its contradiction.  So perhaps that's one way of dealing with it. The question then becomes how inquiry relates to these ideas.  I'd suggest, as you do, that it would cut off inquiry, but not because of knowledge.  Rather, as Joe said earlier, it is the individual doing what they can to stave off the loss of a threatened belief.  I think this is that they don't *want* discussion to leave the world of possibility and move to the realm of facts (the second of the three universes). It is interesting to me how many people do *not* want to move from possibilities (how ever probable) to the realm of facts or events. I think rather that tenaciousness is, as Joe suggested, more closely related to appeals to authority and their weakness.  I'd also note in The Fixation of Belief that Peirce suggests that doubt works by irritation.  "The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief.  I shall term this struggle *inquiry* though it must be admitted that it is sometimes not a very apt designation."  (EP 1:114)   To me that suggests something like a small boil or irritation on ones skin or small cut in ones mouth.  One can neglect it but eventually it will lead to a change in action.  As Peirce notes it may not seem like what we call inquiry.  Thus his "sometimes not a very apt designation."  But so long as it changes our habits, even if it takes time and is slow, then inquiry is progressing. It might be an error to only call a process of inquiry what we are conscious of as a more directed burden of will.  Which I believe was Jim W's point a few days ago. Clark Goble --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com