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Scientific Reasoning and the Summum Bonum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

W. E. Schlaretzki
W. E. Schlaretzki*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Abstract

C. S. Peirce argued that inductive reasoning and probability judgments are adequately secure only in the indefinitely long run, and that therefore it is illogical to employ these modes of inference unless one's chief devotion is to the interests of an ideal community of all rational beings, past, present, and future. He thought of this devotion as a “social sentiment”, involving self-sacrifice. An examination of his argument shows that the attitude presupposed by his conceptions of induction and probability is in fact not self-sacrificial and is social only in a very special sense. Furthermore, it seems doubtful that this attitude is characteristic of practicing scientists; and this is a reason for questioning Peirce's analysis of induction and probability.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 1960 , pp. 48 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 by Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

This is a revised version of a paper read at a meeting of the Peirce Society, 27 December 1957, at Cambridge, Mass.

References

2 Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (8 vols.): I-VI, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-35; VII-VIII, ed. Arthur W. Burks, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. Volume V, paragraph 35. All subsequent citations in this paper are to this publication and will be made in the conventional way by volume and paragraph numbers, thus: 5.35.

3 5.318-357.

4 2.645-660.

5 5.352.

6 2.661.

7 Peirce later gave a definition of “in the long run” in terms of “probability-limit” (2.758). Cf. 7.210 (c. 1901); 8.255, n. 10 (probably 1904).

8 5.349.

9 5.350.

10 5.350.

11 5.345.

12 5.354.

13 2.652.

14 2.652.

15 2.653.

16 2.653.

17 2.654.

18 2.654.

19 2.654.

20 2.661. This is Peirce's repetition of his conclusion in 1910. Cf. his remark in a letter to William James, 13 March 1897: “No man can be logical who reckons his personal well-being as a matter of overwhelming moment ...” (8.251).

21 5.356.

22 2.654.

23 2.655.

24 5.354.

25 2.654; 5.354.

26 2.655.

27 2.655.

28 5.378.

29 Something like this is what Peirce seems to have in mind in 5.349-350. It is suggested also in some later writings, e.g., 2.709 (1883); 2.784 (1902); 7.210 (c. 1901).

30 5.350.

31 Thomas A. Goudge, The Thought of C. S. Peirce, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950, p. 6.

32 5.402, n. 2.

33 Later in his life Peirce did recommend for use what are in effect alternative methods of forming beliefs in certain types of situation. Instinct (or “sentiment”) is what he appeals to, in 1898, as the proper ground of belief on “vitally important topics” (1.616-677). Still later, Peirce appealed to indubitability as one at least of the criteria for the acceptability of certain beliefs, namely, the vague, instinctive beliefs of “common sense” (e.g., 5.445). His failure to reconcile these recommendations with his continued devotion, in principle, to the conceptions of induction and probability described above is one of the major deficiencies of Peirce's philosophy. It is interesting that in a paper on the logic of history (c. 1901) he alludes to the need for a “logic of practical belief” to complement the “logic of science” (7.185-186). But he never produced such a logic, though his later general theory of logic, together with his pragmaticism, would seem to provide a promising basis for it. In any case, it is doubtful that Peirce supposed that it would be possible to show a connection between the logic of practical belief and the logic of science.

34 5.377.

35 5.377.

36 2.654.