Peirce in the 21st Century

Nathan Houser
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal
in American Philosophy, Volume 41, Number 4, Fall 2005, pp.
729-739 (Article)
Published by Indiana University Press
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s philosophy finds its footing in this new
millennium, there is some reason to sup-
pose that Peirce will play a larger role in setting
its course than anyone would have expected
during most of the half-century that followed
the 1951 publication of Quines "Two Dog-
mas of Empiricism." There are many reasons ~ \\ tnP
for this welcome prospect, not least of which
is the rising profile of pragmatism world- O 7 c. (^pyifai/v*,
wideeven at home. It's hard to say what got y
things turned around. My favorite candidate is Nathan Houser
Artificial Intelligence, that minor movement
within the now ubiquitous Computer Revolu-
tion. Suddenly it became respectable again to
talk about the difference between mind and
body (our software and hardware), to worry
about qualitative consciousness, to consider
the relation between "information," the AI
analog of beliefs, and procedures for certain
performances, to consider new logics for
information acquisition and integration, and
even to investigate the apparent necessity that
information be situated in some specified
world and linked to it indexically. A curious
upshot of this late effort to understand how
actual entities, whether artifactual or biologi-
cal, could possibly develop into, or be designed
to be, "thinking, believing beings," and what
that really amounts to, soon had philosophers
like Dan Dennett and Paul Churchland, along
with many others, working on problems that
connect in deep ways they surely didn't foresee
with the concerns of the participants of the
old Cambridge Metaphysical Club. Some of
our mainstream philosophers are beginning to
understand that the old pragmatists may have
been onto something. (The mainstream phi-
losophy I have in mind is the American ana-
lytic tradition that counts Carnap and Quine
among its founding fathers, reveres figures like
Sellars and Davidson, is carried on today by
TRANSACTIONS OFTHE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY
Vol. 41, No. 4 2005
1^ scientistic philosophers like Dennett and the Churchlands, and even accepts
Z neopragmatists like Putnam and Rorty as part of the family.)
O The expanding common ground between contemporary American phi-
J~~* losophy and early pragmatism may explain why Peirce's stock appears to be
^7 rising. More than any of the other first-generation pragmatists, Peirce seems
^, almost to belong to the family of analytic philosophersthough only, I
y) would say, as a rather distant relative, a great uncle perhaps and one best not
V mentioned in polite conversation. But close enough that parts of his work
<j< have always been considered to be at least relevant to mainstream interests.
q/ For a long time it was Peirce's contributions to symbolic and inductive logic
t_i that gave him his "credentials" in analytic philosophy, along with his early,
somewhat nominalistic, pragmatism. But over the last decade or two this has
begun to change. Abduction has become standard fare in mainstream phi-
losophy. In the 2 edition of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, one finds
the unqualified claim that "all of the arguments for scientific realism are
abductive." Some of Peirce's variant logics, like his Existential Graphs (EG)
and his sixteen-connective system, have generated specialized research com-
munities and, in the case of EG anyway, have begun to show great promise
in the competitive marketplace of ideas. (This means that significant
research based on EG, or on logics closely related to EG, is being funded. )
Surprisingly, Peirce's theory of signs has even begun to inform mainstream
philosophy, most recently giving some much-needed assistance to the rather
misguided theory of mmes that has grown up in cognitive science. But,
really, it seems to be the weakened grip of analytic philosophy on our disci-
pline that has resulted in a rapidly spreading range of influence for Peirce, a
range that now extends from economic thought to philosophy of religion.
It is with the changing prospects of pragmatism relative to analytic phi-
losophy that Peirce stands the best chance of becoming a key philosopher
for the 21st century. This conclusion is well-supported by Joseph Margolis
in his recent treatment of the changing climate of philosophy in America.
Margolis, whose findings are published in two books, Reinventing Pragmatism
and The Unraveling of Scientism, actually touts Dewey as the philosopher for the
21st century, but it is what he has to say about the prospects for pragmatism
and the opportunity this promises for Peirce's philosophy, notwithstanding
Margolis's own clear preference for Dewey, that interests me and that I
believe is worth careful consideration. I think it is interesting and important
that Margolis has deliberately constructed an idealized form of pragmatism
that favors Dewey over Peirce and James because he thinks such a "rein-
vented pragmatism" can compete more successfully in the coming disputes
with analytic naturalism (2002, pp. 10II). Although I think one should
not dismiss lightly Margolis's historical and sociological judgments, I dis-
agree with him in this case and think that his rationale for settling on Dewey
fails to do justice to Peirce (and probably also to James). I am also a little
uncomfortable with Margolis's polemical style, even though I have adopted
7, it here, but it is well worth considering whether ideas ever have a chance of
>
survival, let alone wide-spread acceptance, without dedicated and capable f
4 '
promoters.
The story Margolis tells is largely concerned with the battles and in- g-
trigues of recent philosophy in America, to some extent pitting the neoprag- g-
matists against their more scientistic brethren, as well as against themselves. ^0
But in a curious sense it is the story of a battle of ideas being waged between *
contemporary American philosophers and the classic pragmatists, whose O
ideas refuse to give up the ghost. Margolis recognizes that early pragmatism
in America, along with neo-Kantianism and Hegelianism in Europe, repre- ^
sents a high-water mark for world thought. The defining characteristic of
pragmatism, he believes, is its anti-Cartesianism. But for Margolis, Carte- ^
sianism is more nuanced than the usual dualism: as he puts it, "in the Amer- >
ican setting, 'Cartesianism' is not dualistic," but is "usually materialistically
inclined" (2002, p. 38). A sure sign of Cartesianism, on this view, is a com-
mitment to a robust realism that purports to make a clean cut between cog- q
nizers and the cognized. As such, and quite surprisingly, Margolis finds that
American philosophy has been blindly creeping back to Descartes.
Another important feature of early pragmatism was its naturalism. This
is a common understanding. But the naturalism of early pragmatism was a
pretty weak affair, on Margolis's view: "a conceptual scruple," shared with
such heterogeneous doctrines as positivism and Marxism, amounting to a
refusal to admit non-natural or supernatural resources in the descriptive or
explanatory discourse of any truth-bearing kind" (2002, p. 6). Margolis
seems not to have grasped how great was the impact of Darwinian natural-
ism on the members of the Metaphysical Club and that the originality of
their views grew largely out of their commitment to an evolutionary account
of intelligence based in actual experience. Margolis mistakenly attributes
this stronger Darwinian naturalism only to Dewey.
Of course Margolis understands that a lot of philosophical work has
been expended, following Peirce's original formulation of the pragmatic
maxim and James's popularization of it, to develop convincing pragmatic
accounts of meaning and truth, but he believes that the intent and import
of the maxim can be pretty well summed up in four points: (I) "the rejec-
tion of Cartesian and Kantian intuitionism, apodicticity, transcendentalism,
and necessitarianism;" (2) "the social embeddedness of beliefs, perceptions,
and judgments in a continuum of similar elements" (a holism of sorts); (3)
"the methodological and practical linkage between thought and action,
along with the effective determination of meaning and the assessment of
truth in terms of distinctions (consequences) grounded in shared experi-
ence;" and (4) "the entirely open-ended, constructive, socially determined
process of judging what to count as knowledge and intelligence" (2002,
p. 10). It is at this point that Margolis admits to having slanted his account
of pragmatism to favor Dewey.
It seems clear that Margolis thinks that American philosophy was on the
right track before the brilliant Vienna Circle philosophers, in the 1930s, y-^j
^ transported their neo-positivism, as well as many of themselves, to the
- United States. Carnap arrived in 1936. Although pragmatism had not
O played itself out, the pragmatists were no match for the European emigres
*~~[ or their American disciple, Quine, and logical empiricism took fast root in
^T soil well tilled by half a century of pragmatist spade work. This American
j form of analytic philosophy was soon transformed by Quine into what
yy Margolis calls "analytic naturalism" and, for the last fifty years, it has been
*-7 the dominant American philosophy.
<\ This opened the second great chapter of philosophy in America. (I
q/ know it is debatable whether American Transcendentalism ought, also, to be
l_i regarded as a great chapter in its own right, but I am following the historical
views of Margolis, which I believe are mostly on target.) In many respects
the turn to analytic philosophy in America does not seem to me to have been
all that much of a revolution because so many of the precepts and methods
of pragmatism were shared by this approach. The common ground included
not only a strong commitment to scientific realism and naturalism but, at
least in Peirce's case, there was a shared appreciation for logical formalism
and a focus on language analysis (for Peirce, as we know, this was a broader
semiotic analysis). One marked difference between pragmatism and analytic
naturalism was the form of naturalism at issue. Pragmatic naturalism held
that humankind and human intelligence are continuous with all of nature
and that growth and the struggle for survival are keys to philosophy as well
as to biology. But pragmatists did not dogmatically stipulate an official
ontology. Analytic naturalists do. To be a member in good standing of
American analytic philosophy, you must be a physicalist at least, intent on a
program of reducing "all non-physical concepts to the concepts of logic,
mathematics, and physics,"5 and most likely you will be an eliminative mate-
rialist committed to scientism. Analytic naturalism is exclusionary and,
according to Margolis, it holds that all "truth-bearing explanation is ulti-
mately causal" and, furthermore, that "causal explanation is constrained by
the 'causal closure of the physical'," (2002, pp. 67). According to Margo-
lis, pragmatic naturalism is irreconcilable with analytic naturalism, which he
calls "naturalizing." The difference between these two forms of naturalism
is so great that Margolis offers as the best short statement of "pragmatism's
late discovery of itself," this motto: "Natural but not naturalizable" (2002,
p. 7). From a Peircean perspective, we might sum things up by stressing that
nominalism is an overarching dogma of analytic naturalists.
It would go well beyond my purpose here to try articulate an adequate
story of the complex history of analytic naturalism but I think most would
agree that Quine and his followers have raised the level of our discipline and
deserve much credit for ushering in the second truly great period of Amer-
ican thought. At the same time, I think Margolis is correct in noticing that
analytic naturalism is faltering and that what I am calling "mainstream phi-
losophy" may soon have to give up its right to that title. The very short story
j-.j of analytic naturalism is that it has burdened itself with an impossible set of
O

m
dogmas: an unyielding commitment to reductive physicalism, at least, if not 3
to eliminitive materialism; the doctrine of the causal closure of the physical; R
and, per impossible according to Margolis, the total rejection and even g
abhorrence of any form of relativism. Today this approach finds itself EJ*
depending on latter-day analytic naturalists like Dennett and the Church- ^
lands to discover in evolutionary biology or neurophilosophy the solutions ST1
to traditional philosophical questions.6 Margolis argues that this is a hope- o
less cause because the naturalizers have, paradoxically, rejected dualism only
to embrace an equally mistaken extreme Cartesian realism. ^
Happily, as I have already noted, as the fortunes of American analytic
philosophy seem to be waning, the opposite seems to be happening in the y
case of pragmatism. Some twenty-five years ago Richard Rorty somehow ^
managed, with sharply honed ideas, excellent timing, and great rhetorical *
skill, to almost single-handedly revive interest in pragmatismfrom within
mainstream philosophy. Some may believe, and for good reason, that prag-
matism, and American philosophy more generally, had already been rescued
from the hegemony of the dismissive analytic movement thanks to some dis- ^
tinguished members of the Peirce Society and the Society for the Advance-
ment of American Philosophy; but if pragmatism was rescued it was
spirited away to a safe place only to be visited by friends. It seems to have
been Rorty, along with, if in dispute with, Hillary Putnam, who somehow
brought pragmatism into mainstream debates. That truly was a notable
achievement, even if the pragmatism in question is one many of us would
rather not own. In fact, as Margolis shows, Rorty 's efforts over the years have
been as much in support of key dogmas of the analytic naturalists as they
have been in support of what most avowed pragmatists would call pragma-
tism. For example, Rorty has been a strong promoter of the Davidsonian
view that what we can know about the world can, and must be, known with-
out the intervention of "interpretive tertia," without, that is, "conceptual
schemes" that come between us and the world (2002, p.34). It has been with
Putnam that the original pragmatists found a voice to do battle with Rorty
and to address mainstream issues. (Of course there are others besides Put-
nam who have very effectively represented Peirce within analytic philoso-
phyI note, for example, the impressive work of Susan Haackbut it is
Putnam who Margolis identifies as the most notable opponent of Rorty,
and it is their "running quarrel" that Margolis tags as "the very paradigm of
the evolving effort to redefine pragmatism" (2002, p. 32).
Margolis, quite conviningly, details the quarter-century debate between
Rorty and Putnam that has brought us to where we are today, a point in time
when pragmatism is regarded as a promising alternative to a possibly failing
analytic naturalism, even though pragmatism itself, in its second instantia-
tion, is also failingfailing because neither Rorty's neo-pragmatism nor
Putnam's multiple versions of pragmatic realism allows adequately for the
relativist and historicist alternatives that are necessary for a real recovery of
realism (2002, p. 107). This is what Margolis believes and what he argues -,-.
^ for in detail in his book, Reinventing Pragmatism. His companion book, The
Z Unraveling of Scientism, treats the fortunes and misfortunes of scientism.
O Together these two books build a convincing case that the "single most
""* important philosophical issue at the end of the twentieth century"now as
[Z we make our way into a new century and a new millenniumis the "con-
^, ceptual adequacy or inadequacy of analytic 'naturalism'" and the contest
<j^ between the naturalizers and the pragmatists (2002, p. 3).
7 The upshot of all this is that pragmatism, partly because of its somewhat
^> chameleon-like character, has never altogether lost its appeal and, now,
S because of the vitality of the Rorty-Putnam quarrel, is regarded by many to
l_i be the philosophy-in-waiting. Margolis is convinced that the second pragma-
tism, the work of Rorty and Putnam, is only the opportunity and not the
answer. Pragmatism needs a third life to really recover its promise and to take
the reins from analytic philosophy. Margolis proffers a new pragmatism, a
reinvented pragmatism, that will reconnect with the critical intuitions of its
originators while avoiding lines of development from its second life that have
proved to be "self-defeating in the Cartesian way." Margolis is adamant that
this revisioning of pragmatism "should not be pursued 'archivally,' as if the
texts of the early pragmatists might decide the newer questions" (2002, p. 3):
"there can be no serious point to a revival [of pragmatism] that does not
take into account the half century of vigorous dispute that has, on any read-
ing, eclipsed its older energies" (2002, p. 12). I must say, this seems right to
me if what Margolis means is that the revisioning of pragmatism should not
be pursued only by going back to the original pragmatists without taking
account of subsequent developments.
But what is Margolis really proposing? Remember that he believes, per-
haps not so unlike Rorty, at least in practice, that one is fully justified in
constructing an idealized pragmatism to meet some noble purpose. Margo-
lis's purpose for pragmatism is to compete successfully with analytic natu-
ralism, in fact to win out over it, by providing the long-sought answers to the
problems of scientific realism. What, then, must the new pragmatism be
like? Very briefly, the new pragmatism must not dismiss relativism and
incommensurabilism out of hand (91); it must "admit conceptual ["inter-
mediaries" or] tertia... to make [its] realism constructivist from the start and
throughout . . . [with] no fallback objectivism to take for granted" (2002,
p. 51); it must not restrict its epistemology to causal explanations (2002,
p. 20); and it must not allow dualisms of "subjects and objects," of "the sub-
jective and the objective," and "between realism and idealism"(2002, p. 22).
It will help one get a sense of Margolis's vision if one considers the fol-
lowing: "We may," he says, " treat pragmatism in a bifurcated way, featuring
the 'idealist' tendencies in Peirce or featuring Dewey's tendency to focus
rather on the management of the actual circumstances of life here and
now. . . Certainly Peirce's 'long run is a pragmatist invention that disallows
any fixed telos or truth or Tightness or any reliable invariances in the encoun-
J-.. tered world; but it is increasingly made to collect the best energies (and aspi-
rations) of human societies in what cannot he secured here and now; and that, as we J?
now understand these matters, is either not pragmatism at all or else an
alternative utterly irreconcilable with it" (2002, p. 9). Clearly, even though 5
Margolis has great respect for Peirce and, especially, for Peirce's early insight g-
into the intrinsic link between meaning and action, it is not a Peircean prag- ^0
matism that he has in mind for our new century. Instead, Margolis offers 51
what he calls an "up-to-date reading of Dewey" (2002, p. 51). O
I want to be clear that I believe Margolis's proposal for a new pragmatism 3
is a rich resource for pragmatists of all stripes as we prepare to meet the ^3
challenge he convincingly prophesieseven though many of his views will
be quite provoking for Peirceans. But that may be all to the good. In what y
follows, I will try to set out in outline a single issue but an important one for
Margolis's construction, the question of fallibilism, and then offer some *
thoughts stimulated by Margolis's provocation.
It seems that Margolis expects the new pragmatism to be built largely q
"around the still unexplored possibilities of fallibilism" (2002, p. 133). He S
says that, "Retrospectively, pragmatism's strength and widest influence lie *
with the spreading forms of fallibilism and whatever concepts fallibilism
illuminatingly transforms: notably, the theory of truth that James and Dewey
more or less agree on, that James effectively invented, that was never ardently
adopted but now seems so much more promising than it ever was in the best
days of the pragmatist protectorate" (2002, p. 132). He adds that, "the
future of 'pragmatism' lies with the contest between the potentially irrecon-
cilable forces of naturalism and pragmatism ..., particularly those involved
in reconstituting what to understand by realism and fallibilism" (133).
I assume that it is more or less evident that fallibilism ought to be con-
genial to cultural relativism and incommensurabilism, doctrines dear to
Margolis. But he correctly regards Peirce's fallibilism as a threat to his new
pragmatism and tries to build a case against Peirce's doctrine and for
Dewey's. Peirce's emphasis on the "long run" is seen as a large part of the
problem: "It is precisely Peirce's veering off beyond the "here and now" that,
retrospectively, signifies his departure from pragmatism's main tendency,"
Margolis noted (2002, p. II). He goes out of his way to distinguish
Dewey's fallibilism from Peirce's:
fallibilism takes two entirely different forms in Peirce and Dewey. In
Peirce it signifies the perpetual postponement of inquiry's ever arriving at
the "truth about reality". ... In Dewey it signifies the restriction of all
cognitive claims within a thoroughly fluxive world, by means of practical
skills (on which science itself depends) that first emerge from certain
non-cognitive animal powers implicated in our survival and viability."
(2002, p. 135)
The Peircean might well ask why Margolis thinks the view he attributes here
to Dewey would not also be accepted by Peirce. Let's look a little deeper
into Margolis's understanding of Peirce's fallibilism. j-,c
h

^ In an earlier article in the Transactions (1998, Vol. 34) Margolis described

/C Peirce's fallibilism as consisting of three "serially nested themes": (Infallibility,
O the "thesis that, with regard to any proposition, it is humanly possible to
hold a mistaken belief," which is "tantamount to a denial of Cartesian indu-
bitability"; (2) self-corrective inquiry, the thesis that "it is both possible and
^f, likely that, for any mistaken belief, a society of inquirers can, in a pertinently
y-j finite interval of time, discern its own mistakes and progress toward discov-
*~7 ering the true state of affairs"; and (3) a supporting metaphysics that marks
< Peirce's fallibilism as more than just an epistemological doctrine (1998:
q/ 339). It is in terms of these three themes that Margolis distinguishes
L^ Dewey's fallibilism from Peirce's. Dewey's, based only on the first two
themes, "rests on an entirely arbitrary but pretty hope," he says, while
Peirce's rests "on an enabling metaphysics" (1998: 541) that grounds his
"epistemological confidence that science is generally progressing toward the
Truth" (1998: 548).
Margolis mounts a number of interesting arguments in support of
Dewey and against various elements of the Peircean themes. These are well
worth close study especially because Margolis views Peirce's fallibilism very
broadly and his arguments confront central claims of Peirce scholars like
Christopher Hookway, Susan Haack, Carl Hausman, Cornells Delaney, and
many others. I will consider here just one of Margolis's arguments.
To prove that he was right in rejecting Peirce's metaphysics, Margolis
claims that Peirce was forced into a paradox that he could only escape by
deforming his fallibilism into an indefensible doctrine (1998: 549). At issue
is what Margolis calls "the paradox of the known object" which results from
two incompatible claims, both, he says, made by Peirce and required by his
fallibilism.
Claim I: "the act of knowing a real object alters it" (5.555).
Claim 2: "the real thing is as it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any
definite collection of minds may represent it to be" (5.565).
Margolis argues that this incompatible dualism runs throughout Peirce's
doctrine of fallibilism and, effectively, destroys it. "The fact is," says Mar-
golis, (adding, "I have an idea that the point has never been properly noted
in Peirce") "that Peirce characterizes all of his principal notionstruth,
reality, objectivity, mind, existence, thirdness, community, belief, knowledge,
even pragmatism and fallibilismin two distinct ways: in one, in accord
with the consensual life of actual societies working in finite ways; in the
other, in accord with the vision of the ideal limit of infinitely extended
inquiry, in which the first is interpreted. My contention is that one cannot
rightly understand Peirce's account of any of these (or similar) notions
without reconciling these two forms of usage. Merely juxtaposing them pro-
_, , duces paradox, as I have demonstrated" (1998: 55354).
>
He goes on: "I hold that there is an analogous incompatibility involving
each and every one of Peirce's central notions and that the primary function
of the full doctrine of fallibilism is to interpret and reconcile the double
interpretation of all these notions. Effectively, the difference between the two
is what obtains in particular, determinate, and finite human actions and what
obtains in the single, all-inclusive ideal, evolutionary continuum viewed at the ST*
limit of the infinite sequence of all such finite actions" (1998: 554). O
He concludes: "Thus: the 'real' is altered by action, in the sense of finite
human life; but the 'real' is, also, what it is 'irrespectively of any mind,' at the ^j
deal limit of infinite inquiry. The Deweyan form of fallibilism jettisons t
Peirce's third theme and holds to the first two themes. The price of such a y
retreat is to replace the would-be legitimation of a realism in science with a ^
pious hope in favor of such a realism.... It's no good insisting that Deweyan
fallibilism ever recovers objectivity and realism: it has no regulative principle
to offer; but then neither does Peirce's fallibilism, since its regulative princi- q
pie operates, per impossible, only at the ideal limit of inquiry. The dilemma
cannot be overcome" (1998: 554). ^
Based on arguments like this, Margolis supports his own commitment to
a Deweyian style fallibilism purged of Peircean idealisma fallibilism that
makes no "pretention of progress, or approximation to the Truth" and that
reinterprets "realism and truth in terms entirely internal to a human praxis
that knows no independent or regulative or constitutive principle of Truth
or Reality" (1998: 558). This view, which I find to be less uncongenial to
the views of Dennett, or even of Paul Churchland, than I believe Margolis
supposes, will be part of the new pragmatism, if he has his way.
In dismissing Peirce's fallibilism in support of his own construction,
Margolis has placed a lot of weight on the inconsistency of the claims
Peirce made in the so-called "paradox of the known object." It so happens,
however, that Peirce did not make both claims. Margolis missed the irony of
the paragraph that contains the purported first claim. Here is what Peirce
said: "It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They are
curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be amus-
ing to see how I think" (CP 5.555).
So, on a more careful reading of the text, this paradox disappearsit
disappears, anyway, assuming that Margolis is wrong in holding that Claim
I is required by Peirce's fallibilism (as Peirce obviously denies).
Frankly, I don't believe that any of Margolis's arguments against Peirce's
pragmatism or his fallibilism succeeds or even fully hits the mark. (At a min-
imum, Margolis would have to consider how Peirce's distinction between
immediate and dynamic objects of thought, viz. semiosis, informs his real-
ism.) But his provocative treatment of Peirce does fully succeed in bringing
new focus on many critical questions that will have to be addressed before
Peirce's form of pragmatism can have a chance of succeeding in the coming
philosophical struggles. ^
H
U
^ The role of fallibilism in Peirce's philosophy is an excellent example of a
Z key Peircean doctrine still waiting for the attention it deserves. Obviously
O some components of Peirce's fallibilism have been much examined and
debated, and have even entered mainstream thought, especially in connec-
tion with Popper's falsificationism. But in gathering in the name of Peirce's
^, fallibilism all of Peirce's doctrines and principles that either directly or indi-
yj rectly underwrite it, Margolis has done what Peirceans should have done
"7 long ago. It gives a new sense to the meaning of Peirce's fallibilism and its
< centrality for Peirce's pragmatism and for his thought in general.
q/ When I reviewed (admittedly not exhaustively) how some leading Peirce
[_, scholars have treated fallibilism, I found that there is a great deal of confu-
sion and disagreement about what it amounts to. Not uncommonly, fallibil-
ism is thought simply to be the view that, regarding any belief or knowledge
claim, we might be mistaken. This connects only with the first theme of
Peircean fallibilism identified by Margolis. Recently on Joseph Ransdell's
on-line forum, Peirce-L, the question of the meaning of fallibilism was the
subject of discussion. Ransdell noted, correctly I believe, that "Peirce him-
self never [made] any attempt at a rigorous definition," and that Peirce prob-
ably kept the word vague so that fallibilism could more easily be "imputed
to many different thinkers." That might be right. Peirce does seem to have
advocated fallibilism as a methodological or epistemological stance in-
tended to support ongoing open inquiry: "no blight can so surely arrest all
intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness . . ." (CP1.13).There is at
least one indication that Peirce may have held the broad view of fallibilism
that Margolis favors; it is from Peirce's most sustained writing on fallibilism
written in 1893:
For years ... I used for myself to collect my ideas under the designa-
tion fallibilism; and indeed the first step toward finding out is to acknowl-
edge you do not satisfactorily know already; so that no blight can so surely
arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness .... Indeed, out
of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the reality of
knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my philosophy has
always seemed to me to grow .... (CP 1.1314)
But even if Peirce did not, himself, think of fallibilism as a full-scale philo-
sophical doctrine supported by or encompassing a considerable part of his
general system of thought, I think Margolis is right to see that it does.
Given the centrality of fallibilism to the reinvented pragmatism Margo-
lis envisions, I think it is high time we Peirceans tried out the idea that
Peirce's fallibilism is a rich web of interconnected ideas running through all
of Peirce's thought, a cable of ideas, that supports the doctrine that we must
never be cock-sure of any belief or knowledge claim.
Once we view fallibilism in this way, we might conclude that Peirce's phi-
losophy of perception is as much a part of his fallibilism as is his tychism
,, or his end-of-inquiry theory of truth. This would be important because it
would turn attention to abduction, the logic of perception, as another key Jp
to understanding fallibilism. Margolis actually remarks that Peirce's account
of fallibilism is "thoroughly metaphysical, fixed on the supposed underpin- g
ning of our abductive powers." In contrasting Popper's and Peirce's accounts g-
of fallibilism, Margolis even speculates that Popper's fallibilism rests on an ^0
account of "human knowledge as 'a very special case of animal knowl-
dege'which [Margolis notes] is (also) Popper's paraphrase of Peirce's
abductive doctrine" (1998: 546). Curiously, however, Margolis doesn't s
appear to have realized how this might absolve Peirce from the criticism that ^
his case for fallibilism is built on the infinite postponement of the end of t
inquiry. y
Obviously this is the merest suggestion of what a richer and deeper con- ^
ception of fallibilism can offer in the way of preparing Peircean resources *
for the coming decades when pragmatism will, again, take the reins of
American philosophyif Margolis is right. Whether the pragmatism to q
come will favor the more nominalistic and relativistic views of Dewey and
James, as reconfigured in Margolis's third way, or whether it will favor the "
more realistic non-relativistic precepts of Peirce, will largely depend on how
well we prepare for the moment of opportunity.
Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
nhouser@iupui.edu
NOTES
1. This paper was presented as my Presidential Address to the Charles S. Peirce
Society on 28 December 2003 in Washington, D. C. It has been modified only slighdy.
2. John Sowas research on applications of his EG-based Conceptual Graphs and
Knowledge Representation is what I have in mind (see Sowa's website: www.jfsowa.
com).
3. For example, see Robert Aunger's The Electric Mme; A New Theory of How We Think,
The Free Press, 2002, pp. 232-34.
4. This was the conviction of Horace Kallen: see his conversation with Corliss Lam-
ont, et al., in Dialogue on George Santayana, ed. C. Lamont, Horizon Press 1959, pp.
89-90.
5. See R. L. Kirkham's article on the Correspondence Theory of Truth in the Con-
cise RoutUdge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, p. 900.
6. See Kristin Andrews' "Walter's Neurophilosophy of Free Will: A Review," Philo,
Vol. 6, 2003, p. 166.
7. Since presenting this paper in December 2003, I have tried to develop further
this broad account of fallibilism. My latest thoughts on this subject were presented on
6 April 2005 at a conference in Milan and that paper, "Peirce's Contrite Fallibilism,"
will appear in the conference proceedings to be published by Cambridge Scholars Press.
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