The Pragmatic Maxim in 1878

The Pragmatic Maxim in 1878Author(s): Richard SmythSource: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 93-111Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40319805 .

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Richard Smyth

The Pragmatic Maxim in 1878

Fitzgerald's study of the foundations of Peirce's pragmatism contained an attack on a widely held assumption - the assumption that the pragmatic maxim is a version of a verifiability principle.1 In the decade since his work appeared it has become evident that the attack was not

entirely successful. Peirce continues to be interpreted as a forerunner of the contemporary positivists. For example, A. J. Ayer treats the pragmatic maxim of 1878 as the principle that later became the foundation of Bridgman's operationalism.2 Ayer also believes that what truth there is in the thesis of operationalism is preserved in more recent formula- tions of a verifiability principle.3 My objective here is to present and to defend a reading of the pragmatic maxim of 1878 which supports the

minority viewpoint. Where the verificationist interpretation has Peirce

looking to the reasons for the truth of beliefs, I argue that his intention was to focus on the way in which ideas and beliefs are made and are altered.

Peirce's original version of his maxim is now well-known: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object" (5.402) ).4 Any reading of this must deal with the probable, intended significance of two key phrases: "effects of the object" and "practical bearing." Part of the evidence for my reading of these phrases comes from a consideration of the historical causes that are known to have had an effect on Peirce's thinking in this period. By appealing to this type of evi-

dence, I deliberately invoke what I think is the spirit of the pragmatic maxim as it applies to the ideas of a deceased author: If you wish to determine the content of some fixed belief, consider the circumstances in which the belief was first occasioned and any additional circumstances that might have caused the belief to have been modified. The circumstances in which Peirce returned to a discussion of his pragmatic doctrine around the turn of the century were different in several respects from the circumstances in which it was originally formulated; in particular, his

theory of signs and his understanding of the logic of abduction had



94 Richard Smyth

undergone some changes. Fitzgerald apparently believes that these later discussions of the pragmatic maxim are easier to distinguish from verificationism, but I prefer to leave that an open question. What I offer is an analysis of the pragmatic maxim in "How To Make Our Ideas Clear."

It will be recalled that Fitzgerald supported his conjecture with comments about the meaning of "sensible" and "action". As to the first he observed that it is properly used to mean "anything of which we

may be cognizant or aware."5 Suppose one of us were to say "I am sensible of the great difference between my views and the views of Ayer." What he would mean is that he is conscious of those differences - or even that he has a clear idea of them. In the Critique of Pure Reason the faculty of sensibility is a faculty for representations which are affected

by the objects; hence, this faculty could properly be called a faculty through which the mind is determined by sensible effects of the objects. As to the term "action", Fitzgerald establishes the obvious but important point that Peirce uses it throughout these early essays to include mental conduct and other aspects of the conduct of inquiry.

While neither of these terms appears in the statement of the pragmatic maxim, both of the underlying points of interpretation are reflected in the language of the maxim. The first issue concerns what Peirce means in speaking of the effects of the object: I suggest that he means the effects which the object has had (and, in the case of an unsettled idea, effects that it will have) on us and our way of thinking. The important point to notice is that our attention is being directed to the things which provoked the occurrence of the idea and the things which can make the idea a fixed or stable idea; by the same token, our attention is being directed away from the reasons which will establish the truth of the idea. If verificationism is to mean anything, it must be a doctrine which relates the content of ideas (or, perhaps, the meaning of words) to something which has a bearing on truth rather than some-

thing which has a bearing on existence or permanence. The second issue concerns what Peirce has in mind when he speaks of the practical bearing of those effects: I suggest that he means the bearing of those effects on the things for which we are responsible as practical agents. It appears that Peirce's conception of this practical agency, as well as

many of his key terms, is taken from Kant's analysis of practical reason in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. I argue that Peirce's understanding of the first issue was influenced in a significant



The Pragmatic Maxim in 1878 95

way by Descartes's analysis of the possible causes of belief. For reasons which will be explained in the sequel, I believe that the pragmatism of Peirce's maxim - its reference to ideas as things made - should be

given priority over the practicalism of the maxim - its reference to ideas as involved in what we do. Accordingly, we turn first to the influence of Descartes's views on how to make our ideas clear.

There is little doubt that "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" was intended as an improvement on the Cartesian method for making ideas clear. Peirce makes this explicit at the outset of the essay. (5.391-5.392) Also some readers find an ironic commentary on the first lines of the Discourse on Method in the opening remarks of "The Fixation of Belief" in which Peirce sets the general topic for the series of papers that are to follow. A more controversial point concerns the exact

impression that Descartes's methodology made upon Peirce. I suggest that what chiefly struck Peirce was the way in which Descartes gave methodological priority to a discussion of the possible causes of the existence of ideas. Also, though this point is more conjectural, Peirce

may have been impressed by the fact that in Descartes's development of his system the question about the sources of the permanence or

fixity of beliefs is given precedence over the question about the principle by which beliefs can be established as true. I will review the passages which indicate that these considerations constituted for Peirce "the most essential point of the Cartesian philosophy" (5.392), but first we must recall how Descartes's argument gave the actual or possible causes of our ideas priority over the reasons for belief.

The importance of hypotheses about the possible causes of beliefs is apparent in the first stages of Descartes's thought, where he exhibits his method of provisional doubt. The point of this exercise in doubting is to neutralize our biases and our prejudices. What is the methodological principle by which this is to be done? Since Descartes tells us that "the

discovery of some reason to doubt as regards each opinion will justify the rejection of all/'6 his method evidently embraces the rule: Reject as provisionally doubtful whatever one has some reason to doubt. If

this, or something like it, is the rule, the content of the rule must

obviously be determined by what counts as a reason for doubt. This

point, which has been set out very clearly by Marc-Wogau in his discussion of the rule of provisional doubt,7 was probably in Peirce's mind as he criticized the inadequacy of Descartes's reasons for doubt and called the method a method of "paper doubt'1. Each of Descartes's



96 Richard Smyth

reasons for doubt involves a hypothesis about possible causes of the beliefs in the class that are being challenged; and that, according to Peirce, is not adequate to cause any real doubt about the beliefs.

As one reviews Descartes's specific reasons for doubt, one sees very clearly what counted for him as a reason for doubt. Each of his reasons involves an hypothesis about a possible cause of belief which has the following general characteristic: In each case, if the proposed (but hypothetical) cause of the belief were the cause of the belief, the existence of the belief - as the effect of that cause - would have no necessary connection with the truth or falsity of the belief. That is, if the belief had come into one's head as an effect of this kind of cause, it might be true or it might not be true - its occurrence tells nothing either way. In the light of this understanding of what counts as a good reason for doubt and in keeping with the assumption that the method aims at the neutralization of prejudices, one must also assume that he accepts as his definition of a mere prejudice something along these lines: A mere prejudice is a belief that has been caused to occur in such a way that the occurrence of the belief is independent of the truth of the belief.

The majority of our ordinary beliefs can be discarded because they are produced by mechanisms that are known to be unreliable, and thus they are mere prejudices. Either the mechanism is one that can produce the belief without any occurrence of the object - as in the case of dreams and hallucinations. Or the mechanism involves the agency of the object of the belief, but in a line of causation that intersects an extraneous line of causation - as in the case of the bent-stick illusion in which what we see depends upon properties of the medium as well as properties of the stick. If the occurrence of the belief depends upon these inter- secting causes, it is a chance or random occurrence in the sense which became classic in the writings of Cournot.8

The conjecture which cuts to the bone in Descartes's program of doubt is the hypothesis of a malevolent deceiver. If that hypothesis is interpreted in the spirit of Peirce's "The Fixation of Belief," Descartes is rescued from certain objections which might otherwise be fatal to his hypothesis. If we keep to the distinction between that which can cause the occurrence of a belief and that which can provide a reason for the truth or the falsity of a belief, then the point of the hypothesis is that there might be a being with an absolute control over our thoughts. In this case, the being could force us to think in ways that are entirely




arbitrary. The other interpretation of the hypothesis has been that the malevolent being can cause us to think in ways that are false. This

interpretation has sometimes even been extended to include the sug- gestion that he makes our beliefs to be false by the control that he has over the objects of those beliefs. However, there has always been a

puzzle about what the demon could do to make our mathematical and

logical beliefs be false. Also, there is a well-known dialectical puzzle about whether there is any rational strategy for altering the truth-value of our beliefs which would be a winning strategy for the demon -

winning in the sense that it would defeat our efforts to determine what the basis is upon which the truth or falsity of the beliefs is determined.

Although these objections are perhaps not insuperable for one who prefers the second reading, a reading based on the analysis of a prejudice avoids the problems entirely by interpreting in the spirit of Peirce's later reflections on the fixation of our beliefs. If the demon merely is asssigned power over us and what we think, then he can produce our beliefs in an arbitrary manner. The result will not be that he can control the truth or the falsity of the belief - any rule or method by which he sought to do that would give him a problem; instead the result will be that, by controlling the occurrence of the belief in an

arbitrary way, he achieves the result that all our beliefs - or nearly all - are mere prejudices.

Can such a demon defeat our efforts to eliminate mere prejudices? Descartes's answer to this question is the best known part of his philosophy: There is one thought which is such that its occurrence in us has a

necessary connection with its truth, and that is the thought, "I am

thinking." This belief is such that, whatever be the cause or the combination of causes of its occurrence in me, whenever the belief does occur it is true. In order to rescue Descartes from the often repeated charge that he employs a principle of verification before he justifiies his right to employ it, we only need to read his claim ' 'Whenever the belief occurs it must be true" in the spirit of Peirce's reflections. In this

case, Descartes's "whenever" or "just as often as" expresses a causal

generalization: any cause of the occurrence of the belief as a first effect will have the truth of the belief as its second effect. Considered as effects and according to the common understanding of such things in Descartes's day, these effects must be changes in some substance; hence, on the reading of Descartes which stresses existence and truth as con- comitant effects, his argument only works for "I am thinking" and not



98 Richard Smyth

for "There are thoughts." Those who have maintained that Descartes is only entitled to the second, weaker claim have consciously or uncon-

sciously sought to keep his assertions within the bounds of some

principle for the verification of beliefs, but at this point in Descartes's reflections the principles that are out front are metaphysical ones bearing on what is a prejudice - and thus are ones that determine the possible causes of truth and existence. Such principles of the metaphysical foundations of belief are only required to eliminate any grounds for doubt about this particular belief by establishing that it is no mere

prejudice. To think about the existence and the truth of beliefs as

things made or things produced, we must alter our normal perceptions -

perceptions that encourage us to think about the occurrence and the truth of beliefs in the context of practical principles or principles that can be employed to control what we think and do. But when we do alter our perceptions in this way, we adopt the perspective of MThe Fixation of Belief" and prepare the way for the pragmatic maxim.

We have not completed the process of showing that our thoughts are not mere prejudices until we have shown that an all-powerful being does exist and is no deceiver. There are three particular points to which one should attend in these later stages of Descartes's argument, because of their special relevance to Peirce's pragmatic turn. First, we call attention to the obvious point that Descartes takes a route to the existence of God that involves a principle securing a cause for the occurrence of a given idea. The principle of causation, which Descartes borrowed from Suarez or some similar source, is a metaphysical principle about the possible causes of ideas (and of other things as well). The

principle is that the chief or total cause which is introduced to explain any effect must be adequate to the production of that effect.9 This

principle is agreed on all hands to be a metaphysical, rather than a

practical or methodological, principle, and it relates to what can be

brought about, rather than to the way we ought to do something. The second point is admittedly somewhat conjectural: Descartes

might be thought to have established a connection in Peirce's mind between inquiry into the possible causes of belief and inquiry concerning the fixation of belief. These are points in the work of Descartes and Peirce which are sufficient to indicate that this conjecture is not absurd, though it may strike some as unlikely. First, we call attention to the fact that God is required by Descartes as the cause of our being in order to establish that when beliefs recur in us they recur through a mechanism




of memory which can be relied upon to preserve our ideas. The 'cogito' presents us with a belief as a temporary and fleeting occurrence, but Descartes seems to be suggesting that the deepest level of doubts about the possible causes of belief has to do with the existence of beliefs as permanent or lasting possessions. Our second remark on this subject is that when Peirce later returned to the discussion of the possible causes of our scientific hypotheses he explicitly considers a Cartesian hypothesis. The phenomenon which seemed to him to be real and to be such that, if it is real, it demands an explanation is the tendency for the correct hypothesis to occur to us more frequently than is allowed for by chance. His own explanation is that our minds have evolved under natural circumstances which favor selection for that tendency to guess right more often than would otherwise be expected. But he calls attention, at the same time, to the hypothesis that the occurrence of ideas in us is a miracle - i. e., is to be accounted for by the causal activity of God. He tells us that such an hypothesis cannot be dismissed as absurd (2.690). Our final observation is that if the conclusions of Descartes and Peirce about the possible fixations of belief are put in sufficiently general terms, one formula will contain them both: The only cause which is adequate to account for our possession of fixed beliefs is some external permanency (which Peirce in "The Fixation of Belief" calls nature, which Descartes calls God, and which both could call Nature-or-God in the manner of Descartes's progeny) .

There is a third and final point to notice about the later stages of Descartes's argument. In the end he does attempt to introduce a methodological principle, by establishing a necessary connection between the occurrence of clear and distinct ideas about a thing and our true ideas about the thing. The nub of the argument, as Peirce evidently saw it, is that we are helpless in the face of our tendency to take what seems to us to be clearly and distinctly involved in our ideas about something as the truth about that thing. Hence, if we were not justified in taking what is revealed to the light of our reason as the truth, then God would not be distinguishable from that malevolent being who had created us to be deceived. It is immaterial for our purposes to know whether or not that is indeed the nub of the Cartesian argument for a

principle of verification. The significant facts are that Peirce identifies it as such at the outset of "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" and that he apparently accepts the basic premise: "... the most essential point of the Cartesian philosophy [is] . . . that to accept propositions which



100 Richard Smyth

seem perfectly evident to us is a thing which, whether it be logical or illogical, we cannot help doing" (5.392). From the fact that he chides Leibniz for having overlooked this strategic consideration, we can easily infer that he does not intend to make the same mistake himself.

Peirce criticizes and rejects the method of provisional doubt. His reasoning is another good indication of his interest in the Cartesian analysis of the possible causes of ideas; he turns the position of Descartes against itself by suggesting that the Cartesian methodology presupposes an inadequate understanding of the things that can cause a change in our states of mind. Doubt is an active state of mind, but Descartes proposes no adequate cause that could bring about such a state of mind. For example, his idea that his thought might be under the control of a malevolent deceiver is merely part of a "paper doubt" about the causes of his states of mind. The hypothesis is not sufficient to bring about a "real and living doubt". "The mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief" (5.376).

The metaphysical views that underlie Peirce's rejection of "paper doubt" are an important element in the turn from practicalism to pragmatism in methodology. Fitzgerald calls attention to an essential part of these views when he notes that for Peirce ideas (and, more generally, signs) have the effects of final causes rather than efficient or moving causes.10 Ideas - considered as such - lack all efficacy in forcing changes. A fortiori, they cannot, by themselves, be held to stimulate inquiry. The metaphysical view which underlies this condition is perfectly general and receives many other illustrations in Peirce's writings. For example, your idea that the room is hot cannot by itself get the window raised, though it may well be a cause of the raising of the window. It is powerless without the agency supplied by arms and legs. In the same way, one can speak of the law of least work as the cause of the meandering of a river, but only an unenlightened hearer would interpret that to mean that the familiar, sweeping curves are made by the law and not by the movement of water.

The essay on the fixation of belief marked an important way station in applying this general principle to the study of our ideas. If an idea cannot be made or altered by an idea alone, still one cannot immediately conclude that every idea is the effect of some external object. Why not suppose that ideas are made by us, or that they are produced by something in our natures? "The Fixation of Belief" provides a detailed




refutation of that possibility. Peirce apparently structures his argument around a traditional view of the division of the faculties or aspects of human nature. Neither our willfullness or tenacity, nor our social impulses or instincts, nor our capacity for reasoning together can be relied upon as the adequate cause of any fixed idea. On the assumption that a clear idea is one which we will have no rational motive to alter, any method for making a clear idea will necessarily be a method in which ideas are ultimately fixed. Hence, if the conclusion of "The Fixation of Belief" is accepted, the method of making our ideas clear must be a method in which the effect of something external to ourselves is allowed to be reflected in the ideas that are studied. The defect of all species of practicalism as methods of clarifying ideas is that they ask us to view our ideas as things we make or as things that arise in the course of what we do. The correct, pragmatic view is that every idea that can end as a clear idea must begin as an idea that is made in us by the things that force themselves to our attention and stimulate inquiry.

The assumption underlying this reading is that "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" is written within the context of the arguments in the first essay of its series. The assumption is that doubts about the meaning of an idea have the same general character as any other doubts that can arise in the course of inquiry and that the same general conclusion applies to them: "To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect" (5.383). If anyone grants this assumption about the way the two essays are related, he will want to extend the line of connection back to Peirce' s earlier series of essays in 1868 and to see the two as continuing the earlier attack on Descartes. Descartes had attempted to account for the production of clear ideas by the supposition that we possess a rational faculty which is responsible for providing them. Peirce' s verdict on this alleged faculty of intuition had been entirely negative (5.213).

Peirce's examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the Cartesian methodology taught him that questions about the causes adequate to change our ideas have priority over the questions about the reasons that we can supply to verify the ideas or the definitions we can supply to clarify the ideas. The reason for this is that every methodology must presuppose the kind of stimulation from the object which supplies us with leverage over the ideas. Now among our various ideas we must



102 Richard Smyth

include our ideas about methodology. It follows that every attack on a methodology or expression of a doubt about it can be effective only if it can presuppose the existence of something which will disrupt and force a change in the ideas about method which are under attack. We have already remarked that Ayer interprets these methodological essays by Peirce in the spirit of verificationism. Ayer does not note or pursue the significance of the distinction between the causes by which an idea is made or altered and the reasons by which an idea is verified. The weakness of this interpretation shows up most vividly when Ayer takes up the four considerations which Peirce brings against those who would doubt his ideas about the method of science. Ayer says that these various considerations are "not very convincing," "curious," "fallacious," "trifling" and, taken as a whole, "slightly disingenuous."11 The explanation for these unfavorable judgments by Ayer is that he takes the four observations to be offered by Peirce as reasons which support the method of science and its underlying presupposition (namely, the presupposition that there are real and independent objects of inquiry which can affect the course of inquiry) (5.384). But the four comments are clearly and explicitly offered by Peirce as his explanation of why he does not doubt the method and the hypothesis it supposes, and as his explanation of why others will never come to have real doubts about these things. For example, his third point is that "Everyone uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it." Ayer takes this as an argument in support of the scientific method, and, interpreting it in that manner, he rightly calls it trifling. But Peirce' s point is that to have a real doubt about the scientific method, you must suppose an adequate cause for the doubt. The fact that people do have a natural tendency to employ the method of science certainly is relevant to a judgment about whether something about us will cause a doubt about the method.

Ayer correctly perceives that Peirce is attempting a reply to a challenge to the truth of his own assumptions. Ayer misperceives the nature of the reply. Peirce counter-attacks against the sceptic with a question he has learned from Descartes: How can the doubter account for the causes of his own alleged ideas? In regard to his own ideas Peirce does not meet the doubter with an attempted justification of his methods for justifying belief; instead he gives a causal explanation of the fixity of his own convictions. The principle on which the explanation rests is, at least, consistent with the presuppositions of his method; Peirce re-




iterated the principle in a later footnote to the discussion: "Changes of opinion are brought about by events beyond human control."

If we have correctly identified the Cartesian background for the pragmatic maxim then we are in a position to formulate the assumption which Peirce carried into the discussion of how to make our ideas clear: In order for a method for clarifying ideas to be successful as a method of science, it must be restricted to those ideas that are made in us in the actual course of inquiry. An anthropology or science of human nature which is conducted in a pragmatic spirit is particularly concerned with the way in which our natural human tendencies are affected by the circumstances of history and geography. For example, when we consider how men are affected by the rays from the sun in the tropical regions, we are considering men pragmatically - that is, as things made to be in a certain way. By tradition, methodology has been conceived as the domain of the practical, rather than the pragmatic. On this traditional view, where ideas are considered to be our doings or the effects of our doings, the principles for the clarification of ideas are practical rules (the rules of definition). By contrast, the key phrase in the pragmatic maxim and the phrase which gives it its pragmatic significance is the one which asks us to consider the effects of the object on us. With this

phrase Peirce means to restrict the process of clarifying ideas to those ideas that can be assumed to have an actual context in inquiry. The passport which the phrase suggests as the passport which must be shown by any idea which can be a clear idea is one that is shown at the entrance to thought: What are the circumstances that provoked the idea and what circumstances would cause it to be altered?

The Cartesian assumption underlying the analysis is that nature (or nature's God) is (as it were) running an experiment on us. The pur- pose of the experiment is to shape and discipline our thinking. If this be the supposed phenomenon, then we can properly ask, "By what

experimental effects is this phenomenon made known to us?" That is to say, if objects are assumed to have effects on our ideas, we have an obligation to say where and how these effects can be discerned. I suggest that the second key phrase in the pragmatic maxim contains Peirce' s answer to this epistemological puzzle. I argue that he found the key to the epistemology of the problem of clear ideas in Kant's writings, although I agree that there were several historical influences on his thinking at this juncture. I preface my remarks about the sense of the phrase by a very brief review of two such elements that have become



104 Richard Smyth

reasonably familiar through previous discussions of the maxim. The point of the review will become clear when we return to Kant's influence on the pragmatic maxim.

The effects of an object which conceivably have a practical bearing are the ones that have a possible bearing on those things that are within our control. Among the things in our mind which are candidates for the status of things with a practical bearing, one obvious candidate is a rule of conduct - considered in whatever form it assumes when it becomes capable of an actual effect on conduct. Prior to "How To Make Our Ideas Clear," logicians had established that the whole bearing of any general proposition on the conduct of a deduction is exhausted by viewing it as a rule for connecting particular ideas. Mill's logic had made this observation about the role of general propositions in syl- logisms,12 but the same idea is easily extended to our general concepts as well. For example, one might ask a logician to clarify the general concept of identity in the judgment that George Washington is identical to the first president of the United States. One response open to the logician would take the form of a definition of identity which sets out what is contained in the idea. But if the logician is asked to consider the practical bearing of the idea, he is encouraged to express the content of the idea in the form of a rule. In the case at hand, the idea of the identity of these two individuals can be given as the rule for treating the idea or term 'George Washington' as interchangeable with the term 'the first president of the United States' in the appropriate contexts. If the idea of their identity has become fixed in your mind, you will have a natural tendency or habit of translating information about them in this way. This first point - which I assume without special argument - is one which was familiar to Peirce from his logical studies: If your interest in the practical bearing of an idea is restricted to its bearing on the conduct of reasoning, then the content of the idea can be given in the form of a rule of conduct. This observation is conditional, and our second point has a bearing on the scope of the condition.

We are attempting to study ideas pragmatically, as modifications of the mind through the effects of objects. In the course of his earlier series of papers on the nature of mind Peirce had defended a very general thesis about the possible "modifications of consciousness." The thesis is one by which he sought to "reduce all mental actions to the formula of valid reasoning" (5.267). Thus, when Peirce commenced his study of how to make our ideas clear, he had already convinced




himself that the practical bearing of every modification of consciousness which is a general idea can be considered to be its bearing on reasoning. This result, together with the result which had been anticipated by Mill, shows that the content of every idea can be given in the form of a rule, // there is some reason for doing so. The story of the Kantian influence on the pragmatic maxim is about the reasons for doing so.

Kant's influence on "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" is most apparent in the language of the discussion. In The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant examines the possibility of a determination of things through the will - a type of causation, according to Kant, in which a role must be assigned to a rule or law of our conduct. The first point to notice about Kant's discussion is the very special sense in which he employs the term "metaphysics." The concept is tied to his distinction between the empirical and the non-

empirical part of every moral philosophy. The assumption about the rules of conduct which underlies the empirical part of the study of morals is that very assumption which, as we have argued, Peirce carries into "How To Make Our Ideas Clear"; that is, the empirical part of the study of morals deals with "the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature."13 Thus, Kant's non -metaphysical part assumes what is normally designated a metaphysical principle and has indeed been so described by us through the first part of this study - the

principle, namely, that there is a causality by which nature acts on us. What Kant calls the metaphysical part of the study of morals is the part which studies our moral conceptions and principles as these have their source in us and our own spontaneity as rational beings. It follows from this first point that if Peirce was influenced by Kant's terminology in "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" then the claim that his pragmatic maxim does away with the metaphysical employment of ideas becomes a mere tautology which follows from the special, Kantian sense of the term "metaphysics", when conjoined with his own assumptions that all our ideas reflect the sensible effects of natural objects. It also follows, contrary to what has sometimes been said, that the original formulation of the pragmatic maxim was not particularly hostile to metaphysics in any ordinary, non-Kantian sense.

The second point to notice is that Kant's distinction between these two parts of the study of morals corresponds to a distinction that he makes between two kinds of rules or imperatives. What Kant calls a

"pragmatic imperative" is distinguished from an imperative of pure



106 Richard Smyth

practical reason which he calls a "moral imperative." Kant's interest in the metaphysics of morals is directed toward the possible practical bearing of pure rules or imperatives, but for our understanding of Peirce what Kant tells us about the pragmatic imperative is central. Pragmatic imperatives are said to "involve necessity."14 From Kant's previous discussion of the related distinction between assertorial and categorical imperatives, we can infer that the necessity which he has in mind is the necessity which derives from our nature and from our natural tendencies. However, the important point which Kant stresses in the discussion of these pragmatic imperatives is the way in which the imperatives which depend upon our natural tendencies can be affected by our changing, individual circumstances. Thus, a pragmatic imperative is always "one which can only hold under a contingent subjective condition, viz., they depend upon whether this or that man reckons this or that as part of his happiness."15 Pragmatic maxims are not only relative to human nature in general, but to the contingencies of human nature in varying circumstances. To revert to our earlier example, we can fairly conclude that pragmatic rules or "counsels of prudence" which arise for those who live in the tropics would not come to have the same force for those who live in temperate zones.

There is an additional terminological point which suggests that Peirce had Kant in mind when fashioning the pragmatic maxim. We have argued that in "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce distinguishes the scientific method from other methods through a consideration of our natural human propensities, and that the statement of the pragmatic maxim is predicated upon the outcome of the earlier analysis. According to the terminological proposal in Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Meta- physics of Morals, "whatever is deduced from the particular natural characteristics of humanity, from certain feelings and propensities, nay even, if possible, from any particular tendency proper to human reason, and which need not necessarily hold for the will of every rational being - this may indeed supply us with a maxim but not with a law; . . ."l6 The significance of that proposal must be understood against the background of a tradition stretching back to Aristotle - a tradition according to which in matters which concern the discussion of thought, doing has priority over what is made or done, or (to put the same point in different words) the practical considerations have priority over pragmatic ones. Kant agrees to that priority as it affects the discussion of thought in logic: That is, he makes the metaphysical distinction between concepts




and intuitions rest on the fact that concepts have their origin in the spontaneity of the understanding, rather than in our receptivity;17 and he tells us that general logic does not need to concern itself with sensible influences.18 So long as the tradition of Aristotle and Kant held sway, the directives which govern the clarification of concepts could be viewed as laws of logic in the strict, Kantian sense of law. By the same token, Peirce's choice of the term * 'maxim" is fully explained by the assumption that he intends to give the pragmatic aspect of thought priority over the practical and that he is using the term in the strict, Kantian sense. A pragmatic law, i. e., a law founded upon a consideration of what can be done to us, is a contradiction in terms for Kant.

The greatest single benefit which Peirce derived from Kant in "How To Make Our Ideas Clear" comes from Kant's analysis of the ingredients of a practical agency. We have already mentioned one element: the existence of a principle or rule of action to which the conduct can be made to conform. The second, essential element is that the action is determined by that principle by means of our conception of the principle or rule. "Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is, according to principles, that is, have a will. Since the deduction oí actions from principles requires reason, the will is nothing but practical reason."19 The feature to be stressed about Kant's analysis of this exercise of practical agency is that he makes our conception of the rule an indispensable element in the situation. "The pre-eminent good which we call moral can consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being in so far as this

conception . . . determines the will."20 One point which this Kantian analysis makes clear is the reason for

the second occurrence of the word "conception" in Peirce's pragmatic maxim. The object provokes us to thought, with the result that we

acquire some conception or some general belief about the object: this accounts in a straight-forward way for the first and the third occurrences of "conception" in the maxim. These conceptions are what are being clarified. The maxim invites us to trace the reverberations of the object through our thinking until those reverberations assume a practical bear-

ing in the form of a rule of action. But why the second occurrence of

"conception" in the maxim? The question is one that must be faced

by every exegesis of the maxim, not just by ours. The question is a

puzzle because the direction of Peirce's discussion in the passages sur-



108 Richard Smyth

rounding the maxim is clearly pointing the other way - toward the substitution of rules or habits for the conceptions that are to be clarified. Yet the formulation of the maxim with its second reference to conceptions makes the clarification of the original conception consist in our conception of something. What does Peirce hope to gain by this?

I submit that the answer lies in Kant's views about the peculiar epistemological availability of those conceptions which are conceptions of rules of action. Laws of nature apply to things whether or not the things are capable of any conception of those laws, but a practical rule or law has a conceivable bearing on our conduct - that is, it is a practical rule - just in case we can have a conception of the law. This analysis gives us an immense epistemological advantage when we deal with practical rules, and one which Kant, himself, repeatedly stressed. For example, he writes that "we do not need science and philosophy to know what we should do to be honest and good, yea, even wise and virtuous. Indeed, we might well have conjectured beforehand that the knowledge of what every man is bound to do, and therefore also to know, would be within the reach of every man, even the commonest. Here we cannot forbear the admiration when we see how great an advantage the practical judgment has over the theoretical in the common understanding of men."21 On the assumption that Peirce was aware from other sources of the possibility of viewing every general concept or principle in the light of its conceivable practical bearing, Kant's analysis of the epistemological availability of practical rules gave Peirce a reason for doing so. The entire significance of a practical rule is exhausted by what we are able to frame as our conception of that rule, because it can only have a practical bearing on our conduct through our conception of it. If our behavior merely happens to conform to the rule, but is not determined through our awareness of the rule, the rule can have great theoretical importance as a law of our nature but it has no practical bearing.

The invitation to consider the practical bearing of the idea is Peirce' s way of assuring you that you will be able to become conscious of what is involved in your idea. But you will lapse into a species of pure practicalism - the very death of pragmatic ways of thinking - if you omit the restriction of this method to the ideas that are provoked and shaped by objects. As I interpret the maxim, therefore, it has a pragmatic dimension and a practical dimension. The pragmatic dimension has priority in the straight-forward sense that the application of the




maxim is restricted to those ideas which arise in us in the actual course of inquiry.

The difficult problem for Kant in the metaphysics of morals is not how we know what we ought to do, but how it is possible for us to do what we ought to do. How can the alleged determination of our conduct through practical laws be justified as possible? Kant's central task is thus to give what he calls a "proof" or a "deduction" of the possibility of a causality through freedom. There is absolutely nothing like such a deduction in "How To Make Our Ideas Clear." Nevertheless, one particular advantage of my interpretation of that essay is that it renders intelligible a fact that Max Fisch and others have found somewhat puzzling. What did Peirce mean when he suggested that his system of logical graphs contains a proof of his pragmatism? I suggest that he had in mind a proof in the Kantian sense, as a deduction of the possibility of practical agency.

Peirce's pragmatism alters the terms of this problem in several significant respects. For Peirce, as for Kant, our positive freedom as

practical agents is related to the process by which a law or a rule is derived as the rule of our action. Peirce seems never to have been attracted to the additional idea that our actions themselves are determined through our will. That is, on his analysis of human freedom, a con-

ception of the rule of conduct is required for the possibility of review and criticism of actions, rather than being required as the direct determinant of the action itself. Our control over the action is achieved in the process whereby the habits or rules of action are determined. This

emphasis on our autonomy, or status as rule-giver, is perhaps not very different from the emphasis in Kant's view. But, as we have noted, Peirce assumes that every mental action can be reduced to some form of valid reasoning. Hence, if there is a possible practical agency it must be exercised in the course of reasoning. Peirce supposes that we gain this control or autonomy by the fact that there is a form of merely hypothetical reasoning or reasoning about possible courses of action which can have an effect on our habits of conduct. Since the objects of such reasoning are mere "beings of reason" - which is to say that they are produced by us - the habits which result from this reasoning are reflections of our autonomy.

In order to establish the possibility of such reasoning in a manner that satisfies Peirce's pragmatic maxim, the outcome of the reasoning must be shown to depend upon the way in which we are forced to think



110 Richard Smyth

by the objects of which we become sensible. At first glance this pragmatic condition contradicts the explanation which has just been given of where and how we can gain control over our habits of conduct -

namely, by reasoning about merely imaginary states of affairs. However, the contradiction disappears if we can conceive the process of reasoning itself in the pragmatic spirit. Peirce's system of logical graphs provides an obvious solution to the dilemna. This logical system, particularly through its gamma part, offers us a theory which is intended to have three important characteristics:

1) The contents of every representation which can be granted any significance should be capable of being analyzed within the system.

2) The theory (in its gamma part) accounts for the possibility of valid reasonings about mere possibilities.

3) The theory should represent logic as an observational science in accordance with the pragmatic view of mental action. The theory does this by making our determination of the validity of every reasoning and of the contents of every representation depend upon a technique for

graphing, experimenting upon, and observing the representations of the

objects which are the subject matter of the reasoning. These three results secure the possibility of our exercise of autonomy as rational beings: they show that it is possible for us to establish habits of conduct through a

process of reasoning about possibilities. They secure that possibility in a manner that is consistent with the priority of the pragmatic assumption about our thinking. I conjecture, therefore, that if the goals of Peirce's

system of graphs were achieved, he would view the result as a deduction

(in the special Kantian sense) of the possibility of the pragmatic maxim of 1878.22

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

NOTES

1. John J. Fitzgerald: Peircés Theory of Signs as Foundation for Pragmatism (The Hague, 1966), p. 96.

2. A. J. Ayer: The Origins of Pragmatism (San Francisco, 1968), p. 44. 3. Ibid., p. 49. 4. Charles Sanders Peirce: Collected Papers (Cambridge, I960). References in

the text are to the volume and the paragraph. 5. Fitzgerald, p. 100.




6. Descartes: Philosophical Writings, ed. by Anscombe and Geach (London, 1970), p. 61.

7. Konrad Marc-Wogau: "Der Zweifel Descartes' und das Cog/to ergo sum", Theoria, Vol. XX (1954), p. 128.

8. Antoine-Augustin Cournot: Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance et sur les charactères de la critique philosophique (Paris, 1851), p. 30.

9. Francisco Suarez: Disputationes metaphysicae (Hildesheim, 1965). Vol. I, p. 917 (disp. 26, sect. 1, art. 5).

10. Fitzgerald, p. 43. 11. Ayer, p. 21 if. 12. John Stuart Mill: A System of Logic (New York, 1884), p. 93 and

pp. 137-138. 13. Kant: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals , trans. T. K.

Abbott (New York, 1949), p. 3. 14. Ibid., p. 34. 15. Ibid., p. 34. 16. Ibid., p. 42. 17. Kant: Introduction to Logic, trans. T. K. Abbot (London, 1885), pp. 26-27. 18. Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London,

1953), p. 94 (A52-53). 19. Fundamental Principles, p. 30. 20. Ibid., p. 19. 21. Ibid., p. 21. 22. I am grateful to Jeremiah McCarthy for helpful discussions about Peirce.



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The Pragmatic Maxim in 1878