Belief

Let's have a look at this particular crazy bastard right here. His name is C. S. Peirce (pronounced like 'purse'), and he might be the smartest person you've never heard of. Certainly, pound-for-pound, America's smartest drug addict.

Persons who follow the history of science are fond of noting that prior to, say, 1895, many scientists were ready to call it a day--just as soon as a couple of wrinkles in "our" theory of electromagnetism had been smoothed out. Despite the fact that from 1895-1905, all hell broke loose in physics ... *IN* 1895, if you wanted to get your hands on someone who knew everything there was to know, Peirce would have been a good choice.

Granted, he was sort of a wreck of a human being. Couldn't hold a job, kept thinking that people would flock, nay stampede, to send him money to learn logic through the mail, died crazy locked up in a tower. [Okay, okay, that last is NOT true ... despite the fact that from a narrative standpoint it would have provided him with a fitting end. Plus ... my boss Joe Pitt told me that once.] But his thinking in a wide range of fields has improved his reputation nearly every year since his death in 1914. [Perhaps not to his credit, Peirce would not have been the slightest bit surprised.]

Peirce was a difficult thinker. Even philosophers, driven by the imperative of attaining a wide acquaintance with the history of philosophy, typically read only two articles. The first is called:

The Fixation of Belief

In it, he argues a number of things. His first step was to define belief, and Peirce defined belief (a number of times and in slightly different ways throughout his works) as thought at rest. Belief is a solution to doubt. Doubt is uncomfortable. Enquiry (or inquiry) is spurred by doubt, and stopped (assuaged, contented by) belief. If I am thinking about what I want on my pizza (jalapenos? sun-dried tomato? anchovies?) I only think about it until I've "made up my mind." Then I'm done thinking about it ... at least 'till the next time.

Puerile example? You bet. But consider this ... when we make up our minds, we stop enquiring. This is true of ordering lunch, and Peirce would say, of any non-scientific context. Belief is thought at rest.

He also thought that there were four basic ways of "fixing" belief. They are Tenacity, Authority, A priori, and Pragmatic (or Scientific).

Tenacity involves looking to ... well, yourself for your beliefs. I don't mean in a self-reliant kind of way, I mean in a "cover your eyes lest you see information you disagree with" kind of way. I once went to check on the books I had ordered for a class called "Reason and Revolution in Science," which included Darwin, and the (lovely, friendly, Baptist with two capital 'B's and a spike through it) general books manager said ... "Ooooh, tha-yats Duhr-Wihn, in't it? Oh, I couldn't read tha-yat ..." Tenacity!

Authority involves looking to ... wait for it ... an authority. Cf. the scholastic period, where if you wanted to know something theological you looked in the Bible (or perhaps official commentaries ... Summa Theologicae, anyone?), and if you wanted to know something about science, you would look in Aristotle. (Aristotle who had a very Happy Gilmore theory of gravity ... things made primarily of earth fall because they want to get to their home.) That's it. Everything was better in the old days ... I only like Matlock!

A priori is mildly difficult to explain. As an example, in the 17th century, when science began to make explanatory progress, some people were profoundly disquieted by the idea that we could go out and look at the world ourselves, leaving those authorities behind. This is of course a central tension of the 17th century, and has nothing whatever to do with Kansas and Dover, Pa. Some people tried to ally science and religion by making the first dependent on the second, but in a very roundabout kind of way. Descartes' science was trustworthy, he thought, because he had used his god-given intellect to investigate what must be true ahead of time by necessity. Everything must have a cause, for example. Obviously, right? Even before we have any experience with particular causes. A priori means before experience, and so "made manifest by the light of nature", which is code for a priori, at least in Meditations on First Philosophy means, for Descartes, absolutely certain. Such ideas are trustworthy, but not because they depend on an authority. They are things that we know must be true ... before we have any experience with reality.

Peirce doesn't think much of a priori ideas, or at least their logical provenance. Because we are capable of (and perhaps pinioned by) a tendency to think that what we believe is true. Descartes, for example, couldn't conceive of a world without god. So he was certain about it; but commentators like Peirce point out that there is a difference between my being certain--I certainly believe twinkies are the perfect food!--and some kind of abstract certainty. When looking for things that must be true, we often find ourselves settling for ... our own beliefs.

The fourth way to fix belief is the pragmatic, or scientific method. I will deal with this, and some of the pragmatic issues raised by Peirce's second paper, on another day when I'm bored prior to class. But what I want to raise right now is the general reason why Peirce claimed that the fourth method is the best. And the reason is, the pragmatic method of fixing belief responds to reality.

If you tenaciously cling to your beliefs, you will dismiss and possibly avoid counterevidence, or even ideas that might make you change your mind. Which is in a way admirable, but what if you believe that torture is a good thing? I have a hard time getting behind that one. Authority is nice (and a time-saver), but what if my authority is Hitler? Less aggregiously, what if your authority can't help you in a new situation? I know I'm not s'posed to covet my neighbor's oxen, to use the Bible as an example, check--can I download music? In the long run (and possibly excepting the Bible, depending upon your point of view) the method of authority resolves to "some guy said ..." x.

We are a bit further along with regard to *our* regard for science, so we tend to treat scientists as authorities ... but science has special rules, and is designed (at least in the abstract) to be a neutral search for truth. It has some Mertonian virtues, like freely communicated, transparent, repeatable, on ad infinitum.

I have a number of friends who are quite conservative but a little worried about the direction our country has been taking with regard to science in our current atmosphere of battological malversation. They tickle me. The thing that makes science cool, the thing that makes science work ... is a clear-eyed attempt to account for evidence. And evidence is not framing, or Chunkiavellian made up weapons, or keeping the level of debate on a level of generality so vague as to be useless. I'm for Freedom! If you're not with me ... (Well, actually, Cheney does specifically condone torture, right up to rape--if it doesn't cause organ failure. Oh dear.)

"The method of science," for Peirce, is the best method precisely because it takes reality into account. And every single trend I've watched for the last 5 years, in our leadership--specifically, when they say they want to get away from "reality-based decision-making"--in our media, in our relations to each other, in our fearful attempt to cling to the simple and good; even if the world is neither ... these things worry me on a general level because I retain the belief that we ought to take reality into account.