It will be noted that the quotation employs the terms “reality” and “truth,” while it makes them a part of the statement of the hypothesis entertained in scientific procedure. Upon such a basis, what meanings attach to the terms “reality” and “truth”? Since they are general terms, their meanings must be determined on the basis of the effects, having practical bearings, which the object of our conception has. Now the effect which real things have is to cause beliefs; beliefs are then the consequences which give the general term reality a “rational purport.” And on the assumption of the scientific method, the distinguishing character of the real object must be that it tends to produce a single universally accepted belief. “All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be applied.” “This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a foreordained goal, is like the operation of destiny.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.”[[82]] In a subsequent essay (on the “Probability of Induction”) Peirce expressly draws the conclusion which follows from this statement; viz., that this conception of truth and reality makes everything depend upon the character of the methods of inquiry and inference by which conclusions are reached. “In the case of synthetic inferences we know only the degree of trustworthiness of our proceeding. As all knowledge comes from synthetic inference, we must also infer that all human certainty consists merely in our knowing that the processes by which our knowledge has been derived are such as must generally have led to true conclusions”[[83]]—true conclusions, once more, being those which command the agreement of competent inquiries.
Summing up, we may say that Peirce’s pragmaticism is a doctrine concerning the meaning, conception, or rational purport of objects, namely, that these consist in the “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.”[[84]] “Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects,” and if we have any doubt as to whether we really believe the effects to be sensible or no, we have only to ask ourselves whether or no we should act any differently in their presence. In short, our own responses to sensory stimuli are the ultimate, or testing, ingredients in our conception of an object. In the literal sense of the word pragmatist, therefore, Peirce is more of a pragmatist than James.
He is also less of a nominalist. That is to say, he emphasizes much less the particular sensible consequence, and much more the habit, the generic attitude of response, set up in consequence of experiences with a thing. In the passage in the Dictionary already quoted he speaks as if in his later life he attached less importance to action, and more to “concrete reasonableness” than in his earlier writing. It may well be that the relative emphasis had shifted. But there is at most but a difference of emphasis. For in his later doctrine, concrete rationality means a change in existence brought about through action, and through action which embodies conceptions whose own specific existence consists in habitual attitudes of response. In his earlier writing, the emphasis upon habits, as something generic, is explicit. “What a thing means is simply what habits it involves.”[[85]] More elaborately, “Induction infers a rule. Now the belief of a rule is a habit. That a habit is a rule, active in us, is evident. That every belief is of the nature of a habit, in so far as it is of a general character, has been shown in the earlier papers of this series.”[[86]]
The difference between Peirce and James which next strikes us is the greater emphasis placed by the former upon the method of procedure. As the quotations already made show, everything ultimately turned, for Peirce, upon the trustworthiness of the procedures of inquiry. Hence his high estimate of logic, as compared with James—at least James in his later days. Hence also his definite rejection of the appeal to the Will to Believe—under the form of what he calls the method of tenacity. Closely associated with this is the fact that Peirce has a more explicit dependence upon the social factor than has James. The appeal in Peirce is essentially to the consensus of those who have investigated, using methods which are capable of employment by all. It is the need for social agreement, and the fact that in its absence “the method of tenacity” will be exposed to disintegration from without, which finally forces upon mankind the wider and wider utilization of the scientific method.
Finally, both Peirce and James are realists. The reasonings of both depend upon the assumption of real things which really have effects or consequences. Of the two, Peirce makes clearer the fact that in philosophy at least we are dealing with the conception of reality, with reality as a term having rational purport, and hence with something whose meaning is itself to be determined in terms of consequences. That “reality” means the object of those beliefs which have, after prolonged and coöperative inquiry, becomes stable, and “truth” the quality of these beliefs is a logical consequence of this position. Thus while “we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be ... it would be a great mistake to suppose that this definition makes the idea of reality perfectly clear.”[[87]] For it is only the outcome of persistent and conjoint inquiry which enables us to give intelligible meaning in the concrete to the expression “characters independent of what anybody may think them to be.” (This is the pragmatic way out of the egocentric predicament.) And while my purpose is wholly expository I can not close without inquiring whether recourse to Peirce would not have a most beneficial influence in contemporary discussion. Do not a large part of our epistemological difficulties arise from an attempt to define the “real” as something given prior to reflective inquiry instead of as that which reflective inquiry is forced to reach and to which when it is reached belief can stably cling?
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PEIRCE’S PUBLISHED WRITINGS
I. Writings of General Interest.[[88]]
A. Three papers in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 2 (1868).
1. “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,” pp. 103-114.
2. “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” pp. 140-157.