But he says similarly of belief, “Belief involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, of a habit”. “Since belief is a rule for action, it is a new starting point for thought”. “The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise”. (p. 291).
Now it will be agreed that instead of defining belief and meaning in terms of the same thing and thus identifying them, we ought sharply to distinguish between them. To have the meaning of a thing is not at all the same as to believe in it. Thus one may have clearly in mind the meaning of centaurs or of fairies or of any of the characters of mythology without in the slightest degree believing in them. Defining these things in terms of sensible effects, we could say that we know their meaning in the sense that we understand which sensible effects would be involved if they did exist. But to have a belief about them would mean that we would expect these sensible effects. In other words, a belief involves the possibility of fulfillment or frustration of expectation. To believe in anything is therefore a distinct step beyond understanding it.
In inserting these theories of reality and of belief in this discussion of a method for clear apprehension, Peirce is passing beyond a doctrine of clearness and involving himself in a doctrine of truth. We have seen that he does not seem to be able to maintain the postulated reality underlying his description of the scientific method for attaining truth. And it now seems that he is in equal difficulty with belief. If meaning is simply a sum of habits, belief is not simply a sum of habits, for the two are not the same. And if, as we have said, the quality that distinguishes belief from meaning is the fact that it involves expectation, then we appear to be on the verge of a new theory of truth,—a theory saying that truth is simply the fulfillment of these expectations.
Such, we may note, is the interpretation that Dewey puts upon the pragmatic method,—such is the theory of truth that he finds involved in it.
The interpretations of pragmatism which came particularly to the notice of Peirce, however, were those made by James and Schiller, and against these, we may say here, he made vigorous protest. These he regarded as perversions of his doctrine. And he was so desirous of indicating that his own theory of clearness involved for himself no such developments as these, that, in order to make the distinctions clear, he renamed his own doctrine.
His first article of dissent, appearing in The Monist in 1905, was directed mainly, however, against the looseness of popular usage. He traces briefly the doctrine’s growth. Referring back to his original statement in 1878, he says of himself that he “framed the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purpose of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the conceivably experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this doctrine he [Peirce, now speaking of himself] invented the name of pragmatism…. His word ‘pragmatism’ has gained general recognition in a generalized sense that seems to argue power of growth and vitality. The famed psychologist, James, first took it up, seeing that his ‘radical empiricism’ substantially answered to the writer’s definition, albeit with a certain difference in point of view. Next the admirably clear and brilliant thinker, Mr. Ferdinand C. S. Schiller, casting about for a more attractive name for the ‘anthropomorphism’ of his Riddle of the Sphinx, lit, in that most remarkable paper of his on Axioms as Postulates, upon the designation ‘pragmatism’, which in its original sense was in generic agreement with his own doctrine, for which he has since found the more appropriate specification ‘humanism’, while he still retains pragmatism in a somewhat wider sense. So far all went happily. But at present the word begins to be met with occasionally in the literary journals, where it gets abused in the merciless way that words have to expect when they fall into literary clutches. Sometimes the manners of the British have effloresced in scolding at the word as ill-chosen—ill-chosen, that is, to express some meaning that it was rather designed to exclude. So, then, the writer, finding his bantling ‘pragmatism’ so promoted, feels that it is time to kiss his child good-by and relinquish it in its higher destiny; while to serve the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he begs to announce the birth of the word ‘pragmaticism’, which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers”. (pp. 165-6).
Three years later Peirce published an article of much more outspoken protest, this time including in his repudiation the professional philosophers as well as the popularists. Writing for the Hibbert Journal (v.7) he states his case as follows:
“About forty years ago my studies of Kant, Berkeley, and others led me, after convincing myself that all thinking is performed in signs, and that mediation takes the form of dialogue, so that it is proper to speak of the ‘meaning’ of a concept, to conclude that to acquire full mastery of that meaning it is requisite, in the first place, to learn to recognize that concept under every disguise, through extensive familiarity with instances of it. But this, after all, does not imply any true understanding of it; so that it is further requisite that we should make an abstract logical analysis of it into its ultimate elements, or as complete an analysis as we can compass. But even so, we may still be without any living comprehension of it; and the only way to complete our knowledge of its nature is to discover and recognize just what habits of conduct a belief in the truth of the concept (of any conceivable subject, and under any conceivable circumstances) would reasonably develop; that is to say, what habits would ultimately result from a sufficient consideration of such truth. It is necessary to understand the word ‘conduct’, here, in the broadest sense. If, for example, the predication of a given concept were to lead to our admitting that a given form of reasoning concerning the subject of which it was affirmed was valid, when it would not otherwise be valid, the recognition of that effect in our reasoning would decidedly be a habit of conduct”. (p.108).
After referring to his own expositions he continues, “… But in 1897 Professor James remodelled the matter, and transmogrified it into a doctrine of philosophy, some parts of which I highly approved, while other and more prominent parts I regarded, and still regard, as opposed to sound logic. About the same time Professor Papirie discovered, to the delight of the Pragmatist school, that this doctrine was incapable of definition, which would certainly seem to distinguish it from every other doctrine in whatever branch of science, I was coming to the conclusion that my poor little maxim should be called by another name; and I accordingly, in April 1905, renamed it Pragmaticism.” (p.109).
“My original essay, having been written for a popular monthly, assumes, for no better reason than that real inquiry cannot begin until a state of real doubt arises, and ends as soon as a real Belief is attained, that a ‘settlement of belief’, or in other words, a state of satisfaction, is all that Truth, or the aim of inquiry, consists in. The reason I gave for this was so flimsy, while the inference was so nearly the gist of Pragmaticism, that I must confess the argument of that essay might be said with some justice to beg the question. The first part of the essay is occupied, however, with showing that, if Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction that would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue. This, I beg to point out, is a very different position from that of Mr. Schiller and the pragmatists of to-day…. Their avowedly undefinable position, if it be not capable of logical characterization, seems to me to be characterized by an angry hatred of strict logic, and even a disposition to rate any exact thought which interferes with their doctrine as all humbug. At the same time it seems to me clear that their approximate acceptance of the Pragmaticistic principle, and even that very casting aside of difficult distinctions (although I cannot approve of it), has helped them to a mightily clear discernment of some fundamental truths that other philosophers have seen but through a mist, or most of them not at all. Among such truths,—all of them old, of course, yet acknowledged by few—I reckon their denial of necessitarianism; their rejection of any ‘consciousness’ different from a visceral or other external sensation; their acknowledgment that there are, in a Pragmatistical sense, Real habits … and their insistence upon interpreting all hypostatic abstractions in terms of what they would or might (not actually will) come to in the concrete. It seems to me a pity that they should allow a philosophy so instinct with life to become infected with seeds of death in such notions as that of the unreality of all ideas of infinity and that of the mutability of truth, and in such confusions of thought as that of active willing (willing to control thought, to doubt, and to weigh reasons) with willing not to exert the will (willing to believe)”. (pp.111, 112).