Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle: Grounds for Human Significance

4. Belief, Reality, and Truth

BELIEF, REALITY, AND TRUTH There is nothing . . . to prevent our knowing outward things as they really are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them in numberless cases, although we can never be absolutely certain of doing so in any special case. (5.3 I I) IN THE PREVIOUS chapter we showed some of what is behind Peirce's assertion that for logical thought to be possible, the mind must have three elements: first, ideas, or thoughts; second, general rules according to which one idea determines another, or the habitual connection between thoughts; and third, processes establishing habitual connection between thoughts (7.348, 355, 358). While we have shown that processes can determine ideas, we have not made clear how and to what degree the mind judges and alters its own processes, and thereby the "content" of consciousness. The "habitual connection between thoughts" is for Peirce synonymous with "beliefs." A belief is not only not present in an instant (as a thought is not present in an instant ), "it cannot be present to the mind in any period of time" (7.355). A beliefis not the thought ofa general rule by which ideas succeed one another, nor is it the succession of ideas; it is the rule, "an habitual connection among the things which are successively present" (7.355). Peirce's treatment of belief in the mind corresponds to 49 Belief, Reality, and Truth his treatment of "ground" in his sign theory. Therefore we will look first at how ground is treated in Peirce's sign theory and then look at how beliefs can influence and be influenced by thought. Peirce says "every representamen" is "connected with three things, the ground, the object, and the interpretant" (2.229). This assertion has confused many because "ground" is not quite logically parallel with the "object" and "interpretant." Ground, like belief or the habitual connection of signs, is not a sign itsel£ Peirce's best single definition of a sign is the following, and it clarifies what he means by ground. Actually, the first sentence is the definition, and the rest is an elaboration of it: A sign or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in every respect, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen. (2.228) All thought, all description, explanation, interpretation of anything is "grounded" in "belief." I have shown elsewhere that Peirce's concept of ground (and hence belief) corresponds to Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of "language games" and E. D. Hirsch's concept of "genre. "1 The grounds, language games, uses, habitual connections, beliefs are at the basis of all rationality. For a sign even to be thought it must involve a ground. Hence all thought is grounded in habits of thought that are the product of prior volitional acts and social conditioning. We may investigate these habits and alter them, but at no moment can we act or think without the nonrational acceptance of them. This is 50 Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle why Hans-Georg Gadamer says we cannot escape the "horizon " or "historicity" within which we live. This is no doubt why S0ren Kierkegaard argues that ultimately all logical and rational systems must begin in a "leap" that is not itself open to rational questioning and inquiry. And this is Wittgenstein 's point when he says that questioning must come to an end in order to act. The processes establishing a habitual connection between thoughts and beliefs Peirce calls "inference." Inference is the process of learning from experience, of doing science. Inference is 'purposive, deliberate conduct. It involves the comparison of an act, idea, or inference with another and ajudgment about future conduct. Future conduct and thought are affected by the beliefs that develop under the influence of a course of self-criticism that inference provides . A thought, then, is a sign of a belief, of a habitual connection , but is not a belief itself. "A thought which is not capable of affecting belief in any way," Peirce said, "obviously has no signification...