Conversations on Peirce: Reals and Ideals

Five Peirce’s Dynamical Object Realism as Process Philosophy

five peirce’s dynamical object Realism as Process Philosophy Carl R. Hausman  From our many discussions of the realist and idealist strands in Peirce’s pragmaticism and from our engagement with contemporary pragmatists such as Margolis and Rorty, our conversations inevitably turned to the way in which Peirce tried to hold a middle ground between sheer mirroring and sheer constructing in the process of human knowing. Thus, in pursuing what Peirce might have meant by representational realism, we were led to consider the semeiotic processes Peirce pointed to in showing how perceptual judgments led back to a point of resistance. This led to various examinations of the dynamical object, one of which follows here. As noted earlier, Peirce’s conception of pragmatism has been interpreted as both a form of objective idealism and a form of realism. Objective idealism, as I understand it, insists that whatever is regarded as real must not only be mind dependent but also constituted by mind in the sense of being ultimately reducible to mental activity. Opposed to idealism is what I think of as ontological realism, {  }  carl r. hausman which I take to be the view that what is real in relation to thought in general is not itself exhausted by, or actually reducible to, thought. Instead, what is real, although it is necessarily related to thought, maintains an independence insofar as it functions as a constraint on what anyone and every intelligent being thinks. This independence from thought as a whole is what is crucial and is what we tried to address in responding to Margolis. However, whether Peirce’s thought depends on an idealistic or a realistic commitment, it surely is a kind of process philosophy, and a kind that seems to me to be unique. An explanation of this claim hinges on an attempt to understand what Peirce considered to be the function of the dynamical object in relation to interpretation in general—to the semeiotic system in which human understanding relates to the world. My aim here is to focus on the way in which the dynamical object distinguishes Peirce as at once a unique realist and a unique process philosopher. Before offering this account of Peirce’s process realism , however, let me consider the import of the terms pragmatism and process philosophy. The popular understanding of pragmatism is that it is a theory or quasi-theory about inquiry that is governed by concerns for practical action and practical goals. Thus, in this view pragmatism is something like a caricature of the Jamesian theory that what is true is what works. And what works is what satisfies inquirers or anyone who asks about the meaning and truth of an idea. Satisfaction is a form of experience , and thus the reference and test of an idea seems to lie in some conscious experience. Such a notion is at the heart of constructivist versions of pragmatism. Peirce’s early unnamed pragmatism and his later pragmaticism need to be thought of differently. For Peirce, pragmatism is a way of determining the meaning of general terms, and—taking into account his views after the 1880s—it presupposes an epistemology and an ontology concerning truth and what is real for rational communities. My concern, then, is with the ontological dimensions of Peirce’s pragmaticism . In this context, one stratum of common ground between realism as process philosophy  Jamesian and Peircean pragmatism is crucial. Both insist that the determination of meaning must lie in consequences—in future occurrences . For James pragmatism is ‘‘[t]he attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.’’1 And for Peirce the ‘‘kernel of pragmatism’’ is the idea that ‘‘the whole meaning of an intellectual predicate is that certain kinds of events would happen, once in so often, in the course of experience, under certain kinds of existential condition’’ (CP 5.468). Thus, for Peirce, reality is determinable in terms of future activity. Reality, then, is evolutionary. This point is central to the relating of Peircean pragmaticism to process philosophy. With respect to process philosophy, I take the main thrust of its advocates to depend on the rejection of any metaphysical or ontological position that views reality as substantival and static. What is knowable as reality is temporally spread as or in sequences of events. Events are connected by relations, and the only stabilities in the...