Not Cynicism, but Synechism: Lessons from Classical Pragmatism

Susan Haack Not Cynicism, but Synechism: Lessons from Classical Pragmatism Probably you all know that hoary old joke about the two behaviorists meeting on the street: "Hi! You're fine, how am I?" We laugh; but sometimes another person really can notice something about your mental goings-on of which you're not quite aware yourself — as I realized when, in the discussion after I had given a talk on philosophy of science at Yale, Karsten Harries observed: "Oh, I see; you're a synechist." Up till then I had been most conscious of the influence of Peirce's stalwart defense of the "scientific attitude," a genuine desire to learn the truth; of his arguments that the very possibility of inquiry presupposes a kind of realism; of the Critical Commonsensism I had adopted, and adapted, from him; and of course of his penchant for neologisms. But as I mulled over Harries' comment I soon saw that synechism is, indeed, one of those pragmatist ideas that has made its way into my philosophical thinking, or perhaps another of those philosophical leanings of mine that makes pragmatism congenial; and that my Critical Common· sensism could itself be plausibly construed as synechist in spirit. So the task I have set myself here is first to articulate the regulative principle Peirce calls "synechism," its connections with objective idealism, agapism, tychism, and logical realism, and its role in Peirce's understanding of what metaphysics is and does; and then — as my subtitle suggests — to trace (some of) the themes in my metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind that qualify me as a synechist, at least in a broad sense of the word. However, though my tide contrasts the synechism of the classical pragmatist tradition with the cynicism of recent self-styled neo-pragmatism — I just couldn't resist the play on words! — I shan't spend long on the Vulgar Pragmatism of Rorty and his admirers. But I will tell you the wonderfully ironic story of Peirce's first public presentation of synechism, when he read the nearly-finished version of "The Law of Mind" at the Harvard Graduate Philosophy Club in May of 1892. Among those present were Peirce's brother Jem, Josiah Royce, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, Dickinson S. Miller, and Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Spring, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 2 240 Susan Haack Charles Montague Bakewell. The same day, Abbot wrote in his diary that "[Peirce] read an able paper on 'Syechism,' his new system of philosophy"; the following day, Bakewell reported in a letter to George H. Howison that he had "[h]eard Mr. Chas. Peirce read a paper last evening on Continuity, the Law of Mind, or ' Cynicism'." Honestly: I am not making this up! Of course, synechism has nothing whatever to do with cynicism. Introducing a paper of 1893 entitled "Immortality in the Light of Synechism," die editors of The Essential Peirce describe synechism as "the doctrine that everything is continuous" (£P2:1); and Peirce himself refers to synechism as a "doctrine" both in the introduction and in the conclusion of "The Law of Mind" (which, after he had presented it at Harvard, was published in the Monist for 1892, the third of five metaphysical papers of his that appeared between 1891 and 1893). Some years later, however, in his entry on "Synechism" for Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Peirce wrote that "[sjynechism is not an ultimate and absolute metaphysical doctrine; it is a regulative principle of logic, prescribing what sort of hypothesis is fit to be entertained and examined"; it is "that tendency of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of prime importance ... and, in particular, upon the necessity of hypotheses involving true continuity" ( CP 6.173 (my italics) and 6.169, 1902). This seems to me a significantly better formulation: it is more plausible in itself, and it makes better sense of Peirce's observations about the synechist's attitude to dualisms. "[E]ven in its less stalwart forms," Peirce writes, "[s]ynechism ... can never abide dualism, properly so called," not even dualism "in its broadest legitimate meaning," the style of philosophy that "performs its analyses with...