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  • Toward a Peircean Response to MacKinnon's Question
  • Charles G. Conway (bio)

In 1968 Donald M. MacKinnon (1913-94), the Scottish philosopher and theologian, posed the rhetorical question: "Does not metaphysics sometimes emerge as the attempt to convert poetry into the logically admissible?"1 An elucidation of this implicit assertion may bring to light a useful perspective on the nucleus of the metaphysical enterprise that promotes the interanimation of philosophy and theology. At least, that is the ambition of a longer-term project.2

However, in this essay,3 I will presuppose an affirmative response to MacKinnon's question and concentrate on three goals: (1) show that Peirce's Normative Sciences are an appropriate prism through which to investigate the cogency of a trajectory from poetry to logic; (2) evince that such passage from poetry to logic is plausibly compatible with, even illuminated by, a conventional anthropological account of the psychological makeup of the investigator-metaphysician, wherein human nature manifests both affective and rational polarities; (3) examine how one might contend that this developmental track traces a pathway from similarity to sameness. Parenthetically, this third goal raises but will not resolve the issue of whether a genuine "sameness" is achieved or whether only an artificial identity is imposed, a Vaihingerian "as if," such that concepts employed are at base metaphorical. If the latter, then this assertion of Nietzsche is telling: truth is "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and [End Page 74] anthropomorphisms . . . which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory . . . illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are."4

Accordingly, the ensuing essay divides itself into three major parts: (1) Peirce's Normative Sciences, (2) Human Nature as Duplex, and (3) From Similarity to Sameness.

The first is foundational since I employ the thought of Charles S. Peirce,5 particularly his Normative Sciences (hereafter in lower case), as a prism through which to examine the broad track of the transformation suggested by MacKinnon's question.

I. Peirce's Normative Sciences

Before discussing the specifics of the normative sciences, two general features should be underscored, that is, that they are (1) quasi-continuous and (2) theoretical.

Regarding the first, Peirce wrote in 1906 that "Esthetics, Practics,6 and Logic form one distinctly marked whole . . . the question where precisely the lines of separation between them are to be drawn is quite secondary" (MS 283).7

Peirce directly addressed the second feature in 1903 when he propounded his doctrine of the normative sciences, terming them "purely theoretical" (5.125), and "the very most purely theoretical of purely theoretical sciences" (1.282). He went on to say, however, that there are "practical sciences of reasoning and investigation, of the conduct of life, and of the production of works of art. They correspond [his italics] to the normative sciences, and may be probably expected to receive aid from them. But they are not integrant parts of these sciences" (5.125). Peirce did not describe these "practical sciences" in any detail, nor refer to them in his subsequent writings. On the one hand, this is not a burning concern since the aim of this essay is to sketch an overview of the [End Page 75] trajectory MacKinnon indicates and the theoretical may suffice without reference to particulars. On the other hand, something might be said here about Peirce's views on the relation between theory and practice.

Despite his having written in 1898 that "the two masters, theory and practice, you cannot serve" (1.642),8 Peirce was a pragmatist and had to connect reflective thought with action, even if his pragmaticism denies that action is the be-all or singular goal of theoretical inquiry (5.429). He made this connection in two strikingly memorable fashions: (1) invoking Jesus, "Ye may know them by their fruits" (5.402n.2) to supply a biblical rationale for the unity of thought and conduct; and (2) citing an everyday example that if one has a general thought that stuffy air is unwholesome, then one is compelled to open the window (5.431). Thus, one may properly conclude that Peirce did not intend to sever theory and practice.

In Peirce's classification of the...

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