Notes on the Epistemology of Charles Peirce

Peirce begins with a criticism of the philosophical approach of Descartes, i.e. universal doubt. "We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter the study of philosophy," says Peirce. (Pg. 198 in Cooper, Epistemology: the Classic Readings) He says that no one following the method of Cartesian doubt will ever truly be satisfied until he/she has recovered all those beliefs that have supposedly been called into doubt. Individuals, says Peirce, cannot be made to be the sole judges of truth, or Metaphysics would have a higher amount of knowledge currently than does natural science; moreover, more people would agree on metaphysical issues than on natural ones. However, it does indeed seem that there is much more consensus associated with natural science than that of Metaphysics.

The practical upshot of this critique of Descartes is Peirce's claim that philosophy ought to utilize the methods of natural science, i.e. justification of conclusions by consensus.

When reasoning, because humans are imperfect rational animals, certain habits of mind result in the drawing of one conclusion or inference over another. As in science, philosophical inferences ought to be tested by time, experimentation, and consensus. Therefore, what works to lead people to a general consensus is knowledge. Thus, knowledge becomes something that is useful to the causing of the fixation of belief. Peirce therefore is a Pragmatist, i.e. one who believes that true knowledge is defined in terms of its usefulness and the degree of consensus it causes. Because of the effect of knowledge leading to consensus, should there be a complete consensus of belief, then one can know what reality is.

This theory is radically different from those of Nietzsche and Descartes. For Descartes, the individual was crucial to the attainment of knowledge since, at the beginning of one's quest for knowledge, all one could know was that he/she exists as a thinking being. According to Peirce, complete Cartesian doubt of all other things than this is not even possible due to the lack of ability to suspend one's beliefs/prejudices. These two philosophers also differ in their opinions about what knowledge should be defined in terms of. For Descartes knowledge was something absolute and indubitable, however, for Peirce knowledge can only be called so if it is accepted within a consensus, also making the individual far less important than an entire society in the quest for knowledge.

Peirce differs from Nietzsche in that Nietzsche puts the focus back on the individual conception of knowledge. However, unlike Kant and Peirce, Nietzsche believes that reality is created (in this respect he is more similar to Kant) by the use of language. According to Nietzsche, there is no absolute truth; there is just metaphor, and human relations that are artistically embellished, then these seem to become so fixed that people take them for binding truths.

Of the two views, I think Kant has come far closer to describing the way knowledge genuinely works than has Peirce. Peirce does indeed seem to focus upon the practical side of knowledge, while Kant seems more interested in describing the way the human mind actually cogitates about the true reality that is out there and unknowable. I do have reservations about Kant's theory, if only because I found Descartes' Cogito ergo sum argument to be so convincing, and it seems that Kant's theory does not even allow for that piece of knowledge since there are no sense data associated with it. I am unhappy with Peirce's view that knowledge is simply that which leads to consensus because the possibility exists that the consensus may simply be mistaken about the way things are. However, given his belief that we define reality through consensus, he may be able to avoid that unhappy consequence by denying the existence of an absolute reality.