Peirce's Theory of Inquiry

Peirce's Theory of InquiryAuthor(s): John J. FitzgeraldSource: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall, 1968), pp. 130-143Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40319550 .

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John J. Fitzgerald

Peirce's Theory of Inquiry*

Three years ago I proposed an analysis of Peirce's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," which argued for a wider interpretation than is usually given of the phrase "sensible effects" contained in the prag- matic maxim.1 I would now like to propose a companion analysis for its sister essay, "The Fixation of Belief," which seems to me to contain a loose and possibly misleading phrase, namely, "the method of science" (5.384).2 In what follows I should like to clarify the sense of that phrase in the context of Peirce's philosophy.

To accomplish this task I will highlight the line of argument Peirce uses to show that the method of science is the most reliable manner for settling our beliefs. This is necessary because the sense of the premises obviously determines the sense of the conclusion. I shall follow that with an outline of the manner in which Peirce, in his later years, treated the three forms of inference which constitute scientific method. Finally, I shall try to show the relevance of Peirce's later reflections on the forms of inference to the earlier argument. More specifically, I shall argue that if the phrase "the method of science" is taken in the same sense in which it is usually applied in the physical sciences, then the essay does not argue in a manner calculated to fix our beliefs about method. However, in his later years, Peirce took the phrase in a generic sense which would be applicable to the procedures of the essay itself.

* This study is a partial result of work done while holding a summer re- search grant sponsored by the University of Notre Dame.



John J. Fitzgerald 131

There are two major steps in the argument of "The Fixation of Belief": (1) the establishment of a norm for selecting or judging the worth of a given method of inquiry, and (2) a survey of methods that have been used to determine which, if any, best satisfies the accepted criterion.

There are two pivotal notions in the establishing of a norm for judging the methods of fixing belief, namely, belief and inquiry. Since the latter is defined in terms of the former, belief must be considered first. A belief is a proposition to which we give assent, where the assent indicates that we are satisfied with the proposition to such an extent that we are willing to act upon it. The latter, the willingness to act, is a consequence of the satisfaction and is oftentimes what the outsider takes as a sign that the proposition is really satisfactory to the one who professes to believe it. Recall here our common challenge to a person to "put up or shut up" when we think he is being merely contentious.

The opposite of the state of belief is the state of doubt, not, as we might expect, the state of disbelief. Disbelief is simply the state of believing the opposite. One who is committed to, assents to, the opposite position is called a disbeliever. This use of the term is more common in the contexts of religious belief and disbelief, and it is important to bear in mind that Peirce is not using the term in such a restricted sense. The state of doubt, then, is a condition in which we withhold assent to a given proposition or its opposite because we are not yet satisfied with its status. As a result of this dissatisfaction we will be hesitant to act upon the proposition.

In offering these descriptions Peirce intends to call attention to something in our common experience. If, for instance, one has some money to invest, he may invest it in a firm that he is convinced is honestly managed and has a good product or potential. On the other hand, he will refuse to invest his funds, or even to consider the matter further, if he is convinced that the company is not well managed or has no potential for earnings. These are instances of the states of belief and disbelief, respectively. But there is yet another possibility, and that is that the prospective buyer is simply not yet sure of either the good standing or of the potentialities of the company. This may lead him to investigate



1 32 Peirce's Theory of Inquiry

further the credentials of the firm. Here we have a situation of doubt leading to a search for further information.

The latter situation brings us to Peirce's other key notion in his argument, namely, "inquiry." The search to remove the doubt and reach a state of belief is what Peirce calls inquiry (5.374). Con- trary to what was the case in his treatment of belief, Peirce is not here offering a commonly accepted definition of inquiry, but rather one which has considerably more latitude than our ordinary use of the term. This will become quite obvious when we list some of the methods he finds it useful to review. It has been objected that Peirce's definition is misleading because it is broad enough to include the flipping of a coin to settle a doubt.3 And although this is a way of seeking to settle a doubt, it is hardly what we would or- dinarily honor with the term "inquiry." However, I think that this objection is wide of the mark, since Peirce is trying to argue to the particular method of inquiry we should follow, and so he wants to introduce it neither by a stipulated definition nor by a simple appeal to usage. What Peirce wants to do is begin with a description wide enough to include all kinds of procedures, and then to utilize that to develop a criterion that will move him and his readers to a more special conception of inquiry.

Having noted that inquiry is to be looked upon as the means to attain the state of belief, we now come to the crucial and contro- versial step in the development of the argument. He writes:

The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our actions so as to satisfy our desires; and this reflection will make us reject every belief which does not seem to have been so formed as to insure this result. But it will only do so by creating a doubt in the place of that belief. With doubt, therefore, the struggle begins, and with the cessation of doubt it ends. Hence the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to a test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. And it is clear that nothing out of the sphere of our



John /. Fitzgerald 133

knowledge can be our object, for nothing which does not affect the mind can be the motive for mental effort. The most that can be maintained is that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is a mere tautology to say so. (5.375; first italics added)

Here Peirce is proposing, indeed arguing, that an inquiry comes to an end when we recover the state of calm and equilibrium which is characteristic of the state of belief. This is something that is not likely to be accepted by the common man, who may admit that inquiry begins in doubt, but would want to claim that our goal is truth, and not merely a settled state. Peirce's answer to this objection, given above, may be expanded in the following manner. The decision about the truth or falsity of a given proposition must be in terms of what is available to the knowing subject. But there is nothing available to us except what is mediated by our knowledge. Hence truth cannot mean more than what we think to be true. Put in another way, we have no independent access to the objects of our knowledge so that we could, as it were, compare the object to our knowledge of the object to ascertain their conformity or lack of it.

It may seem that Peirce is merely taking a familiar and easy subjectivist position and is denying the possibility of what we speak of as objective knowledge. But this is not the case. His point is that the introduction of the notions "truth" or "objective knowledge" does not provide us, in the beginning, with an effective criterion for judging which of our beliefs are true and which are false. If we would try to think ourselves back into a primitive condition we might be able to understand that the question of truth or falsity, and following that the question of objective truth, is not something that can arise on the occasion of our first judgment or belief. The awareness of falsity comes only when, for some reason or other, we find that what we once thought to be true is apt to lead us into a troublesome situation or to conflict with some new and different belief.

This point can be expressed in the following way. Peirce is not objecting to the notion of objective truth in toto, but merely to what he would consider to be a premature introduction of the



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notion. It is not a primitive or primary notion, and it does not provide us with any effective criteria by means of which we can judge methods of inquiry. Peirce proposes that we speak of objective truth in terms of the method used to settle our mental attitude toward a given proposition, and the account of truth is in terms of the method rather than the method in terms of truth.

Thus far, then, Peirce has argued that inquiry is the struggle to recover a state of belief. Any inquiry will be a good one if it suc- ceeds in settling beliefs over the long run. This gives us a criterion which we may utilize in assessing the various means that men have used in the fixing of our beliefs. We can now go on to such a survey.

The first method mentioned by Peirce is what he calls the method of tenacity. He describes this as taking any answer to a question that one might fancy and reiterating it to oneself, dwelling on whatever may be favorable to the acceptance of that proposition and disregarding all that might upset it. While this is not considered a very live option today for settling beliefs, it is certainly conceivable that people can willfully fail to take full account of evidence against their cherished views. And the inclusion of this on Peirce's list helps us to see how literally he takes his own very broad definition of inquiry. Such a method fails to measure up to the criterion we elaborated above because it is very likely that one is going to come in contact with other people who, using the same or another method, hold to opposite beliefs. This will make him realize that the opposite beliefs are just as legitimate as his own, given the method utilized. This should have an unsettling effect on his own beliefs arrived at in this way, and so the method is not calculated to fix beliefs over the long run.

The second approach examined is the method of authority, where a person relies on some external source, an established social body such as the state or church. This method is likely to run into diffi- culty, like the method of tenacity, when a man becomes aware of differing beliefs settled by different authorities. It is also likely to fall short of being fully satisfactory since no authority will determine beliefs about every matter that a man faces, and so he will be left to develop alternative methods of inquiry, which may grad- ually erode the faith in authority as the proper method.

The third method Peirce singles out is called the method of



John /. Fitzgerald 135

natural preferences. This seems to be intended to cover the various procedures utilized by philosophers in the past, but seems par- ticularly directed to the manner in which the rationalists pro- ceeded. Peirce writes about this method: "The most perfect example of it is to be found in the history of metaphysical philosophy. Sys- tems of this sort have not usually rested upon any observed facts, at least not to any great degree. They have been chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seemed 'agreeable to reason* " (5.382). This invites us to picture the members of the Acad- emy or the Lyceum strolling back and forth under the trees dis- cussing questions in philosophy, where the conversation is controlled by the dialectical development of the argument more than by the observation of events. Or we might think of Descartes' argument for the existence of God based on the idea of an infinite being that Descartes finds present in his own mind. While the arguments of the philosophers are superior to the two methods we discussed previously, they are nonetheless deficient since they have not in fact accomplished what a good mode of inquiry should, that is, they have failed to settle beliefs. This is evident from a cursory glance at the history of philosophy.

We are forced, then, to move on in our search for a satisfactory method, and the remaining one that has been utilized is the method of science. Let me quote Peirce's remarks leading into this method because the reasons he presents, which explain the success of the method, are relevant to a point I will want to call attention to later in the paper. Peirce writes:

To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect. Some mystics imagine that they have such a method in a private inspiration from on high. But that is only a form of the method of tenacity, in which the conception of truth as something public is not yet developed. Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual. It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And although these affections are neces-



ij6 Peirce's Theory of Inquiry

sarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method may be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is the method of science. (5.384)

There are two things to note about this method. In the first place, it has in fact led to the establishing of widely accepted theories, and so has a fruitfulness that the other methods have not enjoyed. But further, Peirce tries to say what it is about this method that has led to the successes. What is characteristic of the method of science, as contrasted with the other methods, is that it forces us to appeal to an external permanency. The experimental method seems devised to force us back constantly to experience to verify our theories.

The conclusion from Peirce's survey of the methods of fixing beliefs is that we should put our trust in the method of science. However, it should be noted that in the course of the discussion there has not been any detailed spelling out of the elements of the method. It has merely been mentioned in general terms. Since this is the first in a series of six papers on the logic of science, we might expect that the task of filling in the content of the method would be discussed in the following papers. However, we do not find any such discussion. The following essay, the famous "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," insists on the necessity for predictable sensible effects from any meaningful hypothesis, but the precise meaning of "sensible effects" is not clearly developed. The middle three essays are concerned with the calculation of probabilities and with a discussion of the grounds of induction, not with a spelling out of the conditions for scientific method. The title of the final essay looks more promising in that its title is "Deduction, Induc- tion, and Hypothesis," and these three forms of inference later came to be taken by Peirce as constitutive of scientific method. At this time, however, the main argument is devoted to showing that induction and hypothesizing are two distinct and irreducible forms of inference. And the classes of arguments are looked upon as three forms of inference to be used independently of one another to derive various kinds of conclusions. There is no attempt to confine these forms of inference to any laboratory model.

This leads to the second part of this study, namely, reflection on Peirce's views on inference as they emerge in his later papers.




One major change is that, while he is still equally insistent on the irreducibility of the three processes of inference, he now treats of them as moments in the process of arriving at conclusions, which moments together constitute the total process. Negatively, they are no longer looked upon as three separate and coordinate ways of reaching conclusions. Rather, each contributes, in its own way to establishing a conclusion. For the sake of completeness here I will treat briefly of the three forms of inference. Because it is familiar territory in Peirce, such a treatment will be adequate for our pur- poses. After the descriptions I will continue with some subdivisions of induction which appear in Peirce's later writings. These subdivisions are not so often noticed, and yet they seem to be of singular importance in appreciating Peirce's own philosophizing.

A brief description of abduction is given in the "Lectures on Pragmatism," where Peirce writes: "Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis" (5.171). Characteristically, when we are faced with a surprising situation, we seek an explanation or cause of such an occurrence. Where this seeking is conducted in a conscious manner, and so is open to self-control, the process is called abduction. We are reasoning back from (afe) the occurrence of an event to the antecedents from which such an event would follow necessarily or as a matter of course. And this would make its occurrence no longer a matter of surprise.

Peirce speaks of this process of forming an explanatory hypothesis as logical because it is a controlled process of thought and there is a sense in which we can speak of its validity or invalidity. This latter is possible because of the definition Peirce gives of validity, which is, "possession by an argumentation or inference of that sort of efficiency in leading to the truth, which it professes to have" (2.779). Insofar as an abduction merely purports to suggest a hypothesis which would explain a given situation its claim is rela- tively weak, and it is a valid argument as long as the one who is adopting the hypothesis does not take it as a final and all-sufficient argument. The insufficiency of abduction taken just by itself, is brought out in the following passage from Peirce: "Its [abduction's] only justification is that from its suggestion deduction can draw a prediction which can be tested by induction, and that, if we are ever to learn anything or to understand phenomena at all, it must be by abduction that this is to be brought about" (5.171).



ij8 Pence's Theory of Inquiry

It is not necessary to tarry on the role of deduction any longer than to remark that its role is primarily in the elaboration of the consequences of the hypothesis proposed as a result of the abductive process. The spelling out of the necessary consequences is prelimi- nary to the third and final stage in the method of science, namely, the inductive stage.

In the years after 1900 Peirce often returned to the consideration of induction and indicated several different divisions of induction. The first treatment was in a paper entitled "The Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents" written about 1901. The next treatment was for the Lowell Lectures of 1903, and was included in a series generally entitled "Some Topics of Logic Bearing on Questions Now Vexed." The third treatment was in 1905 in conjunction with his development of the "Neglected Argument" for the existence of God. It is of interest to note the variety of contexts in which Peirce tried to develop his logic of science, that is, in the contexts of history and metaphysics or theology. It seems quite clear that in his later years Peirce was looking for a unified method of inquiry that would be applicable, allowing for certain variations in application, to all fields of human knowledge. He did not try to force all kinds of inquiry into exactly the same mold as that used by the laboratory sciences, but rather was keenly aware of the necessity for taking note of the various procedures that man actually uses as the basis for his articulation of what is involved in rational method. This openness is clearly revealed in the variety of subdivisions of induction which will be taken up presently.

Before we take up the divisions, it will be helpful to quote Peirce's description of induction in general. "Induction takes place when the reasoner already holds a theory more or less prob- lematically (ranging from a pure interrogative apprehension to a strong leaning mixed with ever so little doubt); and having reflected that if that theory be true, then under certain conditions certain phenomena ought to appear (the stranger and less ante- cedently credible the better), proceeds to experiment, that is, to realize those conditions and watch for the predicted phenomena" (2.775). This emphasizes again that the inductive phase comes after and complements the abductive and deductive phases. It also uses a term which is apt to be misleading, unless we are aware of the way in which Peirce is using the term. I refer to the word "ex-




periment." In the "Lectures on Pragmatism," written about the same time as the above definition, Peirce was careful to make the following qualification: "When I say that by inductive reasoning I mean a course of experimental investigation, I do not understand experiment in the narrow sense of an operation by which one varies the conditions of a phenomenon almost as one pleases" (5.168). The full import of this general remark will be brought out now in the divisions of induction.

The first, and least satisfactory, type of induction distinguished by Peirce is called "Rudimentary Induction."4 It "proceeds from the premise that the reasoner has no evidence of the existence of any fact of a given description and concludes that there never was, is not, and never will be any such thing" (7.111). Such a procedure, Peirce notes, will lead to truth at last, so long as we continue honestly to make observations of what does occur; when it is cor- rected by future experience, the correction will be sudden, since a type of event which we supposed never to happen will have oc- curred; we often use this line of settling our beliefs, especially in practical contexts, where we assume that events of a given kind will not occur, for example, that I will not be involved in a fatal air crash when I board a flight.

The second type of induction is characterized as "the argument from the fulfillment of predictions" (7.114). This and the third kind of induction, to be taken up in the next paragraph, are what best fulfill Peirce's theory that the three kinds of inference are to be used in conjunction with one another. The inductive moment is when we make observations to determine whether or not the predictions which we have deduced from our hypothesis occur or not. Now it is interesting that, in 1903, Peirce subdivided this genus into two species. In the first species the events predicted are merely the continuance in future experience of the same type of event which led to the formation of the hypothesis (7.116). In the second species, the events predicted are of a type that has not been ex- pected or even runs counter to our expectations. Of these two, the second is the more spectacular and the stronger, but that does not remove all force from the first and more pedestrian.

The third type of induction is termed "statistical induction," and, as the phrase suggests, is concerned with concluding to a definite ratio of occurrences of a given event. There are three



140 Pence's Theory of Inquiry

species of this which I will briefly note. The subdivisions are on the basis of the kind of collection which is to be sampled. The first species is concerned with determining the ratio of occurrence of a given class of events where the class is endless and where we do not know whether the various occurrences are independent of one another or not. Peirce's example of this is the occurrence of the digit 5 in the numerical expression of jt. The second species is concerned with determining the ratio in a class where the class is endless, but where we can assume that the occurrences are independent of one another. Peirce's example of this is the casting of a die where the casting can theoretically continue without end and it is assumed that the throws are independent of one another. The third species is concerned with determining the ratio of a class which is finite so that each member of the class is able to appear in our experience as often as any other member (7.120-124).

Although this has been only a brief presentation of Peirce's views, it is sufficient to make clear Peirce's broad notion of scientific method. If I am not mistaken, we often associate with the phrase "scientific method" something of a cross between the second and the third genera, that is, we take it to be concerned with predictions of unexpected events that are amenable to quantitative treatment. Peirce, however, is not making any such association. As we noted above, the phrase "scientific method" taken generically means for him the conjoint use of the three forms of inference. And his common sensism, his feel for the varied ways successfully used by people in settling beliefs by appeal to an external standard, prevents him from restricting the inductive moment to the observation of new, unexpected, and measurable events. Our common experience is accorded a full role in Peirce's theory.

This last observation can be stressed if we now return to the question raised much earlier, namely, what is the meaning of the phrase "the method of science," which Peirce had claimed to be the most reliable method in "The Fixation of Belief"? In trying to answer this question we have to distinguish between the suggested sense as of 1878, when the essay was written, and the sense which emerged as Peirce reflected further on the methods of settling beliefs.

As our remarks about the treatment of hypothesis, deduction, and induction in the 1878 series would indicate, it would be a



John ]. Fitzgerald 141

mistake to hold that Peirce understood the phrase as synonymous with the serial use of three forms of inference. Further, given the trends of the times, it would be quite natural to associate the phrase with the techniques utilized in such disciplines as physics, chem- istry, and biology. This customary reading of the phrase is rein- forced by the fact that in the consideration of the various methods the impression is given that the philosophers of the past have used the "method of preferences," and this would focus attention, by contrast, on laboratory procedures.

But before accepting such an interpretation, we ought to look a little more carefully at the reasons for the success of the method of science, as presented by Peirce. The common flaw in the three methods rejected is that none of them appeals to something external and permanent in reaching conclusions. We need a method which will force us to look to the external, to the public, in the fixing of our beliefs, and the method of science is well suited to make us appeal systematically to the external and public. But the necessity for an appeal to the external is not a sufficiently narrow ground to establish that this appeal must be made in a laboratory situation, or that the type of induction to be utilized must be of a statistical or quantitative sort. It is one of the merits of the various subdivisions of induction Peirce made in his later years that it calls our attention to the variety of ways in which we can honor the prescription to let external and public objects play a role in the settling of beliefs. Although the world of common experience lacks the accuracy of the laboratory world, this hardly makes it subjective and private.

A second advantage of scientific method that Peirce singles out is that it will lead to the correction of errors if it is persistently followed. Again, the correction of opinions by constantly checking them against experience can be carried out in a nonstatistical manner. Hence we see that the two grounds offered for the success of science are not such as to make us utilize laboratory procedures. They are grounds for calling attention to the necessity for an inductive moment in the adoption of any proposal or hypothesis. The line of argument of the essay, then, seems to support the wider sense of scientific method which Peirce later held, rather than a restricted sense of the term, which is the more commonly accepted sense.



1 42 Pence's Theory of Inquiry

We can press this question of the sense of the method by raising a further question: which of the methods of fixing belief was Peirce using in the essay itself? It is quite obvious that it is not scientific method in the sense in which statistics and quantification are central. We must say, then, either Peirce's argument is unsci- entific, or the sense of the phrase "scientific method" is to be taken in a more generous sense. In the light of Peirce's rather extensive later reflections on methodology, it seems that the latter alternative is the proper one to adopt.

If we do adopt this alternative we can then consider "The Fixa- tion of Belief" as basically the proposal of a hypothesis to the effect that the use of hypothesis, deduction, and induction is the most fruitful way of settling our doubts. The hypothesis has been suggested by the success of the physical sciences, and we can look to future verification by the continued success resulting from the application of the method, with proper adjustments, to all varieties of problems, including those usually pursued by philosophers. But in this latter case the kind of induction suitable will be that division under "the fulfillment of predictions" which looks to the continuance in future experience of the type of phenomena that suggested the hypothesis. In this connection it is helpful to recall Peirce's own description of philosophy as that class of theoretical knowledge "which uses the most rational methods it can devise, for finding out the little that can as yet be found out about the universe of mind and matter from those observations which every person can make in every hour of his waking life" (1.126).

Peirce has generally been looked upon as a strong proponent of a scientific philosophy. If the reflections given above are of any weight we ought to be careful of the sense of the phrase. Peirce recognized that his task as a student of methodology required that he try to articulate what is in fact practiced by working scientists. And he clearly recognized that practice preceded the articulation in a theory. Remarking on the importance of his enterprise he said: "The scientific specialists - pendulum swingers and the like - are doing a great and useful work; each one very little, but al- together something vast. But the higher places in science in the coming years are for those who succeed in adapting the methods of one science to the investigation of another" (7.66). Peirce him- self was a working scientist reflecting on the logic of his procedures



John J, Fitzgerald 143

hoping to find the key which would enable him to relate the scientific procedures of the physical scientists to the problems of philosophy. It was a task of adapting that method to philosophy, not of reducing philosophy to experimental science. While it is not clear that Peirce fully realized the manner of adaptation when he wrote "The Fixation of Belief" in 1878, he was aware of the various ways of applying scientific method after 1900. This wider interpretation of science fits well with his own philosophical analy- ses and also seems to give full reign to the varieties of human experience. Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute

NOTES

1. "Peirce's 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear'," The New Scholasticism, XXXIX (1965). 53-68.

2. See The Collected Papers of criarles òanaers reirce, ea. c. tiartsnorne, P. Weiss and A. Burks (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1931-1935, i958)- The complete essay under consideration is at 5.358-387.

3. See H. Frankfurt, "Peirce's Account of Inquiry," The Journal of Philosophy, LV (1959), 588-592.

4. 1 ne exposition 01 reirce s views ronows nis treatment aim termmuiugy ui 1903. While this differs slightly from the 1901 and 1905 versions, it is the treatment that is given in the context of a general discussion of scientific method and seems to be a comprehensive division. The differences, at any rate, are slight, consisting in regrouping and renaming the subdivisions.



Peirce's Theory of Inquiry

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