Peirce on Norms, Evolution and Knowledge.

( Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, winter 1997, vol. XXXIII, n°1, pp. 35-58)

Claudine Tiercelin. Université de Tours

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(p.35)Peirce's evolutionary cosmology or scientific metaphysics has often been presented as the 'black sheep' or 'white elephant' of his philosophy. ^[1]  Just as it is easy to find admirers of Peirce's work in logic and epistemology, so it is to find people horrified by such pieces of what C. Hookway calls 'armchair ontological metaphysics' ^[2] as the following:

 

'In the beginning, infinitely remote— there was a chaos of unpersonalized feeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without existence. This feeling, sporting here and there in pure arbitrariness, would have started the germ of a generalizing tendency. Its other sportings would be evanescent, but this would have a growing virtue. Thus the tendency to habit would be started; and from this, with the other principles of evolution, all the regularities of the universe would be evolved. At any time, however, an element of pure chance survives, and will remain, until the world becomes an absolutely perfect, rational and symmetrical system, in which mind is at last crystallized in the infinitely distant future' (6. 33). ^[3]

 

While some commentators have refused to 'swallow' such writings and have considered them as simply inconsistent with Peirce's central themes in logic^[4], others have tried to show, quite rightly I think, that there was no incompatibility between the two, and that, on the contrary, they were closely linked.

(p.36)If I agree with the conclusion, I am not sure I agree with the explanations that have been offered to try and save the white elephant, and most of all with the interpretation which compares Peirce's project of a scientific or 'purified' metaphysics (5.423), with a sort of transcendental deduction ^[5].

While one of the functions of Peire's evolutionary cosmology is indeed to explain how reality must be, if the regulative hopes of logic are absolutely true, or in other words, 'to repay the regulative loans taken out in our logical investigations'(1.487)^[6], —Peirce's claim being that his evolutionary objective idealism is the only theory capable of meeting these demands— by providing an account of reality, of mind, and of experience, which entails that the categories are universally present in experience, and that reality if fully intelligible to us ^[7], I do not think that Peirce's metaphysics occupies a similar role as a transcendental deduction.

Such an interpretation has to do with another way to treat the tensions one finds in Peirce's writings between naturalistic and idealistic tendencies, namely, to say that although Peirce perfectly admits the bearing of some naturalistic or psychological matters on logic or epistemology, 'perhaps the most distinctive feature of his philosophical system…is, from his earliest work, a total repudiation of naturalism, and a defence of epistemology (Grammar and Logic) as a prior philosophy'^[8].

For my part, although I know how important Kant was for Peirce, I have never been able to understand how his objective idealism could be modelled on Kant's transcendental idealism, since Peirce never admitted the distinction, crucial for transcendental idealism, between the  Ding an sich  and the phenomenon, between thinking and knowing.

 In this paper, I shall address that issue, though indirectly : After a brief survey of the mixture of idealistic and naturalistic elements  that are present  in Peirce 's evolutionary cosmology, I shall suggest a way to  try and reconcile such conflicting tendencies, namely by focusing on Peirce's conception of logical norms and  rationality, and  on the links that may be drawn between such views  and Peirce's use of evolutionary themes.

 

(p.37) I.The  mixture of idealistic and naturalistic elements in Peirce's evolutionary cosmology.

In spite of the strongly Schellingian accents of the original passage quoted above, reminiscent of the fact that Peirce was 'born and reared in the neighborhood of Concord, at the time when Emerson, Hedge, and their friends were disseminating the ideas that they caught from Schelling, and Schelling from Plotinus, from Boehm, or from God knows what minds stricken with the monstruous mysticism of the East'(6.10), so as to admit that 'some cultured bacilli, some benignant form of the disease was implanted in (his) soul, unawares, and that now, after long incubation, it comes to the surface, modified by mathematical conceptions and by training in physical investigations', it would be perfectly inaccurate to underestimate Peirce's claim that he did develop his evolutionary cosmology as a  scientific  metaphysics.

It is true that one may be tempted to reject, at the outset, such a project in which ethical and religious considerations seem to be on the same footing as logical or epistemological considerations, in which cosmological speculations finally culminate in an evolutionary ideal, the course of evolution being described as the growth of concrete reasonableness, of the Summum bonum. Peirce clearly evokes the power or the efficacy of ideas (1.213), going so far as to say that there are 'ideas in nature which determine the existence of the objects' (1.213). The growth of reason is seen as that of the Summum bonum which is achieved through an esthetic contemplation of nature (1.615). Matter is 'effete mind'. Again, it is true that one of the main reasons for the introduction of tychism  —the element of chance and indeterminacy (or firstness) in Nature—, in Peirce's synechistic (or continuous) metaphysics, is his opposition to materialism: one must prevent mind from being reduced to a simple illusion of the material system (6. 61)^[9].

However,  Peirce's project is intended as scientific: what does this mean?  Briefly ^[10], to  build metaphysics as a science is not so much  to  follow a systematic or architectonic model( cf. 6. 604-608), or an empiricist model, or particular  rules and  methods; rather,  it is to(p.38) follow a form of life and duty : to reach the idea, by pursuing a disinterested life devoted to inquiry, that reality does exist, is as it is, independently of what anyone may think of it, but which everyone is destined to discover sooner or later, so long as he is rational, and places his efforts within those of a community   of research : which implies to devote one's life to the discovery of the nature of reality, the central concept of Peirce's scientific  and realistic metaphysics, thus inseparable from some normative vision of rationality.

Metaphysics is then  a positive  (though not positivistic) science :  which implies that the special sciences do indeed intervene in the whole explanation of the 'world of being'(6.214). As a result, one has  to consider the analyses made by the various writers on evolution; but, at the same time, such an enterprise is not conceived as a pure empirical derivation or justification of the categories of the real by such special sciences or by history; this is why Peirce did not want to be confused with the evolutionary cosmologies already present at his time, with H. Spencer, J. Fiske or F. Abbott, which he viewed as pure fairy tales. Peirce's project was neither a metaphysics of nature, nor a systematic metaphysics, nor a metaphysics of evolution, as Donald T. Campbell, one of the founders of evolutionary epistemology, rightly pointed out, — although Peirce, according to him, had all the ingredients for an evolutionary epistemology of selective retention ^[11]. This explains why, although Peirce was very attentive to  the lessons of science, he  only read them through his prior categorial analysis of reality: so true it is that 'philosophy requires thorough-going evolutionism or none' (6.4). Hence,  the lessons Peirce  retained from the theoricians of evolution were lessons of   logic. From each of them, Darwin, Lamarck, Clarence King, something has to be gained: for, as far as  the three modes of evolution are concerned, each one has a role to play in the formation of species: the Darwininan theory accounts for the production of characters really beneficial to the race though these may be fatal to the individuals( 6.16). Contrary to Chauncey Wright and Spencer who made Darwinism a first principle of mechanism (6.14), Peirce stresses two factors: heredity and natural selection, which are more capable of wide generalizations (6.15) (p.39)and more in keeping with tychism and Firstness (6.298; 6.304):  hence he uses Darwinism against the necessitarian mechanists(6.35); but Darwinism is alsomore in keeping with Secondness (the shock of selection). Yet, geological and paleontological evidence seems to require catclysmal evolution. The data seem to indicate that species are not very greatly modified under normal circumstances, but are rapidly altered after cataclysms or rapid geological changes(6.17). So, history of science proceeds by abrupt leaps (1.109; 6.17), thus  coïnciding well enough, as a theory of simulation and defiance, with Secondness and with the view of knowledge as an inquiry proceeding from disrupting doubts to the establishment of belief-habits. As to Lamarckism —Peirce's favorite— it stresses the teleological aspect of evolution, and is the only one to explain habit acquisition in terms of goal-oriented efforts and struggles, thus enabling to understand better, from the inside, so to speak, the overwhelming presence of Thirdness (6.16), thereby assuming a better transition to the psychological observation of the principle of generalized continuity in the law of mind where it is part and parcel of synechism.Now, could one dream of a better model when evolution is defined as 'the working out of a definite end'(1.204)?

As is well known, Peirce worked out these three forms of evolution through his categorial scheme, which he organized in the following way : Firstness corresponds to fortuitous evolution or to the undifferentiated  continuum of qualitative possibilities; the second principle of selection by elimination illustrates Secondness (action and reaction, struggle, facticity, confrontation with reality) or the actualization of the possible (or God's will);  the third principle, the essential one, already present in the undifferentiated continuum, which maintains itself in fortuitous variation by differentiation and growth, and assures the coherence of the whole, is Thirdness : it warrants that the introduction of facticity under the form of individuation does not dissolve the coherence present in the universe, but simply continues to specify the original continuity of the possibles as a differentiated continuum of natural laws and behavioral habits. Thirdness, the principle of rational mediation, thus assures continuity, it is the law of(p.40) habit, the real law of evolution, which explains all particular laws. 'In biology, the idea of arbitrary sporting is First, heredity is Second, the process whereby the accidental characters become fixed is Third. Chance is First. Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First. Matter is Second. Evolution is Third.'(6.32).

 I shall not pursue here the description of the progressive birth of the cosmos that logically follows from such an analysis^[12]. It should simply be clear by now that Peirce's evolutionary cosmology is indeed conceived as some intellectual hope to reach, through the categories displayed by logic, a better understanding of what Cournot called 'the idea of the order and reason of things'^[13]. As Peirce says: 'Every attempt to understand anything— every research supposes, or at least  hopes  that the very objects of study themselves are subject to a logic more or less identical with that which we employ'(6.189). In that respect, it is true that, for Peirce, the only appeal that seems to be made to psychology remains subordinated to the categories, in other words, to logic. As a consequence,  even if it is true that 'the only possible way to explain the laws of nature and uniformity in general is to suppose that they are the result of evolution', and that 'an evolutionary philosophy of some kind must be accepted' (6.604),  yet Peirce's cosmology or rather cosmogony(6.33) is  to remain formal enough and keep away from of any clearcut or reductionistic  form of naturalism. 

And indeed, Peirce is convinced that if one is rational enough, and scientifically minded, Peirce thinks, one cannot fail in the long run to discover that reality is such as it is, namely, the growth of some concrete reasonableness which is finally following the action of love (agapism) , the Golden Rule (6.288): 'the agapastic development of thought is the adoption of certain mental tendencies, not altogether heedlessly, as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the mere force of circumstances or of logic, as in anancasm, but by an immediate attraction for the idea itself, whose nature is divined before the mind possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is, by virtue of the continuity of mind'(6.307). And this is why Peirce's metaphysics comes to the idea of a living cosmos, mind and matter being viewed in a monistic way : 'the one(p.41) intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws' (6.25). The universe is not like the one described by the mechanists : it is animated by final causes, worked from within by concrete reasonableness. However, radical indeterminacy remains the dominant character of evolution. 'Hence, the essence of reason is such that its being can never be achieved. It must always be in a state of beginning, of growth'(1.615).

 Thus, the law of habit becomes the law of mind. But if that is so, it means that to a certain extent too, the laws of logic may be considered as a product of evolution, which is the growth of concrete reasonableness. But how is this going to work? How is Peirce going to prove that the laws of logic are the product of evolution, without reducing logic  (and norms) to nature? Are we to understand Peirce's research of a prior epistemology as a total repudiation of naturalism, or is there a third way, a 'middle course' that would enable to  make a link between such a mixture of idealistic and naturalistic tendencies?

 

2. Logic and norms :Peirce's conception of normative rationality.

 In order to get a clearer view about this, I suggest we take a closer look at Peirce's conception of norms and rationality.

Such a conception is worked out at length by him ^[14] and integrated into the doctrine of the so-called normative sciences, which are part and parcel of science itself (5.39). Although such sciences are positive in so far as the assertions they make (in logic, ethics or esthetics) rest on facts of experience which force themselves upon us (5.120), they are not practical sciences —indeed, Peirce is very eager to separate ethics from practical or 'vital' concerns^[15], —because their object is analysis and definition. So they are the purely theoretical sciences of purpose, of purely theoretical purpose (1.282). They are the sciences of the laws of the conformity of things to ends. 'Esthetics considers those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those things whose end is to represent something' (5.129).

The new fact then is the definition of logic as a normative sci-(p.42)ence, and even more, as a particular problem of ethics, which is in turn, dependent upon esthetics (2.197). Indeed, the essential problem of ethics is not right or wrong , but 'what I am deliberately ready to accept, as the statement of what I want to do'(2.198). So it is mostly a science of ends. Logic thus depends on it, since it has to do with thinking as a deliberate activity and with the means to reach that end which is a valid well conducted reasoning. Hence, it becomes 'impossible to be completely and rationally logical except on an ethical basis'(2.198). But in turn, both depend on esthetics, which is the analysis of the end itself, and of the ideal one would be willing to accept and to conform to.

The importance devoted to the normative sciences is in keeping with Peirce's analysis of reasoning and the orientation given to the pragmatist theory of research. Reasoning is more and more viewed as 'thinking in a controlled and deliberate way'(1.573). Logic being  defined as 'the theory of the establishment of stable beliefs' and  'the theory of deliberate thought', there are good and bad reasonings that may be submitted to criticism, of which we are responsible, since they are deliberate and controlled, and since, for a pragmatist, the way one thinks cannot be distinguished from the way one conducts oneself (5.534), thus from the way one is guided by a purpose or an ideal (1.573), namely that of the discovery of reality. On the other hand, the pragmatist theory of research or theory of belief, namely of 'being deliberately ready to adopt the believed formula as a guide for action'(5.27) must lead  less to a search for origin than to the determination of the norms and ideals that are to be chosen for the future conduct (5.35; 5.461), —which, incidentally, means that rationality should not be reduced  to action nor to its practical consequences. Such a determination is achieved by an endless exercise of self-criticism,  becoming itself a kind of habit : 'If conduct is completely deliberate, the ideal must be a habit of feeling which has developed under the influence of all a series of criticisms and hetero-criticisms ; and the theory of deliberate formation of such habits of feelings is what should be meant by esthetics'(1.574).

There is in that Peircian conception of logic as a normative sci-(p.43)ence, resting in the end on ethics and esthetics a deep line of thinking: if the phenomena of reasoning are, finally, in their basic traits, parallel to those of moral conduct, it is, because 'reasoning is, essentially, just as moral conduct, a thought submitted to self-control'. But how ?

 

'The phenomena of reasoning are in their general features, parallel to those of moral conduct. For reasoning is essentially thought that is under self-control, just as moral conduct is conduct under self-control. Indeed, reasoning is a species of controlled conduct, and as such necessarily partakes of the essential features of controlled conduct. If you attend to the phenomena of reasoning, although they are not quite so familiar to you as those of morals because there are no clergymen whose business is to keep them before your minds, you will necessarily remark, without difficulty, that a person who draws a rational conclusion, not only thinks it to be true, but thinks that similar reasoning would be just in every analogous case. If he fails to think this, the inference is not to be called reasoning. It is merely an idea suggested to his mind and which he cannot resist thinking is true. But not having been subjected to any check or control, it is not deliberately approved and is not to be called reasoning. To call it so would be to ignore a distinction which it ill becomes a rational being to overlook. To be sure, every inference forces itself upon us irresistibly. That is to say, it is irresistible at the instant it first suggests itself. Nevertheless, we all have in our minds certain norms, or general patterns of right reasoning, and we can compare the inference with one of those and ask ourselves whether it satisfies that rule. I call it a rule, although the formulation maybe somewhat vague; because it has the essential character of a rule of being a general formular applicable to particular cases. If we judge our norm of right reason to be satisfied, we get a feeling of approval, and the inference now not only appears as irresistible at it did before, but it will prove far more unshakable by any doubt"(1.606).

 

(p.44)Thus, to say of a reasoning that it is a reasoning is to say that it follows certain rules which we are ble to judge , which we can approve or disapprove. Otherwise, it is not a reasoning , it is just a simple inference. Yet, be it a reasoning or an inference, it forces upon us irresistibly, which suggests that there is, in the norms themselves, something irresistible. Hence,  to qualify as  sound or valid,  logic must  obey certain rules or norms of correct reasoning which we accept. Such rules and norms are characterized by the fact that they seem self-evident  to us. It is in that sense that logical rules or norms are comparable to the rules of conduct or to moral norms: they are imperatives or prescriptions which we follow.

But where does such normativity come from?  In defining logic as the theory of the establishement of stable beliefs and as a normative science Peirce intents to show that logic is concerned as much with beliefs and norms as it is with logical truths:  in that respect he avoids both a  straightforward Platonist (or Fregean)  position and a straightforward psychologistic or naturalistic one . On the one hand, he is not ready to say that the laws of logic owe their normativity to  the existence of some type of special facts, of the laws of Being-True,  describing some reality of which they  would be indicative truths.  But on the other hand, he  is not ready to say either that the laws of logic are just  psychological features of a sytem of beliefs which an agent has:  for Peirce, to claim that logical norms are normative is to claim that they belong to norms of rationality, that they are the rules that must be followed by an ideally rational agent; hence it is not so much a feature  that a system of belief or an agent does in fact have, as  a trait that governs our interpretation of a system of rational beliefs and behaviours of individuals.  As a matter of fact, if we did not suppose that a subject or agent had some traits of 'optimal' rationality, we could not interpret him. In that sense, rationality is not a datum, a given, an empirical fact which we could discover or not in a creature. It does not follow that we could not describe some creatures (humans, animals, machines) as being more or less rational or irrational. But even then,  our various ascriptions of rationality are always  relative to the norms of rationality which we accept.

(p.45)Thus logical norms are inferential norms, governing what we can expect an agent to believe, if he has certain beliefs (for example, that he has no contradictory beliefs).

However,  they are also norms that are due to the very truth of the agent's beliefs —otherwise, one could not understand that they should function as norms, namely, that they seem to have some kind of necessity (and self-evidence). In that respect, truth is not only a descriptive property of a statement or of a belief, it is also a normative property ^[16]: the fact that someone has a belief presupposes that one accepts such a belief as true, even if that belief turns out to be false. In other words, for Peirce, in terms close to what Quine, Davidson or Dennett are nowadays  writing, we most often adopt a principle of charity, according to which the agent whom we interpret, has beliefs which are, according to our own standards, in general, true. This close link between belief and truth , —which was well formulated by Moore's paradox : one cannot say 'I believe that  p   but  p  is false'—, is expressed by Peirce when he stresses that it is somewhat  redundant to say p   is true and  to believe thatp :

 

'All you have any dealings with are your doubts and beliefs…If your terms "truth" and "falsity" are taken in such senses as to be definable in terms of doubt and belief and the course of experience (as for example they would be, if you were to define the "truth" as that to a belief in which belief would tend if it were to tend indefinitely toward absolute fixity), well and good; in that case, you are only talking about doubt and belief. But if by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entites of whose existence you can know nothing , and which Ockham's razor would clean shave off. Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the "Truth", you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt'(5.416).

 

(p.46)3.  Logical norms and evolution

As a consequence, the rationality of a system of beliefs obeying logical norms is not for Peirce a fact: neither a transcendent fact , in a Fregean sense, nor a natural fact, as psychologists think, when they try (cf. Mill or Bain) to reduce the laws of thought to the laws of human psychology and the latter to natural laws. Being norms, logical truths and rules  cannot be deduced from or reduced to factual propositions bearing on the nature or constitution of individuals. 

However, some explanation has to be offered for their being so 'irresistible' or self-evident. And it is here that evolution comes into the picture:  it is so  because they are the product of certain mental habits or dispositions which are the product of evolution, of that long history of interactions with our cultural peers, punctuated by habit-changes, through which they finally became reinforced or strenghtened. This also explains why in the long run,  such habits  become  identical for everyone, and finally come to play a normative role, by detaching themselves from what has been previously believed:

 

'A cerebral habit of the highest kind, which will determine what we do in fancy as well as we do in action, is called a  belief . The representation to ourselves that we have a specified habit of this kind is called a  judgement.  A belief-habit in its development begins by being vague, special, and meagre; it becomes more precise; general and full, without limit. The process of this development is called  thought .  A judgement is formed; and under the influence of a belief-habit, this gives rise to a new judgment, indicating an addition to belief. Such a process is called an  inference; the antecedent judgement is called the premiss; the consequent judgement, the  conclusion ; the habit of thought, which determined the passage from the one to the other (when formulated as a proposition), the  leading principle'(3.160).

 

'At the same time, that this process of inference, or the spontaneous development of belief, is continually going on within(p.47) us, fresh peripheral excitations are also continualy creating new belief-habits. Thus belief is partly determined by old beliefs and partly by new experience. Is there any law about the mode of the peripheral excitations? The logician maintains that there is, namely, that they are all adapted to an end, that of carrying belief, in the long run, toward certain predestinate conclusions which are the same for all men. This is the faith of the logician. This is a matter of fact, upon which all maxims of reasoning repose. In virtue of this fact, what is to be believed at last is independent of what has been believed hitherto, and therefore has the character of  reality. Hence, if a given habit, considered as determining an inference, is of such a sort as to tend toward the final result, it is correct; otherwise, not. Thus, inferences become divisible into the valid and the invalid; and thus logic takes its reason of existence' (3.161).

 

Thus, for Peirce, although the logical laws find their origin in mental operations, they rest on psychological acts which acquire, in relation to their origin, an autonomy and independence which detach them from it, and enable them to play the role of leading principles of the conduct of reasoning.  At a certain time in inquiry, one no longer cares about knowing how one came to certain conclusions by such and such inferential acts (1.56). In that respect, our logical beliefs may well be the product of evolution and come from feelings of approval or disapproval which we feel after a long history of relationships with our peers. However, from the fact that  such a general capacity to have referential systems and to approve them (or to view them as norms) has grown, ('we outgrow the applicability of instinct'), it does not follow that  one may derive the  content   of the inferential rules themselves  from some evolutionary history. As far as such rules state certain ideals of thought and action, their origin becomes opaque, and it is such opacity which constitutes their normativity and rationality.

In so doing, Peirce presents logic, neither as  a  science which would or could describe directly   the processes of natural reasoning, as(p.48) if one could transpose the rules of logic at the level of psychology, nor as a science able to codify anything which were totally distinct from the steps of reasoning  as if logic were a pure abstract game of arbitrary rules. In  that respect, he  avoids deriving the logical contents from some acts of the mind ( and would  consequently oppose, a straightforward naturalistic or evolutionary account  of rationality or logic), but he also avoids a Fregean type position whose major well known difficulty is to leave unexplained the way in which logic can simply be applied.

 

4. Some remarks about Peirce's views on normative rationality  and evolution and the contemporary debate.

 There has been much debate in the literature recently,  about the relationships between rationality and evolution, between nature and norms.  It is often considered today, that there are three major ways, largely converging in their conclusions, but distinct by the type of argument they use, to try and give an evolutionary or naturalist theory of the  logical norms of rationality of our systems of belief^[17]. According to the first one,  from the fact that natural selection chooses the best inferential systems, one must conclude that our inferential systems must be rational, and that irrationality is highly improbable or even impossible. The argument rests on the assumption that natural selection 'optimizes' and on what Gould and Lewontin call the 'Panglossian paradigm' ^[18]. But its major drawback  seems to be the following :  even if it is correct, it does not enable to establish a general  link between natural selection and rationality, nor does it say anything particular about the nature and content of logical norms in particular.

The second way consists in claiming a general theory of intentional contents, according to which a given belief has the content it has in virtue of the fact that it accomplishes a certain biological function. The normative character of mental contents in general and of the mental contents of logical thoughts in particular is thus explained by the fact that, according to such a functionalist-teleological view, such contents have achieved and still do achieve a certain function (p.49)inside the species. Following that line of argument various 'teleosemantics' have been proposed^[19].

A third way consists in attempting to describe, through some biological or evolutionary history, the content of some inferential capacities and logical principles. Thus, through the study of the properties of our natural reasoning about some logical contents, one tries to show how such properties are best explained if one supposes that they are the product of mental schemes inherited from the evolution of species.

To a certain  point, Peirce's views seem to retain parts of each story, without buying any of them completely.  Of course, Peirce seems to say, we have to admit that  the logical principles are true. But this does not imply that we have to take them as litteraly or absolutely true. We just have to take them as mere idealizations of our systems of belief. A close line of argument has recently been taken by the Australian Brian Ellis, who writes:

 

'Laws in science refer to idealized entities in idealized circumstances which model, usually less than perfectly, the real entities and circumstances of the physical world. They can be used to explain the behaviour of real entities, and the theories in which they are embedded provide frameworks for determining what remains to be explained. My thesis is that the laws of logic are like this. They are laws governing the structure of ideally rational belief systems of idealized languages which model, always less than perfectly, ordinary human belief systems on natural languages. They can be used to explain at least some of the features of ordinary belief systems, and the theory of rational belief systems in which they are embedded provides a framework for determining what remains to be explained about our belief systems.'^[20]

 

 Just like Peirce, Ellis insists on showing that such a theory of rational belief systems is fatal to any kind of dualism, such as the dualism that is to be found in most contemporary epistemologists,(p.50) who (like Popper for ex.) believe  that the task of epistemology should be seen as the rational reconstruction of knowlegde, namely of man as a more or less rational agent operating with a priori principles of reasoning upon given data (or in Popper's case, upon conjectures and observationally acquired beliefs) to construct the edifice of objective scientific knowledge. All such epistemologists,  including Popper, think of the body of scientific knowledge as a kind of intellectual superstructure or building erected by us upon more or less firm foundations of items of knowledge or belief acquired directly through sense experience.

Now, Ellis objects,  'this view of man is incompatible with the view which science requires us to take. For it is essentially a dualist one':

 

 'It may not be dualist in the sense of presupposing the existence of two distinct kinds of substances, processes or events, mental and physical. But at least, it implies that man, the rational agent, is somehow separate from the physical world which he is trying to understand. He is able to grasp certain a priori principles of reasoning which he can apply with varying degrees of facility to the items of belief or knowledge which he acquires through sense experience. On the scientific view, man is a physical organism reacting in various ways to his environment. His beliefs are brain states of various kinds. His beliefs - all of them- are acquired by physical causal processes. Reasoning is such a process, and his reaching a conclusion a culmination of a physical process. A man's system of belief is a function of his genetic endowment and of the history of his sensory stimulation. His belief system would thus be better likened to an ecological system than to a building. It has a certain shape and structure which can no doubt be explained. But the scientific explanation, when it is forthcoming will not make reference to free agents applying or misapplying a priori rules of reasoning to given data. Rather I would expect it to proceed in two stages: firstly by the (p.51)development of a theory of the structure and dynamics of human belief systems, and secondly by the development of a neurophysiological theory adequate to explain the relevant structural and dynamical laws. The view that human belief systems are products of human agency seem to me to be no more plausible than the view that ecological systems are products of divine agency' (p.vi).

 

And Ellis, like Peirce, uses the concept of 'rational equilibrium' to characterize a system of ideally rational beliefs:

 

'An ideally rational belief system is one which is in equilibrium under the most acute pressures of internal criticism and discussion. Actual belief systems normally, and perhaps always, fail to be ideally rational in this sense. This is so partly because they are continually being disturbed by new observationally (or otherwise) acquired beliefs, and partly because the required pressures of internal criticism and discussion, are not applied, or if applied, not understood and so, not effective. Nevertheless, the physical ideal of a rational belief system is useful for explaining some of the structural features of ordinary human belief systems'(p4).

 

According to such a conception,  logical laws need not be absolutely nor strictly true. They just have to be sufficiently true. They need not be absolutely necessary either, in the sense that they would be unmovable. But they can be still be said  necessary  in a weak sense, in the sense that we can suppose that an equilibrium in our system of beliefs may be reached during a long period of time.

There is still a second point to be explained : it is the' irrresistible' or obvious  character of our  logical laws. Here again, it has been recently claimed ( in particular by Richard Nozick) that  the fact that we accept them as such and recognize them as norms is a psychological property  which  can be accounted for in evolutionary terms.^[21] According to Nozick :

 

(p.52)'There could be different bases for our acting in accordance with a factual connection : the action could be prewired (if the factual connection obtained in the past and there was evolutionary selection for that automatic fact-action sequence) or the action could result from operant conditioning. There is a third basis. Acting upon  reasons  involves  recognizing  a connection or structural relation among contents. Such recognition itself might have been useful and selected for. The attribute of a certain factual connection's  seeming  self evidently evidential to us might have been selected for and favored because acting upon this factual connection, which does hold, in general enhances fitness. I am not suggesting that it is the capacity to recognize independently existing valid connections that is selected for. Rather, there is a factual connection, and there was selection among organisms for that kind of connection seeming valid, for noticing that kind of connection, and for such noticing to lead to certain additional beliefs, inferences, and so on. There is selection for recognizing as valid certain kinds of connections that  are  factual, that is, for them coming to seem to us as  more  than just factual' ^[22]

Nozick speaks here of inductive inferences^[23], but he  is ready to extend such an analysis to the deductive rules of inference. Does this imply that the principles of logic are no longer necessary but contingent? No, answers Nozick; it might be enough that they are true , even if only contingently, even just 'true enough' —recall the example of Euclidian geometry— and that they have held true durably for long enough to leave an imprint upon our evolutionary endowment. ^[24]

What it is essential to distinguish , if one is willing to propose such a hypothesis, is on the one hand, the objective content  of the logical laws or principles, and on the other hand, the psychological processes which lead us to accept them and to recognize them as self-evident.  Natural selection operates on the second, not on the first. And this is very different from the psychologist hypothesis which (53)hoped to reduce logical principles to psychological laws and to reduce their objectivity to processes of recognition.

 

Conclusion.

 In his explanation of the relationships between rationality and evolution, R. Nozick refers to Kant, who tried to answer the crucial following problem: If reason and the facts are to be taken as  independent factors, then the rationalists can produce no convincing reason why the two should correspond. Why should those two independent variables be correlated? In the second edition of the  Critique of Pure Reason,  commenting on his deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding, Kant reminded that there were two major ways  'in which we can account for  a  necessary   agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects' (B 166) : either experience makes such concepts possible, or it is the other way round. Now, Kant added, the second type of explanation won't do, because the categories are pure a priori concepts, hence independent from experience: in that respect the claim of an empirical origin would be a kind of  generatio aequivoca  .  Kant's solution is well known:  he proposed that the empirical facts were not an independent variable; their dependence upon reason explains the correlation and correspondence between them. And Kant concluded that there is but one possible way, the second one, which might be called a 'system of epigenesis of pure reason', namely, that 'the categories, from the side of the understanding, include the principles of possibility of any experience in general'. 

But, as Nozick notes, there is still a third possibility available: 'that it is  reason  that is the dependent variable, shaped by the facts, and its dependence upon the facts explains the correlation and correspondence between them. Reason tells us about reality because reality shapes reason, selecting for what seems "evident" ' (Nozick, p.112).

As a matter of fact, Kant did envisage such a third way :

 

'A middle course may be proposed between the two above mentioned, namely, that the categories are … subjective dispositions of thought ( Anlagen zum Denken), implanted in (p.54)us from the first moment or our existence, and so ordered by our Creator that their employment is in complete harmony with the laws of nature in accordance with which  experience proceeds — a kind of  preformation system  of pure reason…' (B 167).

 

But the reasons why Kant objected to such a middle course are well known :  'there is this decisive objection against the suggested middle course, that the necessity  of the categories, which belongs to their very conception, would then have to be sacrificed' (B167).

Now, it seems obvious that authors like  Peirce, Ellis or Nozick are ready to engage into such a sacrifice, or at least to satisfy themselves with a 'weak' sense of necessity. 

Were he right or wrong in doing so, it is at least easier to understand why Peirce could feel he was the spiritual son of Kant, who had so finely detected 'the inseparable link which exists between rational knowledge and rational finality"(5.412), and was at the same time convinced that the only way to answer Kant's challenge ( Kant whom he characterized as a 'somewhat confused pragmatist") was 'to abjure from the bottom of his heart' the thing in itself. As I said previously, not only  does this suffice to forbid all reduction of Peirce's objective idealism to transcendental idealism. But  if I am right in suggesting that Peirce's course was precisely  the middle course suggested by Kant ^[25], it may also help to dissolve the so-called tensions or contradictions in Peirce's thought, namely, by reading his project as a kind of 'system of preformation of pure reason',  a system which, mid-way between a purely empiricist and an a priori starting point, tries to explain how intelligible norms can somehow emerge from our empirical nature.  At least,  it would make it easier to  understand why Peirce described his own intellectual development as that of 'a pure Kantian', who was simply forced 'by successive steps', into Pragmaticism.

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(notes, p. 55-58).