Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Fixation of Belief

In 1877, Charles Sanders Peirce published a series of articles in Popular Science Monthly. The first essay, entitled: "The Fixation of Belief," has had a profound influence on my philosophical approach. So I thought it would be interesting to share some of those basic ideas and outline how I have expanded upon Peirce's original architecture.

First of all, Peirce was one of the first philosophers to acknowledge that the question of the nature of human belief is an important area of philosophical inquiry. Beliefs, according to Peirce, underlie many (if not most) of our actions. He argued the the formation, or "fixation" of a belief is the product of a natural process, which he called human inquiry. This process is initiated by an identifiable "feeling of doubt" that is generated by our brain and central nervous system. It is this "feeling" that initiates and sustains the involuntary process of inquiry until a new belief is established. Peirce suggested that the feeling that accompanies belief is more pleasurable than the state of doubt. So the psychological states of doubt and belief are marked by distinctive "feelings," and all humans naturally know the difference between the two. We, therefore, naturally, seek the pleasure of belief and avoid the pain associated with the state of doubt.  Over the course of our lifetimes many our "old beliefs" are cast into doubt by inquiry and are replaced by "new beliefs." Just because we happen believe or doubt something, either individually or collectively, does not mean that it is True or False.  Hence, Peirce is an epistemological realist in the sense that he believes that Truth is a correspondence between what be believe and something external to that belief.  

Now let's stop and think about all this so far. First, note that Peirce's theory of inquiry is rooted in biology, which implies an ultimate evolutionary explanation; and that this biological process generates mental states that we interpret as doubt or belief. Second, Peirce argues that since we "act" on the basis of our beliefs, there are social implications. Third, Peirce argues that there are better and worse ways for us to forge our beliefs. He therefore identifies four methods for the fixation of belief that all human beings have adopted over the long course of human history: method of authority, method of tenacity, the a priori method, and the scientific method. Although all four methods are "natural," but only one is likely to generate beliefs that are relatively stable over the long run and likely to be True. I'll explore these four methods in subsequent blogs.

           

2 comments:

Thomas McClanahan said...

Looking forward to the next few blogs...

David Dodson said...

Mankind isn't even capable of thinking logically when thoughts are in conflict with his basic loyalties.

Ideas of “Divine Crusade,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Stopping the Communist Menace,” or “Making the World Safe for Democracy” or “Make America Great Again” have taken us on many destructive and self-destructive paths.

Page 2, Section II, first paragraph:
“The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something which we do not know.”

The problem isn't things we don't know. The major is things we think we know but aren't true. And this goes for “scientists” and “logicians” as much as much as anyone else.

I disagree with Peirce when he says, “It is true that we do generally reason correctly by nature.” I think that loyalty disables the logical parts of the human brain when information threatens our belonging. Anyone with half a wit should know that you're not going to win the hearts and minds of the people of Fallujah, Iraq by force of arms, intimidation, and automatic weaponry yet most of us are sure our mission in the Middle East is “fighting for freedom.” Anyone with half a working logical brain should know by now, 40 years later, that what we believed about the civil war in Vietnam was mostly bullshit, yet we don't. This is only possible with our logic fully disabled!

We literally cannot think a thought that threatens our belonging, that puts us in conflict with our group or family.

Darwin published an unpopular idea: evolution. Yet the basic idea of breeding had been around for millennia. Any eighth grader can see that this is the same thing with mankind

Page 3: “Our beliefs guide our desires and shape actions.” I agree, but this doesn't go far enough. Our beliefs also shape what we see, hear, and remember – the “facts” as we see, hear, feel, and remember them. Modern jurisprudence is finally coming to the realization that trace evidence is far more reliable that eyewitness testimony.

In the third paragraph of Section III on Page 3, Dr. Peirce states (in underlined red) “Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else."

Let's test this.

Many of us studied the Declaration of Independence in school. What is the lie that many of these learned men signed in solemn affirmation?

How about Honest Abe's Gettysburg Address? What's the lie in it?
Got your answers to these two questions?




I didn't until a couple of years ago … and I knew the Gettysburg Address by heart!

Thomas Jefferson, the major author of the Declaration, owned 600 people who were denied freedom. Why were there slaves up until January 1, 1863 and why did fully half the population have no vote, no participation, and no representation until 1920? And why were the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s necessary and yet still insufficient to get us to treat each other as equals?

It's obvious, isn't it? Clear facts. Clear lie. How did I miss it for years?? I pride myself on my logic and I didn't even get a glimmer of this dishonesty in myself and my heroes until two years ago!