I next want to cover three papers published 1868-69 in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Structurally, the papers are a dumpster fire, so I’ll organize posts by theme rather than sequentially.
In the second paper of the series, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” Peirce lays down a marker: here’s what he dislikes about the philosophy of his time, and here’s what he proposes to do about it.
Note: I have an annotated table of contents for my entire “cover band” reinterpretations of Peirce essays.
Fixing philosophy
René Descartes broke from the earlier scholastic philosophers in four ways.
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Cartesian philosophy begins with universal doubt. It reduces the number of axioms to those most essential and undeniable, then builds up from there. In contrast, the scholastics did not doubt fundamentals.
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To Descartes, certainty is found in the individual consciousness, which will recognize correctly stated propositions as incontrovertibly true. Scholastics obtained certainty from venerated long-dead authorities, especially Aristotle and the Church Fathers.
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The Cartesian style favors a single chain of reasoning stretching from premises (often obscure) to a conclusion. But the scholastics favored multiple arguments, each adding more evidence for one conclusion.
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Scholasticism sought to explain all things created by God. Cartesian philosophy renders many things definitionally inexplicable beyond “That must be the way God wanted it.”
Philosophers today (1868) are predominately Cartesians, though they may quibble with one or more of the above points.
We shouldn’t return to scholasticism, but modern science and logic require a new philosophy (and, in consequence, new philosophical results).
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Complete doubt is unattainable. We all have prejudices that it never occurs to us can be doubted. Cartesian philosophy too often is an elaborate process of formally reasoning toward what you always believed to start with (but you don’t admit that).
That’s not to say that doubt is impossible, only that it’s caused by specific reasons that force doubt of the currently believed – not from some generic process of will toward all-pervasive doubt.
Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we don’t doubt in our hearts.
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Our individual consciousnesses are poor judges of the truth of propositions, no matter how clearly and distinctly those propositions are stated. You need look no further than metaphysicians, all of whom think themselves able to be absolute judges of truth – and all of whom disagree on what that obvious truth is.
Science, in contrast, depends on community judgment. Any theory is on probation until examined by scientists who come to consensus that there’s no point in further doubt, that it’s time to move on.
Philosophy should be the same. If a theory – obvious to its author – is examined by disciplined and truthful peers who decline to accept it, that ought to raise doubt in the mind of the theory’s author, no matter how certain his argument seems to him. Philosophy, instead, is highly disputatious.
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Philosophy should proceed from observable premises rather than internal feelings. It should avoid reasoning in chains of inference no stronger than their weakest links. Better is a cable woven from connected fibers of evidence: each perhaps weak but collectively strong.
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Many philosophical theories reason from what can be analyzed to conclude there’s some ultimate form of matter that is absolutely inexplicable and unanalyzable. As a matter of logic and semiotics, such a conclusion is absurd. We should exclude such claims from philosophy.
Liner notes for the 2026 reissue
The fourth point above is vague because Peirce’s point assumes his theory of semiotics (roughly: how words and other symbols produce meaning) prior to explaining it. What I’ve read and understood thus far doesn’t allow me to make a better translation.
In his youth, Peirce made a thorough study of Kant. “I devoted two hours a day to the study of Kant’s Critique of the Pure Reason for more than three years, until I almost knew the whole book by heart, and had critically examined every section of it.” – “Concerning the author” (1897) in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Justus Buchler (ed.), 2001,(archive.org), p. 2. I don’t think he has as low an opinion of Kant as he does of Descartes – though I do remember him writing something about how Kant’s fatal flaw was that he wasn’t so good at logic. It is clear Peirce intends to replace Kant’s grand system with one of his own.
As is evident above, Peirce rather preferred the scholastics to Descartes, especially Duns Scotus (c. 1265/66 – 1308). Peirce admired logicians, so the logic-chopping the scholastics are known for didn’t seem as arid to him as to other later philosophers.