GENUINE DOUBT AND THE COMMUNITY IN PEIRCE’S THEORY OF INQUIRY

Abstract

For Charles Peirce, the project of inquiry is a social one. Though inquiry, the passage from genuine doubt to settled belief, can be described on the individual level, its significance as a human activity is manifested in collective action. Peirce carefully described the proper method of inquiry as the “scientific method” in the 1877-8 Popular Science Monthly article series. Carried out by a community of investigators, the conclusion to be attained, given a sufficient amount of time, is what philosophers have generally referred to as Truth, its object, Reality. For any individual, Truth transcends experience and inquiry. But it does not transcend experience and inquiry altogether: is a fixed limit, an ideal, towards which a properly functioning community converges. What, in principle, makes the cohesion of such a community possible? Why did Peirce believe that convergence towards an ultimate conclusion was the necessary end of unlimited scientific inquiry? This essay examines Peirce’s notion of community to answer these questions and suggests that the presence of genuine doubt not only makes convergence possible, but also constitutes the starting point for almost all inquiry. The exception is philosophical inquiry. As Douglas Browning points out in his paper “The Limits of the Practical in Peirce’s View of Philosophical Inquiry” Peirce’s later work describes philosophical inquiry as one type of inquiry where genuine doubt is commonly not the starting point but rather an intermediate stage resulting from cultivated doubt. How can Peirce make room for “cultivated doubt” in philosophical inquiry after he has stressed how crucial genuine doubt is in providing the objectivity necessary for an eventual convergence of belief? Taking my cue from Browning’s analysis, I argue that passages in Peirce’s Popular Science Monthly articles indicate that Peirce had already begun to shift away from genuine doubt as the necessary starting point for philosophical inquiry. What is the significance of this shift for the scientific community’s convergence of opinion? I conclude by exploring the effects of two plausible interpretations of the shift.