The Fitness of an Ideal: A Peircean Ethics

Abstract

Synechism is founded on the notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, but phases of one and the same process of the growth of reasonableness.- C. S. Peirce (CP 5.4, 1902)In 1898, Charles Sanders Peirce stood before his audience and said, Now, the two masters, theory and practice, you cannot serve (EP 2:34)1 and condemned with the whole strength of conviction the tendency to mingle philosophy and practice. It comes as no surprise, then, that in 1898 Ethics is not considered Normative Science.But just few years later Peirce changed his mind. In the Minute of 1902, we find Peirce calling Ethics one of the Normative Sciences that are the very most purely theoretical of purely theoretical (CP 1.281, 1902). I think what allowed Peirce to include Ethics as normative science was the realization that ideals of conduct function like the laws of nature: both guide habitual behaviour. Ethics is the study of the conformity of our action towards the ideals proposed by Esthetics. The ideals proposed by Esthetics the sedimentation of an entire culture's practices that have provided the culture with stable belief set. Once those ends brought under the scope of rational, critical deliberation, then they can become subject to the scientific method. This is what allows Ethics to become Normative Science. Peirce's fear, however, is that wholesale rejection of our belief set would lead to type of Cartesian doubt that is not only unwarranted and unjustified, but also very likely to lead us into error because of lack of the stable foundation that our cultural practices have afforded us. Instead of this wholesale rejection, in 1903, Peirce outlines process of critical self-control that brings our practices in line with rational deliberation, which ultimately contributes to the growth of concrete reasonableness.The purpose of this paper is to explain why Peirce held that there is division between theory and practice and to show how the two must inform one another through a slow of forms. (RLT, 122) I will do this by first setting up the theory/practice problem for Peirce and showing why that is problem for pragmatism in general. Second, I will trace the development of Ethics through the evolution of the Normative Sciences.2 Third, I will show that the development of the Normative Sciences must come out of practice. The results of the normative sciences should be taken up again in practice in order for them to contribute to the growth of concrete reasonableness. The concluding section will bring together two essays from The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce (2012), namely, Rosa Maria Mayorga's Peirce's Moral Realicism and Ignacio Redondo's The Normativity of Communication: Norms and Ideals in Peirce's Speculative Rhetoric. By combining these two papers, we can better understand that the slow percolation of forms that Peirce talks about in the Reasoning and the Logic of Things lectures involves activity in accordance with the forms of relations of objects. This move relies on both his normative sciences and metaphysical inquiry.1. Theory and PracticeThe position that I would like to put forward has been hinted at in the secondary literature but has not been spelled out in complete detail.3 What I would like to see is an approach that respects the roles that instinct and habit play in ethical deliberation by developing deliberate, intelligent habits that contribute to the growth of concrete reasonableness. To get there, it will first be necessary to dispel some of the myths about Peirce holding division between theory and practice. This will be done by showing what Peirce had to say about Ethics as Normative Science. It is here and in his comments about the ideals of conduct that one can plainly see the interwovenness of theory and practice.At the outset, it should be noted that there is fairly straightforward solution to this problem that could have been employed here, and it is move that many commentators, such as Vincent Colapietro, have made before. …