| Term Paper Title | Logical Reasoning |
| # of Words | 3590 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 14.36 |
Logical Reasoning
We think that we are all logical creatures, that we can attain truth by our logical reasoning, but historically, this has not been the case. Every scientific advance somehow “exemplifies the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time it was written.” (pg.62)
Thus, we are not perfectly logical creatures, in fact, most of us are content with our beliefs without logical facts; and since we gain logical facts through experience, experience only serves to continuously frustrate our beliefs, hopes, and aspirations. This is our primary source of doubt. However, as human beings, we like to have encouraging and pleasing beliefs, so we undertake inquiry to eradicate this doubt. Peirce thinks that there are four essential methods for fixing our beliefs, and they are:
1. Method of Tenacity
If all we need is a settled opinion, then why don't we just pick an answer that we like and just stick with it?
This way of fixating belief is impossible, as we would have to live like hermits. Living in a social setting, our beliefs would be challenged by those that we interact with in our daily lives.
2. Method of Authority
Once the state/church reaches a settled opinion, then let them teach that belief and have those who reject it be terrified into silence.
This method has been much more successful than the method of tenacity historically. For most people, this is the method that they use to fix their beliefs, so long as they don't mind being intellectual slaves. However, the state/church cannot regulate every opinion, and of course people from other countries/cultures/religions who hold contrary beliefs may influence public opinion.
3. A Priori Method
Since the two above methods are inadequate, why not have reason determine our beliefs?
This method fails for several reasons. It fails because what our reason tells us to believe is not necessarily consistent with our experiences; in fact, experience only serves to defeat our beliefs at every turn. It also fails because not everybody reasons the same way, and so it suffers the same problem as that posed against the method of tenacity in that people will disagree. Finally, "It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste, but taste unfortunately, is always more or less a matter of fashion." (Pg. 73)
4. Method of Science
To satisfy our doubts, we need a method dependent on an external permanency, some method that is mind-independent.
According to this method, everybody will hold the same belief, or will eventually if we persist in our inquiry. This rests on the assumption that there are real things in the external world, and we can ascertain the one true conclusion through reason and experience. According to this model, the truth is mind-independent.
Thus, Peirce thinks that science will eventually provide those mind-independent (objective) truths, and so he holds it in the highest regard. However, this approach is fraught with controversy, as it has been the traditional place of philosophy to answer our most compelling questions. Some philosophers may feel slighted at this and construct attacks against those who would hold science as their one source of truth. Peirce's conception of the nature of scientific practice and of what differentiates it from other forms of human activity (a matter upon which he could speak expertly as a contributor to a number of scientific fields) can be of real help in this controversy; not by providing scientists with arguments that will counter the arguments of those who would attack the sciences but by reminding scientists of what is essential to them as such and what is not.
The sort of case which academic politicians make usually uses the same general line of reasoning. It starts by claiming that scientists make pretense to being something they cannot possibly be, namely, infallible knowers of the truth about something in virtue of being equipped with methods which guarantee that whatever conclusions they come to with use of them will be the truth. This depiction ...Read entire document
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