Charles Sanders Peirce: Reality Outside the Mind

Our thinking about psychology is embedded in a general understanding of the world. This general understanding might not be explicitly articulated, but it influences how we draw the boundary between the psychological domain and the non-psychological domain, and how we think about the relation between the two. Think about a therapist who is getting to know her client. She has to distinguish those problems that arise from the facts of life (e.g., financial problems, physical health, dysfunctional relationships), from problems that arise from the client’s thinking about those facts. Similarly, a researcher distinguishes between, on one hand, what she is trying to investigate, and on the other hand, the methods and theories used in the investigation.

Our topic featured in an episode of the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, when Sheldon and Amy argue about the relative importance of their respective sciences. Their argument was about the general understanding of reality, within which we engage in science. Sheldon, a theoretical physicist, said that his field is about the entire universe and, as such, will explain everything including scientists and their activities. Amy, a neurobiologist, said that her field is concerned with the mind and, therefore, will someday explain how a theoretical physicist builds a theory about the whole universe. Sheldon dismissed Amy’s position as “psychologism,” and since they couldn’t resolve their disagreement, they stopped talking.

We might think Amy and Sheldon stopped their argument because of their unusual stubbornness, but the point at which they stopped is, in fact, a boundary that most psychologists similarly do not cross. Most of us do not go further into our assumptions about reality, and the relationship between our understanding of reality and how that understanding influences our thinking in psychology. In this brief post, I am going to tiptoe into the other side of that boundary, discussing two major positions (realism and subjectivism), and how they are connected to several other assumptions about the mind. Our guide is the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), and his brief essay, The Criterion of Valid Reasoning. References are at the end of the post in case you are interested in further reading.

Let’s return to Amy and Sheldon. Their disagreement was a disagreement about what we take as our safe starting point—mind or world. Do we begin with a reality outside of the mind? (realism) or do we begin with the mind and appearances (a position described both as anti-realism and subjectivism)? Peirce argues against the anti-realist position, but he does much more. He demonstrates different forms of anti-realism in various domains, including ethics, and describes the general form of the subjectivist position (“the mind relates only to itself, not to an outside world”). He reveals some of the commitments of subjectivism, about the nature of judgment, which may not be obvious at first. Finally, his analysis leads us to the distinction between habitual and deliberate thinking, anticipating contemporary works by, e.g., Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, by nearly a century.

What is subjectivism? As we noted before, it is a philosophical position—a general understanding of reality—that takes subjective experience as its safe starting point. In so doing, it claims we cannot draw a boundary between experience and reality. As a consequence, questions about the world and matters of fact turn into questions about the mind (what the mind takes to be the world and matters of fact). Peirce takes this position to be mistaken, because it clouds an important distinction. “The psychological question”, he writes, “is what processes the mind goes through. But the logical question is whether the conclusion that will be reached, by applying this or that maxim will or will not accord with the fact.” (p. 120) He shows how this problem, in its general form, shows up in a variety of domains, and he how clarifies the consequences of accepting realism versus subjectivism.

Different Manifestations of Subjectivism

The first manifestation of the error with which Peirce is concerned is equating “what is the case” or “what is real” with “what appears to be the case” or “what appears real”. To do this is to equate reality with the mind. The error, according to Peirce, shows up not only when we think about reality as such, but also in ethics and aesthetics. In its ethical form, the error equates “what is the correct course of action” with “the action that makes the actor feels better”, reducing ethics to hedonism (desire and pleasure/pain). In its aesthetic form, the error equates “what is beautiful or admirable” with “what we happen to like”, reducing aesthetics to taste.

After recognizing different forms of subjectivism, Peirce expresses its general form, according to which the mind can only relate to parts of itself, and never to something outside of itself. I don’t see the coffee cup, but rather an internal image of a coffee cup in my own mind; instead of admiring or enjoying what is beautiful, I am admiring or enjoying my own taste; instead of wanting to do what is ethical, what I want is to express my own sentiment regarding a preferred action. Peirce argues that realism takes us out of this inner cycle where we cannot relate to, believe in, or desire anything except what is in our own mind.

Subjectivism also deprives us from the distinction between two types of judgments. From a realist perspective, I can distinguish between the following two:

• The painting is beautiful (judgment)
• I judge that the painting is beautiful (meta-judgment)

As Peirce points out, not being able to distinguish between the two types of judgment is a strange implication of subjectivism. If I can never reach beyond my own mind, then I must regard the two statements above as different formulations of the same statement. Peirce highlights the distinction further by pointing to the difference between negating the two statements:

• The painting is not beautiful
• I don’t judge the painting to be beautiful

The statements (and their negations) convey different meanings, and we need to be able to tell them apart. This is difficult from a subjectivist perspective. Similarly, we could not distinguish between a relatively trivial expression of taste (e.g., “I don’t like the smell of durian in the market”) and a relatively serious ethical judgments (e.g., “it is wrong to steal from the market”). Given that subjectivism sees both types of judgment as mental state relating to another mental state, it does not draw a boundary between the two types of judgment. What makes the two types of judgments different, after all, is that they express different forms of relating to the world.

Ethics and Morality Essential Reads

The Doctors Trying to Redefine Death

How Our Morals Might Get in the Way of Behavior Change

Interconnected Problems: Habitual versus Deliberate Thinking

We might ask the subjectivist: If the mind cannot reach out and reveal facts about the world, what enables us to survive? What is it that makes our reasoning about the world valid? With subjectivism, Peirce argues, we come to accept a type of “truth instincts” or “habits of thinking” that allow us to form appropriate beliefs (beliefs that do not lead to our extinction) and come to agree with each other. We have survived, because our habits of thinking have aligned with the facts of the world. But what about the cases where we make mistakes? And what about cases where we disagree with others about what is the case?

Subjectivism recognizes habits of reasoning as the only source of reasoning, claiming that good reasoning is good because it accords with our habits of reasoning (including instincts). According to realism, on the other hand, our habits of reasoning sometimes do not accord with the facts. And, when they do, it is not their status as habits that makes them correct. We distinguish between “I don’t like durian,” (a matter of taste) and “I don’t approve of stealing in the market.” The second judgment has a rationality. It can be expanded and argued, and it implies good and bad beyond my individual position (e.g., relations between people in general in a society). A visceral reaction to durian or to violence cannot be expressed in the form of a rational argument that convinces another person. A rational argument about violence, therefore, can be considered aside from whether or not the arguer has a visceral reaction to violence. Habitual reasoning and taste do not offer a basis for building consensus with others, whereas deliberate reasoning offers such a basis.

Anticipating the contemporary distinction (e.g., System 1 vs. System 2; intuitive vs. reflective; etc.), Peirce proposes a distinction between two types of reasoning. The first (habitual reasoning), he says, can generate a lot of guesses. Its results are abundant, though possibly erroneous. By contrast, the second type (deliberate reasoning) is lean and precise, though it needs the assistance of the first type of reasoning as a scaffold. The goal here is not to blame habitual reasoning, but to recognize its status, and the possibility of subjecting it to inspection, in distinction from deliberate reasoning.

The purpose of reasoning, Peirce argues, is to avoid disappointment and disaster, by keeping us cognizant of the states of affairs. Reasoning, therefore, can be subject to evaluation, based on its consequence. Understanding what it means to reason carries with itself the idea of good reasoning. That is to say, according to Peirce, good reasoning is not a matter of subjective taste. It can be evaluated within a shared domain in which the consequences of our reasoning can be observed and described. After all, some of us wish to study logic. This fact indicates that we can wish to improve our thinking, as well as it indicates our recognition of the possibility for good and bad reasoning.

Rewards of good reasoning might include the good feeling that comes as a possible outcome of reasoning, when reasoning brings us into closer accord with facts, giving us a better handle on reality. But such a good feeling is neither a necessary nor a sufficient part of good reasoning, which is to say we should not diagnose good and bad reasoning based on positive and negative feelings alone.

Back to our Question

Psychological research and practice happen in the background of our assumptions about reality. We do not begin with the mind and subjectivity as the starting point. Hence, our studies of reality don't begin afresh with psychology. If that appears to be the case, it is because our assumptions about reality are operating in an unexamined background.

Peirce’s realism comes with humility, and the recognition of our fallible nature. After we recognize that the standards of good and bad reasoning can only be given with respect to the real world (in which we face the consequences of our reasoning), we also recognize that the greater portion of our reasoning and judgment is habitual. The scope of deliberate reasoning is narrow, and we cannot act without the help of habitual, unexamined reasoning. Even when we engage in deliberate reasoning, we cannot examine all the consequences of our reasoning. Therefore, we regard our judgments, in so far as they are judged by their consequences thus far, as provisional.

Does this mean that we must side with Sheldon? Not quite. In the next post, again with Peirce’s help, we will see an account of how sciences differ from each other, and how each picks their respective domain.