Bennett - Peirce and the Logic of Fallibilism

~ 17 82./ames O. Bennett

Peirce and the Logic

of FallibilismIn this paper I explore the relationship between fallibilism and the-

conception of knowledge as justified true belief. I use the work of C.S. Peirce as a springboard for my discussion, and the issues are ap-proached through consideration of some papers on Peirce's view offallibilism.1 In the first section, I explore "the logic of fallibilism"as it bears on the conception of "criteria of truth." In the secondsection, I examine an attempt to render Peirce's doctrine of fallibilismconsistent with the view that knowledge is justified true belief and theassertion that we are justified in making claims of the sort, "I know thatp." In the final section, I argue that we are not, in fact, justified inmaking such claims. We may indicate the precise nature of our cogni-tive situation more accurately, and the logic of fallibilism requires thatwe should.

In his paper, "Truth and Fallibilism," Konstantin Kolenda states that,"one of the unresolved questions about Peirce's account of truth iswhether he meant to provide its meaning or its criteria." He addsthat there have been some conflicting opinions in recent literature,and that he has argued that "Peirce's definition of truth makes such acriterion inaccessible." However, Kolenda proceeds to suggest thaj^such "criteria of truth" might nevertheless by formulated, as a kind ofhelpful supplement to a definition.

Envisage now the following situation. Your description ofa phenomenon (1) is borne out by perceptions, yours andeveryone else's, and (2) coheres with all other descriptions,conceptually and empirically connected with that phenome-non. Can you say that your belief is true? To answer thisquestion we need more than just the definition of truth.

...But if in addition to the definition, we also have adequaterelevant criteria, the answer to our question is yes. We can say

354 James O. Bennett

that the belief characterized above is true, because it satisfiesthe applicable criteria of truth . . . In other words, we canmake truth claims on the basis of adequate criteria which areconsonant with the definition of truth.

When Kolenda speaks of such criteria enabling us to "make truthclaims," he does not have in mind mere statements to the effect thatwe have reason to believe that a certain claim is true; he seems rather tounderstand the "making of a truth claim" as an incorrigible statementthat we have indeed found the truth.

Do we make such claims? Peirce thought that we do. For,he. said that '. . . upon innumerable questions, we have alreadyreached the final opinion'. Here we may include such indubit-able propositions as those describing everyday familiar objects. . . Of all of them we may be certain that their truth-valuewill not be reversed, no matter how long anyone wished toinquire into them. Under some circumstances, we are in theposition to claim that all the relevant data and their logical

interpretants are in.

This line of thought is entirely antithetical to fallibilism in general,and to the spirit of Peirce's thought in particular. It is no accident that"criteria of truth" are rendered inaccessible by Peirce's conception oftruth, for they are incompatible with his theory of knowledge. If suchcriteria were not accessible, they would be absolutely useless, and ifthey were accessible, they would allow us to be aware of the particularoccasions on which we were in possession of the truth. This'lattersituation would constitute precisely that state of certainty which fal-libilism is essentially concerned to deny. William James characterizedthe issue as follows:

The absolutists in this matter say that we not only can attainto knowing the truth, but we can know when we have attaniedto knowing it; while the empiricists think that although wemay attain it, we cannot infalliby know when. To know isone thing, and to know for certain that we know is another.

Peirce and the Logic of Faüíbilism 355

(Of course, James' terminology is somewhat obscure in this context;one need only substitute 'Opponents of fallibilism' for 'absolutists',and 'fallibilists' for 'empiricists', in order to render the passage moreclear.)

Peirce expressed the same view in similar language.7 He criticizedSir William Hamilton for the assertion that 'To know, and to knowthat we know, are one and the same thing."8 More explicitly, he wroteelsewhere:

Perhaps we may already have attained to perfect knowledgeabout a number of questions; but we cannot have an unshake-able opinion that we have attained such perfect knowledgeabout .iny given question. That would be not only perfectlyto know, but perfectly to know that we do perfectly know,which is what is called sure knowledge.9

The fallibilist does not wish to deny that we may often have know-ledge. If knowledge is justified true belief, then the fallibilist maygrant that in all probability many of our justified beliefs are, as a mat-ter of fact, true. The issue in question is whether we can know that thebelief in question happens, as a matter of fact, to be true. Now thisquestion is a bit tricky, because the phrase 'knowing that we know'has at least two possible senses. If 'knowing' here means 'possessingjustified true belief', then it does seem that we can "know that weknow." That is, if we have a justified belief that happens to be true,and we have a justified belief that belief constitutes a case of know-ledge, and if belief happens, as a matter of fact, to be true, then wehave a justified true belief about a justified true belief — we know thatwe know.

However, neither James nor Peirce would judge that analysis to beof much significance. The intent of their remarks concerns the questionof whether we can be aware of those cases in which justified true be-lief is actually attained. Thus, James asks whether we can know whenwe attain truth, and Peirce questions whether we can "have an unshake-""able opinion" that we have attained knowledge. In the preceding para^°graph, wherein the sense in which we can "know that we know" wasdiscussed, it was simply supposed — hypothetically — that the belief


in question happened to be true. But how could one be aware of thatfact?

This question brings us back to the notion of "criteria of truth."The phrase has an odd ring to it. Could it be that it represents a mis-guided attempt to answer the (rhetorical) question just posed? Onemight naturally assume that, given the characteristics of knowledgeas justified true belief, there must be one or more criteria by which wecan discern whether each obtains. Thus, we speak of criteria of belief(such as a willingness to act), and criteria of good evidence (such asfair sampling). One might naturally be led to suppose, therefore, thatthere also could and should be "criteria of truth." However, it willbe obvious upon a moment's reflection that if we did have such criteria,and if they were different from the criteria of good evidence, then wewould have no need of evidence. Why worry about whether or notone has good evidence for a belief if one has access to other criteriathat will allow him/her (directly) to determine its truth? Or, to put itanother way, why should one be content to operate within the inferiorrealm of "mere" belief (with the risk that attends reliance upon proba-bility) if one has access to logical procedures that guarantee the pos-session of truth?

Incidentally, one aspect of Peirce's attack upon the Cartesian phil-osophy is his criticism of the criterion of clarity "as the first conditionof infallibility." Peirce notes, "The disctinction between an idea seemingclear and really being so, never occurred to him."10 In other words,even if we did have in our possession what appeared to be criteria ofcertain knowledge, such criteria, could still be mistakenly applied]Moreoever, that insight renders the very conception of criteria of certainknowledge problematic, for in what possible sense could such criteriafunction — thereby providing us with certainty — if their very applica-tion was always attended with an element of uncertainty? A similarpoint would apply to the concept of "criteria of truth." If such cri-teria were not completely sufficient in practice to inform us as to whentruth was possessed, then they could (at best) provide us with "mere"probability; in that case such criteria would be functioning as evidence,and thus would not allow us to be aware of having passed beyond thepossession of justified belief.

The fallibilist must hold that we can never pass beyond a state of

Peirce and the Logic of Páüibilism 357

justified belief to an unmediated (and thus error-free) awareness or"the way things are." To suppose that we can be aware of when thetruth condition for knowledge has been satisfied is to think that wecan somehow get beyond justified belief. The fallibilist, therefore,must maintain that the most we can do is to assert that we have goodreason to believe that the truth condition has been satisfied. However,it is important to realize that in that case we have not gone beyondjustified belief. To have good reason to think that the truth conditionhas been satisfied is to have good reason to think that the propositionin question is true. But that is precisely what it means to have justi-fied belief.

These considerations should be sufficient to indicate that the verynotion of "criteria of truth" is a red herring. Whenever we state thatwe believe a proposition, we are saying that we think it is true.13 Ifwe also have good reasons for our belief, then we have done all wecan toward achieving justified true belief. It is the height of naiveteto suppose that further epistemológica! inquiry might disclose certaincriteria which would allow us to make pronouncements such as thefollowing: "In addition to believing p, and having good reasons forthat belief, we also have ascertained that 'p is true,' actually is true."This is not to say that justified true belief is not different from justi-fied belief, but that the difference is beyond our control. We cannotperform some additional operation that will enable us, at will, to passbeyond the latter to the former.

The question of the proper relationship between fallibilism and theconception of knowledge as justified true belief is explored in RobertAlmeder's paper, "Fallibilism and the Ultimate Irreversible Opinion."Almeder addresses the question as to whether a fallibilist such as Peirce'is committed to a view that is contradictory. The apparent contra-diction lies in the fact that "saying 'I know thatp' offers a guaranteewhich saying 'but I may be mistaken" withdraws."15 One possible movefor the fallibilist is simply to drop the truth condition from the concept.of knowledge, but Almeder rejects this alternative: 'this will be utterlyunacceptable because if there is anything that philosophers agree upon__


it is that knowledge cannot be false."16

Almeder suggests an ingenious solution to the apparent dilemma —one which seemingly allows us without contradiction to retain truthas a necessary condition for knowing, and also the idea that we mayalways be mistaken. According to this line of thought, "saying thata statement p is true means that the rules of confirmation embeddedin the conventions of our current conceptual framework fully authorizeour asserting p or writing it down for acceptance."17 However, thereis an evolution of conceptual frameworks in the history of thought,as they approximate ever more closely the way things actually are.This means that, while we may be optimistic about the general dkectionin which an inquiry is proceeding, we may never be quite certain atany given time that the present conceptual framework is the final one —the one so fully adequate as not to be subject to overthrow at somefuture time.

Given this set of assumptions, the expression 'I know thatp, but I may be mistaken' need not inconsistently implythat p is true and possibly it is not. Rather it would simplymean that, given the semantic rules of our current conceptualframework, the assertion (or inscription) of p is authorizedalthough it is logically possible that the conceptual frameworkin which p is presently authorized may be replaced by afuture and more" adequate conceptual framework in whichthe assertion (or inscription) of p may not be authorized.And there is nothing at all contradictory about this.

There may be nothing contradictory in that line of thought, but as anattempt to rescue the doctrine of fallibilism from its critics it must beregarded as a cure that is worse than the ill. The problem lies in thesuggestion that to say that a statement is true means that it is "author-ized" by "rules of confirmation embedded in the conventions of ourcurrent conceptual framework."20 If that is so, then "we must considertruth and knowledge a matter of what we are fully authorized in writingdown relative to our present conceptual framework . . ."21 Now thisis just a fancy way of stating that truth is relative to available evidence,and that move virtually destroys fallibilism altogether! If 'true' means

Peírce and the Logic ofFaüibiUsm 359

nothing more than 'warranted by existing rules of confirmation' (or'warranted by available evidence'), then in so far as we are conscientiousin our attendance to existing rules of confirmation (or available evi-dence), we could never be said to hold beliefs that were actually not true,and so we could never be wrong. (We would, of course, be led toreplace some beliefs by others, but the earlier beliefs could not beregarded in retrospect as false; we would have to regard them as havingbeen true at that earlier time, just as the latter beliefs would be regardedas true at the later time.) Almeder's attempted reconciliation of theconcept of knowledge as justified true belief with the doctrine of fal-libilism fails, then, because it destroys one of the very elements thatit seeks to preserve.

One reason that Almeder goes astray involves an ambiguity withrespect to his characterization of some of Peirce's statements. Almederattributes to Peirce the following view:

What is established as true amounts to no more than whatwe are authorized in asserting (or writing down) relativeto our present body of information; and so what is truetoday may not be true tomorrow.22

Now the phrase 'what is established as true' might refer to what actuallyis true, or it might refer only to what is considered to be true. Thepassages in Peirce's writings cited by Almeder concern "what is estab-lished as true" only in the latter sense.23 That is, Peirce states onlythat what we consider to be true today, we may not so consider tomor-row. This claim does not carry with it the implication that truth isrelative to evidence, and so Peirce's actual statements do not warrantAlmeder's characterization of his view.24

In summary, a claim that truth is relative to an existing conceptualframework might mean that truth is what evidence warrants, or it mightmean that we are entitled to assert as true what evidence warrants."In Peirce's thought, "truth is relative to our conceptual framework"only in the second sense. In the first sense, human fallibility is greatlyreduced, because truth is not independent of our modes of belief — apossibility that Peirce denies. ("There would not be any such thingas truth unless there were something which is as it is independently of


how we may think it to be."25) To say that truth is independent of ourmodes of belief must mean, among other things, that even though anexisting conceptual framework does authorize us in asserting certainstatements to be true, those statements might nevertheless be false.Preservation of the distinction between what actually is true and whatwe are entitled at any given time to assert to be true is essential tofallibUism.26

Almeder's discussion is significant, in so far as it raises the question ofthe proper relationship between fallibilism and the conception of know-ledge as justified true belief. If knowledge is understood to involvetruth, then to say, "I know that p," does seem to offer a guaranteethat the qualification, "but I may be mistaken," seems to withdraw.If Almeder's solution to this problem is inadequate, what alternativesremain?

My suggestion is this: the fallibilist must challenge one's right toassert, "I know that p." Strictly speaking, one should say either, "Ibelieve that I know that p," or "I know thatp, ifp is, in fact, true."However, it must be noted that both assertions are actually just long-winded and cumbersome ways of expressing the fact that one has goodreason to believe that p is true. If that is so, then there is really nopoint in using the term 'know'. At best it is superfluous, and at worstit is highly misleading, in that it suggests that the person making theassertion has managed to pass beyond a state of justified belief.

It is time for philosophers to face up to the question as to whetherthe difference between justified belief and knowledge is composedof anything within human control. Philosophers who suppose thatit is should inform the rest of us as to just what the "criteria of truth"are, and how those criteria can afford us the certainty that would enablethem to transcend the general category of evidence — i.e. that whichcontributes to the justification of our beliefs. If the difference is notwithin our control, then we can never be aware of when justified beliefis rendered knowledge as a result of the de facto truth of the beliefin question. If that is so, then we are never warranted in stating that"we (or I) know that p." The logical chasm between the assertions

Peirce and the Logic of Fatlibilism 361

"we know that p" and "we believe that we know thatp" is absolute;we cannot bridge that gap through some set of operations — such as theconstruction and satisfaction of "criteria of truth."

The considerations adduced here indicate that it is unnecessary andmisleading ever to state, "I know that p," where truth is understoodto be a necessary condition for knowledge, if one wants to speak in-purely logical terms, one can say simply, "there is overwhelming evi-dence for p." That expresses exactly the truth of the matter, withoutneedlessly going beyond it. (Incidentally, scientists — as opposed tophilosophers — seem content generally to express themselves in thismore accurate, if humble, manner.) If one wants to speak in psycho-logical terms, one can say, "I am certain of p." (We are all certain aboutany number of things; however, this does not guarantee our infallibility.)Finally, if one wants to express one's certainty with illuminating pre-cision, one can say, "I believe thatp more strongly than any conceivableevidence that might be supposed by others to count against it."27

This latter statement sufficiently indicates the degree of strength thatsome of our beliefs attain, and nevertheless it does not controvert theview of fallibilism; even so radical a statement leaves open the pos-sibility that the belief might nevertheless be false.28

If, strictly speaking, it is pointless and misleading ever to state, "Iknow that p," then the value of the verb 'to know' is open to seriousquestion.29 As one philosopher has stated, knowing "isn't somethingwe do, it's something we get to by what we do." It is widely heldthat knowing is not a psychological process, and thus that we do notneed a verb to denote a state of mind of the form, "knowing" (alongwith wishing,wondering, etc.). I am arguing here that neither is knowinga distinct logical activity, because it is simply not a distinct activityat all. The activity that is involved in cases of knowledge — that whichresults in knowledge, sometimes — is the gathering and evaluation ofevidence; and all that we are ever warranted in asserting is the fruit ofthat activity — the possession of justified belief.

If 'knowledge' is a perfectly respectible noun, then it is natural tosuppose that there is a verb corresponding to it. However, just as onecan possess composure without "composing," so can one possess know-ledge without "knowing." That is, one possesses knowledge by havingjustified beliefs that happen to be true — not by performing some unique


mental operation that is qualitatively different from believeing on the

basis of evidence, or by employing some logical procedure that trans-

cends the gathering and evaluation of evidence. Of course, it wouldbe futile and thus foolish to propose that everyone cease to use theterm 'know', for people in any event will continue to use it when refer-

ring to beliefs for which the evidence is overwhelming. There is, how-ever, an important point involved here, for many contemporary phil-

osophers in their analyses of concepts rely heavily on the actual pat-

terns of ordinary language. Thus, there seems to be a tendency toreason as follows: since (1) knowledge must refer only to what is true,

and thus when we know we are in possession of the truth, and (2) it

is perfectly legitimate to state in many contexts, "I (or we) know thatp," then (3) the doctrine of fallibilism, that it is theoretically possible

that any of our beliefs might actually be false, must be false.It would seem that the fallibilist must reject either 1 or 2. A radical

alternative not explored in this paper involves the denial of 1. (WhileI find this alternative plausible, it runs so contrary to the stream of

contemporary thought that its defense would need- to be lengthy, andthus would, be out of place in this discussion.)31 Almeder sought to

retain both 1 and 2, and yet reject 3, by defining 'truth' in such a way

that even a true belief can be overturned at a later time. From mypoint of view, this is eating our cake and having it too. The fundamental

move in this discussion has been to challenge 2, by pointing out thatif we must qualify assertions of knowledge by stating that we believe

that we know (as I believe we must), then actually we are not asserting

any more than the possession of justified belief. If "I know thatp,"

is replaced by "there is overwhelming evidence for p," then fallibilismis not threatened by the type of argument just mentioned.32

The University of Tennessee

NOTES

. 1. There is a significant and often disregarded ambiguity in Peirce's con-ception of fallibilism. It is usually taken to be the view that in any particularcase what we believe to be true might, in fact, be false. This amounts to sayingthat error is always possible, though not necessarily actual. However, in at leastone passage Peirce explicitly links fallibilism with the view that all our knowledge

Peirce and the Logic of Fattibüism 363

claims are tinged with some degree of error: Collected Papers of Charles SandersPeirce (hereafter referred to as CP), Vols. I-VI ed. Hartshorne and Weiss (Cam-bridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1931-1935; Vok VII-VIII ed. Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1958),Vol. I, Paragraphs Number 171 and 172 (hereafter written as 1.171-1.172). Nowit is one thing to say that we cannot be aware of when we possess the truth, andquite another to say that in no instance do we know the truth completely. I findthis latter claim problematic, in that it seems to presuppose the very sort of know-ledge about reality that it attempts to deny. Thus, throughout this paper fallibfl- ( <ism is taken as the view that error is always possible, though not necessarily actual, ' ---'J

as Peirce states in the following passage.

There is nothing, then, to prevent our knowing outward things asthey really are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them innumberless cases, although we can never be absolutely certain ofdoing so in any special case. (CP, 5.311)

2. Konstantin Kolenda, "Truth and Fallibilism," Transactions of theCharles S. Peirce Society, Vol. XV (1979), p. 251.

3. Ibid.4. Ibid,, p, 253. Kolenda expresses this general line of thought in another

paper, "Two Falubflists in Search of Truth," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Soci-ety, Sup. Vol. LI (1977), pp. 99-100.

5. Kolenda, "Truth and Fauibilism," pp. 253-254. Incidentally, Kolendaelsewhere notes that "Peirce's fallibilism . . . is conceptually connected with histheory of signs, according to which every conception is indefinitely translatableinto further conceptions" ("Two Fallibilists. . .", pp. 101-102). In support ofthe apparently contradictory claim that sometimes "all the relevant data andtheir logical interpretants are in," Kolenda does not cite Peirce, but rather NormanMalcolm ("Truth and Fallibilism," p. 258)! Interestingly, however, even Malcolm'sanalysis fails to justify the claims made by Kolenda (see f.n. no. 28 of this paper).

6. William James, "The Will to Believe," in The Will to Believe and OtherEssays on Popular Philosophy and Human Immortality (New York: Dover Pub-lications, Inc., 1956), p. 12.

7. For two other discussions of Peirce's views on "knowing that we know,"see David Savan, "Peirce's Infallibilism," in Studies hi the Philosophy of CharlesSanders Peirce, ed, Moore arid Robin (Amherst: The University of MassachusettsPress, 1964), pp. 190-211, and Robert G. Meyers, "Skepticism and the Criterion inPeirce," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. XIV (1978), pp. 3-17.Savan states that the proposition that "we cannot know for certain that we know"is the central thesis of Peirce's fallibilism" (p. 207). However, in discussing whathe terms Peirce's m fallibilism — a position that Savan claims "does not conflictwith Peirce's fallibilism" (p. 208) — Savan asserts that we may not only possess


beliefs that happen to be true, but that we may know that they are true (p. 201).Moreoever, after having noted Peirce's criticism of Hamilton's claim that "to know,and to know that we know, are one and the same thing" (p. 207), in a closingsummary and reconstruction of Peirce's view Savan is led to assert that "To know,and to know that you know are one and the same" (p. 209)! Meyers' discussionis more sound, although I think that his remark that "Knowledge and mere beliefare clearly different states of mind. . ." (p. 10) is contrary to the entire thrustof Peirce's view.

8. CP, 7.419.9. CP, 4.63.

10. CP, 5.391. Literally, this is not fair to Descartes — the distinctiondid occur to him. However, the spirit of Peirce's remark is legitimate: Descartesfailed to deal adequately with the problem that the distinction engenders.

11. Compare with Wittgenstein: "But can it be seen from a rule that cir-cumstances logically exclude a mistake in the employment of rules of calcula-tion? What use is a rule here? Mightn't we (in turn) go wrong in applying it?"On Certainty (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1972), no. 26.

12. See, for instance, CP, 5.416.13. As Peirce pointed out. See CP, 5.375.14. Robert Almeder, "Fallibflism and the Ultimate Irreversible Opinion,"

American Philosophical Quarterly, Monograph No. 9 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,(1975), pp. 33-54.

15. Ibid., p. 33.16. Ibid., p. 34.17. Ibid., p. 35,18. Ibid.19. Ibid.20. Ibid.21. Ibid., p. 40.22. Ibid., p. 36.23. For example, in some of the passages cited by Almeder, Peirce states

that a person must consider what he/she cannot doubt to be absolutely true (or,"indubitable"); nevertheless, he adds, the belief may actually be false (5.451,5.419, 5.416, 5.498, 6.498). If the point of these remarks were that what isactually true is "no more than what we authorized in asserting," it would makeno sense to state that beliefs for which there is overwhelming evidence mightnevertheless be false.

24. In fairness to Almeder, it should be noted that he is concerned to arguethat Peirce had two views of knowledge and truth. Almeder recognizes the lessrelativistic strain in Peirce's thought that I am emphasizing, but he thinks thatpassages such as those mentioned in the previous footnote can only be seen asindicating the presence of a second (and conflicting) view. I find nothing in thepassages he cites or in his argument to warrant this conclusion.

Peirce and the Logic of Fallibilism 365

25. CP, 7.659.26. Thus, the independence of truth, the objectivity of truth, and fal--

libüism are all intimately related notions. To deny any of these is to deny the"others. Confusion over this point is evident in two companion papers, "TwoFallibilists in Search of the Truth," by Susan Haack and Konstantin Kolenda(Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Sup. Vol. LI, pp. 63-104. Haack con-cludes that it is difficult to combine objectivism and fallibilism (p. 82), but failsto explain why. Indeed, she ascribes to Peirce a "criteria! theory of truth," whichshe finds to be at odds with his fallibilism, because the former is linked with sub-jectivism (pp. 79 and 81). Thus, her discussion implies that fallibilism is incompat-ible with subjectivism, but she nevertheless (inexplicably) concludes that it isincompatible with objectivism as well! Kolenda, after agreeing that "to take fal-libilism seriously is to create problems for the notion of truth" (p. 85), sets outto show that fallibilism can after all be combined with "the possibility of ob-jective knowledge" (p. 85). The heart of Kolenda's view involves the assertionthat "the truth of a belief is relative to the corroborating evidence available andcan change overtime, without inconsistency, if there are sufficiently radical changesin the relevant evidence" (p. 100). As I have already pointed out in the body ofthe paper, this view virtually destroys fallibilism altogether.

The discussions of Haack and Kolenda appear to reflect the following sort ofinference: "if it is always possible to be in error, then there can be no such thingas objective truth." However, that conclusion just does not follow, and indeedthere would be a problem for the fallibilist who held truth not to be objective(or non-relativistic), for the following reason. To the extent that truth is relative— whether to cultures, conceptual frameworks, or available evidence — the pos-sibility of error is reduced. Under the most extreme form of relativism — a com-plete subjectivism in which truth was held to be relative to the momentary opinionof the individual — error would not even be possible. Conversely then, as onemoves in the opposite direction on this "relativity spectrum" — toward a non-relativistic conception of truth — the possibility of error must increase. It is onlylogical, therefore, that one who held truth to be absolute (or completely free ofsubjectivism) would also hold that error is always possible. Far from underminingthe notions of absolute or totally objective truth (or knowledge), fallibilism isactually essential to them.

A related source of confusion about the relationship between fallibilism andtruth is the idea that probability measures degrees of truth. If that is so, then'a denial of absolute certainty would entail a denial of complete truth. Peirce,however, explicitly rejects the idea that truth varies with probability (CP, 8.3),and rightly so. If truth is indeed independent of our modes of belief (i.e. notrelative to available evidence), then beliefs that are highly improbable may never-theless be completely true, while beliefs that are highly probable may neverthe-less be completely false. This divergence is possible because, while truth is notrelative to available evidence, probability is.


27. Or, even more strongly, "There is nothing whatever that could happenin the next moment or the next year that would by me be called evidence thatthere is not an ink-bottle here now." Norman Malcolm, Knowledge and Certainty(Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), p. 67.

28. As Malcolm himself stated. Whether or not one "uses 'know' in thestrong sense" is determined by "one's present attitude." Nothing in one's attitudecan guarantee genuine infallibility, and thus even when one is "using 'know' inthe strong sense" one may nevertheless be in error (op, eft., p. 72).

29. Compare with Wittgenstein: "And in fact, isn't the use of the word'know' as a preeminently philosophical word although wrong?" Op. cir., no. 415.Also see no. 12 and no. 443.

30. A. D. Woozley, "Knowing and Not Knowing," reprinted in Knowledgeand Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 98. Woozley also states,"Maybe we ought to say 'I think I know that...' more often than we do" (p. 99).I have argued that we must say that, but also that such a qualification robs 'know*of its force.

31. Almeder's remark to the contrary, not all philosophers are agreed thattruth is a necessary condition for knowledge. No less keen an epistemologist thanC. L Lewis denied it; see An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, Il-linois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1962), p. 323. It might be noted that Lewiswas a fallibilist who was heavily influenced by Peirce.

32. This paper was initiated under the financial support of a Faculty ResearchGrant from the Office of Graduate Studies and Research of The University of Ten-nessee. I would like to express my gratitude for their generous assistance.

Book ReviewsStudies in the Scientific and Mathematical Philosophy of Charles S.PeirceCarolyn BiseleEdited with a Preface by Richard M. MartinThe Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1979xii + 386 pp.

Carolyn Bisele has been identified with the scholarly recovery of C.S. Peirce's work in mathematics and science as well as in the history ofscience since the early 50's when her articles on Peirce first began toappear. These articles, along with the detailed introductions to thefour volumes of Peirce's The New Elements of Mathematics, extensivelyedited by her, comprise for the most part Studies in the Scientific andMathematical Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce.

The majority of the essays deal with mathematics in one form or .another. Some deal with rather specific mathematical problems with -which Peirce was concerned, viz., map-projection, the four-color prob-lem, Fermatian Inference, problems relating to probability and conti-nuity. Others deal with mathematical border areas, viz., mathematicaleconomics and the teaching of mathematics. The New Elements is acollection of Peirce's unpublished papers, including textbook manuscriptmaterial, much of which is intrinsically interesting and some of whichrepresents clear advances in mathematical pedagogy.

The scientific essays are much less technical in nature. Rather theyare historical in the double sense that (a) they treat Peirce's scientificproductivity against the background of 19th century science and (b)they are concerned with his special interests in the history of scienceand in certain historical figures, especially Galileo and Kepler.

Prior to the appearance of these mathematical, scientific, and his-torical essays, the assumption of most Peirce scholars was that Peircewas primarily a logician and that his principal contributions were inthe area of logic, including his early formulation of pragmatism-and his'subsequent refinement (pragmaticism). ''Other scholars assumed thatPeirce's principal contribution lay in the direction of metaphysical _speculation, his categoriology, the system he was attempting to con-

Bennett - Peirce and the Logic of Fallibilism

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Transcript of Bennett - Peirce and the Logic of Fallibilism