Kant, Peirce, Dewey: on the Supremacy of Practice over Theory

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1 Kant, Peirce, Dewey: on the Supremacy of Practice over Theory Agnieszka Hensoldt University of Opole, Poland e mail: hensoldt@uni.opole.pl (This is a draft version of a paper which is to be discussed at the Pragmatist Kant conference (Berlin, July 2017); please do not quote it without permission.) Pragmatism is often considered as a philosophical perspective denying any sharp theory versus practice dichotomy, however it is also a perspective stressing the primacy of a point of view of practice. When tracked down in the history of philosophy traces of the later thesis lead to the passages of Kant's second critique on the primacy of pure practical reason and its connection with the speculative. Moreover, traces of the name pragmatism lead also to Kant this is at least how Peirce explains his decision of choosing this name for his doctrine (Peirce 1905, EP ). However, when you follow these two traces, you will find they do not lead us to the same story. Shortly speaking, when Kant postulates the connection between the practical reason and the speculative one, he considers this connection possible just because he distinguish clearly between the practical and the pragmatic and this connection is established between the practical (not the pragmatic) reason and the speculative one. On the other hand, when Peirce chooses the name for his doctrine, he is absolutely sure he does not want the name practicism or practicalism as this is not the practical in Kant's sense his doctrine considers. Thus, Peirce in spite of calling himself a pupil of Kant who still thinks in Kantian terms most readily is not interested in (if not neglects) the practical in Kant's terms. My aim in this paper is tripartite. Firstly, I shall analyse and compare Kant's, Peirce's, and Dewey's reasons for claiming the primacy of practice. I have chosen Peirce's and Dewey's positions among all pragmatist thinkers as (1) they are the most explicitly expressed and (2) they stay in interesting relation to each other (e.g. Peirce's and Dewey's discussion on Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory (1903) which in fact concerns the role of practice in human cognition processes). (3) Kantian roots of Peirce's philosophy are also significant. Secondly, I shall attempt answering the questions: What visions of human intellectual activity did Kant's, Peirce's, and Dewey's doctrines provide us with? Which one of them is most tempting for us today and why? I am convinced that each of these three views has its strengths and weaknesses so the proper question is not Which one is the best? but rather What can one gain and what can one loose, accepting rather one than the other of these three perspectives? Thirdly, as answers to the above questions reveal that the issue of theory practice relation is not an abstract and strictly theoretical problem but this is in fact a meta philosophical issue how to practice philosophy, I shall consider whether and how Kant's view on the capacities of the mind and their relation to each other could enrich the pragmatist view (which version of it? More Peircean or more Deweyan position?) on roles and ends of philosophy. Or maybe in spite of his (outwardly) pragmatist claim of the primacy of practice Kant's doctrine remains alien to the pragmatist spirit? Immanuel Kant Let us see now in what sense and why Kant introduces terms practical and pragmatic. Kant was a thinker who had so much to say about the distinction on theoretical and practical philosophy and on the practical and speculative reason as this distinction was his way to 1

2 face the problem as to how to preserve the unlimited rights of modern science, its mathematical method, and the ensuing Cartesian spirit without surrendering genuine ethics (Lobkowicz 1967, 123). His idea was to establish two radically different domains of competence: (1) of modern mathematical physics and (2) of ethics. As the domain of the modern physics is the phenomenal world, the noumenal world is exclusively the domain of ethics. As Lobkowicz noticed: Kant's use of the expression practical so radically differs from the traditional Greek and medieval use that it is possible to argue that Kant's distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy corresponds to Aristotle's distinction between physics and metaphysics at least as much as, quite obviously, it reproduces the Aristotelian distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge. In any case Kant's ethics embraces what Aristotle called first philosophy (Lobkowicz 1967, 124 5). However, Kant had to face a long history of the use of terms such as philosophy of morals, practical philosophy, ethics in a significantly wider sense than as to referring to only supersensible realities. This is the reason for which Kant introduced a distinction on practical and pragmatic. (As far as I know) the first time Kant mentioned it was in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, where he distinguished three kinds of principles (imperatives): the technical one, the pragmatic one, and the moral one. In each of these cases the way of the necessitation of the will is different: either rules of skills, or counsels of prudence, or commands (laws) of morality (Kant 1785/2002, 33). The pragmatic imperative is a formulation of counsels of prudence. Kant mentions two meanings of prudence: worldly prudence and private prudence. Both of them are skills to reach given aims: to have influence on others in order to use them for his aims or to unite all these aims to his own enduring advantage (Kant 1785/2002, 32). In fact, Kant approves only of the latter use of prudence, the first one calling even slyness. What is now more important to me is the fact that pragmatic imperatives are always formulated in order to reach an empirical aim. This is the reason why Kant differentiates between pragmatic imperatives and moral imperatives, the latter being directed towards supersensible aims. The distinction helps Kant in excluding from practical philosophy disciplines such as: political economy, dietetics, or eudaemonistic ethics ( universal doctrine of happiness ) the disciplines whose domains belong to the sensible world. One could expect Kant limited the domain of normative ethical judgements to the same domain which is determined by the categorical imperative. This was not, however, Kant's strategy. In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint Kant introduces a pragmatic knowledge of man whose subject matter is human free actions of self creation: what man makes, can or should make of himself as a freely acting being (Kant 1798/1996, 3). Yet, what has to be emphasized: a pragmatic knowledge considers Man as a citizen of the [phenomenal] world and these aspects of human existence are also subjected to ethical judgements, including categories of right and wrong, sin, and moral value (not only of advantage and disadvantage or usefulness). Moreover, Kant seems to be convinced that pragmatic and moral accounts are (quite often) consistent with one another. The reason for this is as Frederick P. Van de Pitte notices the fact that: All of Kant's philosophy is ordered to a single purpose: By means of analysis of the essential principles of human nature, it discloses his proper destiny, and indicates how he must work towards its fulfilment (Van de Pitte, xix). Having made a sharp distinction between two capacities of the mind: the practical one and the speculative one, Kant rejected the view that they can remain isolated. According to him, such an isolation would result in a conflict of reason with itself. Otherwise, when the supremacy of practical reason over the speculative is postulated, not only the agreement of the reason with itself is saved but also there is no damage done to the one of the most important tasks of the speculative reason, this is to constraining speculative frivolity. In Kant's view this primacy of practical reason is possible and even desirable because the reason in question is pure and insensitive to empirical 2

3 determination of any sort (which is, according to Kant, always self love or personal happiness), thus this (discussed above) exclusion of pragmatic issues from the domain of practical philosophy makes this primacy possible. Charles Sanders Peirce In 1905 Peirce justifies his choice of the name pragmatism in the following words: for one who had learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer ( ), and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily, praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his feet, the later expressing relation to some definite human purpose. Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined the preference for the name pragmatism. (Peirce 1905, EP ) Let us notice that in this passage Peirce in fact does not maintain that he is a follower of Kant's doctrines of the capacities of the mind. On the contrary, he personally finds no use in Kant's distinction between the practical and the pragmatic, as he is not going to study (or even to refer to) the domain of practical philosophy (in Kant's terms). However, he admits thinking in and using Kant's terminology what of course is not unimportant. There is also one more very Kantian feature in this passage this is Peirce's attachement to rationality. Peirce, like Kant, is convinced that this is the human rationality which is the source of a connection between the theoretical and the practical. Yet, Peirce differently recognizes the nature of this connection. According to Kant, this connection is in fact the supremacy of practical reason and is indispensable as it guarantees the agreement of the reason with itself; but at the same time it neither expands the cognitive insights nor provides new cognitively justified propositions (Kant 1788/2012, 154). From Peirce's standpoint causes of a connection between the theoretical and the practical are completely different and have nothing to do with a priori perspective. I would classify them into three groups connected with each other, yet referring to various arguments. 1. the pragmatic maxim (How to Make Our Ideas Clear) This was Peirce who first formulated the maxim of pragmatism and this is the maxim which is the original expression of pragmatist conviction of a close connection between the theoretical (thoughts, sentences, words, signs etc.) and the practical (experience and conduct). The general message conveyed by the maxim is that if one asks about meanings of words, signs, theories etc. one has to look for their practical consequences, for rules of conduct they oblige us to follow. As Peirce, formulating the maxim of pragmatism, had in mind scientific concepts, hypotheses and theories, the practical consequences and rules of conduct required for making clear meanings of these concepts, hypotheses and theories must be of a general nature. Peirce holds that as human cognition is essentially probabilistic (or comes from inductive reasoning) a risk that everyone of us is wrong about a certain matter is high, however a chance that human beings will finally discover the truth is also high thus in Peirce's approach this is not an individual being but the unlimited community of inquirers who is a subject of cognition. I would call this first argument the semantic argument, though you can obviously argue that it can be named logical or even linguistic. (In fact, all of Peirce's arguments for (or against) theory practice connection have a lot of common with logic.) 2. the rational agent argument (The Doctrine of Chances and The Fixation of Belief) Having argued that human cognition (including scientific hypotheses) is essentially probabilistic, Peirce considers its influence on human conduct and he admits: Although probability will probably manifests its effect in, say, thousand risks, by a certain proportion between the numbers of successes and failures, yet this, as we have seen, is only to say that it certainly will, at length, do so. Now the number of risks, the number of probable 3

4 inferences, which a man draws in his whole life, is a finite one, he cannot be absolutely certain that the mean result will accord with the probabilities at all. (Peirce 1878, EP 1.148) ( ) death makes the number of our risks, of our inferences, finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain. (Peirce 1878, EP 1.149) On this view there is, in fact, no guarantee that a decision (made in a concrete life situation) based on logical and/or scientific assumptions would be the best one for life interests of a decision maker. However, this is not the most important as Peirce argues. If you are to be consistent in one's thinking, decision making and conduct, if you are to be rational, you have to follow in practice (in everyday life) rules of rational conduct, though they have only probabilistic character. This connection between rational conduct and rational reasoning you can find in Peirce also in the other round order in The Fixation of Belief he argues that the roots of scientific reasoning come from solving everyday problems: Everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it. (Peirce 1877, EP1.120) 3. synechism Peirce explicitly calls his approach synechistic in his paper Immortality in the Light of Synechism (Peirce 1893, EP 2.1 3). At the beginning of the paper he refers to the maxim of pragmatism as a formulation of his philosophical synechism. As the core claim of synechism Peirce introduces a belief that continuity governs the whole domain of experience in every element of it. (Peirce 1893, EP 2.1) This conviction certainly stays in conflict with all possible forms of dualism, including the theory practice dualism. According to Peirce, dualism is the philosophy which performs its analyses with an axe, leaving as the ultimate elements, unrelated chunks of being. (Peirce 1893, EP 2.2) Hence, the synechistic argument for the close connection between theory and practice reads that a sharp cutting between these two kinds of human activities leads to serious misunderstanding of human cognition and reasoning processes. * What I have to mention here, though very shortly, is that Peirce seems to be inclined (at some of his papers) to accept the theory practice dichotomy, though in other (most of his) papers his standpoint is opposite. Particularly bizarre and ambiguous in this aspect are his Cambridge Conferences Lectures (1898). In the fourth lecture titled The First Rule of Logic Peirce argues for synechism and mentions dualism among the most serious errors which block the way of inquiry (Peirce 1898, EP ). Yet, in the first lecture titled Philosophy and the Conduct of Life he objects to the Hellenic tendency to mingle philosophy and practice (Peirce 1898, EP 2.29) and argues that true scientific investigation (including philosophical investigation) must not be conducted with the question of utility in mind and with regard to vital affairs. These ambiguities in Peirce's stance might be a subject matter of a long separate presentation thus I am not going to discuss them further now. At the end of this section I would like to highlight Kantian features of Peirce's approach to the theory practice distinction. Although his understanding of the practical side of this distinction is different than Kant's, he is attached to a conviction that a theory practice connection is based on a strictly rational ground. This is best visible in his insistence that practical consequences which are to included in the meanings of concepts, hypotheses, theories etc. have to be of a general validity and commonly understandable. The manifestation of Peirce's Kantianism is also his balancing between synechism and dichotomy it can be interpreted as a kind of fear of and at the same time escape from (too strong) domination of everyday life, from not always rational or even subjective motives in our cognition. 4

5 John Dewey Dewey's views on the relation between the theoretical and the practical can be found in most of his works if they are not formulated explicitly, they can be quite easily deduced. However, as far as I know in three of his papers the theory practice distinction is a subject of explicit analyses. What Pragmatism Means by Practical and The Development of American Pragmatism these are two papers in which Dewey expresses his criticism of (mainly) James's version of pragmatism: in short he accuses James of mixing up different application of the maxim, confusing different meanings of the concept practical, limiting the application of the maxim to the moral aspects and limiting applications of pragmatism to the teaching, neglecting nearly completely the construction of philosophy. It is easy to notice that such as the pragmatic maxim is considered by classical pragmatists to be the pragmatist credo, the other crucial (and controversial or at least requiring discussion) element of the doctrine is the relation between the theoretical and the practical. It is so important that worth writing a paper on the meaning of practical in pragmatism. I will skip details of this criticism and analyses by Dewey and go straight to the third paper: The Logic of Judgements of Practice. This is one of the chapters (14th) of a book Essays in Experimental Logic (1916). Dewey objects there to the theory practice antithesis, holding that theory is a mode of practice. He does not prove it in a strict logical sense of the word however he argues for it on a variety of grounds: (besides others) presenting science as a very specialized kind of practice with origins and aims in everyday life. Science is not only the most emancipated mode of practice but it it also that mode of practice which emancipates experience (Dewey 1916, 439). Dewey was the first (neither Peirce nor James did it) who explicitly denied the theory practice dualism. Conceiving science as a future and practice oriented intellectual activity Dewey has to conceive in this way also philosophy. Dewey's strong antidualistic position in respect to the theory practice dichotomy has its roots in his early paper in logic: Thought and Its Subject Matter (1903), where Dewey rejects the conception of pure logic and introduces applied logic (Dewey 1903, 6). Dewey argues there that though universally valid laws of reasoning are laws of pure logic, in practice, this is in cases when a subject matter of reasoning is an object of human experience and inquiry, this is not pure logic but applied logic ( the epistemological type of logic ) which we need. This logic deals with: thinking as a specific procedure relative to a specific antecedent occasion and to a subsequent specific fulfilment ( ). From its [applied logic's] point of view, an attempt to discuss the antecedents, data, forms, and objective of thought, apart from reference to particular position occupied, and particular part played in the growth of experience is to reach results which are not so much either true or false as they are radically meaningless because they are considered apart from limits. Its results are not only abstractions (for all theorizing ends in abstractions), but abstractions without possible reference or bearing. From this point of view, the taking of something, whether that something be thinking activity, its empirical condition, or its objective goal, apart from the limits of a historic or developing situation, is the essence of metaphysical procedure in the sense of metaphysics which makes a gulf between it and science. (Dewey 1903, 8 9) Dewey's position expressed in the foregoing passage is in some aspects close to Peirce's. They share the conviction that laws of logic have no value just in themselves but only if they are useful in science, in particular in empirical sciences. Dewey, like Peirce, holds that roots of laws of logic lay in attempts to solve concrete problems (mostly empirical) connected with more and more complicated scientific challenges. However Peirce saw Dewey's conception of logic as completely different from his own. He wrote a critical review of Studies in Logical Theory (CP ) and also a letter to Dewey, expressing anxieties about Dewey's approach to logic (CP ). Peirce objects Dewey's 5

6 rejection of pure logic. According to Peirce logic in a strict sense ought to deal with the validity and the strength of arguments, it is not as Dewey holds the theoretical study of the norms that should guide us when we inquire. And only pure logic is open to new applications and might be useful in completely new situations. On the contrary the laws of logic formulated by Dewey will depend upon biological and historical views. (Hookway 2012, 102 9) Conclusion 1. The pragmatist thesis on the connection between theory and practice is not exactly Kant's thesis. 2. Is it justified to use Kant's term supremacy of practice over theory to the pragmatist conception? I would say it is (paradoxically) in Dewey's case, yet in Peirce's case I would hesitate. 3. From Peirce to Dewey (and latter to Rorty) it can be observed fading of a theorypractice distinction. I would even risk saying that this is a process of (traditionally conceived) theory dissolving in practice. What do we gain by this? We become aware of our interests, positions, prejudices, aims, historical and biological limits which strongly influence over human cognition. Dewey and Rorty would say also that thanks to this process we stop believing in possibility of objective cognition. (As I have tried to show Peirce made attempts to save the objectivity of cognition but he was not fully successful as he had to marry antagonistic values: objective or at least intersubjective cognition on the one hand and synechism on the other hand.) What do we lose by this? If all laws and norms of reasoning are culturally and historically dependent, we lose an opportunity of estimating them and choosing better ones as in fact there is no justified criterion for such an estimation. Putnam, discussing this conviction, uses the term naturalized reason and does not agree that reason is completely immanent: Reason is, in this sense, both immanent (not to be found outside of concrete language games and institutions), and transcendent (a regulative idea that we use to criticize the conduct of all activities and institutions). (Putnam 1983, 234) Putnam's belief that reason is partly transcendent is very Kantian and indeed he does not deny his esteem to Kant. Yet, Kant's approach to human rationality is not easily adopted on the pragmatist ground. Putnam made an attempt of such an adoption, arguing that (1) all normative judgements to be valid need to fulfil some universal necessary conditions, and (2) we need such normative judgements in order to argue for such important values as democracy and open society. Rorty, commenting on the foregoing issues, holds that the previous belief cannot be accorded with pragmatist stance, and the latter requirement is impossible to satisfy. (Rorty 1993) Even if Rorty is right (I am inclined to think he is), Kantian style devotion to reason might have its advantages, especially in current political situation: in times of rise of nationalism and irrationalism in many countries of the world. That is why I find as important questions: (1) what can be done in order to save (or to restore) the ability of arguing conclusively for values in general and in particular for democracy and open society? (2) is it possible to do it in a non dogmatic way? References Deleuze, G. (1963) La philosophie critique de Kant. Doctrine des facultés. Dewey, J. (1903) Thought and Its Subject Matter, in: J. Dewey (ed.) Studies in Logical Theory, University of Chicago Press. 6

7 Dewey, J. (1907) What Pragmatism Means by Practical. Dewey, J. (1916) The Logic of Judgements of Practice, in: J. Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic. Dewey, J. (1925) The Development of American Pragmatism. Dewey, J. (1938) Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Hookway, C. (2012) The Pragmatic Maxim. Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism. Kant, I. (1788/2012) Critique of Practical Reason, tr. McPherson Rudisill, P. Kant, I. (1785/2002) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. tr. Wood, A.W. Kant, I. (1798/1996) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint. tr. Dowdell, V.L. Lobkowicz, N. Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx. London Peirce, C.S. (1877) The Fixation of Beliefs. Peirce, C.S. (1878) How to Make Our Ideas Clear. Peirce, C.S. (1878) The Doctrine of Chances. Peirce, C.S. (1893) Immortality in the Light of Synechism. Peirce, C.S. (1898/1992) The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of Peirce, C.S. (1904) Review on J. Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory [CP ]. Peirce, C.S. (1905) What Pragmatism Is. Putnam, H. (1982/1983) Why Reason Can't Be Naturalized, in: H. Putnam Realism and Reason. Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3, Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (1993) Putnam and the Relativist Menace, in: The Journal of Philosophy, vol. XC, no. 9. Van de Pitte, F.P. (1996) Introduction, Kant, I. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint, tr. Dowdell, V.L. 7