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Erkki Kilpinen
Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences
In: Bergman, M., Paavola, S., Pietarinen, A.-V., & Rydenfelt, H. (Eds.)
(2010). Ideas in Action: Proceedings of the Applying Peirce Conference
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Problems in Applying Peirce in Social
Sciences
Erkki Kilpinen
University of Helsinki
1. Introduction
Acurious paradox inheres in Charles Peirces relation to the social sciences.
He is one of the most social of classical philosophers, if not the most social,
one who can go so far as to claim that individualism and falsity are one
and the same (CP 5.402 n2 [1893]) or that logic is rooted in the social
principle (CP 2.654 [1878]). However, the science that de facto studies hu-
man beings social relations, sociology, has remained an unmapped area
in Peirces otherwise so all-embracing purview of human intellectual en-
deavours. As his reputation has spread in recent years, it has reached also
sociology, and today some sociologists are turning to him in search for the-
oretical inspiration. However, as he never said anything substantial about
this discipline,
1
he is also a very Delphic guide in this domain, one whose
pieces of advice demand a great deal of elucidation. I begin with a brief
demonstration of how Peirces very scarce sociological observations allow
contradictory interpretations. After this, I give a quick resume of how his
thought has so far been applied to sociology, and then, in the main part
of this paper, I put forward my own opinion about how it could be used
in dealing with the conceptual foundations of sociology and other social sci-
ences. In particular, I wish to show that Peirces philosophy has some new
things to say in regard to the hoary question of what human rationality is
1
All rules have their exceptions. Peirce was familiar with the work of his contemporary
compatriot sociologists, Lester Ward and Franklin Giddings, reviewed it, and in personal
correspondence with the two also touched on substantial issues. Peirce also held Ward in
high intellectual esteem.
86
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 87
all about. I take the same course that the history of sociology has originally
taken, by rst taking critical issue, with the help of Peirce, with neoclassical
economics, and then show how this Auseinandersetzung can yield conclu-
sions that are also of relevance for theoretical sociology and its problem of
rationality. In further likeness with the history of sociology (cf. Joas, 1996,
ch. 1), I use the general interpretation of human action as the catalyst with
which the relations between the various social sciences are to be sorted out.
As the relations between various sciences were of special interest to
Peirce, it is understandable that he sometimes mentions sociology. How-
ever, the occasions when he looks behind this name and tries to see what
this eld of study is all about are rare. In a brief sketch for a history of
science, From Copernicus to Newton (MS 1337), he presents one of those enu-
merative orders of science that he was fond of, and enumerates a part of
it as follows:
Still more special combinations or structures are communities or soci-
eties of conscious beings especially men; and sociology must be reck-
oned as the seventh order of science. It has two main branches, the
rst relating to conduct in general, the second to intercommunication.
The rst branch includes ethics, theology, politics and law. The second
branch includes the theory of art and sciences of language.
HP 1:148
This arouses ambivalent feelings in a reader who is familiar with the-
oretical problems in sociology. Peirces conception appears at rst glance
deceptively modern, with communication, politics, law and language as
objects for sociological study. On the other hand, his expression commu-
nities or societies of conscious beings, especially men reminds a modern
reader also of something else, about the unproblematic manner in which
the entomologist Edward O. Wilson (1975) drew parallels between human
societies and other kinds of societies in his suggested synthesis for socio-
biology. Precisely those sociologists who would welcome language, com-
munication and politics as themes would be abhorred by the idea of com-
paring human societies with those populated by non-humans.
Accordingly, brief summaries like this do not sufce to make clear
where Peirces ideas are of relevance for social disciplines and where they
are not. There is a body of literature that previously has tried to answer
this question. Within that literature, some have used Peirce for substantial
purposes, some have approached him more from a meta-theoretical view-
point, and as I now turn to that literature, I divide it into three thematic
88 Ideas in Action
groups. As I see things, Peirce has previously been applied to sociology
and social theory
2
from three different viewpoints:
(i) as a counter-example to modernism;
(ii) as a theorist of the human self; and
(iii) as a realist counter-example to critical realism.
Let us take a look at these viewpoints in closer detail.
2. Some previous attempts to apply Peirce in sociology and social
theory
(i) Peirce as a counter-example to modernism
We have never been modern, is the famous slogan of Bruno Latour
(1993), the French sociologist of science and a sort of semiotician in his
own right. Those social scientists and philosophers, who take inspira-
tion from Peirce while considering modernity, maintain that though we
have been modern, this was not any foredoomed cultural fate. An alter-
native has been available all the time during the course of modernity, and
Peirces philosophy is one example of it. This is the leading idea in the
social treatises by the Midwest sociologist Eugene Halton (1995; Rochberg-
Halton, 1986) and philosophers and historians of ideas like Hoopes (1989;
1998), Deely (1994; 2000), Neville (1992) and Ochs (1993) are other relevant
names. At their best, these works show sophisticated sociological insight.
However, what they actually manage to contribute to is that eld of study,
for which even English-speaking scholars often use its German name, Zeit-
diagnose, diagnosis of ones own time. When the German sociologist Ulrich
2
In choosing examples for closer inspection, I use awareness of semiotics as a criterion,
and thus leave out some earlier treatments of Peirce in sociology. The rst systematic soci-
ological discussion of Peirce apparently occurs in the radical dissident sociologist C. Wright
Millss 1942 dissertation, posthumously published as Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher
Learning in America (Oxford University Press paperback edition, 1966). That work testies to
Millss intellectual precocity, but its interpretation of Peirce follows the footsteps of the 1930s
logical positivists, and thus misses semiotics. A generation later, J. D. Lewis and R. L. Smith
rely heavily on Peirce in their American Sociology and Pragmatism (1980), but are not able to
distinguish between semiology and semiotics, and accordingly drift onto false tracks. Jrgen
Habermass Knowledge and Human Interests (originally of 1968; new English translation 1987) I
would classify as a philosophical rather than as a sociological work, although its sociological
inuence has been considerable. Habermas has since then admitted that lack of knowledge
about semiotics made him give an excessively positivistic depiction of Peirce in that work.
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 89
Beck (1986/1992) some twenty years ago became internationally famous
by claiming that modern society is essentially a risk society, he was making
a diagnosis of our time, and quite an apt one, many people would say. As
for Peirce, he sometimes exercised Zeitdiagnose himself, as he lamented, for
example, how political economy seems to legitimize universal selshness,
the opinion expressed in his famous essay Evolutionary Love (1893; re-
published in CP 6.287-317 and EP 1:352-371).
However, while most sociologists would agree that Zeitdiagnose is a
genuine part of sociological theorizing, few would take it as a central or
the most important part. For another thing, it needs to be pointed out
already at this early stage that those negative opinions that Peirce brings
out in Evolutionary Love are not his nal word about political economy
or economics. On other occasions, he said something beyond mere ide-
ology, something that has even analytic value. The above anti-modernist
body of literature shows close faithfulness to Peirce, but does not quite take
modernity as a fait accompli (cf. Mazlish, 1989). Peirce may be a counter-
example to modernism, but this does not yet tell what social-scientic rel-
evance his philosophy may have.
(ii) Peirce as a theorist of the human self
Two famous sociologists, Norbert Wiley (1994) and Margaret Archer
(2003) have used Peirce in an attempt to enrich current sociological theory
with his ideas, drawing particularly on his notion of the human self. Self or
subjectivity is a very hotly debated theme in sociology, so it is no wonder
that even Peirces rather brief and scattered remarks about it have stirred
some interest. His conception of the self, however, is not of any ordinary
variety; it is semiotically constituted, in other words, mediated by signs,
and this has escaped these authors, despite the fact that Wileys book is
entitled The Semiotic Self (1994).
Wiley, however, has committed a tragicomic blunder. He has managed
to pinpoint the one and only non-semiotic part in Peirces literary corpus,
those earliest (early 1860s) extant manuscripts that were published for the
rst time in the rst volume of the Writings edition (1982). In them Peirce
uses an expression consisting of pronouns, I It Thou. Wiley thinks, as is
prima facie understandable, that these terms refer to Peirces self-theory,
as other pragmatist philosophers use such pronouns in that sense, like
William James (1890) and George Herbert Mead (1934) do with their I/Me
90 Ideas in Action
distinction.
3
But it is not so; those passages were written while Peirce was
just beginning to outline his semiotic theory (and his theory of the self), and
their intended purpose is logical. In them Peirce is performing his famous
feat, reducing Kants twelve-termtable of categories to his own basic three,
those which later on assumed the laconic names, rstness, secondness
and thirdness (cf. Esposito, 1980). Accordingly, the tuistic expression,
i.e., usage of I/you terms, later on completely vanishes from Peirces us-
age, after it has performed its ancillary work (cf. Habermas, 1995). In his
mature philosophy he does discuss the human self, but not by using tuistic
expressions or ideas.
As Archer (2003) draws on Wileys (1994) preceding work, these errors
multiply further. The two authors argue to opposite effects, however, so
that Wiley proposes a unication of the self-theories of Peirce and Mead,
whereas Archer wishes to purge sociological theory of the detrimental ef-
fects of Meads inuence (as she thinks), and attempts to use Peirces self-
theory as a neutralizer. She thinks that Meads self-theory is excessively
social, but Peirces is free of that fault, so that The Peircian Me, as the per-
sonal conscience which is regularly consulted, is thus very different from
Meads Me, as the generalized other (Archer, 2003, p. 73). I have dis-
cussed Peirces and Meads respective self-concepts and argued that they
amount to more or less the same thing, so that Peirce also does recognize
the presence and importance of the generalized other. The only difference
is that mans circle of society [as] a sort of loosely compacted person
(Peirce CP 5.421 [1905]) is not as laconic an expression as Meads general-
ized other; but it does refer to the same phenomenon (Kilpinen, 2002). As
for Archer, her search for an irreducible, non-social core in the human self
cannot receive support from Peirces side, because his unshakable position
is that all thought is in signs including also thoughts about ones self;
they are mediated by signs. In fact, this is just the same idea that is behind
Meads I/Me distinction, the idea that one can know ones self only as medi-
ated, as a me. (For a more detailed criticism of Archer in this respect, see
Gronow, 2008.)
(iii) Peirce as a counter-example to critical realism
The Copenhagen sociologist Margareta Bertilsson (2004) uses Peirces
philosophy to assess critically the theoretical movement that in current so-
3
The I Thou distinction in Martin Bubers philosophy of theology is yet another well
known example of such a division in self-theories.
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 91
cial science is known as critical realism. This movement, originating in the
work of the philosopher Roy Bhaskar (1979) and carried on by various fol-
lowers, has been dissatised with the dominating interpretive approaches
to social science proliferating today, and has searched for an alternative,
in both sociology and economics. Most interestingly, as Bertilsson shows
in her article The Elementary Forms of Pragmatism (2004, see also Bertils-
son, 2009), critical realists have in their project even appropriated some
ideas from Peirce, particularly his idea about abduction as the third basic
mode of logical inference (Bertilsson, 2004, pp. 3856.). This, however, is
not as welcome as it might seem at rst blush, as Peirce and the critical
realists understand the character of scientic (and human) inquiry differ-
ently, though this is not quite obvious at rst sight. As Bertilsson main-
tains (pp. 3856), the critical realists conception of inquiry is an impov-
erished and more schematic version in comparison with that of Peirces,
all things considered.
I support Bertilssons argument that critical realism is not realist (or
critical) enough, if evaluated by Peirces criteria. But if so, then her argu-
ment can be strengthened by pointing out that abduction is not even the
only mode of truth-advancing logical inference that Peirce has introduced.
His conception of theorematic deduction (see below) takes the idea of
truth-advancement even further. Bertilsson also maintains (p. 388 fn. 2)
that Peirce made the linguistic turn well in advance of both Wittgen-
stein and the post-modernists,, but strictly speaking this is not true, and
does not advance the Peircean case in social sciences. Richard Rorty (1982)
already took Peirce as a forerunner of the linguistic turn and simultane-
ously committed the error of not seeing (Bertilsson is ambivalent on this)
that linguistics and Peirces semiotics are at completely different levels of
generality, so that linguistic affairs, important though they are, constitute
only a tiny sub-domain in the problem eld of semiotics. There is a turn
in Peirces development, but it is of semiotic nature (Bergman, 2004), and
it constitutes a more comprehensive meaning-theoretic upheaval than any
linguistic turn (for a similar point concerning pragmatism in general see
Hildebrand 2004).
In sum, what seems to hinder the advancement of Peircean ideas in
social sciences is that the thoroughly semiotic character of his philosophy
has not been realized. In what follows, I try to avoid that error and argue
where Peirces social-scientic relevance actually lies. I think that it lies in
his new, process conception of action, and in his new conception about the
role of rationality therein, a conception that is more dynamic than previous
92 Ideas in Action
alternatives. Moreover, I think that the best course to approach Peirce is to
begin in such a problem eld where he has said something substantial, and
this, so far as social sciences are concerned, is not sociology but economics.
3. Peirce on the problem eld of social science
In the early 1890s, having lost his job at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Sur-
vey, Peirce tried to concentrate on philosophy and drafted various plans
for works to be published. The most gigantic of them was no doubt an in-
tended 12-volume series, Principles of Philosophy, or Logic, Physics and Psy-
chics, Considered as a Unity, in the Light of the Nineteenth Century, for which he
printed an advertising prospectus in 1893. The eighth planned volume was
intended to treat Continuity in the Psychological and Moral Sciences, or
the social sciences, as we would say today, and its contents Peirce sketched
in a telegram-like staccato language as follows:
Mathematical economics. Precisely similar considerations supposed
by utilitarians to determine individual action. But, this being granted,
Marshall and Walrass theoremleads to a mathematical demonstration
of free will. Refutation of the theory of motives. The true psychology
of action expounded. HP 2:1115 [1893]
I propose that the best course in trying to deconstruct this list of topics,
which despite its brevity titillates a social scientists imagination, is to begin
from the end, the true psychology of action. The reason to take that
course is that Peirce has, if not quite expounded, at least made clear what
such a psychology would be like.
He expressed his opinion in a review on a new edition of Wilhelm
Wundts Principles of Physiological Psychology. The following words do not
paraphrase merely Wundts position, but what Peirce takes to be a sensi-
ble attitude toward mental phenomena berhaupt, namely that the whole
function of thinking consists in the regulation of conduct (CP 8.199 [1905]).
This phrase should alert Peirce scholars, because it comes close to repeating
his position from some three decades before, namely that the whole func-
tion of thought is to produce habits of action, as the idea was expressed
in his seminal essay, How to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878; W 3:265). This
impression is not deceptive, because in an alternative draft for the review
in question, Peirce goes on to elaborate his above agreement with Wundts
psychology by saying that
Endeavouring to sum up the results of this elaborate investigation so
far as they concern psychologyin such imperfect fashion as they can be
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 93
reduced to one simple sentence, we may say that Wundt nds that the
function of our thinking-organ lies in its regulation of motor reactions.
Now this is neither more nor less than the substance of pragmatism in
the dress of psychology. The original denition of pragmatism put it
in the form of maxim: Consider what effects that might conceivably
have practical bearings you conceive the object of your conception to
have. Then, your conception of those effects is THE WHOLE of your
conception of the object. What is that than to say that the sole function
of thought is to regulate motor reactions? CP 8.201 n. 3 [1905]
Here we have it, namely the answer with which Peirce keeps his
promise of 1893, about showing what the true psychology of action
would be like. Such a psychology, where thought regulates motor reactions
and motor conduct, apparently is a true psychology of action or something
close enough. While Peirce, in keeping with Wundts original problematic
refers to motor reactions and their regulation, these do not make up the
whole story, so that we can talk about action in an advanced, rather than
merely behavioural sense. In the paraphrase that I quoted rst, Peirce said
that the whole function of thinking consists in the regulation of conduct.
Conduct expresses a more advanced sense of action than mere motor reac-
tions, so that we are entitled to conclude that we are dealing with Peirces
psychology of action, or theory of action, in a comprehensive and serious
sense. There is also reason to speak about it explicitly as Peirces theory,
because though it apparently assumes its psychological framework from
Wundt, it has also a characteristically Peircean kernel. Above, he speaks
about the substance of pragmatism in a dress of psychology, and the
substance of pragmatism is Peirces own doubt/belief theory of inquiry,
originally put forward in 18778. This is the logical and rational kernel in
the theory of action, whose descriptive psychological outlines Peirce ap-
propriates from Wundt and other late nineteenth century theorists.
The theory of action belongs to the tools of the trade in the various so-
cial sciences; they all deal with human doings rather than people as such.
We are making some headway in relating Peirces thought to that prevail-
ing in social sciences, but we are not there yet. One thing to which Peirce
scholarship has not given sufcient attention is that he right from the be-
ginning maintained that his doubt/belief theory of inquiry also had gen-
eral action-theoretic relevance; it was not purely a contribution to scientic
methodology, though this was its main purpose. Everybody uses the sci-
entic method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when
he does not know how to apply it, Peirce said while introducing that the-
94 Ideas in Action
ory of inquiry (EP 1:120), meaning that version of the scientic method
that he himself was explaining in the article in question, The Fixation of
Belief (1877). In the concluding paragraph of the second article, How
to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878), he said, moreover, that We have, hith-
erto, not [yet] crossed the threshold of scientic logic (EP 1:141). Now,
as Peirces announced purpose was to spell out the logic of science in that
series of articles, the following conclusion suggests itself. The rst two
writings, The Fixation of Belief and How to Make Our Ideas Clear,
together make up what might be called a Prolegomena for the true logic
of science. In them, Peirce discusses human inquiry in general, rather
than its explicitly scientic sub-variant, and if this interpretation holds
water, I suggest further that those two writings express also Peirces con-
ception of action, considered from its rational side (or logical, as was his
preferred expression).
Before going further, there is still something in Peirces relation to
Wundt that pertains to our present problem. Peirce held Wundt in high
esteem (cf. HP 2:891 [c. 1901])
4
and even credits him for having rst shown,
in the 1860s, that every train of thought is essentially inferential in char-
acter (CN 1:37 [1869]). This is an important idea, because the inferential
character of human thought later on came to be one of the cornerstones
in Peirces own philosophy. Accordingly, we can pose the following ques-
tion: if every train of thought is essentially inferential in character, what
then does the human mind do, when it infers?
Peirces answer to this question is prima facie surprising, if expressed
in a laconic manner: the human mind does not actually draw its infer-
ences. In order to see what this means, recall what he said above about
thoughts role in regard to motor action and conduct: it regulates them,
rather than, say, produces them or brings them about. The idea of regula-
tion is not conned to this task. Above, Peirce was perhaps unnecessary
generous to his predecessor Wundt, by calling him the sole inventor of the
idea that thought is essentially inferential. Rather, the truth is that Peirce
brought to fruition Wundts original idea. Namely, his mature position is
(cf. Murphey, 1961, pp. 35960) that though every train of thought is po-
tentially inferential, it does not have to be so actually. Peirce is famous for
maintaining that logical reasoning takes place by means of self-control
in this it resembles ethics and is related to it so that according to him a
logical reasoner does not so much draw his or her inferences. He or she
4
Peirce appreciated Wundt as a scientist rather than as a philosopher. See the 1905 review
in its entirety.
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 95
rather receives inferential candidates, in the stream of mental associations
(CP 7.443-4f. [1893]), and out of these (s)he by means of self-control, by
deciding whether to accept the association as a conclusion or not, makes
genuine conclusions. A logical reasoner is a reasoner who exercises great
self-control in his intellectual operations, is Peirces well-known position
(EP 2:2001 [1903]). The underlying idea is a bit like that of a gardener culti-
vating her owers (cf. EP 1:354 [1893]). A gardener begins with great many
seedlings, of which only a small minority will eventually ourish. Out
of those seedlings, the gardener selects the most promising ones, nurtures
them actively, and picks out of the ground and destroys the less promis-
ing ones. In this way she eventually produces a beautiful ower-bed, and
I submit that the model in Peirces theory of reasoning is similar: a small
minority of continuously owing mental associations are eventually ac-
cepted as logical conclusions, and the procedure in doing this is precisely
that of exercising self-control, as Peirce liked to say. Autonomy is just
a fancy word for self-control maintains Daniel Dennett (1995, p. 366)
today, and Peirce would have approved of this expression. I presume,
though I cannot demonstrate it in the space available, that his endorsement
of this idea might stem from his youthful reading experience of Friedrich
Schillers Aesthetic Letters (1795), where Schillers position is that the voice
[of morality] is merely inhibitory (p. 179 in the 1967 edition).
Here we have reached a point at which to take stock. Peirces idea about
logical inferences as self-controlled operations provides us with the basics
of his theory of rationality. This idea of rationality is the skeleton in his
more general psychology of action, or theory of action, to follow social
scientists parlance. And this, in turn, provides us with a tool of analysis,
because theories of action, as I said above, belong to the tools of trade in
social sciences. This enables us to return to the agenda that Peirce had set
for himself in 1893, to explain what Continuity in the Psychological and
Moral Sciences would be all about.
4. Peirce and economics
Peirces agenda, it will be recalled, contained an explicit reference to eco-
nomics. It is now possible to juxtapose those two references to that sci-
ence that Peirce made in 1893, the one in Evolutionary Love, the other
in his advertising prospectus. In the rst place, his prima facie very neg-
ative opinion in the former about political economy as a Gospel of Greed
(EP 1:3556) turns out to be sarcastic. Peirce tells later, in 1906 or so, that he
96 Ideas in Action
had on purpose made as much fun as politeness would allow of such
writers who undertake to address the issue of human welfare, a ques-
tion for which Peirce considered political economists particularly unt
(CP 6.517 [c. 1906]).
If so, does not then Peirces more neutral expression in his advertising
prospectus express his position correctly? In it he takes the mathematical
economics of Marshall and Walras as a fait accompli, and at rst glance
seems to have only minor reservations about its close relation to utilitari-
anism. Even this, however, is not the nal truth. The reason is that Peirce
elsewhere expresses regret about political economy having turned into
economics (NEM 4:62 [c. 1902]) that is to say, about its turning from a
general social science into a more limited mathematical analysis of wealth.
Accordingly, his opinion about the achievement of Marshall and Walras
is ambivalent. While systematizing economics by means of mathematical
methods a feat with which Peirce would have no quarrel
5
they have
also considerably narrowed its scope.
6
I suggest that we should take a last look at Evolutionary Love in or-
der to nd a way out of this dilemma. There Peirce says, in connection with
his critical discussion about political economy, that the study of [its] doc-
trines, themselves true, will often temporarily encourage generalizations
extremely false, as the study of physics has encouraged necessitarianism
(EP 1:354 [1893]). The clue-word is Peirces characteristic expression ne-
cessitarianism.
This curiously Peircean term is yet another of those that have not so
far received sufcient attention by Peirce scholars. Even in advanced lit-
erature it has too often been taken merely as a synonym expression for
determinism. In some cases, as in the quotation above, it can pass as
such. I argue, however, that this in fact is only one of its sub-meanings,
and that the terms pertinence extends further. In the rst place, if Peirce
means merely determinism, why doesnt he say so? It was a going English
5
Peirce was familiar with mathematical economics, as one of his half-serious hobbies from
early on was to analyse economic theorems by means of differential calculus (e.g., W 3:173176
[1874]). He was also well-read in economics, aware, for example, about the work of Antoine
Cournot (1801-77), who in histories of economics is represented as the missing link between
classical and neoclassical economics (the economics of Marshall and Walras, for instance), but
known only by very few during his lifetime (Schumpeter, 1954; on Peirces familiarity with
Cournot, see Eisele, 1957/1979 p. 59; 1974/1979).
6
It is at this juncture that theoretical room is being made for a new general social science,
sociology (Clarke, 1982; Mazlish, 1989). About that development see also Hodgson (2001;
2004).
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 97
term at the time, used also by him.
7
That this meaning cannot be the cru-
cial terms whole meaning comes out from a retrospective personal remark
that Peirce once makes.
He tells that he originally, in his teens, was a young necessitarian of
the most odious type (MS 958:42 [c. 1892]), but then had the good fortune
of receiving Friedrich Schillers aforementioned Aesthetic Letters (1795) as
a gift, and that reading experience cured him of that vice. Aesthetic Letters
cannot cure anyone of determinism, because that theme is nowhere men-
tioned in the book. It deals with moral philosophy, and more than once
tells critically that Utility is the great idol of our age, to which all powers
are in thrall and to which all talent must pay homage, as is Schillers ex-
pression in his second letter, third section (p. 7 in the 1967 edition; original
emphasis). My interpretation accordingly is that the mature Peirce faults
his own earlier self for having been a young utilitarian, not for having been
a young determinist. But if so, what then do utilitarian thought and de-
terminism have in common, because there indisputably are cases where
Peirces pet term necessitarianism refers to the latter meaning?
8
They
share a common, exclusively deductive logical framework. Regarding the
position to which Peirce refers as necessitarianism, and to its supporter
as, a necessitarian I propose and submit for Peirce scholars to consider
that a necessitarian is such a person who in his or her logic exclusively relies on
necessary reasoning.
Necessary reasoning refers in the rst place to deductive reasoning in
the ordinary sense of the term, and it is established knowledge within
Peirce scholarship that his logical armature extends further than this. De-
duction is the only necessary reasoning, is his expression in his 1903 Har-
vard lectures on Pragmatism, and he adds immediately that it is the rea-
soning of mathematics (EP 2:205). A brief moment later he elaborates this
by saying that all necessary reasoning, whether it be good or bad, is of the
nature of mathematical reasoning, and adds provocatively that I declare
that all necessary reasoning, be it the merest verbiage of the theologians, so
far as there is any semblance of necessity in it, is mathematical reasoning
(EP 2:206).
This polemic assertion can be explicated by referring to the two dif-
ferent tasks that Peirce has explicitly set for logical analysis: its security
7
One of William Jamess important early essays was The Dilemma of Determinism (1884)
which Peirce said struck him (Peirce to James 3/18/1897; CP 8.306).
8
Peirces Reply to the Necessitarians (CP 6.588-618 [1892]) is a case where necessitarianism
and determinism are used interchangeably.
98 Ideas in Action
and uberty, (EP 2:4634 [1913]). Necessary reasoning is strong in security,
but weak in uberty, in the ability to yield new knowledge and informa-
tion, which according to Peirce also belongs to the tasks of reasoning. He
expresses the idea, in regard to empirical science and human individuals
ordinary involvements with material reality, as follows:
All that necessary reasoning can do is to keep an initial hypothesis
consistent with itself, it cannot prove any matter of fact. [. . . ] The
world of possibilities in which necessary reasoning holds a solitary
sway, is a world of generals. [. . . ] The world of existencies to which
truth is related, and in which necessary reasoning is out of place, is the
world of individuals. CN 2:151 [1897]
Whereas necessary reasoning (deduction) is strong in security, its non-
necessary counterparts (abduction in particular) are strong in uberty, in
the advancement of human knowledge. As I said above, knowledge about
Peircean abduction, the third mode of logical inference, has of late reached
also the social sciences. What instead has not yet reached that universe
of discourse is that abduction does not exhaust what he has to say about
truth-advancing (ampliative) logical inference. Peirce scholars know, but
other people less so, about his position that our ordinary reasonings,
[even] so far as they are deductive, are not, in the main, such syllogisms
as the books have taught, but are just such inferences that are particularly
dealt with in this new branch of logic (CN 2:132 [1896]). By this new
branch of logic Peirce refers to his own invention, the logic of relatives,
as he called it. Its consideration qua logical theory can be left to the pro-
fessionals of that discipline, but its consequences demand also other peo-
ples attention. On its basis, Peirce reaches a conclusion that there are two
modes of deduction, namely its corollarial and theorematic variants, the
former answering to the traditional idea of deduction, the latter being its
more general and dynamic counterpart. Namely, theorematic deduction
is also able to suggest new truths, not merely to preserve the truth of its
premises, as is the case with the ordinary corollarial variant. Why not then
make such use of this distinction as Peirce himself suggests, as he says
that this is a matter of extreme importance for the theory of cognition
(NEM 4:56 [c. 1902])?
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 99
5. Conclusion: Knowledge-advancing use of reason as Peirces im-
plicit legacy for social sciences
Regarding cognition, Peirces distinction in the rst place suggests that the
domain of the ampliative use of human reason in his conception is even
wider than most people have hitherto assumed. It is safe to say that he
nds truth-advancement or knowledge-advancement even more impor-
tant than the corroboration of putative knowledge, or the context of jus-
tication, to follow Popperian parlance.
Regarding our theme, the theory of action considered from a social-
scientic viewpoint, Peirces position is, we recall, that the whole function
of thought is to produce habits of action. If so, we may ask how thought
produces them when it operates in the ampliative mode, the mode that
turns out to be more signicant than ever. Here I take a shortcut and refer
to results alreadyachieved by other Peirce scholars (Hintikka, 2007; Pietari-
nen, 2003; 2006). Hintikka (2007, p. 47) provides an answer to the above
question, by paraphrasing Peirces position to be that the aim of scientic
abduction is to recommend a course of action. To this, I add that this
holds not only for scientic abduction but also for abductions performed
during everyday life.
9
But the actual point is, as Hintikka adds immedi-
ately, that such recommendation can scarcely mean a preference for one
particular action in one particular kind of situation, but presumably means
a policy recommendation (ibid.).
If so, this provides us with ingredients for an answer to the question:
where does Peirces relevance for social sciences actually lie? The model of
rationality that has prevailed in these sciences, making its rst entre with
neoclassical economics on which also Peirce commented, has been what is
known as the theory of rational choice. Some have called it the default
mode of social theorizing in its entirety (Wagner, 2000) or at least of its
theory of rationality. That theory typically operates by means of necessary
reasoning, to express the matter in Peirces terms. If we take the upshot of
Peirces ampliative theory of rationality to be that it yields policy recom-
mendations, this means that it proffers a more general notion, in a positive
sense, of rationality. Rational choice still has a task to perform, but only an
ancillary task. It nishes the job whose main part is in reasons production
9
Peirces well known position is that Not the smallest advance can be made in knowledge
beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step (HP 2:900
[1901]). Early in his article, Hintikka (2007) says that all our science and indeed our whole
life depends on ampliative reasoning (p. 40).
100 Ideas in Action
of policy recommendations it singles out a particular deed to be done in
terms of some of those policies. Peirce is aware of the existence and prac-
tical importance of rational choice, as he says that Balancing reasons pro
and con is the natural procedure of every man. No man can avoid do-
ing so continually (EP 2:78 [1901]). However, as he adds immediately that
reason is nothing but mans natural way of thinking, carefully and consis-
tently observed (ibid.), I take this to suggest the following interpretation.
A competent agent does make choices in the course of action, but (s)he
takes them in stride, in the midst of an already ongoing action process, not
while sitting pretty and pondering!
And with this hypothetical conclusion we have found a viewpoint from
which Peirces thought may turn out to be of relevance for the social sci-
ences. Early in this article, I expressed reservations about the views of
the sociologist Margaret Archer (2003), but that disagreement is of minor
importance. She has my full support when it comes to the program that
she calls resisting colonization, namely the colonization that rational
choice theory (with neoclassical economics implicitly in the background)
exercises toward other social sciences and their theoretical assumptions.
The collection Rational Choice Theory (2000), edited by Archer and Jonathan
Tritter, is devoted to explicating and criticizing this tendency in the social
sciences, in sociology in particular, and to critically questioning rational
choice theory.
It is dubitable, however, whether its arguments are able to convert many
(or any) of the uncritical supporters of that theory. Certain assertions, e.g.
that rational choice theory does not take social normativity into account
(at least not sufciently) (Archer, 2000), or that it ignores emotions at the
expense of rationality (Williams, 2000), are formally to the point. To all
this, however, a supporter of the theory apparently has an answer ready:
even supposing the importance of all that, a thought-out social theory in
any case needs to include an explicitly rational component, and if this is
admitted, isnt then the notion of rational choice our only choice?
It is not our only choice, Peirces theory of rationality in the language
of social scientists enables us to assert. And as I said above, it enables
one to assert this in a positive sense, without doing away with the idea of
rational choice (let alone with the idea of rationality itself) and replacing
it by some other notion. There is such a phenomenon as choice, which
does have a task to perform, but in a wide perspective that task is nonethe-
less rather pedestrian. In rational choice theory the subject is conned to
draw on that information that he or she already has. Whence did it ever
Kilpinen Problems in Applying Peirce in Social Sciences 101
come to his possession in the rst place? This is a question that the the-
ory of rational choice has to leave untreated (or address in a mystifying
manner), but some people would nd that very question more important.
Peirces ampliative theory of reason, on the other hand, incorporates that
question as one of its basic tasks. It treats all humans as inquirers and as-
sumes that the continuous enlarging of our stock of knowledge belongs
to the human condition. Peirces dynamic theory, furthermore, goes much
better together with the sociological understanding of action, where action
is taken as reexive monitoring of conduct in the day-to-day continuity
of social life as Anthony Giddens (1984, pp. 4344) has put it than with
those so-called action-models that economic theory relies on. But in this
respect the situation is again such that we need not do away with them
completely. By drawing on Peirces ampliative theory of rationality sociol-
ogy will be able to resist colonization from the side of economics, without
resorting to nihilistic attempts to deny the validity of the latter altogether.
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