Claudine Tiercelin

Abduction and the Semiotics of Perception

From H. Helmholtz describing perception as involving unconscious inferences (Helmholtz 1867) to R. L. Gregory claiming that perceptions simply are hypotheses (Gregory 1973, 1994), many philosophers and scientists have stressed the links between perception and some form or other of hypothesis. But very few have undertaken to clarify the epistemological status of hypothesis itself or to wonder whether that might have some bearing on the correct understanding of perception itself. C. S. Peirce was undoubtedly one of them: not only did he connect perception and hypothesis (which he baptized ‘abduction’), but, with his categories (conceived as logical, semiotical, phenomenological, and metaphysical tools), he o¤ered an enlightening analysis of such a link, and in so doing, of both processes. In what follows, I shall present the most salient aspects of Peirce’s approach and try to show also in what respect they may clarify his position as regards his supposedly ‘direct’ (Reidian) or ‘natural’ (Putnamian) realism and even provide clues to some di‰culties which perception and abduction themselves still have to face.

In Defense of a Critical Commonsensist Conception of Knowledge

Questioning doubt is much more recent than questioning knowledge, and may be traced back to Charles Sanders Peirce and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Both have a close pragmatist strategy and reject the relevance of the radical Cartesian scenario. However, despite a common diagnosis of what goes wrong with the sceptic and of some illusions he entertains about thinking, knowledge, and the way they are related to practice and action, the replies are not the same. Whereas Wittgenstein wavers between a realistic reaction and a neo-Pyrrhonian attitude, Peirce’s offensive attack strongly relies on a metaphysical and scientific version of realism and on a critical Common Sensist method of inquiry. Both philosophers insist on relying on first principles or hinge propositions, but also illustrate rather different views about these. The aim of this paper is to try and show how and why, in the end, Peirce’s Critical Commonsensist and fallibilistic attitude seems a better strategy, both as an account of the logic of our epistemic practices and as a convincing parry to scepticism.

Peirce et Wittgenstein face au défi sceptique

Peirce e Wittgenstein mostrano che il dubbio, come la credenza, ha bisogno di ragioni. Entrambi sviluppano le loro critiche al dubbio radicale secondo una prospettiva pragmatista, ma danno risposte diverse: Wittgenstein ondeggia tra una reazione realista e una pirronista, mentre Peirce sostiene una versione scientifica e metafisica del realismo e della filosofia del senso comune, rimanendo tuttavia cosi critico e fallibilista da tenersi solo a un passo dallo scetticismo. L’intento dell’articolo e di mostrare la varieta delle risposte pragmatiste alla sfida scettica e la superiorita della prospettiva peirceana. Peirce and Wittgenstein have shown that doubt, as much as belief, needs reasons. Both have close pragmatist views in their criticism of radical doubt, but have different answers. Whereas Wittgenstein wavers between a realistic and neo-pyrrhonian reaction, Peirce relies on a scientific and metaphysical version of realism and common sensism, yet remains so critical and fallibilistic that he keeps close to skepticism. The aim of the paper is to show the variety of the pragmatist parries to the skeptical challenge and the superiority of Peirce’s approach.

THE FIXATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE QUESTION-ANSWER PROCESS OF INQUIRY

Th e aim of the paper is to present some important insights of C. Hookway’s pragmatist analysis of knowledge viewed less in the standard (Gettier) way, as justifi ed true belief, than as a dynamic natural and normative question-answer process of inquiry, a reliable and successful agent-based enterprise, consisting in virtuous dispositions explaining how we can be held responsible for our beliefs and investigations. Despite the merits of such an approach, the paper shows that it may be ineffi cient in accounting for some challenges posed by scepticism or by the nature of epistemic normativity. In which case it might be premature to propose it as a new conception of knowledge against the standard one and worth considering a diff erent, though still pragmatist, strategy, in which inquiry would aim at the fi xation of knowledge, still viewed as justifi ed true beliefs, i.e critical commonsensical, warrantedly assertible, intellectual and sentimental dispositions for which the epistemic agent, viewed less as an individual person than as a scientifi c community of inquirers, should be taken as a knowing and reliable agent, both answerable and responsible for her assertions.

Épistémologie du désaccord

Pr Claudine Tiercelin

Die schwierige Beziehung von Metaphysik und Wissenschaft

Malgre lopposition entre le pragmatisme et la metaphysique, lA. etudie la conception dune metaphysique scientifique et realiste developpee par Peirce dans le cadre de son projet dune cosmogonie evolutionniste, qui sinscrit a la fois dans lheritage de Schelling et dans la continuite de levolution de la realite (synechisme) et du present non-reducteur des elements aleatoires (tychisme). Examinant les principes de la cosmogonie que sont la continuite et le hasard, lA. montre que Peirce propose une approche logique et agapiste de levolution de la realite fondee sur les notions de hasard, amour et logique