<サーヴェイ論文>プラグマティズムと実在 : パースの実在概念と実践的実在論をめぐって

Abstract

While William James's lecture at Barkley in 1898 made pragmatist thoughts popular, the founder of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, found James's pragmatism unsatisfactory, and began to call his own thought 'pragmaticism' in order to differentiate it from James's. This paper aims to argue for the potential impacts that Peirce's pragmaticism may have on the contemporary philosophical discussion about propositional attitudes. Peirce claims that the general laws actively operating in the natural world are real. Although it is the physical laws that Peirce keeps in mind in arguing for this unique realism, this paper would like to assume that 'the law of mind', on which Peirce expands in a paper published in 1892, is really operative in the human mind, and therefore it can also be considered as real. In this realism, it is not physical objects but semioses which are regarded as real. This paper clarifies the contemporary significance of Peircean pragmaticism and realism, by comparing them with L. R. Baker's Practical Realism (PR). Because PR explains propositional attitudes in terms of collective sets of subjunctive conditionals, PR seems to share this core idea with pragmaticism. Moreover, PR argues that propositional attitudes cannot be reduced to physical states of brain, and that propositional attitudes are real in the same sense that bankruptcies are real. This view may be considered as keeping in step with Peircean realism. Peirce sustains, however, a peculiar attitude toward scientific inquiries and naturalism, which leads to his argument for 'normative sciences'. Although Baker contends that she takes a position opposed to naturalism, PR is compatible with subject naturalism held by a prominent neo-pragmatist, Huw Price. On the other hand, Peirce's anti-naturalism would add a complex colour hue to the texture of the neo-pragmatists' discussion. Based on these observations, this paper argues that Peirce's thought can make a unique contribution even in the contemporary context.