SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

20 I Foundations of Peircean Semiotics
Peirce Divested for Nonintimates I 21
linkage is not a static relationship, since human knowledge and belief about reality
must be acquired through inferential processes in which signs and their objects
come into truthful relation: "The whole effort in investigation is to make
our beliefs represent the realities" (MS 379). Reasoning involves coming to believe
true representations of reality. It is semiotically mediated in that all thought
takes place through the medium of signs and it is realistically grounded in that
the most perfect representations are those that depict reality so clearly that the
semiotic means are not distorting factors.
The attainment of true opinion is a communal activity, since the inferential
process arrives at "settled belief" among scientifically logical minds. But if the
truth is what people ultimately agree on, it is not because a social group has
collectively decided upon some belief but rather because a scientifically rigorous
community of minds will ultimately agree on the representation of reality. So,
that generations of people believe something to be true counts for nothing if "sufficient
experience and reasoning" show this belief to be false. In other words,
truth as the "final settled opinion" arrived at through scientific rationality is a
future-oriented notion (in distinction to the past-orientation of historically inherited
cultural beliefs). And yet truths are, in a sense, "predestinated" to reach the
point they do in fact reach: "The method we pursue or the action of our will,
may hasten or retard the time when this conclusion is reached; but it is fated to
emerge at last. And every cognition consists in what investigation is destined to
result in" (MS 379).
So that the object of a final settled opinion not merely coincides with the truth,
but is the truth by the definition of words. The truth is independent of what
we may think about it and the object of an opinion is a creation of thought
which is entirely dependent on what that opinion is. It exists by virtue of that
opinion. There seems to be a contradiction here. But the secret of the matter
is this. The final settled opinion is not any particular cognition, in such and
such a mind, at such and such a time, although an individual opinion may
chance to coincide with it. If an opinion coincides with the final settled opinion,
it is because the general current of investigation will not affect it. The
object of that individual opinion is whatever is thought at that time. But if
anything else than that one thing is thought, the object of that opinion changes
and it thereby ceases to coincide with the object of the final opinion which
does not change. The perversity or ignorance of mankind may make this thing
or that to be held for true, for any number of generations, but it can not affect
what would be the result of sufficient experience and reasoning. (W 3:79)
Peirce consistently rejected the possibility of acquiring firm, scientific knowledge
of anything nonreal, namely, whatever possesses the attributes it does solely
because of the opinion of "any person or definite existent group" (NEM
3/2:881). The real does, however, correspond to the object of the opinion of a
community if that opinion is the result of sufficient rational discussion. Of
course, that a person or group has a false or nonsensical idea can be a true fact
about that person or group. Peirce is quick to point out, however, that reality is
not confined to the universe of existent objects (Seconds) but must include as well
the class of ens rationis or "creations of thought" (Thirds). These general entities,
including abstractions in metaphysics and linguistic types, are not "fictions"
(NEM 3/2:918)—contrary to the physicalist or behaviorist prejudice against
them (N 1:35)—because they are the "inevitable result of sufficient thought"
(NEM 3/2:918).
Peirce's scientific realism, at first glance, leaves little room for the study of
cultural units, categories, or entities which depend on the historically transmitted
beliefs of a society and for which truth-value is not always relevant. He is careful,
however, to indicate that the object of a sign can be real "as far as the action of
the Sign is concerned" (MS 634:27), as long as the vector of determination still
flows from object to sign:
The word "witch" is a sign having a "real Object" in the sense in which this
phrase is used, namely to mean a supposedly real Object, not the Sign, and in
intention or pretension not created by the sign. ... It is real in the sense in
which a dream is a real appearance to a person in sleep, although it be not an
appearance of objects that are Real. (MS 634:27)
A more complex example is the legal contract, obviously a social phenomenon
dependent upon human agreement at two levels: agreement as to the general nature
of binding, valid contracts and agreement between the parties to a particular
contract. The issue is whether or not a contract is real, according to Peirce's definition.
At first it would appear that the answer is "no," since every contract
depends
upon what people think—a contract is defined as something you must
enter into intentionally. As Peirce tentatively concludes, "so that nothing which
merely inheres in an agreement can be real" (MS 296). But Peirce proceeds to
consider the question in greater depth. Imagine two persons, each dreaming of
entering into a contract of identical specification with the other. Clearly these
contracts are totally dependent upon the mental states of the persons involved
and so would not be real, despite the historical fact of "judges deciding otherwise."
So it seems that the contracting parties must come together in a genuine
triadic way, such that each party assents to the agreement and, further, recognizes
the other's assent as an essential reason for their assent. "I will say that
there must be some voluntary, some deliberate molition of some kind, though it
be merely mental, in which both parties shall be involved as agents" (MS 296).
This contract now appears real, since it exercises an efficient force in coordinating
the behavior of the parties according to the terms of the agreement. As Peirce
concludes his discussion, "It is thus demonstrated that what is subjectively general