Scots Philosophical Association

University of St. Andrews

Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce's Relation to John Duns Scotus by
John F. Boler
Review by: Timothy C. Potts
The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 61 (Oct., 1965), pp. 361-362
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Association and the
University of St. Andrews
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2218264 .
Accessed: 25/06/2014 06:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Oxford University Press, Scots Philosophical Association, University of St. Andrews are collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:00:47 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 BOOK REVIEWS 361
He claimed that his philosophy " denies nothing of orthodoxy except its confidence "
(p. 38). Perhaps he underestimated how much is hereby denied! For those who said
that without eternity life on earth was of no value, Wright prescribed therapy, not
argument. While rejecting orthodox religious belief, Wright believed in conduct in a
" religious spirit ", i.e. finding one's happiness in pursuing universal ends disinterestedly.
Speaking of such actions he makes the interesting comment that we " should not seek
to make them obligatory simply on the ground of their positive worth " (quoted p. 43).
Rather, they are works of supererogation. Wright disagreed with James' duty to believe
but admitted-more tolerantly than Clifford and Huxley-a right to believe (in God)
on insufficient evidence.
Professor Madden does not succeed in finding much of interest in Chauncey Wright's
ethics. He was a utilitarian because he felt that an ethics of consequences lent itself
to tests, unlike intuitionism. (This was Bentham's fallacy. In fact, "happiness is
good" is no more verifiable than " telling lies is wrong "). He recognized a class of
intrinsic goods which contains all " ultimate sources of pleasure of whatever rank or
intensity ". Beauty is preferable to pleasure because of its intrinsic dignity, but this
is not itself a moral difference. To the objection that this is capitulating to intuitionism
his answer is that these differences are differences of preferability, not moral differ-
ences. He followed Mill, in other words, not Bentham; but he neither enlarged Mill's
doctrines nor fortified his arguments.
Wright gave attention to social problems and formed the general view, which is
yet another interesting anticipation of a modem doctrine (Professor Popper coming to
mind), that it was easier to plan the removal of unhappiness than the positive further-
ance of happiness. More interestingly he distinguished primary morals, which are
beyond reform since they are grounded in nature, from secondary morals where reform
is relevant. One would like to know what falls into these different categories.
Wright was led to explore the logic of science in connection with the examination
of evolutionary doctrines in Darwin and Herbert Spencer. In so doing he has been
thought to have prefigured the pragmatism of Peirce and James. It is true, Professor
Madden points out, that he criticizes Spencer for treating scientific principles as " sum-
maries " instead of as "working hypotheses " and for adding to the concepts of science
vague overtones so as to make them compendiously descriptive. But, as the author
also points out, while Wright's position resembled that of the pragmatists in demanding
the deduction of sensory consequences as a test of scientific principles, he did not, it
seems, hold that such verification was necessary in the case of simple empirical sentences.
He accepted what may be called a " self-contained sensuous given ". Nor did he possess
the instrumentalist notion of the truth or falsity of a proposition consisting in what
would sensibly happen if something or other were done. The author concludes, therefore,
that Wright is no more a pragmatist than Hume.
Wright's account of chance or accident has led to his being regarded as the pre-
cursor of Peirce's " tychism ". But, in fact, as Professor Madden conclusively demon-
strates, he accepted the universality of causation and regarded irregularity as a function
of causal complexity.
In another respect he was thoroughly modern; he regarded science as metaphysi-
cally neutral. " There is nothing in positive science, or the study of phenomena and
their laws, which idealism conflicts with" (from a letter, quoted p. 93). Wright had
no use for the Scottish philosophy of common sense as the answer to scepticism, be-
cause the doubts of the sceptic concern not questions of fact but their proper interpreta-
tion. He regarded the idealist as not denying the existence of an external world but
giving an explanation of it. In this he was at one with a good many modern philosophers
of analysis. When he discussed whether an object can exist unperceived, his answer
was " Yes, in the sense that if one were to go and look, one would have certain percep-
tions." On the question of verification Wright is very up-to-date in holding that in a
scientific theory only some concepts need to be tested by direct reference to sensible
experience; it is enough if the others occur in a system testable as a whole.
What the book brings out very well is that here was a natural philosopher, working
on small canvases and thinking out the answers to a few problems quite independently.
W. H. F. BARNES

Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism : A study of Peirce's relation to John Duns Scotus.
By JOHN F. BOLER. (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1963. Pp. xii +
177. Price $5.00).
The scope of this book is wider than its title suggests; the problem of universals
is the central topic, as one might expect, but potentiality and causality also receive
detailed attention. The reason for their inclusion lies in Peirce's view that the account

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:00:47 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 362 BOOK REVIEWS

of causality which a philosopher gives will be determined by his attitude to universals:

a " constant conjunction " account springs from nominalism, and at the other extreme
the view that there is a logically necessary connexion between causes and effects will
presumably follow from platonism, while in between the various compromise solutions
to the two problems also pair off.
After an introductory chapter in which the author describes how the issue presented
itself to Peirce, he goes on to precis Scotus' discussion of universals in the Quaestiones
subtillissimae 7.18, with the order of the arguments re-arranged in order to incorporate
material from 7.13 and from the Opus Oxoniense 2.3.1. The three chapters which follow
are all devoted to Peirce : the first is concerned with logic, and the way in which Peirce
thinks that the new logic of relations will help to refute nominalism; the second with
the notion of a " common nature " shared by objects of which the same predicate is
true, and with Peirce's attempt to elucidate it by means of his theory of pragmatism;
while the third treats of his substitution of law for the mediaeval form as the key con-
cept in analysing causality, and hence also of his category of " thirdness ".
In the final chapter Mr. Boler summarizes his findings and proffers some criticisms
of his own, and he makes it clear that he has been at pains to give a " neutral " ex-
position in the body of the work unbiased by the intrusion of his own opinions. The
result is that for the most part Scotus and Peirce are expounded in their own words
and terminologies, little attempt being made to interpret their arguments. If someone
wished to write on the influence of Scotus on Peirce, this book could be used to great
advantage as a set of notes in which the relevant passages of both authors had been
diligently collated and arranged in a suitable order; but the writer would then have
to digest the material and put it into the language of contemporary philosophy.
Many examples could be given to illustrate this criticism; one which applies both
to Scotus and to Peirce is the distinction between ' existing' and 'real '. It seems
that a so-and-so is real if and only if we are entitled to say that there is a so-and-so,
that is to say, the meaning of 'real' can be expounded in terms of the existential
quantifier; whereas something exists if and only if it has come into existence and has
not yet ceased to exist. Mr. Boler sees no need to explain the distinction, but only
to note that there is one; yet the whole plausibility of any non-nominalist view of
universals must hinge upon how it is elucidated. Indeed, no one could say of this book,
as Newman's acquaintance did of the Oriel Common Room, that it stank of logic:
even so crucial a distinction as that between the two uses of " universal," in which
Peirce follows Scotus, is expounded by means of scholastic terminology, and while
the author mentions that Quine has criticized Peirce's view that every categorical
proposition is a conditional, he does not appreciate that if the reader's sympathy is to
be sustained some attempt must be made to give the view a plausible interpretation.
Again, he tells us that Scotus thought that universals are contracted to particulars in
the primary substances to which they belong, and that Peirce denied this; but as no
explanation is given of what Scotus meant by ' contraction', the reader is left without
understanding what Scotus asserted and Peirce denied. Here too I would suggest that
logic provides the requisite interpretative tools.
A final criticism must be that Scotus is quite inadequately treated for the purpose
in hand; it is only universals in Scotus which receive attention, whereas Peirce's views
on many other topics about which Scotus also wrote are outlined. In particular, I
cannot see why Mr. Boler has thought fit to ignore Scotus' discussions of potentiality
and causality. If Peirce spent one to two years reading the scholastics, it is hardly
likely that he confined himself in Scotus to three articles on universals, or that with
the Quaestiones subtillissimae in his hands he lacked the curiosity to discover what the
Doctor subtilis said about potentiality in his questions on Metaphysics 0.
TIMOTHYC. POTTS

Rationality: An essay towards an analysis. By JONATHANBENNETT. (London: Rout-

ledge. 1964. Pp. viii + 123. Price 14s).
Man has long been distinguished from the beasts of the field as a " rational animal"
endowed with the gift of language. Mr. Bennett's purpose in this book is to investigate
this concept of rationality in relation to these two claims.
Instead of defining 'rationality' and inquiring whether animals possess this quality
he deliberately begins with a non-committal description of it as " whatever it is which
humans possess which marks them off, in respect of intellectual capacity, sharply and
importantly from all other known species ". His programme is to start with a piece
of admittedly non-rational behaviour, the dances of the honey-bees studied by von
Frisch, and to inquire what has to be progressively added to this behaviour to persuade
anyone to call it 'rational'. Since human rationality is primarily expressed in language

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.28 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:00:47 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions