Thinking Through the Imagination by Kaag John;

Author:Kaag, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press

Taking Guesses: Peirce’s Imaginative Ontology

In “A Guess at the Riddle,” Peirce applies his understanding of logic and epistemology to the construction of a philosophic architectonic. Aptly titled, this piece stands as Peirce’s first look at speculative philosophy. It is a guess at explaining the way in which triadic ordering—originally conceived in terms of formal logic—manifests itself in the fields of metaphysics, psychology, physiology, biology, and physics. His division of these fields is maintained and extended in the final section of this project, which aims to investigate the structure and movement of the imagination from the perspective of the empirical sciences.

Before delving into Peirce’s direct arguments, it is important to consider an indirect argument that commentators neglect in their analysis of the “Guess” and later works. This indirect argument hinges on the character of guesswork itself. By it, Peirce attempts to expose a continuity between the thoughtful lives of human beings and the natural world in all of its aspects. This is why he undertakes such an ambitious study of the natural and physical sciences. This is why he hypothesizes—“guesses”—that the organization of natural being must exhibit the same structure, movement, and spontaneity that is exhibited in the mind. This is why he “guesses” that he can begin to show a continuity between matter and mind. It is, however, not the demonstration of this point but rather the guess itself that provides the “proof” of Peirce’s position on continuity.

“A Guess at the Riddle” is a moment of abduction in its own right, a moment of fortuitous hypothesis generation. As a hypothesis, it is an initial attempt to transform the indeterminacy of a situation into a more harmonious state of affairs. It is a new guess at resolving the riddle of life, not in the abstract but immediately, in the life of embodied human beings. The operative verb is “re-solve,” since Peirce believes that we are repeatedly called by novel events to make novel hypotheses. Our ability to do so, he believes, demonstrates something about the relation between ourselves and the world at large, namely, that it is a continuous relation. Our hypotheses are fitted to the circumstances that we encounter not by some random coincidence but rather by a particular logic that prefigures our experience and our guesswork. Peirce emphasizes the ubiquity and self-reinstating character of hypotheses: if one attempts to refute the principle of abduction, one is forced to make a conjecture or good guess in reference to the refutation of the principle. We, as embodied beings encountering novel and unexpected situations, cannot avoid the novel guesswork that Peirce describes. Likewise, we cannot avoid the logic or order that prefigures these hypotheses.

A possible objection may be made to this final point, that hypothesis formation rests upon a prefiguring continuity between a thoughtful human being and natural being on the whole. After all, is the beginning of inquiry not marked by a type of discontinuity, namely, a problem to be solved? At the risk of repetition, I consider the argument from another vantage point.

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