Robert Lane

On Peirce's Early Realism

Charles Peirce described the question of nominalism versus realism as the question "whether laws and general types are figments of the mind or are real" (1.16, 1903, emphases in original).' Peirce himself came down squarely on the side of realism. Late in his life, he described himself as "a scholastic realist of a somewhat extreme stripe" (5.470, c.1906). His "extreme scholastic realism" (8.208, c.1905) was the doctrine that there are both "real vague^' (5.453 and EP 2:354, 1905, emphasis in original)^, including real possibilities, and "real generals" (5.503, c.1905), including real natural laws and kinds.^ However, Peirce was not always an extreme scholastic realist, i.e. he did not always believe in the reality of both possibility and generals. He became a realist about possibility only in the 1890s, and for at least several years before that time, he was concurrently an anti-realist about possibility and a realist about generals.* That non-modal realism about generals, what one might think of as his moderate scholastic realism, stretches back at least as far as 1868, when he argued that "universals may be as real as singulars" (W 2:175) and that "generals must have a real existence" (5.312, EP 1:53 and W 2:239).= But it is unclear whether Peirce was a realist about generals before 1868, and several passages from 1865 strongly suggest that he was not. For instance, he wrote that abstract terms such as "whiteness" denote only "fictions." In the case of such terms, "we pretend that we hold realistic opinions..." (W 1:287, 1865, emphasis in original). That same year, he wrote that ^^Qualities are fictions ... redness is nothing, but a fiction framed for the purpose of philosophizing; yet harmless so long as we remember that the scholastic realism it implies is false" (W 1:307, 1865, emphasis in original). On the reasonable assumptions that qualities like whiteness and redness are generals and that by "scholastic realism" Peirce meant the claim that there are real generals, these comments indicate that, in 1865, Peirce was not a realist about generals and thus that he adopted his moderate scholastic realism (i.e., realism about generals but not possibility) at some point between 1865 and 1868. This seems to be the conclusion reached by Max Fisch. Fisch was concerned to trace "Peirce's Progress from Nominalism toward Realism," both in an essay by that name and in his introduction to volume two of the Chronological Edition Transactions ofthe Charles S. Peirce Society Fall, 2004, Vol. XL, No. 4

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of Peirce's writings. Fisch argued that over the course of Peirce's life, his philosophical views became increasingly realistic, particularly with regard to probability and possibility. And although Fisch did not say explicidy that the early Peirce denied that there are real generals, his emphasis on the seemingly anti-realist passages from 1865 indicates that he took the early Peirce to have been an anti-realist, not only about probability and possibility, but about generals as well.* Fisch was undoubtedly correct about Peirce's increasing realism about probability and possibility. But the textual evidence regarding Peirce's view of generals is not as decisive as it appears. Its suggestion of anti-realism about generals runs counter to Peirce's later assessment of his own intellectual development. In 1893, he wrote that "never, during the thirty years in which I have been writing on philosophical questions, have I failed in my allegiance to realistic opinions and to certain Scotistic ideas" (6.605).'''' A reasonable interpretation of this remark is that from at least 1863 two years before he wrote the seemingly and-realist passages quoted above Peirce was a realist about generals. In this essay I want to setde the quesdon whether, prior to 1868, Peirce was in fact an and-realist about generals. In doing so, I will explain how early comments which so strongly suggest and-realism about generals can be reconciled with the self-assessment quoted above. My explanadon of those comments, as well as my account of Peirce's earliest posidon regarding generals, will hinge primarily on arguments for two claims. The first claim is that Peirce never meant to deny the reality of qualides but meant only to deny that qualides are enddes, things, or individuals. The second claim is that at some point between 1865 and 1868, what Peirce meant by the phrase "scholasdc realism" changed dramadcally. Prior to that year, he used "scholasdc realism" to refer to the view, not simply that there are real generals, but that generals, including qualities, are individual things. It is this doctrine that Peirce meant to deny, not just prior to 1868, but undl the end ofhis life. After laying out my arguments for those claims, I will consider other passages cited by Fisch in support of his account of Peirce's early nominalism, and I will argue that those passages do not indicate that Peirce denied the reality of generals prior to 1868. I will conclude that despite first appearances, the textual evidence does not support the claim that Peirce moved from a posidon of and-realism to one of realism about generals.

To begin, I need to say some things both about terminology and about the state of Peirce's thinking about generals in 1868. Perhaps the least quesdon-begging way of describing the disagreement between realism and nominalism is to say that it is a disagreement as to the

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nature of attribute agreement, the state that obtains when two or more objects have an attribute in common, e.g. being pink, being a sample of copper, being a mosquito, etc. Michael Loux describes contemporary realists and nominalists as sharing the belief that attribute agreement is somedmes "objecdve," by which he means that "many of our ways of sordng things are fixed by the objects themselves."' As Loux describes it, the debate between realism and nominalism is over whether there is some general theoredcal explanadon of attribute agreement. Realists maintain that (i) there is such an explanation, and that (ii) it is this: for every case of attribute agreement among objects, a ... w, there is a thing, O, and a reladon, il, such that each of those objects stands in i l to O. Nominalists either reject both (i) and (ii) and claim that attribute agreement is metaphysically basic and that no such explanadon is possible, or they accept (i) and reject (ii), maintaining that realism's explanadon is off the mark and that some better explanadon is needed. So on Loux's account, anyone who rejects (ii) is a nominalist, and anyone who accepts it is a realist. Now, in Loux's senses of "realism" and "nominalism," Peirce was a nominalist, not just early on but throughout the decades spanned by his philosophical wddng. He never held that attribute agreement is best explained by saying that there are things to which items with agreeing attributes are related. Loux's descripdon of realism seems roughly equivalent to what Peirce derisively called "nominalisdc Platonism," the view that generals are individual things capable of reacdng against other individual things.'" So I will not use "realism" or "nominalism" in the same ways as Loux. By "realism" I will mean the claim that there are real generals (i.e., universals, including natural kinds, types, laws, etc.); that is, that there are generals that are independent of what anyone thinks about them. This statement of realism incorporates Peirce's definidon of "real," which he used as early as 187rs Berkeley review. There he disdnguished between that which is real, the charactedsdcs of which are independent of what we think about it, and that which is a fiction or figment, the charactedsdcs of which do depend on what we think about it." Says Peirce, this is a definidon of "real" on which nominalists and realists agree. But they disagree about what sorts of thing are real, i.e., what sorts of thing are independent of what people think about them. On Peirce's view, it is with exacdy this difference of opinion that the disagreement between nominalism and realism begins. Nominalists hold that the real includes only that which is outside of individual minds and which causes sensadon, and thus thought, in those minds; it is "the incognizable cause" of cognidon (8.15, EP 1:91, and W 2:471).'^ Now, nominalists can grant that there is generality, of a sort, in thought; that, for example, "man" is a "mental term or thought-sign" that "stands indifferendy for either of the sensible objects caused by the two external realides" (8.12, EP 1:88, and W 2:468).^^ But since they take that which is incognizable to be non-general, they are nonetheless led to accept

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Anti-Realism about Generals (ARG): generals (i.e. universals, including natural kinds, types, laws, etc.) are not real, i.e. they are not independent of what anyone thinks about them. So nominalists begin by assuming that the only realities are those incognizable things outside the mind that cause sensation, and this leads them to deny the reality of generals. As the preceding suggests, Peirce may not have had just a single doctrine in mind when he used the term "nominalism." It seems that nominalism, in his sense, includes not only ARG, but also distinctive views about cognidon and reality. So whenever possible, I will refer, not simply to nominalism, but to specific nominalistic views, such as ARG or the nominalistic conception of reality. Now by no later than 1868's "Questions Concerning Reality," a draft ofthe cognition series of 1868-69, Peirce had struck on a different way of elucidating the concept of reality. He described the real as "the object of an absolutely true proposition" (W 2:175);" this andcipated the more sophisticated account of reality in "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" as "that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you" (5.311, EP 1:52 and W 2:239, 1868).'^ And it is clearly an early statement of Peirce's clarification ofthe concept of reality which results fi-om applying the pragmatic maxim to that concept.'* On this pragmatic conception of reality, generals are real: ...a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true representation. Since, therefore, the word "man" is true of something, that which "man" means is real. (5.312, EP1:53, and W 2:239,1868) ...general concepdons enter into all judgments, and therefore into true opinions. Consequendy a thing in the general is as real as in the concrete. It is perfecdy true that all white things have whiteness in them, for that is only saying, in another form of words, that all white things are white; but since it is true that real things possess whiteness, whiteness is real. (8.14, EP 1:90, and W 2:470,1871) Unlike the nominalist's nodon of reality, on which only uncognizable causes of cognition are real, Peirce's pragmadc notion, far from simply being compadble with realism about generals, implies that there are real generals. The passages just quoted echo what Peirce had written about universals in

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"Quesdons Concerning Reality": "...there is nothing to prevent universal proposidons from being absolutely true, and therefore universals may be as real as singulars" (W 2:175, 1868).'^ There he described his belief in die reality of generals as "nominalisdc, inasmuch as it bases universals upon signs"; but it is sdll a form of realism about generals, as it is "quite opposed to that individualism which is often supposed to be coextensive with nominalism" {ibid.). That is, it does not limit reality to individuals only; it allows that there are also real generals. He went on to describe the "nominalisdc element" of his theory of cognidon as the claim that "nothing out of cognidon and significadon generally, has any generality"'^ and to illustrate it with this example: ... is the blackness of this., idendcal with the blackness of that'i I cannot see how it can help being; the determinadons which accompany it are different but the blackness itself is the same, by supposidon. If this seems a monstrous doctrine, remember that my nominalism saves me from all absurdity. This blackness, upon my principles is purely significadve purely cognidve; there is nothing I suppose to prevent signs being applied to different individuals in precisely the same sense. ... blackness in general, is shown to be real, by the tesdmony of the senses, and its cognidve or significadve character does not stand in the way of this, at all. (W 2:180, 1868) The "nominalisdc element" of Peirce's theory is the view that generality does not occur outside "of cognidon and significadon generally," i.e., outside of what is cognizable. It is this view of generality that, when joined with the nominalisdc view of the real as limited to incognizable causes of cognidon, implies ARG. I will call this view Peirce's Cognitionism about Generals (CG)." In Peirce's statement of CG ("nothing out of cognidon and significadon generally, has any generality"), the word "generally" suggests that even early on, his view was that generality does not have being only within the cognidve acdvides of specific individuals., i.e., it suggests that he took real generals to be external rather than internal?'^ For Peirce, the external is that which is independent of "what phenomenon is immediately present, that is of how we may diink or feel" (8.13, EP 1:90, and W 2:470, 1871).^' In addidon to being real, and thus independent of what anyone thinks about it., the external is independent o? how anyone happens to think or feel. But not everything real is external; there are also internal realides, "phenomena within our own minds, dependent upon our thought, which are at the same dme real in the sense that we really think them," e.g. "a dream has a real existence as a mental phenomenon, if somebody has really dreamt it" (5.405, EP 1:136-7, and W

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3:271, 1878). A dream, as a phenomenon in the mind of an individual, is dependent on how that individual thinks, and is thus internal in Peirce's sense.^^ Now, it is clear from Peirce's examples of the real-but-internal that what is internal is always internal to someone or other. The fact that I had a dream last night, or the fact that I just thought of having lunch, are real facts about my mental life facts that depend on how things go in my mind., rather than on how things happen in cognition generally. Were generals internal, they would not necessarily be figments, since some internals are real; but they would nonetheless be dependent on the thoughts or feelings of specific individuals. A given general would be like the occurrence of some specific dream or thought it would depend on how some pardcular individual thinks or feels. To be external rather than internal is to be independent of how anyone in pardcular thinks and thus to be free of the idiosyncrasies of the experiences of individual people. Now, Peirce stated explicidy, in the period of his later, modal scholasdc realism, that there are real, external "general types and wouldbes" (8.191, c.1904). And although there is no such explicit statement in his early wridngs on realism, that he took real generals to be external even early on is suggested by the Berkeley review: ... since it is true that real things possess whiteness, whiteness is real. It is a real which only exists by virtue of an act of thought knowing it, but that thought is not an arbitrary or accidental one dependent on any idiosyncrasies., but one which wiW hold in the final opinion. (8.14, EP 1:90, and W 2:470, emphasis added) Clearly, Peirce's early view was that the reality of whiteness depends upon "an act of thought knowing it." But his claim that the act is neither arbitrary nor accidental suggests that, on his view, whiteness, unlike a dream or a thought experienced by a pardcular person at a pardcular dme, does not depend on what anyone in particular thinks. In other words, it suggests that whiteness is not internal."'^* Sdll, real generals are not independent of thought altogether (not "out of cognidon and significadon generally"), since the final opinion is not independent of thought altogether (not "independent ... of thought in general"). This Cognidonism about Generals, the "nominalisdc element" of Peirce's theory of cognidon, remained a part of his realism about generals through the period of his modal scholasdc realism, as the following two passages make clear: To say that a predicdon has a decided tendency to be fulfilled, is to say that the future events are in a measure really governed by a law. ... If the predicdon has a tendency to be fulfilled, it must be that future events

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have a tendency to conform to a general rule. "Oh," but say the nominalists, "this general rule is nothing but a mere word or couple of words!" I reply, "Nobody ever dreamed of denying that what is general is ofthe nature of a general sign; but the quesdon is whether future events will conform to it or not. If they will, your adjecdve 'mere' seems to be ill-placed." (1.26, 1903, emphasis added) ...the external world, (that is, the world that is comparadvely external) does not consist of existent objects merely, nor merely of these and their reacdons; but on the contrary, its most important reals have the mode of being of what the nominalist calls "mere" words, that is, general types and would-bes. The nominalist is right in saying that they are substantially of the nature of wordy., but his "mere" reveals a complete misunderstanding of what our everyday wodd consists of. (8.191, c.1904, emphasis added)

As this suggests, CG is a doctrine that an and-realist about generality could accept, and in fact it is compadble with the nominalism that Peirce sketched in the Berkeley review while explaining the nominalisdc view of reality (8.12, EP 1:88, and W 2:468, 1871). The general "man," being a thought-sign, is ofthe nature of thought and significadon; but on the nominalist view of reality, nothing that is of the nature of thought and significadon is real, since the real is limited to the incognizable causes of cognidon hence the nominalist commitment to ARG. But the conjuncdon of CG and Peirce's pragmadc concepdon of reality does not entail ARG, and this is why, in 1868, Peirce was able to accept CG without also denying the reality of generals. His reasoning 1. The real is the object ofa true proposidon. 2. Some true proposidons have general objects. 3. Therefore, there are real generals. was consistent with CG, the "nominalisdc element" in his realism. So by no later than 1868's "Quesdons Concerning Reality," Peirce had adopted a moderate, i.e. non-modal, realism about generals: "...there is nothing to prevent universal proposidons from being absolutely true, and therefore universals may be as real as singulars" (W 2:175,1868).

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I will now argue that the passages from 1865 that so strongly suggest Peirce's early acceptance of ARG acuially indicate no such thing. They are, in fact, consistent with Peirce's moderate scholasdc realism of 1868. Here again, and at greater length, are the relevant passages. The first comes from the eleventh of Peirce's Harvard Lectures "On the Logic of Science": For every symbol must have denotadon that is must imply the existence of some thing to which it is applicable. It may be a mere ficdon; we may know it to be a ficdon; it may be intended to be a fiction and the very form of the word may hint that intendon as in the case of abstract terms such as whiteness., nonentity., and the like. In these cases, we pretend that we hold realistic opinions for the sake of indicadng that our proposidons are meant to be explicatory or analydc. (W 1:287, ApdlMay, 1865) The second and third passages are from drafts of an unpublished work endded "An Unpsychological View of Logic..."^^ In one draft, Peirce wrote: Qualities are ficdons; for though it is true that roses are red, yet redness is nothing, but a ficdon framed for the purpose of philosophizing; yet harmless so long as we remember that the scholasdc realism it implies is false. (W 1:307, May-Fall 1865) Peirce expressed the same views in a subsequent draft: What are such words as blueness., hardness., loudness, but ficdons...? ... To use [such terms] ... is to make use ofa ficdon, but one which is corrected by a steady avoidance ofall realisdc inferences. (W 1:311-12, May-Fall 1865) But that Peirce did not mean to assert ARG with regard to types corresponding to sensory qualides is suggested by the following claim, made by Peirce in the same paragraph of "An Unpsychological View..." in which he said "qualides are ficdons": "Without this kind of ficdon, not only modern mathemadcs would be impossible; but philosophy, itself, would be deprived ofall its terms" (W 1:311, 1865). This echoes another passage written in the same year, from the tenth Harvard lecture:

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Abstract words such as truth., honor ... are somewhat difficult to understand. It seems to me that they are simply ficdons. Every word must denote some thing; these are names for certain ficddous things which are supposed for the purpose of indicadng that the object of a concrete term is meant as it would be did it contain either no informadon or a certain amount of informadon. ... Hence, only analydcal proposidons are possible of abstract terms; and on this account they are peculiarly useful in metaphysics where the question is what can we know without any informadon. (W 1:2767,1865, emphases in original) So if Peirce was commitdng himself to ARG, he was also denying the reality of objects of mathemadcal and philosophical (including metaphysical) inquiry. Muddying the waters sdll further is Peirce's claim, from the eleventh Harvard lecture of 1865, that "there are real kinds in nature." At first glance this may seem to be decisive evidence that in 1865 Peirce was a realist about natural kinds. But a closer look at the passage shows it not to be decisive after all: "...there are real kinds in nature, that is to say classes which differ from all others in more respects than one..."^* (W 1:287). This characterizadon of natural kinds as real "classes" is consistent with a denial of the reality of generals and generality. It is possible that at this dme, Peirce did not think of natural kinds as generals, but as collecdons of concrete pardculars. Unfortunately, this is all Peirce had to say about natural kinds in this lecture, and it does not setde the issue whether Peirce was a realist about generals at this dme. To see what Peirce was really up to in the seemingly and-realist passages, we need to look more closely at "An Unpsychological View..." The passages quoted above come from Peirce's cridcisms of psychologism, the view that logic is a descripdve enterpdse, one that describes the way that humans think. On this view, the principles or laws of logic are the laws of human thought. Peirce attributed this view to John Stuart Mill (W 1:164 and 166,1865), among others, and argued against it that logic, while descripdve, is not descripdve of thought as such. Rather, as he put it in the first Harvard lecture of 1865, logic consists of descripdve claims about symbols and thus descdbes the way that humans think only insofar as that thinking is symbolic (W 1:166,1865). In making his case against psychologism, Peirce argued that it is legidmate to speak ofthe logical properdes of an argument, e.g. validity, even if the argument was inscdbed long ago in a forgotten language and will never be translated or understood by anyone ever again. To call such an argument valid is to say that "if it could be read ... [it] would yield a belief such as would never be contradicted by an experience" (W 1:312, 1865).^^ Peirce was explaining the claim that an argument is valid by describing what would happen were someone to interpret

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that argument, and he took this explanadon to be no less legidmate because no one will in fact ever interpret the argument. Peirce intended this explanadon of validity to count against psychologism, which he evidently took to imply that an argument's logical properdes depend on some actual person experiencing that argument. Peirce raised the issue of sensory qualides (blueness, hardness, etc.) in order to draw an analogy between such qualides and logical properdes and thus strengthen his case against psychologism. An argument that will never be interpreted is, he wrote, like a flower in a desert. Has this not colour because nobody can see its colour.' It is true that to call that a colour which cannot be seen is a sort of ficdon; but it is a ficdon which is purified from its ficddous element completely as soon as we add that it cannot be seen. ... What are such words as blueness, hardness, loudness, but ficdons of this kind.> (W 1:311, In order for us sensibly to predicate color ofa physical object, it need not be the case that the object will ever again be seen by anyone. Our talk of the object's color may be understood as a claim about what would happen were someone to see the object, whether or not anyone ever actually does see it. Peirce's point was that the same holds for validity. Our talk of validity may be understood to refer to the non-actual case in which someone were to experience the ancient argument and the explanadon of validity would rely on claims about what would happen in such a case.^' This helps to illuminate what Peirce was up to in those passages, but it doesn't fully explain them. Although he was obviously drawing an analogy between logical properdes and sensory qualides, it is unclear how far the analogy was supposed to go. After all, he did say something about blueness, hardness and loudness that he did not say about validity: he called them fictions, which indicates that he took them not to be real, i.e. not to be independent of what anyone thinks about them. Now, I suspect that Peirce intended the points he made about blueness, hardness, and loudness to apply to validity as well. I suspect this because, following Mill, Peirce called "blueness," "hardness," and "loudness" abstract names, and although he did not describe "validity" as an abstract name, it does count as such on Mill's view. According to Mill, abstract names denote the qualides that are connoted by their corresponding concrete names.^ For example, the abstract name "blueness" denotes the quality that is connoted by the concrete name "blue." Similarly, on Mill's view, the abstract name "validity" denotes the quality that is connoted by the concrete name "valid." If my suspicion is correct, then Peirce was taking the same posidon regarding the reality of validity as he was regarding the reality of blueness,

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hardness, and other sensory qualides. This, I think, would gready strengthen my case that he was not commitdng himself to ARG with regard to those qualides. Unfortunately, Peirce did not say explicidy that he wanted to treat sensory qualides and logical properdes in the same way, nor did he acknowledge that "validity" is an abstract name. For stronger evidence that Peirce was not commitdng to ARG in these passages, we need to note a pair of disdncdons he employed in a draft of "An Unpsychological View...". The first is the distincdon between thing znd quality;^^ the second is that between the matter znd form ofa "phenomenon" (by which Peirce seems to have meant a visual expedence).^^ Matter and form are two aspects of a visual experience, and according to Peirce, there is a hypothesis corresponding to each of them. Corresponding to the matter of an experience is the hypothesis that there are things or "external realides," and corresponding to the form of an experience is the hypothesis that there are qualities. ^''Things," wrote Peirce, "are legidmate hypotheses." But ^'[q]ualities are ficdons; for though it is true that roses are red, yet redness is nothing, but a ficdon framed for the purposes of philosophizing" (W 1:307,1865). But this claim does not imply ARG about types corresponding to sensory qualides. In 1865, Peirce held that the very use of abstract names such as "blueness," "hardness" and "loudness" suggests that there are external realides, i.e. things or enddes, to which those names refer: It has been said that these "abstract names" denote qualides and connote nothing. But it seems to me the phrase "denoted object" is nothing but a roundabout expression for a thing. What else is a thing but that which a perception or sign stands for? To say that a quality is denoted is to say that it is a thing. And this gives a hint of the vedtable nature of such terms. They were framed at a dme when all men were realists in the scholasdc sense and consequendy things were meant by them, enddes which had no quality but that expressed by the word. They, therefore, must denote these things and connote the qualides they relate to. To use them, now, then ... is to make use ofa ficdon, but one which is corrected by a steady avoidance of all realisdc inferences. (W 1:311-312,1865) This shows that Peirce, in 1865, took terms such as "blueness," "hardness" and "loudness" to refer to qualides conceived as things or entities. Peirce's concept of thing or entity is an andcipadon of his later concept of the existent or actual. The existent is "that which reacts against other things" (8.191, 1904); it is, in other words, an individual (3.613, 1901-2). And Peirce would eventually come to

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think ofthe individual as coextensive with the non-general (e.g., 1.434, c.1896). Therefore, when Peirce characterized qualities as fictions, he was rejecting the view that blueness, hardness, and the like are things., individuals, "entities which [have] no quality but that expressed by the word" (W 1:312, 1865).^' This is the view that Peirce would eventually call nominalistic Platonism, the claim that generals are (not just real but) existing individuals. The realistic inference against which he cautioned us in 1865 is the inference from the presence of abstract terms in our language to the belief that there exist individual things that those terms denote. When Peirce denied that "whiteness," "hardness," etc. denote anything real, he was denying that whiteness, hardness, etc. are real individual things or entities.^ And that denial is compatible with a belief in the reality of whiteness, hardness, etc., conceived, not as individual things or entities, but as real generals, objects of general terms occurring in true propositions. In particular, it is compatible with the realism about qualities expressed in 1868's "Questions Concerning Reality." Again: ...is the blackness of this., identical with the blackness of that''. I cannot see how it can help being; the determinations which accompany it are different but the blackness itself is the same, by supposition. ... This blackness, upon my principles is purely significative purely cognitive [sic]-., there is nothing I suppose to prevent signs being applied to different individuals in precisely the same sense. ... if our principles are correct blackness in general, is shown to be real, by the testimony of the senses, and its cognitive or significative character does not stand in the way of this, at all. (W 2:181) The ontological commitments Peirce made in this passage are compatible with his 1865 claims. What changed between 1865 and 1868 was his willingness to use abstract terms like "blackness" to refer to qualities conceived as generals rather than individuals. So in the 1865 passages in which he characterized qualities as fictions, Peirce was denying reality only of qualities-conceived-as-individuals. This is a position he would never give up, because he would never adopt the position that qualities are individuals, existents or entities. So the 1865 passages in which Peirce claimed that qualities are fictions do not indicate that the early Peirce accepted ARG.

But what about Peirce's 1865 suggestion that "scholastic realism" is false? The correct explanation of that claim is not that Peirce meant, in 1865, to deny

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the reality of generals, even qualities. Rather, a more accurate explanation is that the use Peirce put to the phrase "scholastic realism" changed between 1865 and 1868. Earlier, he meant by "scholastic realism" the view that generals are individuals, things, entities (using "exist" as Peirce came to do later in his life, we can say that he meant by "scholastic realism" the view that generals exist). Later, he meant by "scholastic realism" the view simply that generals are real. The textual evidence supports this interpretation. In 1865's "An Unpsychological View of Logic...", Peirce wrote: To say that a quality is denoted is to say that it is a thing. And this gives a hint of the veritable nature of such terms [as "blueness," "hardness," and "Ioudness"]. They werefi"amedat a time when all men were realists in the scholastic sense and consequendy things were meant by them, entities which had no quality but that expressed by the word. (W 1:312, 1865, emphasis added) This indicates that in 1865, Peirce held realism "in the scholastic sense" to be the view that qualities are things., entities that have only the quality denoted by the word that refers to them. In other words, Peirce seems at this time to have taken scholastic realism to be the view that qualities are real individuals. At this early stage, by "scholastic realism" and "realism in the scholastic sense" he meant the view he would later call nominalistic Platonism. This shows how his claim that "scholastic realism ... is false" (W 1:307, 1865) does not imply ARG since his rejection of "scholastic realism" amounts to nothing but the denial that qualities are individual things. But by 1868's "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," Peirce's understanding of, and attitude towards, the realism of the scholastics had changed in an important way: ... since no cognition of ours is absolutely determinate, generals must have a real existence. Now this scholastic realism is usually set down as a belief in metaphysical fictions. But, in fact, a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true representation. Since, therefore, the word "man" is true of something, that which "man" means is real. (5.312, EP 1:53, and V^ 2:239,1868) This is clear evidence that by this time Peirce was no longer using the phrase "scholastic realism" to refer to the view that generals, including qualities, are individual things. Here Peirce was using "scholastic realism" to refer to the view

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that generals, although not individual things, are nonetheless real. And as noted above, by this time Peirce had come to think of the real as "that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent ofthe vagaries of me and you" (5.311, EP 1:52 and W 2:239). If I am right that his use of the phrase "scholastic realism" changed from 1865 to 1868, then his claim that "scholastic realism is usually set down as a belief in metaphysical fictions" and his subsequent correction of that misunderstanding of scholastic realism is a correction of a mistake that he himself had made just a few years before. The mistake was not to believe in the reality of qualities-conceivedas-individuals; rather, it was to attribute that belief to (at least some) medieval realists. It is that mistaken attribution that Peirce was correcting in "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities." If my explanation ofthe 1865 passages is correct, then the following passage, from 1909, should be read as yet another criticism by Peirce of his own earlier misunderstanding: It must not be imagined that any notable realist of the thirteenth or fourteenth century took the ground that any "universal" was what we in English should call a "thing," as it seems that, in an earlier age, some realists and some nominalists, too, had done; though perhaps it is not quite certain that they did so, their writings being lost. (1.27 n.l, 1909) This echoes what Peirce wrote a few years earlier, in about 1905, about the tendency of "individualists," those who believe that reality consists solely of individual things, to project their view onto others: Individualists are apt to fall into the almost incredible misunderstanding that all other men are individualists, too even the scholastic realists, who, they suppose, thought that "universals exist." ... They certainly did not so opine, but regarded generals as modes of determination of individuals; and such modes were recognized as being ofthe nature of thought. (5.503,

An explanation of this change in Peirce's use of the phrase "scholastic realism" is suggested by what we know of Peirce's philosophical studies between 1865 and 1868. John Boler estimates that Peirce's first serious studies of the works of Duns Scotus occurred "around 1867-68,"'* and according to Max Fish, in the spring of 1867, Peirce

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acquired early editions of Duns Scotus. On January 1 1868 he compiled a "Catalogue of Books on Mediaeval Logic which are available in Cambridge" more of them in his own library than at Harvard's or anywhere

So Peirce spent significant time studying medieval philosophy between his prima facie anti-realist writings of 1865 and his explicidy realist statements of 1868. Those studies had an important and lasting infiuence on the development of his metaphysics. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that his studies caused him to change from a position of and-realism to one of realism about generals. Rather, those studies deepened his understanding of the realism of the scholastics and thus caused him to change his mind about what (at least some of) the medieval realists themselves had believed.^'

So the passages that seem so strongly to indicate an early commitment to ARG are, when properly understood, consistent with Peirce having been a realist about generals prior to 1868. But these passages are only some ofthe material on which Fisch based his claim that the early Peirce was a "nominalist." I now need to address the other textual evidence upon which Fisch relied: Peirce's review of John Venn's The Logic of Chance., his statements about "cognidonism," and his claim that the proper course of inquiry is to begin as a nominalist "and to continue in that opinion until [one] is driven out of it by the force majeure of irreconcilable facts" (4.1,1898). Fisch noted that in Peirce's 1867 review of The Logic of Chance., he endorsed the "nominalistic" view of probability as against the "realisdc" and "conceptualisdc" views. Peirce described the three views as follows (W 2:98, 1867): realistic: probability is "something inhering in ... singular events." conceptualistic: probability "does not exist in ... singular events, but consists in the degree of credence which ought to be reposed in the occurrence of an event." nominalistic: "probability is ... the rado of the number of events in a certain part of an aggregate of them to the number in the whole aggregate." As Fisch pointed out, the "nominalisdc" view is simply the frequency theory of probability. But the fi-equency theory of probability is consistent with Peirce's early, non-modal realism about generals, so Peirce's early commitment to this

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view of probability is consistent with his having been a realist about generals at that dme. As I mendoned above, undl the 1890s Peirce took the quesdons ofthe reality of generals and the reality of modality to be independent. On that early view, there is no incompadbility between "nominalism" (i.e. and-realism) about probability and realism about generality. And-realism about probability and realism about generality are compadble doctrines, so long as one's concepdon of generality is non-modal as Peirce's was before the 1890s. So that Peirce, in 1867, accepted an and-realist view of probability by no means implies that he was at that dme an and-realist about generals. If this were not the case, then it would be hard to explain the fact, which Fisch himself acknowledged,'' that Peirce condnued to accept the "nominalisdc" view of probability for roughly three decades after he wrote the Venn review long after he had explicidy declared for realism about generals. So Peirce's acceptance of the frequency theory of probability in his 1867 review of Venn is not evidence that he accepted ARG. Fisch cited other passages that perhaps provide a stronger reason to believe Peirce had accepted ARG early on. These are passages in which Peirce asserts that the proper course of inquiry for a metaphysician to take is that dictated by Ockham's razor: begin as a nominalist (in some sense) and then accept realism only when forced to do so by the evidence. Fisch quoted or referred to each of the following: You must have a consistent plan of procedure, and the hypothesis you try is the one which comes next in turn to be tried according to that plan. This jusdfies giving nominalism a fair trial before you go on to realism; because it is a simple theory which if it doesn't work will have afforded indicadons of what kind of realism ought to be tried first, (letter to William James, 8.251, March 13,1897) What disdnguishes the nominalist is that he does not admit certain elements. The realist, if he is a sound thinker, must once have occupied the same posidon. (draft of letter to Ernst Schroder, April 7,1897) It appears therefore that in sciendfic method the nominalists are endrely right. Everybody ought to be a nominalist at first, and to condnue in that opinion undl he is ddven out of it by the force majeure of irreconcilable facts. (4.1,1898) Fisch noted only that these comments are from "later years," not that they were all written from 1897 to 1898. But that they are from those years is important. It

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was in "The Logic of Relatives" (3.456-552), an ardcle published in The Monist in 1897, that Peirce took his final, decisive step toward worfa/realism. And it was around 1897 to 1898 that Peirce began to think ofthe quesdon of generality as one essendally involving modality.*" At the dme Peirce wrote the passages quoted above, his move from a moderate, non-modal scholasdc realism to an extreme, modal scholasdc realism wasfi-esh.With hindsight, the Peirce of 1897 and 1898 could look back on his previous, non-modal realism about generals and view it as having been somewhat "nominalisdc" in the sense that it was not as extreme a form of realism about generality as that towards which he has just moved. So I take Peirce, in the passages quoted above, to have had in mind, not just his own views pdor to 1868 (as Fisch seems to have thought), but his own views prior to 1897, the year he finally moved to his extreme, modal, scholasdc realism. They refiect the hindsight of a philosopher who has moved to an extreme, modal realism about generals and away from an earlier posidon of moderate, nonmodal and thus, more "nominalisdc" view of generals, but not one who previously held ARG. Some of the most vexing material upon which Fisch relied in his account of Peirce's early nominalism is that having to do with "cognidonism." Fisch quoted from an unpublished manuscdpt from late in Peirce's life, a manuscript in which Peirce referred to his own 1868 definidon ofthe real as "that which, sooner or later, informadon and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent ofthe vagaries of me and you." He wrote that this definidon is as plain "as the nose on one's face," once one looks at truth or a [sic] reality fi-om that point of view called "cognidonism," a point of view which it is probable that both James and I were led to take by the infiuence of our common fi-iend, not to call him our teacher, Chauncey Wright, who unquesdonably derived that way of thinking from John Stuart Mill, whose enthusiasdc follower he was... (R655, p.32,1910) Fisch quoted from this passage in order to illustrate "the variety of nominalisdc metaphysics that Peirce ... held" in 1867.*^ But what exacdy is cognidonism? Pracdcally all Peirce had to say with regard to cognidonism in R 655 is what is quoted above.*^ But Fisch suggests the following: Cognidonism was the doctrine that what there is is cognidons; that ^^cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms" (5.257); that "whatever is meant by any term as 'the real' is cognizable in some degree, and

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so is of the nature of a cognidon, in the objecdve sense of that term" (5.310); that cognidons are all in signs and none intuidve (5.253); that "cognidon arises by a process of beginning" in which there is no first (5.263), that is, nothing is sign-object only and not sign-vehicle or sign-interpretant; that every cognidon is condnued in another, so that none is interpretant only (5.253); and that nothing is absolutely singular or absolutely determinate, so that "being at all is being in general" (5.349). Clearly this variety of nominalism is also a variety of idealism; more exacdy, a semiodc idealism.** So on Fisch's view, cognidonism is not a single doctrine, but a cluster of related ideas about cognidon and reality, and it was pardally in virtue of Peirce's acceptance of that cluster of views that he was, in 1867, a nominalist. But there are a number of problems with what Fisch said regarding cognidonism. First, he went too far in saying that, for Peirce, "what there is is cognidons." In saying this Fisch failed to disdnguish between two claims: (1) "what there is is cognidons," i.e., everything that there is, is a cognidon. (2) everything that there is, is cognizable. There is an enormous gulf between those two claims. That Peirce held (2) is clearly illustrated by the passages quoted by Fisch, and I strongly suspect that (2) is what Peirce himself meant by "cognidonism" (which is why I called his view that "nothing out of cognidon and significadon generally, has any generality" his "Cognidonism about Generals"). But it is not clear at all that he held (1). Although Peirce did hold that whatever is real "is ofthe nature ofz cognidon, in the objecdve sense of that term," (emphasis added) it is far fi-om obvious that this implies (or that Peirce intended it to imply) claim (1). Fisch's formuladon, "all there is is cognidons," is much too close to Berkeleyan idealism to capture Peirce's view. The second problem is more to the point of the present essay. All of the quotadons Fisch cited in the above-quoted paragraph come fi'om the final, published version ofthe cognidon series of 1868-69.*' According to Fisch, it is in that series that Peirce took his first step away from "nominalism" and towards "realism." But in this paragraph, Fisch intended to illustrate "the variety of nominalisdc metaphysics that Peirce ... held" in the period of his "inidal nominalism," before he wrote the final, published version of the cognition series. Fisch himself wrote that

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By the dme the cognidon series appears in print, Peirce has lowered his colors. Not only does he no longer call himself a nominalist, but in the second ardcle [i.e., "Some Consequences of Four Incapacides"] he declares unobtrusively for realism. (5.312) So if Peirce's "cognidonism" is present throughout the cognidon series, then it cannot be equivalent to the "nominalism" away from which Peirce moved (according to Fisch) in that series. At any rate, there is no reason to think that the doctrine Peirce called "cognidonism" is idendcal to ARG or that it entails ARG. For the reasons mendoned above, I believe that Fisch was mistaken to attribute to Peirce the endre cluster of doctrines about cognidon and reality that he listed in the abovequoted passage. But even if I am wrong and Fisch was right that in 1867 Peirce accepted all of those doctrines, this would not imply that the Peirce of 1867 denied the reality of generals. Those doctrines are consistent with the view that there are real generals.

So the textual evidence does not support the claim that Peirce moved from a posidon of and-realism to one of realism about generals. As I have argued, that evidence shows that Peirce began as an and-realist about qualides-conceived-asindividuals, not that he began as an and-realist about qualides-conceived-asgenerals. The seemingly and-realist passages of 1865, as well as other passages cited by Fisch, once properly understood, give us no reason to think that Peirce ever embraced ARG and denied that there are real generals. In fact, they are all consistent with Peirce's moderate, non-modal scholasdc realism about generals. To be sure, Fisch was dght that the early Peirce held and-realist posidons on probability and possibility. It would be decades before he broadened that inidal, moderate realism to transform it into an "extreme scholasdc realism" and before he revised his pragmadc maxim so that it would consistendy take account of the reality of "would-bes." But Peirce's "progress from nominalism toward realism" did not begin wath and-realism about generals. In his earliest statements relevant to the nominalism/realism debate, there is an "element" of nominalism viz. Cognidonism about Generals, the view that the general does not occur outside ofthe cognizable but no denial ofthe reality of generals.** State University of West Georgia rlane@westga.edu

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REFERENCES Boler, J. 1963 Burks, A. 1964

Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce's Relation to John Duns Scotus. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. "Peirce's Two Theories of Probability," in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, second series, Moore, E. and Robin, R. (eds.), Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 141-150. "Peirce's Nominalist-Realist Distinction, an Untenable Dualism," Transactions ofthe Charles S. Peirce Society 34, pp. 183-202. "Peirce's Progress from Nominalism toward Realism," Monist 51, pp. 159-78; reprinted in Peirce, Semeiotic and Pragmatism: Essays by Max H. Fisch, Ketner, K., and Kloesel, C. (eds.), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986, pp. 184-200; page references are to the reprint. "Introduction," in Peirce, C. S., 1982- , v.2, pp. xxi-xlviii. "Extreme Scholastic Realism: Its Relevance for Philosophy of Science Today," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2%, p^. 18-50. "Introduction," in Peirce, C. S., 1982- , v.6, pp. xxv-lxxxiv. Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. "Two Forms of Scholastic Realism in Peirce's Philosophy," Transactions ofthe Charles S. Peirce Society 24, pp. 317-348. A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive. London: Longman's. Reprinted in Collected Works of fohn Stuart Mill w.7-8, Robson, J. (ed.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. "Modality, Analogy, and Ideal Experiments According to C S . Peirce," 5yf/!;e41,pp. 65-83. "Peirce-Semandcs for Modal Logics," in Ketner, K., Ransdell, J., Eisele, C , Fisch, M., and Hardwick, C. (eds.), Proceedings ofthe C. S. Peirce Bicentennial International Congress. Graduate Studies Texas Tech University, no. 23, Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech Press, pp. 207-215.

de Waal, C. 1998 Fisch, M. 1967

1984 Haack, S. 1992 Houser, N. 2000 Loux, M. 1998 Michael, F. 1988 MiU, J.S. 1843

Morgan, C. 1979 1981

Peirce, CS. 1931-58 Collected Papers, Hartshorne, C , Weiss, P. and Burks, A. (eds.), 8 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (references in decimal notadon by volume and paragraph number). The Charles S. Peirce Papers, microfilm edition, Cambridge: Harvard 1966 University Library, Photographic Service. References to this microfilm set of Peirce's papers held in Houghton Library, Harvard, use the numbering system for manuscdpts developed by Robin (1967, 1971)

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(references by manuscdpt and, when available, page number). ne New Elements ofMathematics, Eisele, C. (ed.), 4 vols. in 5, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1976 (reference by volume and page number). 1982Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce: a Chronological Edition, Fisch, M., Moore, E., and Kloesel, C , et al. (eds.), 6 w., Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (references to "W" by volume and page number). 1992-98 77;e Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, 2 vols.. Houser, N., Kloesel, C , and the Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (references to "EP" by volume and page number). 1992 Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, Ketner, K. (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1997 Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, Turrisi, P. (ed.), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Roberts, D. 1970 "On Peirce's Realism," Transactions ofthe Charles S. Peirce Society 6, pp. 67-83. Robin, R. 1967 Annotated Catalogue ofthe Papers of Charles S. Peirce, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. 1971 "The Peirce Papers: A Supplementary Catalogue," Transactions ofthe Charles S. Peirce Society 7, pp. 37-57. Short, T. 1996 "Review Essay," Synthese 106, pp. 409-30. 1976

NOTES 1. References in this decimal notation are to Peirce's Collected Papers by volume and paragraph number. 2. References to "EP" are to The Essential Peirce by volume and page number. 3. Cf R 290:17, 1905; 6.485 and EP 2:450, 1908; and R 339, 1908. References to "R" are to the Harvard manuscripts cataloged in Robin (1967, 1971), available in a microfilm edition. The Charles S. Peirce Papers, produced by Harvard University Library; references are by Robin's manuscript number and, when available, page number. 4. In 1897, motivated by problems in set theory, Peirce adopted a fiallblown realism about modality (3.S27f.). Prior to this time, Peirce took the question whether there are real generals to be independent of the question whether possibility is real. But not long after 1897, he came to think ofthe two questions, not just as related, but as identical. For the most part, I will be setting aside the issue of modality in this essay (however, see note 29). For a detailed account of Peirce's eventual acceptance of modal realism, see my "Peirce's Modal Shift," forthcoming. 5. References to "W" are to the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition by volume and page number.

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6. Fisch wrote: "Where is the evidence in volume 1 of [the Chronological Edition] that [Peirce] was a professing nominalist during the period of that volume? In what he says about the falsity of scholastic realism on pages 307 and 312 and in other relevant passages on pages 287, 306, and 360." (1984, p. xxvi) This is as close as Fisch comes in either this 1984 piece or in his 1967 article "Peirce's Progress..." to claiming that the early Peirce denied the reality, not just of probability and possibility, but of generality as well. Fisch was explicit, though, in suggesting the time and location of Peirce's "first step toward realism": 1868, in the second article of the foumal of Speculative Philosophy cognition series. In reading Fisch as having held that Peirce began as an anti-realist about generality before the cognition series of 1868-9,1 disagree with Don Roberts (1970). On Roberts' reading of Fisch 1967, Fisch did not "class [Peirce] with those who deny the real existence of anything general." (p.76) Susan Haack (1992, p. 44 n.4) seems to agree with me, and to disagree with Roberts, on this point. Fisch's commitment to the claim that early on Peirce was an anti-realist about generals is far less clear in 1967's "Peirce's Progress...", to which Roberts 1970 responds, than in his 1984 introduction to v.2 ofthe Chronological Edition, so it is understandable that Roberts does not see it. Michael 1988 refers to Roberts 1970 and notes in passing that "Roberts now accepts Fisch's view" (p. 346 n.2) that "Peirce was a nominalist before he became a scholastic realist" (p. 317). Roberts' mind may have been changed by exactly those passages from v.l ofthe Chronological Edition to which Fisch refers in his "Introduction" to v.2 the fact that Roberts 1970 refers to none of those passages supports this hypothesis. Michael 1988 and Short 1996 are, like Roberts 1970, critical of Fisch's account of Peirce's progress from nominalism to realism. Michael agrees with Fisch that Peirce was not always a realist, but identifies 1883, not 1868, as the year Peirce began to move away from nominalism towards realism. However, by "nominalism" Michael means, not the view that there is no real generality, but the view that there is no generality apart from cognition. Short, on the other hand, takes Peirce's nominalism to continue into his later period of modal realism. But when Short refers to "Peirce's continuing 'nominalism,'" he means the view that reality is to be identified with "a world external to cognition." (p. 420) On the disagreements among Fisch, Roberts, Michael, and Short, see Houser 2000, pp. Ixxxi-lxxxii. For my own critical comments on Short's account, see note 18; and for more on Houser's and Michael's views, see note 24. 7. Peirce made a similar comment ten years later, in his Lowell Lectures of 1903: In a long notice of Frazer's [sic] Berkeley., in the North American Review for October, 1871, I declared for realism. I have since very carefully and thoroughly revised my philosophical opinions more than half a dozen times, and have modified them more or less on most topics; but I have never been able to think differently on that question of nominalism and realism. (1.20) He might be understood to have meant that since his review of Fraser's Berkeley, he had not been able to think differently about this question, whereas at some time before 1871 he had accepted nominalism. Or he might be understood to have meant that he had been unable to think differently on the issue of realism and nominalism since the beginning of

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his philosophical career (around 1863, exactly thirty years prior to the first quotation, the year of his first philosophical publication, an "oration delivered at the Reunion of the Cambridge High School Association" and published in the Cambridge Chronicle in November 1863). I believe the latter interpretation to be accurate, but none of my arguments will hinge on this reading. 8. Fisch (1967, pp. 197-8 n.3) quoted this passage, but then claimed that Peirce was overstating the age of his "allegiance to realistic opinions" by five years. If the position I argue in this essay is correct, then Fisch was mistaken and Peirce did not overstate the age of his realism about generals. To support his view that Peirce overstated the length of his commitment to "realistic opinions" by five years, Fisch quoted passages from the same series from which 6.605 is taken (the Monist series of 1891-93) in which Peirce says that, in the cognition series of 1868-69, he "was a little blinded by nominalistic prepossessions" (6.103, 1892) and "my views were, then, too nominalistic to enable me to see" (6.270, 1892). But had Fisch quoted these passages at greater length, it would have been clear that the earlier "nominalistic prepossessions" to which Peirce referred in 1892 did not amount to a denial that there are real generals: The next step in the study of cosmology must be to examine the general law of mental action. In doing this, I shall for the time drop my tychism out of view, in order to allow a free and independent expansion to another concepdon signalized in my first Monist paper as one of the most indispensable to philosophy, though it was not there dwelt upon; I mean the idea of continuity. The tendency to regard continuity, in the sense in which I shall define it, as an idea of prime importance in philosophy may conveniently be termed synechism. The present paper is intended chiefly to show what synechism is, and what it leads to. I attempted, a good many years ago, to develop this doctrine in the foumal of Speculative Philosophy (Vol. II); but I am able now to improve upon that exposition, in which I was a litde blinded by nominalistic prepossessions. (6.103 and EP 1:313,1892) The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person; and, indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea. Long ago, in the foumal of Speculative Philosophy (Vol. II, p. 156), I pointed out that a person is nothing but a symbol involving a general idea; but my views were, then, too nominalistic to enable me to see that every general idea has the unified living feeling of a person. (6.270 and EP 1:350, 1892) So the Peirce of 1892 was not attributing a denial ofthe reality of generals to the Peirce of 1868. Rather, he was saying that, in 1868, he had not yet come to think of general ideas as having "the unified feeling of a person." Admittedly, what Peirce meant by this is not obvious (although I believe his point was that, in the cognition series, he had come too dose to an empiricist-style atomism about cognition according to which the mind consists

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of discrete ideas). But neither is it obvious that the denial ofthe claim that general ideas have "the unified living feeling of a person" is inconsistent with the claim that there are real generals. What's more, even Fisch acknowledged that Peirce was a realist about generals by the time he wrote the final drafts of the 1868-69 cognition series (1967, p. 187). So even on Fisch's own account of Peirce's early realism, the 1892 references to the cognition series should not be construed as evidence that Peirce was an anti-realist about generals in 1868. 9. 1998, p.21. 10. Peirce described nominalistic Platonism as the view that "generals exist" (5.503, c.1905). Thus, nominalistic Platonism is different from the "strange union of nominalism with Platonism" (8.10, EP 1:85, and W 2:464, 1871) that Peirce attributed to Berkeley. On Peirce's view, Berkeley's view was a genuine form of nominalism, as it both denied the reality of generals (8.27-8, EP 1:97, and W 2:477-8, 1871; 5.371n., 1893; 5.181, 1903) and took reality to be limited to that which is outside individual human minds and which causes sensations in those minds. (8.30, EP 1:99, and W 2:480, 1871) But it is nonetheless Platonistic, in that those causes of sensation are "archetypes" in the mind of God (ibid.). With regard to Peirce's 1905 description of nominalistic Platonism as the view that "generals exist," it is important to note that, although in his earlier writings Peirce did not distinguish between reality and existence, he was careful to distinguish between them in his later writings. He took reality to be the independence of a thing's characteristics from what anyone thinks about it, and he took existence to be the capacity to react against like things (e.g., 6.349, 1902-3; 5.503, c.1905; 6.495, c.1906; and 6.328 and 336, c.1909). On his developed view, existence is possessed only by individuals (3.613, c.1901). He did at times assert that "generals exist" (e.g. 5.312, EP 1:53 and W 2:239, 1868). But he did so only early on, before he began to use "existence" more narrowly, to refer to the mode of being possessed by things capable of causal interaction. So a charitable reading of Peirce's early assertions of the existence of generals will interpret them as meaning simply that generals are real, i.e. that they have being that is independent of our thoughts about them, rather than that they exist, i.e. that they are individual things capable of causal interaction with other individual things. 11. de Waal (1998, p. 184) calls this the Scodsdc definition of reality, based on Peirce's claim to have derived it from Duns Scotus. It appeared later, in 1878's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," as the merely verbal definition of "real," the result of making the concept of reality clear to the second degree of clearness (5.408, EP 1:139 and W 3:271, 1878). It also appeared earlier, in a somewhat rougher formuladon, in "Some Consequences of Four Incapacides": the real is "independent of the vagaries of me and you" (5.311, EP 1:52 and W 2:239, 1868). This passage includes andcipations of both Peirce's definidon of reality as that which is independent of what anyone thinks about it, and his pragmadc darificadon of the concept of reality according to which the real is the object of a true belief, i.e. of a belief which would survive all further inquiry. 12. Cf 5.312, EP 1:53, and W 2:239, 1868; and W 2:490, 1871. Note that these external, incognizable causes of cognidon need not be non-mental. Berkeley, who on Peirce's view was a quintessendal nominalist, would not say that the external causes of human cognidon are non-mental, since on his view, nothing is non-mental. For Berkeley, the external causes of human cognition are "archetypes in the divine mind" (8.30, EP 1:99, and W 2:480,1871). 13. This echoes what Peirce wrote in "Some Consequences of Four

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Incapacides": "The nominalist must admit that man [i.e., the word 'man'] is truly applicable to something; but he believes that there is beneath this a thing in itself, an incognizable reality" (5.312, EP 1:53, and W 2:239). 14. Peirce also andcipated his pragmadc account ofthe real as the object of a true proposidon in the eleventh Harvard Lecture of 1865, when he wrote that "every true symbol is applicable to some real thing" (W 1:286, 1865). 15. This passage actually andcipates both Peirce's pragmatic account of reality as the object of a true proposidon and his definition of reality as that which is independent of what anyone thinks about it. 16. For example: "The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who invesdgate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality" (5.407, EP 1:139 and W 3:273, 1878). 17. Fisch, in his account of Peirce's "Inidal Nominalism," quoted at length the passage from "Quesdons Concerning Reality" in which Peirce made this obvious and unequivocal commitment to realism about universals. But Fisch took the passage, not as evidence of Peirce's realism about generals or universals, but as evidence of his nominalism and as representadve of the stage in Peirce's development that came immediately before what Fisch called Peirce's "First Step Toward Realism." Fisch recognized how strange this must seem, for in a footnote to the line in quesdon, he considered the following objecdon to his account: "So [Peirce's] 'nominalism' is realism!" (1967, p. 198 n.l2, emphasis in original). Bizarrely, he made only the following response to this imagined cridcism: "No, but this is the opening through which a minim of realism will enter in the final drafr [of the cognidon series]" {ibid.). But contra Fisch, there is no difference in the metaphysical commitments Peirce made in "Quesdons Concerning Reality" and those he made in the final, published version of the cognidon series. He was explicidy committed to a moderate (non-modal) realism about generals in both. 18. Here I disagree with Thomas Short (1996) about what Peirce meant by "the nominalisdc element" in his theory of cognidon. Short notes the following passages, which Max Fisch quoted to support his claim that in the drafts ofthe 1868-9 cognidon series Peirce was a nominalist, while in the published version he was a realist: Now the nominalisdc element of my theory is certainly an admission that nothing out of cognidon and significadon generally, has any generality; ... ("Quesdons Concerning ReaUty,"W 2:180) ...since no cognidon of ours is absolutely determinate, generals must have a real existence. Now this scholastic realism is usually set down as a belief in metaphysical ficdons. ("Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," 5.312, EP 1:53, and W 2:239) I agree with Short that although these passages might seem to mark an important shift in Peirce's thinking, they really do no such thing. But Short goes on to say that, in the 1871 Berkeley review, Peirce sdll retains that 'nominalisdc element', the backward

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reference to observadon's external sdmulus: 'This theory is also highly favorable to a belief in external realities' (p. 470), which '...can be known only as exerting a power on our sense...' (p. 469) [The page numbers refer to the Writings2.]

But the "nominalisdc element" that Peirce described in 1868 (W 2:180, quoted above) is pretty clearly not the view that there are external realities that "can be known only as exerting a power on our sense." Rather, it is the claim that below I call Cognidonism about Generals, the view that generality occurs only within "thought and signification generally." This claim is independent of what Peirce asserted in the passage from "Some Consequences..." quoted above, that there are causes of sensadon external to any individual mind (although they are cognizable and thus not independent of thought in general). So I think Short is wrong about what Peirce took the nominalistic aspect of his realism to be. He goes on to describe "Peirce's early and continuing inclinadon toward the 'nominalism' that idendfies reality with a world external to cognidon" (p. 420) and so long as he means "external to the cognidon of any particular individual, but not to cognidon in general," I think he is right in ascribing this view to Peirce, although, for reasons given above, I see no reason to describe the view either as a form of nominalism or as a nominalistic element in Peirce's theory. 19. I take the term "cognidonism" fi-om Peirce (R 655, p. 32, 1910), and although I suspect I am using it in roughly the way he did, I am not completely sure about this. See below for a discussion of what Fisch took Peirce to have meant by the term. 20. While I suggest below that Peirce's view, both earlier and later, was that real generals are external, my arguments that his early, seemingly and-realist statements about generals are actually compatible with his 1868 realism do not turn on whether he took real generals to be external during that time. 21. Cf 7.339 and W 3:29, 1872; and 5.405, EP1:136, and W 3:271, 1878. For examples of Peirce's use ofthe external/internal distinction, see 4.157, c.1897; 5.45, EP 2:151, and Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking p.156, 1903; 8.284, 1904; 5.474, 1907; CP 5.487 and EP 2:412-413, 1907; 5.493, 1907; and 1.321, C.1910. 22. But not everything internal is real all figments or fictions, those things that are not real, are internal. (E.g., 5.405, EP 1:136, and W 3:271, 1868.) 23. That Peirce, even in the period of his early, non-modal realism about generals, took generals to be external, is fiirther suggested by: (1) his apparent descripdon of his own realism as "the realism of Scotus" in "Some Consequences..." (5.312, EP 1:53, and W 2:240, 1868); and (2) his description in the Berkeley review of Scotus as having denied that "the actual cogmnon ofthe universal is necessary to its existence" (in Peirce's early sense of "existence," in which it is synonymous with "reality") and his subsequent statement that "[t]he subject of science is universal; and if the existence of universal [sic] were dependent upon what we happened to be thinking, science would not relate to anything real" (8.18, EP 1:91, and W 2:472, 1871). Commendng on the Berkeley review in a subsequent letter to the editor of The Nation, he wrote that "[t]he realists certainly held (as I have said) that universals really exist in external things" (W 2:490, 1871). But Peirce himself would reject the formuladon "exist in extemal things" as being too nominalisdc later in his life, he explained exactly how it is that his scholasdc realism differed fi-om Scotus': "Even Duns Scotus is too nominalistic when he says that universals

On Peirce's Early Realism.

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are contracted to the mode of individuality in singulars, meaning, as he does, by singulars, ordinary exisdng things" (5.208, c.1905). But that universals are not in ordinary exisdng things does not imply that they depend on what anyone in particular thinks or feels, i.e. it does not imply that they are internal. 24. In suggesdng that early on Peirce may have held generals to be external, I disagree with Nathan Houser, according to whom Peirce "accepted that there are generals external to thought" only around 1897 (2000, p. Ixxxii). Houser is right, though, that Peirce's scholastic realism underwent an important change beginning around 1897. It was then that Peirce came to think that epistemic definitions of modal concepts were inadequate and thus became a modal realist, and it was soon after that he began to conceive of possibility and lawfiilness as types of generality, and that his scholastic realism became a form of modal realism. On the issue of whether the early Peirce took generals to be external, it is worth noting the view of Fred Michael (1988). Michael argues that "Peirce's early and late realism differ with respect to the reality of universals outside of cognition. Peirce's early realism did not commit him to such endties, and in that sense had a nominalist ontology. The realism Peirce develops after 1883, however, is committed to real universals outside the mind" (p. 336). If what Michael means here is that early on Peirce took generals to be internal, but that later he took them to be external, I disagree I discern no such change in Peirce's realism. On Michael's view, Peirce actually remained a "nominalist" after 1868 and did not begin converdng to his eventual, strong form of scholasdc realism undl after 1883. But by "nominalism," Michael does not mean ARG, or the conjuncdon of ARG with the nominalisdc view of reality. Rather, he seems to mean the view that there is no generality "outside of cognidon in external reality." As potendally confusing as this use of "nominalism" might be, it does stem from Peirce's own use of the term. As mendoned above, Peirce referred to the idea that "nothing out of cognidon and significadon generally, has any generality" as the "nominalistic element" of his posidon (W 2:180, 1868) and then admonished his readers to remember "my nominalism" (W 2:181), clearly meaning that same "nominalisdc element." However, as I argued above, Peirce's claim that "nothing out of cognidon and significadon generally, has any generality" is compadble with the claim that there is external generality. 25. The full tide is: "An Unpsychological View of Lx)gic to which are appended some applicadons ofthe theory to Psychology and other subjects." 26. This claim comes, not from a discussion of natural kinds, nor from an examination of the realism/nominalism debate, but from a discussion of the relationship between the denotadon and connotation of symbols. Peirce was arguing that symbols that represent natural kinds are excepdons to the general principle that denotadon and connotadon of symbols are inversely propordonal. 27. Nodce the andcipadon of his later pragmadc account of truth, which assumes extreme scholasdc realism and its consdtuent modal realism: "... [it] woW yield a belief such as would never be contradicted by an experience" (emphases added). For more on the modal realism suggested by this passage, see note 29. The endre sentence from which this passage is taken reads as follows: By a logically valid argument which no one can read, is meant one which, if it could be read and if it has any ultimate premisses whatever which given in experience or analyzable out of experience, would yield a belief such as would never be

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contradicted by any experience. (W 1:312, 1865)

I am unsure ofthe significance ofthe second " i f clause, but I am nonetheless confident in my interpretation of this passage. 28. Peirce drew the same analogy in the other draft of "An Unpsychological View...": Suppose that in an undecipherable inscription of a long-exdnct people an argument is written. Is that any the less logically correct or fallacious because no one can read it and so no one can think it? I believe the reader will agree that it is not. It seems to me to be in exacdy the same condidon as a flower in the desert. This is said to have colour, though colour is nothing but in the eye; and no one can see this flower. This colour is nothing actual nothing physically possible but it is a ficdon from which all the fictidous element has been eliminated by a device of language. (W 1:306, 1865) These passages were anticipated by the following, from the first Harvard lecture of 1865. Here Peirce was defending his "unpsychological" view of logic, in particular, that the "logical character" of an argument inscribed on a blackboard "belongs to what is written on the board at least as much as to our thought" rather than belonging "to thought, peculiarly." He was responding to the objecdon that though what is written has a logical character, it only has it because it can be understood and thought. This ... I entirely admit. In the same way, those letters are white. There is no doubt that whiteness inheres in the chalk. Yet they are only white in so far and because they can be seen. ... The unpsychological view is that they [i.e. argument forms] are forms of all symbols whether internal or external but that they only are by virtue of possible thought. (W 1:165,1865) This is dear evidence of Peirce's early pragmadsm. Even at this very early stage in his philosophical development, he was explicadng attribudons of logical properdes to arguments, and colors to physical objects, in terms of the difference the truth of those attribudons make to possible experience. 29. A complete discussion of tfiis point would take account of the distinction between condidonals in the indicadve mood and those in the subjunctive mood. Although Peirce himself used the subjuncdve mood in his statements about the never-again-to-be-read argument, it is not dear that in these early writings he was aware of the modal realism toward which one might be pulled by the use of subjuncdve condidonals. His 1865 statements about arguments-never-to-be-interpreted and colorsnever-to-be-seen clearly andcipate the later, modal-realisdc version of the pragmadc maxim that gives the meaning of concepts in terms of conditionals in the subjuncdve rather than the indicative mood. Does this mean that Peirce was also a realist about modality as early as 1865? Far from it: earlier in this same draft of "An Unpsychological View...", Peirce wrote that possibility "is the mode in which that is which is only more or

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less expected" (W 1:312). This is an early appearance of Peirce's "information-relative" view of modality (Morgan, 1979 and 1981) according to which possibility is simply compadbility with what is believed in some state of informadon or other. By 1878's "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," in his discussion of the diamond to which pressure will never be applied, he still had not embraced modal realism, and he maintained that it made no difference whether we say that the diamond to which pressure will never be applied is hard or not. After his 1897 move toward a more realist view of modality, he revised the pragmatic maxim so that it analyzed concepts in terms of subjuncdve, rather than indicadve, condidonals (e.g., 5.453-7 and EP 2:354-7, 1905). Again, see my forthcoming "Peirce's Modal Shift" for a more complete account ofthe evolution of Peirce's views on modality. 30. 1843, bk. 4, ch. 4. 31. These concepts actually belong to a three-fold distinction among quality, thing and representation in general, which is an eariy anticipadon of Peirce's concepts of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. But for my present purposes, it is the distincdon between quality and thing that is most relevant. Note that Peirce made very similar, but not quite identical, sets of distincdons in the two drafts of "An Unpsychological View..." reproduced in volume 1 of the Chronological Edition. In the first draft, he described thing / quality / representation as hypotheses corresponding to matter /form / image, the three aspects of a phenomenon (W 1:307, 1865). In the second draft, he disdnguished among the substantial matter / substantial form / accidents of a noumenon and the phenomenal matter / phenomenal form / representational element of a phenomenon (W 1:313,1865). 32. I base this interpretadon on Peirce's statement that every phenomenon involves, besides its matter and its form, a third aspect: an image (W 1:307,1865). 33. Peirce later gave an example of a ficdonal endty that has no attribute "but that expressed by the word" that denotes it: "...there is no man of whom all further determinadons can be denied..." (5.312, EP 1:53, and W 2:240, 1868), i.e. no endty which has the attribute of being a man without having any other attributes. 34. And when he denied that "nonendty" denotes anything real (W 1:287, April-May, 1865), he was denying simply that there is a real thing or entity that is a nonendty. 35. Peirce made a similar criddsm of individualisdc misinterpretadons of scholasdc realism in his entry endded "Matter and Form" in Baldwin's Dictionary (6.361, c.1901). He later described "individualism" as a form of nominalism, that form "which endeavors to express the universe in terms of Matter alone" {New Elements of Mathematics 4:295, c.1903) and the essence of which is that "reality and existence are coextensive" (5.503, c.1905). 36. 1963, p. 152. Boler bases this on the following passage: Before I came to man's estate, being gready impressed with Kant's Critic of the Pure Reason, my father, who was an eminent mathemadcian, pointed out to me lacunx in Kant's reasoning which I should probably not otherwise have discovered. From Kant, I was led to an admiring study of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and to that of Aristode's Organon, Metaphysics, and psychological treatises, and somewhat later derived the greatest advantage from a deeply pondering perusal of some of the works of medieval thinkers.

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St. Augustine, Abelard, and John of Salisbury, with related fragments from St. Thomas Aquinas, most especially from John of Duns, the Scot (Duns being the name of a then not unimportant place in East Lothian), and from William of Ockham. So far as a modern man of sdence can share the ideas of those medieval theologians, I uldmately came to approve the opinions of Duns, although I think he inclines too much toward nominalism. (1.560, 1907)

I take the date of this passage from BP 2 chapter 28. That chapter, endded "Pragmatism" by the editors, contains some but not all ofthe content of R 318. The material published as 1.560-562, originally dated by the editors ofthe Collected Papers as c.1905, is from that manuscript (although it does not appear in EP). 37. 1984, p. xxiv. 38. I do not mean to suggest that this was the only, or even the most important, effect of Peirce's 1867 68 study of medieval philosophy. 39. 1967, p. 185. On this point, Fisch refers to Burks 1964. 40. For example, see 6.185 and Reasoning and the Logic of Things p.247, 1898: "That which is possible is in so far general, and as general, it ceases to be individual." 41. Part of this passage is quoted at Fisch 1967, pp. 185-6. 42. 76fl!.,p. 185. 43. That passage concludes: " unless, indeed, it was Mill's cognitionism that made Wright so enthusiasdc for him. To be sure, 'cognidonism' is not so unusual an infecdon that one can be sure, forty-odd years later how he caught the germ of it" (R 655, p.32). So far as I have been able to discover, R 655 is the only document in which Peirce ever used the term "cognidonism." It appears nowhere in the Collected Papers, nor is it indexed in any ofthe volumes (1-6) ofthe Writings xint have appeared to date or in any other collecdons of Peirce's wridngs. 44. 1967, p. 186. 45. Here again is the relevant passage from Fisch, this dme with references added (QCCF = "Questions Concerning Certain Faculdes Claimed for Man," 1868; SCFI = "Some Consequences of Four Incapacides," 1868; GVLL = "Grounds of Validity ofthe Laws of Logic," 1869): Cognidonism was the doctrine that what there is is cognidons; that "cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms" (5.257 [QCCF]); that "whatever is meant by any term as 'the real' is cognizable in some degree, and so is of the nature of a cognidon, in the objective sense of that term" (5.310 [SCFI]); that cognidons are all in signs and none intuidve (5.253 [QCCF]); that "cognidon arises by a process of beginning" in which there is no first (5.263 [QCCF]), that is, nothing is sign-object only and not signvehicle or sign-interpretant; that every cognidon is condnued in another, so that none is interpretant only (5.253 [QCCF]); and that nothing is absolutely singular or absolutely

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determinate, so that "being at all is being in general" (5.349 [GVLL]). Clearly this variety of nominalism is also a variety of idealism; more exactly, a semiodc idealism. (1967, p.185-186) 46. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 meedng of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in Birmingham, Alabama, and at the 2004 meedng ofthe Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in New Orieans, Louisiana. I wish to thank those in attendance at each presentadon for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank Rebecca Carr, who provided a very helpful commentary, and two anonymous referees for this journal for their extremely helpful comments. Any errors remaining are, of course, my own.