C. S. Peirce on Nominalism

The bulk of this text is from the online documentation of the writings of the great American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce known as CP. Peirce was the originator of pragmatism which he renamed pragmaticism so it would not be kidnapped by those who distorted his original meaning.

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Nominalism is as prevalent now as ever. It is the companion of binary thinking. It is suited to a world that is inured to cynicism and the hallowing of self-interest, the self being the measure of all things and subjectivity being all.

Fortunately nominalism is not truth. The truth is that nominalism like everything else is part of reality and it is reality that life is meant to master. To master reality is to acknowledge that there is much beyond the self that is innate, common to all. And even to suspect that there are premises, rules and values that are fundamental to reality and therefore do not hit the nominalist fire-wall which is the boundary of the self.

When one needs respite from nominalism, there is no better place to go than Charles Sanders Peirce. His comments on nominalism are meant to edify and encourage. They are below:

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§1. NOMINALISM †1

15. Very early in my studies of logic, before I had really been devoting myself to it more than four or five years, it became quite manifest to me that this science was in a bad condition, entirely unworthy of the general state of intellectual development of our age; and in consequence of this, every other branch of philosophy except ethics — for it was already clear that psychology was a special science and no part of philosophy — was in a similar disgraceful state. About that time — say the date of Mansel’s Prolegomena Logica†2 — Logic touched bottom. There was no room for it to become more degraded. It had been sinking steadily, and relatively to the advance of physical science, by no means slowly from the time of the revival of learning — say from the date of the last fall of Constantinople.†3 One important addition to the subject had been made early in the eighteenth century, the Doctrine of Chances. But this had not come from the professed logicians, who knew nothing about it. Whewell, it is true, had been doing some fine work; but it was not of a fundamental character. De Morgan and Boole had laid the foundations for modern exact logic, but they can hardly be said to have begun the erection of the edifice itself. Under these circumstances, I naturally opened the dusty folios of the scholastic doctors. Thought generally was, of course, in a somewhat low condition under the Plantagenets. You can appraise it very well by the impression that Dante, Chaucer, Marco Polo, Froissart, and the great cathedrals make upon us. But [their] logic, relatively to the general condition of thought, was marvellously exact and critical. They can tell us nothing concerning methods of reasoning since their own reasoning was puerile; but their analyses of thought and their discussions of all those questions of logic that almost trench upon metaphysics are very instructive as well as very good discipline in that subtle kind of thinking that is required in logic.

Peirce: CP 1.16 Cross-Ref:††

16. In the days of which I am speaking, the age of Robert of Lincoln, Roger Bacon, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, the question of nominalism and realism was regarded as definitively and conclusively settled in favor of realism. You know what the question was. It was whether laws and general types are figments of the mind or are real. If this be understood to mean whether there really are any laws and types, it is strictly speaking a question of metaphysics and not of logic. But as a first step toward its solution, it is proper to ask whether, granting that our common-sense beliefs are true, the analysis of the meaning of those beliefs shows that, according to those beliefs, laws and types are objective or subjective. This is a question of logic rather than of metaphysics — and as soon as this is answered the reply to the other question immediately follows after.

Peirce: CP 1.17 Cross-Ref:††

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Stephen C. Rose is the propounder of Triadic Philosophy and the author of numerous works supporting his thought. He writes daily on Medium and his books are available on Kindle . Twitter is the center of his activities online.