Ma Luisa D Villablanca

Habit, Competence, and Purpose: How to Make the Grades of Clarity Clearer Vincent Colapietro Introduction In a letter written to William James in 1909, C. S. Peirce illuminates a distinction drawn more than three decades earlier in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” There are three grades of Clearness of Interpretation. The first was such familiarity as gave a person familiarity with a sign and readiness in using it or interpreting it. In his consciousness he seemed to himself to be quite at home with the sign. In short, it is Interpretation in Feeling. The second was Logical Analysis. ... The Third was Pragmaticistic Analysis [and] would be a Dynamical Analysis, but [is] identified with the Final Interpretant. (EP 2, 496--97) Because we are referring to meaning, the first grade of conceptual clarity concerns the firstness of thirdness (meaning being irreducibly an instance of thirdness) or, perhaps better stated, thirdness in its firstness. Thus, the characterization of this grade as “Interpretation in Feeling” is likely misleading. For the feeling in question is bound up with actions and habits. It is not feeling prescinded from all else, but rather feeling taken as a qualification of some action (e.g., the utterance or interpretation of a sign). In order to bring the first and third grades of clarity into even sharper focus than has yet been accomplished (my task in this paper), it is necessary to appreciate the extent to which each grade exemplifies not only a distinct mode of habituation, but also a different manner of functioning (i.e., a distinct manner in which habits render possible the distinctive conduct of human agents). In other words, the clarification of these grades of clarity (especially the first and third grades) demands attention to the acquisition and operation of habits. In turn, habituation and the deployment of habits need themselves to be more explicitly linked to purposes than is customarily done. In the case of such distinctively human endeavors as scientific inquiry, artistic performance, and moral striving, what most matters are not individual habits or even clustered ones but those dispositions constitutive of character (what John Dewey calls the interpenetration of habits [MW 14, 29--30]). For the fully deliberative agent, the cultivation of habits is one with the cultivation of character. In the scientific inquirer, we encounter deliberative agency in one of its most distinctive guises. Peirce insists, the “most vital factors in the method of modern science have not been the following of this or that logical prescription---although these have had their value too---but they have been the moral factors” (CP 7.86). These moral factors are virtues in the classical sense, i.e., dispositions to act in ways at once perfective of the character of the agent and of the practice in which the agent is engaged. In all contexts (not just that of science), the deliberate formation of one’s character ordinarily involves the passionate participation in, hence a deep identification with, some shared human practice (e.g., experimental inquiry or religious worship, artistic innovation or political engagement). “The course of life,” Peirce notes, “has developed certain compulsions of thought which we speak of collectively as Experience. Moreover, the inquirer more or less vaguely identifies himself in sentiment with a Community of which he is a member, and which includes, for example, besides his momentary self, his self of ten years hence; and he speaks of the resulting cognitive compulsions of the course of life of that community as Our Experience” (CP 8.101; cf. CP 5.402.n2). The habits into which our words and expressions must be translated in order to attain the third grade of clarity (the pragmatic clarification of their meaning) are, in critical respects, identifiable in reference to the purposes of participants in practices having a self-corrective character, above all, because they expose themselves to the disruptive pressures of ongoing experience. Above all, then, I want in this paper to bring two points into sharper focus than has yet been accomplished by expositors of C. S. Peirce. One concerns what he pragmatically means by the first grade of clearness, the second what he so means by the third grade. I will have little to say here about the second level of clarity. The first grade---that of local, unreflective familiarity ---results from unreflectively established habits, whereas the third---that of generalized, pragmatic clarification---focuses primarily on deliberately modifiable habits (see, e.g., CP 5.491). Of course, habits are, for Peirce, inherently and irreducibly general. Moreover, their generality is itself potentially generalizable: what is generally true of them in one context might be true of them in another, also what is true of them might be analogously true of other things (e.g., the disposition of dogs and apes to be territorial might reveal a truth about humans). Finally, pragmatic clarification aims at identifying the general tendencies most relevant to a particular inquiry. The extent to which our actually established habits are alterable, especially as the result of deliberation, is an experimental question. But, for Peirce, at least some of these must be considered alterable (EP 2, 337, 348). The bulk of these habits, however, change (if not all) only slightly and imperceptibly (see, e.g., CP 5.212). These established habits constitute a vast background of unquestioned competencies (cf. Taylor), these modifiable ones a small but important foreground of human autonomy in its most directly personal form but also broader “practical” significance. In Peirce’s judgment, the very meaning of rationality (or reasonableness) is bound up with the conviction that agents are able to alter their conduct by modifying their habits (see, e.g., CP 5.418; 5.442; also in EP 2, 337; 348; Colapietro 1998). The ability to modify one’s own habits in a self-conscious, self-critical, and self-controlled manner presupposes grades of habituation and (in a sense) autonomy over which one has little or no control (CP 5.533; also 1.591). Our conscious deliberations are, ultimately, rooted in our unreflective, somatic competencies. Peirce’s commonsensism is nothing less than an acknowledgment of the importance and, indeed, indispensability of these seemingly humble competencies. Our highest achievements are made possible by our lowliest abilities, ones never completely transcended (see, e.g., MS 372; quoted in Fisch 1986, 372). The cultivation of our rationality, in the Peircean sense of deliberate self-control, does not require a denial of animality; quite the contrary, it demands a forthright acknowledgment of the unique features, also the peculiar fate of the human animal---that of being bounded narrowly within the sensibility and intelligence of a specific form of animal life (see, e.g., CP 5.536) but, by the very exercise of that intelligence, to endeavor to transcend the severe limitations imposed by our actual inheritance, including our native capacities (cf. Kant 7). Undertaking a clarification of Peirce’s own doctrine of clearness, in the manner I am advocating, invites us to explore affinities between Peirce, on the one side, and Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, on the other (affinities hardly ever appreciated). Though I cannot on this occasion substantiate this claim (let alone undertake such an exploration), it is one worthy of being developed. This much however must be said here. These affinities concern the somatic attunement of human agents to their social and natural worlds, an attunement revealed in the ability of such agents to respond appropriately or effectively to the variable circumstances of everyday life, also in their ability to enlarge the scope of such attunement (CP 5.511). Moreover, undertaking such a clarification invites us to sound the pragmatic depths of Peirce’s mature thought. In sounding these depths, we are driven toward the task of providing a more detailed portrait of human agency than Peirce himself ever sketched, though one on which he clearly relies and, indeed, to which he explicitly appeals (see, e.g., CP 5. 418; 5.442; also in EP 2, 337; 348; Thompson). I will myself not offer here such a sketch, only highlight some of the more salient features to be included in such a portrait (Colapietro 1999). The somatic abilities and expertise of human agents, typically operating at the level of unreflective (or prereflective) engagement, are continuous with the somatically rooted capacity to frame and modify concepts. The most rudimentary of these abilities, including the capacity to chew and swallow food as well as that of grasping and holding objects, are not to be slighted. When an illness or accident deprives an agent of such capacities, that person is made acutely aware of their importance. Concepts are interwoven into these abilities (Oakeshott; Winch); put otherwise, these somatic abilities embody flexible, nuanced concepts (concepts in the sense, to be explained below, of flexible and nuanced dispositions). As agents, we ordinarily do not conceptualize in an explicit and abstract manner whether, say, something is edible, but rather put something in our mouths and begin to eat it. The activity itself is, on this account, an instance of conceptualization. That is, conceptualization does not occur prior to, or independent of, the more or less spontaneous flow of situated responses; rather these responses are themselves modes of conceptualization. Insofar as we conceive physical acts such as eating or grasping as merely physical acts, utterly lacking generality (i.e., thirdness), we are conceiving them in a reductively abstract manner. Conceptualization is not, from a pragmatist perspective, a prior or independent process, but is immanent in at least some of our spontaneous, physical exertions. This makes of these exertions, in effect, conceptualizations. In some instances, the responses of organisms such as humans, apes, chimpanzees, dolphins, and even dogs to intra- and extra- somatic pressures and challenges are not purely mechanical reactions, but dispositionally improvisational exertions. The capacity of organisms to respond in novel and unprecedented ways to environmental and somatic events, especially vicissitudes, is connected in some of them to a tendency to respond otherwise than their established habits would appear to dictate. Manifestly somatic habits are implicitly conceptual affairs; at the very least, proto-concepts are intertwined with somatic exertions. We have just noted that the somatic abilities and expertise of human agents are continuous with the somatically rooted capacity to frame and modify concepts. These abilities are, in certain respects, themselves modes of conceptualization. It is equally important to note that the deliberative capacity of rational agents to assume, in a consciously deliberate manner, the formation of their own character grows out of densely sedimented layers of habituation (see, e.g., CP 5.533). Our instinctual and inherited modes of conceptualization, along with our unreflective beliefs, underlie and, in no small measure, underwrite our loftier flights of formal deliberation. Here, too, continuity is discernible, in particular, continuity between our tacit, unreflective habits and our symbolically articulated, deliberately cultivated habits. Peirce’s doctrine of the grades of clarity is, however, only one of the places in which he appeals to the phenomenon of habits as a resource for illuminating our world and our selves (including the relationship between embodied, social selves and their complex, variable world). In general, he supposes that the “great facts of nature which familiar experiences embody are not of the number of those things which can have their juices sucked out of them and thrown aside” (CP 6.565). General tendencies are, unquestionably, among these prominent facts of the natural world. So, too, is growth (see, e.g., EP 2, 373--74). Growth extends to nothing less than the forms of being and, thus, to those of intelligibility. The “law of growth” (EP 2, 445) means, above all else, the growth of habits, including the increase in the intimate and effective integration of habits. This increase results in the disruptive emergence of novel forms of natural agency (e.g., the generation of animate beings and the evolution of new species of plants and animals). Too often, habits are understood as constraining and conservative forces; for Peirce, they are however enabling and often creative propulsions. “Some undisciplined young persons may have come to think of acquired human habits chiefly as constraints; and undoubtedly they all are so in a measure. But good habits are in much greater measure powers than they are limitations ...” (MS 930, 31; quoted in Colapietro 1989, 112). Moreover, there is the disposition of some beings to acquire and, conversely, to lose dispositions, often quite quickly. This implies the growth of habits. Habits not only grow but also contribute to growth in a variety of ways. Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology and pragmaticist semeiotic are attuned to these “great facts of nature.” Given these and other considerations, it is, accordingly, not inappropriate to sketch in broad, quick strokes the larger context in which our delimited topic must ultimately be located to be adequately understood. Habits, Laws (or Rules), and Codes Habits are operative in every domain of experience, thus traces of their presence, power, and permutations are discoverable everywhere. They are, as just indicated, among the most prominent facts of the natural world. Examples of such traces range from the tendency of certain materials to become wrinkled to that of human organisms to be imitative (Aristotle’s Poetics; Bourdieu 1990, 25--29), from densely accumulated moisture under certain atmospheric conditions to form one or another kind of cloud to aging stars exploding. Other examples are the disposition of certain prey to camouflage themselves in a particular way and the tendency of the roots of plants to drive deeper in search of nourishment. Tendencies and dispositions abound in nature. It is thus not unlikely that the concept of habit is relevant to every field of inquiry. More precisely, either this concept or one of its numerous analogues is, in some contexts, a phenomenon and, in others, a principle of explanation (however partial or preliminary). The concept of habit is obviously relevant to physiology, psychology, anthropology, economics, and sociology, less obviously but no less truly relevant to cosmology, semeiotic, and arguably even phenomenology (or, to use Peirce’s term, phaneroscopy). Peirce was manifestly aware of the range of this relevance. His appreciation of habit, its centrality no less than its ubiquity, underwrote his opposition to nominalism. In addition, an accurate understanding of many of his central concerns, including nature, mind, semiosis, experience, and agency, depend upon an adequate comprehension of what he means by habit. Nothing is more important for attaining such a comprehension than the appreciation that, from Peirce’s perspective, habits not only result from processes of growth but also contribute to such processes. That is, habits embody within themselves, however cryptically, a history but also a power to modify the very processes (or histories) out of which they emerge. They are emergent functions bearing witness to antecedent struggles and exerting influence on ongoing processes. “Once you have embraced the principle of continuity [i.e., the doctrine of synechism],” Peirce suggests, “no kind of explanation of things will satisfy you except that they grew” (CP 1.175; cf. Darwin). Habits tend to function in such a way that they subject themselves to the exigencies of modification and even eradication. They insure, at once, continuity, stability, and coherence, on the one hand, and innovation, mutability, and improvisation, on the other. We miss the force of habit, in its distinctively Peircean sense, if we suppose that habits work only to conserve structures (i.e., the phonemes within a language, the mores within a culture, or the virtues within a community)---if we fail to appreciate the extent to which habits, simply by their inherent operation (thus by their propulsive influence), drive toward alteration. The dynamic forms of continuity in which Peirce was most interested are effective agencies of change, genuine sites of creativity. Peirce’s cosmology is attuned to the phenomena of life (see, e.g., CP 6.61, 6.64), including the human mind as a biological phenomenon (i.e., as a cluster of species-specific capacities). Mechanism and determinism render life inexplicable, whereas hylozoism (CP 6.6; also in EP 2.375) and tychism provide us with a vision of the cosmos in which life, evolution, and mind are far from anomalous, let alone impossible. In Peirce’s philosophy, the concept of habit mediates between those of mind and matter in such a way as to avoid the ontological dualism so characteristic of so much modern thought. In order to appreciate his claim that matter is mind hide-bound with habit, one needs to appreciate the continuum of habits, ranging from virtually immutable habits to readily modifiable habits. This is as much a form of materialism (or physicalism) as a form of idealism, though Peirce tended to stress his alliance with objective idealism (see, e.g., CP 6.277; cf. MS 649, 19). The emergence of mind in any recognizable or paradigmatic sense is due to the growth of habits in various directions, not least of all in the directions of complexity and integration. The more complex habits become, especially the more functionally integrated these increasingly complex habits become, the more likely we are to attribute mind to an agent, at least if this shows signs of framing and modifying purposes. Consequently, a semeiotic conception of mind and consciousness needs to be articulated in terms of the acquisition, loss, and other susceptibilities of habits. In Peirce’s writings, habits are fundamental, while rules and codes are derivative. They are the principal means of explaining such coenoscopic phenomena, at the philosophical level at least, as mind, language, law, and morality. Codes are, on this view, the result of codifications. As useful and even indispensable as they often are, codes leave much out of account. The flexible, nuanced, varied, and variable habits making up the mores of any culture are, for example, never fully articulated in even the most exhaustive code of moral conduct. In general, the most thoroughgoing codification always falls far short of doing complete justice to living habits as they operate in concrete contexts. Habits indeed lend themselves to codification (think of the alphabet or a lexicon). They are undeniably formalizable. So, Peirce’s approach might be seen as a via media, a route between an unqualified formalism and a militant antiformalism (see, e.g., Rellstab). Attending to the formalizable aspects of concretely embodied and thus dynamically operative dispositions, at the expense of the vast, vague background of tacit, prereflective ability, is a tendency all too often discernible in the approach of theorists unconscious of their distorting privileging of verbal formulations, abstract definitions, and elegant classifications. The temptation to proceed in this fashion is one that Peirce often encourages, indeed, one to which he himself succumbs. But, at his best, his pragmaticism and commonsensism, at the very least, imply the shortcomings and inadequacies of such a procedure. Vagueness is not only pervasive and irreducible but also advantageous, for even the discourse of inquirers on countless occasions. While an inappropriately severe demand for clarity is not as debilitating to investigators as an uncompromising insistence on certainty, it can be quite harmful. Clarifying Ideas and Fixing Beliefs Let us turn back to our main topic. As I have already noted, Peirce distinguished three levels of conceptual clarity. He did so principally for the purpose of winning formal recognition for a level of conceptual clearness practically honored by experimental inquirers but largely ignored by philosophical logicians. In other words, he strove to close the gap between the logica utens of experimentalists and the logica docens of logicians: what had become central to the historically evolved practice of inquiry ought to become central to the explicit theory of this practice. By the second half of the nineteenth century, pragmatic clarification was an integral phase in responsible inquiry: it was simply a critical part, however an implicit part, of experimental investigation. What was so critical to the practice of inquiry thus deserved to be made explicit in the theory of inquiry (logic in Peirce’s sense). Part of Peirce’s critique of Descartes’ approach (though a part not commonly noted) is the excessive reliance of his philosophical predecessor on abstract definitions (see, e.g., CP 5.392). Another part of this critique is the radical separation between theory and practice, entailing the failure to see theoretical inquiry as an irreducible form of human practice. Theoreticism26 tends toward verbalism because of the propensity of theorists (more precisely, theoreticists) to define words in terms of other words (cf. Short 1994; also Short 2007). Just as the four ways of fixing belief (that is, the four ways of conducting inquiry) can be seen not as separable undertakings but as integral features of a single process, so the three grades of clearness can be viewed as distinct phases in a cumulative effort. As ways of fixing belief, taken by themselves, tenacity, authority, and apriority are doomed to fail. As features of an inclusive process, they are integral to the success of investigation. That is, tenacity, authority, and apriority each have their rightful place in experimental inquiry. For example, the method of authority as an allegedly self-sufficient way of fixing belief is indeed a rival to the method of science (or experimentation). But the critical role of exemplary practitioners---hence, the provisional authority of communally acknowledged exemplars---itself calls for our can - did acknowledgment. In brief, there are authorities in science. This is known by anyone who has worked in a laboratory or in the field. This authority is ordinarily not only administrative; it is epistemic or heuristic. It bears upon how to undertake the work of inquiry. The same case can be made for both tenacity and apriority. As standalone methods, they are fatally flawed. As integral parts of an experimental orientation, they have their rightful (if variable) place. It may not, however, seem to be true of tenacity. For Peirce does assert, “the scientific spirit requires a man to be at all times ready to dump his whole cart-load of beliefs, the moment experience is against them. The desire to learn forbids him to be perfectly cocksure that he knows already” (CP 1.55). But practical certainty need not take the form of invincible cocksureness. I am referring here to the practical certainty of the theoretical inquirer---the certitude of one who is passionately but deliberately committed to discovering what is not yet known (in short, the certitude of a practitioner, albeit a participant in the practice of inquiry). In the nineteenth century, the resistance within science itself to Darwin’s theory of natural selection was not unreasonable. The best geologists of the day, including scientists whom Darwin greatly respected (ones whose expertise he was reluctant to question or challenge), did not believe the earth was old enough for evolution, as envisioned by Darwin, to have taken place. Moreover, despite being a contemporary with Gregor Johann Mendel (1822--1884), Darwin was not aware of Mendel’s work. For this and other reasons, he was not in the position to identify the mechanism by which selection takes place. Darwinian evolution becomes a creditable theory only after the scientific acknowledgment of the genetic mutations underlying Darwin’s fortuitous variations and, in addition, the radical revision by the scientific community (above all, by geologists) of the Earth’s age. When confronted with the massive details of his painstaking account of natural selection, the scientists in Darwin’s day did not dump the cartload of their beliefs. Rather many of them strenuously resisted his theory. Such resistance was rooted in their tenacity, in the fierceness with which they clung to what they took to be experimentally warranted beliefs. One might object that, as history has proven, these scientists were unreasonable in clinging to their beliefs, rather than dumping them the moment experience counted against them. But my point concerns as much how inquirers ought to behave as how they typically tend to behave. A degree of tenacity is useful for insuring that theoretical innovations, especially radical ones, come to be articulated in their strongest form. Though less conservative than other communities, communities of inquirers cannot avoid being somewhat conservative. Nor is this altogether unfortunate. The stiffness of opposition, due to such a conservative bent, works to insure that innovations are forged in the crucible of adversity. Such innovations are the stronger for this. What is true of the methods of fixing belief is also true of the means of attaining clearness. It is, indeed, even more obviously true. Peirce is quite explicit about this: I trust that, in that essay [“How to Make Our Ideas Clear”], I made my own opinion plain, that Pragmatistic Adequacy no more supercedes the need of Analytic Distinctness and of adherence to precise Definitions, than this latter, or Second Grade of clearness supercedes the need of intuitive or unintellectual Clearness... . It is evident that no abstract definition can possibly render needless the power of directly recognizing whether a concept does or does not apply to a given image; and I believe I was sufficiently explicit as to my own opinion that no recognition of the utility of a concept, however just, could in the least affect the need of precisely defining it. (Please observe, by the way, that I speak of three distinct Grades [or Levels] of clearness, which I also call Kinds, but never Stages, as if one were done with before the next began; for the contrary will be found markedly their relation.) (MS 649, 2--5; quoted in Fisch 1986, 372). Peirce returned to this distinction on numerous occasions (see, e.g., EP 2, 256; 496--97). There are even several places in which he proposes a fourth level of clarity (e.g., CP 2.118; 5.3), also at least one place where he subdivides the second grade into two and the third into three (MS 620, p. 19; cited in Fisch 1986, 371). Indeed, in his mature at - tempts to cast his thought into a consistently pragmatist or pragmaticist form, he continued to appeal to this quite early doctrine. Moreover, expositors and advocates of Peirce have spilled much ink on the issue of clearness (see, e.g., Fisch 1986; Hookway 1992; Short 2007). A tremendous amount is to be learned from their efforts to clarify Peirce’s own approach to clarity. This is especially true of the efforts of Manley Thompson, Christopher Hookway, Joseph Ransdell, T. L. Short, Sandra Rosenthal, and Lucia Santaella. But even these commentators and followers, undeniably the most insightful of those who have written about Peirce, have not yet done complete justice to the pragmatic importance of his three levels of conceptual clarity. In this context, the term pragmatic needs to be distinguished from what we ordinarily understand by practical, especially the narrowly practical. In order to counteract this tendency, I want to seize this occasion as an opportunity to stress the pragmatic dimensions of responsible inquiry. Above all else, the pragmatic importance of these distinct levels concerns the conduct of inquiry---how inquirers ought to comport themselves for the purpose of advancing inquiry. Quite apart from its benefits to, or effects on, other forms of practice, the question of how inquirers, precisely as inquirers, ought to comport themselves (how they ought to undertake the task of investigation) is a pragmatic question. This is so not least of all because the question concerns the attainment or, at least, the approximation of the purposes constitutive of a shared human practice. Especially in disciplines such as philosophy and fields such as semiotics, inordinate emphasis has been placed on abstract definitions and formal classifications, thus insufficient attention has been paid to pragmatic clarifications and genealogical reconstructions (or, more generally, historical narratives). The value of such definitions and classifications should not be overlooked; but, by themselves, they are far from adequate modes of conceptualization. Such definitions and classifications need to be supplemented. They need to be supplemented not only by pragmatic clarifications and historical contextualizations but also by a reflective appropriation of the primordial forms of human engagement. Such supplementation in each of these directions---in the direction of reflective appropriation no less than that of pragmatic clarification---can - not be gainsaid. The first level of conceptual clarity encompasses habits as much (if not more) than the third level. The habits by which an agent is equipped unreflectively to interpret or to utter signs of various kinds are, in some respects, far removed from the habits to which an inquirer calls our attention in pragmatically clarifying the meaning of our terms, but in other respects these habits are not utterly disparate from those serving as the ultimate interpretants of our theoretical terms. The most important respect in which these habits are different is that, in the one case, they are haphazardly formed, whereas in the other they are deliberately cultivated. The most significant respect in which these habits are akin is that, on both levels, they insure an attunement (or harmony) between the dispositions of somatic, social agents and the dispositions of the beings with which such agents are bound up, thus those with which they must contend. The dispositions of things are integrated into those of the agents who have had opportunities to handle these things in some fashion or other; put otherwise, the dispositions of agents are calibrated to those of things encountered in experience, either the somewhat narrowly circumscribed sphere of everyday experience or the imaginatively expanded arena of experimental inquiry. It is, however, easy to misunderstand what Peirce pragmatically means by the first grade of clarity. He is himself in some measure responsible for the likelihood or, at least, possibility of interpreters construing his meaning too narrowly. The first grade of conceptual clearness does not only concern what we are most likely to envision as the use of signs (our tacit adeptness in interpreting and uttering signs in appropriate circumstances), for it concerns such affairs as the muted growl of an unknown dog or the peculiar smile of a longtime friend, also a sharply defined line in our perceptual field (say, that of a tree branch) or an unexpected opening in a forest of densely growing vegetation. In the wonderful coinage of J. J. Gibson, the tree branch is an affordance to anyone engaged in the activity of climbing, just as the opening is an affordance for anyone seeking a way out of the forest: the branch affords the climber an opportunity to carry out an activity, just as the opening affords the person seeking escape a route by which to fulfill this purpose. What we are biologically attuned to perceive (as much as anything else, if not more) are affordances and obstacles. We take the handle of a door as the means of opening the door and entering a room, simply by taking hold and turning the handle. This act embodies in itself a take on the object seemingly affording us the possibility of entrance. An allegedly inward, imaginative representation of this object as a handle need not be posited; the outward, purposive act is, in itself, a mode of conceptualization. The response to objects and events, in practical effect (though not necessarily in conscious intent) under a certain description (e.g., to take this piece of furniture, despite its almost illegible design, as a chair, or that device as a corkscrew), involves a semiotic dimension (simply in sitting on the “chair” one is in effect interpreting what it is). The use of things (cf. Heidegger; also MerleauPonty) is utterly dependent upon the interpretation of signs (e.g., a very sharp blade is seen as such---its extreme thinness being a telltale sign of its extreme sharpness---and thus used with extreme caution). So, too, is the inhabitation of the world as an organism endowed with motility (Merleau-Ponty) and propelled by desires. Hence, the use of things and inhabitation of the world in an intelligent and appropriate way would be, on my interpretation, examples of what Peirce means by the first grade of clearness. Human conceptualization is, first and (at least, arguably) foremost, a somatic, practical affair. Our dispositions to use certain things in certain ways implies that we are taking them in a certain light, responding to them under a certain description (merely walking along a footbridge confesses one’s trust in the ability of the bridge to support one’s weight). But our tacit, locally embedded, and directly somatic conceptualizations make possible our more explicit, elaborately generalized, and primarily imaginative or otherwise mental modes of conceptualization. The latter modes are the ones in which philosophers, including Peirce, have been most interested. But, like Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, his writings provide resources for understanding the former mode (the tacit, local, and manifestly somatic mode). But, to make clear Peirce’s doctrine of the distinct grades of conceptual clearness, we need to become even clearer about what he means by concepts. Toward a Pragmatic Conception of Concepts It is not possible here to give a complete account of the Peircean conception of our intellectual concepts. For our purposes, what most needs to be stressed is that Peirce’s conception of such conceptions is itself thoroughly pragmatic. It will be useful, first, to assemble a number of texts conveying Peirce’s conception and, then, to explicate his under - standing of concepts in an emphatically pragmatic manner. Peirce acknowledged, “I know very well that such a thing as an absolutely definite concept is beyond the power of the human mind.” But he immediately added: Still “I insist upon rendering the initial concepts as definite as they can be made” (EP 2, 421)---and made specifically for the exacting purposes of rigorous inquiry. Despite this insistence, he issued this warning: “we must be on our guard against the deceptions of abstract definitions” (CP 7.362). Along these same lines, he noted in reference to one of the focal concerns of his intellectual life (the pragmatic meaning of scientific inquiry): What is Science? We cannot define the word with the precision and accuracy which we define Circle ... any more than we can so define Money, Government, Stone, Life. The idea [of Science] like them, and more than some of them, is too vastly complex and diversified. It embodies the epitome of man’s intellectual development. (MS 601) Accordingly, its essence cannot be distilled in a definition. How we learn both most of the terms in a practice and those definitive of a practice (e.g., how we learn the distinctively biological meaning of terms like species, evolution, and organism as well as the strictly scientific meaning of this discipline itself) might be gathered from how we learn slang. You hear a new slang word: you never ask for a definition of it; and you never get one. You do not get even any simple example of its use; you only hear it in ironical, twisted, humorous sentences whose meaning is turned inside out and tied in a hard knot; rider and ridden understand one another [in] a way of which the former [say, a human] can no more give an account than the latter [a horse]. (7.447) If we are considering the initiation into a science such as biology, this seems to exaggerate, arguably wildly exaggerate, the extent to which the acquisition of comprehension is based on tacit, unreflective engagement. But the memorization of formal, abstract definitions, apart from the use of the understanding made available through such definitions, is a dead and deadening process. The use of such concepts is far more a tacit, unreflective exertion than an explicit, theoretical exercise. Formal definitions undeniably play an indispensable role in self-evaluating procedures. So, too, are contextual characterizations of pivotal terms. Some of the most important of these, scattered throughout Peirce’s writings, are these: “Now the best definition that was ever framed is, at best, a similar dissection [of a corpse]. It will not really work in the world as the object defined will [or, more precisely, would]” (CP 1.220). “... a Concept is a Sign ...” (CP 8.305). “A concept is something having the mode of being of a general type which is, or may be made, the rational part of the purport of a word” (CP 8.191). “A concept is not a mere jumble of particulars,---that is only its crudest species. A concept is the living influence upon us of a diagram, or icon, with whose several parts are connected in thought an equal number of feelings and ideas. The law of mind is that feelings and ideas attach themselves in thought so as to form systems. But the icon is not always clearly apprehended” (CP 7.467). “A concept is a symbol present to the imagination ...” (MS 283, p. 95) “We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature; the symbol-parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo... . In use and experience, its meaning grows. Such words as force, law, wealth, marriage bear with us very different meanings from those they bore to our barbarous ancestors” (CP 2.302). “... of the two implications of pragmatism that concepts are purposive, and that their meaning lies in their conceivable practical bearings, the former is the more fundamental” (CP 8.322, emphasis added; cf. LOT, p. 234). “Concepts are mental habits, habits formed by the exercise of imagination. Human instinct is no whit less miraculous than that of the bird, the beaver, or the ant. Only, instead of being directed to bodily motions, such as singing and flying; or to the construction of dwellings, or to the organization of communities, its theatre is the plastic inner world, and its products are the marvelous conceptions of which the greatest are the ideas of number, time, and space ...” (MS 318, p. 14; emphasis added). In formally semeiotic terms, what we ordinarily call a concept is identified by Peirce as a rheme (or rhematic sign). Though not all species of rhematic signs are also legisigns,32 some of the most important unquestionably are such species. These are, in addition, the ones most relevant to the essential business of intellectual concepts in heuristic contexts. The function of such concepts is inseparable from their role in rational arguments concerning objective facts (CP 5.467). Concepts are intellectual insofar as their structure is that upon which rational “arguments concerning objective fact may hinge” or turn (CP 5.467). In this context, an argument is rational insofar as its strength (its formal validity and, beyond this, its heuristic soundness) can be evaluated in light of intersubjectively espoused and enforced norms and ideals, while any matter is objective (at least) insofar as a community of observers is, in principle, capable of validating or repudiating claims of one or another of its members concerning such a matter on the basis of shared observation or experience. Those species of rhemes that are also legisigns are, at bottom, habits. To possess a concept, in the sense of a rhematic legisign (of whatever species), is to be disposed to grasp a range of particulars in a certain manner. In turn, to be disposed to grasp particulars in this manner is only provisionally a mental or imaginary orientation toward these objects or events; it is ultimately an agential and thus potentially deliberative stance toward what objects and events are in any one of the three modes of being, but most usefully what they themselves are disposed to do in determinable circumstances. Our capacity to grasp the beings in whose midst we are thrown extends far beyond that of taking hold of objects and events with our hands. But, at the farthest reach of our conceptual grasp, rhematic signs always bear implicit witness to the seemingly humble ability to pick up, turn around, and put down the tangible objects of our everyday encounters (part of what Heidegger means by pragmata). Pragmatically understood, concepts are whatever enable us to grasp some being or aspect of its being, including its very mode of being. Hence, they enable us to handle, however crudely or even ineptly, what we meet in experience. The capacity of the mouth to seize and hold the nipple, to suckle sufficiently for the nourishment of the newborn, is in some measure an acquired ability, all the more so the ability of the hand to grasp and hold, indefinitely, what the eyes see. The human mind instinctually reaches out and tries to take hold of what it sees or in some other way perceives, no less irrepressibly and fatefully than does the human hand reach out and try to grasp what appears within the field of consciousness. The extent to which our hands, guided by our eyes and other senses, provide one of the most fecund metaphors for the human mind is rarely appreciated, especially by philosophers, but also by even those theorists who celebrate the importance of the body. This is implicit in Begriff, the German word for concept (or notion). While Kant conceives of concepts primarily in terms of rules (Schrader), Peirce conceives of them primarily in terms of habits and only derivatively in terms of rules. While Kant sharply distinguishes between determinate and reflective judgments, Peirce in effect blurs this distinction by making all human judgments either the sedimented results of reflective judgments or simply reflective judgments. Human concepts are, at all levels, habitual capacities (at least, potentially habitual capacities) to grasp and hold some object or event in relationship to an indeterminate array of other factors. Insofar as habits are formalizable into rules, concepts can be identified with rules; but, insofar as they escape such formalization, this identification can be misleading (cf. Winch). Though appreciative of the value of abstract definitions and formal classification, elaborate codifications such as lexicons and the explicit formulation of operative principles, Peirce was equally appreciative of our inability to transcend our massive reliance on unreflective familiarity. Our instinctual capacity to frame concepts in response to experiential challenges enables us to acquire a vast array of highly flexible conceptions. These conceptions themselves enable us to be at home in the world. That is, they render familiar what otherwise would be strange and disorienting. This familiarity is indicative of our attunement with the world, primarily as an arena of action. Human agents are related to the “circumambient All” (CP 6.429) not as aloof spectators trying to survey an expansive scene from which they can completely extricate themselves (or one from which they are altogether exiled), but rather as implicated actors (beings implicated in processes and practices over which these agents can exert only limited control, about which they can attain merely approximate, provisional, and fragmentary understanding). Even so, they are remarkably attuned to the world into which they are thrown. Primordial Attunement and Unreflective Capacities In his memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Norman Malcolm quotes his teacher as having once said: A person caught in a philosophical confusion is like a man in a room who wants to get out but doesn’t know how. He tries the window but it is too high. He tries the chimney but it is too narrow. And if he would only turn around, he would see that the door has been open all the time!” [51] No less than such thinkers as Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Peirce’s contribution has been, in important instances, his ability to show us not only the need to turn around but also the way to accomplish this maneuver. This is nowhere more evident than in his response to the Cartesian challenge of how an individual knower can find within itself adequate resources for knowing with absolute certainty an external world or, for that matter, anything else. How does a mind initially contained within itself and, hence, primordially estranged from the world come to know the world? Implicit in his critique of Cartesianism, Peirce does not attempt to answer this question; rather he rejects it and all of the assumptions that work, often in an undetected manner, to resurrect this conundrum. From his perspective, we are not alien to the world in which we breathe, move, and otherwise act. We are rather primordially attuned, even if imperfectly adapted, to the environment in which we are destined to conduct the business of living. What this attunement pragmatically means is that our innate habits (our instinctual tendencies) provide the basis for a rough-and-ready, practical attunement to some of the most salient features of our life-world, at least those features bearing most directly upon motility (cf. Merleau-Ponty; also Gibson) and reproduction (CP 6.604). The reproduction of the species concerns the nurturance of the young as much as the securing of a mate. Beyond this, these innate habits secure the possibility for attaining an ever fuller and finer attunement to the complex circumstances into which human ingenuity inevitably plunges the human animal. The function of intelligence in its most immediately practical sense concerns not representing reality in some inward domain but realizing desires in some hazardous sphere. In Peirce’s own words, “one, at least, of the functions of intelligence is to adapt conduct to circumstances, so as to subserve desire” (CP 5.548). But the function of our intelligence is hardly exhausted in the task of such adaptation. Unbridled curiosity and unfettered wonder thrust human intelligence, time and again, into unfamiliar circumstances. While our attunement to the circumstances of our lives is massive and, in countless respects, intricate, “man is so continually getting himself into novel circumstances that he needs, and is supplied with, a subsidiary faculty of reasoning for bringing instinct to bear upon situations to which it does not directly apply” (CP 6.498). On the one hand, Peirce insists: “man is so completely hemmed in by the bounds of his possible practical experience, his mind is so restricted to being an instrument of his needs [and desires] ... he cannot, in the least, mean anything that transcends those limits” (CP 5.536). On the other hand, the very exercise of our intelligence, hence the enactment of our habits, propels us to transcend not the limits of possible experience but those of our established abilities and prereflective attunement to our inherited world. Habit, Purpose, and Character: Pragmatic Clarification and Deliberative Agency It is important not to exaggerate the importance or necessity of clarifying, pragmatically or otherwise, our ideas. Peirce is quite explicit about this: When one seeks to know what is meant by a physical force, and finds that it is a real component acceleration of defined amount and direction that would exist whatever were the original velocity, it is possible to press the question further and inquire what the meaning of acceleration is; and the answer to this must show that it is a habit of the person who predicates an acceleration, supposing him to use the term as others do. For ordinary purposes, however, nothing is gained by carrying the analysis so far; because these ordinary commonsense concepts of everyday life, having guided the conduct of men ever since the race was developed, are by far more trustworthy than the exacter [more exact] concepts of science; so that when great precision is not required they are the best terms of definition. [EP 2, 433] There is, Peirce insists, a categoreal distinction between effort and purpose. Effort is an instance of secondness, whereas purpose is an example---indeed, a paradigm---of thirdness. “The sense of effort is,” in his own words, “the sense of an opposing resistance then and there present.” This sense of exerting oneself and being resisted “is entirely different from purpose, which is the idea of a possible general regarded as desirable together with a sense of being determined in one’s habitual nature (in one’s soul, if you like the expression; it is that part of our nature which takes [or acquires] general determinations of conduct) to actualize it” (EP 2, 483--84). What makes the sense of effort and purpose categoreally different is that this sense “is not an idea of anything general or of anything possible, but of what which actually is” (EP 2, 484). It may be necessary, in order to render the conclusion true, to take the term ‘habit’ in a much wider sense than that in which it is requisite that it should be understood in order that our conclusion should imply the truth of pragmatism. Just this turns out to be the truth of the matter. That it is so will be illustrated by my sole reply to a possible objection to our conclusion... . [EP 2, 431] Peirce derives this objection from a critique offered by Josiah Royce, even if he was not the intended target of this Roycean criticism. “The supposed objection is that, besides habits, another class of mental phenomena is found in purposes” (EP 2, 431). That is, not habits but purposes are fully suited to serve as the ultimate logical interpretants of our intellectual concepts. In a very qualified sense, Peirce concedes this point. But he does so without abandoning his thesis regarding habits. From this, we should not infer that Peirce is simply being stubborn or worse---vainglorious (i.e., too proud to modify or discard his position, even though the force of argument counts against his stance). Rather, we should discern in his nuanced response an admirable subtlety. Let us, first, quote at length Peirce’s response and, then, explain in detail not only its formal structure but also its pragmatic purport. My reply is that while I hold all logical, or intellectual, interpretants to be habits, I by no means say that all habits are such interpretants. It is only self-controlled habits that are so, and not all of them, either. Now a purpose is only the special character (and what is, strictly speaking, special, as contradistinguished from individual, is essentially general) of this or that self-controlled habit. Thus, if a man has a general purpose to render the decorations of a house he is building beautiful, without yet having determined more precisely what they shall be, the normal way in which the purpose was developed ... was that he actually made decorations in his inner world, and on attention to the results, in some cases experienced feelings which stimulated him to endeavors to reproduce them, while in other cases the feelings consequent upon contemplation of the results excited efforts to avoid or modify them, and by these exercises a habit was produced, which would ... affect not only his actions in the world of imagination, but also his actions in the world of experience; and this habit being self-controlled, and therefore recognized, his conception of its character joined to his self-recognition, or adoption, of it, constitute what we call his purpose. [EP 2, 431] The identity of the habits into which the pragmaticist ultimately translates the meaning of terms is inextricably connected to purpose. The best way to make this point is far from evident. But the general point is not in the least controversial. “[Readiness] to act in a certain way under given circumstances and when actuated by a motive is a habit” (CP 5.480; emphasis added). In “What Pragmatism Is” (1905), Peirce asks: “But of the myriad forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to be called its very meaning?” (CP 5.427) What is that form that would provide us with the ultimate logical interpretant of the intellectual signs playing such a prominent role in such propositions? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances [i.e., not when agents are animated by this or that narrow purpose], nor when one entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most directly applicable to self-control under every [conceivable] situation, and to every purpose.” [CP 5.427] “We are,” Peirce notes elsewhere, “too apt to think that what one means to do and the meaning of a word [or other sign] are quite unrelated meanings of the word ‘meaning,’ or that they are only connected by both referring to some actual operation of the mind” (CP 1.343). But this is not so. They are rather quite intimately related meanings of the word meaning. This is the heart of Peirce’s pragmatism (or pragmaticism). Conclusion The pragmatic clarification of meaning has as much to do with purpose as it does with habit (or, more precisely, habit-change). What Peirce means by habit is inclusive of purpose, the only kind of habit suitable to serve as an ultimate logical interpretant being a habit incorporating within itself some of the defining features of concretely embodied purposes. This is, no doubt, vague, but possibily it must be so (what such features of such purposes are, in any given context, are almost certainly variable). The critical point is that not habits in isolation but in clusters and these clusters in context, as defined by purpose, are the matters to which the pragmatic maxim draws out attention. Only thus is the concept of habit conceived in a sufficiently concrete and specific way. Moreover, the Peircean conception of habit is as relevant to offering an adequate account of the first grade of conceptual clearness as this conception is itself pertinent to providing such an account of the third grade. While our adept familiarity (or the first level of clarity) is rooted in the fluid functioning of unreflective habits, our pragmatic clarifications flower from deliberately cultivated, explicitly identified habits. The ever fuller and finer attunement of the dispositions of somatic, social actors to the dispositions of whatever is encountered in experience is continuous with the tacit competencies of human agents in everyday circumstances. Scientific inquiry transports human agents to nothing less than unfamiliar worlds (see, e.g., CP 1.236), spheres of action in which their innate and customary habits are often as much a hindrance as an aid. Peirce is quite explicit about this: the indubitable beliefs refer to a somewhat primitive mode of life, ... and while they never become dubitable in so far as our mode of life remains that of somewhat primitive man, yet as we develop degrees of self-control unknown to that man, occasions of action arise in relation to which the original beliefs, if stretched to cover them, have no sufficient authority. In other words, we outgrow the applicability of instinct---not altogether, by any manner of means, but in our highest activities. [CP 5.511] Peirce counted the extended family of heuristic practices (or theoretical inquiries) among the highest activities or pursuits of human beings. The resources of phenomenology, especially as these were augmented and refined by Heidegger in Being and Time and Merleau-Ponty in The Phenomenology of Perception, provide an aid in articulating what is implied by Peirce when referring to the first grade of clarity. The resources of analytic philosophy are especially helpful when trying to frame formal, abstract definitions of matters being investigated; they are, however, also helpful for appreciating important facets of both the first and third grades of clarity. The genius of Peirce himself is nowhere more evident than in his realization that the practice of inquiry incorporates within itself (however implicitly) the maxim of pragmatism, thus any adequate theory of our heuristic practices must make not only explicit but also central how conscientious inquirers clarify the pivotal terms in any experimental field. The appeal to habits at the center of Peirce’s pragmaticism is an appeal made by an expert inquirer for the sake of more widely cultivating a particular species of heuristic expertise. It is the exercise of expertise or, at least, competence, for the sake of enhancing and expanding expertise in virtually all fields of investigation, but especially in coenoscopic (or strictly philosophical) fields. We, however, never evolve to the point where our rudimentary forms of somatic competence become completely irrelevant. We always depend on a vast background of unquestioned abilities (cf. Polanyi; Taylor). In other words, we never supercede the first grade of clarity. Of equal importance, the pragmatic meaning of habit in the context of Peircean pragmatism is bound up with the meaning of purpose. If we are to clarify what Peirce means by habit, we must become not only clearer about what he understands by purpose but also why his understanding of habit is so intricately bound up with his understanding of purpose. For some purposes, thus, in some contexts, we can abstract from (at least, not explicitly avert to) our animating and governing purposes, paying painstaking attention rather to the dispositional properties of this or that empirical object. But, insofar the dispositions of deliberative agents in their role as experimental inquirers is integral to the clarification of meaning (i.e., insofar as the defining dispositions of things or objects is disclosed in and through the exertions of rational agents), purpose both as a specific form of habit and as the most critical factor in instituting the experiential context of our rational endeavors is central to Peirce’s pragmatism. My hope is to have rendered this thesis plausible, by making it clear---and to have made it clear by both adhering to Peirce’s own pragmatic maxim and suggesting promising directions in which the elaboration of this doctrine might be carried forward today. Part of this clarification, however, has involved stressing the irreducible vagueness (including the vast, vague background of operative but unidentified habits) always accompanying even our most determinate clarifications and precise formulations.