Bibliography

Reason's Rules

Let us distinguish between the proposition and the assertion of that proposition. We will grant, if you please, that the proposition itself merely represents an image with a label or pointer attached to it. But to assert that proposition is to make oneself responsible for it, without any definite forfeit, it is true, but with a forfeit no smaller for being unnamed. Now an ex post facto law is forbidden by the Constitution of the United States of America, but an ex post facto contract is forbidden by the constitution of things. A man cannot promise what the past shall have been, if he tries. It is evident that to guarantee that, if a piece of work has not already been done right, one will pay for it, and to guarantee that, if it shall be found not to have already been done right, one will pay for it, have one and the same meaning. One or other of them therefore must be an elliptical or otherwise unliteral expression, or else both are so. But nobody will maintain that to promise to pay for the work, if it shall be ascertained not to have been already done right, really means to promise to so pay, if it shall in fact not have been already done right, whether it be ascertained or not. It would be equally absurd to say that there was any third meaning which should have reference to an unascertained past. It follows, then, that to contract to pay money if something in the past has been done or not done can only mean that the money shall be paid if it is ascertained that the event has happened or has not happened. But there would be no reason why the literal sense should not be understood if it made any sense. Hence there can be no meaning in making oneself responsible for a past event independent of its future ascertainment. But to assert a proposition is to make oneself responsible for its truth. Consequently, the only meaning which an assertion of a past fact can have is that, if in the future the truth be ascertained, so it shall be ascertained to be. There seems to be no rational escape from this.

A state of belief may be very unhappy in consequence of the character of the proposition believed. But it is a state in which the stimulus of doubt is allayed, and in so far is satisfactory.

A belief is of the nature of a habit; for a belief is a rule so impressed upon a man’s nature that he will act according to it when he acts deliberately and the proposition believed in is the hinge on which conduct will turn. Now a habit (using the word in such a sense as not to exclude a natural disposition) is nothing but a rule so impressed upon a man’s nature that he tends to act according to it, when opposing influences are not too strong. A belief, therefore, is seated in the depth of the soul, and may never appear even to the believer himself except in its effects.

The state of doubt is a state of indeterminacy between two propositions. It is unsatisfactory. It is a state of stimulation, accompanied by a peculiar feeling.

…experience means nothing but just that of a cognitive nature which the history of our lives has forced upon us. It is indirect, if the medium of some other experience or thought is required to bring it out. Duality, thought abstractly, no doubt requires the intervention of reflection; but that upon which this reflection is based, the concrete duality, is there in the very experience itself.

…a habit (using the word in such a sense as not to exclude a natural disposition) is nothing but a rule so impressed upon a man’s nature that he tends to act according to it, when opposing influences are not too strong.

No matter how completely free the Reader may be of the influence of logical systems and traditions, he nevertheless does hold certain logical tenets. There are certain general forms of reasoning which he approves as calculated to lead to the truth. There are certain others which he condemns as dangerous. This doctrine is his logica utens; and he actually applies it in every case in which he can properly be said to reason.

A practical belief may […] be described as a habit of deliberate behavior. The word “deliberate” is hardly completely defined by saying that it implies attention to memories of past experience and to one’s present purpose, together with self-control. The acquisition of habits of the nervous system and of the mind is governed by the principle that any special character of a reaction to a given kind of stimulus is (unless fatigue intervenes) more likely to belong to a subsequent reaction to a second stimulus of that kind, than it would be if it had not happened to belong to the former reaction. But habits are sometimes acquired without any previous reactions that are externally manifest. A mere imagination of reacting in a particular way seems to be capable after numerous repetitions of causing the imagined kind of reaction really to take place upon subsequent occurrences of the stimulus. In the formation of habits of deliberate action, we may imagine the occurrence of the stimulus, and think out what the results of different actions will be. One of these will appear particularly satisfactory; and then an action of the soul takes place which is well described by saying that that mode of reaction “receives a deliberate stamp of approval.” The result will be that when a similar occasion actually arises for the first time it will be found that the habit of really reacting in that way is already established. I remember that one day at my father’s table, my mother spilled some burning spirits on her skirt. Instantly, before the rest of us had had time to think what to do, my brother, Herbert, who was a small boy, had snatched up the rug and smothered the fire. We were astonished at his promptitude, which, as he grew up, proved to be characteristic. I asked him how he came to think of it so quickly. He said, “I had considered on a previous day what I would do in case such an accident should occur.” This act of stamping with approval, “endorsing” as one’s own, an imaginary line of conduct so that it shall give a general shape to our actual future conduct is what we call a resolve. It is not at all essential to the practical belief, but only a somewhat frequent attachment.

[—] If an opinion can eventually go to the determination of a practical belief, it, in so far, becomes itself a practical belief; and every proposition that is not pure metaphysical jargon and chatter must have some possible bearing upon practice. [—]

…there is just this difference between a practical belief and an expectation so far as it involves no purpose [or] effort; namely that the former is expectant of muscular sensation, the latter of sensation not muscular.

[The] real state of things is something which is “so,” that is, has a certain determination, or specialization, or being, whether it be opined to be so or otherwise. Therefore, the reader holds that for every question not nonsensical, there is a certain determination of being which is completely independent of what you, or I, or any man or generations of men may opine about it.

[The] act of stamping with approval, “endorsing” as one’s own, an imaginary line of conduct so that it shall give a general shape to our actual future conduct is what we call a resolve.

…it does not follow that because every theoretical belief is, at least indirectly, a practical belief, this is the whole meaning of the theoretical belief. Of theoretical beliefs, in so far as they are not practical, we may distinguish between those which are expectations, and those which are not even that. [—]

…there is just this difference between a practical belief and an expectation so far as it involves no purpose [or] effort; namely that the former is expectant of muscular sensation, the latter of sensation not muscular. The expectancy consists in the stamp of approval, the act of recognition as one’s own, being placed by a deed of the soul upon an imaginary anticipation of experience; so that, if it be fulfilled, though the actual experience will, at all events, contain enough of the unexpected to be recognized as external, yet the person who stands in expectancy will almost claim the event as his due, his triumphant “I told you so” implying a right to expect as much from a justly-regulated world. A man who goes among a barbarous tribe and announces a total eclipse of the sun next day, will expect, not only “his” eclipse from Nature, but due credit for it from that People. In all this, I am endeavoring so to shape what I have to say as to exhibit, besides, the close alliance, the family identity, of the ideas of externality and unexpectedness.

As to purely theoretical beliefs not expectacious, if they are to mean anything, they must be somehow expectative. The word “expect” is now and then applied by careless and ignorant speakers, especially the English, to what is surmised in regard to the past. It is not illogical language: it is only elliptical. “I expect that Adam must have felt a little sore over the extraction of his rib,” may be interpreted as meaning that the expectation is, that so it will be found when the secrets of all hearts are laid bare. History would not have the character of a true science if it were not permissible to hope that further evidences may be forthcoming in the future by which the hypotheses of the critics may be tested. A theory which should be capable of being absolutely demonstrated in its entirety by future events, would be no scientific theory but a mere piece of fortune telling. On the other hand, a theory, which goes beyond what may be verified to any degree of approximation by future discoveries is, in so far, metaphysical gabble. To say that a quadratic equation which has no real root has two different imaginary roots does not sound as if it could have any relation to experience. Yet it is strictly expectative. It states what would be expectable if we had to deal with quantities expressing the relations between objects, related to one another like the points of the plane of imaginary quantity.