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The Fixation of Belief by Charles Sanders Pierce

 

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             He then enrolls the ideas of another great empiricist, Darwin, to demonstrate that the survival of the human species relies on this rival of ideas, and further advances that through survival we discover a technique for settling conviction suitable to the single person, as well as to the group. He notes, nonetheless, that government (and other social foundations) at last commands truth as indicated by it engages instead of to the respectability of rationale; subsequently this methodology, which he calls the strategy for power, inescapably prompts its own particular logical fallacies. .
             Pierce then analyzes the a priori method, which he characterizes as thinking "as one is inclined to think," with propositions "agreeable to reason". He composes that in spite of the fact that " this method is far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others its failure has been the most manifest," noting cases where conclusion has been created self-assertively and conflictingly, thus leaving its rationale undependable. .
             Having disregarded these methods for fixed belief, Pierce puts forth his defense for the technique for science. Since our notion of truth does not change whether it is genuine or not, he contends that " a method should be found by which our beliefs may be caused by nothing human, but by some external permanency – by something upon which our thinking has no effect." Pierce writes that the scientific method presumes that "realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really are, and any man will be led to the one true conclusion." He composes that the experimental technique is substantial on the grounds that " experience of the method has not led us to doubt it.


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