The Development of Beliefs

How and why do beliefs form? What makes them stick?

We all believe things.

But have you ever thought about what motivated or convinced you to believe something?

What was the reasoning or rationale behind a belief, and do you even need a justification to have a belief in the first place?

Background

In his work “The Fixation of Belief”, Charles Peirce discusses how the process of fixation occurs through several methods, these being:

the method of tenacity
the method of authority
the a priori method
and finally, the method of science.

Peirce continues by explaining why the fixation of belief under the method of science is most advantageous because of its basis in reality and due to the practical results it achieves.

He describes this advantage in the following:

“…giving a new conception of reasoning as something which was to be done with one’s eyes open, in manipulating real things instead of words and fancies.”

To better understand Peirce’s argument regarding fixation, consider what fixation implies in this context.

From the Oxford English Dictionary, the most relevant definition reads:

“In immaterial sense: To attach firmly; to implant securely (principles, etc.)”.

Then, in the context Peirce’s work the problem of fixation refers to the problems associated with the permanence of some beliefs in the minds of individuals. The method of science is distinct from the other methods in that it is able to defeat the subjectivity of the other methods of fixing belief through its consideration that there are real things, thus establishing the basis for its permanence outside of the fickleness of human beliefs in the external.

The Types of Belief Fixation

To begin, let us consider the three methods which Peirce mentions before science:

(1) the method of tenacity

(2) the method of authority

(3) the a priori method

We’ll consider the weaknesses of each of these methods with regard to factors which detract from their permanence.

The Method of Tenacity

The method of tenacity represents one of the more naïve and fundamental methods of preserving a belief, it involves a type of brutal force in that it takes advantage of willful ignorance to achieve fixation. In its essence, the method of tenacity places the permanence of the belief over the truth of the belief in its fixation of that belief. Peirce describes the nature of the method of tenacity in the following:

“If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?”

In the above quote, Peirce works out how, if one is primarily concerned with the preservation of certain beliefs, then it would be possible by any number of crude means such as repeating that belief to oneself and avoiding any situations that might prove direct evidence contradicting that belief. For instance, I might believe that after I write a paper, my professor will give me an A on it.

If I were to engage in the method of tenacity to preserve that belief, I might reiterate to myself that the content in my paper would justify an A and never check Blackboard (or whatever online platform you use) again. The weaknesses of this approach to belief-fixation are immediately apparent in the above example, and Peirce indicates this weakness as the fact that “the social impulse is against it.” One will not be able to fix belief using the method of tenacity because:

“The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him, and it will be apt to occur to him… that their opinions are quite as good as his own, and this will shake his confidence in his belief”

The importance of the opinions of other people, the social impulse, largely invalidates the method of tenacity as a suitable method of belief fixation. This is because if one is to interact with others and consider their opinions of equivalent value to one’s own, then the method of tenacity will too often produce unsolvable conflicts between one’s own beliefs and the beliefs of others.

The Method from Authority

Above, it has been illustrated how a naïve approach to belief fixation that prizes the end of fixating the belief over all else does not necessarily lead to the most successful outcome. In fact, it arguably leads to less successful fixation due to the conflict that one encounters in practicing a method of tenacity. The next method one should consider in belief fixation, then, would be a method that takes into account the opinions of one’s peers. The method of authority characterizes such an approach:

“Let the will of the state act, then, instead of that of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; have at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed.”

Note how analogous the method of authority is to the method of tenacity in the process of reiteration and rejection of contradictory evidence that it relies on for belief fixation, the difference only lies on the scale at which the beliefs are enforced.

Additionally, another key difference lies in the suppression of contradictory thought and reason present as part of the method of authority: “Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do.” While the method of authority solves the issue of contradiction through the active suppression of dissent and has enjoyed success and stability in populations with uniformity in beliefs, it still has limitations. Peirce remarks on these limitations stating that:

“…no institution can undertake to regulate opinions upon every subject. Only the most important ones can be attended to, and on the rest men’s minds must be left to the action of natural causes. This imperfection will be no source of weakness so long as men are in such a state of culture that one opinion does not influence another…”

In other words, the method of authority is valid as long as there aren’t significant portions of dissidents or those capable of sustained reflection and reasoning in the population.

The “a priori” method

However, it is interesting to note that this limitation is analogous to that of the method of tenacity in that people may begin to question the authority of their own society in relation to other foreign societies in that there is nothing that inherently establishes the superiority of any two societies in relation to each other.

This is the same problem as in the method of tenacity where the individual realizes they do not have any reason to believe that their own opinion is better than those of others. The “authority” in the method of authority then becomes similar to the willful ignorance to the end of belief fixation in the method of tenacity except that such willful ignorance is now enforced at an institutional or governmental scale.

This weakness in the method of authority leads people to search further for a more justifiable method to fix their beliefs. Since the crux of the method of authority’s weakness lies in the recognition of the arbitrary nature of one’s government or state, an improved method should account for such arbitrariness. Peirce describes the progress of such considerations that lead to the a priori method:

“They will further perceive that such doubts as these must existence in their minds with reference to every belief… The willful adherence to a belief, and the arbitrary forcing of it upon others, must, therefore, both be given up.”

In giving up these beliefs, Peirce notes that men now have begun to take up systems not based in “observed facts in any great degree…” These new systems are “chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seemed ‘agreeable to reason’… it does not mean that which agrees with experience, but that which we find ourselves inclined to believe.” So in advancing from the method of tenacity and the method of authority, we arrive at a method which relies on systems which superficially make sense and which may be internally consistent, but do not have a rigorously established basis in reality.

The goal of the a priori method is to eliminate the element of accident and caprice from a method of belief fixation. However, Peirce notes that while this aim to eliminate the accidental from belief fixation leans in the right direction, the a priori method does not accomplish its goal of separating itself from the accidental more than the method of authority does. He explains:

“This method, therefore, does not differ in a very essential way from that of authority… I cannot help seeing that, though governments do not interfere, sentiments in their development will be very greatly determined by accidental causes”

Simply put, we cannot rely on humans to create an a priori method devoid of the accidental because of the randomness and caprice that affects the human creating such a method.

The Method of Science

Thus, from avoiding the key limitation that is found in the method of tenacity, the method of authority, and the a priori method, the method of science is the most successful in its belief fixation. The key limitation that the method of science avoids is reliance on human thinking to create a system or method of belief fixation. It grounds belief fixation in something independent of human thinking:

“…it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency — by something upon which our thinking has no effect.”

The method of science achieves the elimination of the uncertainty, the accidental element associated with human thinking by becoming independent of human thinking altogether. Peirce’s description of the method of science’s key tenet or hypothesis illustrates this:

“There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects… we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are.”

Therefore by fixating our beliefs on something entirely independent of our cognition, on the permanence of the external, we are able to achieve the best results for that fixation.

Briefly, not all issues may be settled through the scientific method. The most salient issue is the fact that the method of science rests on a hypothesis and we cannot ascertain that hypothesis to be true through the use of science (as this would be circular). The only way of answering this skepticism, according to Peirce, is through practice:

“The test of whether I am truly following the method is not an immediate appeal to my feelings and purposes, but, on the contrary, itself involves the application of the method. Hence it is that bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.”

To reiterate, the appeal of the method of science in belief fixation lies in its reliance on features external to human feelings and rationality for its permanence and principles. In addition, it is possible to be further convinced of the validity of the method of science because there is a right and a wrong way to execute it, in contrast with the other three methods, and because the validity of the method is based on the application of the method itself.

Belief Fixation — Final Thoughts

To conclude, Peirce identifies three problematic schemes of belief fixation, the method of tenacity, the method of authority, and the a priori method. He identifies these problematic schemes in order to show where adjustments had been made in order to account for the issues or weaknesses associated with the prior method. The key limitation for all three of these methods was their reliance on human thinking, biases, and feelings to fix belief. In other words, these beliefs are fixed according to our own inclinations rather than based in anything “real”.

Eliminating that reliance by basing a method of belief fixation on something externally permanent like the elements of reality around us, allowed for the development of a method of science as the most successful approach to belief fixation.

The method of science makes certain hypotheses regarding the reliability of our perceptions, and the regularity of physical patterns of behavior or principles that we can observe. This hypothesis is continually affirmed through the execution of the method of science to fix our belief.