November 8th to 11th, 2004

Brian Wilson
brinwils@iupui.edu
Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis, Indiana - United States of America

PEIRCE'S FALLIBILISM, REALISM, AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF INQUIRY

ABSTRACT
Peirce's fallibilism is concerned, at its core, with a scientific realism which claims there is a reality that exists independent of any individual inquirer or group of inquirers' opinions and can be known by experience via the scientific method of inquiry. To have scientific knowledge is to have well established beliefs which, more often than not, lead us toward a more refined description and accurate prediction of reality. Peirce's fallibilism is the doctrine that this knowledge is neither absolutely certain nor entirely approximate. Peirce's fallibilist stance, on the one hand, should not lead to the skeptical conclusion that all, most, or any one particular belief is false; on the other hand, we shouldn't draw the foundationalist's conclusion that we must, at the least, have access to one or more (basic) infallible beliefs. Rather, Peirce's fallibilism is a function of his method of inquiry, such that to believe that our scientific knowledge is fallible is to conduct inquiry in such a way that experience of an independently existing reality will bear out true and false beliefs. Thus, we, as a group of inquirers, conduct our inquiries against an independent reality with the view that possible future experience will burst at the seams of our most faithfully established scientific beliefs.

KEYWORDS: Fallibilism, Realism, Methodology, Inquiry, Knowledge, Belief, Skepticism, Foundationalism.

Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Departament of Philosophy
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil