Epistemology: foundations and core concepts

Epistemology

The epistemological gap is about what is real (i.e., physical and thus observable) and what is not real (i.e., what is not physical and thus unobservable). Peirce is one philosopher who believed that real and unreal is what gives us doubts and beliefs -- and beliefs are obviously stronger than doubts. Hegel, on the other hand, was an idealist and he believed that everything that exists has to be mental -- not physical. Hegel was actually quite believing in the idea that there isn't any physical stuff at all. Rather, people are just things that embody thoughts and feelings (p. 4). This isn't to say, however, that there can

not be any associations drawn between the two thinkers. Both Peirce and Hegel had similar ideas when it came to beliefs and truths, which can be considered the same thing.

According to Pierce, we can usually say when something is real or believed and when something is unreal or doubtful. He says, "there is a dissimilarity between the sensation of doubting and that of believing" (p. 71). However, there is more to doubt and belief than simply that. Pierce suggests that there's a "practical difference" (p. 71). "The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect" (p. 71). Therefore, what can be surmised is that a belief can only be a belief when there is not even an ounce of doubt attached to it. Likewise, Hegel believed that truth is not truth until it is whole (i.e., everything that was and ever shall be). If we are to believe that a belief is a truth than essentially Peirce and Hegel were not saying entirely different things in theory; it is only the way in which they word their theories that leads us to believe that they are not related at all.

Hegel believed that everything was inside of us. Essentially, everything that we know and think in our minds is who we are and those ways of thinking come from concepts and theories and thoughts that came from other people before us. We are, in essence, simply made up of a lot of different people through time and history. The people today are an evolved version of everyone that came before and this pattern will continue. This has to do with Spirit. He says, "Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward" (p 5). On that same note, in Peirce's "Fixation of Beliefs," he talks about the struggle between beliefs and doubts (inquiry) and how the purpose is to know if one is dealing with a doubt or a belief. This can be likened to Hegel's theories in that inquiry is all about evolving. One cannot evolve -- society cannot evolve -- if there is not this struggle to find the truth or beliefs.

Where Peirce strays from Hegelian thought and thus widens the epistemological gap is that he says that there are

Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, through our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion (p 75).