Some Consequences of Four Incapacities

Introduction

The essay appeared in 1868 in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, the second of three articles in which Peirce, then in his late twenties, attacked the Cartesian foundations of modern philosophy. The four incapacities are that we have no power of introspection; no power of intuition, since every cognition is determined by earlier ones; no power of thinking without signs; and no conception of the absolutely unknowable. Peirce concludes that all thought is in signs and that even the self is known by inference. Philosophy should start from the beliefs we actually hold and rely on a community of inquirers: “Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.”

Connections

Criticizes

• Meditations on First Philosophy1641 · René Descartes

Taken up in

• How to Make Our Ideas Clear1878 · Charles Sanders Peirce

More works by Charles Sanders Peirce

• 1878How to Make Our Ideas Clear