Evading, Exploiting, and Enabling Doubt: Insights from Peirce for Sociological Theory and Imagination

• In Event: 20426 - Belief and Doubt in the History of Sociology

Abstract

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) is generally recognized as one of America’s most original thinkers. As the father of the American philosophy of pragmatism, Peirce’s thought has left a mark on various sociological theories developed in the tradition of pragmatism up to the present day. But Peirce’s insights bear on sociological theory not only indirectly. I will make a case for recognizing Peirce as a proto-sociological theorist in his own right. I build my case on Peirce’s theory of doubt, which, I argue, bears directly on questions and themes at the heart of sociological theory—how sociological conditions and processes affect individuals in ways that constrain and enable social change. Peirce’s theory of doubt in relation to his analysis of the “fixation of belief” via methods of “tenacity,” “authority,” and “science” suggests a sociological theory of change in belief, habit, and action (for these are inherently related) centered on the concept of doubt as necessary for prompting the search for new belief, but also liable to being systematically evaded, exploited, or enabled. Besides contributing to sociological theories of social change, understanding the sociology of doubt offers a perspective from which we can see the reasonableness (if not correctness) of people’s tendency to stick with the beliefs they have, in view of which we can better empathize (if not agree) with our ideological “others”—an exercise in sociological imagination much needed in our polarized times.

Author

• Bridget J. Ritz, University of Notre Dame