Pragmatism, Kant, and

Transcendental Philosophy

Edited by Gabriele Gava and

Robert Stern

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 First published 2016
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 To Mario

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 Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
GABRIELE GAVA AND ROBERT STERN

1 German Idealism, Classical Pragmatism,

and Kant’s Third Critique 22
SEBASTIAN GARDNER

2 The Fallibilism of Kant’s Architectonic 46

GABRIELE GAVA

3 A Kant-Inspired Vision of Pragmatism as

Democratic Experimentalism 67
DAVID MACARTHUR

4 Peirce, Kant, and What We Must Assume 85

CHERYL MISAK

5 Peirce and the Final Opinion: Against Apel’s

Transcendental Interpretation of the Categories 94
DANIEL HERBERT

6 Forms of Reasoning as Conditions of Possibility:

Peirce’s Transcendental Inquiry Concerning
Inductive Knowledge 114
JEAN-MARIE CHEVALIER

7 Kant and Peirce on Belief 133

MARCUS WILLASCHEK

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 viii Contents
8 Round Kant or Through Him? On James’s Arguments
for Freedom, and Their Relation to Kant’s 152
ROBERT STERN

9 Consciousness in Kant and William James 177

GRAHAM BIRD

10 Concepts of Objects as Prescribing Laws:

A Kantian and Pragmatist Line of Thought 196
JAMES R. O’SHEA

11 Subjectivity as Negativity and as a Limit: On the

Metaphysics and Ethics of the Transcendental Self,
Pragmatically Naturalized 217
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM

12 A Plea for Transcendental Philosophy 239

WOLFGANG KUHLMANN

13 Transcendental Argument, Epistemically Constrained

Truth, and Moral Discourse 259
BORIS RÄHME

Contributors 287
Index 291

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 7 Kant and Peirce on Belief
Marcus Willaschek

According to Peirce, pragmatism (or “pragmaticism”) is Kantianism with-

out things in themselves: “The present writer was a pure Kantist until he
was forced by successive steps into Pragmaticism. The Kantist has only to
abjure [. . .] the proposition that a thing-in-itself can, however indirectly, be
conceived; and then correct the details of Kant’s doctrine accordingly, and
he will ind himself to have become a Critical Common-sensist” (CP 5.452)1
(where “Critical Common-sensism” is an aspect or consequence of what
Peirce had previously called pragmatism). As this and many other state-
ments by Peirce show, and as has been repeatedly stressed in the literature
on the history of pragmatism, Kant was a major inluence on Peirce.2 His
inluence can be seen in many aspects of Peirce’s philosophy: his conception
of thought as action, his speciic brand of realism, his account of the cat-
egorical structure of thinking, just to name a few. In this paper, I will take
a closer look at an aspect of Kant’s inluence that has occasionally been
noticed (cf. Murphey 1968, 177; Thayer 1981, 138), but to my knowledge
never closely investigated. It concerns one of the fundamental concepts of
Peircean pragmatism: the concept of belief. My interest, however, will not
be primarily historical. Rather, I hope to bring into relief an insight Peirce
shares with Kant that still is philosophically important today. Moreover,
I will argue that Kant’s account of belief is in a certain sense more radically
pragmatist than Peirce’s in that it allows belief to be rationally justiied by
recourse to the role it plays in action. While this point moves Kant closer to
James than to Peirce, he also differs from James in that the practical justii-
cation of a belief is not constituted by its practical consequences, but rather
by the belief’s being a presupposition of the action’s being rational. Thus,
Kant’s account of belief can be seen as a genuine and original contribution
to the pragmatist tradition, sharing features with Peirce’s and James’s ac-
counts, but also differing from them in key respects.
I will approach my topic somewhat indirectly by irst looking at the Kan-
tian origin of the label “pragmatism,” which will take us to Kant’s distinc-
tion between pragmatic and moral belief. I will then present Kant’s account
of belief in the Canon section of the Critique of Pure Reason and, after
sketching Peirce’s conception of belief, highlight the many differences, but

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 134 Marcus Willaschek
also the much more important commonalities, between them. Finally, I will
very briely compare Kant’s account with James’s in “The Will to Believe” in
order to bring into view both the genuinely pragmatist character of Kant’s
account of belief and the way in which it differs both from Peirce’s and
James’s.

1 PRAKTISCH AND PRAGMATISCH

As Peirce recollects in 1905, the term “pragmatism” derives from Kant inso-
far as labels such as “practicalism” or “practicism” appeared inappropriate
to Peirce because of the moral and metaphysical connotations of the term
“practical” in Kant: “for one who had learned philosophy out of Kant [. . .]
and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily, praktisch and pragma-
tisch were as far apart as the two poles, the former belonging in a region of
thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of
solid ground under his feet, the latter expressing relation to some deinite
human purpose” (CP 5.412).
Peirce was surely correct in thinking that from a Kantian perspective
the label “pragmatism” was much more itting for his own philosophy
than “practicalism” or “practicism.” However, this is not for the reason
Peirce himself offers, since “praktisch” and “pragmatisch” in Kant are by
no means opposites, related as the North Pole is to the South Pole. Accord-
ing to Kant’s most general deinition of “practical,” which we ind in the
Canon of the Critique of Pure Reason, “everything is practical that is pos-
sible through freedom” (CPR A800/B828), where “freedom” is freedom of
choice. Thus, in this wide sense, the practical concerns the realm of human
agency, broadly conceived, and there is no apparent reason why a “mind
of the experimentalist type” should shy away from it. It is within this prac-
tical realm that Kant goes on to distinguish between “pragmatic laws of
free conduct for reaching the ends recommended to us by the senses” and
“pure practical laws whose end is given by reason completely a priori,” the
latter being “the moral laws” (CPR A800/B828). Thus, in the Canon we
encounter a contrast not between the practical and the pragmatic, but rather
between the pragmatically practical, which is empirical, and the morally
practical, which is a priori or “pure.”3
Similarly, in a passage from the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals, Kant distinguishes between “technical,” “pragmatic” and “moral”
imperatives (KGS 4:416f.), all of which are “practical principles” (cf. KGS
4:414–5). Moral imperatives are supposed to hold a priori, whereas prag-
matic imperatives—although they presuppose an end of which we know
a priori that every human being pursues it, namely one’s own happiness
(KGS 4:415)—are empirical insofar as what will or will not contribute to
some particular person’s happiness is an empirical question (KGS 4:418).4
So again, the contrast is not one between the practical and the pragmatic,

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 135
but rather one within the practical between the pragmatic and the moral.5 In
fact, Kant never draws a contrast between the practical and the pragmatic,
but consistently treats the pragmatic as one species of the practical.6
So it seems that what Peirce must have had in mind with his reference
to Kant’s use of “praktisch” and “pragmatisch” is rather the distinction
between the moral (as the realm of “pure practical reason”) and the prag-
matic. Since the moral realm, according to Kant, is based on the moral law,
which holds a priori for all rational beings and requires us to think of our-
selves as part of an intelligible world (KGS 4:452), the moral in the Kantian
sense is indeed a “region of thought” that is necessarily suspect to the exper-
imentalist philosopher. Kant draws a distinction between the pragmatic and
the moral in various different contexts, and he applies it to different kinds
of objects: to laws (CPR A800/B828), imperatives (KGS 4:416–7; 6:391),
ends (KGS 6:354), forms of friendship (KGS 6:472), education (KGS 6:281;
9:455) and culture (KGS 9:470), just to name a few. While the precise con-
notations of the distinction may vary with context and subject matter, its
core meaning remains the same: While the pragmatic is directed at the real-
ization of empirical ends (which are variable, arbitrary, and contingent), the
moral realm is constituted by the moral law and directed at realizing moral
ends (which are a priori and necessary).
Among the various applications of this contrast, there is one that stands
out as being particularly close to Peirce’s own concerns, namely the dis-
tinction between pragmatic and moral belief drawn by Kant in the Canon
of the Critique of Pure Reason.7 There, Kant deines “pragmatic beliefs,”
which concern “arbitrary and contingent ends,” as “contingent beliefs,
which however ground the actual use of the means to certain actions” (CPR
A824/B852) and contrasts them with “moral beliefs,” which are “neces-
sary” (CPR A824/B852) and have ends that are “inescapably ixed” (CPR
A828/B856) by the moral law.
Kant’s deinition of pragmatic belief as “ground[ing] the actual use of the
means to certain actions” is obviously a close cousin of the famous deini-
tion of belief as “that upon which a man is prepared to act,” attributed to
Alexander Bain, of which Peirce said that pragmatism was a mere corollary
to it (CP 5.12). In the next section, I will take a closer look at Kant’s con-
ception of belief and his distinction between pragmatic and moral belief. As
we will see later, although the Peircean concept of belief is particularly close
to Kant’s account of pragmatic belief, the afinities extend also to Kant’s
conception of belief in general and, thus, even to his conception of moral
belief (as a special case of belief in general).

2 KANTIAN BELIEF

In the section entitled “Canon of Pure Reason” in the Critique of Pure Rea-
son, Kant distinguishes between opinion, belief, and knowledge as three

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 136 Marcus Willaschek
kinds or “stages” of “taking (something) to be true” (Fürwahrhalten) (CPR
A822/B850). A “taking to be true” (or, as it is also translated, an assent),
is a theoretical propositional attitude, that is, an attitude towards a prop-
osition (or, in Kantian terms, a judgment), which proposition is taken to
represent some state of affairs truly. It is, therefore, what today in philoso-
phy is commonly called a “belief,” which has been deined as “the attitude
we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it
as true” (Schwitzgebel 2014). Kant’s concept of belief, by contrast, is nar-
rower than the current notion, since it is only one species of assent alongside
opinion and knowledge. Here is Kant’s oficial deinition of the three kinds
of assent: “Having an opinion is taking something to be true with the con-
sciousness that it is subjectively as well as objectively insuficient. If taking
something to be true is only subjectively suficient and is at the same time
held to be objectively insuficient, then it is called believing. Finally, when
taking something to be true is both subjectively and objectively suficient
it is called knowing” (CPR A822/B850). Kant goes on to describe “subjec-
tive suficiency” as “conviction (for myself)”8 and “objective suficiency”
as “certainty (for everyone)” (CPR A822/B850). Unfortunately, it is not
entirely clear what he means by this, and various divergent interpretations
have been proposed.9
For present purposes, I suggest that “subjective suficiency” or conviction
be read as concerning the irmness with which the subject is committed to
the truth of the judgment in question.10 In particular, subjective suficiency
concerns the irmness of assent vis-à-vis (a) possible counterevidence and
(b) rising stakes. For instance, if I assent to the judgment that Fred was
in Frankfurt yesterday, which is what he himself has told me, how might
I react to your claim to having seen him yesterday in Munich? And how
might I react if I were to learn that Fred was suspected of having committed
some crime in Munich yesterday? The more I am disposed to give up my as-
sent under such circumstances, the lower its degree of conviction or subjec-
tive suficiency. Thus, subjective suficiency concerns how deeply entrenched
an assent is in the subject’s cognitive system.11 An assent is subjectively suf-
icient to the highest degree only if there is no possible counterevidence and
no practical consequence in light of which the subject would give it up. (As
we will soon see, even though Kant’s deinition may seem to demand this,
not all beliefs are subjectively suficient to this degree.)
By contrast, “objective suficiency” or “certainty” concerns the relation
between the subject’s reasons for taking the judgment to be true and the
actual truth of the judgment. An assent is objectively suficient if the reasons
on which it is based in fact guarantee that the judgment is true and thus, if
the subject is aware of this, result in certainty, that is, in the awareness that
a mistake is impossible (cf. KGS 9:66).12 Belief in the Kantian sense, there-
fore, is the attitude towards a judgment in which one is irmly convinced of
its truth even though one is aware of the fact that the reasons on which one
bases one’s assent fall short of guaranteeing that the judgment is in fact true.

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 137
This raises the question whether it can ever be rational to believe some-
thing in Kant’s sense. As Hume famously says with regard to belief in mira-
cles, “[a] wise man . . . proportions his belief to the evidence” (Hume [1748]
1999, sect. 10, § 4). This can be read as saying that the weaker the evidence
for some claim, the weaker the conidence one should place in its truth.
Kantian belief violates this evidentialist principle, because it allows the irm-
ness of conviction (degree of subjective suficiency) to be disproportionate
to the available evidence (degree of objective suficiency): In particular, in a
Kantian belief, a irm conviction may go hand in hand with weak evidence.
How can we ever be justiied in holding such an attitude?
Before we try to answer this question, it may be helpful to be more pre-
cise about what is meant here by “evidence” and “evidentialism,” since
these terms have been used in many different ways. In what follows, I will
take “evidence” for some person A’s belief that p to be a fact that q, which
minimally satisies the following two conditions: (a) A is epistemically jus-
tiied in believing that q and (b) the fact that q is in some way indicative of
the fact that p. (Thus, “evidence” involves at least a three-place relation: q
is evidence for A’s belief that p.) Now, evidence is “suficient” with respect
to A’s belief that p, if the irmness of the belief corresponds to the strength
of the evidence. For instance, if A is irmly and fully convinced that p, then
suficient evidence must guarantee that p, or at least make p highly likely. By
contrast, if A only believes that p very tentatively, the evidence is suficient
if, on balance, p is slightly more likely, or more plausible, than its negation.
(All this is obviously extremely vague, but it will sufice for the purposes at
hand.) A strong form of evidentialism would then hold that it is irrational
to believe anything without suficient evidence. This is meant to capture
the gist of a famous line from Clifford, whom James quotes as saying: “It
is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon
insuficient evidence” (James [1897] 1979, 18).13 Therefore, according to
this strong form of evidentialism, Kantian belief must appear to be irratio-
nal, since in this case the irmness of the belief does not correspond to the
strength of the evidence.
Kant’s response to this worry consists in limiting belief to theoretical
attitudes that are related to action: “Only in a practical relation, however,
can a theoretically insuficient taking to be true be called believing” (CPR
A823/B851, translation altered).14 Kant’s idea is that a judgment that does
not warrant full conviction on purely theoretical grounds (because the avail-
able objective reasons fall short of guaranteeing its truth) can nevertheless
be something one can be irmly convinced of—without violating any norms
of rationality—if the judgment stands in the right kind of relation to one’s
actions and ends. But what relation is that? In answering this question, I will
rely on some insights from Thomas Höwing’s excellent analysis of Kant’s
concept of pragmatic belief (Höwing forthcoming).15
Kant explains: “Once an end is proposed, the conditions for attaining
it are hypothetically necessary” (CPR A823/B851). Höwing calls this “the

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 138 Marcus Willaschek
Canon Principle” and argues convincingly that it is a fundamental principle
of rational agency. Now belief according to Kant consists in “my presupposi-
tion and taking to be true of certain conditions” (CPR A824/B852), namely
those conditions that, according to the Canon Principle, are hypothetically
necessary for attaining my end through some action of mine (assuming that
I cannot be certain that these conditions in fact obtain). For instance, if
I want to save money for my retirement (= end) by making a deposit in a
bank (= action), I must believe (in Kant’s sense) that the bank will still be
active, and able to pay out the money, when I retire. Of course, I cannot be
certain of this; thus, my taking it to be true is not objectively suficient and
hence not knowledge. But nevertheless, I must be suficiently convinced that
the bank will repay my money if I am to be motivated to make the deposit.
This means that there is an additional sense in which the assent, in the case
of belief, must be “suficient,” namely suficient for action. As Kant puts it
in the Jäsche-Logik: “This is a taking to be true that is suficient for action
[genug zum Handeln], i.e. belief” (KGS 9:67n, translation altered). I take
this to show that by deining belief as “subjectively suficient,” Kant does
not want to say that only an assent that is maximally irm counts as belief
(although he does require that for a special kind of belief, namely moral be-
lief).16 Rather, a belief is an assent that lacks certainty but is still suficiently
irm to serve as a basis for one’s actions.17
To understand what this means, we must next explain what it is to act
on the basis of a given belief. Recall the Canon Principle according to which
the conditions for reaching one’s end are necessary relative to that end. Fol-
lowing Höwing, I will call these conditions “enabling conditions of practical
success.” I will assume that they include the relevant instrumental relation
between my action and its end as well as the existence of a set of background
conditions that are suficient for the action to realize the end. In the case of
saving for retirement, the enabling conditions thus comprise (i) the fact that
regularly depositing small amounts of money in a bank is a means to having
a larger sum available in the future, as well as (ii) the supposed fact that the
bank will still exist and be able to pay out the money once I have entered
retirement. For an action to be based on a belief thus means that the latter
is a belief in the obtaining of the enabling conditions for the action’s being
successful. The Canon Principle, as a fundamental norm of rational agency,
thus comes to this: it is rational for some agent S to do A in order to achieve
end E only if S takes it to be true that the enabling conditions for A’s being
successful in realizing E obtain. In all cases where this taking to be true is
not certain (objectively suficient, knowledge), it is a belief in the Kantian
sense.18
One might worry that the Canon Principle is too demanding. Do I really
have to irmly believe that the bank will be able to pay out the money in
order to make it rational for me to deposit my money in it? What if I live
in politically unstable times and, therefore, am rather skeptical that I will
get my money back, but still think that this is my best bet? Wouldn’t it

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 139
still be rational to deposit the money in the bank, even if I don’t believe,
but only hope that the bank will be able to pay it back? This worry can
be overcome by keeping in mind the practical character of Kantian belief.
As we have seen, a belief is an assent that is suficiently irm to serve as the
basis for one’s actions. Now, the degree of conviction that will be suficient
in a particular case will depend on the alternative courses of action that are
open to me. If there are many other ways to realize my end, the degree of
conidence in the obtaining of the enabling conditions of my action’s being
successful will have to be fairly high in order to make it rational for me to
act on it. But, if there is no alternative way to realize my end, my belief that
the enabling conditions obtain need not be very irm at all. It need only be
suficiently irm, relative to the alternatives.
Consider Kant’s example of the doctor who doesn’t know what illness his
patient suffers from, but who has got to do something to cure the patient
(CPR A824/B52). Since appearances indicate that the patient might suffer
from consumption, and the doctor can’t think of any alternative diagnoses,
he treats the patient for consumption. Assuming the patient would most
probably die if the doctor did nothing, and considering that he doesn’t see
any alternative treatment, the doctor’s degree of conidence in his diagnosis
needn’t be very high in order to make it rational to act in accordance with
it. Nevertheless, the doctor cannot rationally act that way if he takes it to
be false that the patient suffers from consumption or if he doesn’t take any
stance on this issue at all. Some kind of positive theoretical attitude towards
the patient’s suffering from consumption is required, and this seems to be
suficient for Kantian belief (in this kind of case).
This means that the degree of conidence required for (pragmatic) belief
can sometimes be quite minimal. If all competing diagnoses are ruled out,
but consumption is not, the best bet is to treat the patient for consumption.
In such a case, one “believes,” according to Kant, that the patient suffers
from consumption. What is characteristic of Kantian belief, though, is that
even this minimal degree of conidence goes beyond what is warranted from
a purely theoretical point of view (according to which we would have to
suspend judgment).
Thus, a belief in the Kantian sense is an assent to an objectively less-than-
certain judgment that the enabling conditions for some action the agent has
decided on obtain, where the assent is suficiently irm to serve as a basis
for action. Since Kantian belief is limited to cases of assent that serve as the
basis of action, its anti-evidentialist consequences are somewhat mitigated.
A moderate evidentialist might admit that even if a Kantian belief such as
the doctor’s belief in Kant’s example may not be epistemically justiied, it
can nevertheless be rationally justiied in some non-epistemic sense.19 Kant’s
account of belief is compatible with this moderate kind of evidentialism.
But, it is not compatible with the more radical version of evidentialism,
introduced above, according to which it is always and in every respect ir-
rational to believe in light of insuficient evidence. According to Kant, the

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 140 Marcus Willaschek
lack of alternative ways of realizing one’s end can outweigh weakness of
evidence and make it rational to believe something on the basis of insufi-
cient evidence.20
On the basis of this deinition of belief, Kant then goes on to distin-
guish between contingent and necessary belief on the one hand and between
pragmatic and moral belief on the other (CPR A823f./B851f.). A belief is
necessary, relative to a given end, if the subject knows that there is no al-
ternative course of action available that would realize the end; otherwise,
the belief is contingent. Now, pragmatic belief is doubly contingent: it is a
contingent belief in the sense just deined, but it is also contingent in the ad-
ditional sense that the end in question is not rationally necessary.21 By con-
trast, moral belief is necessary in the twofold sense that the action is without
alternatives and the end (because it is given by the moral law) is rationally
necessary.22 Pragmatic belief admits of degrees; moral belief does not.
While Kant’s example of pragmatic belief is the doctor who believes that
his patient suffers from consumption, his example of a moral belief is be-
lief in the existence of God. Kant had argued in the preceding section of
the Canon that, as rational agents, we are morally required to realize the
highest good, which consists in a world in which everyone is just as happy
as they morally deserve to be. But, according to Kant, we can realize this
end only with divine assistance (cf. CPR A814/B842). Thus, the existence of
God is an enabling condition for realizing a rationally necessary end and is,
therefore, the object of a moral belief—even though, as Kant had argued in
the Dialectic, the question whether God exists cannot be decided on purely
theoretical grounds. We do not need to discuss the plausibility of Kant’s ar-
gument for moral belief in God. What matters for our purposes is only that,
apart from the rational necessity of the end, moral belief does not differ in
structure from the case of pragmatic belief. Just as with pragmatic belief,
moral belief is rendered rational even in the absence of suficient evidence,
because it concerns the enabling conditions of some of our actions (namely
those aiming at realizing the highest good).

3 BELIEF IN PEIRCE

Let me now turn, much more briely, to Peirce’s conception of belief. In a

well-known passage from “How to make our Ideas Clear,” Peirce names
three essential characteristics of a belief: “First, it is something that we are
aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and, third, it involves
the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit”
(CP 5.397). The irst feature, awareness, follows from the fact that belief,
according to the Peirce of 1878, has a characteristic qualitative aspect to it,
a “sensation of [. . .] believing” (CP 5.370).23 In particular, this sensation
differs from the one connected with doubting. While doubt is “an uneasy
and dissatisied state,” belief is “calm and satisfactory” (CP 5.370).

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 141
This takes us to the second feature. Belief, for Peirce, is essentially an
element in the dynamic process of thinking that comprises, as its other basic
elements, doubt and inquiry. Put very schematically, thinking starts from a
state of belief, which is followed by doubt, which motivates inquiry, which
leads to a new belief. Since this new belief can also be displaced by further
doubt, belief is essentially a transitory state: “at the same time that it is a
stopping-place, it is also a new starting-place for thought” (CP 5.397).
But, why can’t we just be content with the beliefs we happen to have?
The reason derives from the third feature, which is that belief establishes
a rule for action or, as Peirce often puts it, a habit. This means, irst, that
belief is essentially practical: “Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our
actions” (CP 5.371). And second, it means that any given belief is related
not only to individual acts, but also to a general type of action. Having a
belief, for Peirce, means being ready to act in a certain way under speciied
circumstances: “Belief does not make us act at once, but puts us into such
a condition that we shall behave in some certain way, when the occasion
arises” (CP 5.373). A belief, or the rule of action associated with it, tells us
what to do in a speciic type of situation. And this is why beliefs can, and
often will, be unsettled by doubt, since every so often there will be situations
of the relevant type where acting in the way speciied by the belief will either
be impossible or unsuccessful. If this happens, the belief will be replaced by
doubt, which initiates the search for a solution, which Peirce calls inquiry,
until a solution has been found and a new belief is established. This is not to
say that doubts can arise only from practical dificulties. But even a merely
“theoretical” doubt (concerning a belief that is not at present practically
relevant) will have to be, according to Peirce, a “real and living doubt” (CP
5.376) (requiring more than the admission of the logical possibility of false-
hood) in order to shake any of our current beliefs.
Obviously, there are many more aspects to Peirce’s conception of belief
than this thumbnail picture can convey, but for present purposes I will have
to restrict myself to three further remarks. First, Peirce’s point is not just
that belief as a kind of mental state is characterized by its functional role
in the process of thought and its relation to action. Rather, and even more
importantly from Peirce’s perspective, the content of a speciic belief is also
ixed by its functional role: “The essence of belief is the establishment of
a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of
action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they
appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no mere
differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different
beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different
tunes” (CP 5.389).
Second, the kind of action that is to be performed in a given situation
depends not only on one’s belief and what kind of situation one is in, but
also on one’s motives and ends: “[Readiness] to act in a certain way under
given circumstances and when actuated by a given motive is a habit; and

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 142 Marcus Willaschek
a deliberate, or self-controlled, habit is precisely a belief” (CP 5.480; em-
phasis added). Thus, the role of belief is to mediate between one’s ends and
a possible course of action. Consider Peirce’s example of The Assassins, a
medieval religious sect in the Middle East: “The Assassins, or followers of
the Old Man of the Mountain, used to rush into death at his least com-
mand, because they believed that obedience to him would insure everlasting
felicity. Had they doubted this, they would not have acted as they did” (CP
5.371). Nor, one might add, would they have acted this way if they hadn’t
cared so much about everlasting felicity. So, where a belief serves as a “rule
for action,” at least three factors are involved: a speciic situation, an end,
and a possible course of action. The belief then states the conditions under
which that course of action will, in that particular situation, successfully
contribute to realizing one’s end. As Peirce puts it most succinctly in a text
from 1904: “A belief in a proposition is a controlled and contented habit of
acting in ways that will be productive of desired results only if the proposi-
tion is true” (EP 2.312).
Third, concerning the epistemological aspect of beliefs, Peirce acknowl-
edges their essential fallibility: “Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settle-
ment of opinion [which term Peirce here uses interchangeably with “belief”].
We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely
an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves
groundless; for as soon as a irm belief is reached we are entirely satisied,
whether the belief be true or false” (CP 5.375; emphasis added).24 Therefore,
a belief does not need to be based on evidence that rules out its falsity in
order to serve as the basis for action. What is required is only the absence
of “a real and living doubt.” Without such doubt, “all discussion is idle.”
Once everyone is fully convinced of a certain point, “no further advance
can be made” by arguing for it. I take these remarks from “The Fixation of
Belief” to make not just a psychological, but also an epistemological point:
We are fully justiied in our beliefs as long as they are “perfectly free from all
actual doubt” (CP 5.376); providing additional evidence for a belief which
is not subject to a living doubt does not improve its epistemic standing.
This allows for rational belief without any positive evidence for its truth,
as long as the belief is free from doubt. Thus, Peirce’s conception of belief
is anti-evidentialist in dissociating rational belief from the availability of ev-
idence.25 Moreover, it is “conservative” in that it allows us to continue to
hold whatever beliefs we may have, even in the complete absence of evidence
for their truth, the latter being required only in the case of living doubts.

4 COMPARING KANT’S ACCOUNT OF BELIEF WITH

PEIRCE’S (AND WITH JAMES’S, TOO)

A comparison of Kant’s and Peirce’s conceptions of belief reveals both deep

similarities and important, though perhaps less deep, differences. Among

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 143
the things they have in common is, irst, the basic understanding of what
kind of thing a belief is. Both Kant and Peirce think of belief as a conscious
theoretical propositional attitude that is essentially linked to action. For
both, the link between belief and action consists in the belief’s serving as a
basis for action in a twofold sense. On the one hand, a belief is a basis of
action in a psychological sense in that, without the belief (or a relevantly
similar one), the agent would not have performed the corresponding action.
On the other, a belief is the rational basis of an action in that, without the
belief (or a relevantly similar one), performing the action would be irratio-
nal. (This latter aspect is less prominent in Peirce than in Kant.) Second, for
both Kant and Peirce, the link between a belief and the action based on it is
that the action can be successful only if the belief is true.26 Third, both Kant
and Peirce insist that beliefs do not have to be certain, or known to be true,
in order to be rationally justiied; both are fallibilists about belief and both
build fallibility into their concepts of belief. And inally, Kant’s and Peirce’s
accounts of belief are both anti-evidentialist in that they allow that one can
be rationally justiied in irmly believing something on theoretically “insuf-
icient” evidence. While it seems that for Peirce there can be rational belief
even in the absence of any evidence at all, Kant at least allows for rational
belief without suficient evidence (i.e., evidence adequate to the irmness
with which the belief is held).
But, of course, there are also important differences. First, Kant considers
belief to be a highly speciic form of assent, to be distinguished from opin-
ion and knowledge as the other forms of “taking something to be true”
(the latter being roughly equivalent to belief in the current sense), whereas
Peirce tends to see belief as the fundamental kind of theoretical attitude that
includes opinion and knowledge as well as other theoretical attitudes as its
species. Second, where Kant thinks of beliefs as more or less static mental
states, Peirce understands them as “thought at rest” (CP 5.396), that is, as
part of a dynamic process that includes doubt and inquiry. Third, at least
the Peirce of 1878 attributes to belief an experiential character (the “sensa-
tion of [. . .] believing,” which is a “calm and satisfactory state” (CP 5.370),
which Kant does not. Fourth, Kant distinguishes between two important
kinds of belief, pragmatic and moral, whereas Peirce has no use for the
concept of moral belief (because an “experimentalist mind” treats all ends
as contingent). Fifth, where Kant seems to think of the relation between
belief and action primarily as one between a particular belief and an indi-
vidual action, Peirce regards beliefs as related to habits, and thus to types of
action.27 Sixth, and relatedly, Kant’s and Peirce’s accounts of belief differ in
the order of explanation. While Kant, in his account, starts from an action
that is supposed to realize a given end and then speciies the content of the
belief required for the action to be rational, Peirce starts with the distinc-
tion between belief and doubt and then identiies belief with a disposition
to act in a speciic way. Seventh, according to both Kant and Peirce we can
specify the content of a belief by inquiring into the enabling conditions of

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 144 Marcus Willaschek
our actions; however, unlike Peirce, Kant does not assume that the content
of the belief is ixed exclusively by its functional role with regard to agency.
Rather, the content of the belief, which Kant calls “judgment,” is ixed by its
representational content, that is, by the concepts employed in it.
No doubt this list could be extended to include both further similarities
and further differences. Instead, however, I would like to highlight, in clos-
ing, an aspect of Kant’s and Peirce’s conception of belief that I ind philo-
sophically particularly important. It concerns the anti-evidentialism which
Kant and Peirce share on a general level, but on which they also differ in
important respects.
Neither Kant nor Peirce would allow that a belief can be rational in the
face of undefeated evidence to the contrary. Thus, it is only because the doc-
tor in Kant’s example, after “looking at the appearances,” “doesn’t know
anything better” (CPR A824/B852) that he is entitled to believe that the
patient suffers from consumption. For cases of moral belief, Kant explicitly
requires that neither their truth nor their falsity can be known or even at-
tributed a probability (KGS 9:67). For Peirce, awareness of counterevidence
would lead to doubt, which replaces the belief and initiates inquiry.
But, even if the available evidence thus constrains what we can rationally
believe, according to both Kant and Peirce the evidence does not uniquely
determine what it is rational for us to believe and to what degree. Rather, for
Peirce, we are generally entitled to hold on to the beliefs we happen to have.
Only when there is a “real and living doubt” are we rationally required,
and psychologically compelled, to give them up. To be sure, one has to be
open-minded and critical in one’s belief-forming processes, but mere lack
of theoretical evidence, according to Peirce, is no good reason to give up a
belief that works practically. Note, however, that Peirce does not seem to
hold that a belief can be rationally justiied by non-theoretical factors exclu-
sively. As Christopher Hookway has remarked: “The distinctive character
of Peirce’s pragmatism depends upon a view about the scope of relective
thought: it offers a clariication which is to be valuable where relection has
a fundamental role and is not intended for use in other areas of life. The
only ‘consequences’ of a concept or proposition which are ‘pragmatically
relevant’ will then be those which are pertinent to ‘relective inquiry’; as-
pects of meaning which are of importance in attempting to answer ‘vital’
questions need not be taken into account” (Hookway 2012, 190). In this
respect, at least, Kant can be seen as more radically pragmatist than Peirce.
Peirce thought of the relation between belief and action as moving primarily
in one direction, namely from the belief to the act. Kant, by contrast, sees
the relation as moving in both directions: While the belief is the psychologi-
cal basis for the action, the action (or more precisely: the fact that an action
of an appropriate kind is rationally required) can be the rational warrant
for the belief. As Kant is aware, this transmission of rational warrant works
only under highly speciied conditions; in particular, it presupposes that the
end served by the action is suficiently important, the action without known

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 145
alternatives, and the belief not defeated by evidence to the contrary. But,
once these conditions are given, Kant is willing to admit that an assent that
would otherwise be rationally unjustiied can turn out to be rational, even
in the absence of suficient theoretical evidence in its favor.
In this respect, Kant is closer to James than to Peirce, since it is William
James who argues that beliefs that lack suficient theoretical evidence can still
be rationally warranted if adopting them contributes to their turning out to
be true, as is the case when someone will be able to jump over a chasm only if
she believes that she will succeed (cf. James [1897] 1979, 29, 53–4, 56, 80).
As James argues in “The Will to Believe,” certain kinds of religious belief can
be seen as special cases of this kind of rational justiication of a belief by its
practical consequences (James [1897] 1979, 29–33). Peirce disagreed. Here
is how Christopher Hookway characterizes the views of Peirce and James on
this point: “Peirce and James would agree that where ‘intellectual methods’
(relection and the method of science) cannot settle a live or vital question,
then we should rely upon sentiment (or the passions). But where we can read
this as consonant with James’s pragmatism, the answer being justiied by the
effect it has on conduct, Peirce argues that such issues are outside the scope
of the sort of rational logical self-control within which his pragmatism inds
a home” (Hookway 2012, 194n). Thus, while James claims that in vital is-
sues belief without suficient evidence can be rationally justiied by its effect
on conduct, Peirce only admits that nothing is wrong with such a belief inso-
far as it falls outside the scope of rational inquiry altogether.
In this dispute among fellow pragmatists, Kant would have sided with
James, since for Kant, as for James, a belief can be rationally justiied by
its role in action. But, note that Kant’s account is much more general, and
I think also more profound, than James’s. Kant’s point is independent of the
expected positive effects of holding the belief in question. What matters is
not the expected outcome, but rather that the belief is a rational presuppo-
sition of one’s action. Therefore, Kant’s point is not about an entitlement
or, as James later put it, a “right to believe” (James [1907] 1975, 124), but
rather about a rational commitment one undertakes by acting in a certain
way. What one is committed to is the belief that the enabling conditions of
one’s action in fact obtain. This does not just hold for Jamesian beliefs with
the character of a self-fulilling prophecy, but rather for all our actions and
the beliefs they are based on.
Kant’s argument for a moral belief in God is meant to show that religious
belief can be seen as a special case of this general point, namely the one in
which belief in God is a rational presupposition of realizing the highest end,
which in turn is a requirement placed on us by reason itself. One may doubt
that Kant’s argument for the moral belief in God is convincing. But, one
can still acknowledge that Kant is right to insist, irst, that we are rationally
committed to believing that the enabling conditions of our actions’ being
successful obtain, and second, that this includes enabling conditions the ob-
taining of which is “metaphysical” in the sense of going beyond what can

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 146 Marcus Willaschek
be empirically established.28 While the irst point anticipates some import-
ant features of Peirce’s account of belief, the second can be seen as making
a point similar to James’s in “The Will to believe,” while at the same time
avoiding what in James can look like facile consequentialism.
One inal remark. Even though Peirce does not distinguish between prag-
matic and moral belief and seems to have rejected the very idea of moral
belief in the Kantian sense, this does not affect the important similarities
between Kant’s and Peirce’s accounts of belief. And the reason for this is not
that Peirce’s account is similar to, and perhaps inluenced by, Kant’s account
of pragmatic belief (although that may well be true). Rather, the reason is
that Kant’s generic account of belief, of which pragmatic and moral beliefs
are species, is importantly similar to Peirce’s. As we have seen, beliefs in the
Kantian sense are cases of taking something to be true that stand in a “prac-
tical relation,” where the “practical” concerns the sphere of human agency
broadly conceived. Thus, insofar as Peirce had the distinction between prag-
matic and moral belief in mind when he chose the label “pragmatism,” he
might just as well have chosen “practicalism” or “practicism,” since it is not
pragmatic belief in particular, but rather belief in general—which for Kant
is “practical”—that is importantly similar to his own account of belief.29

NOTES

1. References to Peirce are given according to volume and paragraph number in

the Collected Papers (CP) and to volume and page number in The Essential
Peirce (EP); page-numbers for Kant refer to the A/B-numbering of the Cri-
tique of Pure Reason (CPR) and, for all other works, to the Academy Edition
(KGS) (Kant 1900-). When not differently indicated, translations in English
are given according to The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel
Kant.
2. Kant’s inluence on Peirce has been emphasized, among others, by Murphey
(1968); Haack (2007); Pihlström (2010).
3. Thayer, in his history of pragmatism, refers to this passage as the background
for Peirce’s statement, but falsely claims that Kant himself distinguishes be-
tween “practical” and “pragmatic laws”; cf. Thayer (1981, 138). Similarly,
Pihlström claims that Peirce accepts Kant’s distinction between the pragmatic
and the practical, where the latter is the realm of a priori moral laws (Pihl-
ström 2004, 41).
4. Kant explains his calling these imperatives “pragmatic” in a footnote, some-
what confusingly, by claiming that “pragmatic” designates a relation to
“general welfare”: “It seems to me that the authentic signiication of the
word ‘pragmatic’ could be determined most precisely in this way. For those
sanctions are called ‘pragmatic’ which really low not from the rights of
states, as necessary laws, but from provision for the general welfare. A his-
tory is written ‘pragmatically’ when it makes us prudent, i.e., teaches how
the world could take care of its advantage better than, or at any rate at least
as well as, the world of antiquity has done” (KGS 4:417). This is confusing
because pragmatic imperatives, as Kant deines them, are not directed at gen-
eral, but rather at individual welfare.

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 147
5. In one place in the Groundwork, though, Kant calls the moral or categorical
imperative “the practical imperative” (4:429).
6. Even in the Critique of Judgment, where Kant expels the “technically-practical”
(which there includes the pragmatic) from the realm of practical philosophy
proper, he still treats it as a species of the practical (and, again, contrasts it
with the moral).
7. In later writings Kant sometimes, although rarely, uses the terms “practical
belief” (KGS 5:647) or “pure practical belief of reason” (KGS 5:144) for
what in the Canon he calls moral belief. Mostly, he continues to speak of
moral belief.
8. A reading of section 3 of the Canon is complicated by the fact that Kant
implicitly distinguishes between objective and subjective conviction (cf. CPR
A824//B852, where Kant speaks of “subjective conviction”) without mark-
ing the distinction in a consistent way. Thus, at A820/B848 Kant talks about
objective conviction (“valid for everyone”), while at CPR A822/B850 he
speaks both of objective conviction (“which is at the same time objectively
valid”) and subjective conviction (“for myself”) in the same paragraph, call-
ing both “conviction” without further qualiication.
9. Cf. e.g., Chignell (2007), Pasternack (2014), Stevenson (2003), Höwing
(forthcoming). There are at least three reasons why there is little consensus
about Kant’s account of opinion, belief and knowledge: (i) Kant’s published
and unpublished pronouncements on this topic are rather brief and leave many
questions unanswered (partly because Kant does not seem to have thought of
his views as original); (ii) Kant offers divergent accounts in different places,
primarily the Canon and the Jäsche-Logik (for instance, in the latter, Kant
seems to restrict belief to moral belief, thus ruling out the possibility of prag-
matic belief, which nevertheless seems to come up in some of his examples);
and (iii) Kant’s use of central terms such as “conviction” (Überzeugung) in
the Canon seems to be, at least at the surface of the text, either ambiguous
or contradictory. For these reasons, there is considerable interpretative lee-
way here, so that none of the proposed interpretations may be clearly correct
or incorrect. In what follows, I will base my interpretation primarily on the
Canon section, drawing on the Jäsche-Logik and the transcripts from Kant’s
logic lectures only where these help to clarify the text in the Canon.
10. Kant emphasizes irmness in the context of subjective suficiency or convic-
tion at CPR A824/B852 (“subjective conviction, i.e., irm belief”); also cf.
CPR A828/856 (“I am certain that nothing can shake this belief) and KGS
9:72.
11. Even though subjective suficiency admits of degrees, it cannot be identiied
with what present-day Baysian epistemologists call degree of belief, since
subjective suficiency in the Kantian sense may often, but need not always,
depend on the probability the subject attributes to the judgment’s being true.
12. Kant also requires that one is conscious of the reasons’ being objectively
suficient; cf. KGS 9:58.
13. Consider the weaker formulation of evidentialism by Conee and Feldman
in their inluential paper entitled “Evidentialism” from 1985 (as reprinted
in Conee and Feldman (2004)): “Doxastic attitude D toward proposition p
is epistemically justiied for S at t if and only if having D toward p its the
evidence S has at t” (Conee and Feldman 2004, 83). Conee and Feldman are
not very explicit about (i) what evidence is, (ii) what it means for S to have
evidence, and (iii) what it means for a doxastic attitude to “it” evidence.
However, they emphasize that although it may be epistemically irrational to
hold beliefs that do not “it” one’s evidence, it can be rational in other (e.g.,
moral) respects.

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 148 Marcus Willaschek
14. I owe this point to Thomas Höwing. That Kant limits belief exclusively to
attitudes with some practical import is obscured by the fact that he, in the
relevant passages in the Canon, also discusses something he calls “doctrinal
belief” (CPR A825/B863), which is a purely theoretical attitude. However,
Kant explicitly points out that this attitude is called belief only in a derivative
sense and in analogy with practical belief proper (CPR A825/B863).
15. I should note that my interpretation also differs from Höwing’s on many
points, most importantly on what the subjective suficiency of an assent
consists in.
16. This would it with the fact that in the Jäsche-Logik, too, Kant’s oficial dei-
nition of belief holds only for moral belief, but is then tacitly extended so as
to include pragmatic belief.
17. Cf. KGS 9:68n, where Kant says that a merchant who enters a deal must
not only opine that he will make a proit, but really believe it, “that is, that
his opinion is suficient for an uncertain enterprise.” The essential difference
between opinion and belief (that the latter is subjectively suficient, while the
former is not) does not concern degree of belief in a merely “theoretical”
sense (such as an estimation of probability, given one’s evidence), but rather
a practical commitment. This is conirmed by a footnote in the Jäsche-Logik,
where Kant says that belief is distinguished from opinion “not by the degree,
but by the relation it, as a cognition, has to action” (KGS 9:67n, translation
altered). Since both opinion and belief are objectively insuficient kinds of as-
sent, but differ in their subjective suficiency, Kant can be read as saying here
that even where a given belief and a given opinion do not differ in the degree
to which they are conirmed by the available evidence (both are “objectively
insuficient”), they differ in that only belief can serve as a basis for action,
and is thus “subjectively suficient.” (As mentioned before, though, this is
not the only way to read this and other related passages.)
18. Note that the Canon Principle cuts both ways: If I decide to do A, I am
rationally required to believe that the enabling conditions of A hold. But if
I don’t believe that the enabling conditions of A hold, I cannot rationally
decide to do A.
19. This is the view, e.g., of Conee and Feldmann, cf. Conee and Feldman (2004).
20. In his contribution to the present volume, Robert Stern argues that Kant
and James should not be read as anti-evidentialists. In particular, Kant’s
“practical” arguments for freedom of the will, both that from Groundwork
III (“acting under the idea of freedom”) and that from the second Critique
(“fact of reason”), should be seen not as dismissing the need for evidence,
but rather as being based on evidence of a particular kind, namely evidence
provided by practical, rather than theoretical reason. But note, irst, that this
reading does not touch on Kant’s concept of belief and thus does not un-
dermine the anti-evidentialist reading of that concept offered here. Second,
Stern himself notes that Kant’s arguments for the “postulates of pure practi-
cal reason” (God, freedom, and immortality) differ in structure from Kant’s
practical arguments for freedom from the Groundwork and the Analytic
of the second Critique. Since belief, according to Kant, is the adequate atti-
tude towards the postulates, an evidentialist reading of the latter arguments
does not rule out an anti-evidentialist reading of the former. Third, Stern’s
conception of evidence seems to be less demanding than the one used in the
present paper. “Evidence,” on the use of that term adopted here, requires
good epistemic standing plus truth-indicativeness. On my reading, the basis
of Kant’s practical arguments for freedom (roughly: in Groundwork III our
awareness that we have to make up our own minds about what to do, and in
the second Critique our awareness of unconditional obligations) is either not

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 Kant and Peirce on Belief 149
in good epistemic standing (Kant admits that whether we’re transcendentally
free cannot be decided on purely theoretical grounds) or (if one focuses only
on how things present themselves to rational agents, whether true or not) is
not indicative of our “really” being free (as opposed to our necessarily taking
ourselves to be free). Hence, the sense in which Kant’s practical arguments
for freedom are evidentialist arguments (that is, arguments that offer reasons
for taking ourselves to be free) is compatible with them not being eviden-
tialist in the more demanding sense of evidence adopted here. I was greatly
helped in revising this paper for publication by an exchange with Robert
Stern on the issue of evidentialism. Stern does agree with the irst and second
point made in this footnote, but not with the third.
21. Kant anticipates Ramsey and present-day Baysians by claiming that the
“touchstone” for how irmly an agent is committed to some belief is bet-
ting. Although Kant himself doesn’t put it that way, betting, on the Kantian
account of belief, can be understood as artiicially turning some judgment
into a judgment about enabling conditions. If I opine that it’s going to rain
tomorrow, there may be nothing at all hanging on whether I’m right. So my
assent cannot be a case of belief. But if you challenge my opinion and pro-
pose a bet, my accepting that bet with the aim of winning some money will
be successful only if it rains tomorrow. By betting on it, tomorrow’s raining
has become an enabling condition for my winning the bet and thus the con-
tent of a belief of mine.
22. This means that there are two further types of belief besides pragmatic and
moral for which Kant, however, does not reserve a special label, namely
contingent beliefs that have necessary ends and necessary beliefs that have
contingent ends. I deviate here from Höwing’s interpretation, which claims
that Kant identiies contingent with pragmatic and necessary with moral be-
lief, but also notes that this seems unwarranted.
23. In later writings, Peirce denies that belief has to be conscious (cf. CP 5.417;
5.480). I have beneited from the online Commens Dictionary of Peirce’s
Terms, edited by Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola, 2003-, which offers a
collection of some relevant passages by Peirce on belief (http://www.helsinki.
i/science/commens/dictionary.html).
24. Even though Peirce often uses the terms “opinion” and “belief” interchange-
ably, he sometimes distinguishes them in a way that, although different from
the Kantian distinction, is not altogether dissimilar: “We believe the prop-
osition we are ready to act upon. Full belief is willingness to act upon the
proposition in vital crises, opinion is willingness to act upon it in relatively
insigniicant affairs” (CP 1.635).
25. Recall that evidence for p needs to be positively correlated to the truth of p so
that the mere absence of doubt does not, as such, count as evidence.
26. More precisely: Without the belief’s being true, the action can be successful
only accidentally, by sheer luck.
27. Kant discusses “habit” in the context of judgment and prejudice at KGS
9:76. Also note that there are some interesting similarities between Peirce’s
conception of belief and habit and Kant’s concept of a maxim, which is a rule
for action and has a habitual aspect, but differs from belief in being a “de-
termination of the will,” that is, a practical attitude, not a theoretical one.
28. One may wonder whether it might not be suficient for rational agency to
hope, rather than believe, that the enabling conditions for one’s action’s
being successful obtain, where hoping that p would be compatible with not
believing that p. In another paper, I argue that rationally trying to do A re-
quires, minimally, that one does not believe that doing A cannot be success-
ful (Willaschek forthcoming). In cases of straightforwardly doing something

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 150 Marcus Willaschek
that one takes oneself to be able to do, this doesn’t seem to be suficient,
though. If I go to turn on the lights (and do not just take myself to be trying
to do so), I must take myself to be able to turn them on, which means that
I believe that all enabling conditions for my turning on the lights obtain and
all that is further required depends on my own decision to turn them on. If
that is correct, Kant’s account of moral belief could be defended in this re-
spect (since according to Kant we can be morally certain of our ability to act
as the moral law requires), while his account of pragmatic belief may need
to be revised (since the doctor, in Kant’s example, can at best try to heal the
patient by treating him for consumption, which would not require that he
believe that the patient has consumption, but only that he not believe that he
does not have consumption).
29. Thanks to Gabriele Gava, Thomas Höwing, Andreas Kemmerling, and Rob-
ert Stern for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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