Peirce vs. Hegel: Epistemology, Belief, and Truth

Introduction: The Epistemological Gap

The epistemological gap concerns what is real — that is, physical and thus observable — and what is not real — that is, not physical and thus unobservable. Peirce is one philosopher who believed that the real and the unreal are what give us doubts and beliefs, and beliefs are obviously stronger than doubts. Hegel, on the other hand, was an idealist who believed that everything that exists must be mental rather than physical. Hegel held firmly to the idea that there is no physical "stuff" at all; rather, people are simply things that embody thoughts and feelings (p. 4). This is not to say, however, that no associations can be drawn between the two thinkers. Both Peirce and Hegel held similar ideas when it came to beliefs and truths, which can in many respects be considered the same thing.

According to Peirce, we can generally determine when something is real or believed and when something is unreal or doubtful. He writes, "there is a dissimilarity between the sensation of doubting and that of believing" (p. 71). However, there is more to doubt and belief than this surface distinction alone. Peirce suggests that there is 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). What can therefore be surmised is that a belief can only be a belief when there is not even an ounce of doubt attached to it. In his essay The Fixation of Belief, Peirce frames the entire process of inquiry as a struggle between doubt and belief, where the goal is to settle one's mind into a stable, actionable conviction.

Peirce on Doubt, Belief, and Practical Difference

Hegel believed that everything was, in a sense, inside of us. Everything that we know and think in our minds is who we are, and those ways of thinking derive from the concepts, theories, and thoughts of those who came before us. We are, in essence, composed of many different people across time and history. The people of today are an evolved version of everyone who came before, and this pattern will continue indefinitely. This relates directly to Hegel's concept of Spirit. As he writes, "Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward" (p. 5). For Hegel, truth is likewise not truth until it is whole — encompassing everything that was and ever shall be. Hegel's idealism thus locates all reality within the unfolding movement of mind and Spirit through history.

Peirce's account of inquiry can be meaningfully compared to Hegel's theory of Spirit in that inquiry is fundamentally about evolving. Neither the individual nor society can evolve without the struggle to find truth or to move from doubt to belief. If we accept that a belief is a kind of truth, then Peirce and Hegel were not saying entirely different things; it is primarily the way in which they articulate their theories that makes them appear unrelated. Likewise, while Hegel's idealism situates truth within mental life, Peirce acknowledges that taking advantage of the laws of perception allows us to see the truth about things — a point on which Hegel would find some agreement, since perception is, for him, one avenue through which Spirit comes to know itself.

Hegel's Idealism and the Nature of Spirit

Where Peirce genuinely parts ways with Hegelian thought, and thus widens the epistemological gap, is in his claim 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, though 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).