Method of Authority is a term used by Charles S. Peirce to identify one of four possible ways to establish the strengthening of beliefs, namely the method of co-referring to some publicly recognized authority.
According to Peirce, beliefs are habits of action. When these habits are broken, as a result, doubt arises and in the struggle to overcome doubt and establish the belief grows a study (study).
One way to overcome doubt is by invoking the authority of a person or community. This is the essence of the method of authority.
It is inevitably doomed to failure, as some people, even in the best organized civil and ecclesiastical societies, will claim a “broader kind of social feeling” (CP 5.381), a feeling that will urge them to turn. to the experiences and thoughts of people from other countries and times.
While establishing faith is something we do as participants in society, no current society can serve as the ultimate arbiter.
As a way of establishing beliefs, Peirce’s appeal to society is like an infinite or ideal society in the long run, not what a particular historical group believes on the basis of ultimate experience.
With this, he insists that the experience of the individual is nothing if he is left alone. If the person understands what others cannot, we say that he is hallucinating. What should be thought is not “my” experience, but “our” experience, and this “our” has endless possibilities “. (CP 5.402n2).
Any group, narrower than “we” do not have the authority to establish beliefs rationally.
