Charles S. Pierce's How To Make Our Ideas Clear

In this essay, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, an American philosopher, Charles S. Pierce aims to explain on how to make our ideas clear. He states that our ideas can either be clear and obscure, or distinct and confused. He believed that with thoughtful inquiry of our beliefs, can be broaden to help us develop a firmer grasp of reality.
A clear idea is so perceivable that it will be unmistakably recognized, and if it fails to be clear, it is defined as obscure. Now, in the essay, Pierce criticizes the definition used by the logicians by stating, “since it is clearness that they were defining, I wish the logicians had made their definition a little more plain.” A distinct idea is when there is nothing unclear about them. Clearly, to Pierce the definitions need clarification and the need to be reformulated, preferably to his standards and method of thinking.

He spoke of clarity as a principle of truth and concluded that clearness is something with which we are familiar, this ends up later on as the 1st grade of clarity. Pierce states about Descartes, “self-consciousness was to furnish us with our fundamental truths, and to decide what was agreeable to reason. But since, evidently, not all ideas are true, he was led to note, as the first condition of infallibility, that they must be clear.” The issue with Descartes is that he never noticed the distinction between an idea seeming clear from that of really being