Jairo Ferreira 204 can reveal another meaning of the sign. There is a limit, social and individual, which seems to summon, in immersion in this abyss, the dreams, art, meditation, and so-called primitive reli- giosities and meditations. There is, therefore, a historical limit that refers to the epistemological advances of the species. At the same time, there are restrictions on epistemological advances relating to (dominant and dominated) beliefs. The authority belief is not the only one: Peirce (CP, 5.377-5.387) described four meth- ods of fixing beliefs; he criticized three and de- fended one. In Tenacity, a person holds what one believes just because one believes in it, as a fixation of brute force. It is a method of limited effectiveness, as it tends to be disturbed by the opinion of others in disagreement, and this social interference weakens the method. Seeking to be an answer to this difficulty, in the next method, that of Authority, a belief transferred from a point of greater influence (such as government or a re- ligion, for example) is a guarantee of agreement between many individuals in society. But it also fails to a certain extent, as it levels everyone in the lack of intellectual freedom, and it will end up being perceived by a certain group of people. The next method, A Priori, seeks to correct this flaw by proposing that a person thinks as one is inclined to do, as if seeking to fix one’s natural belief. However, it crumbles when we realize that other people have different ideas of what is natural. From this, finally, we arrive at the Method of Science: which admits that there are real things and whose characteristics are independent of people’s opinions, and that, through reasoning, each person can be led to a conclusion, and many investigators will reach this same conclusion, which will be the true one. In this method Peirce evokes the concept of reality, which remains ab- sent in other conceptions of belief (Severo and Rocha da Silva, 2021, page 12).
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