Jon, Gary, List,
Jon: “Peirce considered the ‘anthropocentric bias’ of Western philosophy to be a feature, not a bug" […] "To say, therefore, that a conception is one natural to man, which comes to just about the same thing as to say that it is anthropomorphic, is as high a recommendation as one could give to it in the eyes of an Exact Logician" (CP 5.47, EP 2:152, 1903). Gary: “So, in a word: the spirit of the ‘Religions of the Book’ and those of the East are, in my view, quasi-necessary; the language, symbols, doctrines and dogmas, however, are mainly insufficient for the needs of our era.” Allow me to expand on my motivations for leaving the god question open. One of them, I've already touched on... the creative void, as first cause, may itself be the progenitor of life. If so, then this raises questions as to whether God is a product of life processes (the universe as a unified collective), or the creator of them… or even both, in the sense of a god-universe bootstrapping itself into existence. Indeed, is God even necessary, whether as the creator of life, or the arbiter of moral purpose? By leaving the god question open, one is forced to address first principles. First principles? The creative void is one such first principle. Another is the pervasiveness of maternal love throughout nature. How do the mothers of so many species know to love their offspring? Where does this come from? Darwinians typically trivialize maternal love (or any other kind of love) as an "adaptive trait", an adjunct to the meat-and-potatoes of dumb stochastic processes. Religious folk, by contrast, might describe it as God's love pervading throughout nature. I introduce a different slant... maternal love as of semiotic significance prioritizing the known, an expression of the tension between the known and the unknown. An anthropocentric bias would presuppose that only humans are capable of love, and that its manifestation outside of the human domain is in the form of "instinct" as an adaptive trait. In this context, maternal love in non-human animals, as "instinctual", is merely incidental - an artificial fabrication of God's perfect love that He reserves for humans. With our anthropocentric interpretation, we lose sight of its semiotic significance, rich in meaning and purpose… and even, as a first principle in all sentient life throughout the universe, not just human life on Earth. On the moral question and its intent... is morality defined by God? Or does it relate to cultural health and well-being? Self-interest versus the greater good? Christianity has already demonstrated that morality relates to the greater good that makes progress in cultures possible. The foundation of civilisation, the European Renaissance and all that. In the absence of morality, overwhelmed by self-interest, degeneracy and misery would be the end-point of that trajectory. The European Renaissance is now in the past, a new future beckons. A new Dark Age, perhaps? [I allude here to Douglas Murray’s “The Strange Death of Europe”] So where has the anthropocentric, "man made in God's image" indulgence brought us? Yes, it gave us the European Renaissance that preceded the industrial and technological revolutions. But it never tempered its human exceptionalism, the notion that only human logic and reason are real, everything else a mere simile. And in this our indulgent anthropocentrism might have now brought us to the edge of extinction, that's where. The God/Not-God tension of the Occident is unlike the synthesis that emerged in the East. Our Creationism flips to Darwinism morphs into Neo-Darwinism morphs into physicalism/materialism, the notion that everything can be explained in terms of matter and math. Who here hasn't heard of "The Great Replacement"? A strategic agenda or a stupid experiment? Regardless, the established physicalist narrative cannot comprehend that mixing very different cultures, like mixing oil and water, can only ever result in catastrophe. The European cultures that had taken millennia to evolve from the hunter-gatherers now stand at a precipice. The chaos that has arrived at our doorstep we owe to the human exceptionalism that renders human ways of knowing as exceptional, not required to answer to a higher authority, other than the god made in Man's image. The god that I have in mind is Hubble Deep-field, trillions-galactic big. He won’t know my name. Insofar as I might occasionally conjecture, he is very different to the Abrahamic god made in Man's image that has set the stage for a God/Not-God duality, an irreconcilable religion/materialist schism. I'm sure He won't be offended were I to leave Him out of our conversations. He's bigger than that. Cheers, sj From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 18 August, 2025 8:18 AM To: Peirce List <[email protected]>; Stephen Jarosek <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary Stephen, Jon, List, SJ: Too many Western interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric (god-leaning) biases, and that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern interpretations, which leave the god-question open. I too am more and more inclined to "leave the god-question" open, although I still consider myself something of a 'Cosmic Christian' in Matthew Fox's sense of Christ as Logos and Pantokrator (Fox follows de Chardin and Meister Eckhart, for example, in seeing Christ as a cosmic reality, as an energy pattern, a presence pervading the universe) However, this is for me likely an interim measure as I move further from traditional theism to I know not what (none of the Eastern religions either). So, in a word: the spirit of the "Religions of the Book" and those of the East are, in my view, quasi-necessary; the language, symbols, doctrines and dogmas, however, are mainly insufficient for the needs of our era. On the other hand, I didn't comment in the Planck/Peirce discussion that both thinkers were wholly opposed to atheism and made many statements to that effect. And I too am opposed to materialism, nothing-but-ism, social Darwinism, irreverence (for people, animals, the earth), etc. As did First Nations people of the Americas, I see all of nature as sacred. And Tat Tvam Asi. My own thinking to date is that some Eastern thought posits Mind in a way which not only leaves 'the god-question open' but which offers such stimulating ideas as expressed in a Tibetan Buddhist tantra I read decades ago which opens: Samaya: Gya, Gya, Gya, translated, Universal Mind: Vast, Vast, Vast. And I am inspired by those metaphysical ideas which suggest that we are of the very nature of that Vast Intelligence. For example, Vedanta, Tat Tvam Asi (translated, You Are That: 'Tat' = 'That', 'Tvam = 'You', 'Asi' = 'Are') identifies the person with the essence of Tat. So I welcome a discussion of how some Eastern thought can help us find a way to see Vast Intelligence at the core of the cosmos without making That 'an anthropomorphic God' as Peirce and billions of Jews, Muslims, and Christians do. I have great respect for those who hold such beliefs as they all have at least the potential value of finding life -- and not only human life, but all life -- valuable, sacred. Jon: Despite viewing consciousness as "limited to embodied and living beings," Peirce considered the "anthropocentric bias" of Western philosophy to be a feature, not a bug. . . Applying this directly to "the god-question," he preferred "the anthropomorphic conception" of "an old-fashioned God" as "more likely to be about the truth" than "a modern patent Absolute". Gary: I would agree that for many an abstract 'Absolute' resonates very little with the sense of the profound mystery of our being in this vast cosmos (just spend a little time with the images take by the Webb telescope to get a sense of what I mean by 'vast cosmos'), that for some of us our 'intellect' and 'soul' or 'spirit' senses a connection to something profoundly Real/Vital which the extant religions no longer adequately address. The 'old-fashioned God' of the "Religions of the Book " has apparently worked well enough for multitudes and for centuries, and still has a powerful grip on many today. But there seems to be an increasing desire among some for a faith which, if not exactly 'scientific', is at least not at odds with science (again, neither Peirce nor Planck thought it need be). Still, should it ever evolve, that now quite inconceivable religion will need symbols more powerful than those of the existing major religions which, however, and in my personal experience as a Christian, are very powerful indeed in pointing the way to the sacred. Perhaps there's a truth in what Jon quoted Peirce as saying ". . .that each of us believes in God, and that the only quest is how to believe less crudely." Best, Gary R On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 1:08 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Stephen, List: SJ: Too many Western interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric (god-leaning) biases, and that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern interpretations, which leave the god-question open. Despite viewing consciousness as "limited to embodied and living beings," Peirce considered the "anthropocentric bias" of Western philosophy to be a feature, not a bug, because "every scientific explanation is a hypothesis that there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous" (CP 1.316, 1903). "To say, therefore, that a conception is one natural to man, which comes to just about the same thing as to say that it is anthropomorphic, is as high a recommendation as one could give to it in the eyes of an Exact Logician" (CP 5.47, EP 2:152, 1903). Applying this directly to "the god-question," he preferred "the anthropomorphic conception" of "an old-fashioned God" as "more likely to be about the truth" than "a modern patent Absolute" (CP 5.47n, EP 2:152; see also CP 8.168, 1902). Of course, Peirce famously professed his own belief that God is "Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434, 1908), and he even asserted, "It may, therefore, truly be said that each of us believes in God, and that the only quest is how to believe less crudely" (SWS 283, 1909). However, he also insisted that "'God' is a vernacular word and, like all such words, but more than almost any, is vague," going on to suggest that the reason why many people erroneously deny that they believe in the reality of God is because "they precide (or render precise) the conception, and, in doing so, inevitably change it; and such precise conception is easily shown not to be warranted, even if it cannot be quite refuted" (CP 6.494-6, c. 1906). After all, he adds a few paragraphs later, "it is impossible to say that any human attribute is literally applicable" to God (CP 6.502); so, accordingly, "we must not predicate any Attribute of God otherwise than vaguely and figuratively" (SWS 283). My forthcoming paper in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, "Peirce's Cosmological Argumentation: God as Ens necessarium," explores Peirce's answer to "the god-question" in greater detail. As usual, I will post a link and the abstract when it is published, presumably in the next issue. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 8:11 AM "Stephen Jarosek" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary, List Gary R: “While Planck was cautious about explicitly theological language (although he was a practicing Lutheran), my sense is that he tended towards a view in which the universe’s ultimate reality is mind-like, far more general than human consciousness, perhaps more like a universal cosmic field in which human minds participate.” Resonates with aspects of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and the quantum void. Peirce’s and Planck’s interpretations are exceptional. Peirce, for example, appreciates that “consciousness seems limited to embodied and living beings”, and this resonates nicely with my own thinking. However, my exchanges with Grok focus more on Eastern philosophies, rather than Western. Too many Western interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric (god-leaning) biases, and that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern interpretations, which leave the god-question open. In my latest research (current paper under review with a journal), I factor in the parallels between the quantum void and Sunyata (the creative void of Buddhism/Hinduism), within a Peircean-semiotic context. My extensive convo with Grok covers the “creative void” in greater detail, around the notion that the “tensions” in the void (its potentialities) are essentially semiotic. If anyone is interested, DM me and I can send you a Word transcript of my convo with Grok… or I can post it to the forum, if there’s a way of doing this. If anyone is interested in my current paper that is under review, here’s a link to a preprint on Academia.edu: <https://www.academia.edu/129898049/UPDATE_Association_as_Downward_Causation> https://www.academia.edu/129898049/UPDATE_Association_as_Downward_Causation Cheers, sj _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ?subject=SIG%20peirce-l">UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=SIG%20peirce-l";>UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
