Jon, List,
I fully agree with what you wrote. We may (or even "must") have a direct perception of God. We just can't see the forest for the trees. But isn´t this view a contradiction to gnosticism and its influence to christianity at e.g. Augustinus and Luther? All these from dull to frightening dogmas about two realms, hell, original sin, and the like?
Best, Helmut
22. August 2025 um 00:20
"Jon Alan Schmidt" <[email protected]>
wrote:Gary R., List:
Your follow-up questions are valid but frankly seem a bit jumbled. I have taken a stab at rearranging them to facilitate offering my initial answers, resulting in another lengthy post; once again, I will compensate for that by refraining from posting anything else today. If I left something out that you were hoping I would address, please say so.
GR: Firstly, doesn't the OD (which you've argued is God) need to be known by collateral observation or some sort of acquaintance? What sort of collateral knowledge could the Universe-as-Vast-Sign have of its OD, God? ... So who is reading the Vast Sign?
Peirce maintains that the interpreter of any sign must have collateral acquaintance/experience/observation of its dynamical object in order to understand it. An admittedly unusual feature of the universe as a sign is that we are interpreting it from within it, so it is natural to wonder how we can experience anything apart from it, and Peirce's response seems to be that we have direct experience of God. He states that synechism "is forced to accept the doctrine of a personal God," of whom "we must have a direct perception," and that people who doubt the reality of such God do so only because "facts that stand before our face and eyes and stare us in the face are far from being, in all cases, the ones most easily discerned" (CP 6.162, EP 1:332-3, 1892). He adds that "when a man has that experience with which religion sets out, he has as good reason--putting aside metaphysical subtilties--to believe in the living personality of God as he has to believe in his own. Indeed, belief is a word inappropriate to such direct perception" (CP 6.436, 1893); and he later refers to "the soul’s consciousness of its relation to God" as "nothing more than precisely the pragmatistic meaning of the name of God" (CP 6.516, c. 1906).
GR: And what is its IO? ... What's its IO? ... Again, the Sign has no effect upon the OD, but isn't an OI required? Where is that located? ... Where is the OI, or isn't there one or something like it (but how could that be)?
The immediate object of any sign is internal to that sign and corresponds to how it identifies its dynamical object. For example, the immediate object of an ordinary word is whatever satisfies its verbal definition, which is its immediate interpretant. Peirce consistently classifies the universe as a symbol, but every symbol involves indices; and if my overall hypothesis is correct, then the universe as a whole is also an index of God by virtue of being created by God. As my forthcoming Transactions paper spells out, Peirce's cosmological argumentation is that the co-reality of the three universes that together comprise our entire existing universe calls for a rational explanation, and the only viable candidate is the reality of "that which would Really be in any possible state of things whatever" (R 339:[295r], 1908 Aug 28). Accordingly, he considers "God" to be "the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434, 1908)--unlike any other proper name, its referent can be distinguished by a general description because there could not possibly be more than one such necessary being.
GR: Isn't the Vast Sign itself necessarily within a mind or something like a mind if it is 'conceived' at all? ... Is the Cosmic Sign out of God's Mind altogether? But if the mind I'm inquiring into is the Mind of God, then how can the Vast Cosmic Sign stand apart from that? ... That is, where is that Sign situated in relation to consciousness/mind?
As a perfect sign, the entire universe is itself a quasi-mind (EP 2:545n25, 1906). God is not only its dynamical object, but also its utterer; and just as any spoken or written sign token is external to its utterer's mind, likewise our existing universe is external to God's mind. On the other hand, the inexhaustible possibilities from which God chooses some to actualize might be strictly internal to God's mind, depending on how we understand Peirce's references to them as "Platonic worlds" in his blackboard discussion (CP 6.208, 1898). In any case, our ability to "read" God's mind is no different from our ability to "read" other people's minds--we can only hear and read their external utterances, not their internal thoughts. As Peirce says, "signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded" (CP 4.551, 1906). Accordingly, our minds are distinct from God's mind but "welded" to it in the one immense sign that God has uttered--"though we cannot think any thought of God's, we can catch a fragment of His Thought, as it were" (CP 6.502, c. 1906).
GR: So, if not the mind of God (who stands apart from it and yet, you say, somehow sustains and evolves it), then what? Again, how is the Cosmic Sign determined by God when, I assume, no physical determination is meant in your semiotic use of 'determine?
From our time-bound perspective within the universe, God is still constantly uttering it and will continue uttering it into the infinite future. "The creation of the universe ... did not take place during a certain busy week, in the year 4004 B.C., but is going on today and never will be done" (CP 1.615, EP 2:255, 1903). Consequently, all our dynamical interpretants are being determined by it as an incomplete sign, one that it is always becoming more determinate by "working out its conclusions in living realities" (CP 5.119, EP 2:193, 1903). That is my understanding of God's "determination" of the universe in this context, with physical determination as a degenerate manifestation of semiosic determination. Since God is an infinite being, God's complete self-disclosure is an unattainable/asymptotic limit at which the universe as one immense sign would be perfectly determinate, thereby realizing its final interpretant--"an interpretant which would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, we may use this language) would be the very Universe ... the ideal sign which should be quite perfect ... the fact that is not abstracted but complete" (EP 2:304, NEM 4:239-40, 1901).
GR: I have little doubt that some might see these kinds of questions and this kind of discussion as akin to 'how many angels can sit on the head of a pin'?
On the contrary, I think that they are important for establishing the internal coherence of my conception of the entire universe as one immense sign whose dynamical object is God the Creator and whose final interpretant is God completely revealed, which is obviously necessary (but likely not sufficient) for its plausibility.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 10:35 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote:
Jon, List,Well, that's a lot to take in! So I'll just try a chunk of it today. I had written:GR: If it is a system, how is it that its object is viewed . . . as outside that system?JAS: According to Peirce, it is a fundamental semiotic principle that every sign is determined by a dynamical object that is external to that sign, independent of that sign, and unaffected by that sign. Therefore, if the entire universe is a sign--as Peirce himself clearly maintained--then it must be determined by a dynamical object that is external to the entire universe, independent of the entire universe, and unaffected by the entire universe.I'm still a bit mystified. Firstly, doesn't the OD (which you've argued is God) need to be known by collateral observation or some sort of acquaintance? What sort of collateral knowledge could the Universe-as-Vast-Sign have of its OD, God? And what is its IO? Isn't the Vast Sign itself necessarily within a mind or something like a mind if it is 'conceived' at all? I would assume it can't have self-reference? So who is reading the Vast Sign? Is the Cosmic Sign out of God's Mind altogether. But if the mind I'm inquiring into is the Mind of God, then how can the Vast Cosmic Sign stand apart from that? What's its IO? That is, where is that Sign situated in relation to consciousness/mind? It surely can't be mind-less? Our own minds are evidence that it isn't. So, if not the mind of God (who stands apart from it and yet, you say, somehow sustains and evolves it), then what? Again, how is the Cosmic Sign determined by God when, I assume, no physical determination is meant in your semiotic use of 'determine? Again, the Sign has no effect upon the OD, but isn't an OI required? Where is that located?I know I could wait for your Transactions paper, but I've followed you to some extent so far and yet questions keep arising. I guess the thrust of the questions above is 'Where is Mind in all This?' And another big question the shorthand of which is: Where is the OI, or isn't there one or something like it (but how could that be)?I have little doubt that some might see these kinds of questions and this kind of discussion as akin to 'how many angels can sit on the head of a pin'? But for those of us who take metaphysical questions such as Peirce (and you) have posed, well we find that they stimulate thinking in us about cosmic spiritual matters of importance to us.Best,Gary R
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