List: The subject line of this post is the title of my paper ( https://doi.org/10.2979/csp.00048) that appears in the latest issue of *Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society* (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/56250). If you do not currently have access to that journal, then I encourage you to consider subscribing electronically for less than $40 per year ( https://iupress.org/journals/transactions/), which includes membership in the Society (https://peircesociety.org/).
As I acknowledge in the final endnote, I prepared this text on the basis of a series of List discussions that took place in August-November 2024, initiated by Gary Fuhrman and joined by others including Jeffrey Downard, Helmut Raulien, Gary Richmond, and Edwina Taborsky. Here is the abstract. Charles Peirce begins his best-known text about religious metaphysics by defining the proper name "God" as *Ens necessarium*. In two previously unpublished manuscripts, he advocates the hypothesis of such a "necessary being" as the only "rational explanation" that is "adequate to account for the sum total of reality," namely, "the three universes" that together encompass "all the phenomena there are." Combining key statements from those passages into a series of distinct steps yields a cosmological argumentation for this conclusion, one resembling that of Gottfried Leibniz. In conjunction with Peirce’s other relevant writings, it has implications for the attributes of God, as well as for the relationship between God and the universe, while also raising questions that call for further study. One of the anonymous reviewers suggested several such questions, which are listed in the conclusion as follows. - To what extent was Peirce directly influenced by Leibniz’s writings in developing his own cosmological argumentation? How do the differences between their approaches affect the persuasiveness of their formulations, especially in the context of each one’s overall logical and metaphysical views? - How does Peirce’s cosmological argumentation interact with his better-known "Neglected Argument"? Are they fully complementary, or conflicting in at least some respects? - Exactly what does Peirce mean by advocating theological anthropomorphism? How does it square with his insistence on a concept of God that is "vague in the extreme"? - If God is only vaguely conceived as a hypostatic abstraction, "that which creates this universe," does anything testable or practical follow from that hypothesis? If not, does it violate Peirce’s pragmaticism? - In what sense does this universe that we know through experience follow as a necessary consequence from the hypothesis of *Ens necessarium* as "that which would Really be in any possible state of things whatever"? Why this universe, rather than any other? Please consider this an invitation to share your thoughts about possible answers and/or comment on the content of the paper itself. As I state in its very last sentence, "My sincere hope is that others will now build on the preliminary groundwork laid here by pursuing these and related topics." Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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