Thanks, John! The connection with Aquinas is quite, um, felicitous. I think he uses the very term that Peirce translated as Light of Nature, correct? Peirce himself traced it back to Aquinas:
http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm#Light of Nature Not to say that Peirce agreed with Aquinas about the value of theology but the distinction between the knowledge of God which is generally possessed by most men and the knowledge gained through demonstration does seem very similar to Peirces distinction between argument and argumentation. This other Baldwin entry may also be relevant: http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm#Knowledge for its distinction between immediate and mediate knowledge. gary f. From: Deely, John N. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 21-May-14 10:57 AM To: Søren Brier; [email protected] Cc: Kathrine Elizabeth Lorena Johansson; Claudia Jacques ([email protected]); Elisabeth Sørup; Seth Miller; Leslie Combs Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: De Waal seminar chapter 9, p. 160 Early in his 1628 Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes laid down his most successful maxim. It was not I think therefore I am; rather was it the advice to stop reading the Latin authors lest you be infected by their errors without even realizing it. Peirce was the first and, practically speaking, the only one of his time, to break this rule, an example which even his followers to the present day have been loath to follow (it is not only Thomas Lloyd Short who promotes blindness on this point). Thus, for example, most commonly (Bergman, Tejera, et multi alii), Peirce is credited with recognizing the irreducible triadicity of the relation required for signs as his most original contribution, when in fact this crucial point was was well established among the later Latins, not only the Conimbricenses whom Peirce read, but also and most notably Poinsot, whose work unfortunately Peirce did not come to know (not surprisingly, since Poinsots demonstration of the triadic relation was buried in a much larger Cursus Philosophicus which received no significant attention until years after Peirces death. Actually, it was the notion of an Interpretant which need not be mental that was Peirces major contribution to semiotics, for it opened the way beyond zoösemiosis to understanding phytosemiosis and physiosemiosis as dimensions of the action of signs nearly undreamed of in the Latin days of the unchanging heavens. But that is another story, and the point I want to bring to attention at this point in our discussion of Kees book concerns Peirces peculiar distinction between Argument and Argumentation. I say peculiar inasmuch as in common English today most people mean by argument what Peirce calls rather argumentation. In this respect, Kees is quite correct to say on p. 160 (citing in note 10 Aquinas 1266 Summa theologiae I, Q. 2, art. 3) that Thomas Aquinass famous five ways of proving the existence of God are clear examples of argumentations. What Kees does not mention is the far more interesting point yet another proof of unintended ill consequences of Descartes 1628 maxim (actually, my own attention was called to this point only last year by one of my graduate students, Eduardo Araujo) that Aquinas, without using the term argumentation explicitly, presents exactly Peirces NA idea in Chapter 38 of the last volume of his 1259-1265 Summa contra gentiles, followed in Chapter 39 by contrasting the ch. 38 argument with the ch. 39 argumentation. I attach the two texts in English translation (I perhaps should be attaching instead the Latin) so you can see this for yourselves. I also attach for your interest some comments of my own to the effect that the NA in SCG 38 is actually superior to the argumentation form given to Aquinass 5th way in ST I.2.3.
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