Dear John
This is an extraordinary subject. To see a philosopher like you produce all
kinds of assumptions of which there is absolute no ground for in what I have
written is amazing. To use the word God is like pressing a button on a machine
producing all kind of traditional common sense assumptions and superstitions.
It is all coming from you, but you seem to believe that it is my views you are
talking about. But it is not. It is a very unpleasant discussion method.
It is a lack of respects to assume that I do not know better than what you
assume. Your assumptions of my stupidity blocks your ability to see what it is
that I try to accomplish. Try to reach a deeper understanding of what I have
written. There is 35 years of study and experience behind this view.
Yes the universe is all we have, but the debate is about what the universe is
and how it is connected to us. Peirce was a very deep philosopher. He believed
in a very refined version of scientific method as the instrument for us to
reach reliable knowledge about ourselves and the universe's processes in time.
Peirce's view is much broader and more refined than the received view of
science, we have these days, which is leading us into info-computationalism.
"Supernatural" is by the way a very interesting concept assuming that we know
for sure all what is natural and from that is able to determine what is not.
But if something is real, it is also natural even if it is a cultural fashion
or superstitious ritual. How can you define something as existing in a realm
outside of nature? Well, there is the theory of the many universes that has no
access to each other and that is exactly why its scientific status questioned.
Best
Søren
Fra: John Collier [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 17. juni 2014 16:28
Til: Søren Brier; John Collier; Edwina Taborsky; Catherine Legg; Gary Richmond;
[email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Emne: Re: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Well, Søren, I would agree, as implicitly I did with Edwina, that we are here
talking about Nature, nothing non-natural. I stand by my comparison. I think
you are very much deluded on this issue. I think you should change your
terminology, but not necessarily your beliefs. There is no God as found in any
religion that I know about, which requires a care for humans, one way or the
other -- some Gods don't like humans, others do. There is nothing supernatural
that cares about humans, I think; all of these are imaginary "friends" or
possibly "enemies". We are here to make the best of things we can. Without
extraordinary help. We have to figure it out. so far we are alone in the
universe.
John
At 03:06 PM 2014-06-17, Søren Brier wrote:
Dear John
What term other than God would you find better? We are talking about the
ultimate reality that holds everything else together and is you most intimate
connection to reality and meaning. I find your example of the Higgs boson is
very misleading and a bit offending. Makes me wonder if you have really
understood me.
Best
Søren
Fra: John Collier [ mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 17. juni 2014 06:38
Til: Edwina Taborsky; Søren Brier; Catherine Legg; Gary Richmond;
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
I concur with Edwina; I see no reason to call the real here 'god'. I have taken
a similar line in my classes for decades when looking at what Aquinas' Five
Ways would imply (Aquinas, of course, does not make Peirce's distinction
between existence and reality, so his use of 'existence' is misleading at best).
In fact I find this sort of 'god' talk misleading, in much the same way as
calling the Higgs boson 'the God particle' is misleading.
John
At 07:49 AM 2014-06-16, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Thanks, Soren, for this outline - very nice. In particular, the brief and
succinct account:
God is real but does not exists and therefore is not conscious and cannot have
a will based on a personhood as it is understood by most Theists. Therefore the
whole creationist concept of a conscious plan in the creation of the world
would collapses and only Peirce's synechist and thycistic semiotic Agapism
remains. As in evolutionary epistemology there is a deep connection between the
process of human cognition , ecology and evolution in the form of semiosis'
combination of chance, love and logic.
The differentiation between 'reality' and 'the existence' is important, as is
the location of 'will' within existentiality rather than within reality.
Even though I'm an atheist and don't accept the notion of 'god', I do accept
the notion of reality - a reality that is rational, evolving, logical and that
acknowledges chance and love.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Søren Brier<mailto:[email protected]>
To: Catherine Legg<mailto:[email protected]> ; Gary
Richmond<mailto:[email protected]> ;
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 9:34 AM
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Dear Cathy
Thank you for your appreciation of my work. It is heartwarming coming from such
a good philosopher ! The references came from the fact that a lot of my writing
was based on those two article that was not accepted by the referees of the
Centennial conference, probably because this is a "dangerous area" in Peirce's
philosophy for many analytically trained philosophers.
There is no doubt that Peirce's evolutionary process view combined with his
fallibilism adds something to both Buddhism and Christianity as also Hartshorne
see it in his development of a process theology. Thus evolution is God's way
of creating the world. The problem with this understanding for most ordinary
Christians is that it would demand a change in their concept of God to
Peirce's: God is real but does not exists and therefore is not conscious and
cannot have a will based on a personhood as it is understood by most Theists.
Therefore the whole creationist concept of a conscious plan in the creation of
the world would collapses and only Peirce's synechist and thycistic semiotic
Agapism remains. As in evolutionary epistemology there is a deep connection
between the process of human cognition , ecology and evolution in the form of
semiosis' combination of chance, love and logic. John Archibald Wheeler's "it
from bit participatory universe" is the closest a modern philosophical
physicist has come to Peirce's vision. But as most physicist Wheeler is basing
his view on an information theoretical view and fails on establishing the
reflective phenomenological basis, which that is so foundational to Peirce's
pragmaticist semiotics and view of the "natural light of reasoning".
J.A. Wheeler (1990). "Information, physics, Quantum: The search for links", pp.
3-29 in W.H. Zurek (Ed.). Complexity, entropy and the physics of information.
Vol. VIII in Santa Fe Institute, Studies in the Sciences of complexity. Addison
Wesley publishing Company.
Best
Søren
Fra: Catherine Legg [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 16. juni 2014 07:09
Til: Søren Brier; Gary Richmond; [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Hi all,
I'm very behind on this thread, but have been reading and enjoying it. I just
haven't had the chance to pull my thoughts together enough to post.
First of all, a big thank you to Søren for starting us off with such
wonderfully erudite postings - even including bibliographies which are a
resource for all of us to keep and refer to in the future!
I have a bit of background knowledge of world religion and certain spiritual
traditions, but have certainly learned quite a bit more through this thread -
about key ideas in Buddhism, Dogen, St John of the Cross, and more.
Totally agree with you Søren about the way the phenomenological tradition has
done useful ground work for this area of philosophy but is still regarded with
suspicion by the 'mainstream'.
Thank you to those (Gary R, Gary F and Søren spring to mind) who were willing
to describe a little of their own mystical (or otherwise spiritual) experiences
in this public forum. This kind of candour and trust is what makes philosophy a
truly enriching exercise, and peirce-l a valuable forum.
Gary F I was very interested in the way you highlighted the role of the
*natural light of reason* in Peirce's philosophy as giving him a distinctive
take on these questions. I'm very interested in that as I'm still pursuing
iconic signification as a kind of direct 'seeing' to break the deadlock of
pointless attempts at discursive explanations in current epistemology.
Eugene I loved what you said about 'naturalistic' philosophy relying on a
"subnatural conception of nature". Very good.
I wonder if the thread has paid enough attention to what Peirce was saying in
some of the quotes that were posted about his cosmology being *hyperbolic*
(i.e. evolutionary), and the mode of evolution being jumping into the fray of
life and testing hypotheses. This would distinguish Peirce's views from both
Christianity and Buddhism wouldn't it?
Cheers, Cathy
From: Søren Brier [mailto:[email protected] ]
Sent: Tuesday, 3 June 2014 5:44 a.m.
To: Stephen C. Rose; Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Dear Stev(ph)en and list
About the meaning of spirituality. I am presently reading Basarab Nicolescu
(2014): From modernity to Cosmodernity: Science, Culture and Spirituality
On p. 13 here expressed the transcultural experience of reality in a very
eloquent way, that I find very close to Peirce pure Zero or Tohu va Bohu and
Nargajuna's emptiness from which all things co-arise:
"The perception of the transcultural is, first of all, an experience, because
it concerns the silence of different actualizations. The space between the
levels of reality is the space of this silence. It is the equivalent, in
interior space, of what is called the quantum vacuum in exterior space. It is a
full silence, structured in levels. There are as many levels of silences as
there are correlations between levels of perception and levels of reality. And
beyond all these levels of silence, there is another quality of silence, that
place-without-place that the poet Michel Casmus calls "our luminous ignorance".
This nucleus of silence appears to us as an unknowable because it is the
unfathomable well of knowledge, but this unknowable is luminous because it
illuminates the very structure of knowledge. The levels of silence and the
levels of our luminous ignorance determine our lucidity."
Best
Søren
Fra: Stephen C. Rose [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 1. juni 2014 20:16
Til: Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Steven - Hope your hospital stay has good results.
It's funny to think of my resonance with Peirce in light of the fact of my
seminary training and lifelong work as both a representative and critic of the
church. I see little or no distinction between Peirce's thinking as a whole and
his thinking that explicitly relates to theology and religion. To make this
distinction sets him up for the charges you levy. I am not sure on what basis
your general observations on the relative spiritualities within the Peirce
family rest, but I tend to take them as less than substantiated by evidence. I
could be wrong. But I have studies some in the areas of American and English
universalism and its morphing into the less interesting (to me) and more
predictable unitarianism. I think CSP may have more affinity with the earliest
universalists and that these have some odd but not insignificant ties to some
views of the late Karl Barth and even to Paul. CSP reserves great acidity for
what he regards as a failing of John, the assumed author of the Fourth Gospel,
and perhaps also of the Book of Revelation. I think Peirce is foundational in
any discussion of holism, moving past Snow, and getting to some understanding
of Christianity past the fundamentalist culture religion that has largely
supplanted both neo-orthodoxy and liberalism. Best, S
@stephencrose<https://twitter.com/stephencrose>
On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Soren,
My apologizes for the delayed response (I am hospitalized currently). My
comment deserves clarification as Soren suggests.
In brief, Charles' really should not be considered seriously with respect to
social religion and his relationship with formal religion except through his
Neglected Agument (yet another advocacy of his semiotic). God certainly is not
something he "worships" in any traditional sense and his advocacy of "worship"
is not at all religious ( but painfully manipulative and social). His father
and brother are different and more holistic in this regard. If there is a
commonreligious thread between them it is positivism. But Charles, in my view,
should be dismissed.
At some point Stanford will make my January talk on this subject available.
Steven
On Saturday, May 31, 2014, Søren Brier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Dear Steven
It is obvious not so to me. So, would you care to explain us why you think so?
That would be an interesting contribution to our discussion. I have long felt
that although we in many ways were on the same track, there were also some deep
disagreement on basic interpretations. But I have not been able to put my
finger on it. Maybe you can?
Cheers
Søren
Fra: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [
<mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] På vegne af
Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sendt: 31. maj 2014 01:19
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; Kathrine Elizabeth
Lorena Johansson; Claudia Jacques
([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>); Elisabeth Sørup;
Seth Miller; Leslie Combs
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Contradictory and I doubt Peircean.
Steven
On Monday, May 19, 2014, Søren Brier <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
1. God is real but does not exist: so the best way to worship him is through
the religion of science
I thought this sums up nicely Section 9.6 in Kees' book and was a good way to
start the discussion of: God, science and religion. Peirce's theory of the
relation between science and religion is one of the most controversial aspects
of his pragmaticist semiotics only second to his evolutionary objective
idealism influenced by Schelling (Niemoczynski and Ejsing) and based on his
version of Duns Scotus' extreme scholastic realism, which Kees' did an
exemplary presentation of as well. Peirce's view of religion and how science is
deeply connected to it in a way that differs from what any other philosopher
has suggested except Whitehead's process philosophy, but there are also
important differences here.
I have no quarrels with Kees' exemplary understandable formulations in the
short space he has. That leaves opportunity for us to discuss all the
interesting aspects he left out like Peirce's Panentheism (Michael Raposa ,
Clayton and Peacock), his almost Neo-Platonist (Kelly Parker
http://agora.phi.gvsu.edu/kap/Neoplatonism/csp-plot.html ) metaphysics of
emptiness or Tohu va Bohu (see also Parker) and ongoing creation in his
process view, and from this basic idea of emptiness ( that is also
foundational to Nargajuna's Buddhism of the middle way ) a connection to
Buddhism. This was encouraging Peirce to see Buddhism and Christianity in their
purest mystical forms integrated into an agapistic Buddhisto-Christian process
view of God. Brent mentions an unsent letter from Peirce's hand describing a
mystical revelation in the second edition of the biography. This idea of
Buddhisto-Christianity was taken up by Charles Hartshorne - one of the most
important philosophers of religion and metaphysicians of the twentieth century
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/ who also wrote about
Whitehead's process view of the sacred (see references).
I have collected many of the necessary quotes and interpreted them in this
article
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/ImagesRepository/ijts/Downloads/A%20Peircean%20Panentheist%20Scientific%20Mysticism.pdf
, and in Brier 2012 below.
Even Peirce's evolutionary objective idealism is too much to swallow for most
scientists who are not fans of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. So even today it is
considering a violation of rationality to support an evolutionary process
objective idealism like Peirce's, which include a phenomenological view. Even
in the biosemiotic group this is dynamite. We have h
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Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
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________________________________
Professor John Collier
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
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