Gary F., List, I think the argument at 6.303 rehearses Peirce's larger argumentative strategy, which is to draw on the formal relations examined in the phenomenology and the kinds of signs and principles of inference studied in logic as basis for setting up the principles of metaphysics. Once he has shown that tychasm and anancasm are degenerate forms of agapasm, he is then in a position to argue that a principle of love is the highest of the three principles--and the only one that will supply us with adequate explanations of such things as the growth of order.
As such, I think Peirce gives a pretty strong cable of arguments grounded in his phenomenology and logic for thinking that the world is governed by a principle of love. In fact, I think the neglected argument is an argument drawn from common experience for thinking that a particularly general and vague conception of God can serve as a kind of global hypothesis for explaining the growth of order in all three universes of experience--and that this hypothesis is a central strand of the cable he is winding together into a system of ideas. As an interpretation of the text, I do think he provides arguments for a metaphysical principle that is, as you've put it, a benign cause. Having said that, I understand that you can disagree with Peirce on this matter. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Gary Fuhrman [[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 5:22 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1 Thanks, Jeff, this helps to clarify the issue. Your quote from CP 6.295 is a kind of precursor to the Neglected Argument: “strong feeling is in itself, I think, an argument of some weight”. But of course it only has much weight for those who have the feeling! In your first quote, while summarizing the history of cosmology, Peirce remarks that “the ontological gospeller [John], in whose days those views were familiar topics, made the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love”, and it's clear that his own “warmth of feeling” supports that idea. However, he also recognizes the logical problem in reconciling this belief with monotheism: the Creator of love must also be Creator of hate. This isn't a problem for an evolutionary cosmology such as Peirce is outlining here, which aims to explain how the various universal tendencies work themselves out; but it doesn't provide any rational basis for identifying that One Supreme Being with the “Real creator of all three Universes of Experience” (and therefore of all those tendencies). Besides, the idea that love is supreme among all tendencies, or more genuine than the others, even if we accept it, doesn't prove that the Creator of all universes is “benign.” —But then that's the kind of theological argument that Peirce prefers to avoid, by appealing to instinct as the best guide to belief in practical matters. Anyway, I don’t think you’ve given me good reason to change what I said before, but you have thrown a strong light on its Peircean context. gary f. } I thank thee that I am none of the wheels of power but I am one of the living creatures that are crushed by it. [Tagore] { www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm<http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> }{ gnoxics From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 21-Jun-14 8:30 PM Gary F., You say: "I’m not aware of any argument in Peirce’s scientific metaphysics supporting the proposition that God is benign." Peirce starts the discussion of Evolutionary love with the following question about the possible relationships that might hold between principles of love and hate. 6.287. Philosophy, when just escaping from its golden pupa-skin, mythology, proclaimed the great evolutionary agency of the universe to be Love. Or, since this pirate-lingo, English, is poor in such-like words, let us say Eros, the exuberance-love. Afterwards, Empedocles set up passionate love and hate as the two coördinate powers of the universe. In some passages, kindness is the word. But certainly, in any sense in which it has an opposite, to be senior partner of that opposite, is the highest position that love can attain. Nevertheless, the ontological gospeller, in whose days those views were familiar topics, made the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love. What, then, can he say to hate? Later in the essay, Peirce seems to think that he has offered an argument of sorts. 6.295. Much is to be said on both sides. I have not concealed, I could not conceal, my own passionate predilection. Such a confession will probably shock my scientific brethren. Yet the strong feeling is in itself, I think, an argument of some weight in favor of the agapastic theory of evolution -- so far as it may be presumed to bespeak the normal judgment of the Sensible Heart. Certainly, if it were possible to believe in agapasm without believing it warmly, that fact would be an argument against the truth of the doctrine. At any rate, since the warmth of feeling exists, it should on every account be candidly confessed; especially since it creates a liability to one-sidedness on my part against which it behooves my readers and me to be severally on our guard. Is this the only argument he's given in "Evolutionary Love" for the thesis that the principle of love has priority in his metaphysical explanations of the evolution of order in the cosmos? For my part, I think there is an argument in the following passage: 6.303. All three modes of evolution are composed of the same general elements. Agapasm exhibits them the most clearly. The good result is here brought to pass, first, by the bestowal of spontaneous energy by the parent upon the offspring, and, second, by the disposition of the latter to catch the general idea of those about it and thus to subserve the general purpose. In order to express the relation that tychasm and anancasm bear to agapasm let me borrow a word from geometry. An ellipse crossed by a straight line is a sort of cubic curve; for a cubic is a curve which is cut thrice by a straight line; now a straight line might cut the ellipse twice and its associated straight line a third time. Still the ellipse with the straight line across it would not have the characteristics of a cubic. It would have, for instance, no contrary flexure, which no true cubic wants; and it would have two nodes, which no true cubic has. The geometers say that it is a degenerate cubic. Just so, tychasm and anancasm are degenerate forms of agapasm. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Gary Fuhrman [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2014 5:28 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1 Having just caught up with this thread, I’d like to add one belated comment. Peirce’s God is ens necessarium personified. He views the personification as instinctive. Some of us have an aversion to this kind of personification. Whether that aversion is itself instinctive is a difficult psychological question, I think. But it’s clear that in Peirce’s view, religious belief should be more instinctive than rational; that’s a central point of the “Neglected Argument” essay. EP2:435: “If God Really be, and be benign, then, in view of the generally conceded truth that religion, were it but proved, would be a good outweighing all others, we should naturally expect that there would be some Argument for His Reality that should be obvious to all minds, high and low alike, that should earnestly strive to find the truth of the matter; and further, that this Argument should present its conclusion, not as a proposition of metaphysical theology, but in a form directly applicable to the conduct of life, and full of nutrition for man's highest growth.” There’s a pair of big IFs at the beginning of that sentence, and Peirce focusses on the first while neglecting the second. The first sentence of the NA affirms his belief that God as ens necessarium is “Really creator of all three Universes of Experience.” But he does not address the question of whether the Creator is “benign.” Now, from a rational point of view, there is nothing necessarily benign about creative power. I’m not aware of any argument in Peirce’s scientific metaphysics supporting the proposition that God is benign. Rather I think it’s a pragmatic requirement for any monotheistic religion to believe that Creation is benign. This belief, like the habit of personification, may be instinctive for some people and not for others; but for a religion that is “directly applicable to the conduct of life,” this kind of optimism is parallel to the belief that truth is discoverable, which is a logical requirement for doing science, according to Peirce. Optimism is pragmatically nutritious, while pessimism is insane, or at least unhealthy. Personally I don’t share Peirce’s optimism — not on an instinctive level, that is. But I think he’s quite right that it’s healthy for both religion and science as communal enterprises. The religious expression of that optimism is the belief that the personified Creator is also the personification of Good or benignity. I also think that from a rhetorical point of view, Peirce was wise to slip that premise into his argument almost surreptitiously (in the sentence quoted above) — because I don’t think there’s any reason to believe it except that it’s ethically “nutritious” if we concede “that religion, were it but proved, would be a good outweighing all others.” gary f. } Be! Verb imprincipiant through the entrancitive spaces! [FW2 463] { www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm<http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> }{ gnoxics
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