Gary F - I would compare my sense of the agenda of 'preventing the dissipation
of matter' within the ongoing evolution of the process of Thirdness with your
'creative urge'. However, I don't see it as ruthless - though I see your point
in its indifference to the individual - I'd simply call it pragmatic. That is,
whatever is existential, i.e., an actualization of matter, HAS to function, and
function within its environment. If a new species emerges that doesn't function
well, that doesn't fit into that environment - then, it will normally become
extinct. No matter how much that individual species 'wants' to continue to
exist - so, that's the ruthless indifference!
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Fuhrman
To: Peirce List
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 9:32 AM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God,
science and religion: text 1
Sorry, my previous post got away from me while I was drafting it … completed
here.
Phyllis, Jeff,
I think you’re essentially right about Peirce’s argument for the reality of
God. And Jeff, you’re right that I disagree with him — but not with the logic
of his argument. I just don’t share the instinctive feeling that his argument
is grounded in. Optimism doesn’t come naturally to me, I just try to act as if
it did, out of a feeling of responsibility. J
Gene, Jon, Gary R,
Yes, the creative urge — the force that through the green fuse drives the
flower, as another poet put it. It doesn’t strike me as benign, though. The
quality of life that strikes me most is its ruthlessness. (What if the Creator
or evolution causes (most of) us to see it as positive and benign just to keep
the ¥-ball rolling?)
Søren, Edwina, Matt, I agree with you too. J Very interesting conversation
here.
Stephen, you ask,
[[ "Peircean realism does not assert that all generals are real." But doesn't
he more or less admit into reality everything that we perceive or think about
or otherwise recognize and relate to? I know that he distinguishes between real
and unreal but I am still perplexed by how he can say all thinking is in signs
and not concede that everything is in some sense real. ]]
In keeping with his ethics of terminology, Peirce was careful to use the term
“real” as it was used by those who introduced it into philosophical discourse
and used it as a technical term (namely the Scholastics). “Everything that we
perceive or think about or otherwise recognize and relate to” is part of the
phaneron, which is the collective total of everything that appears. But not
everything that appears is real in Peirce’s sense (although you can reasonably
say that everything that appears really appears). The distinction between
appearance and reality is basic to all the normative sciences, and your usage
of “reality” does away with that distinction. That’s why I stick with Peirce’s
usage, in philosophical discourse.
gary f.
} When Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is
kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there
is ritual. [Tao Te Ching 38 (Feng/English)] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
From: Phyllis Chiasson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 22-Jun-14 8:53 PM
To: Jeffrey Brian Downard; Gary Fuhrman; peirce-l@list iupui. edu
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God,
science and religion: text 1
My experience with NA has lead me to similar understandings. If God and love
are synonymous terms, as even many fundamentalists will agree. And if love
(&justice) are Real forces as Peirce says, then love and/or God is (or can be)
physically efficient. The future effects of said efficiency rely upon a
definition (in this case vague) from which to test and measure outcomes. NA,
after all is merely a hypothesis.
Phyllis
Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> wrote:
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
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