> On Jun 12, 2016, at 3:22 PM, [email protected] wrote: > > However, in the following you only take up a dual distinction, between what > exists and what is real. Where is the virtual? Where is triadicity?
Well I wasn’t addressing everything. <grin> Just that I notice for many trying to get a grasp on Peirce the real/existent distinction isn’t obvious because most philosophy is based upon nominalistic assumptions. For nominalists of the realist variety (i.e. not idealists or the empiricist variations of idealism) to exist is to be real and to be real is to exist. Admittedly some like Quine are a little more sophisticated but in the broader cultural context that’s the starting place. > To my mind "Neglegted Argument on the Reality of God" is not at all about a > notion (a conception) of God, but about the meaning inherent in the idea of > the Holy Trinity. I’m not sure those are distinguishable. After all Peirce is starting from an assumption about what God is like that arises in the religious tradition he finds himself situated. Admittedly he then starts to move beyond that tradition (as I think Hegelianism pushed many in the 19th century). By his mature period many see as much Buddhism as Christianity in his thoughts about God. What’s so interesting to me is that the traditional trappings of Christianity - the incarnation of the Son - seems lacking in Peirce. (I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve not really studied Peirce in this regard - so I may be missing some key texts) > So, one could ask: Is God general? - But this is a question I have never > come across with. I wonder whether you, or anyone else have? I think within the Platonic conception and more Platonic oriented theology that’s typically how God is seen. He’s the most absolutely general and completely non-material. (This isn’t my own view mind you) Again noting this isn’t something I know much about, it *seems* to me that Peirce’s conception of God are in some ways similar to Scotus. We know Peirce read quite a bit of Scotus so this wouldn’t be that surprising. For Scotus God exists only in a manner somewhat analogous to how created beings exist. > On Jun 12, 2016, at 5:17 PM, Jerry Rhee <[email protected]> wrote: > Are the following questions the same? > > “Is God general?”, “What would God be?”, “What is God?”, “quid sit deus?” > > To ask if God is general is to ask what the idea or the form of God is. This > is a Platonic question and “"Idea," nearer Plato > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato>'s idea of ἰδέα, denotes anything whose > Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully represented, regardless > of any person's faculty or impotence to represent it. > Scotus differs from some other theologians in that he thinks that God’s perfection entails some degree of representation. However he also takes the traditional sense that God’s existence and essence are more or less the same thing. Existence in this sense is only analogous to normal entities’ existence. Scotus on human knowledge of God actually is very similar to quite a few of Peirce’s semiotic positions. The place Scotus limits knowledge of God is more the problem of a finite being fully comprehending and infinite object. Again I’m not entirely sure of Peirce’s conception of God. Outside of the Neglected Argument I’ve simply not studied it much. And I must confess I primarily turn to the Neglected Argument more for how Peirce uses abduction to argue for very abstract entities.
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