These are definitely off the cuff and should be taken so: Peirce came late in life to musement and without is there would be no neglected argument.
It is very possible that he also understood the power of maxims, what he called memorial maxims. They are what we go on, so he says. I think Peirce may have felt he could converse with whoever he took to be god. More particularly I infer from my encounter with Peirce what I am saying. Including that we can prove things out by inner conversations with whoever we take to be our higher self or beyond. And we can prove things out by being aware of the actual measurable fruits of our encounters. I have refined all this in considerable detail in the many writings I have posted on Kindle. They have no particular audience but neither did Peirce. Best, S Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 4:09 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote: > List: > > While searching through the *Collected Papers* for all instances of the > word "habit," which I anticipate will be the next concept for me to explore > in working out my "logic of ingenuity" thesis, I came across 6.490-491. > This passage is presented as the conclusion of "A Neglected Argument for > the Reality of God," which puzzled me because it was unfamiliar, despite > the fact that I had read that paper several times in volume 2 of *The > Essential Peirce*. > > As it turns out, this is precisely the text that the editors of the latter > deliberately chose to omit from page 447; it is the second half of the > "first additament," which was not included at all in the original published > version. As explained in note 14, they retained the first half of it > because that is where Peirce most clearly presented the image of "a nest of > three arguments" that he also discussed in the "second additament," which > actually accompanied the article itself in *The Hibbert Journal* of > October 1908. > > CP 6.490 includes some very interesting stuff, perhaps most notably what > may have been Peirce's last attempt at outlining his cosmology. This seems > to refute the claim of Thomas Short and others that he abandoned all such > speculation after the final lecture of the Cambridge Conferences series in > 1898, as published in *Reasoning and the Logic of Things*. I may have > more to say about that subject at another time; for now, I am more > intrigued by the first few sentences of CP 6.491. > > CSP: Among the many pertinent considerations which have been crowded out > of this article, I may just mention that it could have been shown that the > hypothesis of God's Reality is logically not so isolated a conclusion as it > may seem. On the contrary, it is connected so with a theory of the nature > of thinking that if this be proved so is that. Now there is no such > difficulty in tracing experiential consequences of this theory of thinking > as there are in attempting directly to trace out other consequences of > God's reality. > > > As Bowman L. Clarke pointed out in a 1977 *Transactions* article, > "Peirce's Neglected Argument," Peirce here attempted to address an > important way in which he acknowledged that the retroductive conjecture of > the Reality of God is unlike a typical *scientific *hypothesis--it is not > amenable to deductive explication and inductive corroboration. Peirce > proposed the alternative of going through those steps with his "theory of > the nature of thinking" instead, because "the hypothesis of God's Reality > is logically ... connected so with" this theory that "proving" the latter > would suffice to "prove" the former. > > This raises a few interesting questions. > > 1. To what specifically was Peirce referring here as "a theory of the > nature of thinking"--the three stages of a "complete inquiry" and their > "logical validity," as laid out in sections III and IV of the paper, or > something else? > 2. How exactly is "this theory of thinking" *logically *connected with > "the hypothesis of God's reality"? > 3. What would be some "experiential consequences of this theory of > thinking" that we could, with comparatively little difficulty, deductively > trace and inductively test? > 4. What exactly would it mean to "prove" Peirce's "theory of the > nature of thinking," such that "the hypothesis of God's reality" would > thereby also be "proved"? > > I have some tentative thoughts about these matters, including a couple of > ideas that I found in the secondary literature, but would appreciate seeing > what others have to say initially. > > Regards, > > Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA > Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman > www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to > [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L > but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the > BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm > . > > > > > >
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