Clark- thanks for your very nice outline of the NA - I certainly agree with
your view, that as Chiasson says, it's not just about a 'belief in God',
because it's not deductive but is, as noted, abductive. Abduction inserts
freedom and spontaneity - attributes outside of the range of a God. And agreed
- the NA doesn't offer 'compelling reasons for why we should call this ens
necessarium as god. I, as an atheist, prefer his outline of Mind as the ens
necessarium.
As Mind is an action of Reasoning [within all three modes], then, I think that
ethics is grounded within it. You don't, in my reading, require a God, for
ethics.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Clark Goble
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2016 10:50 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Theory of Thinking
On Sep 18, 2016, at 4:57 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
wrote:
I appreciate the suggestion, and Chiasson's article is interesting.
However, I find it rather implausible that a work entitled "A Neglected
Argument for the Reality of God" was somehow intended to be more about "the
attitude and method from which all decisions of importance to the conduct of a
life should begin," such that the content of the hypothesis itself is secondary
or even irrelevant.
I think how most people (myself included) use the argument is as a way of
illustrating how one could apply the pragmatic maxim to metaphysics in general.
That is it’s a great example of understanding how abduction works to avoid the
problems that say the Vienna Circle crowd had with their verification
principle. While Chiasson isn’t limiting it in quite that fashion (although she
early on acknowledges that use) she is focusing on using it as a type to
understand broader application of the maxim. That’s helpful. I don’t think she
neglects the NA as primarily about God. She addresses that early on but then
goes off on the question of why Peirce was concerned with the NA for God. It’s
not just about belief in God. I think she’s right in that.
As I mentioned, while I think Peirce’s thrust is really about God, the
argument as fashioned along those lines ends up being problematic simply
because I bet most who read that essay are either atheists or at least dubious
of Peirce’s theology. In turn that leads one to think through the problem of
abduction relative to metaphysics in general. I’m not sure Peirce meant it as a
proof for God in the normal sense of deduction since it’s clearly abductive in
nature. And Peirce better than anyone knew the implications of that.
Now I don’t think it not being a proof nor most accepting it is a problem
since of course entities with weak evidence will be viewed differently over
time. That’s why Peirce emphasizes the community in the long term. That said of
course Peirce might say his conduction of the experiment is correct and others
wrong. This isn’t just a problem for Peircean abduction (especially relative to
metaphysical entities/structures) but is a common problem with armchair
philosophizing in general. Thus it pops up in the more analytic tradition with
intuitions of meaning such as in determining definitions. It also is a problem
in phenomenology in the continental tradition.
I am still intrigued after doing a Google search on the weekend how few
papers engage with the difference of God the first and God the second in
Peirce’s thought. It’s only God the first who is real but not actual.
Chiasson’s paper is interesting in that she says,
Certainly Peirce's self-proclamed core perspective of absolute idealism
could have pointed him towards a belief in God. It's generally accepted that,
even if Peirce didn't believe in a God, he--at the very least--wanted to. While
most scholars who accept Peirce's pragmatism in other ways may believe that he
failed in this attempt at proving God's Reality, it's generally agreed that
Peirce did succeed remarkably in this essay at laying out what is perhaps his
best description of the abductive reasoning process.
This distinction between belief and hope for belief is interesting. It seems
closer to what we typically associate with James rather than Peirce. Again
though I think it’s the question of Jesus that I’d love to know what Peirce
believed and why. As Chiasson notes the NA tends to adopt a near Hegelian
conception of God that was becoming quite popular among religious intellectuals
in the late 19th century. (As I recall it was primarily religious believers who
kept Hegel significant in American thought)
Against Chiasson I’d probably suggest the NA still provides as somewhat
strong an argument for the ens necessarium, It's even done in a fashion many
atheists would accept. It just doesn’t offer compelling reasons for why we
should call this God. As many have noted the line between atheist and deist is
blurry at best and often seems a nominalist distinction. i.e. more a
distinction in name rather than content. Chiasson is right that really what
Peirce is after is grounding ethics in some fashion. While there certainly are
many atheists who are skeptical ethics can be grounded there are also many who
are fine grounding them in some sort of realist conception.
To my eyes the real question of God is more the question of theism and not
what Peirce outlines in the NA. That is an interventionist God especially if
that deity is embodied in life as the traditional conception of the incarnation
requires. Peirce at least held somewhat to that view at times in his life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
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 .
-----------------------------
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 .
