List:
As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I started the thread on "Peirce's Theory of Thinking," there is an intriguing paragraph about cosmology in the first additament to "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." It did not actually accompany the article originally, but nevertheless is in the Collected Papers as CP 6.490. Before discussing it directly, a few preliminaries are in order. In the very first sentence of the published article itself, Peirce stated, "The word 'God,' so 'capitalized' (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name, signifying *Ens necessarium*; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2.434). In the second additament, the one that did appear in *The Hibbert Journal*, he added, "It is that course of meditation upon the three Universes which gives birth to the hypothesis and ultimately to the belief that they, or at any rate two of the three, have a Creator independent of them …" (CP 6.483, EP 2.448). Furthermore, in three different manuscript drafts of the article that are included in R 843, Peirce explicitly denied that God is "immanent in" nature or the three Universes, instead declaring (again) that He is the Creator of them: - "I do *not* mean, then, a 'soul of the World' or an intelligence is 'immanent' in Nature, but is the Creator of the three Universes of minds, of matter, and of ideal possibilities, and of everything in them." - "Indeed, meaning by 'God,' as throughout this paper will be meant, the Being whose Attributes are, in the main, those usually ascribed to Him, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Infinite Benignity, a Being *not* 'immanent in' the Universes of Matter, Mind, and Ideas, but the Sole Creator of every content of them, without exception." - "But I had better add that I do *not* mean by God a being merely 'immanent in Nature,' but I mean that Being who has created every content of the world of ideal possibilities, of the world of physical facts, and the world of all minds, without any exception whatever." These passages shed light not only on Peirce's concept of God--he was clearly a theist, not a pantheist or panentheist, at least as I understand those terms--but also on what exactly he had in mind with his three Universes of Experience that the article describes as consisting of Ideas, Brute Actuality, and Signs. These evidently correspond respectively to (1) ideal possibilities, matter, and minds; (2) Ideas, Matter, and Mind; and (3) ideal possibilities, physical facts, and minds. Of course, it is barely a stretch, if at all, to identify these with his categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. What I quoted above from CP 6.483 and EP 2.448 suggests the possibility that only two of the three Universes have a Creator independent of them, which raises the question of which one might not. Peirce provided a major clue in CP 6.490: A full exposition of the pragmaticistic definition of *Ens necessarium* would require many pages; but some hints toward it may be given. A disembodied spirit, or pure mind, has its being out of time, since all that it is destined to think is fully in its being at any and every previous time. But in endless time it is destined to think all that it is capable of thinking … Pure mind, as creative of thought, must, so far as it is manifested in time, appear as having a character related to the habit-taking capacity, just as super-order is related to uniformity. According to Peirce, then, God is "pure mind," and thus in some sense may not be *completely *independent of the Universe of Mind (i.e., Thirdness), while nevertheless being the independent Creator of the other two Universes--of Ideas and ideal possibilities (i.e., Firstness), and of Matter and physical facts (i.e., Secondness). What does all of this have to do with cosmology? By 1908, Peirce apparently no longer held (if he ever did) that Firstness came first, so to speak; God *created* Firstness (and Secondness), but God Himself *is* Thirdness. Furthermore, what exactly did God create when He created Firstness? Peirce once again supplied the answer in CP 6.490: In that state of absolute nility, in or out of time, that is, before or after the evolution of time, there must then have been a tohu-bohu of which nothing whatever affirmative or negative was true universally. There must have been, therefore, a little of everything conceivable. In other words, there was an infinite range of vague possibilities, consistent with Peirce's evolving mathematical definition of a *continuum*, which is a paradigmatic manifestation of Thirdness. He continued: There must have been here and there a little undifferentiated tendency to take super-habits. But such a state must tend to *increase itself*. For a tendency to act in any way, combined with a tendency to take habits, must increase the tendency to act in that way. Now substitute in this general statement for "tendency to act in any way" a tendency to take habits, and we see that that tendency would grow. It would also become differentiated in various ways. The tendency to take habits is another paradigmatic manifestation of Thirdness, and Peirce had suggested thirty years earlier in "A Guess at the Riddle" (CP 1.414, EP 1.279) that "habits of persistency" were precisely what enabled substances to achieve permanent existence; i.e., Secondness. I probably could (and eventually might) say more about CP 6.490, but these initial observations are reminiscent of and consistent with the famous "blackboard" passage from the last Cambridge Conferences lecture of 1898, "The Logic of Continuity" (CP 6.203-209, RLT 261-263). Peirce offered a clean blackboard as "a sort of Diagram of the original vague potentiality," differing from it by having only two dimensions rather than "some indefinite multitude of dimensions." A chalk line drawn on the blackboard--by the hand of God, perhaps?--represents a brute discontinuity, but it is not really a line itself; it is a surface, one whose continuity is entirely derived from and dependent on that of the underlying blackboard. The only true line is the limit between the white and black areas, "the reaction between two continuous surfaces into which it is separated." Peirce acknowledged that all three categories--whiteness or blackness (Firstness), the boundary between them (Secondness), and the continuity of each (Thirdness)--are necessary for the reality of the chalk line. However, he suggested that the continuity of the blackboard (Thirdness) is primordial in the sense that its reality somehow precedes and sustains that of *anything* drawn upon it. A chalk line that persists, rather than being erased, represents the establishment of a habit--which is also entirely derived from and dependent on the continuity of the underlying blackboard: This habit is a generalizing tendency, and as such a generalization, and as such a general, and as such a continuum or continuity. It must have its origin in the original continuity which is inherent in potentiality. Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general. As additional lines are drawn and persist, they join together under other habits to constitute a "reacting system." Eventually, "out of one of these Platonic worlds is differentiated the particular actual universe of existence in which we happen to be." So Peirce reaffirmed here that the law of mind, which is the law of habit, is primordial in the sense that all physical laws are derived from it (cf. CP 6.24-25). Furthermore, according to Peirce, God as "pure mind," as well as the universal tendency to take habits and the "Platonic worlds" of Ideas and ideal possibilities, were and are *real* prior to--and hence apart from--the world of Matter and physical facts that now *exists*. His position was an "extreme scholastic realism," indeed! 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 .
