> On Nov 2, 2016, at 2:07 PM, Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Potter writes: > > I would like to add here on my account that when it coms to understanding the > conditions of possibility of special disclosure or revelation in holy persons > or historical events, disclosure of God in the natural order is first > required as a real possibility since without it there would be no way of > telling what is allegedly disclosed in these persons and events is truly God. > Hence I have argued [in "Revelation and 'Natural' Knowledge of God"] and > would argue that some form of "natural knowledge" of God must be possible if > there is to be any "super-natural revelation." It seems to me self-evident > that in this matter dogmatism is unsatisfactory and an appeal to privileged > mystical arbitrary" (13). > > In his response, Smith writes "What Potter is driving at here is not wholly > clear to me" (90). It is "wholly clear" to me either. Any thoughts? >
Just a guess that might be completely wrong. I think he puts quotes around “supernatural” because he doesn’t subscribe to Hume’s conception of the supernatural. (Neither does Peirce as I think I mentioned in a quote by him Monday) That is if there is intervention it’s natural in the Peircean sense. But if it is then it is an empirically analyzable phenomena. Dogmatism or private mystical ‘senses’ are unsatisfactory because they simply don’t engage with this empirical manifestation. Peirce seems to hint at this in the various places he’s skeptical of scriptural accounts of Jesus or miracles. The reasons go back to his objections to most belief in “The Fixation of Belief.” To simply trust the account without reason is dogmatism and authoritarianism which are simply not trustworthy. So his answer is that we don’t know. What he *doesn’t* say though is that it is unknowable. That is assuming the events happened in a fashion similar to what is described then under the pragmatic maxim we have real differences that can give us knowledge. I’ve not read Potter here (although I will now check it out) but I bet that’s the point he’s getting at. I actually bring this up in epistemological discussions quite often. Rather than talking religion with all its baggage though I’ll bring up UFOs which few believe in. Now I think most UFO accounts are either mistaken, lies or delusion. But if I were walking alone in the woods and came upon a space vehicle with clearly non-human intelligent beings at that point I think I have experience to justify a belief in them. It may not be public in the sense that scientific knowledge in but I’d have a very hard time doubting. Especially if I did the usual inquiry to ensure I wasn’t hallucinating, dreaming, or being misled in some fashion. > As for the Gospel of John, Peirce refers to John as "the ontological > gospeler" whom he says made "the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have > been made out of nothing, to be cherishing love" (6.287). How this might > relate to the famous first chapter of that Gospel (which John Sowa also > pointed to) in consideration of our question, I'm uncertain. I think many of his views of love come out of John’s gospel. (Or at least it sure seems that way to me) He also seems to ascribe fairly common scholastic views here so I suspect that’s affecting him a great deal too. But of course elsewhere he ties the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) to his categories. Again he’s not far off tradition here. Augustine famously formulates the Trinity in terms of platonic conceptions of relation. At time he also talks about how the “divine trinity of object, interpretant, and ground… In many respects this trinity agrees with the Christian trinity; indeed I am not aware that there are any points of disagreement…if our former guess that reference to an interpretant is Paternity be right, this would also be the Son of God. The ground being that, partaking of which is requisite to any communication with Symbol, corresponds in its function to the Holy Spirit.” (MS 359) Now while talking about the Son it doesn’t really tell us much about Jesus but it does I think get at how God is love and how that manifests itself. I think that effectively God as sign in Peirce’s conception of love and man as sign differ only in terms of breadth. (Or at least it sure seems that way to me) Love is thirdness for Peirce or evolution. Secondness or Son is a bit trickier but I think the above clarifies that. This idea of ‘reference to an interpretant’ relative to Jesus may clarify somewhat how to see him. (Again I think the Buddha in many traditions occupies a similar place) The problem in this (and I should hasten to add I’m far from a theologian of traditional Christianity) is the issue of Jesus as mediator, thirdness as mediator and spirit as mediator. But this is a problem in John itself - especially where the spirit is portrayed as a mediator in John 16:5-15 among other places.
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