> On Nov 3, 2016, at 7:04 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > I, for one, don't see in Peirce that there is a 'pre-Big Bang universe' of > 'ur-continuity' nor that there is a 'creator' involved in this > 'ur-continuity'. Nor that there is a 'different kind of pre-Big Bang > Thirdness. > > But I am concerned about the focus of this thread. It seems to me that we are > moving into a discussion based around our own firmly-held personal beliefs > about god, the world, creation etc, and are using Peirce, searching for and > 'interpreting' his writings, to support our own personal beliefs.
I tend to think we’re getting to the limits of Peirce here although I think there is considerable textual evidence in Peirce for an ur-continuity. Again Kelly Parker has pretty compelling arguments here for Peirce’s beliefs. Peirce speaks of a creator in numerous places but clearly he means something different from the first cause of Duns Scotus or Aristotle due to the place of chance in his ontology. As we’ve discussed over the past weeks his creator is more akin to the God in process theology or perhaps a process reading of Spinoza. > On Nov 3, 2016, at 8:39 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > My response to his NA is not to ignore it but to acknowledge that I cannot > interpret it within his full body of work - which includes his earlier > writings. Note - I am not ignoring it; I cannot correlate it except as > metaphoric, with his earlier writings. I think accepting a break between the early works and later works is fine when we can’t reconcile them. However I think the NA is quite reconcilable with most of his work from what era of say 1896 forward. At least I don’t see the contradictions. We may not like what he says, but I confess I don’t quite understand the treating it as metaphoric. That seems a bit of a dodge. As I’ve often said we probably should keep as separate issues the historic ones (what Peirce believed and when) from the more philosophical ones (whether particular views of Peirce were correct or extending arguments beyond where Peirce took them). I’ll confess I find the more platonic aspects of Peirce a little harder to accept and the arguments certainly weaker than his main doctrines. But I have to concede the arguments for Peirce having held them are quite strong and hard for me to disbelieve. > On Nov 3, 2016, at 9:18 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Are you not familiar with "the principle of charity"? It is not a > "sanctimonious claim" that I invented; it is a legitimate, well-established, > and widely endorsed method of interpretation. Per Wikipedia, "In philosophy > and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's > statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its > best, strongest possible interpretation." As Donald Davidson put it, "We > make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a > way that optimises agreement." So we assume that "A Neglected Argument," for > example, is fully consistent with everything else that Peirce wrote--unless > and until the evidence compels us to conclude otherwise. I think we have to be careful here. As sympathetic as I am to Davidson’s razor a charitable reading doesn’t guarantee a correct reading. Often charitable readings transform a philosopher’s arguments into something other than they intended in order to make it function better. I tend to think that while we must read with a hermeneutics of charity we must also read with a hermeneutic of suspicion. Typically multiple readings are possible and we should be careful eliminating them without justification.
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