BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}JAS, list:
1] You seemed unaware of the Five Ways - I'm sure you have looked it
up now - and you seemed quite hostile to my reference to it. The other
arguments [eg, Moral/Kant, Lewis] and other arguments [design]...are,
as I see them, part of the attempts to rationalize the unknowable.
That is, I see them as logical arguments to affirm a belief [in this
case, in god] - but they are simply that: logical arguments. They
rest on faith not evidence. And I don't see the assertion that 'faith
is a gift that comes from God' - as anything other than yet another
'belief'.
2] My putting a capital in the word 'Mind' rather than 'mind' is
nothing other than my typing - and has no intrinsic deep meaning.
3] No- I don't like being told that UNLESS I read someone's paper,
THEN, I am wasting your and my and every one else's time. I have
very different views from you on many aspects of Peirce but I don't
insist that you read my papers.
Edwina
On Mon 14/05/18 4:39 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt [email protected]
sent:
Edwina, List:
Over the weekend I finished reading an excellent book, How to Think
by Alan Jacobs. One of the best pieces of advice that it contains
is, "Take five minutes." As I can confirm from my own experience,
when we read or hear something with which we disagree, we tend to
switch from Listening Mode to Refutation Mode; we are so busy already
formulating a rebuttal that we are no longer paying attention to what
the person is actually saying. Instead, we should let things simmer
for a little while before responding; research clearly indicates that
this results in better understanding of the actual arguments that the
other person has put forward.
With that in mind, I have a friendly request--this is one of two
posts that I am sending more or less simultaneously; please read both
of them carefully, wait at least five minutes, and then read both of
them again before beginning to reply to either of them.
1. What gave you the idea that I do not know about the Five Ways?
I stated that they were "identified by Aquinas and grounded in a
number of very specific (and controversial) metaphysical
presuppositions," and later described them as " deductive arguments
for a fairly definite conception of God."
2. I am not trivializing the Five Ways, I am simply pointing out
that-- as specifically formulated by Aquinas --they do not exhaust
the philosophical arguments for the existence (or Reality) of God,
even though they are indeed quite venerable.
3. Besides (obviously) the Neglected Argument, examples that come
to mind are the Moral Argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and
the Argument from Design. The last two are similar, but not
identical, to two of the Five Ways; they are not grounded in exactly
the same metaphysical presuppositions that Aquinas utilized.
4. As a Lutheran, "I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or
strength, believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the
Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His
gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith" (Small Catechism).
In other words, no one ultimately believes in the true God because of
a philosophical argument; faith is a gift that only comes from God
Himself.
CSP: If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly to
hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her from a
villain, would you stop to reason out the metaphysical question of
whether it were possible for one mind to cause material waves of
sound and for another mind to perceive them? If you did, the problem
might probably occupy the remainder of your days. In the same way, if
a man undergoes any religious experience and hears the call of his
Saviour, for him to halt till he has adjusted a philosophical
difficulty would seem to be an analogous sort of thing, whether you
call it stupid or whether you call it disgusting. If on the other
hand, a man has had no religious experience, then any religion not an
affectation is as yet impossible for him; and the only worthy course
is to wait quietly till such experience comes. No amount of
speculation can take the place of experience. (CP 1.655; 1898)
CSP: One who sits down with the purpose of becoming convinced of
the truth of religion is plainly not inquiring in scientific
singleness of heart, and must always suspect himself of reasoning
unfairly. So he can never attain the entirety even of a physicist's
belief in electrons, although this is avowedly but provisional. But
let religious meditation be allowed to grow up spontaneously out of
Pure Play without any breach of continuity, and the Muser will retain
the perfect candour proper to Musement. (CP 6.458; 1908)
5. If we cannot agree on a definition of "God" that is at least
roughly coextensive with "theism," then we will just continue going
around and around. In this context, I am following Peirce's
"vernacular" usage as quoted below.
6a. I did not reject Peirce's equation of "God" with "Mind," I
rejected your equation of "Mind" with "mind." Peirce was quite
deliberate about capitalizing terms when he intended a very specific
meaning. 6b. Being, Supremacy, and infinity are all found in CP
6.494 as quoted below; and Peirce listed other traditional
attributes--"Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Infinite Benignity"--in R
843, as also quoted below. 6c. Again, what led you to think that I
have not already read it? I even quoted it in my recently
published paper. I suggest that you re-read Peirce's later outlines
of the emergence of the world of matter, such as CP 6.202-208 (1898)
and CP 6.490 (1908).
Better yet, if you sincerely wish to understand why I interpret
his writings on these subjects as I do, please read my entire paper (
https://tidsskrift.dk/signs/article/view/103187/152244). If you have
no such desire, then we are really just wasting each other's (and
everyone else's) time.
Regards,
Jon S.
On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 12:47 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
JAS, list
1. Your attempt to trivialize the famous Five Ways [and they are
famous; I'm stunned that you, a theist, don't know about them] won't
work. Neither of my statements is 'patently false' -which is merely
your assertion, and is not an Argument. Kindly provide evidence for
your claim that it is 'not shared by all Catholics' and others etc.
[And frankly, that is not only an assertion without empirical
evidence but is also a false argument- a negative] Alsd - I refer to
scholars who have studied these Arguments...The fact that the Five
Ways is both a famous argument that IS accepted and is also Argued
Against - takes nothing away from its validity as a Logical Argument.
I would certainly hope that an atheist would research Arguments for
the Reality of God - and not come to their own conclusion merely via
any of the false Fixations of Belief. I am equally stunned that you
would think that I came to my conclusion without research!!!
Therefore your mocking my research as 'ironic' denigrates the
scientific method of arriving at conclusions. I remain stunned that
you are unaware of these Arguments.
2. Moreover, these Arguments are hardly confined to one section of
the Christian theology - and your attempt to trivialize them by doing
so ..won't work.
3. You, by the way, haven't provided the other Arguments [i.e., from
your Lutheran background?] which differ from the Five.
4. An incomprehensible object is not the same as 'his nature' - and
it remains incomprehensible - outside the realm of Reason or Argument
and meant to be accepted only ..by faith. That's not good enough for
an Argument, relying as it does on a belief grounded in Authority, A
priori or Tenacity.
5. Please provide empirical evidence for your assertion [not an
Argument] that Peirce's vague outline of God is 'widely shared by
most [perhaps all] theists}. Why would you state such an
Appeal-to-Populam claim - and not provide the statistical evidence?
6. I totally disagree with your rejection of Peirce's equation of
the term 'God' with Mind. I think he says it quite clearly.
Furthermore your claim that God means""Supreme Being" does not do
adequate justice to the other traditional attributes of God, besides
Being and Supremacy, including infinity.".. These other traditional
attributes are not mentioned by Peirce. Therefore - what is their
source? Being, Supremacy and infinity are not found in Peirce.
I suggest you read Peirce's outline of the emergence of the world of
matter - which has no evidence of any 'god-like' activity. [1.412] but
does indeed outline the emergence of Mind.
Edwina
On Mon 14/05/18 1:15 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt
[email protected] [2] sent:
Edwina, List:
1. Who said anything about "fame" or "extensive analysis," and what
relevance do they have anyway? You straightforwardly asserted that
the Five Ways "form the analytic backbone of theistic Arguments for
the Reality of God," and that they constitute "The Argument," but
both of these statements are patently false. I trust that the irony
is not lost on anyone of an atheist dictating to two theists (Gary R.
and myself) which kinds of arguments we must employ to defend our
belief in God--conveniently, arguments that you have already
dismissed as "inadequate." Not all theists are Christians, not all
Christians are Roman Catholics--Gary is an Episcopalian, and I am a
Lutheran--and not all Roman Catholics are Thomists; so imposing the
Five Ways, as identified by Aquinas and grounded in a number of very
specific (and controversial) metaphysical presuppositions, as the
only available intellectual defense of theism is completely absurd.
2a. I ask once more--what should we call Peirce's very explicitly
expressed view that God is Real, if not theistic? He certainly did
not "reject[] the traditional definition as incomprehensible"; on the
contrary, as carefully stated in the third quote that I provided
below, God is "that Being who possesses those Attributes which I take
to be most essential to the traditional notion"; and it was not this
definition that he called "incomprehensible," but "His nature."
Similarly ...
CSP: The hypothesis of God is a peculiar one, in that it supposes
an infinitely incomprehensible object, although every hypothesis, as
such, supposes its object to be truly conceived in the hypothesis.
This leaves the hypothesis but one way of understanding itself;
namely, as vague yet as true so far as it is definite, and as
continually tending to define itself more and more, and without
limit. (CP 6.466, EP 2:439; 1908)
CSP: "God" is a vernacular word and, like all such words, but more
than almost any, is vague. No words are so well understood as
vernacular words, in one way; yet they are invariably vague; and of
many of them it is true that, let the logician do his best to
substitute precise equivalents in their places, still the vernacular
words alone, for all their vagueness, answer the principal purposes.
This is emphatically the case with the very vague word "God," which
is not made less vague by saying that it imports "infinity," etc.,
since those attributes are at least as vague. (CP 6.494; c. 1906)
The Five Ways are deductive arguments for a fairly definite
conception of God, which (again) is not shared by all Roman
Catholics, let alone all Christians, much less all theists. By
contrast, Peirce offered a retroductive argument for a fairly vague
conception of God, which is widely shared by most (perhaps all)
theists.
2b. Peirce did not associate God as Mind--capitalized, not mind as
the primordial "stuff" of the universe, such that "matter is effete
mind" (CP 6.25; 1891)--with all three Categories; on the contrary, as
carefully stated in the third quote that I provided below, he
described God as "so little like a singular Existent" (2ns) "and so
opposed in His Nature to an ideal possibility" (1ns) "that we may
loosely say that He is a Spirit, or Mind" (3ns). Where did Peirce
ever write about God in terms of matter, let alone "Matter-as-Self
Organized"? He indeed objected to calling God "a Supreme Being," but
for precisely the opposite reason that you are claiming.
CSP: Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , justly
points out that the phrase "Supreme Being" is not an equivalent of
"God," since it neither implies infinity nor any of the other
attributes of God, excepting only Being and Supremacy. (CP 6.494; c.
1906)
"Supreme Being" does not do adequate justice to the other
traditional attributes of God, besides Being and Supremacy, including
infinity.
Regards,
Jon S.
On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 7:33 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
JAS, list
1] Peirce's 'Neglected Argument' is hardly comparable to the fame
and extensive analysis done on the Five Ways - with many books and
articles about these as theistic arguments. Therefore, the Five Ways
is not 'one approach', a comment by which you trivialize its hundreds
of years within both religious and philosophical research and
literature.
2] Peirce's outline of God is not, in my view, a theistic one nor is
it an argument, but is instead, purely semantic. He rejects the
traditional definition as incomprehensible - and we all know that he
said that it is useless to 'know' the incomprehensible. Instead -
Peirce defines 'god' as, instead, Mind. And his analysis of Mind is
always as a functioning of all three Categorical Modes: Firstness,
Secondness and Thirdness. That's it. And that definition is as far
removed from any theistic concept of a Supreme Power as it could be,
since it moves Power, so to speak, within all of Matter-as-Self
Organized.
Edwina
On Sat 12/05/18 10:02 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt [email protected]
sent:
Edwina, List:
1. The Five Ways constitute one approach to arguing for the
existence (or Reality) of God, but it is a considerable overstatement
to call them "the analytic backbone of theistic Arguments" or
(especially) "The Argument" as if there were no others--like Peirce's
"Neglected Argument," for example.
2. If Peirce was not a theist, then what other term should we use
instead for someone who very explicitly, on more than one occasion,
in no uncertain terms, affirmed his belief in the Reality of God?
So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of
God, I answer, Yes. (CP 6.496; c. 1906)
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; 1908)
By the proper name, God, I shall refer to that Being who possesses
those Attributes which I take to be most essential to the traditional
notion; that is to say, while His nature is incomprehensible, He
doubtless has Attributes called by proper extension of the terms
Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Infinite Benignity ... 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. For the argument that I am to
consider; and which, by the way, I will designate as 'The Neglected
Argument,' would not be true of any other being than God. But I do
not, by 'God,' mean, with some writers, a being so inscrutable that
nothing at all can be known of Him. I suppose most of our knowledge
of Him must be by similitudes. Thus, He is so much like a mind, and
so little like a singular Existent (meaning by an Existent, or object
that Exists, a thing subject to brute constraints, and reacting with
all other Existents,) and so opposed in His Nature to an ideal
possibility, that we may loosely say that He is a Spirit, or Mind. (R
843; 1908)
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSch midt [3] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [4]
On Sat, May 12, 2018 at 3:31 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Gary, list:
1] The 'Five Ways' or Quinque viae, refers to the very famous
purely logical arguments by the scholastics [ Aquinas Summa
Theologiciae but see also Anselm's Proslogian] for the reality of
God. I know that JAS didn't refer to these arguments but I am very
sure as a theist himself that he would have to know of them; after
all - they form the analytic backbone of theistic Arguments for the
Reality of God. It isn't enough to say: I believe God exists'; that's
not an argument but a Fixation of Belief from ...a priori,
Authority..whatever. There has to be an Argument - and the Five Ways
is The Argument. I consider each one actually illogical and thus
inadequate, but...many accept them...and there have been over the
years, many volumes devoted to both support and rejection of the Five
Ways.
2] I disagree with you that Peirce was a theist. His references to
'Mind', do not, in my reading, outline it or even examine it as the
Mind of God. After all- to do so, would require an analysis of God
himself - and Peirce doesn't do this. His cosmological arguments, his
evolutionary arguments do not outline this 'Reality', this
metaphysical Being. Instead - what he outlines in his analysis of
What is Matter/Life.....are the three basic categories of MIND:
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. He sees them as 'ens
necessarium' in themselves and I see no correlation of these
operations with any specific Mind of God'.
3] As for Judeo-Christian traditions, I consider these societal
rather than religious traditions. All religions, after all, besides
their metaphysical outlines, are methods of forming and continuing a
sense of 'community'. Our species is a social species - and this
sense of belonging to a community is vital for our rational and
psychological health. Anyone who lacks this - is a psychopath.
So- we'll have to disagree on this issue.
Edwina
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[3] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[4] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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