Jon, you’ve clarified your theological position somewhat (though I don’t think you’ve really owned up to the paradoxicality of it as much as Peirce does with his); but I’m disappointed that you haven’t addressed the semiotic issue that I raised along with the two paragraphs I quoted from Peirce. You wrote
JAS: In fact, all of our Collateral Experience with people who lived and died before we were born, including Peirce himself, is of this nature--we become acquainted with someone through indirect experience, mediated by Signs. But this does nothing to explain how the Universe as Sign manages to get around the semiotic principle that a Sign cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of its Object, but can only represent something with which we are already acquainted and convey further information about it. [[ I do not mean by “collateral observation” acquaintance with the system of signs. What is so gathered is not COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign. But by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes. ] CP 8.179 ] Knowledge of an Object, no matter how incomplete and analogical, is itself a sign requiring acquaintance with the Object prior to any semiotic mediation. If the whole Universe is a Sign, and only a Sign, where can this prior acquaintance come from? “Spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason” are just more signs. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 16-May-19 22:46 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Trinity, Continuity, and the Cosmotheandric, was, [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity of Semeiosis Revisited Gary F., List: GF: If the Universe is a Sign whose Object is God, then we must ask how that Sign can convey knowledge of its Object. This is problematic because the complete absence of God from the Universe of experience would preclude any acquaintance with, or collateral experience of, that Object ... it’s not clear to me how a Creator completely separated from His Creation manages to bridge the gap between Himself as Object and the Universe as Sign, in such a way that it determines another quasi-mind to any Interpretant. As I just clarified in my response to Gary R., I am not advocating "the complete absence of God from the Universe of experience," or claiming that He is "completely separated from His Creation." After all, Peirce clearly held that God is still active in the Universe, still creating it, still giving it new Signs and fresh energy. Perhaps that is one reason why he considered the Humble Argument to be grounded in "spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason" (CP 6.475, EP 2:443; 1908), and thus "open to any honest man" such that it had "made more worshippers of God than any other" (CP 6.486, EP 2:446; 1908). Moreover, Peirce endorsed the well-established principle (at least in Christian theology) that all of our knowledge of God is both analogical and incomplete. CSP: ... that analogue of a mind--for it is impossible to say that any human attribute is literally applicable--is what he [the pragmaticist] means by "God." (CP 6.502; c. 1906) CSP: 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. (R 843:26-27; 1908) 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 but 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) As I noted in the previous thread, the first quoted passage compared "the physico-psychical universe" as a Sign conveying knowledge of God to a portrait of a man, Boswell's book about Dr. Johnson, and Aristotle's works. In fact, all of our Collateral Experience with people who lived and died before we were born, including Peirce himself, is of this nature--we become acquainted with someone through indirect experience, mediated by Signs. CSP: A sign, on the other hand, just in so far as it fulfills the function of a sign, and none other, perfectly conforms to the definition of a medium of communication. It is determined by the object, but in no other respect than goes to enable it to act upon the interpreting quasi-mind; and the more perfectly it fulfills its function as a sign, the less effect it has upon that quasi-mind other than that of determining it as if the object itself had acted upon it. (EP 2:391; 1906) CSP: That which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a Form ... in respect to the Form communicated, the Sign produces upon the Interpretant an effect similar to that which the Object itself would under favorable circumstances. (EP 2:544n22; 1906) The effect of a Sign is its Interpretant, and I have suggested that knowledge of God is the Final Interpretant of the Universe--"that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached" (CP 8.184, EP 2:496; 1909 Feb 26), or "the effect the Sign would produce upon any mind upon which the circumstances should permit it to work out its full effect" (SS 110; 1909 Mar 14). This is a would-be, an ideal, a regulative hope; the actual effects of the Universe on us are Dynamic Interpretants, and due to the fallibility of our Interpretative Habits, they may or may not conform to (or even approach) the Final Interpretant. Nevertheless, the latter is "the absolute Truth," "The entelechy of the Universe of being ... in its aspect as a sign," "the ultimate interpretant of every sign" (EP 2:304; 1904)--and therefore, I suggest, the purpose of the Universe. CSP: Thus the hypothesis will lead to our thinking of features of each Universe as purposed; and this will stand or fall with the hypothesis. Yet a purpose essentially involves growth, and so cannot be attributed to God. Still it will, according to the hypothesis, be less false to speak so than to represent God as purposeless. (CP 6.466, EP 2:439-440; 1908) Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 5:19 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary R, list, Cosmotheandric?? Anyway, what I have to say in this post is very much about the continuity of semeiosis, so let’s not drop that from the subject line just yet. I think Jon has done a good job of representing Peirce’s views on the Universe as Sign, and the reality of God, but I think he’s, well, transcended anything Peirce said by placing before us a dichotomous choice of the Creator as either immanent or transcendent with respect to the Universe (or the three Universes). After all, Peirce did not say that God was “transcendent,” and although he ruled out “immanence” in the drafts of NA, he did not mention it one way or the other in the published article. I think your trinitarian(?) option is as logically viable, and perhaps more pragmatically and morally viable, than Jon’s position as I understand it. But for now I’d like to stick with semiotics rather than delving into ethics or pragmatism just yet. If the Universe is a Sign whose Object is God, then we must ask how that Sign can convey knowledge of its Object. This is problematic because the complete absence of God from the Universe of experience would preclude any acquaintance with, or collateral experience of, that Object. I think Peirce makes the problem clear enough in this passage from 1909: [[ The Sign can only represent the Object and tell about it. It cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of that Object; for that is what is meant in this volume by the Object of a Sign; namely, that with which it presupposes an acquaintance in order to convey some further information concerning it. No doubt there will be readers who will say they cannot comprehend this. They think a Sign need not relate to anything otherwise known, and can make neither head nor tail of the statement that every Sign must relate to such an Object. But if there be anything that conveys information and yet has absolutely no relation nor reference to anything with which the person to whom it conveys the information has, when he comprehends that information, the slightest acquaintance, direct or indirect,— and a very strange sort of information that would be,— the vehicle of that sort of information is not, in this volume, called a Sign. ] CP 2.231, R 637] If we suppose that semiosis is a continuous process of determination from Object to Sign to Interpretant, then it’s not clear to me how a Creator completely separated from His Creation manages to bridge the gap between Himself as Object and the Universe as Sign, in such a way that it determines another quasi-mind to any Interpretant. I know this is a reformulation of an old theological question, but I’ve never heard an answer to it that I found at all persuasive. In the paragraph before the R 637 quote above, Peirce uses the term “emanation” instead of “determination” in a way that seems to emphasize the continuity of the process: [[ If a Sign is other than its Object, there must exist, either in thought or in expression, some explanation or argument or other context, showing how, upon what system or for what reason the Sign represents the Object or set of Objects that it does. Now the Sign and the Explanation together make up another Sign, and since the explanation will be a Sign, it will probably require an additional explanation, which taken together with the already enlarged Sign will make up a still larger Sign; and proceeding in the same way, we shall, or should, ultimately reach a Sign of itself, containing its own explanation and those of all its significant parts; and according to this explanation each such part has some other part as its Object. According to this every Sign has, actually or virtually, what we may call a Precept of explanation according to which it is to be understood as a sort of emanation, so to speak, of its Object. If the Sign be an Icon, a scholastic might say that the “species” of the Object emanating from it found its matter in the Icon. If the Sign be an Index, we may think of it as a fragment torn away from the Object, the two in their Existence being one whole or a part of such whole. If the Sign is a Symbol, we may think of it as embodying the “ratio,” or reason, of the Object that has emanated from it. These, of course, are mere figures of speech; but that does not render them useless. ]]
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