John S, Gary F, Jon S, Edwina, Gary R, List,
In addition to the suggestions John Sowa has offered for profitably reading textual fragments that pertain to difficult philosophical questions--such as questions about the common sense belief in God--I would add the following. As we all know, Peirce often is directly engaging with the history of philosophy. Over the course of his writings, he is explicitly responding to the arguments of classical philosophers (e.g., Plato and Aristotle), medieval philosophers (e.g., Scotus and Ockham) and modern philosophers (e.g., Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley) on a wide range of questions that bear on the legitimacy of the common sense notion of God. As such, we should try to reconstruct the development of Peirce's ideas on these big questions as being responsive to the various arguments other philosophers have made. Here is one such historical strand I'd like to trace out a bit further. If one were to treat aesthetic, ethical and logical ideals that Peirce tries to give expression to in the normative sciences as being (1) perfect and (2) real, what would be the status of something--call it what you will--that is perfect in all three respects? As perfect, it would appear that such a unitary "thing" would not be immanent in the universe as it is found at any time in its history. This holds both for (a) the three universes of the experience of cognitive beings like us and (b) for the real universe as it is independent of the way we might represent it at some point in our inquiries. The three universes of experience would not measure up because each is less than perfect. So, too, with the real universe as exists at any time. In its actuality, it is clearly less than perfect. What is more, if the real laws of nature are all evolving, none are perfect. As perfect and ideal, that "thing" would appear to be timeless, in some sense. Kant follows the Latin tradition (e.g., of Aquinas) in calling the notion of what is perfect as the most encompassing Ideal an ens necessarium. There are different ways of trying to explicate the idea that God is not immanent in the space and time of our universe. One such way is to suggest that God is somewhere else--perhaps in a different, more heavenly, universe. Another way of coming at the question, Kant suggests, is to note how the laws of logic apply to different sorts of things. Normally, we say that, for an individual subject, any given predicate or its opposite must apply. Kant points out that, for some things, there is a third possibility. There are some things (e.g., those that are taken to be infinite) to which the logical laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle do not apply in the normal way. Instead of saying of a thing that it is X or that it is not X, we say that the predicate X does not apply. Might such a point hold for predicates that involve temporal and spatial location? That which is infinite and perfect may be the kind of thing to which the representation of time and space as a whole does not apply. Like Kant, Peirce affirms the need for a Platonic notion of one thing that is perfect and paradigmatic in its character as the full realization of truth, beauty and goodness. Like Plato, Kant and Peirce treat our Idea of such a perfect "thing" as a hypothesis. Kant argues that a hypothesis concerning what is most ideal is essential for schematizing the regulative principles that guide our lives. In effect, we need an iconic representation as a hypotyposis of the regulative Ideas. The hypotyposis is required as a standard for correctly applying regulative principles to individual cases. If Peirce goes further than Kant in treating the ideal of what is most perfect as metaphysically real, then how can it be causally efficacious? Drawing on Aristotle's classification of different types of causes, it would seem to function as a final and formal cause and not as an efficient or material cause. In making such a metaphysical claim, I would expect Peirce's arguments for the legitimacy of such a hypothesis to be responsive to the objections Kant develops in the Dialectic of the first Critique. In that section, Kant gives objections to the traditional versions of the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God. Out of curiosity, is the "semiotic" argument for the reality of God immune to these Kantian objections? When reading the NA, my interpretative strategy is to anticipate various sorts of consonance between Peirce's points and the positive arguments Kant offers for treating God as a practical postulate in the second Critique and as an aesthetic and teleological hypothesis in the third Critique. On this sort of reading, Peirce is starting with a close and sustained examination at the observational basis for the common sense ideas that appear to be wrapped up in traditional conceptions of God. These common-sense ideas include the notions that qualities of feeling are not discrete. Rather they are continuously spread. Furthermore, qualities of feelings appear to have some kind of inherent affinity--one for another. s what is true for the qualities of our experience also true for possible qualities generally? He is showing that this sort of observational basis is so essentially a part of ordinary experience that it is (1) common to all people and (2) leads very naturally to a simple--if vague--hypothesis. In these parts of the NA, Peirce is responding to philosophers like Ockham who have a particularly logical notion of what makes some hypothetical explanations simpler than others. In doing so, he is highlighting those parts aspects of the historical conceptions of God (or plural gods) that appear to be simple--in a natural sort of way. If one were to trace the historical antecedents of the NA out in greater detail, I would be interested to see how close our conception of this "thing", as an ens necessarium, is to the notion of an Ideal that is perfectly beautiful, good and true. What role might such an Ideal play in explaining certain features of the (1) three universes of experience and (2) various features of the real universe as it is actually evolving over time? Does it have any explanatory role, or does it lack such explanatory power? --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354
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