Jon, Gary R, Jon, you wrote, “I am hoping that Gary F. will explain why he finds it problematic that our acquaintance with God is entirely mediated by Signs, even though that is just as true of our acquaintance with Peirce or just about anything else.”
I will try to keep this concise, because it’s really nothing but an attempt to explain what “collateral experience” means in this context. The evidence for Peirce’s having lived in Lowell and Milford, published a number of papers in various journals, having written the hundreds of manuscript pages you and I have transcribed, etc., puts the fact of his existence (1839-1914) beyond any reasonable doubt; and this puts his reality beyond any reasonable doubt. The psychophysical universe which, by hypothesis, was and is being created by God, contains no evidence of God’s existence. “Since God, in His essential character of Ens necessarium, is a disembodied spirit,” any claim of acquaintance with Him must rest on a very different basis from our acquaintance with Peirce (or my acquaintance with you, for that matter). Moreover, any knowledge that any mind can have of God must consist of predicates attributed to the real Subject we call “God” — which name, says Peirce, is different from all other proper names because it is definable. Every other proper name is an index of an entity who, at some time in some universe of discourse, has existed in some embodied form, and the prerequisite for knowledge of that subject is collateral experience of it. A definable term, on the other hand, is necessarily a symbol (CP 4.544) which may have little or no indexical value or grounding in collateral experience. After defining his terms, Peirce begins his NA by saying “If God Really be, and be benign, then, in view of the generally conceded truth that religion, were it but proved, would be a good outweighing all others, we should naturally expect …” Peirce does not assert that God is benign, but he does make the value of his argument conditional on God’s benevolence. Now, what reason do we have for attributing benevolence to the Creator of the psychophysical Universe? Any predicate we attribute to any agency is generalized from our experience of that quality being operative in the observable universe. If God created it all, why should we cherry-pick some qualities of Creation and attribute them to God while ignoring other qualities? What evidence is there that the Creator is more benevolent than malevolent, or indifferent? If there is no evidence, no means of testing a hypothesis inductively, there is no knowledge, no matter how fallible or provisional we take it to be. Based on my own observations of the observable, I think it most likely that God is an ens rationis whose reality consists of our willingness to live up the the ideal characteristics which we attribute to Him. As Peirce put it, the Argument for His reality “should present its conclusion, not as a proposition of metaphysical theology, but in a form directly applicable to the conduct of life, and full of nutrition for man's highest growth.” God is a Real Ideal to Whom a pragmatic monotheist attributes all good. But this attribution runs into logical problems as soon as it tries to elevate itself as a metaphysical theology. If the Creator is benevolent, what accounts for our collateral experience of malevolence and rampant suffering of the innocent in His Creation? Well, one explanation is to say that God is good by definition, and we simply don’t really understand His transcendent and ultimate goodness. Almighty God can do no wrong. The ethical principle behind this belief is essentially “Might makes Right,” which I don’t consider to be a principle “full of nutrition for man's highest growth.” I hope that will suffice, and is sufficiently focused on the semiotic/logical/cognitive issues, because I’d rather not go any further into theology than I have here. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 18-May-19 18:14 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Trinity, Continuity, and the Cosmotheandric, was, [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity of Semeiosis Revisited Gary R., List: Just a few brief clarifications ... GR: I would say that there are those ... who see this Cosmic Christ as active in the Kosmos today and, indeed, always and forever, from the beginning to the end of time--and so, as some commentators have argued, even before the man, Jesus, appeared in the world. It seems to me that at least aspects of this idea find a place in certain schools of Christian theology as well. Yes, I did not mean to imply that Christ had no role in the Universe prior to the Incarnation. On the contrary, as the New Testament and traditional creeds repeatedly affirm, He is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and all three have participated in creating and sustaining the Universe from the beginning. GR: It is in the second person of the Trinity, Christ, that "we live and move and have out being" in the trinitarians view. The Apostle Paul quoted that line from Greek poetry, in context referring to "The God who made the world and everything in it." Again, I do not believe that we can limit this to only one Person. GR: Again, we're getting into traditional theology when we say that the accounts of the God come from the "many trusted accounts of those who knew God personally, who had direct Collateral Experience of Him." Understood; I am hoping that Gary F. will explain why he finds it problematic that our acquaintance with God is entirely mediated by Signs, even though that is just as true of our acquaintance with Peirce or just about anything else. GR: All such genuine relations, while three in one, yet differentiate between the characters of their 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns. Yes, but differentiation does not entail subordination. GR: I would like to suggest that ... [when] speaking of the Trinity in the Christian theological sense that we use the article, 'the', and capitalize 'Trinity'. But in consideration of the sense of the word which means to extend its meaning beyond Christianity ... that we omit the article and not capitalize 'trinity'. Does that make sense? Yes, I will try to keep this in mind going forward--and also try to refrain from further theological nitpicking accordingly. :-) Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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