Jon, list, My previous message, like all of my posts, was formatted in HTML, so I think the formatting must have been lost at your end, Jon. I notice that your latest message also seems to be in plain text. You should check the settings of whatever software you use for email to make sure it properly displays HTML-formatted messages instead of converting them to plain text.
The Peircean distinction I have referred to in this thread is a conceptual one, not merely a verbal one, and Peirce expresses it in various ways. Essentially it is the distinction between (1) what can be conveyed by a sign (i.e. a symbol) and (2) what cannot be conveyed by the sign because the interpreter must already have it in mind in order for the sign to “tell about it.” I’m sure you are familiar with the distinction, as you have mentioned it yourself in previous posts to the list. In my statement of the distinction I used the word “acquaintance” for (2) because that is the term for it most often used by Peirce, and I chose “knowledge” for (1) because your claim is that knowledge of God is conveyed by the Universe as Sign. The fact that Peirce sometimes uses the more technical term “information” for (1), and sometimes used “acquaintance” in reference to a kind of knowledge, has no bearing on the validity of the distinction. You can find most (but not all) of the texts where Peirce makes the distinction by searching for the word “collateral”, but I see no need to copy them all here. JAS: If "God" is indeed "the definable proper name," then might it not also be the exception to the rule that acquaintance with the Object of a Sign requires Collateral Experience/Observation? GF: Quite possibly; and that would explain why “knowledge of God” is indeed exceptional, and not at all like our knowledge of Peirce or any person who has existed. But that would not be what I call positive knowledge, in the usual Peircean sense of “positive,” the sense in which mathematics is not a positive science but logic and semiotics are positive sciences. As I mentioned earlier, I distinguish between knowing and believing, not on the basis of one being more “certain” than the other, but in the sense that knowledge is the goal of the positive sciences which practice inductive hypothesis-testing, while belief is defined pragmatically as a cognitive habit which guides actual conduct. The essential difference between science and religion, as I use those words, is that science aims at theoretical knowledge in the sense I’m using here, while religion aims at guiding the practical conduct of its believers. Looking at them this way, religion and science are not opposed but complementary. Scientists have a core belief that the universe is intelligible, which guides their practice of science; religious believers cannot actually conduct themselves in the real world or live up to their religious ideals without applying some factual knowledge which is not given by revelation. As Einstein put it, religion without science is blind, and science without religion is lame. JAS: I guess we disagree on whether God has left such traces [in the observable Universe]; I see His "fingerprints" all over the Universe, and I also consider certain writings to be revelations from God Himself. Perhaps this is where faith comes into play, another theological rather than philosophical issue. GF: As I explained a few messages back, God being the Creator of the whole Universe means that it’s not honest to claim some aspects of the Universe (and not others) as reflecting the attributes of God. To believe that God is benign is indeed a matter of faith. The religion I subscribe to, which we call “the Bahá'í Faith”, likewise sees all created things as signs of a benign God, and considers certain scriptures to be specially “revealed” by God through individuals singled out to serve that purpose. So I can say that I believe these things, meaning that I accept Bahá'í teachings generally as guiding principles for my own conduct. But I do not claim to know these things — except in a Bahá'í context, where the verb “know” often means “have faith in”. (I have occasionally seen scriptures that use the word “Know” in the imperative, which would be nonsense in a non-religious context, because you can’t order someone (or will yourself) to have factual knowledge.) In every other context, including the Peirce list, I use the words “know” and “knowledge” only in reference to factual and fallible cognition. It is in this sense that I pronounce the Creator to be unknowable. By the way, I can also affirm the unknowability of God in a Bahá'í context, but not in the same sense, because Bahá'í belief is that He is unknowable “in His Essence”, which leaves a loophole for revelation. But I promised not to say anything about theology, and I hope this will suffice to illustrate my rather strict distinction between belief and knowledge — a distinction emphasized more by me than by Peirce. GF: No, I think we can acquire knowledge of nonexistent things such as real generals, if they are embodied or manifested in observable tokens of Types. But as far as I can tell, for both you and Peirce, God the Creator is the name of an individual, an agent or agency, a person with a proper name, and not a general. JAS: On the contrary, Peirce explicitly stated that "whatever exists is individual, since existence (not reality) and individuality are essentially the same thing" (CP 3.613; 1901); and also that "a person is only a particular kind of general idea" (CP 6.270; 1892). Accordingly, if God is a real person Who does not exist, then He is not an individual, but a real general. GF: Here you are equivocating on the use of the term individual. I’m sure you are aware that for Peirce, an “individual” person is not an individual in the strict logical sense. You are also familiar with the difference between common nouns, which are names of generals, and proper nouns or names, which designate individuals such as persons. Since “God” is, as Peirce says, a proper name, God is an individual person — unless, as per your suggestion above, “God” is an exception to the usual grammatical rule. Normally a proper name refers to an Individual, as Peirce affirms in this passage that you yourself quoted: CSP: A proper name, when one meets with it for the first time, is existentially connected with some percept or other equivalent individual knowledge of the individual it names. It is then, and then only, a genuine Index. The next time one meets with it, one regards it as an Icon of that Index. The habitual acquaintance with it having been acquired, it becomes a Symbol whose Interpretant represents it as an Icon of an Index of the Individual named. (CP 2.329; 1903) JAS: What was the "percept or other equivalent individual knowledge" that was "existentially connected" with Peirce's name in that initial encounter? GF: When I first heard the proper name “Peirce”, I already had collateral experience of such names designating individuals who have written books, and of such names being mentioned by other writers in my experience of reading; also the experience of searching for replicas of that name in the reasonable expectation that I could find indices of something he had written, and thus eventually acquire a replica of such a text by means of which I also had collateral experience. Need I go on? or point out that none of this collateral experience applies to the proper name “God”? Having seen images of many of his manuscripts, I can honestly say that I recognize Peirce’s handwriting. I cannot honestly claim to recognize God’s handwriting; nor do I recognize the content of the Bible as written by anyone other than human beings. Authors can bear witness to the feeling of being inspired, I can even say that myself, but I have no experience of other authors being inspired, only of the testimony that they choose to express in that form. Here again is the passage of which I highlighted parts in bold which did not come through to your screen. I hope you can see it this time. [CSP:[ As to reality, one finds it defined in various ways; but if that principle of terminological ethics that was proposed be accepted, the equivocal language will soon disappear. For realis and realitas are not ancient words. They were invented to be terms of philosophy in the thirteenth century, and the meaning they were intended to express is perfectly clear. That is real which has such and such characters, whether anybody thinks it to have those characters or not. At any rate, that is the sense in which the pragmaticist uses the word. Now, just as conduct controlled by ethical reason tends toward fixing certain habits of conduct, the nature of which (as to illustrate the meaning, peaceable habits and not quarrelsome habits) does not depend upon any accidental circumstances, and in that sense may be said to be destined; so, thought, controlled by a rational experimental logic, tends to the fixation of certain opinions, equally destined, the nature of which will be the same in the end, however the perversity of thought of whole generations may cause the postponement of the ultimate fixation. If this be so, as every man of us virtually assumes that it is, in regard to each matter the truth of which he seriously discusses, then, according to the adopted definition of “real,” the state of things which will be believed in that ultimate opinion is real. But, for the most part, such opinions will be general. Consequently, some general objects are real. (Of course, nobody ever thought that all generals were real; but the scholastics used to assume that generals were real when they had hardly any, or quite no, experiential evidence to support their assumption; and their fault lay just there, and not in holding that generals could be real.) One is struck with the inexactitude of thought even of analysts of power, when they touch upon modes of being. One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative to sight, but the fact that this or that is in that relation to vision that we call being red is not itself relative to sight; it is a real fact. ] CP 5.430, EP 2:342-343 ] GF: From the above it is clear what what Peirce calls a “serious discussion” must employ an experimental logic which relies on experiential evidence. Now, the psychophysical Universe as Sign can afford us neither acquaintance with the Creator nor experiential evidence that the Creator is really the subject of any particular predicate, for the simple reason that no such hypothesis is testable by observation. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 22-May-19 00:14 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Trinity, Continuity, and the Cosmotheandric, was, [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity of Semeiosis Revisited Gary F., List: GF: I took this claim of yours to be based on a confusion of acquaintance with knowledge, overlooking Peirce’s frequent distinction between the two and his stipulation that acquaintance can only come from collateral experience, or collateral observation, and cannot be given by signs. Let me quote again the passage with which you began this exchange, since I gather that you are taking it as a basis for positing a sharp distinction between acquaintance and knowledge. CSP: 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; 1910) Two key words are missing here--"knowledge" and "collateral." First, Peirce was contrasting acquaintance with information, rather than knowledge; in fact, I have not yet been able to find any passage where Peirce explicitly distinguished acquaintance and knowledge. Since you called it his "frequent distinction," could you please provide some citations? What are your (or his) definitions of acquaintance and knowledge in this context? Second, Peirce did not explicitly equate acquaintance with what he elsewhere called Collateral Experience/Observation. However, he did distinguish two different kinds of acquaintance--direct and indirect--without explaining what their differences might be. I agree that acquaintance with the Object of a Sign comes from Collateral Experience/Observation, because (as you noted) that is precisely the requirement that Peirce specified elsewhere for identifying the Objects of a Proposition as denoted by the Semes that serve as its subjects. What remains unclear to me is the warrant for thinking that such acquaintance cannot be given by Signs at all, implying that it must always be direct. What do you suppose that Peirce meant by indirect acquaintance, if not acquaintance mediated entirely by previous Signs? How else could he claim that "long study of the works of Aristotle may make him an acquaintance" (CP 6.502; c. 1906)? How else can you and I now be acquainted with Peirce, such that the man himself is the Object of that proper name when we utter or interpret Propositions about him? There is also a specific kind of acquaintance that Peirce explicitly denied to be collateral at all--"acquaintance with the system of signs," because it is "the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign" (CP 8.179, EP 2:494; 1909). If "God" is indeed "the definable proper name," then might it not also be the exception to the rule that acquaintance with the Object of a Sign requires Collateral Experience/Observation? Just a thought. GF: Yes; we are not in the same situation re knowledge of God as we are re knowledge of existent beings (such as Peirce) who have left observable traces of their presence in the Universe. I guess we disagree on whether God has left such traces; I see His "fingerprints" all over the Universe, and I also consider certain writings to be revelations from God Himself. Perhaps this is where faith comes into play, another theological rather than philosophical issue. GF: No, I think we can acquire knowledge of nonexistent things such as real generals, if they are embodied or manifested in observable tokens of Types. But as far as I can tell, for both you and Peirce, God the Creator is the name of an individual, an agent or agency, a person with a proper name, and not a general. On the contrary, Peirce explicitly stated that "whatever exists is individual, since existence (not reality) and individuality are essentially the same thing" (CP 3.613; 1901); and also that "a person is only a particular kind of general idea" (CP 6.270; 1892). Accordingly, if God is a real person Who does not exist, then He is not an individual, but a real general. GF: As Peirce says, we need some index to direct our attention to a subject before we can assign attributes to it and thus have any knowledge of it. Again, what was the index that first directed our attention to a man who lived and died before we were born, Charles Sanders Peirce, when we knew absolutely nothing at all about him? Was it not a Sign, his proper name, at that point completely unfamiliar to us? How did we subsequently acquire the extensive knowledge that we now have of him? Was it not entirely mediated by other Signs? CSP: A proper name, when one meets with it for the first time, is existentially connected with some percept or other equivalent individual knowledge of the individual it names. It is then, and then only, a genuine Index. The next time one meets with it, one regards it as an Icon of that Index. The habitual acquaintance with it having been acquired, it becomes a Symbol whose Interpretant represents it as an Icon of an Index of the Individual named. (CP 2.329; 1903) What was the "percept or other equivalent individual knowledge" that was "existentially connected" with Peirce's name in that initial encounter? It seems that only one such occasion is sufficient to establish Collateral Experience/Observation with the Object of any proper name; and what did Peirce say about God in this respect? CSP: In considering personality, that philosophy [synechism] is forced to accept the doctrine of a personal God; but in considering communication, it cannot but admit that if there is a personal God, we must have a direct perception of that person and indeed be in personal communication with him. Now, if that be the case, the question arises how it is possible that the existence [sic] of this being should ever have been doubted by anybody. The only answer that I can at present make is that facts that stand before our face and eyes and stare us in the face are far from being, in all cases, the ones most easily discerned. That has been remarked from time immemorial. (CP 6.162; 1892) If someone has a "direct perception of" God and "personal communication with" Him, then that would seem to qualify as Collateral Experience/Observation once His proper name is existentially connected with those events; and Peirce also offered his best guess at why, nevertheless, not everyone believes that He is real. GF: Here we reach the point where I think your argument goes astray: your assertion that anything real must be knowable. To explain why I think so, I will quote the entire paragraph which is the context of the phrase you have quoted, highlighting in bold the parts that call your assertion into question. Unfortunately, the bold was missing from what you actually posted, so I will hold off on further comment and ask you first to provide the quote with the formatting that you intended. 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 Tue, May 21, 2019 at 8:28 AM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Jon, I think we’re getting closer to the heart of the matter, which is (and has been) the nature of knowledge. I think Jeff’s most recent post showing the complexity of the object-sign relation also contributes greatly to this discussion, but in this post I’ll just insert some answers to your questions, along with some other comments, trying to further clarify the issue. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: 20-May-19 12:09 JAS: Thank you for further clarifying your objection. Initially it was that God is completely separated from His creation, and thus absent from the Universes of Experience. GF: Yes, that was what you appeared to be claiming with your stipulation that the Object must be external to the Sign which is the Universe. But you amended that by saying that God is not completely separate from the Universe, so then came the next step: JAS: When I disputed this, it was that our acquaintance with God must be entirely mediated by Signs. GF: That was your counter-claim to my claim that acquaintance with an Object is a prerequisite for knowledge of it, which is indeed mediated by signs (i.e. propositions). I took this claim of yours to be based on a confusion of acquaintance with knowledge, overlooking Peirce’s frequent distinction between the two and his stipulation that acquaintance can only come from collateral experience, or collateral observation, and cannot be given by signs. As he put it, “the proper way in logic is to take as the subject whatever there is of which sufficient knowledge cannot be conveyed in the proposition itself, but collateral experience on the part of its interpreter is requisite” (NEM 3:885, 1908). JAS: Since I pointed out that we are in the same situation with respect to anyone who lived or anything that happened before we were born, you noted that those people and events existed, but God did not and does not--as Peirce himself explicitly affirmed, which is why he specifically argued for the Reality of God instead. GF: Yes; we are not in the same situation re knowledge of God as we are re knowledge of existent beings (such as Peirce) who have left observable traces of their presence in the Universe. JAS: Please do not misinterpret this as an accusation of moving the goalposts; I am simply explaining the progression of my own understanding of your position during the course of our exchange so far. Am I correct that the non-existence of God is what you find problematic for our ability to acquire knowledge of Him? GF: No, I think we can acquire knowledge of nonexistent things such as real generals, if they are embodied or manifested in observable tokens of Types. But as far as I can tell, for both you and Peirce, God the Creator is the name of an individual, an agent or agency, a person with a proper name, and not a general. I have said that this Person has not left observable traces of His presence in the Universe, and you haven’t disputed that. As Peirce says, we need some index to direct our attention to a subject before we can assign attributes to it and thus have any knowledge of it. (Certainty is not the issue here, as all positive knowledge is fallible, though quite distinct from belief.) If so, then one possible response from me would be to invoke the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation; however, I will respect your preference not to delve any further into theology at this point. Instead, I will stick to relevant Peircean concepts and texts. GF: Thanks for that, and in return, I’ll spare you an account of how Muslims and Bahá'ís get around the problem of knowing the unknowable. 😊 JAS: In thinking about all of this over the last couple of days, I noticed the same thing that you did about the first sentence of "A Neglected Argument" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434; 1908)--Peirce considered "God" to be "the definable proper name" (emphasis in original), implying that it is the only such case; and he then specified what it signifies, not what it denotes. In other words, the Immediate Interpretant of "God" (so capitalized) is "Ens necessarium, in my [Peirce's] belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience"; and my current understanding of Speculative Grammar is that the Immediate Object of "God" is whatever it possibly could denote in English accordingly. GF: OK. But notice that I am not questioning the reality of God the Creator. I don’t take that to be a universally instinctive belief or hypothesis as Peirce does, but I don’t question his honesty in declaring it to be his belief. What I question is whether that belief has the pragmaticistic meaning that he says it does, despite its object being “infinitely incomprehensible.” What you seem to be questioning is how we can know that "God" actually does denote something as its Dynamic Object— GF: No, I’m willing to assume that that proper name does denote something. What I question is how we can know anything about that Entity defined as Ens necessarium. (Of course a definition does not count as positive knowledge.) i.e., how it can serve as a subject of a Proposition that we are able to evaluate as either true or false, which would require previous Collateral Experience or current Collateral Observation in order to be understood at all. According to Peirce, if God is Real then He has "Properties, i.e. characters sufficing to identify their subject, and possessing these whether they be anywise attributed to it by any single man or group of men, or not" (CP 6.453, EP 2:434; 1908). However, he already expressed dissatisfaction with that particular formulation in his Logic Notebook the month before it appeared in print. CSP: As to the Real, I have decided within the last few days that my definition in The Hibbert Journal was not advisable, since it gives rise to a multitude of perplexing problems of little or no meaning. It is better to say that that which truly possesses an attribute independently of the latter being attributed to the former by any single finite mind or single group of such minds is, in so far, Real, thus avoiding those insoluble & nonsensical problems. (R 339:476[322r]; 1908 Sep 9) It is thus possessing characters independently of them being attributed to it, rather than the sufficiency of those characters to identify it, that makes something Real. In other words, whether or not we are able to identify God by His attributes has no bearing on His Reality; only that He possesses those attributes regardless of what anyone thinks about them. GF: Right! And how do we learn by experience whether a subject really has an attribute independently of anyone attributing that character to that subject? We formulate a hypothesis and then test it in some way that would refute it if it were not true (or less conclusively, confirm it if it is true). This testing requires some actual observation which is honest enough not to fudge the data or prejudge the question. There’s the rub: in order to know that the Creator is really benign (for instance), apart from your (or anyone’s) belief that He is, you would have to test that hypothesis by observing the unobservable. That is one of the paradoxes involved in the claim that the Creator is even ideally knowable, which would have to be the case if knowledge of the Creator is the very purpose of Creation. As I have noted previously, this is a verbal definition of Reality, at the second grade of clarity; the pragmaticistic definition, at the third grade of clarity, is "the state of things which [would] be believed in that ultimate opinion" (CP 5.430, EP 2:342-343; 1905) after infinite inquiry by an infinite community. GF: Sorry, I don’t see that the differences between “grades of clarity” have any bearing on the very possibility of knowledge. Here we reach the point where I think your argument goes astray: your assertion that anything real must be knowable. To explain why I think so, I will quote the entire paragraph which is the context of the phrase you have quoted, highlighting in bold the parts that call your assertion into question. (The italics are Peirce’s.) [CSP:[ As to reality, one finds it defined in various ways; but if that principle of terminological ethics that was proposed be accepted, the equivocal language will soon disappear. For realis and realitas are not ancient words. They were invented to be terms of philosophy in the thirteenth century, and the meaning they were intended to express is perfectly clear. That is real which has such and such characters, whether anybody thinks it to have those characters or not. At any rate, that is the sense in which the pragmaticist uses the word. Now, just as conduct controlled by ethical reason tends toward fixing certain habits of conduct, the nature of which (as to illustrate the meaning, peaceable habits and not quarrelsome habits) does not depend upon any accidental circumstances, and in that sense may be said to be destined; so, thought, controlled by a rational experimental logic, tends to the fixation of certain opinions, equally destined, the nature of which will be the same in the end, however the perversity of thought of whole generations may cause the postponement of the ultimate fixation. If this be so, as every man of us virtually assumes that it is, in regard to each matter the truth of which he seriously discusses, then, according to the adopted definition of “real,” the state of things which will be believed in that ultimate opinion is real. But, for the most part, such opinions will be general. Consequently, some general objects are real. (Of course, nobody ever thought that all generals were real; but the scholastics used to assume that generals were real when they had hardly any, or quite no, experiential evidence to support their assumption; and their fault lay just there, and not in holding that generals could be real.) One is struck with the inexactitude of thought even of analysts of power, when they touch upon modes of being. One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative to sight, but the fact that this or that is in that relation to vision that we call being red is not itself relative to sight; it is a real fact. ] CP 5.430, EP 2:342-343 ] GF: From the above it is clear what what Peirce calls a “serious discussion” must employ an experimental logic which relies on experiential evidence. Now, the psychophysical Universe as Sign can afford us neither acquaintance with the Creator nor experiential evidence that the Creator is really the subject of any particular predicate, for the simple reason that no such hypothesis is testable by observation. For this reason I think what you say next is wrong: Consequently, if anything is Real--even it does not now, never has, and never will exist--then it must be knowable; and presumably you will agree that we do have knowledge of some non-existent Realities. Again, how is that possible? And why would God be any different? Are you perhaps suggesting that entia rationis are the only non-existent Realities that are knowable? GF: That’s not what I had in mind, but it may be so — if such things as processes are entia rationis. But that’s another question, quite apart from the knowability of the Creator. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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