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}Gary R, Gene, Mary, list
I don't think that the term 'patriarchy' merits the 'we are now
superior to this idea' sneers and condescension one sometimes
associates with the term. I think one should look at the
system-of-patriarchy as a rational means of organizing a population
of a particular size and a particular economic mode.
That is - hunting and gathering economies are SMALL - around 30
people in a band. Their economic mode is just that: hunting 'what is
there' and gathering 'what is there'. These people do not own the
land or its goods. When they've 'eaten their way out of a terrain',
they must migrate. The metaphysical or religious ideology is animism
- with multiple spirits and multiple gods. And, neither patriarch or
matriarchy - because, again, this economic mode is not based on land
or goods ownership or production. And it can only support SMALL
populations.
Horticulture and pastoral nomadism - emerges in biomes where the
land enables SOME agriculture and SOME small scale ownership of
animals. The populations remain small but are larger than the H&G -
possibly in the hundreds and thousands. Patriarchy is found among
pastoral nomadism. Why? Because the economy is based around the
work-of-the-men.
And that's the key. Any society must socially and politically
privilege whichever gender or group provides the economic
infrastructure of the group. So- a pastoral nomadic economy, which
requires the men to herd and control the animals - will be
patriarchal. It will also be patrilineal - for the, eg, cattle, must
be passed on to the next generation 'as a whole', not split up into
one cow here and one cow there. So, the eldest son will inherit the
whole herd.
Religious? Multiple gods. Polytheism.
The next larger societal mode will be settled agriculture - an
economic mode that requires inherited and stable land bases,
ownership of domesticated animals, and a lot of hard physical
labour. So again, quite naturally, it will be patriarchal and
patrilineal. Nothing mean or subversive about it - but a logical,
rational social decision. And - with this economic mode, you get the
capacity to support large populations in the hundreds of thousands.
AND - you then get monotheism...one supreme god.
Edwina
On Thu 30/05/19 6:50 PM , Gary Richmond [email protected]
sent:
Gene, Mary, List,
Gene quoted me: Gary R: “one might argue that God (Abba) is
transcendent while Christ (the Word) is immanent, and as Christians
say, we come to know God the Father through God the Son.”
GR: I imagine that there are at least some Christians--especially
those who think along the Trinitarian lines I've outlined--who might
say and believe something like this. In addition, in many progressive
communities and churches such as mine, Riverside Church in Manhattan,
one is not at all unlikely to hear words like "Mother-Father God"
coming from the pulpit (btw, the Senior Minister is a woman, Amy
Butler), and to hear prayers where 'Creator' substitutes for
'Father', etc. The patriarchy is seen to be the problematic 'thing'
which it is.
GH: Peirce’s first wife, Harriet Melusina Fay, saw through
father-son patriarchalism, and grasped how it abstracted the mother,
the third part of a family trinity, to ethereal spirit. And “ Mary
as the Mother of God” and “the Holy Family” remain alienating
veils, as Ludwig Feuerbach pointed out, masking through abstraction
the earthly family.
GR: Fay was perhaps more than anything else a feminist in her
public life. I don't know whether she "saw through" anything, while a
growing sense of patriarchy was dawning on especially English and
American women in her day.
More to the substantive point, there is a tendency in all religions
that I know of to employ symbols pointing to the noumenal, to the
Holy, to God. But it's important not to confuse the finger pointing
to the moon with that which it only indicates. And while
fundamentalism involves just that confusion and conflation, not all
religious people are so confused. This is especially important, I
think, as one because more critically aware of such problematics as
our patriarchal history. Meanwhile, folk like me have not found it
necessary to throw the baby (God) out with the bathwater (what needs
to be radically rethought and reconstructed in religion).
There's not much in history (both East and West with few exceptions)
which is not to some considerable extent patriarchal, for example,
nearly all institutions, including most religious ones as well as
religion more generally speaking (with such exceptions as
certain--but not all--primal indigenous religions). Some of us who
are, for example, members of one of the monotheistic religions are
today dealing with this history as best we can. Religious symbolism
is--as all symbolism is and must be-- interpreted, and that
interpretation can grow, deepen; or, contrariwise and even
perversely, it can rigidify, for example, to aim at excluding those
who don't conform to its dogmas.
GH: And apart from obvious patriarchalism, there is also the obvious
anthropocentrism. The human family as religious model, though perhaps
a good starter for relational thinking for the anthropocentric humans
predominant today, is simply too confined, too human-all-too-human, to
provide a basis for a sustainable religion. As you've suggested,
anthropocentrism--and perhaps especially the relations within the
human family--quasi-necessarily plays an important role in the
creation and development of religions East and West. Peirce suggested
that it was natural and necessary that we conceive of God as at least
in some ways like a person, although even that conception is, of
course, itself symbolic--as so much of religion is. Yet, as Peirce
argued, "symbols grow," and, as Gary Fuhrman put it in a recent blog
post titled "Do Symbols Grow?"
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/2019/05/do-symbols-grow/ [1] "as new meanings
for a symbol develop, old ones fall away and die." And we can
establish our social 'would-bes' in the direction of the worst
meanings falling away and dying while the best are nurtured and grow.
GH: The idea that “Man is made in God’s Image” is a conceit of
human exceptionalism, a product of the historical development of the
anthropocentric mentality. If you grant a creator, all living beings
are made in the creator’s image, except for that human subset of
anthropocentric humans, who are made from their own idolatry.
Nietzsche asked, “Which is it: is man one of God’s blunders, or
is God one of man’s blunders?” ( Twilight of the Idols, 1889).
Sadly, both may be true.
Feuerbach, who not only influenced the problematic Nietzsche, who,
in my opinion, one ought to have outgrown by the time one leaves ones
intellectual adolescence when nihilist intellectual brilliance had
been so seductive. Yes, Feuerbach influenced not only Nietzsche but
also that arch-antiSemite. Wagner (read his thoroughly disgusting
essay "The Jew in Music" if you have any doubt of that), Hitler's
favorite composer. And Nietzsche appears to have been the Nazis'
favorite philosopher. Übermensch indeed!
So, we have lost our innocence if we ever had it. Were those
'hunter-gatherers' you so admire, Gene, really so pure of heart?
Whether the answer is yes or no, we will most certainly never be
hunter-gatherers again. All we can hope to do is to try to correct
some of the errors which led to our blood-stained history. Oh, sure,
one can point to the Inquisition and the bloody crusades, but Mao,
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc., etc. tortured and murdered
millions--and not in the name of God. And the misuse of religion by
politicians, for example, is patent, perhaps most especially in the
USA.
In the Christian church which I attend, Riverside Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_Church [2]we interpret the
Gospel as strongly suggesting that we ought act together towards
achieving social justice in our communities and beyond. Riverside is
an inter-faith, inter-racial, LGBTQ welcoming place where one might
hear a sermon by a Rabbi one Sunday, an Imam another, a gay or
transgender Christian minister another, etc. Here are some of our
social justice ministries and initiatives:
*Maranatha ministry: fostering greater understanding of the LGBTQ
community. I am on a committee which awards three scholarships to
LGBTQ college students actively working within their educational
institutions to this end.*Prison Ministry: supporting incarcerated
men and women to obtain justice and services within the New York
State prison system. *Coming Home: empowering those men and women who
have been imprisoned and need support and opportunities to reenter
their communities.*Beloved Earth: helping the community to become
good stewards of the Earth (we plant trees and do much
more).*Sojourners: works with immigrants in detention centers
And there are other social-justice initiatives including a
nationwide anti-gun violence program.
As for the Holy Spirit, as a Person of the Trinity, She more than
anything else represents a personification of the Love between the
other two Persons of the Trinity involving the idea of the
possibility of our living this love in our human relations as we come
more and more to consecrate our lives to truly valuing the lives
around us, and the Earth which is surely our Mother. The patriarchal
grip can be broken in religion, but not by disparaging it out of
hand. And, further, it is possible to have, as it seems to me that
Peirce did, a conception of science which is neither naive nor at
odds with science.
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia
College of the City University of New York
[3]
Virus-free. www.avg.com
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 5:15 PM Eugene Halton wrote:
Gary R: “one might argue that God (Abba) is transcendent while
Christ (the Word) is immanent, and as Christians say, we come to know
God the Father through God the Son.”
Peirce’s first wife, Harriet Melusina Fay, saw
through father-son patriarchalism, and grasped how it abstracted the
mother, the third part of a family trinity, to ethereal spirit. And
“Mary as the Mother of God” and “the Holy Family” remain
alienating veils, as Ludwig Feuerbach pointed out, masking through
abstraction the earthly family.
And apart from obvious patriarchalism, there is also the obvious
anthropocentrism. The human family as religious model, though perhaps
a good starter for relational thinking for the anthropocentric humans
predominant today, is simply too confined, too human-all-too-human,
to provide a basis for a sustainable religion.
The idea that “Man is made in God’s Image” is a conceit of
human exceptionalism, a product of the historical development of the
anthropocentric mentality. If you grant a creator, all living beings
are made in the creator’s image, except for that human subset of
anthropocentric humans, who are made from their own idolatry.
Nietzsche asked, “Which is it: is man one of God’s blunders, or
is God one of man’s blunders?” (Twilight of the Idols, 1889).
Sadly, both may be true.
Gene Halton
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 3:55 PM Gary Richmond wrote:
Jon, List,
In an earlier message in this thread I suggested that in order to
avoid confusion, when speaking of trinity without explicit religious
underpinnings that we type the 't' lowercase, but that we capitalize
it when referring to the Trinity of theology. In my message below,
Trinity is almost always capitalized since it means to relate to
Peirce's religious metaphysics in conjunction with his cosmological
views, not entirely separate as I see it. In any case, those who are
adverse to theology might consider skipping reading this post.
I'm going to be traveling abroad with perhaps limited Internet
access beginning this weekend through the 12th of June, but before I
left, I did want to ask a question that came to mind again regarding
Peirce's religious metaphysics (his cosmological theology, if I may
so phrase it). I hinted at it earlier, but now would like to deepen
the question.
It seems to me that, on the one hand, Peirce suggested, and you have
argued in your Signs paper, Jon (as suggested by the Blackboard
metaphor in the last of the 1898 lectures) that 'before' this
Universe came into being, 'before' there was anything Existent (so
'before' Time, 'before' the so-called Big Bang), that God, from all
the Platonic possibilities, that is, from all imaginable and
unimaginable essential Platonic forms which might possibly be
involved in the creation of some Universe (the Blackboard metaphor,
if I finally have it right), that on a kind of subset of that
Blackboard of ur-continuity--so upon a kind of Whiteboard--He scribed
those potential qualities and characters which would factor in the
creation of this Universe. (Btw, as I understand Peirce, this is not
the only possible universe the Scriber might create, and Peirce hints
at a kind of multiverse theory, one which seems to me quite different
from most modern versions of such theories.)
However, you also quoted Peirce to the effect that God is creating
this Universe continuously, that the world was not created on some
particularly busy day several thousands of years ago, as Genesis
(and, mutatis mutandis, the Whiteboard metaphor) would have it, but
is happening now and will be happening until the World's end.
It seems to me that in consideration of the ur-Continuity of the
Blackboard from which God selected those Platonic characters
('Platonic' is Peirce's word in this context) which would be
inscribed on 'our' Whiteboard, that that Person is, if I understand
you correctly, the semeiotic Object of this Universe, the Creator of
the vast evolving Symbol which is this Cosmos, our Universe.
But, in consideration of the continuous creation occurring now, it
seems to me that if God the Father is not immanent in this Universe
then that continuous creation must be the ongoing work of He who is
God with the Father but who is not the Father, that is, Christ. And
this is one of the reasons that I introduced this thread on trinity
(there are, of course, others).
[Note: I have already pointed to some thinkers having a trinitarian
view of the cosmos which is not specifically Christian or even, for
that matter, necessarily religious (although, personally, I don't see
how a trinitarian view of the cosmos wouldn't lead to a Trinitarian
and, so, religious one, while the religion need not be Christianity
according to some advocates of trinitarian thinking).]
For now this problematic of both an ur-creation leading to the
putative 'Big Bang' and an ongoing continuous creation is resolved in
my mind in imagining that while the First Person of the Trinity (God
the Father) is not immanent in the Universe, is not Himself actively
and continuously creating it, that the Second Person is (whom some,
notably Matthew Fox and Richard Rohr, have referred to as the Cosmic
Christ), and that this is the consequence of the communication
between the First and Second Persons via the Third, viz., the Holy
Spirit. I understand this to be expression of the (evolutionary) Love
of all three Persons of the Trinity for God's creation and for
humankind, Man having been made in His image.
It seems to me that Peirce analyses this trichotomically (i.e.,
tri-categorially) and semiotically. However, I'm now suggesting that
his pure categorial analysis speaks to the ur-creation (where there
are 'as yet' no signs as such) while the semeiotic analysis concerns
itself specifically with the on-going creation. In this regard, it
also comes to mind, perhaps not completely irrelevantly, that in
Peirce's Classification of Sciences that Phenomenology (yielding the
three Universal Categories) precedes Logic as Semeiotic, and that
Pure Mathematics precedes them both.
Now you've already noted that this way of thinking--that is,
imagining God, as the Second Person of the Trinity, that is Christ,
immanent in and continuing God, as the First Person, the Father's
creation, and in communion with Him through the Holy Spirit--is
something you really haven't (or, really, even want to) entertain
given your conservative Christian views. But I do not see how God can
be both completely 'apart' from His Creation and yet also
'continuously creating' it. So, again, for me seeing God as
Three-in-One and distinguishing the 'roles' (so to speak) of the
three Persons provides something of an answer to the question I've
posed.
I was introduced to the notion of the Cosmic Christ decades ago
while reading Meister Eckhart's writings and sermons which led me to
Fox's work, especially, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. I
'rediscovered' the concept and had it reinforced in the past few
years through Rohr's ongoing work. I hope it's clear that I see it as
an uniquely powerful idea, especially within the context of Peirce
cosmological musings. Peirce, as I understand him, was not a
conservative Christian. It seems to me, then, that his positing Three
Universal Categories and Three Universes of Experience might have made
the idea of God the Creator of this Universe offering to it His Son,
the Cosmic Christ at work today, plausible to him. It also helps
reconcile, at least for me, his proto-cosmic thinking in the 1898
Cambridge House lectures with the several semeiotic analyses you've
been considering and from which you've been extensively quoting, and
helps answer the question of how God can be both apart from His
creation and yet continually creating it.
Of course, Peirce was generally opposed to theology (although not to
religious metaphysics, the distinction not yet clear to me); and,
indeed, religious experience doesn't require theology.
As I noted in an early post in this thread, despite what I just
wrote as a Christian, I do not myself see the trinity idea as limited
to Christian theology and, in fact, imagine that it might prove
valuable in helping bridge the divide between religion and science,
Peirce's desideratum. I hope to take up that more general view of
trinity in future posts.
For now I'd be interested in what thoughts you might have on this
view of the Trinity.
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia
College of the City University of New York
On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 1:36 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <
[email protected] [6]> wrote:
Gary F., List:
Your previous message came through to me as plain text, rather than
HTML; and my reply went out as HTML, rather than plain text; so I
guess that we will just have to chalk up those formatting issues to
cyber-gremlins. :-)
GF: 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.”
Thank you for clarifying this. Rather than knowledge vs.
acquaintance, I associate it with (1) the Interpretant that a Sign
signifies and (2) the Object that a Sign denotes. In a Proposition,
these are represented by (1) the continuous predicate, expressing the
relation among the subjects, which is all that the Proposition itself
conveys; and (2) the subjects themselves, which require previous
Collateral Experience or current Collateral Observation in order to
be understood by an interpreter. What remains unclear to me is why
you seem to think that such Collateral Experience/Observation cannot
be entirely mediated by other Signs. If even a Percept is a Seme
(Sign) that Retroductively produces a Perceptual Judgment, which is a
Proposition (Sign), how can we gain acquaintance with anything in a
way that is not entirely mediated by Signs?
GF: ... 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.
I do not agree with this restriction of knowledge, nor its sharp
differentiation from belief; after all, its standard modern
philosophical definition is justified true belief. For Peirce, a
true belief is one that would be maintained in the Ultimate Opinion,
as a result of infinite inquiry by an infinite community; and a
justified belief is one that is affirmed because it is the conclusion
of a valid Argument--whether Deductive (certain), Inductive
(probable), or Retroductive (plausible)--whose premisses one already
believes. Put another way, a belief is justified as long as one has
no good reason for genuinely doubting it. From this standpoint,
knowledge consists of deliberately adopted Propositions whose
corresponding habits of conduct would never be confounded by any
future experience.
GF: 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 ...
I assume that this is not because you do not believe those
teachings to be true, but because you do not believe that you are
adequately justified in believing them, since you apparently insist
on "inductive hypothesis-testing" for that. As you seem to
acknowledge, Peirce did not impose such a limitation; again, for him,
it was sufficient that the Reality of God (for example) is the
conclusion of a valid Retroductive Argument.
GF: I’m sure you are aware that for Peirce, an “individual”
person is not an individual in the strict logical sense.
Indeed, every "individual" person is a real general; so even if God
is an "individual" person, He is still a real general. Moreover, we
can have no knowledge of any "individual in the strict logical
sense," because that would require it to be completely determinate ;
even less so for God, since (ex hypothesi) He is "infinitely
incomprehensible" (CP 6.466, EP 2:439; 1908). In fact, this
limitation serves as a basis for Peirce's "extreme scholastic
realism"--all Objects of knowledge are general, and some Objects of
knowledge are real; therefore, some generals are real.
CSP: The absolute individual can not only not be realized in sense
or thought, but cannot exist, properly speaking. For whatever lasts
for any time, however short, is capable of logical division, because
in that time it will undergo some change in its relations. But what
does not exist for any time, however short, does not exist at all.
All, therefore, that we perceive or think, or that exists, is
general. So far there is truth in the doctrine of scholastic realism.
But all that exists is infinitely determinate, and the infinitely
determinate is the absolutely individual. This seems paradoxical, but
the contradiction is easily resolved. That which exists is the object
of a true conception. This conception may be made more determinate
than any assignable conception; and therefore it is never so
determinate that it is capable of no further determination. (CP
3.93n; 1870)
That which exists would be infinitely determinate at any
hypothetical instant in time, but it is really undergoing continuous
change in its relations, such that every true conception of it--i.e.,
every Sign for which it serves as the Dynamic Object, including all
our knowledge of it--is always capable of further determination; even
more so for God, since (ex hypothesi) He is real but does not exist.
GF: 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.
Yes, they are grammatically different--but are they logically
different? Both are represented in EGs by labeled Spots, and
therefore correspond to general concepts; while indefinite
individuals are represented by continuous Lines, each of which has an
inexhaustible supply of potential branches to accommodate further
determination. "Every Dicisign, as the system of Existential Graphs
fully recognizes, is a further determination of an already known sign
of the same object" (CP 2.320; 1903).
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.
Okay, but what was the nature of that previous Collateral
Experience? Again, was it somehow not entirely mediated by other
Signs? Consider a more remote example--Socrates apparently did not
write anything himself, so everything that we know about him and his
philosophy comes from the testimony of others. How can we
nevertheless have acquaintance (in your technical sense) with
Socrates? Again, why would God be any different?
GF: 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.
Even if we set aside the theological doctrine of special revelation,
I (and many others) do "claim to recognize God's handwriting" all over
"the physico-psychical universe." I am disappointed that you did not
specifically address my comments (and Peirce's) about direct
perception of God and personal communication with Him as candidates
for the kind of Collateral Experience/Observation that would
straightforwardly enable Him to be an Object of Propositions, and
therefore an Object of knowledge. Here are a few other relevant
passages.
CSP: We have a direct knowledge of real objects in every
experiential reaction, whether of Perception or of Exertion (the one
theoretical, the other practical). These are directly hic et nunc.
But we extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with
which we are not in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of
qualities in feeling, peripheral and visceral. But we extend this
category to numberless characters of which we have no immediate
consciousness. (EP 2:304; 1904)
Direct perception results in direct knowledge, and we can even
"extend the category" to include "real objects with which we are not
in direct reaction" and "characters of which we have no immediate
consciousness."
CSP: There is in the dictionary a word, solipsism, meaning the
belief that the believer is the only existing person. Were anybody to
adopt such a belief, it might be difficult to argue him out of it. But
when a person finds himself in the society of others, he is just as
sure of their existence as of his own, though he may entertain a
metaphysical theory that they are all hypostatically the same ego. In
like manner, when a man has that experience with which religion sets
out, he has as good reason--putting aside metaphysical subtilties--to
believe in the living personality of God as he has to believe in his
own. Indeed, belief is a word inappropriate to such direct
perception. (CP 6.436; 1893)
If our social encounters with other people warrant our believing in
their existence--even warrant our being quite sure of it--then direct
perception of God warrants believing in His Reality. In fact,
according to the last sentence, we need to substitute a different
word for belief—knowledge, based on the previous excerpt? Or
acquaintance, perhaps?
CSP: [We] can know nothing except what we directly experience. So
all that we can anyway know relates to experience. All the creations
of our mind are but patchworks from experience. So that all our ideas
are but ideas of real or transposed experiences. A word can mean
nothing except the idea it calls up. So that we cannot even talk
about anything but a knowable object. The unknowable about which
Hamilton and the agnostics talk can be nothing but an Unknowable
Knowable. The absolutely unknowable is a non-existent existence. The
Unknowable is a nominalistic heresy ... Where would such an idea, say
as that of God, come from, if not from direct experience? Would you
make it a result of some kind of reasoning, good or bad? Why,
reasoning can supply the mind with nothing in the world except an
estimate of the value of a statistical ratio, that is, how often
certain kinds of things are found in certain combinations in the
ordinary course of experience ... No: as to God, open your eyes--and
your heart, which is also a perceptive organ--and you see him. (CP
6.492-493; c. 1896)
Here Peirce required direct experience for all knowledge, perhaps
foreshadowing his famous statement, "The elements of every concept
enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their
exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its
passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized
by reason" (CP 5.212, EP 2:241; 1903). He also denied that there is
anything "absolutely unknowable," which seems to me to be another way
of saying that whatever is real is knowable. He then suggested the
mere idea of God as something that we could only obtain from such
experience, since (inductive) reasoning can only "estimate the value
of a statistical ratio." Finally, similar to what I quoted last
time, he asserted that anyone is capable of directly perceiving God
upon opening one's eyes and heart. Apparently you disagree with him
(and me) about all of this, so we may just have to leave it at that.
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.
Thanks for re-posting the quote from Peirce with your bold added.
Again, I do not think that he was as strict as you seem to be about
what counts as "experimental logic," "experiential evidence," and
"testable by observation." After all, he explicitly considered his
(Retroductive) Neglected Argument for the Reality of God to be "the
First Stage of a scientific inquiry, resulting in a hypothesis of the
very highest Plausibility, whose ultimate test must lie in its value
in the self-controlled growth of man's conduct of life" (CP 6.480, EP
2:446; 1908).
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [7] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [8]
On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 9:20 AM wrote:
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.
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