Jon, I think that’s a fair description of Peirce’s views (at that stage of his life anyway). But you’ve given no reason why you or anyone else should share the view that absolute determinacy is the ideal summum bonum, or is better than a less determinate state of things, or that the universe really tends to move in that direction.
The choice of utter determinacy as the highest esthetic value is utterly arbitrary. It would also entail the death of semiosis (along with everything that has any life in it), and since all thought and all knowledge is in signs, it would be the end of knowledge. If that is what you mean by “perfect knowledge,” why would it be esthetically preferable to the “perfect sign” as Peirce describes it <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/mns.htm#onesign> ? If the perfect sign is a “quasi-mind,” then an increasingly determinate universe would be increasingly mindless. Is that really an optimistic outlook? Besides, if the laws of nature are evolving, as Peirce held, why wouldn’t the ideal summum bonum also be evolving? The “cheerful hope” of the pure scientist that her investigations will lead the greater community closer to the whole truth is a psychological characteristic that can’t be reasonably extrapolated to the ultimate purpose of the universe — or even to the esthetic ideal of pragmatism, in my opinion. It’s a concession by Peirce to linear thinking. And I think his reduction to three of the possible sentiments toward the whole of the universe one instance where he “forces divisions to a Procrustean bed of trichotomy” (CP1.568). Love, gary Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg } Now we never can know precisely what we mean by any description whatever. [Peirce, CP 7.119] { <https://gnusystems.ca/wp/> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: Monday, April 24, 2023 9:05 PM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A question for pragmatists Gary F., List: I doubt that Peirce's use of "sentiments" in R 953 in exactly the same as when he says elsewhere that reasoning is subordinate to sentiment in matters of vital importance. On my reading, he is simply anticipating his later recognition of esthetics as the normative science that "considers those things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling" (CP 5.129, EP 2:200, 1903), aligning meliorism with the identification of concrete reasonableness as the summum bonum and its constant growth as the ongoing process of creation. The beginning and the end are ideal limits, not actual events, and the latter state is "better than" the former in the specific sense that it is utterly determinate instead of utterly indeterminate, corresponding to perfect knowledge instead of blank ignorance. CSP: The Meliorist view is that there are in the first place certain real facts, which are as they are quite independently of what you or I or any man many think about them. Secondly, truth, being the agreement of our assertions with those facts, is something definitely one way, and not otherwise. Thirdly, observation and reflection, stimulated by an eager desire to ascertain that truth, gradually lead minds toward it, so that, though ignorance and error always remain in reference to each question, yet they become gradually dispelled. (R 953:7-8[6-7], c. 1899) By contrast, pessimism identifies "eternal nothingness" as the summum bonum, and epicureanism effectively denies that there is any summum bonum at all. My James/Rorty interlocuters seem to fall into the latter camp, embracing "tragic pluralism" as inevitable because they believe that some value conflicts are genuinely unresolvable in principle. Thanks, Jon On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 6:50 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Jon and other folks in this thread, [Sorry about the disappearing text in my previous send of this, I copied some text from PDF and forgot I had to change the color manually.] Doesn’t it seem a bit inconsistent for Peirce to argue about “what our sentiments toward things in general should be,” when he usually argues that “sentiments” are less fallible than our reasoning, precisely because they are products of evolution rather than logic? Personally i have no doubt that the universe is in a continuous state of change, or in Peirce’s terms, “the universe has on the whole a definite tendency toward a state of things” different from any past state of things. (In other words I believe that time is real.) But I see no reason to believe that it has either beginning or end, or that some future state of things will be better than any past state. And that applies not only to the observable universe but to the universe of “human knowledge,” as far as I can see. I’m inclined to think that Peirce’s view on that was just a symptom of that overconfident 19th-century European-American optimism that landed us in the Anthropocene! Love, gary Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg } Open your mouth, always be busy, and life is beyond hope. [Daodejing 52 (Feng/English)] { <https://gnusystems.ca/wp/> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: Friday, April 21, 2023 5:57 PM To: Peirce-L <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A question for pragmatists List: For anyone interested, attached is my complete transcription of R 953. I am now suggesting a date of c. 1899 based on it mentioning "my unpublished Principles of Philosophy," for which Peirce unsuccessfully advertised subscriptions (1894) and later apparently wrote CP 1.176-179 (c. 1896) as a forward, and saying that the first volume "is devoted to the consideration of the question of where we are at this end of the Nineteenth Century." Moreover, the text references Büchner, whom Peirce also invokes in CP 1.192 (c. 1893), and begins to discuss the three grades of clearness that he introduced in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878)--which he updated to serve as chapter 16 of How to Reason: A Critick of Arguments (1894)--and presented again in "The Logic of Relatives" (1897). Presumably, he would have been keen to revisit them once more after William James started popularizing pragmatism (1898). Peirce's definition of epicureanism in this context, contrasted with pessimism and meliorism, is admittedly idiosyncratic. Here is how he summarizes all three with respect to cosmology and knowledge. CSP: These three opinions about the universe, are then 1st, that of the pessimist, that the infinitely distant future comes to that same nothingness that was in the infinitely distant past; 2nd, that of the Epicurean, that the universe has no general character or tendency whatever, and that nothing at all can be alleged of it as a whole; 3rd, that of the Meliorist, that the universe has on the whole a definite tendency toward a state of things in the infinitely distant future different from that in the infinitely distant past. These opinions about the universe, in general, are capable [of] various special applications. Among other things, they can be applied to human knowledge. ... Here, then, are three opinions about science and philosophy. Each has much to support it. The first is that opinion advances by a regular course of development toward a destined goal; but that goal is the very state of complete doubt from which it first set out. The second is that opinion does not advance at all, but only shifts about, appearing for a time to be reaching something but soon passing into disputes. The third is that opinion progresses toward a certain predestinate settlement, which must be called the truth. Each of these views of human knowledge harmonizes with a corresponding view of the constitution of the universe. In light of previous comments in this thread, it also seems noteworthy that Peirce treats Büchner as a stand-in for what today we call scientism, including materialism/physicalism and necessitarianism/determinism--additional characteristics of our intellectual climate that are contrary to synechism/pragmaticism. CSP: When I speak of Büchner and Büchnerism, I do not mean an exact adherence to Dr. Büchner's personal opinions, but I use that name to designate a general type of opinion, namely, the opinion that physics has discovered that the universe consists of molecules moving about under the governance of inflexible law, the law of energy; that that is all there is to it; and that consequently the ideas of God, Freedom of the Soul, and Immortality are silly superstitions. That whole type of opinion I think superficial. ... If the Büchnerite cared to pause to listen to my answer to his question of whether I am not in favor of Büchner and a philosophy based on facts instead of a philosophy based on tradition, he might be somewhat surprised. For I should tell him that, to my mind, his own opinion is based on tradition, in the most unwholesome way possible. He converts science into an infallible Pope. ... The Büchnerites talk of their doctrine as the "teaching of science." But it certainly is not science; it is a philosophical doctrine, the result of a generalization from physics. It seems to me a hasty and overconfident generalization. ... The Büchnerites undertake to make use of the truths of physics to answer the questions which are the furthest removed from physics that any questions possibly can be. In fact, Peirce indicates in the advertisement for his ambitious Principles of Philosophy that its first volume (out of twelve!) was "Nearly ready" and would include "Sketch of a thoroughgoing philosophy of continuity. The great opponent of this philosophy has been in history, and is in logic, infallibilism, whether in its milder ecclesiastical form, or in its more dire scientistic and materialistic apparitions." My working title for a more extensive paper based on my 10-minute presentation is "Thoroughgoing Synechism," so I am curious whether that sketch has survived in a manuscript somewhere. It might be R 946, "An Outline Sketch of the Synechistic Philosophy," which contains discarded drafts for the opening paragraphs of "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (EP 2:1-3, 1893). One of them states, "My own thorough-going synechism is the doctrine that continuity rules the whole domain of experience ..." Thanks, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
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