Aw: [PEIRCE-L] A Scientific Religion, was, Semiosic Synechism: A Peircean Argumentation

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 13:01:29 -0700

Gary, List,
 
Great text, Gary! (in my opinion). Exactly my view. Analysis and synthesis seem to be opponents, but in this case analysis leads to synthesis: The distinction between panentheism and theism is analysed, and shown to be a fallacy, or at least you show, that there is no clear distinction. A distinction that is not clear is not a distinction at all. So this analysis leads to the synthesis of panentheism and theism, or at least the kind of theism that is the same or compatible with panentheism. And it shows, that there rather is a distinction between that kind of theism and other kinds of theism, dogmatic, or whatever we might call them.
 
Best regards, Helmut
 
 
14. September 2024 um 01:13 Uhr
 "Gary Richmond" <[email protected]>
wrote:
 
Jon, Gary F, Jeff, List,
 
[Still in Belgium, I was able to find an adapter so I could charge my computer so that, hopefully, this message, unlike the last addressed to Ben et al. will not contain as many unforced errors  (I recently was watching the US Tennis Open, so I'm still in that scoring mode).]
 
JAS: quoting Peirce to the effect that while his contemporaries could readily see Nature making deductions that "I have not succeeded in persuading my contemporaries to believe that Nature also makes inductions and retroductions" (NEM 4:344, 1898).
 
If Nature is capable of acting not only deductively, but also inductively and, especially, retroductively (and thus posit testable hypotheses -- testable by nature itself -- then it would appear that that is all that is necessary for evolution to occur including the evolution of human intelligence. And, I would add, the intelligence to conceive of God in a way that satisfies the scientific and aesthetic mindsets.
 
JAS: if panentheism is true, then our existing universe is an organic part of God such that God is affected by everything that happens in it. 
 
There are religious views -- even Christian ones  --  that maintain just that position: that God is affected by everything that happens in the world. There is even Biblical support for this view. For example, consider Matthew 6:25-26
 
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 
 
I was myself raised in a non-orthodox Christian tradition that sees God as caring for us, suffering with us, etc., and thus not wholly independent of us. And this is, as well, an aspect of the Cosmic Christic view involving the Trinity with Christ being that personal aspect of God which is involved in the world. 
 
My sense has always been, and from my first reading of Peirce's article "Evolutionary Love," that his theism was far from the classic one, very far from the credal orthodox view. But was he a panentheist? Well, there is, as Jon has pointed out, direct testimony to his being a theist and not a panentheist. 
 
But then there is the argument, essentially scientific, I'd say, in "Evolutionary Love," which, in my view, strongly suggests that such Love requires the reality of something at least like a person (in my thinking, at least until recently, someone like the Cosmic Christ. Logic is one thing; love is quite another. Of course this is mere conjecture. 
 
But putting 'love' aside for a moment, if Nature makes not only deductions and inductions, but also abductions (hypotheses), then isn't it acting at least like a person? Perhaps like a scientist? Christ Scientist? (Although I personally don't think that in Mary Baker Eddy's sense.)
 
But of late Christianity has come to me to seem too narrow and too problematic a religion to express this kind of deep intelligence, growth, care and love generally. On The other hand, Peirce was opposed to strong atheistic claims which he found to be as dogmatic as dogmatic religious views.Thus he saw some form of religious belief as reasonable, given the richness of human experience, including in areas like ethics and logic. In a word, he was cautious of atheistic views that rejected the possibility of a spiritual dimension to existence. 
 
One might ask: would Peirce's religious views have evolved over time? We can't, of course, know. What we can assume, as I noted a short while back, is that he was critical of atheism, especially when it took a rigid, materialistic form; also, that he saw belief in God as having pragmatic value. In my view, the kind of  atheism that sees the universe as a kind of chance accident, an attitude of mind-less "nothing-but-ism" has had and is now having detrimental ethical and ecological consequences. (It doesn't seem that anyone in this discussion is arguing in the vein of the meaninglessness of our existence.)
 
But if atheism is untenable (which Peirce thought, and I agree), while the forms of religion now in existence seem to many philosophically minded individuals inadequate to the challenges of our time, what would a, shall we say, "scientific" religion look like? (Btw, Dewey's attempt at articulating that completely fails in my view.)
 
Best,
 
Gary R
 
 
 
 
On Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 6:17 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:
Gary F., List:
 
I agree that Peirce's focus in the paragraphs that we are discussing is on the composition of concepts as helpfully diagrammed by Existential Graphs. Of course, only a proposition can be represented by an EG, no matter how large and complex; an argument can only be represented by a series of EGs being transformed in accordance with the permissions corresponding to the necessary inference from premiss to conclusion. However, for Peirce, the entire universe as an argument is not strictly deductive--"I have not succeeded in persuading my contemporaries to believe that Nature also makes inductions and retroductions" (NEM 4:344, 1898).
 
I disagree that classical theism and panentheism are properly characterized as "varieties of theism," except in the trivial sense that both affirm the reality of God; and I strongly disagree that the differences between them are merely "verbal ... without logical or metaphysical substance." If (classical) theism is true, then God transcends our existing universe; but if panentheism is true, then our existing universe is somehow contained within God. If (classical) theism is true, then God's attributes include simplicity and impassability, such that God has no parts and is unaffected by our existing universe; but if panentheism is true, then our existing universe is an organic part of God such that God is affected by everything that happens in it. I trust that the logical and metaphysical incompatibility of these basic tenets is obvious without scribing the corresponding EGs and deriving "not both (classical) theism and panentheism" from them. 
 
Regards,
 
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
 
On Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 7:13 AM <[email protected]> wrote:

Jon, list,

It’s true that what Peirce characterizes as "Indefinite as to its Object" is the consequent of a conditional proposition, not the conclusion of an argument. But the context of that sentence is an exposition of what Peirce’s study of Existential Graphs tells him about the “Composition of Concepts.” In his words, “It thus appears that the difference between the Term, the Proposition, and the Argument, is by no means a difference of complexity, and does not so much consist in structure as in the services they are severally intended to perform.”

What I am suggesting is that the theological discrepancy between varieties of theism is one example of a verbal difference (a “logomachy” as Peirce might say) without logical or metaphysical substance. I see this as one of many profound implications of what Peirce is saying in the concluding part of the “Prolegomena”. Rather than try to give a formal “proof” of this, I will just suggest that you try to express either or both brands of theism using existential graphs, bearing in mind that “the essence of the Proposition is that it intends, as it were, to be regarded as in an existential relation to its Object, as an Index is, so that its assertion shall be regarded as evidence of the fact”; and that an “existential relation” is represented in the graphs by a line of identity.

I don’t expect to convince you (Jon) of what I’ve said above, and I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the theism dispute at all, as it’s insignificant compared to what Peirce says about the mutual determination of Antecedent and Consequent: “the Method of Existential Graphs solves this riddle instantly by showing that, as far as propositions go, and it must evidently be the same with Terms and Arguments, there is but one general way in which their Composition can possibly take place; namely, each component must be indeterminate in some respect or another; and in their composition each determines the other.”

All I wanted to accomplish with my post was to reconsider Peirce’s assertion(?) that the Universe is an Argument in the light of this mutual determination as Peirce explains it at the end of the “Prolegomena.” I’m not finished reconsidering it myself, so I won’t even try to draw any verbal “conclusions” from it.

Love, gary f.

Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg

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