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 <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> 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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