Mary, list I am of the view that there is no such thing as patriarchal culture. The role of Culture is to process the relationship between the known and the unknown. Hence all cultures are comprised of the duality that is matriarchal-patriarchal. [This relates to my interest in the concept of "knowing how to be" (Dasein)].
The focus of the matriarchal role is the cultural known, and emphasis is on maintaining traditions, security, cohesion. It is the mother that introduces the child to the cultural known. It is from the mother that the child first learns to define the things that matter (pragmatism). The matriarchal role resists entropy. The focus of the patriarchal role is the cultural unknown, and emphasis is on evolution, change, direction. It is the father that teaches the child about transcendence (or otherwise) beyond the cultural known. The patriarchal role confronts entropy, and tests the limits of the cultural known. Another way of stating all of this. At the gates to the cultural known stands the mother. At the gates to the unknown beyond culture stands the father. THIS is why the spiritual role, throughout all of history's sustainable religions, has always been governed by the patriarchal dimension, and why the nurturing role, throughout all cultures, has been governed by the matriarchal dimension. The tragedy of feminism is its trivialization of the all-important matriarchal dimension. Inequality is that which forces people into roles that they are not naturally predisposed to playing out. Only equal opportunity is fair and just. Equal outcome, by contrast, is bias. The inequality that today most urgently needs to be addressed is the forced inequality of equal outcome. Regards sj From: Mary Libertin [mailto:mary.liber...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, May 31, 2019 4:52 AM To: tabor...@primus.ca Cc: Gary Richmond; Peirce-L Subject: Re: Re: Trinity, Continuity, and the Cosmotheandric, was, [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity of Semeiosis Revisite Edwina, Gary R, Gene, list, The usage of the term *patriarchy* in our recent posts fascinates me. Gene and I state the fact that we live in a patriarchy. Saying that does not elevate us any more than do the excellent arguments of Edwina and Richard elevate themselves. Tone is a Peircean concept and one which could be well used. I don’t know how to do so effectively, (insert smiley face 😀) I would have hoped the tone in my comments early on would have led others to accept/be more aware of my feelings about my being more comfortable as a Peircean than a theological trinitarian. I am working within the system to change it, as Gary eloquently and hopefully leads by example. My wife and I will be introduced as new members of our local episcopal church on Sunday. We are not only working within religion but also within patriarchy. I am cavalier with the word *patriarchy*, perhaps, but inequality needs to be addressed. Isn’t that either a Christian and/or a Peircean? I feel so much more hopeful and grounded because of your comments. I’ll not post again on this topic. Cheers, Mary Libertin Thanks for the On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 7:16 PM Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: 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 gary.richm...@gmail.com 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/ "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 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 Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York Virus-free. www.avg.com On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 5:15 PM Eugene Halton <eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu> 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 <gary.richm...@gmail.com> 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 Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 1:36 PM Jon Alan Schmidt < jonalanschm...@gmail.com> 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 Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 9:20 AM <g...@gnusystems.ca> 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. Virus-free. www.avg.com -- null
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