Edwina and Jon,
ET
This, to me, is the complex semiosic process - and is continuous, open,
adaptive, evolving...and there is no 'final truth'.
JAS
On the contrary ...
CSP: You certainly opine that there is such a thing as Truth.
Otherwise, reasoning and thought would be without a purpose.
(CP 2.135; 1902).
But the word 'final' is ambiguous. It could mean a completed end,
or it could mean a limit that can be approximated but never reached.
For example, mathematicians talk about π as a real number. But π is
a limit that can only be approximated, never actually written down
or computed: 3.14, 22/7, 3.1416, 3.14159265...
That means there is no contradiction between Edwina and Jon: there
exists a final interpretant as a limit, but because of the complexity,
it's impossible to state it as a completed assertion.
In fact, RLT 162-163 (copied below) gives more support for Edwina's
claim than Jon's. As Peirce believes, "all the arbitrary arrangements
which mark actuality ... spring out on every hand and all the time, as
the act of creation goes on, their only value is to be shaped into a
continuous delineation under the creative hand, and at any rate their
only use for us is to hold us down to learning one lesson at a time."
JFS: I used an argument based on Cantor's set theory, which Peirce
knew very well: as the number of elements in a set grows, the number
of ways of combining them grows exponentially.
JAS: Yes, but Peirce ultimately rejected Cantor's "pseudo-continuum"
(CP 6.176; 1908). I have been suggesting recently that the entire
Universe as a vast Argument is instead a "true continuum" (CP 6.170;
1902) and a "perfect continuum" (CP 4.642 & 7.535n6; both 1908)
Peirce never rejected Cantor's construction. By calling it a
pseudo=continuum, he accepted it as a legitimate mathematical
construction. But he went farther by claiming that a geometrical
line has a superinfinity of possible points.
This adds even more support for Edwina's claim.
JAS
As discussed at length by Lane in his book, Peirce's considered view
was that "ultimate Truth" is whatever would become permanently settled
belief upon infinite inquiry by an infinite community--a regulative
hope, the telos of all semeiosis (Final Interpretant), which may or
may not correspond to any actual effect (Dynamic Interpretant).
The phrase "permanently settled" implies a completed endpoint.
That is consistent with God "resting on the seventh day", but it
is inconsistent with "infinite inquiry by an infinite community".
JAS
if, as Peirce professed to believe, God is "Really creator of all three
Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434; 1908), then He is not
"any intelligent being in that universe."
Before saying anything else, I want to emphasize that Hartshorne,
who was the primary editor of CP vol. 6, developed his own version
of process theology that was close to Whitehead than to Peirce.
He used the term 'panentheism', which may be translated as
"all in God". In other words, God isn't in the universes, but
the universes are in God.
Karl Krause, a 19th c philosopher who was a student of Schelling,
coined the term 'panentheism' for a kind of pantheism with a personal
God who created and contained the observable universe(s).
The passages Jon quoted (copied below) are closer to Whitehead and
Hartshorne than they are to traditional Christian theology. Peirce
emphasized fallibilism about physics. He would be more cautious
about metaphysics, even his own.
John
______________________________________________________________________
CSP: The zero collection is bare, abstract, germinal possibility.
The continuum is concrete, developed possibility. The whole universe of
true and real possibilities forms a continuum, upon which this Universe
of Actual Existence is, by virtue of the essential Secondness of
Existence, a discontinuous mark--like a line figure drawn on the area of
the blackboard. There is room in the world of possibility for any
multitude of such universes of Existence. Even in this transitory life,
the only value of all the arbitrary arrangements which mark actuality,
whether they were introduced once for all "at the end of the sixth day
of creation" or whether as I believe, they spring out on every hand and
all the time, as the act of creation goes on, their only value is to be
shaped into a continuous delineation under the creative hand, and at any
rate their only use for us is to hold us down to learning one lesson at
a time, so that we may make generalizations of intellect and the more
important generalizations of sentiment which make the value of this
world. (RLT 162-163; 1898)
CSP: The generalization of sentiment can take place on different
sides. Poetry is one sort of generalization of sentiment, and in so far
is the regenerative metamorphosis of sentiment. But poetry remains on
one side ungeneralized, and to that is due its emptiness. The complete
generalization, the complete regeneration of sentiment is religion,
which is poetry, but poetry completed. (CP 1.676; 1898)
CSP: I hear you say: "All that is not fact; it is poetry."
Nonsense! Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true
poetry ... the universe is a vast representamen, a great symbol of God's
purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities … The Universe
as an argument is necessarily a great work of art, a great poem,--for
every fine argument is a poem and a symphony,--just as every true poem
is a sound argument. (CP 1.315 & 5.119, EP 2:193-194; 1903)
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