Gary F: John, I have to agree with you on this: JFS: There are many other religions around the world that don't seem to attribute a personality to their creator. So Peirce's claim that the NA proves that human nature requires a personal God does not seem to be convincing.
GF: On the other hand, when Peirce asks me to practice phaneroscopy and see whether it leads me to the conceptions of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness as the formal elements of the phaneron, I seem to end up with the same "categories" that he does. GF: Likewise, I think Peirce's assumption in the NA is that belief in a personal and benevolent God is a worthy guide to conduct for everyone who holds that belief instinctively rather being convinced of it by logical argumentation. CSP: If God Really be, and be benign, then, in view of the generally conceded truth that religion, were it but proved, would be a good outweighing all others, we should naturally expect that there would be some Argument for His Reality that should be obvious to all minds, high and low alike, that should earnestly strive to find the truth of the matter; and further, that this Argument should present its conclusion, not as a proposition of metaphysical theology, but in a form directly applicable to the conduct of life, and full of nutrition for man's highest growth. (EP2:435) GF: The recent book by Richard Kenneth Atkins on Peirce and the Conduct of Life includes quotes from the exchange of letters between Peirce and William James as Peirce was preparing his Cambridge Lectures of 1898. In these letters Peirce asserts his allegiance to what he calls "conservative sentimentalism" or "sentimental conservatism." GF: My own gut feelings are different. For one thing, I don't really feel that the Creator is benign. But I recognize that Peirce's statement about religious belief and the conduct of life in the NA is expressed as a conditional: "If God Really be, and be benign, then ." - the value of this belief for the conduct of life is conditional on its being a gut feeling of the believer. And in that sense I agree with it. I consider these points to be sufficiently plausible that my general conclusion is a definite maybe. John
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