List: An aspect of Peirce's writings that presents both challenges and opportunities for scholars of his thought is the fact that so many of his texts remain unpublished. Yesterday, I came across a passage in one such manuscript that is highly relevant to our recent discussions about how God as *Ens necessarium* fulfills the logical requirement for a rational explanation of the co-realty of the three universes. It is in one of the drafts for his series of articles on pragmaticism in *The Monist*.
CSP: Unless we were to think reason in general futile, which neither you reader nor I can, we have the problem before us to explain the sum total of the real, however vaguely. To explain anything is to show it to be a necessary consequence. To say that the total real is a consequence of utter nothing without substance or appearance is absurd. The only alternative is to suppose a necessary something whose mode of being transcends reality. This is vague enough. 'Necessary being' is the equivalent of 'something,' since nothing is self-contradictory and impossible. But a necessary being adequate to account for the sum total of reality, however inscrutable, is not in all respects entirely vague. The exact logician with his bare mathematical apparatus finds it impossible to give any thoroughgoing formal analysis of thought without regarding it as the product of a thinking activity; and he thus sees more clearly than another man, perhaps, the ineluctability of the conception of creative thought. An immanent God will not answer the purpose, although it would seem that creation must in some vague sense be needed for the fulfillment of His being. But our idea of Him and of the mode of His being must remain vague in the extreme (though not utterly so); and as vague, self-contradictory. But pragmaticism is inseparable from the doctrine that all human thought and meaning must carry the anthropomorphic stamp, disguise it as you will. In proportion as an object is more incomprehensible we are compelled more markedly to resort to human ideals, social activities and passional elements to make anything out of it. If I allowed myself to continue, I fear I should stump myself upon a theological argument, while my only purpose is to show that pragmaticism is favorable to religion. I will conclude, then, with the opinion that for the pragmaticistic logician, nature (including the [illegible] works of men) is the symbol of God to Humanity, and pure heuretic science makes it the prayer book of an elevating worship. (R 288:91-92[178-181], 1905) This confirms what I have been suggesting for years--Peirce's statement in CP 6.490 (1908) that "the three universes must actually be absolutely necessary results of a state of utter nothingness" is part of a *reductio ad absurdum*. As he states plainly here, any claim that three-category reality somehow came into being on its own, as "a necessary consequence ... of utter nothing ... is absurd" because "nothing is self-contradictory and impossible." Of course, that this was his position should have been indisputable already from what he wrote seven years earlier--"Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that [initial] state of things? But the only sane answer is that where freedom was boundless nothing in particular necessarily resulted. ... I say that nothing *necessarily *resulted from the Nothing of boundless freedom" (CP 6.218-219, 1898). Moreover, Peirce again explicitly rejects "an immanent God," but this time he also explicitly affirms that "a necessary something ... transcends reality," with the caveat that "creation must in some vague sense be needed for the fulfillment of His being." As he says elsewhere, "I think we must regard Creative Activity as an inseparable attribute of God" (CP 6.506, c. 1906). Nevertheless, he uses the word "vaguely" or "vague" six different times in this passage, consistent with his statements elsewhere that "'God' is a vernacular word and, like all such words, but more than almost any, is *vague*" (CP 6.494, c. 1906); and that "we must not predicate any Attribute of God otherwise than vaguely and figuratively, since God, though in a sense essentially intelligible, is nevertheless essentially incomprehensible" (SWS:283, 1909). Finally, Peirce makes it clear that he is not interested in offering "a theological argument," wishing only "to show that pragmaticism is favorable to religion" because it must "resort to human ideals, social activities and passional elements to make anything out of" God as an incomprehensible object. He concludes by reiterating that the entire universe is one immense sign, "the symbol of God to Humanity," and that engaging in "pure heuretic science" is a form of worship. After all, "if contemplation and study of the physico-psychical universe can imbue a man with principles of conduct analogous to the influence of a great man's works or conversation, then that analogue of a mind--for it is impossible to say that *any *human attribute is *literally *applicable--is what he [the pragmaticist] means by 'God'" (CP 6.502, c. 1906). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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