Home
CP 5.598. I can excuse a person who has lost a dear companion and whose reason is in danger of giving way under the grief, for trying, on that account, to believe in a future life. I can more than excuse him because his usefulness is at stake, although I myself would not adopt a hypothesis, and would not even take it on probation, simply because the idea was pleasing to me. Without judging others, I should feel, for my own part, that that would be a crime against the integrity of the reason that God has lent to me. But if I had the choice between two hypotheses, the one more ideal and the other more materialistic, I should prefer to take the ideal one upon probation, simply because ideas are fruitful of consequences, while mere sensations are not so; so that the idealistic hypothesis would be the more verifiable, that is to say, would predict more, and could be put the more thoroughly to the test. END
I don't know how immersed Peirce was in the almost exploding interest in things psychic, centering on an afterlife, that took place during his lifetime. This text suggests that he has certainly considered the matter. But I would hazard a guess that at the level of experience and knowing. Peirce like most folk comes up empty.
By experience I mean the fruit of out of body and near death experiences and some phenomena that qualify, at least in the mind of the speaker, as evidential.
In a sense Peirce is anticipating the flood of research that is now in progress. Some academics and scientists have forsaken the safe precincts of dominant materialism and engaged in copious, evidential assembly of documentation of reincarnational data, near death experience, remote viewing, and related phenomema.
Public fascination has been consistent.
But the most lucid approaches to this existential conundrum are indeed based on the foundation Peirce lays. Create a logical hypothesis and see if it plays out. Test it.
Triadic Philosophy insists that everything is measurable and that even things as insubstantial and amorphous as good and evil can be rated on a scale that relates to ontological realities. It is not beyond us to see the broad implications of our actions and the eventual destiny we all share.
The evidential quest is in progress.
I don't know how immersed Peirce was in the almost exploding interest in things psychic, centering on an afterlife, that took place during his lifetime. This text suggests that he has certainly considered the matter. But I would hazard a guess that at the level of experience and knowing. Peirce like most folk comes up empty.
By experience I mean the fruit of out of body and near death experiences and some phenomena that qualify, at least in the mind of the speaker, as evidential.
In a sense Peirce is anticipating the flood of research that is now in progress. Some academics and scientists have forsaken the safe precincts of dominant materialism and engaged in copious, evidential assembly of documentation of reincarnational data, near death experience, remote viewing, and related phenomema.
Public fascination has been consistent.
But the most lucid approaches to this existential conundrum are indeed based on the foundation Peirce lays. Create a logical hypothesis and see if it plays out. Test it.
Triadic Philosophy insists that everything is measurable and that even things as insubstantial and amorphous as good and evil can be rated on a scale that relates to ontological realities. It is not beyond us to see the broad implications of our actions and the eventual destiny we all share.
The evidential quest is in progress.
