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CP 6.493. 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. And scepticism, in the sense of doubt of the validity of elementary ideas -- which is really a proposal to turn an idea out of court and permit no inquiry into its applicability -- is doubly condemned by the fundamental principle of scientific method -- condemned first as obstructing inquiry, and condemned second because it is treating some other than a statistical ratio as a thing to be argued about. No: as to God, open your eyes -- and your heart, which is also a perceptive organ -- and you see him. But you may ask, Don't you admit there are any delusions? Yes: I may think a thing is black, and on close examination it may turn out to be bottle-green. But I cannot think a thing is black if there is no such thing to be seen as black. Neither can I think that a certain action is self-sacrificing, if no such thing as self-sacrifice exists, although it may be very rare. It is the nominalists, and the nominalists alone, who indulge in such scepticism, which the scientific method utterly condemns. END
The more one thinks about it the more one guesses that Peirce died at the right time. His clear and unabashed acceptance of a Deity, a Cause, an Original and Continuing Mind, would have probably extended his time of ostracism from the increasingly binary environment of an increasingly uncritical materialism. He would have found allies among those who think outside the box but that breed has been notably unable to crack the onward march of hurt and harm attributable to whole sectors of corporate enterprise ranging from health to agriculture to edibles. We are literally at the mercy of forces we cannot control. These forces have no justification for what they do that involves either ethics or aesthetics.
That lack of consciousness is attributable to most of society, rendering sensitive and inquiring individuals the basic force for thinking that can actually create alternatives.
The effort to amplify this reaction is fundamental to Triadic Philosophy.
The more one thinks about it the more one guesses that Peirce died at the right time. His clear and unabashed acceptance of a Deity, a Cause, an Original and Continuing Mind, would have probably extended his time of ostracism from the increasingly binary environment of an increasingly uncritical materialism. He would have found allies among those who think outside the box but that breed has been notably unable to crack the onward march of hurt and harm attributable to whole sectors of corporate enterprise ranging from health to agriculture to edibles. We are literally at the mercy of forces we cannot control. These forces have no justification for what they do that involves either ethics or aesthetics.
That lack of consciousness is attributable to most of society, rendering sensitive and inquiring individuals the basic force for thinking that can actually create alternatives.
The effort to amplify this reaction is fundamental to Triadic Philosophy.
