Existence, Reality, and God in Peirce's Metaphysics: The Exquisite Aesthetics of the Real

Existence, Reality, and God in Peirce's Metaphysics: The Exquisite Aesthetics of the RealAuthor(s): RICHARD GILMORESource: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2006), pp. 308-319Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25670631 .

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Existence/ Reality, and God in Peirce's Metaphysics: The Exquisite Aestnetics of the Real RICHARD GILMORE The Concordia College

We think by feeling...

?Theodore Roethke

In the 1906 essay entitled "Answers to Questions Concerning My Belief in God," Peirce makes some claims about God that are, I think, quite surprising. He says that God is real, but that God does not exist ("it would be fetichism to say that God 'exists'" (6:495,1906)).1 These two claims alone would seem to be as surprising to the atheist as to the theist. Peirce goes on to say another, rather surprising, two

part thing. "So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I answer, Yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less believes

this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who are accustomed to think the belief is entirely unfounded" (6:496,1906). This may strike one as a kind of inversion of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" (Ricouer 1970,32). It is inverted because the hermeneutics of suspicion generally posits atheistic, materialistic, self-interested motives and beliefs behind a falsely claimed idealistic motive or

belief. Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud are the masters of this kind of hermeneutics of suspicion. Peirce, on the other hand, seems to be going the other way, positing as real the idealistic belief in God, and as false the claimed atheistic, materialistic beliefs commonly associated with the modern scientific sensibility.

A natural response to these moves by Peirce, the response natural to a

contemporary, postmodern reader of these claims, is to see them as fatally dat

ing Peirce and to dismiss them. I want to suggest, however, that these claims are

surprisingly coherent, and that, although they will demand some radical inversions

with respect to how one sees and values things, these inversions are, in the best

pragmatic, or pragmaticistic, spirit, potentially quite empowering and conducive to more effective action in the world.

My goal is to naturalize the way we talk about, and what we understand

by, God; but also to naturalize metaphysics as well. That is, I want to continue Richard Rorty's project of de-divinizing what is putatively taken to be divine, but at the same time, contra Rorty, to divinize, or, at least, to personalize, what is

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2006.

Copyright ? 2006 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

308



EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND GOD IN PIERCE'S METAPHYSICS 309

putatively taken to be inanimate matter. I want to continue Cornel West's project, the project that he describes as the project of American philosophy generally, of

evading metaphysics, that is, specifically, an ontological metaphysics based on a transcendental logic of analysis, and replace it with a Peircean logic of Third

ing,2 that will yield a metaphysical sort of realism that is nevertheless grounded in experience and experiment.

I see these goals, in part, as extensions of James's project in essays like "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings" and "The Will to Believe," which is to

promote understanding between people of different beliefs and temperaments by demonstrating that there are, good rational grounds for apparently very disparate beliefs and values. That is, one very great value of Peirce's philosophy, it seems to me, is the use that can be made of it in overcoming hate in the spirit of love. Of

course, there is no love without hate, or, in other words, there is no love without an Other,3 and so, via Peirce, we are led to identify even with the oppositional factions of obdurate resistance to Thirding.

So one great value of following Peirce's way of Thirding rationalism and

empiricism, atheism and theology, religion and science is just the understanding it can promote between peoples in this deeply fractured world. Another, perhaps

more individual, value is the way certain possibilities and certain methodolo

gies for understanding the world are opened. A metaphor Peirce uses is that of

finding the key to a locked door (6:460; 6:469, 1908). I will argue that both of the two dominant interpretations of nature, that of scientific materialism and

religious supernaturalism, shut and lock doors on realms of our own experience, impoverishing our experience, hence our understanding, in ways that are wholly

unnecessary. A difficulty with which one is presented in discussing any element of

Peirce's philosophy is that his philosophy is a system, and so to talk about any part of it seems to require talking about all of it. There have been many excellent accounts of Peirce on the reality of God by, among others, Raposa, Orange, An

derson, Ochs, and Sheriff. I want to acknowledge, point to, and not repeat what

they have done. What I will do is argue for God as mind, mind as Thirdness, Thirdness as an ever present possibility, which has as one consequence, among others, the enlivening all things with signs of mind. (I will speak of this in terms of

treating all things, including the world or even the universe as a whole, as having a personality.) Peirce's conception of mind, hence of God as the ultimate mind, is

considerably de-divinized from that of the theologians. On the other hand, seeing mind active in all things divinizes the world far beyond the acknowledgments of the scientific materialists. And, somehow, all of these differences ultimately only amount to differences in attitudinal stances, not differences in real beliefs or real experiences, if Peirce's claims with which I began this essay with are true, that everyone, for example, more or less already believes in the God that Peirce is attempting to describe.



310 RICHARD GILMORE

I take it that one of Peirce's big discoveries, perhaps his biggest, is that the

world, nature, works in ways that are very similar to the way the human mind works. Another way to say this is that our mind works in ways that are quite similar to the way nature, in general, works. Peirce gives the law of mind as fol lows: "ideas tend to spread continuously and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectability. In this spreading they lose intensity ... but gain generality and become welded with other ideas" (6:104, 1892). The law of mind is based on two properties that we find pervasive in nature. First, there is a tendency of influence to spread. (That is a bit prolix, say, merely, there is influence.) Second, things tend to take on habits (6:20-21; 6:141,1892). (This, again, is prolix, since what is it to take on a habit but to be influenced?) Much of the rest, it seems to me, is based on versions of Kant's transcendental deductions. Given this apparent fact about the universe, this world, what must be the case

in order for this apparent fact to obtain? Of course for Peirce, unlike Kant, the

hypotheses produced by those deductions must then be tested empirically. The ultimate vindication of the hypotheses will be whether they further

inquiry, whether they are generative and influential or static and dogmatic. As

Manley Thompson puts it, "the ultimate test of any hypothesis lies in its value in the self-controlled growth of inquiry" (Thompson 1953, 146). Some of the

primary hypotheses that Peirce draws from the apparent fact of influence are that

influence entails a continuum. Influence suggests evolution. Influence includes the idea of chance or spontaneity (as a source of new influences) (1:158, 1905). Influence spreads, which means it grows. Influence suggests individuals (who are

influenced) in a continuum (that spreads the influence). Individuals in a continuum

suggests three simultaneous universes: a universe of Firstness (the pure possibili ties of emanations and receptions of influence), a universe of Secondness (the encounter of individuals with other individuals in actions and reactions?part of

the process by which influence is spread), and a universe of Thirdness (growth as the development of a habit, a general idea incorporated dispositional^ into

the individual as the result of interactions?the spread of influence?with other

individuals). The three universes operate simultaneously, although they are also distinct,

very much on the model of Aristotle's four causes (material, formal, efficient, and

final), which are also both distinct from one another and simultaneously operating

(the wooden bowl holds the milk poured into it for the purpose of drinking). As

Peirce says, "not only does Thirdness suppose and involve the ideas of Secondness

and Firstness, but never will it be possible to find any Secondness or Firstness

in the phenomenon that is not accompanied by Thirdness" (5:90, 1903). Peirce

will describe the universe of individual things as the universe of Secondness.

The universe of Thirdness is the universe of general laws, the universe of signs that indicate the adoption of a habit, of habit-taking. The former is the universe

of existent things, the latter is the universe of the real.




In his unpublished essay "Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism," Peirce describes this distinction between "reality" and "existence": "reality means a certain kind of non-dependence upon thought, and so is a cognitionary char

acter, while existence means reaction with the environment, and so is a dynamic character; and accordingly the two meanings... are not the same" (5:503,1905). Not only are reality and existence not the same, but they are not even in the same

universe: existence belongs to the universe of Secondness, whereas reality is the universe of Thirdness. These are logically, objectively, and subjectively distinct universes. We move between these different universes by, in a manner of speak ing, changing our minds.

Peirce's conception of the real has two aspects. One aspect is its "non-de

pendence on thought." That is the negative definition of the real. Peirce puts it a little differently in his famous early essay "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," where he defines the real as "that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be" (5:405, 1878). The positive corollary to the real's non-depen dence on thought is that it is "a cognitionary character," which is to say that it is

thought-like and what thought is of. Peirce sometimes speaks of the real in terms of a thing's "essence" (6:337, 1909). He compares the real to "habits" (5:430), he speaks of the real as an "active general principle" (5:100, 1903), and he also

speaks of the reality of a thing in terms of Thirdness (593-119, 1903). What the reality of a thing does not include is "existence." Things, in

the universe of reality, do not really exist, not autonomously or independently. Existence is a kind of epiphenomenon or an emergent property that results from a reaction. This is a considerable inversion of our ordinary ways of thinking (6:324, 1909). Things can exist only in relation to, and in reaction against, other

things. To exist, to ex-sist is, literally, to stand outside of reality ("Whatever ex

ists, ex-sists, that is, really acts upon other existents, so obtains a self-identity, and is definitely individual" [5:429, 1905]). The universe of reality, for Peirce, is a continuum. This is his doctrine of Synechism. It is a reality in which what is real are generals, that is, general principles or laws; or, in other words, ideas

(indicated by signs). The universe of Secondness, of existent things, is a non-real, degenerate, ad hoc, preterit universe ("Secondness is the predominant character of what has been done" [1:343, 1903]). Seconds are characterized by resistance and effort (1:324, 1903). Secondness is experienced, essentially, negatively: "The idea of other, of not, becomes a very pivot of thought" (1:324, 1903). It is the world as it is understood by what Peirce refers to as individualists or, more

frequently, nominalists. Of course, we are all nominalists some of the time, just as we are all realists some of the time. We are all nominalists when, to use an

example of Peirce's, we run blind into a post (6:19, 1891), and we are all real ists when we are planning our day. We are all nominalists when we are treating things or people as things that exist, as essentially mindless, reactive objects; we are all realists when we are working with the tendencies, the dispositions, the

personalities of things. I take it to be part of Peirce's insight that we have some



312 RICHARD GILMORE

choice about whether we will live in a world of mostly posts or a world of mostly well-planned, potentially beautiful days.

Thirdness, for Peirce, is the experience of seeing beyond the merely reac tive Seconds and perceiving the relations between things, especially in terms of

where they are headed. Thirdness, in contradistinction to Secondness, is futural: "It [Thirdness] is that which is what it is by virtue of imparting a quality to re

action in the future" (1:343, 1903). Thirdness has the character of the mental, which is to say, relationships are understood, they are not literally seen. As Sheriff says, "Thirdness, then, which we have been referring to as 'habit-taking' and 'continuity' might just as well be called 'mind,' 'intelligence,' or 'reason'"

(Sheriff 1994, 19). Materialism, as a theory, insists there is no universe but the universe of

Secondness. Materialism (and nominalism) is not wrong, according to Peirce, it is just not the whole story. There are no Thirds without Seconds, but to think that there are only Seconds, as nominalists insist, is to miss a lot of what there is to understand. To perceive Thirdness is to transcend the perception of existent things and to see things, to understand things, in terms of their relations to one another in a kind of field.4 What you are understanding is not things in terms of the me

chanical principles of action/reaction, but the more general tendencies of things, the dispositions of things to interact in specific ways within a specific context.

To understand Thirdness in a particular context is to understand how things tend to go. It is to understand the general trajectory, although not necessarily the

specific trajectory, of things, of the ideas that are correlated with things. It is, to use a slightly different metaphor, a metaphor that is not really a metaphor for

Peirce, to understand the personality of the context. Section fourteen of "The Law of Mind" is entitled "Personality." Peirce describes personality as "some kind of coordination or connection of ideas" (6:155,1892). He goes on to say, "when we consider that... a connection between ideas is itself a general idea, and that a general idea is a living feeling, it is plain that we have at least taken an appre ciable step toward the understanding of personality" (6:155, 1892). A "general idea," says Peirce, is "quite analogous to a person" (6:270, 1892). A personality is best understood in terms of what a thing will do in the future: "This is personal character. A general idea, living and conscious now, it is already determinative of acts in the future to an extent to which it is not now conscious" (6:155). As

Michael Raposa puts it, "personality is, most essentially, a phenomenon that is

characterized by 'life' and 'growth'" (Raposa 1989, 39). The Native American philosopher Vine Deloria provides what I see as a

very Peircean (or, perhaps Peirce's thinking is very Native American) formula: Power + Place = Personality (Deloria 2001,22-23). To translate this formula into

Peircean terms, I read Power as, essentially, the potential for "the spread of influ

ence" and Place as being an idea, in the Peircean sense, manifest by a particular constellation of Seconds. Personality is not emergent (the nominalist view), but

is the organizing principle, the directive energy, the dispositions of that idea,




that place. It is the "coordination or connection of ideas" among those Seconds.

According to this mode of thinking, a person, of course, will have a personality, but so will a meadow (exhibited in a tendency to promote the growth of certain flora and fauna, and to discourage the growth of others, the particular "habits" of the stream to dry in late-summer and revive in May) or a college (the buildings, the individual faculty members, the individual students are the Seconds?each also with a personality, a Third?that operate under the idea of the college, which then defines and directs them toward a general future), as will a tree (which has the power to branch and will when it "decides" the conditions are propitious, as

much a "decision," really, as the choice of a college). An understanding of the real Thirds of a meadow begins with a feeling,

a feeling of an overarching unity in the multiplicity of individual Seconds. This is where all reasoning begins for Peirce. John E. Smith refers to this as "living reason," of which he says, "it starts from certain direct experiences and moves toward the discovery of rational pattern and meaning within these experiences" (Smith 1968,111). Vincent Colapietro glosses Smith's idea of "living reason" by saying, "It is more or less embodied in the forms and procedures of our institutional

practices (our historical institutions); it is also, in a manner, more or less present in the structures and processes of the cosmos itself (Colapietro 1997, 55-56).

There is, then, a nominalistic logic of Seconds and realist logic of Thirds. The logic of Seconds will be a logic of mere material "things." The logic of Thirds will be a logic of personalities. The existential outlook of the nominalist will be some form of Resistentialism, the philosophy that "les choses sont contre nous."5 The logic of the realist will engage an existential outlook that might be called

"cooperativism." These differences of logic correlate precisely, I believe, with the different logics engaged by the different levels of reasoning in the Prisoners

Dilemma, where the lower level of logic is oppositional and zero sum, while the higher logic is cooperative and non-zero sum.6 Just as the universe of Thirds

depends on, is manifest in, the world of Seconds, the logic of Thirding depends on the logic of Seconds. This is the significance of Wittgenstein's proposed epi graph for Philosophical Investigations, the line from King Lear, "Let me teach

you differences!"7 (the necessary initial logic of clarifying Seconds) and why Part II of Philosophical Investigations is devoted to the problem of "seeing-as" (the higher logic of seeing connections between things).

In a very interesting recent essay, Kenneth Stikkers has identified two

contrasting logics that correlate with what I am arguing are the two logics of Secondness and Thirdness. The first is the Enlightenment, modernist logic of

identity and difference. The second logic he traces to the Renaissance logician Petrus Ramus. Ramian logic, by contrast, is based on analogy and similitude. As Stikkers says, "In contrast to the logic of identity and difference, which enframes the world and allows it to disclose itself only within its binary grid of distinctions, logics of similitude disclose the world as an endless play of resemblances: anal

ogy is the structure of nature; macrocosm is reflected in microcosm; microcosm



314 RICHARD GILMORE

in macrocosm" (Stikkers 2006, 118). The logic of identity and difference is the

logic of Secondness. It is the logic of the nominalists. It is a very powerful and seductive logic. The logic of similitude is much more vague, much less defined, and subject to considerable dangers, specifically in the form of apophenia, seeing analogies or patterns that are not real. (This is what I take Peirce to mean by saying, "the higher weapons in the arsenal of thought are not playthings but edge-tools" [6:461,1908]. To be careful means using the method of science and maintaining one's attitude of fallibilism.) This is especially evident in the examples of Ramian

logic that Stikkers gives from the writings of Jonathan Edwards in which, fol

lowing the principle of "natural facts are signs of spiritual facts," Edwards sees

that "God created the 'waves and billows of the sea and the dire cataracts there are of rivers' to teach us of His 'terrible wrath'; by creating ravens, which feed

upon dead bodies, God instructs us on how the devil delights in feeding upon the spiritually dead souls of the wicked" (Stikkers 2006, 120). This is the kind of talk that leads to people killing people. I take it that it is precisely this kind of talk that Rorty has in mind when he talks about getting rid of religion and

de-divinizing the world. If the logic of similitude, which is, I believe, a version of the logic of

Thirding, is so vague, weak, and dangerous, why entertain it as a real logic? The answers are several and, I think (as a onetime nominalist), overwhelming. The

problem with nominalism is that it cannot explain virtually any manifestation of mind. Rorty and Davidson try to explain linguistic communication in terms

of a "passing theory" (Rorty 1989, 13-16). On this theory, since individuals are fundamentally and absolutely discrete, what we take for communication, for understanding another person, is really just a guess that we have made en

passant that results in behaviors from the other person that, for some reason, fit our expectations. There is, on this theory, no real communicative connection between people. We are all discrete, solipsistic, windowless monads passing in an

existential night. The only real problem with this theory, aside from its aesthetic

darkness, is the "for some reason." That is, if what we take to be communication

depends entirely on guessing, what explains the really remarkable fact of our

fairly quick convergence on shared or anticipatable behaviors? This is one of the most important pieces of evidence for a continuum and for realism for Peirce

(1:170). Pure, arbitrary guessing, without a starting point, would mean an infinite

number of possible alternatives. There would be no directive feature that would

contribute to convergence. There is in this Rorty/Davidson "passing theory" of

communication a weird metaphysical gap. Peirce's theory of communication, which also goes for all perception in

general, is in some ways not that different from the Rorty/Davidson model. That

is, for Peirce, all communication, just as all perception, does begin with guessing, but it is guessing that is based on something, and that something is what makes all the difference. The explanation of the something begins with the idea that there is a continuum. Nothing is entirely discrete. Communication is based on signs and




signs are part of a larger medium, the medium of the real, of general ideas. We

experience signs first as feeling. What we have to make guesses about is what it is that we are feeling. The fact that there is a specific source for our feeling?a sign representing a real idea in the continuum, the idea of a real personality?means that our interpretations are not just random guesses but directed guesses. The

convergence is not arbitrary, but justified by an increasing network of correlations and verifications. There is, therefore, a real connection between two people com

municating because of the real feelings that they are experiencing via the signs that they are using in common. That is why communication is possible, because of real influence; but this real influence is dependent on the reality of some kind of continuum. This is, to be sure, a metaphysical notion, but I do not see it as

particularly more metaphysical than, say, Darwin's theory of sexual selection. That is, it suggests patterns and operations in the world that are real but do not exist. What is eliminated as a theory is the mysterious metaphysical gap, the gap of the-impossible-to-explain, in the Rorty/Davidson nominalist theory.

What is the continuum? It is the ubiquity of relationships that spread in fluence. What is the medium of the continuum? It is thought. What is thought? Thought is the spread of influence according to certain principles or laws. Thought, like gravity or the concept of force in general, however, has a certain vagueness to it as a concept. It describes relatively precisely the way relationships between

things will change due to principles inherent in the relationships themselves.

So, for example, gravitational force is described and calculated according to relational masses. What exactly, ontologically, gravity or force or even causality is, is not relevant to the questions that we practically need to ask about gravity or force or causality. Peirce pragmatically, Wittgensteinianly, makes the ques tion of what force is, ontologically, disappear (5:404, 1878), just as Hume does

with the question of causality. They are illegitimate questions in the vocabulary of force, of causality, or of mind. What is the vocabulary of relevant concepts with respect to mind, to the spread of influence? Resemblance, contiguity, and

causality (5 :307, 1868) are some of the usual classing concepts to identify types of relationships of influence in the spread of thought, in acts of mind. What are the "things" among which influence spreads? What are the things in the world, the universe, of Thirdness? They are particular ideas, or, in a word, personalities (revealed through signs).

Things, people, exist in the emergent universe of Secondness, but are best understood as ideas (as real) in the universe of Thirdness. An idea is, according to

Peirce, a living, generative thing. An idea is only fully embodied in things, and a disembodied idea is an idea about to be embodied. It is a potentiality, a potential relationship for a body to enter into. A disembodied (potential) idea calls out, in a manner of speaking, to bodies (as a kind of final cause, as a holding out as an

option) to participate in this particular mode of generality like a sparrow singing its mating song to a potential mate (1:218-19, 1902). We feel an idea before we think it, feel a possibility as a kind of vague disturbance, as an unclassed Second,



316 RICHARD GILMORE

before we understand it as a real possibility or adopt it into our behavior as an

understood Third. An idea is a general principle of tendency, and so things, like

people, therefore, are best understood dispositionally; that is, in terms of their tendencies or habits, in terms of what they will do under different circumstances and conditions. To see these aspects of things is to see their reality.

Throughout this essay, I have been arguing that, essentially, we think by feeling. We feel the spread of the influence of ideas before we understand what those ideas are. What we feel is a certain relational character between ideas that is itself an idea, and which idea is being indicated by a Sign, which just is "an active power to establish connections between different objects" (6:455, 1908).

We feel a certain dispositional quality, a general principle, that suggests a general trajectory to a situation, which is to say that we feel a personality. When we come to an understanding of the meaning of this feeling, when we Third this feeling via inquiry, we arrive at a belief. What does it mean, then, to say, as Peirce does, "that pretty nearly everybody more or less believes [in the reality of God]"? First of all, it must mean that the reality of God begins with a feeling, and it is a feeling that Peirce believes nearly everyone more or less has had.

In his late essay "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," Peirce identifies a particular state of mind that he believes is underappreciated and from

which all original ideas, as well as the real idea of God, will come. He calls this state of mind "musement," and it requires strict obedience to "the law of liberty" (6:460, 1908). That is, in musement one allows one's mind to go where it will. The law of liberty means that any constraint on the mind undoes its condition, hence its potential, as musement. The result then is just another "Sir Oracle," the

pretense of something new that is in fact one more example of coercive confor

mity. If, however, one allows one's mind the space for pure play, according to

Peirce, a discovery will be made. First, one will notice that the mind works by "homogeneities" (6:465,1908). I take this to mean that the logic of musement is the logic of similitude, the Ramian logic that Stikkers talks about. Second, one

will discover a similitude in the relations between homogeneities that Peirce

associates with the idea of "growth" (6:465). The universal feature of "growth" Peirce describes in terms of "a provision for later stages in earlier ones" (6:465). That is, growth works teleologically. A later stage is anticipated in earlier ones.

This is what it means to have a disposition. This is what one sees when one un

derstands something, one understands its dispositions, its "provisions for later

stages in earlier ones." We feel this in our own thinking, we feel this directedness even in, especially

in, the pure play of musement. This directedness, this notion of influence, is the essence of Peirce's conception of mind and it is associated with his conception of what God is. When we feel this directedness and sense of influence in a direc

tion in our own mind, this works, as Peter Ochs puts it, "as an indexical sign of the reality of God" (Ochs 1998, 241). That is, just as a weathervane indexically indicates the fact of wind and its general direction, the way our mind tracks ac




cording to a particular logic the relations between signs and the direction in which it goes (toward growth, drawn toward some larger pattern of relations as toward an Ens necessarium) indicates the reality of God. As Peirce himself puts it, quite beautifully, "Enter your skiff of Musement, push off into the lake of thought, and leave the breath of heaven to swell your sail" (6:461). "The breath of heaven"

would be an analogy for our experience of influence. We feel the influence of an

idea from a Sign just like we feel the wind on our face, or it filling the sail of our

boat driving it forward. Anyone, therefore, that has mused, anyone who has felt their thoughts grow, according to the law of liberty and not by the coercions of social conformity, will have come across an indexical Sign of God. That people so

muse in the planning of their best days is testimony to their real belief, no matter what they proclaim as their public position on God or science.

In his early essay "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," Peirce uses an example from aesthetics to explain the nature of mind, specifically "a piece of music"

(5:395, 1878). As Peirce remarks, a piece of music has two basic components, the individual notes and the "air" or melody. We experience an individual note in an instant and immediately. The air, however, we can experience only over

time and mediately. We can only hear the air by hearing the separate notes: the two are inseparable, but we have to be listening to something else in the notes,

something more than just the individual notes, to hear the melody. Peirce con

cludes, "Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our

sensations" (5:395,1878). This analogy between thought and music works quite well to illustrate the relationship between the universes of Secondness and Third ness. Materialists and nominalists hear the notes, but, as it were, deny that there is a melody. Religious supernaturalists insist that there is an additional melody,

whole and finished, beyond the real melody, a melody only they can hear. Peirce insists that the melody is real, incomplete, but ongoing and we can, with work and concentration, say something about it, how it goes and how it may develop in the future. The ultimate level of the melody I take to be something like the

mind of God, and, just as it will be virtually impossible for one person to identify the melody of John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP (now being performed in Halberstadt,

Germany, with the performance scheduled to last 639 years) just from listening to it, so it will be impossible for any one person to know the melody that is the

mind of God. To pay attention to the personalities of things, to listen for their melodies,

is, first of all, to feel their Secondness, and then reason one's way through deduc tions and inductions, to a clear and distinct conception of their Secondness. But, then, one must be attentive to and feel their Thirdness, feel the continuity and the

dispositions that direct their emanations of influence, and reason one's way to a clear and more distinct conception of this Thirdness. "Metaphysics ... treats of Phenomena in their Thirdness" (5:124). To give up on the project of metaphys ics, the process of understanding the universe in terms of Thirds, is to give up on

knowing anything about the universe altogether.



318 RICHARD GILMORE

At the end of the fourth of his Cambridge lectures delivered in 1903 entitled "The Reality of Thirdness," Peirce says,

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. But let us compare it rather with a painting?with an impres sionist seashore piece?then every Quality in a Premiss is one of the elementary colored particles of the Painting; they are all meant to go together to make up the intended Quality that belongs to the whole as whole. That total effect is beyond our ken; but we can appreciate in some measure the resultant Quality of parts of the whole. (5:119, 1903)

In a later lecture in the same series, Peirce defines aesthetics as follows: "an

object, to be esthetically good, must have a multitude of parts so related to one

another as to impart a positive immediate quality to their totality, and whatever does this is, in so far, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the total may be" (5:132, 1903). This is part of what Peirce calls "the secret of pragmatism" (5:130, 1903). The secret of pragmatism involves the idea that

logic, as well as ethics, ultimately depends on aesthetics. That means that we

think, ultimately, by feeling. We feel a unity before we understand it. We feel the

unity of another person before we understand the dispositional elements of that

person's personality. Similarly, we feel the unity of a meadow before we know its particular dispositions. And so, too, do we feel the unity of the universe, even as we are still working out its particular dispositions (and there is always more to

work out since particular dispositions are themselves always evolving). To feel the

unity, and then to work out some of its dispositional aspects, automatically evokes in us a sense of approval (5:130, 1903). This sense of approval I associate with

Kant's connection of the experience of the beautiful with a feeling of necessary satisfaction or even with the feeling joy in the experience of the sublime (1951, ?18, ?28). To experience the world in this way, to be open to this experience, is to experience the exquisite aesthetics of the real.

Notes 1. References in this decimal notation are to Charles S. Peirce's Collected Papers. 2. By "Thirding" I mean an act of logic by which a Third is discovered, which is to say, a general

principle is identified that resolves a question of the relationship of some particular Second.

3. In "Evolutionary Love," Peirce says, for example, "the love that God is, is not a love of which

hatred is the contrary ...; but is a love which embraces hatred as an imperfect stage of it" (6.287,

1893). 4. Raposa refers to "systems" (1989,21). 5. I first encountered the philosophy of Resistentialism in a Sunday New York Times Magazine

"On Language" section (9/21/03, p. 20) by Charles Harrington Elster. The philosophy was originally

propounded, as a joke, by Paul Jennings, who attributed its invention to one Pierre-Marie Ventre, in

The Spectator m 1948.

6. For more on the two logics of the Prisoner's Dilemma see Gilmore (2003). 7. M. O'C. Drury relates that Wittgenstein once remarked on this; see Drury (1967, 69).




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Existence, Reality, and God in Peirce's Metaphysics: The Exquisite Aesthetics of the Real

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