Comments on: Pragmatism as Mormon Epistemology Part 2

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 16:24:24 +0000

Absolutely private beliefs become difficult to make sense of, especially if beliefs aren’t merely some quasi-linguistic proposition we have private mental access to. I don’t mind distinguishing between belief and the representation of that belief. That seems a natural distinction to make.

To the point of Peirce’s religion, I don’t think that’s what he meant. Rather he thought the principle Jesus taught applied here. His religion is a bit mysterious to me. He was raised unitarian at a time that was common for the intellectual class. (Emerson was unitarian too) However he converted to trinitarianism and saw significance to that. He opposed James’ view of religion that saw it judged purely in terms of what worked in a loose sense for the individual. He felt religion was an empirical matter as with everything else with empirical claims. (Indeed that distinction over the pragmatic maxim was the major break between the two and it’s quite significant) Yet his own religious views seem an odd mixture of Christianity and something akin to Buddhism. Some have drawn similarities with the process theology of Whitehead and Hartshorne although I think that’s pushing it in places. But he’s definitely a process styled thinker.

By: Jeff G

Jeff G — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:45:54 +0000

Of course Mead – who was the forth most famous pragmatist after Peirce, James and Dewey – thought the social construction of the “me” could be accounted for in terms of a 2-person relationship between a person and “the other”… something which I totally reject.

By: Jeff G

Jeff G — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 11:36:45 +0000

1) As you know, I draw a sharp line between an ethics of communicative claims and an ethics of utterly private belief. I also think that the latter is utter nonsense since its not obvious that I myself have access to my own utterly private beliefs, let alone that anybody else has the access necessary to pass any kind of judgement either way on them.

2) I think Mead’s distinction between the “I” and the “me” are a much better approach to an ethics of belief. Whereas the “I” is the pre-reflexive will that acts, the “me” is a constructed (re)presentation of the “I” that is intrinsically social and normative in nature. Thus, if we want discuss the ethics of belief, it would be much more profitable to discuss the ethics of attributing beliefs to any person’s “me” – which is much closer to an ethics of claims than an ethics of beliefs.

3) Did Peirce really think that that is what Jesus literally meant about fruits? If so, that’s really sad.