[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Sat Feb 22 07:59:23 EST 2020

Assertion:

> 1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as
> a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as
> victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular
> shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with
> symbols to reinforce their delusion.

Reply: I mean.... transubstantiation is one of the first examples Peirce
uses to illuminate thinking that can be improved via the pragmatic maxim....

As Nick points out, for Peirce, Pragmatism is, first and foremost, a means
of figuring out what your ideas mean. Two important benefits of this are
figuring out when you have vacuous thoughts, and gaining the ability to
avoid what Orwell would label "doublethink". That is, being able to figure
out when your ideas are meaningless and when they contradict each other.

------ How to make your ideas clear, 1878 -----------
To see what this principle leads to, consider in the light of it such a
doctrine as that of transubstantiation. The Protestant churches generally
hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a
tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would
our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just meat
and blood; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafercakes
and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may
enter into a belief, either --

1. That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
2. That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon
occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according
to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such
action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some
sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects
the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the
same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can
consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or
indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the
sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless
jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and
having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate
the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is
that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but
conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything *is* our idea of
its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive
ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part
of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning
unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants
to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if
they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here and hereafter.

It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness
of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, that might
conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our
conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of
our conception of the object.
------------

So, the first question is NOT "Did Jesus exist?" nor "Does wine transform
into his blood." The first question is "What does it *mean*, practically
speaking, to claim Jesus had existed?" and "What does it *mean, *practically
speaking, for the wine to be transformed into blood?"  In both cases, by
"practically speaking" I mean, "what consequences would it have for
possible outcomes of our actions?" which could also be translated pretty
reasonably to "what could a scientist investigate based on that claim".
Nick is fond of asking questions like "If the wine *is *blood, can we use
it for a transfusion?" Where as I, a bit more petulant, prefer questions
like "Given that one can still get drunk off of communion wine, how far
over the DUI limit must He have been at all times, and what implications
does that have for the rest of His physiology?"

After you have some idea what your ideas mean, Peirce has ideas about how
we (in the very long run) find out which of your clear-ideas are true, but
that is a separate conversation.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 10:20 PM Sarbajit Roy <sroy.mb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Nick
>
> 1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as
> a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as
> victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular
> shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with
> symbols to reinforce their delusion.
>
> 2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "*Is
> Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of
> believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. *"
> In my view, and in the *view of many non-Americans*
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/taliban-afghanistan-war-haqqani.html>,
> it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship,
> and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US
> Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those
> who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called
> Christianity.
>
> Sarbajit Roy
> Brahma University
>
> On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Geez, Dave,
>>
>>  There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A
>> person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces
>> that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all?
>>
>>  Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is
>> transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine
>> becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage"
>> wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's
>> a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different
>> conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the
>> substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that
>> it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the
>> chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know
>> not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since
>> part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I
>> would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs'
>> blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of
>> inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice
>> contains wine.  We are still on equal footing.
>>
>>  But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to
>> the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their
>> entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to
>> *deduce* from the categories to which we have *abduced*, the
>> consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the
>> discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's
>> blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.
>> The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in
>> addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to
>> taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody
>> in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are
>> yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it
>> should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue,
>> intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..
>> So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
>>
>>  So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on
>> one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s
>> blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of
>> cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for
>> blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a
>> very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but
>> does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that
>> anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would
>> be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s
>> blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment
>> of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you
>> drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree
>> with me.
>>
>>  This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is
>> definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever
>> the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then,
>> Piece would say the position is either
>>
>> Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no
>> possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because
>> our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the
>> asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the
>> contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine.
>>
>>  Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.
>> It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a
>> poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many
>> prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself
>> chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how
>> you respond.
>>
>>  Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of
>> believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.
>> Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying
>> out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and
>> what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.
>> Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds
>> in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will
>> conclude that he is making a stab at it.
>>
>>  Nick
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>>
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
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