[FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Interesting. My guess is that we could fold Peirce (thanks Frank -- I'm the victim, here! 8^) into a particular *kind* of mystical tradition. I'm no scholar. But it seems to me that mystics come in 2 flavors, those who believe cause (a derivative of existence) is merely occult versus those who believe cause is unknowable. Peirce would land in the former camp, I think.

If we posit the existence of immortal people (I've longed for "intellectual vampires" to accompany the philosophers' favorite "intellectual zombies"), I suspect Peirce might agree that a specific type of vampire would be able to track ontology with their conceptions -- and, more importantly, the methods by which they track the world. But I'd need to know more about why y'all distinguish, so disjointly, evolutionary epistemology versus the long-term stabilization of collective conceptions.

Entheogens are of the manipulationist conception of cause. They not only provide access to truth, but *intervene* in the world so as to change the truth. ... if they didn't do that, the name "entheogen" wouldn't apply. So we could argue that evolutionary epistemology might provide for an "open-ended" world ... one where few, if any, properties/attributes are forever-stable. But the long-term stabilization of a conception relies on there being properties upon which the conceptions *can* stabilize.

To me, the very *talking about* of this sort of thing has helped us, no matter which way the question resolves. So, Peirce has *already* helped us. To ignore that seems a bit flippant.


On 2/20/20 7:58 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Your analysis is excellent but the post is missing what is actually an important bit of information re: my quest that Nick would likely recall but is not in the post. I am interested in whether or not various approaches to epistemology are applicable to "knowledge" obtained from mystical and/or hallucinogenic experiences.
> 
> This makes my "feint" a little less of one and my conclusion that Pierce probably offers little of assistance less of a provocation.
> 
> I used to think that Pierce had a bit of the mystic in his work, but increasingly doubt it.

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