[6.7.] Peirce’s “Mystical” Experience.

 

Between writing the second and third articles of the cosmological series, Peirce had what he himself described as a “mystical” experience. It occurred in St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, in New York City, on April 24, 1892. He described it in the following letter to Rev. John W. Brown, the rector of St. Thomas’s:

 

12 W 39^th St. 1892 Apr 24

Dear & Reverend Sir:

I took the Holy Communion at St Thomas’s this morning—in fact, just now—under peculiar circumstances, which it seems proper to report.

For many years I have not taken Communion and have seldom entered a church, although I have always had a passionate love for the church and a complete faith that the essence of christianity, whatever that might be, was Divine; but still I could not reconcile my notions of common sense and of evidence with propositions of the creed, and I found going to church made me sophistical and gave me an impulse to play fast and loose with matters of intellectual integrity. Therefore, I gave it up; though it has been the cause of many a bitter reflection. Many times I have tried to cipher out some justification for my return to the communion of the church; but I could not. Especially, the last two nights I have lain awake thinking of the matter.

This morning after breakfast I felt I had to go to church anyway. I wandered about not knowing where, to find a regular episcopal church, in which I was confirmed; but finally came to St. Thomas. I had several times been in it on week days to look at the chancel, therefore I saw nothing new to me. But this time—I was not thinking of St. Thomas and his doubts either—no sooner had I got into the church than I seemed to receive the direct permission of the Master to come. Still, I said to myself, I must not go to the communion without further reflection! I must go home & duly prepare myself before I venture. But, when the instant came, I found myself carried up to the altar rail, almost without my own volition. I am perfectly sure that it was right. Anyway, I could not help it.

I may mention the reason why I do not offer to put my gratitude for the bounty granted to me into some form of church work, that which seemed to call me today seemed to promise me that I should bear a cross like death for the Master’s sake, and he would give me strength to bear it. I am sure that will happen. My part is to wait.

I have never before been mystical; but now I am. After giving myself time to reflect upon the situation, I will call to see you.

Yours very truly
C. S. Peirce

It does not seem to me that it would be wise to make the circumstances known; but I conceive it my duty to report them to you. I am a man of 52, and married.[1]

 

Peirce biographer Joseph Brent points out that Peirce commented on this experience six years later, in 1898:

 

If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly to hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her from a villain, would you stop to reason out the metaphysical question of whether it were possible for one mind to cause material waves of sound and for another mind to perceive them? If you did, the problem might probably occupy the remainder of your days. In the same way, if a man undergoes any religious experience and hears the call of his Saviour, for him to halt till he has adjusted a philosophical difficulty would seem to be an analogous sort of thing, whether you call it stupid or whether you call it disgusting. If on the other hand, a man has had no religious experience, then any religion not an affectation is as yet impossible for him; and the only worthy course is to wait quietly till such experience comes. No amount of speculation can take the place of experience.[2]

 

Brent has conjectured that this mystical experience had a profound and lasting effect on Peirce’s philosophy and that this is reflected in the last three articles of the cosmological series:

 

                These five essays, written during an intensely promising and threatening time, clearly exhibit the impact of his mystical experience on his philosophical perspective. The first two show none of the mystical doctrine which is interspersed throughout the last three, and which reappears consistently in his work for the rest of his life.[3]

 

I believe that Brent overstates the impact this experience had on Peirce’s philosophy; I do not think he is right to say that the mystical doctrine “reappears consistently” in Peirce’s work after 1892.[4]

 

However, there is certainly a mystical flavor to the final three papers in the series, especially to the last one, “Evolutionary Love.” The third paper, “The Law of Mind,” contains an application to religion that, although fleeting, is absent form the first two papers:

 

... a genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God. (EP 1:331, CP 6.157)

 

As we’ll see, Peirce briefly returns to the idea of a personal God at the end of this article.

 

[6.7.] Synechism.

 

So far we have covered the following doctrines of Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology:

·         evolutionism: the universe is evolving; in particular, it is evolving from a state of lesser- to a state of greater-lawfulness.

·         objective idealism: matter is “effete mind,” in that mental laws (those that are inexact and not absolute) are primary, whereas physical laws (those that are exact, absolute and without exception) derive from mental  laws.

·         tychism: there is an element of real “absolute chance” in the universe, i.e., there is real contingency; while most events happen according to absolute, physical law, there are nonetheless events that are not completely law-governed.

 

In “The Law of Mind,” the third paper of the cosmological series (and the last from which we will read), Peirce emphasizes a fourth constituent claim of his cosmology:[5]

 

synechism (Peirce’s term):

·         “The tendency to regard continuity, in the sense in which I shall define it, as an idea of prime importance in philosophy.” (EP 1:313, CP 6.103; “The Law of Mind,” 1892)

·         “the doctrine that all that exists is continuous” (CP 1.172, c.1897 -- not in EP)

 

 

[6.7.1.] Continuity.

 

So what is continuity? And how does Peirce, in particular, define it?

                                           

Informally, continuity is the state of being continuous, of being without gaps, breaches, breaks or sudden leaps. Intuitively, time and space are both continuous (not everyone would agree that they are, but they certainly seem to be continuous in our normal experience of them). Consider space: there is not one chunk of space here and another there, with a gap in between them. There are no “breaks” in space. Rather, space flows continuously. The same seems to be true of time.

 

Much of Peirce’s thinking about continuity involved what it means for the real number line (the geometrical representation of R, the set of real numbers) to be continuous.

 

R, the set of real numbers, consists of the rational and irrational numbers.

·         rational numbers: numbers that can be expressed as a ratio (e.g., ½, 2/1, 1/100, -2/5, etc.); these include the integers: { ... -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3...}

·         irrational numbers: numbers that cannot be expressed as a ratio (e.g., p, the square root of two, etc.)

 

The real line consists of points, each of which corresponds to a real number (called the correlate of that point). So on the line, there is a point corresponding to each of the rational numbers AND each of the irrational numbers.

 

His preferred definition of continuity changed at least three times over the course of his life. In 1892, when he wrote “The Law of Mind,” he held the following definition:

 

continuity (Peirce’s df.₁₈₉₂): continuity consists of Kanticity and Aristotelicity: [6]

Kanticity: having a point between any two points

Aristotelicity: the property of any series of points that “contains the end point belonging to every endless series of points which it contains.” (EP 1:321, CP 6.123); i.e., a series of points possesses Aristotelicity if and only if, for every endless series of points that it contains, it also contains that series’ end point.

 

 

[6.7.2.] The Law of Mind.

 

Peirce had earlier stated the law as follows:

 

The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalization. Feeling tends to spread; connections between feelings awaken feelings; neighboring feelings become assimilated; ideas are apt to reproduce themselves. These are so many formulations of the one law of the growth of mind. (“Architecture of Theories,” EP 1:291, CP 6.21)

 

But here he restates it, and in such a way as to make explicit the relevance of synechism:

 

Logical analysis applied to mental phenomena shows that there is but one law of mind, namely, that ideas tend to spread continuously and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. In this spreading they lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others, but gain generality and become welded with other ideas. (“The Law of Mind,” EP 1:313, CP 6.104, emphasis added)

 

[For an illustration of what Peirce has in mind here, see the example of the feeling of the color vermilion, EP 1:325, CP 6.136-37.]

 

So his emphasis in the cosmological papers is on the relevance of synechism for an understanding of the mind. He is especially concerned with continuity among ideas.

 

 

[6.7.3.] Synechism and the Law of Mind vs. Atomism.

 

Peirce says that he attempted to develop the doctrine of synechism in the cognition series of 1868-9, but was “a little blinded by nominalistic prepossessions.” (EP 1:313, CP 6.103)

 

In “Man’s Glassy Essence” (the fourth paper in the cosmological series), he explains the “nominalistic prepossessions” that earlier in this series he attributed to the 1868-9 cognition papers:

 

The consciousness of a general idea has a certain “unity of the ego,” in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person; and, indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea. Long ago, in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy [in the “cognition” series of 1868-69, including “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities], I pointed out that a person is nothing but a symbol involving a general idea; but my views were, then, too nominalistic to enable me to see that every general idea has the unified living feeling of a person. (EP 1:350, CP 6.270)

 

What he means here is that, since the 1868-9 series, he has come to distance himself even further from an empiricist-style atomism about the mind, according to which a given mind is composed of individual, discrete, unconnected ideas.[7]

 

 

[6.7.4.] The Continuity of Ideas.

 

Peirce begins an explanation of what he means by saying that ideas are continuous by raising the question, “How can a past idea be present?” (EP 1:314, CP 6.107)

 

He states the difficulty behind this question as follows: “...taking the word ‘idea’ in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness, it is clear that an idea once past is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea.” (EP 1:313, CP 6.105)

 

His synechism as applied to the mind is supposed to show how it is that a past idea can in fact be present.

 

He begins his attempt to answer the question as follows:

 

... to be present, it must be ipso facto [by that very fact] present. That is, it cannot be wholly past; it can only be going, infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the present is connected with the past by a series of real infinitesimal steps. (EP 1:314, CP 6.109)

 

As an adjective, “infinitesimal” means having a value arbitrarily close to zero... an infinitesimal number is a number closer to zero than any specified number. It is less than any finite number. An infinitesimal duration of time would be less than any finite duration of time, but still greater than no time at all.

 

On Peirce’s view, a past idea can be present when it is infinitesimally past... really, genuinely in the past, but “less” in the past then any specific time.

 

Suppose an idea, I, is present to (or present in) a mind at a specific time, t. The question is, how can that same idea have been present to that same mind at an earlier time? Peirce’s answer is that the idea, I, can have been present at an earlier time if that earlier time is infinitesimally close to t. The time in the past at which I is the time t minus n, where “n” stands for some arbitrarily small quantity of time... a quantity larger than no time at all, but still smaller than any specifiable quantity of time.

 

It is not simply that one’s consciousness of an idea takes place over an infinitesimal duration (although that is, in fact, Peirce’s view). One’s consciousness of that idea is direct... when you are conscious of an idea, I, you are not conscious of a representation of I. Rather, you are conscious of I itself, directly conscious of that idea.

 

So, since your consciousness of I occurs over an infinitesimal duration of time, I itself must occur over an infinitesimal duration:

 

... in this infinitesimal interval, not only is consciousness continuous in a subjective sense, that is, considered as a subject or substance having the attribute of duration, but also, because it is immediate consciousness, its object is ipso facto continuous. In fact, this infinitesimally spread-out consciousness is a direct feeling of its contents as spread out. (EP 1:315, CP 6.111)

 

 

[6.7.5.] Mental Events are Contingent.

 

As we’ve already seen, Peirce distinguishes between mental or “psychical” laws, which are indeterministic, and physical laws, which are deterministic.

 

So the “law of mind,” that ideas tend to spread, to become generalized, is not deterministic. There is an element of contingency in the operation of a given mind.

 

... no mental action seems to be necessary or invariable in its character. In whatever manner the mind has reacted under a given sensation, in that manner it is the more likely to react again; were this, however, an absolute necessity, habits would become wooden and ineradicable and, no room being left for the formation of new habits, intellectual life would come to a speedy close. Thus, the uncertainty of the mental law is no mere defect of it, but is on the contrary of its essence. The truth is, the mind is not subject to "law" in the same rigid sense that matter is. It only experiences gentle forces which merely render it more likely to act in a given way than it otherwise would be. There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action, without which it would be dead. (EP 1:329, CP 6.148)

 

 

[6.7.6.] Restatement of the Law.

 

Now Peirce summarizes what has gone before, and in so doing reiterates the connection between what he’s up to here and the nominalism/realism debate.

 

                Let me now try to gather up all these odds and ends of commentary and restate the law of mind, in a unitary way.

                First, then, we find that when we regard ideas from a nominalistic, individualistic, sensualistic way, the simplest facts of mind become utterly meaningless. That one idea should resemble another or influence another, or that one state of mind should so much as be thought of in another, is, from that standpoint, sheer nonsense.

                Second, by this and other means we are driven to perceive, what is quite evident of itself, that instantaneous feelings flow together into a continuum of feeling, which has in a modified degree the peculiar vivacity of feeling and has gained generality. And in reference to such general ideas, or continua of feeling, the difficulties about resemblance and suggestion and reference to the external cease to have any force. (EP 1:330; CP 6.150-4)

 

I think this is what he’s getting at:

 

On the nominalistic view of mind...	but on Peirce’s synechistic view...
ideas are individual things, isolated from one another (this is the atomism of the empiricists)	“instantaneous feelings” flow into each other, forming a continuum of feeling which is (not individual but) general
certain facts about the mind are inexplicable, e.g. ·         that one idea can resemble another ·         that one idea can influence another ·         that one state of mind can be thought about in another state of mind ·         “reference to the external” (EP1:330, CP6.151) -- that an idea can refer to something outside the mind?	these facts become explicable

 

 

[6.7.7.] Synechism and a Personal God.

 

As we saw earlier, Peirce takes his evolutionary cosmology to be “inseparable” from the belief in a personal God:

 

... a genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator that it is really inseparable from that idea; ... (EP 1:331, CP 6.157)

 

At the end of “The Law of Mind,” he returns to this idea:

 

A difficulty which confronts the synechistic philosophy is this. In considering personality, that philosophy is forced to accept the doctrine of a personal God; but in considering communication, it cannot but admit that if there is a personal God, we must have a direct perception of that person and indeed be in personal communication with him. Now, if that be the case, the question arises how it is possible that the existence of this being should ever have been doubted by anybody. The only answer that I can at present make is that facts that stand before our face and eyes and stare us in the face are far from being, in all cases, the ones most easily discerned. That has been remarked from time immemorial. (EP 1:332, CP 6.162)

 

 

Stopping point for Monday October 15. For next time, read pp.1-3 of the “Peirce on Modality handout” (I will email this to you).