AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.

However, for Peirce, it was precisely this aspect of anthropomorphism that pointed toward theism as the least false idea of that which stood behind the universe (PSC 376). Peirce argued that human beings could not have an “idea of any cause or agency so stupendous that there is any more adequate way of conceiving it than as vaguely like a man” (CP 5.536) or a “vague idea of human likeness” (MS L390). In a sense, this anthropomorphic ‘God’ could be construed as a generalised sign of the highest human aspirations imaginable, and thus as closely aligned with the esthetic ideal of the summum bonum (see CP 8.262). In this respect, Peirce’s deity was infinite yet indefinitely comprehensible; but he also quipped that he preferred “an old-fashioned God” to “a modern patent Absolute” as a closer approximation to the truth (CP 5.47 n. 1)

summum bonum

16 Apr 2023 - 17 Jun 2023

Summum bonum is a Latin expression meaning the highest or ultimate good, which was introduced by Cicero to denote the fundamental principle on which some system of ethics is based — that is, the aim of actions, which, if consistently pursued, will lead to the best possible life.

Interesting that that paragraph has an implicit utilitarian bent ("best possible life").

Aka "Form of the Good" and whatnot. A disturbingly elusive things for a naturalist. There's no form of the good in evolution, just forms that are better at duplicating themselves and those that aren't. But any kind of moral or ethical argument implicitly points to some common and ultimate Good.

Reason turns out to be the one thing which satisfies all the qualifications previously established-it is a general, subservient, and single ideal and is admirable in itself. Peirce says that "the essence of Reason is such that its being never can have been completely perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth' and is like the character of a man, which is in a state of constant flux and develops only as the occasions arise.