Mind, Meaning, and the Cosmos

Chris King, Charles Peirce, and the Future of Philosophy

Sungchul Ji (with ChatGPT)
Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Cell Biology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy,
Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Substack Series on the Philosophical Commons

1. Introduction: What Should Philosophy Give Us?

If philosophy is to be more than armchair speculation, it must deliver what we call “philosophical goods”: truth-seeking integrity, ethical clarity, ecological harmony, conceptual elegance, and a vision worthy of the human condition.
In this post, we compare two bold visions of reality—Chris King’s Symbiotic Existential Cosmology (SEC) and Charles Sanders Peirce’s Triadic Semiotics—to assess how well each delivers on those goods. What results is not just a contrast of two thinkers, but a map of two complementary roads toward reconciling mind, matter, and meaning.

2. Eight Philosophical Goods

We define the following eight philosophical goods as desirable outcomes of any theory of reality:
1. Epistemological Integrity – Seeks truth through fallible, testable, self-correcting inquiry
2. Ontological Coherence – Offers a logically consistent and unified vision of existence
3. Semiotic Richness – Accounts for meaning-making, symbols, and communication
4. Ethical Grounding – Provides a foundation for values, responsibility, and stewardship
5. Interdisciplinary Integration – Bridges science, art, philosophy, and spirituality
6. Human Empowerment – Recognizes subjective experience, creativity, and freedom
7. Ecological Resonance – Reconciles humanity with the living Earth
8. Future-Readiness – Equips us to face existential and planetary challenges

3. Chris King’s SEC: Consciousness in Symbiosis

King’s Symbiotic Existential Cosmology proposes that:
- Subjective consciousness is not a byproduct of matter but the cosmogenic foundation of reality.
- Symbiosis, not competition, is the deepest evolutionary principle—uniting genes, species, and minds.
- Entheogens (e.g., DMT, psilocybin) are not accidents of nature but biospheric tools for evolving awareness.
- The universe is completing itself through self-aware agents—us.
- The separation between mind and matter is illusory; the cosmos is a mind–body complementarity.

SEC draws from quantum physics, neuroscience, biology, mysticism, and deep ecology, and offers a poetic, planetary vision of mind embedded in the fabric of Nature.

4. Peirce’s Triadic Philosophy: Logic of the Cosmos

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) built a meticulous metaphysics based on triadic logic and semiotics:
- All things are signs: reality is a web of sign–object–interpretant relations.
- He introduced three categories:
• Firstness: raw qualities and possibilities
• Secondness: brute facts, reactions, resistance
• Thirdness: mediation, law, habit, generality
- Evolution begins in pure spontaneity (tychism), stabilized by habit formation.
- Fallibilism and community inquiry ensure that knowledge progresses.
- Synechism affirms the continuity of mind and matter as one spectrum.

Peirce’s system provides a formal architecture for interpreting everything from logic and mathematics to physics, theology, and cognition.Table: How Each Thinker Contributes to the Eight Goods

Philosophical Good

Chris King (SEC)

Charles S. Peirce

1. Epistemological Integrity

🌗 Moderate: Prioritizes direct experience; risks unverifiability

✅ Strong: Logical rigor, fallibilism, scientific realism

2. Ontological Coherence

🌕 Strong: Unified worldview based on subjectivity and symbiosis

✅ Very Strong: Deep triadic ontology; elegant metaphysical categories

3. Semiotic Richness

🌗 Moderate: Biospheric signaling; lacks formal sign theory

🌕 Exceptional: Reality as semiosis; defines logic of meaning

4. Ethical Grounding

🌕 Strong: Ecological ethics; spiritual stewardship

🌗 Moderate: Implicit ethics via long-term reason and social consensus

5. Interdisciplinary Scope

🌕 Very Strong: Blends biology, psychedelics, quantum theory, and myth

✅ Strong: Connects logic, science, semiotics, and religion

6. Human Empowerment

🌕 Very Strong: Values subjectivity, insight, and biospheric dialogue

🌗 Moderate: Emphasizes reason and community over individual spirituality

7. Ecological Resonance

🌕 Strong: Humanity as part of a living planet

🌗 Limited: Ecology not central; focus is symbolic and abstract

8. Future-Readiness

🌕 Strong: Offers existential tools for human-biosphere crisis

✅ Strong: Logical tools for inquiry, modeling, and adaptive understanding

5. Toward a Complementary Synthesis

While King and Peirce appear to walk different paths—one poetic and experiential, the other logical and analytic—they both:
- Reject mechanistic materialism
- Embrace triadic structure (King: body–life–mind; Peirce: First–Second–Third)
- Affirm that meaning is real, not reducible to matter
- Believe the universe evolves toward greater complexity and intelligibility

What Peirce offers in formal clarity, King offers in existential resonance. One grounds us in logic; the other lifts us into ecospiritual possibility.

Together, they suggest a richer model of reality—one in which meaning, mind, and matter are dynamically co-creating the cosmos.

Final Reflections: Cultivating the Philosophical Commons

In an age of AI, climate emergency, and post-truth politics, we need cosmologies that are both epistemically robust and existentially meaningful. SEC and Peircean semiotics both offer powerful contributions to what we’ve called the Philosophical Commons—the shared conceptual ground from which new insights, ethics, and futures may grow.

Instead of choosing one over the other, we may do better to weave them together.

As Peirce might say, let the long-run inquiry proceed.
As King might say, let the biosphere speak.