Jack Park wondered where I "might go in the elaboration" of my comment
It would seem to me that the integrity of a genuine triadic relationship
involving all three categories is involved in human intelligence which thus
has a potential for participating in its own form of evolution.[GR]
Such an "elaboration" would certainly involve a more or less complete
exegesis of Peirce evolutionary philosophy and, especially, his logic
as triadic semeiotic, pragmatism, and critical commonsensism, a
possible foray into and reconsideration of second and perhaps third
order cybernetics, for example, the former as taken up by Bruce Buchanan
http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/genre/buchanan/homepageBB.htm
perhaps a further development of so-called cyber-semiotics, e.g., see
http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/vol8/v8-1ind.html
some of the evolutionary notions of Ervin Laszlo, co-evolutionary ones
of Doug Engelbart, etc., etc.
For the present I'm concentrating my efforts mainly on such Peircean
notions as might contribute to the growth of collaboratories and
virtual communities. Since at the moment I'm caught up in conference
paper deadlines, I will here only hint at some of the Peircean notions
involved. Peirce holds that "the laws of nature are results of
evolution" and that "this evolution must proceed according to some
principle; and this principle will itself be of the nature of a law.
But it must be such a law that it can evolve or develop itself" and
concludes that "it must be a tendency toward generalization, -- a
generalizing tendency." He suggest that we look for such a
"fundamental universal tendency" where we "find plasticity and
evolution still at work. The most plastic of all things is the human
mind. . .. Now the generalizing tendency is the great law of mind, the
law of association, the law of habit taking."
In Peirce's theory this becomes a matter of exercising critical self-
and hetero-control through pragmatic methods of inquiry connected to a
critical commonsensism, the latter suggesting that there are not only
principles we don't question (and even given his fallibilism, these
can be as indubitable as that fire burns), but also indubitable
inferences. This last joined to interesting and creative abductions
prepares the path for intellectual evolution.
Well, I'm afraid this "short shrift" of the topic has probably produced
more questions & confusion than clarifying the issue. But, I'll
leave it be for now, adding just one suggestive Peircean passage on a
related evolutionary theme.
CP 1.348 . As to the common aversion to
recognizing thought as an active factor in the real world, some of its
causes are easily traced. In the first place, people are persuaded that
everything that happens in the material universe is a motion completely
determined by inviolable laws of dynamics; and that, they think, leaves
no room for any other influence. But the laws of dynamics stand on
quite a different footing from the laws of gravitation, elasticity,
electricity, and the like. The laws of dynamics are very much like
logical principles, if they are not precisely that. They only say how
bodies will move after you have said what the forces are. They permit
any forces, and therefore any motions. Only, the principle of the
conservation of energy requires us to explain certain kinds of motions
by special hypotheses about molecules and the like, , , Setting
dynamical laws to one side, then, as hardly being positive laws, but
rather mere formal principles, we have only the laws of gravitation,
elasticity, electricity, and chemistry. Now who will deliberately say
that our knowledge of these laws is sufficient to make us reasonably
confident that they are absolutely eternal and immutable, and that they
escape the great law of evolution? Each hereditary character is a law,
but it is subject to developement and to decay. Each habit of an
individual is a law; but these laws are modified so easily by the
operation of self-control, that it is one of the most patent of facts
that ideals and thought generally have a very great influence on human
conduct. That truth and justice are great powers in the world is no
figure of speech, but a plain fact to which theories must accommodate
themselves.
CP 1.349 The child, with his wonderful genius for language, naturally
looks upon the world as chiefly governed by thought; for thought and
expression are really one. . . .But as he grows up, he loses this
faculty; and all through his childhood he has been stuffed with such a
pack of lies. . . that he begins real life with the utmost contempt for
all the ideas of his childhood; and the great truth of the immanent
power of thought in the universe is flung away along with the lies.
So the Peircean project can perhaps be seen as an attempt to reanimate
a sense of "the great truth of the immanent power of thought in the
universe," of course through a critical sensibility (which in Peirce at
least is not opposed to sentiment, the fine arts, religion, etc.)
However, in the matter of the possible evolution of human
consciousness, I tend to find the great philosophies of the East static
and, yes, precisely, albeit profoundly, empty of potential for
evolutionary growth so that even my meditative practice these days
involves something like what Peirce termed "musement" on the three
Universes of Experiences.
Best,
Gary
Jack Park wrote:
On 1/3/06, Gary Richmond <garyrichmond@rcn.com> wrote:
<snip>
It would seem to me that the integrity of a genuine triadic relationship
involving all three categories is involved in human intelligence which thus
has a potential for participating in its own form of evolution.
Gary
Gary,
I hope I'm not alone in wondering where you might go in an elaboration
on that statement.
Thanks
Jack
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