Abstract
To survive and thrive in our always evolving world, humans must learn from experience and conserve vital intelligence for immediate access when needed for the resolution of existential predicaments. Peirce described this process as one of inquiry, a trial and error proceeding that resolves quandaries (doubts) and forges habits (beliefs) that accumulate into stores of practical intelligence that are programs for survival. These stores of practical intelligence are the integrated systems of belief that constitute the cores of our minds. But humans aspire to intelligence of a more theoretical sort that has no immediate practical or vital importance but which satisfies intellectual yearnings and advances knowledge in general. The quest for knowledge in general, scientific inquiry, does not yield a body of fixed beliefs (as with practical intelligence) but only a body of provisional beliefs never quite accepted as final. Our minds also encompass theoretical intelligence of this sort. But individual human experience can never achieve the comprehensive practical intelligence necessary for the survival of civilization and the human brain is not adequate for the storage of the theoretical intelligence necessary for the advancement of science. The survival and advancement of civilization depends on the extension of mind beyond individual biological organisms into social groups and institutions. This accords with Peirce’s generalized conception of mind and his idea that minded organisms function within mind that is, at least in part, external to them. Not only can institutions develop minds of their own, some institutions evolve to become the crucial reservoirs of intelligence that define cultures and perpetuate civilization. We may speculate that religion is the human institution that embodies the intelligence that addresses the matters of vital importance for civilizations, while it is the institution of science that embodies the theoretical intelligence that addresses the human aspiration to find things out and our only hope to advance toward the truth.
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Notes
- 1.
Peirce introduced his pragmatism in a series of six papers published in 1877 and 1878 in the Popular Science Monthly. These six papers, as a group, were planned as a book to be titled “Illustrations of the Logic of Science”, and have been reprinted in the main editions of Peirce’s writings. The first two papers are regarded as the classic presentation of pragmatism: “The Fixation of Belief” (W3: 242–257) “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (W3: 257–276).
- 2.
A genuine option is one which is live, forced, and momentous. For details see James (1896: 11).
- 3.
Peirce used various names for the three forms of consciousness; in CP 7.551 he calls feeling “primisense,” consciousness of otherness “altersense,” and thought “medisense.”
- 4.
This distinction is similar to that made in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science between engrams and exograms—see Adams and Aizawa (2010: 144).
- 5.
Note that “organic” was mistakenly set in type by The Monist and was reproduced in The Collected Papers. In Peirce’s original manuscript (his printer’s copy) he clearly wrote “inorganic”.
- 6.
Arthur Burks, editor of volumes 7 and 8 of the Harvard edition of Peirce’s papers, rejected Peirce’s panpsychism but believed it to be ingenious for times. See Houser (2014a: 29).
- 7.
See CP 2.24 where Peirce speculated that the idea of the light of reason, or nearly equivalent conceptions, can probably be found in most cultures. He mentions, for example “the ‘old philosopher’ of China, Lao-Tze” and “the old Babylonian philosophy of the first chapter of Genesis.”
- 8.
For a discussion of this quotation, see Houser (2014b).
- 9.
The idea of social beliefs has been discussed and defended by Émile Durkheim and Margaret Gilbert, among others.
- 10.
See n. 5, above, about the distinction made between engrams and exograms.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
For a helpful overview see Adams and Aizawa (2010).
- 14.
Mead’s social behaviorism was the foundation for the school of sociology known as symbolic interactionism.
- 15.
For discussion of Peirce’s influence on the development of sociology, see Wiley (2006).
- 16.
- 17.
A good treatment of Peirce’s evolutionary philosophy can be found in Hausman (1993).
- 18.
As is typical with Peirce, he identified three kinds of agapastic development.
- 19.
- 20.
Perhaps today, in some cultures, professional sports serve this function as well, or better, than the institution of religion, but that would not have been the case in Peirce’s day.
- 21.
To avoid misunderstanding, it is worth repeating that I make no pretense of making definitive pronouncements about the nature of religion or science. My aim here is to consider how Peirce’s conception of belief, in particular as it applies to matters of vital importance and to theoretical concerns, may help illuminate the development of external minds in institutions and society. The institutions of religion and science are of key importance for this inquiry—which clearly is still preliminary.
- 22.
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Houser, N. (2016). Social Minds and the Fixation of Belief. In: West, D., Anderson, M. (eds) Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45920-2_21
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