Thanks Mara, we’re off to a good start on Chapter 5!
Your question at the end is intriguing. Offhand I’d say Yes, the more fixed and stereotypical the behavior of the species, the more likely this behavior conforms to rational needs in its species-typical environment — provided that its environment is relatively fixed and static. Insofar as the environment is dynamically changing, though, rationality would require adapting quickly enough to keep pace with the changes. Since we humans alter our own environments (and, increasingly, those of other species) much faster than the pace of biological evolution, “rational needs” are changing too, and then stereotypical behavior can be counter-adaptive. MW: Is the plastic human mind in its native state less adapted to rationality than animal minds, since humans need to be focused, attentive, experiential, and reflective to become more adapted to rationality? GF: I would say a similarly qualified Yes to this too. ‘Being adapted to’ conditions means being guided by habits that are appropriate to the situation. As Peirce reminds us, intelligence is largely the ability to take new habits and throw off old ones; and depending on how complex and dynamic the situation is, adaptation to it would require creativity as well as rationality. That’s why the logic of science requires abduction as well as deduction and induction. So the flip side of the human mind being less adapted to rationality is that it is more creative, better able to override and alter its own habits, to re-adapt. gary f. From: Mara Woods [mailto:mara.wo...@gmail.com] Sent: 3-Nov-14 10:06 AM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; peirce List Subject: [biosemiotics:7353] Natural Propositions, Chapter 5 Hello everyone, Chapter 5 is a first step to applying the doctrine of Dicisigns to cognition. Let's begin with the Adaptation to Rationality hypothesis. We'll move into the ventral-dorsal split and its relation to Dicisigns in a few days. Stjernfelt focuses on the promising work of linguist James Hurford in consolidating neuropsychological findings with logic. Following Hurford, Stjernfelt focuses on visual perception here, although the senses of touch, hearing, and smell seems to follow suit. Essentially, Stjernfelt develops Hurford's hypothesis further by connecting it to Peirce's Dicisigns, thus eliminating many problems in Hurford's account that stem from his psychological stance regarding logic. Peirce's anti-psychological stance about logic so thoroughly discussed in earlier chapters of NP means that principles of psychology should not be used to study logic. However, the principles of logic, including the very structure of Dicisigns, could be legitimately used to study psychology, according to Stjernfelt. Given that logic is the study of the conditions of truth, and minds presumably developed to assist the organism in identifying opportunities and threats in the environment, the mind would be under selective pressure to develop cognitions that identify true opportunities and threats. Stjernfelt calls this the Adaptation to Rationality hypothesis. In a footnote on page 127, he quotes Peirce: [[ But the views of all the leading schools of Logic of the present day, of which there are three or four, are all decidedly opposed to those of the present writer. That common tendency of them which he most of all opposes is that toward regarding human consciousness as the author of rationality, instead of as more or less conforming to rationality. Even if we can find no better definition of rationality than that it is that character of arguments to which experience and reflexion would tend indefinitely to make human approval conform, there still remains a world-wide difference between that idea and the opinion just mentioned. But the thinkers of our day seem to regard the distinction between being the product of the human mind and being that to which the human mind would approximate to thinking if sufficiently influenced by experience and reflection, as a distinction of altogether secondary importance, and hardly worth notice; while to the writer, no distinction appears more momentous than that between “is” and “would be”. ] “Essays on Meaning. Preface (Meaning Preface)” 23 Oct 1909, MS 640.] Peirce rejects the view that rationality is a construct of human mental processes for various reasons. One reason is that rationality is the product of trained, reflective thought in humans, not the general product of the human mind. Another reason stems from his realism. The world already contains conspicuous Dicisigns advertising themselves as representing something real in the world (NP, p. 111) before a mind picks them up. Both of these reasons present adaptation to rationality, the former in ontogeny, through individual experience and cultivation, and the latter in phylogeny, through natural selection (and possibly other evolutionary mechanisms). An interesting question here is the relationship between plasticity and adaptation to rationality. Presumably, the more fixed and stereotypical the behavior of the species, the more likely this behavior conforms to rational needs in its species-typical environment. Is the plastic human mind in its native state less adapted to rationality than animal minds, since humans need to be focused, attentive, experiential, and reflective to become more adapted to rationality? Mara Woods
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
