Gary, lists, I think you are suggesting a nice amendment to the more general statement I put forward. When writing it, I was struggling to incorporate individuals, groups and natural kinds into the formulation, and I think all three are needed. Here is a restatement:
Instincts, being habits shared by a number of distinct individuals, where those individuals belong to larger populations that are characterized as being of the same natural kind, are shaped by the laws of evolution and will be weeded out by the forces of selective pressure if the “ledger” doesn’t “balance”. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: g...@gnusystems.ca [g...@gnusystems.ca] Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 5:33 PM To: 'Peirce-L' Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Instinct Jeff, yes, that makes it more general. I asked my wife (who's a bookkeeper) and it does make sense to her that if there's an entry for the benefit to the individual, and another for the benefit to the kind, then the individual entry should not be higher than the "kind" entry, in the case of an inherited habit-pattern such as "association" (which I take to mean the habit of being sociable). Otherwise the kind would incur a deficit, I guess, so it would not "pay" to keep passing on that habit. If this is Peirce's argument, it seems to support group selection (i.e. the population as the unit of selection rather than the individual), which I think some biologists are skeptical about. Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu] Sent: July 15, 2015 4:35 PM Gary F, list, Yes, that is the approach I would adopt as an interpretative hypothesis. It squares with quite a number of things he says and the different kinds of instincts he considers. Having said that, I think it might help if the explanation were made more general: Instinct, being a habit shared by individuals that belong to a natural kind, has been shaped by the laws of evolution and will continue to be weeded out by the forces of selective pressure if the “ledger” doesn’t “balance”. Or, something like that--at least for starters. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: g...@gnusystems.ca [g...@gnusystems.ca] Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 1:01 PM Jeff, Gary et al., My first thought was that instinct being a habit of the species (not just the individual), it would have been weeded out by natural selection if the “ledger” didn’t “balance”. Isn’t that a possibility for what Peirce had in mind? Gary f. From: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com] Sent: July 15, 2015 3:21 PM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Instinct Jeff, John, list, Jeff, quoting Peirce, wrote: This claims is particularly interesting: "Association may happen to be of advantage to the associating individuals; but each individual's instinct brings no more advantage to him than the sum of all the advantages that it brings to so many others. It is double-entry book-keeping; and the sides of the ledger must balance." Why must the sides of the ledger balance?
----------------------------- 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 .
