Dissatisfaction (or bemused acceptance) comes when things established
(habits) are somehow not able to get the job done. Resolving that is among
the gifts of conscious thinking. But there are many other gifts as well.
ᐧ

Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 8:58 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:

> Jon,
>
>
>
> Replies to your replies inserted.
>
>
>
> Gary f.
>
>
>
> *From:* Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 20-May-16 20:05
>
> Gary F., List:
>
> Gf: Now I’m seeing the limitations of your hypothesis that ALL human
> endeavor is rooted in dissatisfaction. It seems to ignore more positive
> motivations such as curiosity, participation and playfulness in all its
> forms. The quest for knowledge can be much more than an escape from a state
> of dissatisfaction.
>
> Js: Although I mainly had in mind the irritation of (genuine) doubt, it
> seems to me that curiosity, participation, and playfulness can all be
> understood as forms of dissatisfaction.  The quest for knowledge would
> cease altogether if everyone were truly satisfied with the current state of
> their knowledge.
>
> Gf: Are you claiming that everyone has to be aware enough of “the current
> state of their knowledge” to make such a judgment on it before undertaking
> any investigation? The fact that curiosity etc. *can be understood* as
> forms of dissatisfaction doesn’t imply that any feeling of dissatisfaction
> necessarily enters into the actual process. I doubt that all explorers are
> so introspective.
>
> Gf: But discovery of principles *in nature* — including the nature of
> conscious purposes as a specialized subset of final causes, or natural
> purposes — is, for any philosopher, ethically privileged over manipulation
> of any kind, because self-control depends on it.
>
> Js: I am not sure that I follow this.  How does self-control depend on
> the discovery of principles in nature?
>
> Gf: This is such an essential part of Peirce’s critical common-sensism and
> pragmaticism that I hardly know where to begin. How can you exercise any
> control over your actions if you have no idea of their predictable
> consequences? Where can you get such ideas except by learning from
> experience about principles of causality in nature, and intentionality in
> human nature? (Human nature is a part of nature, not apart from it.)
>
> Js: Where and how do we draw the line between what is "natural" and what
> is "artificial"--i.e., the result of human manipulation?
>
> Gf: The answer to that would vary with the contextual situation, and I
> don’t see the relevance of the question in this context. My whole point is
> that there *is no* definite division between natural and conscious
> purposes; purposefulness, which Peirce calls Thought (or Thirdness), is a
> continuum including everything from natural tendencies to conscious
> decision-making and adoption of ideals of conduct. Manipulation, like all
> conduct, is always done for *some* purpose; ethics is a matter of
> becoming conscious of what those purposes are, to the extent that one can
> judge some end (as well as some means to an end) to be better than another.
> So your next question makes no sense to me either:
>
> Js: Why should "natural" purposes always be "ethically privileged" over
> human purposes?
>
> Gf: Since I didn’t say that, I might as well just quote Peirce on the
> development of conscious purposes in humans:
>
>
>
> [[[ To return to self-control, which I can but slightly sketch, at this
> time, of course there are inhibitions and coördinations that entirely
> escape consciousness. There are, in the next place, modes of self-control
> which seem quite instinctive. Next, there is a kind of self-control which
> results from training. Next, a man can be his own training-master and thus
> control his self-control. When this point is reached much or all the
> training may be conducted in imagination. When a man trains himself, thus
> controlling control, he must have some moral rule in view, however special
> and irrational it may be. But next he may undertake to improve this rule;
> that is, to exercise a control over his control of control. To do this he
> must have in view something higher than an irrational rule. He must have
> some sort of moral principle. This, in turn, may be controlled by reference
> to an esthetic ideal of what is fine. There are certainly more grades than
> I have enumerated. Perhaps their number is indefinite. The brutes are
> certainly capable of more than one grade of control; but it seems to me
> that our superiority to them is more due to our greater number of grades of
> self-control than it is to our versatility. ]]]  CP 5.533
>
>
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