A couple of comments on this passage from Forster and relating to S. Rose's response: 1. The 'plan' by which the universal intelligence works is not a 'fixed' or time(-space)-invariant 'plan'; (cf. likewise in Plato's Timaeus). There is no way to reason forward to 'deduce' a better world without experimenting. We learn was is more valuable (better) only by a sort of blind effort.
What is 'really' valuable – the good – is inherently, by its very nature, incomprehensible. (Kantian insight) (Incomprehensible because it develops qualitatively; the good keeps getting better. Socrates speech in Symposium: Love is never satisfied (closed). 2. The ultimate fate is not 'indeterminate' just locally 'underdetermined' – which is tied up with the developmental framework. Each stage enables the exploration of the next possible stage of betterment. The 'plan' and the 'intellect' self-referentially and recursively develop. They emerge so that the important problems and questions for each generation are new and different yet built on previous advances. Like intellectual history – each advance is a sort of convergence and yet it opens new 'types of questions' and so is qualitatively emergent. So the issues facing each generation are always qualitatively different. The continuity of the narrative – what holds it (each generation and each era) together is what Hegel called the 'unfolding of an idea' – and the idea is freedom. Freedom is the ability to bring novel value into the world – to make the world better. Dewey later called this – the construction of the good.' Terry On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:23 PM, Gary Richmond wrote: On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of transforming the world though the active realization of intelligent ideals. The ultimate fate of the world is indeterminate and there is no guarantee that the forces of reasonableness will triumph. Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he thinks, is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the pursuit of truth and goodness, a community united, not by mutual self-interest, but by a common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op. cit., 245). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
