[MD] Royce's Evolutionary Insight

[Ian Glendinning]

Read a great quote on Schopenhauer recently:

"Arthur Schopenhauer, a thinker so unremittingly gloomy that his work,
quite unintentionally, represents one of the great comic masterpieces
of western thought." Terry Eagleton "The Meaning of Life"

Regards
Ian


On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 3:21 AM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Royce scholar? that's more my aspiration than description.  I haven't even
> finished one book yet.  I did peek in the back of Kuklick's at the index and
> Fichte isn't mentioned once, nor in Kegeley's explication of a Roycean
> public philosophy.  Nor am I at all familiar with him.
> However, reading Fichte's Wiki page, I'd be very surprised if Royce didn't
> comment on him.  In the wiki entry, Fichte is portrayed as a bridge from
> Kant to Hegel and Royce describes himself (and is described by others) as
> much closer to Schopenhauer than Hegel.  Thus Schopenhauer's criticism is
> interesting to my Roycean investigations:
>
>
> "For he declared everything to be *a priori*, naturally without any evidence
> for such a monstrous assertion; instead of these, he gave sophisms and even
> crazy sham demonstrations whose absurdity was concealed under the mask of
> profundity and of the incomprehensibility ostensibly arising therefrom."
>
>
> sounds like somebody who wrote our own unka Hammie's book of style...
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Ian Glendinning
> <ian.glendinning at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> One observation on Royce and the (19th century) primitive Darwinian
>> view of evolution.
>> He's right to raise the subject above the mechanistic reductionism,
>> but of course there were / are plenty more creative mechanisms than
>> conflict involved in the long-run history - biographical narrative.
>> The combined result can be fitter, without there being a loser as
>> suggested by the archetypal tooth-and-claw reading.
>>
>> And one question. As a Royce scholar, do you see his reading of Fichte
>> as useful / relevant ?
>> (I ask because there is a Royce connection to Mary Parker-Follett I'm
>> thinking about following-up, as well as to Jamesian radical
>> empiricism.)
>>
>> Regards
>> Ian
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 8:43 PM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Royce in reconciling the mechanistic view of the 17th century with the
>> > evolutionary view of the 19th:
>> >
>> >
>> > "Should evolutionary doctrines be true, the real world will not be a
>> place
>> > of mechanical laws and the flux of atoms; it will be a world of struggle
>> and
>> > conflict, of the triumph of the good, or of the abolition of evil, of the
>> > moral importance of the world, of the transition form lower to higher
>> > conditions... it will be a world of ideals."
>> >
>> >
>> > Why does Royce see these implications in the truth of evolutionary
>> > doctrines?  An evolutionary process is historical, and to appreciate it,
>> he
>> > claims, we must forsake that kind of temporality which confines
>> mechanistic
>> > explanation.  An evolutionary sequence may be a series of events which
>> qua
>> > series is physical -- a set of causally related conditions occurring in
>> > space and time; but to accept this series as an historical explanation is
>> to
>> > emphasize unity, meaning, or significance in a way that a causal
>> explanation
>> > will not.  When a temporal explanation functions this way as an
>> explanation,
>> > when it affirms meaning or significance, our explanation takes on a moral
>> > dimension; it will be evaluative according to Royce.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Evaluative.  Value.
>> >
>> >
>> > Royce compares the construction of a mental life to the construction of
>> > sound on a phonograph.  Reverse the motion of the phonograph and the same
>> > sounds become unintelligible.  All the same information is there, but the
>> > meaning is lost.
>> >
>> >
>> > Analogously, imagine a physical description of human consciousness.  If
>> we
>> > should reverse the description, the equation differs only by the
>> > substitution of a minus for a plus.  Nonetheless, as a conscious mind,
>> there
>> > will not merely be "inverted significance":
>> >
>> >
>> > The significance of mental life is not a function of the law-governed
>> > sequences of its states.  The world of our mental states has a history
>> from
>> > moment to moment, and we cannot reduce this history to sequence.  If this
>> > dimension of mind is real, then the world has meaning; it is a place in
>> > which moral ideals and the goals of conscious striving play a part.
>> >
>> >
>> > "The doctrine of Evolution is the schoolmaster which teaches us to face
>> at
>> > last the real question of the universe.  This question is the issue
>> between
>> > causation and the ideals... "
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > This passage in Kuklick's Intellectual Biography of Royce is
>> philosophically
>> > similar to Pirsig's description of a chemistry professor made up of
>> > inorganic compounds.  A mechanistic explanation does not explain the
>> > professor.   Evolution is not thus, a mechanistic explanation.  It's a
>> > biographical explanation.  It's a valuistic explanation.
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