[MD] Royce's Evolutionary Insight

[mark_maxwell at talktalk.net]

Hi John,

?

"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.

?

squonk: It seems to me that Joyce may assume that all process are Historic?

Causation and mechanics attempt to explain process, but that which 'has' undergone?process?(historic) are?contemplated?by?a mind which may not conform to causal or mechanistic process itself. Joyce explains the mental contemplation of the historic to be valued for its unifying aesthetic?

?

>From the sparse details of Royce that i have recently read (thanks to your mention of him) and your own,?i suspect Joyce feels there is some aspect here which is doing the valuing - evaluating, and this may be his Absolute Monism.

?

If this is so, then the evolutionary struggle he discusses may have a teleology of ideals toward which the evolutionary process is progressing, and ultimately, an Absolute ideal toward which the evolutionary process is progressing.

?

I find this interesting, because Absolute ideals are very often perfections, and i feel perfection may be synonimous with Quality. Joyce's Absolute Idealism appears to suggest a progressive aspect (evolution) which further suggests that imperfections, (that which may be regarded as evil and is progressively bannished in the evolutionary process) may form part of a dialectical process within the Monism - and so we may have a Joycean Dialectical Monism.

?

The metaphysics at work here would seem to suggest that the Absolute is perfect (Quality?) and a priori in a conceptual sense (non-spatio-temporal - non-differentiated)?- that is, 'it is'. Within this is a dialectic between imperfections and less imperfections (the 'goods' that have triuphent) which evolve toward the Absolute?

Further, the dialectic is moral, evaluative because the dialectic is being valued in Absolute terms.

So, differentiation itself may be regarded as an imperfection which evolution is bannishing?

?

A bit of a ramble this, but i like to ramble.

?

All the best,

squonk


-----Original Message-----
From: John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:43
Subject: [MD] Royce's Evolutionary Insight




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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