[MD] Royce's Evolutionary Insight

[John Carl]

>
>
>
> I took it to mean that Royce had discovered the Monism through logical
> argument, but I then assumed that once discovered it could be further argued
> that the Monism was already there to be revealed. This is it’s a priori
> status.



squonk, the following passage may be illuminating:

"What real grounding does he offer for the basis or our knowledge of the
world?  Actually, none.  The principles elaborated, he admits, 'are
satisfactory, because as rational beings we find ourselves satisfied with
them.... useless it is to give any final metaphysical basis to our procedure
as reasoning beings."

As he writes James in 1880,"The final basis of our thought is ethical,
practical."


dang.  I gotta go.  Lu is tapping her foot.

More later squonk

--------------

Ok,  I didn't send this because it sure wasn't the last word.  Royce started
out from the stance I outline above and was satisfied to be a Pragmatist for
several years.  But his roots in German Skepticism wouldn't let him stay
that way.  He needed a bit more stiffness in his foundation than Jame's
supposed "concrete".  What he came to rest everything upon was the
self-evident existence of error - the one thing that no matter how skeptical
you are, you have to admit that error exists.

Absolute Thought is derived from the necessary conditions for error's
existence; doesn't that make error the built-in concept and the absolute the
logically derived?

I could be ignorant in my understanding of the fullest Kantian definition of
"a priori".

John