Repository | Book | Chapter
(2016) Consensus on Peirce's concept of habit, Dordrecht, Springer.
To survive and thrive in our always evolving world, humans must learn from experience and conserve vital intelligence for immediate access when needed for the resolution of existential predicaments. Peirce described this process as one of inquiry, a trial and error proceeding that resolves quandaries (doubts) and forges habits (beliefs) that accumulate into stores of practical intelligence that are programs for survival. These stores of practical intelligence are the integrated systems of belief that constitute the cores of our minds. But humans aspire to intelligence of a more theoretical sort that has no immediate practical or vital importance but which satisfies intellectual yearnings and advances knowledge in general. The quest for knowledge in general, scientific inquiry, does not yield a body of fixed beliefs (as with practical intelligence) but only a body of provisional beliefs never quite accepted as final. Our minds also encompass theoretical intelligence of this sort. But individual human experience can never achieve the comprehensive practical intelligence necessary for the survival of civilization and the human brain is not adequate for the storage of the theoretical intelligence necessary for the advancement of science. The survival and advancement of civilization depends on the extension of mind beyond individual biological organisms into social groups and institutions. This accords with Peirce's generalized conception of mind and his idea that minded organisms function within mind that is, at least in part, external to them. Not only can institutions develop minds of their own, some institutions evolve to become the crucial reservoirs of intelligence that define cultures and perpetuate civilization. We may speculate that religion is the human institution that embodies the intelligence that addresses the matters of vital importance for civilizations, while it is the institution of science that embodies the theoretical intelligence that addresses the human aspiration to find things out and our only hope to advance toward the truth.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-45920-2_21
Full citation:
Houser, N. (2016)., Social minds and the fixation of belief, in M. Anderson (ed.), Consensus on Peirce's concept of habit, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 379-400.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.