Just a few comments on the irrational authoritarianism of Dr. Shanta - I'll note that for Peirce, 'Reason', which is akin to Mind, "is something that never can have been completely embodied"...the essence of Reason is such that its being never can have been completely perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth"...the development of Reason requires as a part of it the occurrence of more individual events than ever can occur". 1.615. Ideals of Conduct. Lowell Lectures 1903.
Note also that for Peirce, as an Aristotelian, reason exists within spatial and temporal embodiment, never on its own. Dr. Shanta, on the other hand, promotes an aspatial, atemporal Pure Form (very Platonic, by the way), of a Pure Absolute; that is, total absolute knowledge as pre-existent. So, Dr. Shanta rejects the three categories, since he rejects the spontaneity and freedom of Firstness, rejects the materiality of Secondness, and rejects the embodied evolutionary capacity of Thirdness. Therefore - what is his knowledge base? Again, it is an aspatial, atemporal belief. In Peirce's Fixation of Belief - 5.358--, 1877, he outlines, clearly, Dr. Shanta's isolation from reality - and his isolation from that most basic of human capacities, the capacity-for-doubt. Once you no longer doubt, - that is 'the end of inquiry' [5.374]. And the basic method used by Dr. Shanta, is one of the most common of mankind: "this method has, from the earliest times, been one of the chief means of upholding correct theological and political doctrines'...Wherever there is an aristocracy or a guild, or any association of a class of men whose interests depend, or are supposed to depend, on certain propositions......"cruelties always accompany this system...'" . This is 'the method of authority" - and that is Dr. Shanta's method which he tenaciously holds, immune to facts and evidence, by asserting that any who disagree with him are 'illiterate and unwise'. What is interesting is how this method of Authority, which can assert its dominance over a population, insisting that they be subservient slaves [which is why Dr. Shanta rejects democracy] - what is interesting is how readily people who follow this method accept the results of the scientific method. They readily accept all the technological advances - in medicine and disease control, in electronic communications, in cars, planes, electricity, food supplies, clean water etc and etc ...that are due to and only to The Scientific Method - but, in their writings, reject it as a failure due to its insistence on trial-and-error, fallibility, tests, and its openness to novelty and change. Dr. Shanta dismisses reason - as Peirce notes, in commenting on the 'method of tenacity for its strength, simplicity and directness" 5.386 - that "It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last" [ibid]. But the method of science is different. "Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by resoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of Reality" [5.384]. Notice the difference between Peirce's outline and that of Dr. Shanka, who follows the Authoritarian method of a belief in an aspatial and atemporal Absolute Truth outside of daily experience. Peirce locates truth in reality not in an aspatial and atemporal absolute. Then, he accepts that man, with his capacities (for sense observation and reason) can, over time, access these Truths. This democratic focus on the equality of man, and a focus on existential, material reality - is the opposite of Dr. Shanka's focus - which is more Platonic [pure ideal Forms] - but goes even beyond the Forms of Plato. For Peirce, "the universe of mind...coincides with the universe of matter" 6.501 [My belief in God]- therefore there cannot be an Absolute. At any rate, I don't see the point of arguing with Authority - for the beliefs held within the mode of Authority are, by their nature, immune to facts and reason. Edwina
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