Genetic Theory of Reality

James Mark Baldwin, Jaan Valsiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351517898
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

James Mark Baldwin left a legacy that has yet to be fully examined, one with profound implications for science and the humanities. In some sense it paralleled that of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, whose semiotics became understood only a century later. Baldwin was trying to make sense of complex biological and social processes that only now have come into the limelight as biological sciences have re-emerged in psychology. Baldwin's focus on development, based on the observation of his own children and extrapolated to his general theoretical scheme, is fully in line with where contemporary biological sciences are heading. This is exemplified by the bounded flexibility of the work of the genetic system. The general principle of persistent exploration of the environment with the result of creating novelty, which was the core of Baldwin's theoretical system, has since the 1960s become the guiding idea in genetics. Contemporary developmental science is rooted in Baldwin's thinking. In his new introduction, Jaan Valsiner shows that Baldwin's Genetic Theory of Reality demonstrates how human beings are in their nature social beings, establishes an alternative conceptualization of evolutionary theory, and formulates a system of developmental logic, all of which serve as the foundation for developmental psychology as a whole. This is a work of social science rediscovery long overdue.

PART I. INTRODUCTION GENETIC INTERPRETATION

Chapter I

The Problem: Genetic Morphology

§ 1. The Question of Interpretation

IN an earlier volume,¹ in which the programme of the entire discipline of Genetic Logic was outlined, the following sentence from Lotze was quoted as defining what we are now to consider as the problem of interpretation.

I. “It is,” says Lotze,² “the question how far the most complete structure of thought which all the means enable us to rear, can claim to be an adequate account of that which we seem compelled to assume as the object and occasion of our ideas.” This pronouncement is fully applicable to the topics which are now to come before us. Assuming the completed structure of knowledge as genetically made out, “the complete structure of thought³ which all our means enable us to rear,” the further question then is, how far this complete structure of thought or apprehension—pre-logical, logical, and hyper-logical—can claim to render adequately the reality which “we seem compelled to assume as the object and occasion of our ideas. ”

This question is sufficiently definite and not at all unfamiliar. It falls apart naturally into two: first, that of the “claim,” to use Lotze’s term, that thought or experience makes to render reality, the problem of Epistemology¹; and second, that of the validity of the results—the success or failure, in this task, of the different motives and processes of experience. How are their respective results to be adjusted in the meaning of reality present in the assumptions of knowledge and life alike? This is the problem of Comparative Morphology, which follows upon that of Epistemology, both utilising the results of genetic research. Together they constitute “Real Logic.”²

2. This last is the problem of interpretation. We have, as Lotze intimates, the natural and ordinary assumptions, in life and experience, of what is superficially called “reality.” But we go on to reach, always and everywhere, ways of understanding, construing, thinking about, this reality; in some cases, from mere curiosity; in other cases, for purposes of practical utility. The savage who falls on his face in the presence of the eclipse, no less than the astronomer who turns his glass upon it, is “interpreting” reality. The action of each shows how he understands the event, what its meaning is to him.

§ 2. The Historical Problem of Interpretation

3. Our method, however, requires that the problem be stated in historical and genetic form. We are led to see that there are not only typical sorts of interpretation appearing as the outcome of typical stages and modes of mental process, but also that there are recognisable genetic reasons for their appearance when and where they do. A primitive man can not understand the world in terms of meanings of refined reflection, any more than a child can understand the explanations given in the text-books of physics and psychology. We may suppose, therefore, that these differences have themselves genetic order and development, that there is a natural history of interpretation itself: a continuous movement in the adjustment of the motives of the apprehension of things, resulting in a progression in the evolution of world-views, with the evolution of human culture. If the individuar s typical experience passes successively through a series of modes of apprehension-pro jecti ve, religious, dualistic, logical, aesthetic,—we should expect the history of culture to reveal a similar progress. Similar stages and points of view should be observed in the development of racial interpretation and reflection.

This is a restatement, from a genetic and evolutionary point of view, of the problem of “stages” of thought stated by August Comte, with a suggestion as to its solution. What have been the stages in the evolution of interpretation? And why—from what genetic motives—have they been what they have? If the development of the apprehension of self and things, in the individual’s case, is correctly made out, we may be able to trace out the correlative stages in the historical evolution of the race. The social products could not rise higher, at any period, than the individuals’ knowledge and practice would justify—so much negatively. And the notable and typical gains of individuals, in mental and moral progress, would show themselves, in time and in serial order, in the texture of the social fabric; in its institutions and in its theoretical speculations—so much, at least, more positively.¹

4. The consideration of the question of the history of interpretation falls to the genetic theory of reality and constitutes, in our plan, the first great branch of Morphology. Our consideration of it takes form parallel to that of the consideration of the meaning of reality to the individual²: the types of interpretation found in the history of thought are, in genetic order, pre-logical, logical, and hyper-logical. This intimation may here suffice for the purpose of introduction to the detailed investigation itself (Part II., below).

§ 3. The Intrinsic Problem of Interpretation

5. The problem of interpretation itself remains over, apart from the question of history. The consideration of its history is ancillary to its own treatment. We have, then, as the second and last great problem of Morphology—as it is the last also of Genetic Logic as a whole—that of the interpretation of the meaning of reality as legitimately issuing from the entire mental movement whose development has concerned us. Which, if any, of the historical interpretations is justified in its results?—what does each motive contribute to the full meaning of the real?—what is the synthetic and reconciling mode of apprehension in which the movement of commerce with the real itself overcomes its own dualisms and oppositions, and attains a fully satisfying contemplation of that which, in the words of Lotze, is “the object and occasion of our ideas”?

This is the intrinsic problem. Our treatment of it will be genetic in the sense already illustrated.¹ Our aim is to follow the movement of mental process and not to dictate to it; to observe it, not to direct it. It is in this that the treatment of the topic as a branch of genetic logic differs from the traditional, purely logical and theoretical, discussions. These indeed belong, as we are to see, to a special period—the “logical” period—in the history of interpretation.

But there are other motives entering into the full meaning of the real, beyond the discursive or logical, and it is equally our business to discover them.

6. As has been said, the historical movement of interpretation shows the three great periods conveniently characterised as prelogical, logical, and hyper-logical; and these three headings will be our divisions in the treatment of the historical movement.¹ But in the consideration of the comparative factors entering into the interpretation of the meaning of the real as such, we find that such a division—based on successive cross-sections, as it were, of the entire content of mental process—is not adequate. It indicates the character of the psychical process from which the interpretation issues and the general type of solution as dependent upon the mental function. But it does not penetrate of itself into the solution and discover the motive at work by which the type of reality is determined. At the same time, by its distinction of modes of process—as being prelogical, logical, and so forth—it gives us hints by means of which we may utilise the results reached in the examination of the processes themselves.

Such, indeed, has already been our resource: we have found, in the discussion of Epistemology already referred to, that the meanings of the real persistently fell into two great classes. On the one hand, both the demands of action issuing from the motives of the practical life, and those of knowledge proper issuing from the motives of the intellectual life, proceed, always and everywhere, by a process of mediation by and through representative states of mind or ideas. On the other hand, the interests of immediacy, of direct apprehension and contemplation, are present in characteristic forms in the lowest and the highest reaches of conscious process, in the primitive and in the hyper-logical. All reality, therefore, whatever the process of reaching it may be, is either immediate or mediate, either immediately given or mediated by ideas. If this be true, our problem is greatly simplified. We have to ask, not whether this or that stage of development gives the final interpretation of reality; but which type of “real” meaning, the mediate or the immediate, is the more comprehensive and satisfying.

In this part of our work therefore (Part III) we will examine interpretations based respectively on Mediation and Immediacy, taking account of the several types of each revealed in the historical account of the stages of interpretation (Part II) and reaching our own reasoned results.

In the last Part (IV) it will remain to gather up certain Conclusions and Corollaries of a philosophical sort, which illustrate the wider bearings of Pancalism.¹

§ 4. Scheme of Treatment

In view of the foregoing, we arrive at the following scheme of treatment:

TABLE I
Genetic Morphology: the Problem of Interpretation.

Part I.	Introduction.
Part II.	Historical: the Development of Interpretation. Early Racial (pre-logical and religious) Interpretation. Logical Interpretation: theories based on Mediation. Hyper-logical Interpretation: theories based on the Immediate.
Part III.	The theory of Æsthetic Immediacy: Pancalism.
Part IV.	Conclusions and Corollaries.

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¹Thought and Things, vol. i., “Functional Logic,” Introduction, sect. 16. The place of this problem in the whole scheme is spoken of both in the general Introduction as just cited, and also in the Introduction of volume iii. of that work, which presents the topic of Real Logic. In the volume last cited, entitled “Interest and Art,” the problem of Genetic Epistemology is treated, while here the correlative problem of Genetic Morphology is taken up. See Appendix A.

²Lotze, Logic, Eng. trans., vol. i., p. 12.

³Rather, in our case, the complete structure of “experience,” not merely that of thought, narrowly understood.

¹Epistemology, taken in the broadest sense, as including all possible modes of apprehension, affective and conative as well as cognitive.

²“It remains for Real Logic (1) to interpret each entire series of objective constructions in terms of the sort of reality which their cognition attributes to them; and (2) to interpret all of them together in the mode of reality in which their common cognition terminates, if there be such a comprehensive mode.”—Thought and Things, vol. 1., chap, i., sect. II.

¹In my History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation, this thought is carried out, the development of psychology being considered as the evolution of the dualism of mind and body and its interpretation, parallel with a similar movement in the individual. That little work (London, Watts; New York, Putnam, 1913) was written and published in the interval between the appearance of vol. iii. of Thought and Things and the present volume. It develops intimations made in earlier publications and worked out in university lectures at Baltimore, 1903-6. The same thought has been utilised in treating a special problem in the monograph of Furry, Aesthetic Experience (Psychol. Review Philos. Monographs, No. 1, 1908).

²The “Genetic Epistemology” of Thought and Things, vol. iii. Of the two more evident explanations of the parallelism or “concurrence” between the two movements, this seems the preferable, because it is more empirical and demonstrable. It suggests a de facto relation, the presence of influences by which the individual and social apprehensions have actually advanced together and in reciprocal relationship to each other. . . . The other (the “rational”) explanation assumes a certain constitution or “nature” of thought, which shows itself to be the same in the two cases.

¹A recent able discussion of Genetic Morphology, taken in this sense, is that of W. M. Urban in the concluding chapter (xiv.) of his work, Valuation: Its Nature and Laws. As is indicated later on (chap, x., sect. 19), this is the fundamental problem of the “critical” enquiry of Immanuel Kant, with the important difference, however, that our method is genetic, not “critical” or logical.

¹Except that instead of “hyper-logical” we speak of “immediacy” theories, a term more significant for classification as explained below.

¹ Certain Appendices follow, of which the first (Appendix A) may be especially referred to here, as well as a “Glossary” of the terms used in this and other genetic treatises. On the term “Pancalism,” see the remarks in the Preface.

Chapter II

Individual Interpretation

§ 1. The Nature of Interpretation

I. It will become plain as we proceed that what we are calling Interpretation—following the usage already suggested¹—is generally covered by the term “meaning.” The best way to introduce the topic, indeed, is to recall briefly the theory of meaning as it has been worked out in recent discussions, and take advantage of what we know about it.

In general, interpretation is simply the entire meaning given to an experience, fact, event, by the consciousness which, as we say, “makes” the interpretation. Given bare happenings—a flash of light, a rumbling sound, a shaking movement—each item means this or that experience: a thunder-storm, a passing cart, an unsteady chair. Whatever intent of added meaning attaches to the bare content of fact or idea, it is in so far a personal interpretation of the fact or idea. It may be little or much, superficial or profound. Information, purpose, utility, association, habit, appetite, instinct—a dozen motives of meaning—may surge up and segregate themselves about the nucleus of the given datum. All the experiences cited as examples above, sensations of sight, hearing, muscular sense, may be united together in the interpretation made by the Sicilian, who cries “earthquake,” and rushes from his dwelling in terror. And a similar interpretation may be arrived at by the scientific man seated at Washington, who has before him simply the tracing of a needle on carbon paper, hearing, seeing, and feeling nothing of the physical event itself. His interpretation is more remote, more indirec...