Charles Sanders Peirce and the Mind-Body-World Relation

complex lattice of dynamic meaning configurations which continue over time to theGrowth of Reason, in terms of (individual or collective) Mind’s generalunderstandings of a potentially infinite, but in some respect or other, determined,series of different aspects of the complex Object Second of the World/Realityenvironment:OR I 1 /R 1 I 2 /R 2 I 3 /R 3 &cIncreasing complexity of meanings (Growth of Embodied Reason)Figure 5: The Mind-Body-World relation as Growth of Embodied ReasonWhat is of special interest to investigate further, is the hows and the whys of ways inwhich the ontologically embodied growth of reason in individual, or communities oforganisms in the course of their relatively short lifetimes can be seen to participate inand interact triadically with the broader, much longer term developmental processescontingent in nature.In human terms this means to understand better how, and to what extent, thetechnologies and other artefacts that we create, which all embody in their various thegrowth of reasonableness in our individual minds, as well as in the practices and setsof norms for communication and action that we embody in our everyday use andinterpretation of these technologies and artefacts, serve to nurture and further realgrowth of reason in the world we live in, and how, and to what extent they do not.Since we are, as Peirce constantly reminds us, “fallible” in our “glassy essence”, bothas individuals and as “loosely connected persons”, we need to constantly be awake tothe need to understand better which forms and norms of communication and actionenrich and promote growth of reason in our local and global communities, and whichdo not. In Peirce’s own words:“The individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by ignorance and error,so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only anegation. This is man,proud man,Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,His glassy essence.” [CP 5.264-317]