Regarding innateness, how do you think Peat would interpret Jung’s understanding of the Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, and Instincts? Or even the works of Sheldrake and Panksepp?
I can understand the draw of authoritarian reductionism in Chomsky and the likes of others who have a penchant for determinism. At the same time there most certainly IS an innateness to all metabolizing organisms. No?
Reducing the archetypes/instincts, drives, universal emotions, etc… to being an epiphenomenon emergent of matter is, in my opinion, the real problem. Not that these flexible constants exist in an of themselves.
Really enjoy your work John. Thought provoking and coherent as always.
I think Peat would endorse innateness (definitely against strong social constructivism), but insist that the quality of metabolism, environment, and meaning modulates how any “instinct” appears. So he’d likely reinterpret Jung within a non‑mechanistic, field‑ and process‑oriented (especially Whiteheadian) view of matter, rather than as fixed psychic structures or hardwired “circuits.”
He always leaned toward the idea that consciousness is a basic property of matter, intensified and organised by living metabolism and especially by high oxidative/mitochondrial/thyroid function.
His issue isn’t acknowledging universals, but interpreting them through a metaphysics of dead matter plus add‑on mind, which makes psyche a bit like a ghost on top of mechanism.
A better view for Peat is that living matter is intrinsically meaningful and historical, so universals (like archetypes, instincts, emotions, etc.) are flexible regularities of a cosmos, expressed through organisms whose metabolism and environment co‑create their inner life.
I think that leaves room for genuine innateness in all metabolising organisms without sacrificing freedom, novelty, the primacy of experience, etc.
Exactly that. Peat thought that after the Enlightenment, the West went with Plato, while the East was more aligned with Aristotle. Hence why he was a big fan of Soviet "dialectical" science and spoke highly of the Taoist tradition in China. Fragmented, diminished, rigid, individual vs. whole, alive, growing, collective.
“These two philosophies are ultimately a metaphysics of fullness and a metaphysics of emptiness, respectively.”
Regarding innateness, how do you think Peat would interpret Jung’s understanding of the Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, and Instincts? Or even the works of Sheldrake and Panksepp?
I can understand the draw of authoritarian reductionism in Chomsky and the likes of others who have a penchant for determinism. At the same time there most certainly IS an innateness to all metabolizing organisms. No?
Reducing the archetypes/instincts, drives, universal emotions, etc… to being an epiphenomenon emergent of matter is, in my opinion, the real problem. Not that these flexible constants exist in an of themselves.
Really enjoy your work John. Thought provoking and coherent as always.
I think Peat would endorse innateness (definitely against strong social constructivism), but insist that the quality of metabolism, environment, and meaning modulates how any “instinct” appears. So he’d likely reinterpret Jung within a non‑mechanistic, field‑ and process‑oriented (especially Whiteheadian) view of matter, rather than as fixed psychic structures or hardwired “circuits.”
He always leaned toward the idea that consciousness is a basic property of matter, intensified and organised by living metabolism and especially by high oxidative/mitochondrial/thyroid function.
His issue isn’t acknowledging universals, but interpreting them through a metaphysics of dead matter plus add‑on mind, which makes psyche a bit like a ghost on top of mechanism.
A better view for Peat is that living matter is intrinsically meaningful and historical, so universals (like archetypes, instincts, emotions, etc.) are flexible regularities of a cosmos, expressed through organisms whose metabolism and environment co‑create their inner life.
I think that leaves room for genuine innateness in all metabolising organisms without sacrificing freedom, novelty, the primacy of experience, etc.
Thanks for the clarification.
Reminds me of “As above so below, as within so to without.”
Aristotelian process oriented telos rather than fixed platonic forms. Metabolism/environment being the lever for how the innateness expresses itself.
Exactly that. Peat thought that after the Enlightenment, the West went with Plato, while the East was more aligned with Aristotle. Hence why he was a big fan of Soviet "dialectical" science and spoke highly of the Taoist tradition in China. Fragmented, diminished, rigid, individual vs. whole, alive, growing, collective.
“These two philosophies are ultimately a metaphysics of fullness and a metaphysics of emptiness, respectively.”