Human Transactions

The Emergence of Meaning In Time

Gary H. Stahl

cloth 1-56639-287-X $89.50, Feb 95, Available 232 pp
6x9

"This is an original and provocative work that assertsand arguably demonstratesthe conjunction between ethics and metaphysics. Stahl writes in an authentic and distinctive voice; he not only presents argumentsit is clear that he also believes them. The point he stresses repeatedly is not a version of 'compatibilism' between science and ethics, between the material and moral worldsbut the necessity of the relation between them (and so also, of course, of its possibility). This is an important thesis from which both moral philosophers and researchers in the sciences can learn. Stahl calls attention to significant issues in ethics and in the relation between ethics and epistemologyand does this in a way that is at once challenging and evocative. This is a valuable addition to the literature."Berel Lang, State University of New York at Albany

Given the evolutionary and developmental processes that form a human being, can we plausibly believe that people can make rational and autonomous choices about their lives? How can such choices be non-arbitrary and compelling if there are no norms outside the historical process against which they can be judged? And if that historical process is simply an accidental episode in an indifferent universe, what sorts of meanings can individual lives and choices have?

These are the questions that Gary H. Stahl addresses in this original and provocative work. Drawing on arguments from biology and psychology as well as from the history of philosophy, Stahl examines the naturalistic meaning that can be assigned to moral agency, choice, and responsibility, in order to assert the conjunction between ethics and metaphysics. His focus is the process within which the self and the other, defined in terms of each other, emerge within evolution and development so as to generate an irreducible level of meaning.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Tree Original Questions

1. On Not Reducing Agents to Organisms
People and Process 
Levels of Process 
The Emergence of Persons within Process 
Methodological Problems and Prospects

2. Biological and Ethical Processes
Health at Different Levels of Process 
"Health" and "Disease" as Integrative Concepts 
Morality as an Ordering Principle 
Health and Morality as Levels of Integration 
Emergent Levels of Space and Time 
Replies to Some Criticisms 
Implications of the Bioethical Parallels

3. The Exemplary Status of Moral Acts
Meaning in History 
History and Evolution as Limits to Moral Meaning 
Acts in Moral Space and Time 
Moral Judgment as Both Reflective and Determinant 
Transition to the Issues of History

4. W.W. Miller and the Midworld of Action
Miller's Role in the Discussion 
Miller's Basic Philosophic Stance 
The Finite Act as Constitutional 
The Role of "Functional Objects" 
Transition Back to the Original Questions

5. The Constitutional Status of the Three Original Questions
The Status of the Original Questions 
The Questions as Representing the Dialectic of Process 
Reformulations of Question 1 
Reformulations of Question 2 
Reformulations of Question 3 
Transition to Issues of Methodology

6. Self and the Focus of Significance
The Status of Inquiry in The Developmental Sciences 
Organism and Environment Can Be Treated as Separate Entities 
Similar Outcomes Are the Result of Similar Processes 
Science Is Value Free 
The Concept of "Locus of Significance" 
Transition to Issues of Development

7. Meaning as the Order of Processes
The Continuity of Developmental Processes 
Deprivation Experiments, Both Biological and Moral 
The Inseparability of Subject and Object 
The Drive toward Reductionism 
Irreducible Outcome in Development 
Taking the Outcome as the Locus of Significance

8. Albert Hofstadter and the Dialectic of Process
The Next Steps of the Argument 
The Historical Dialectic of Aesthetic Theory 
The Level of Truth of Statement 
The Level of Truth of Things 
The Level of Truth of Spirit 
The Relations between the Three Modes of Truth 
Relationships between the Levels of Ownness 
The Interpenetration of the Three Modes of Truth 
The Demand for Ownness with All That Is

9. Human Transactions as the Locus of Significance
What Remains to Be Done 
Necessity Is in the Conditions of Process 
Returning to Socrates' Question 
The Problem of the RegressOne More Time 
Dissolving the Problem of Schematism 
The Emergence of Meaning in Time

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author(s)

Gary H. Stahl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In memoriam: "A full life is constituted by the history of its relations to others, and a full death must include these. We are dealing here with solidarity and unique relations among people, not with death that enforces a solitude apart from them."
Gary H. Stahl (1932-1998)