Actually, as my grandson says, i kind of like actualism. I also love
this
poem by Rilke. Happy to talk about unicorn's any time.
mike
------------
The Unicorn by Ranier Maira Rilke
This is the creature there never has been.
They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.
Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
as though it were. They always left some space.
And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
it lightly reared its head with scarce a trace
of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
but only with the possibility
of being. And that was able to confer
such strength, its brow put for a horn. One horn.
Whitely it stole up to a maid, -- to *be*
within the silver mirror and in her.
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:
On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, mike cole wrote:
Whoa!! total agreement. And I Looooove unicorns.
My initial question was something like Martin's. "Tony, what does
it mean
(for Peirce) to be 'aware of signs AS signs." Sounds a lot like
thing in
itself.
First, just to mention -- I think this was before David Ki joined
us at
Louisiana State University -- when I arrived there we had an Asst.
Prof.
whose office featured bookshelves full of unicorns (he did not get
tenure,
but he was hired someplace in the Cal. State system, I think.).
As to "thing in itsef," the Peircean orientation (at least
according to
Deely, with whom I agree) is resolutely opposed to the Kantian
dualistic
denial of intercourse between human consciousness and the world of
things as
they be. Deely writes about "semiotism" vs. realism or idealisml. I
use
"actualism," not to mark a difference between me and Deely, but to
make the
same differentiation available to people who are not so familiar with
Peircean semiotics as are Deely's readers.
In my classes, i ask students if they have ever seen a unicorn. No
one
ventures a yes. Then I ask them, are unicorns good or bad? They
mostly all
raise their hands and say that they are good. Then we get into a
good
discussion. Sounds like I have intuited myself toward what you two
are
agreeing about.
mike
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 6:51 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
wrote:
I completely agree
On Sep 21, 2009, at 7:54 PM, Tony Whitson wrote:
On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Martin Packer wrote:
I've tried to stay out of this thread, because it's a difficult
topic
and
I'm no philosopher (though I can't seem to put their damned books
down!).
But my 2 cents, for what they'll buy, are that one needs to
begin with
an
acknowledgement that Cs is, as I said in my last message,
relational. I
don't mean by this that it is a relationship between mind and
matter, I
mean
that Cs is a relationship between matter and matter. I think
we'd all
agree
that Cs is a property, an aspect, only of living organisms. I
completely
agreed with your earlier post, Andy, that Cs is not simply
present or
absent
but is a matter of degree or type. My favorite Hegel is the
phenomenology,
which is a story about the education of Cs over time. So not
all living
organisms have the same kind of Cs, and humans don't all have
the same
kind,
of have one kind all their lives. Cs develops. But it is always
to be
found
in interaction between organisms (material) and other material
stuff.
It seems to me that it might help a lot to think of
consciousness not
as a
property or aspect, but as an activity. It is certainly a
relational,
material (with formal) activity, in relation to other activities
in
ourselves and in our world.
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