I have previously sent later notebook fragments that echo the text
below; but this section from CSP’s 1868 published article “Some
Consequences of Four Incapacities” seems so squarely on point with this
discussion that I think I now should send this entire 8-paragraph
section. So here goes:
§4. MAN, A SIGN [footnotes omitted]
5.310. We come now to the consideration of the last of the four
principles whose consequences we were to trace; namely, that the
absolutely incognizable is absolutely inconceivable. That upon Cartesian
principles the very realities of things can never be known in the least,
most competent persons must long ago have been convinced. Hence the
breaking forth of idealism, which is essentially anti-Cartesian, in
every direction, whether among empiricists (Berkeley, Hume), or among
noologists (Hegel, Fichte). The principle now brought under discussion
is directly idealistic; for, since the meaning of a word is the
conception it conveys, the absolutely incognizable has no meaning
because no conception attaches to it. It is, therefore, a meaningless
word; and, consequently, whatever is meant by any term as "the real" is
cognizable in some degree, and so is of the nature of a cognition, in
the objective sense of that term.
5.311. At any moment we are in possession of certain information, that
is, of cognitions which have been logically derived by induction and
hypothesis from previous cognitions which are less general, less
distinct, and of which we have a less lively consciousness. These in
their turn have been derived from others still less general, less
distinct, and less vivid; and so on back to the ideal first, which is
quite singular, and quite out of consciousness. This ideal first is the
particular thing-in-itself. It does not exist /as such/. That is, there
is no thing which is in-itself in the sense of not being relative to the
mind, though things which are relative to the mind doubtless are, apart
from that relation. The cognitions which thus reach us by this infinite
series of inductions and hypotheses (which though infinite /a parte ante
logice/, is yet as one continuous process not without a beginning /in
time/) are of two kinds, the true and the untrue, or cognitions whose
objects are /real/ and those whose objects are /unreal/. And what do we
mean by the real? It is a conception which we must first have had when
we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is, when we
first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact
logically called, was between an /ens/ relative to private inward
determinations, to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an /ens/
such as would stand in the long run. The real, then, is that which,
sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and
which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the
very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception
essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits,
and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. And so those two series
of cognition -- the real and the unreal -- consist of those which, at a
time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to
re-affirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever
after be denied. Now, a proposition whose falsity can never be
discovered, and the error of which therefore is absolutely incognizable,
contains, upon our principle, absolutely no error. Consequently, that
which is thought in these cognitions is the real, as it really is. There
is nothing, then, to prevent our knowing outward things as they really
are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them in numberless
cases, although we can never be absolutely certain of doing so in any
special case.
5.312. But it follows that since no cognition of ours is absolutely
determinate, generals must have a real existence. Now this scholastic
realism is usually set down as a belief in metaphysical fictions. But,
in fact, a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality
than that which is represented in a true representation. Since,
therefore, the word "man" is true of something, that which "man" means
is real. The nominalist must admit that man is truly applicable to
something; but he believes that there is beneath this a thing in itself,
an incognizable reality. His is the metaphysical figment. Modern
nominalists are mostly superficial men, who do not know, as the more
thorough Roscellinus and Occam did, that a reality which has no
representation is one which has no relation and no quality. The great
argument for nominalism is that there is no man unless there is some
particular man. That, however, does not affect the realism of Scotus;
for although there is no man of whom all further determination can be
denied, yet there is a man, abstraction being made of all further
determination. There is a real difference between man irrespective of
what the other determinations may be, and man with this or that
particular series of determinations, although undoubtedly this
difference is only relative to the mind and not /in re/. Such is the
position of Scotus. Occam's great objection is, there can be no real
distinction which is not /in re/, in the thing-in-itself; but this begs
the question for it is itself based only on the notion that reality is
something independent of representative relation.
5.313. Such being the nature of reality in general, in what does the
reality of the mind consist? We have seen that the content of
consciousness, the entire phenomenal manifestation of mind, is a sign
resulting from inference. Upon our principle, therefore, that the
absolutely incognizable does not exist, so that the phenomenal
manifestation of a substance is the substance, we must conclude that the
mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference. What
distinguishes a man from a word? There is a distinction doubtless. The
material qualities, the forces which constitute the pure denotative
application, and the meaning of the human sign, are all exceedingly
complicated in comparison with those of the word. But these differences
are only relative. What other is there? It may be said that man is
conscious, while a word is not. But consciousness is a very vague term.
It may mean that emotion which accompanies the reflection that we have
animal life. This is a consciousness which is dimmed when animal life is
at its ebb in old age, or sleep, but which is not dimmed when the
spiritual life is at its ebb; which is the more lively the better
/animal/ a man is, but which is not so, the better /man/ he is. We do
not attribute this sensation to words, because we have reason to believe
that it is dependent upon the possession of an animal body. But this
consciousness, being a mere sensation, is only a part of the /material
quality/ of the man-sign. Again, consciousness is sometimes used to
signify the /I think/, or unity in thought; but the unity is nothing but
consistency, or the recognition of it. Consistency belongs to every
sign, so far as it is a sign; and therefore every sign, since it
signifies primarily that it is a sign, signifies its own consistency.
The man-sign acquires information, and comes to mean more than he did
before. But so do words. Does not electricity mean more now than it did
in the days of Franklin? Man makes the word, and the word means nothing
which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some man. But since
man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these
might turn round and say: "You mean nothing which we have not taught
you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant
of your thought." In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate
each other; each increase of a man's information involves and is
involved by, a corresponding increase of a word's information.
5.314. Without fatiguing the reader by stretching this parallelism too
far, it is sufficient to say that there is no element whatever of man's
consciousness which has not something corresponding to it in the word;
and the reason is obvious. It is that the word or sign which man uses is
the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in
conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves that
man is a sign; so, that every thought is an /external/ sign, proves that
man is an external sign. That is to say, the man and the external sign
are identical, in the same sense in which the words /homo/ and /man/ are
identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is
the thought.
5.315. It is hard for man to understand this, because he persists in
identifying himself with his will, his power over the animal organism,
with brute force. Now the organism is only an instrument of thought. But
the identity of a man consists in the consistency of what he does and
thinks, and /consistency/ is the intellectual character of a thing; that
is, is its expressing something.
5.316. Finally, as what anything really is, is what it may finally come
to be known to be in the ideal state of complete information, so that
reality depends on the ultimate decision of the community; so thought is
what it is, only by virtue of its addressing a future thought which is
in its value as thought identical with it, though more developed. In
this way, the existence of thought now depends on what is to be
hereafter; so that it has only a potential existence, dependent on the
future thought of the community.
5.317. 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 a negation. This
is man,
". . . proud man,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence."
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Martin Packer
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 1:44 PM
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Consciousness
Andy,
There certainly is a distinction between the President and your
thought of the President, and between the taler in your pocket and
your thought of this taler. But again you are siding with Kant, and
against Marx. The difference is not that one is mental and the other
is material. What makes the dollar bill real is not its material
character, but the practices, customs, laws of a community. Your
thought of the dollar is different, but not because it is in your
consciousness. You could write on a piece of paper the statement:
"There is a dollar in my pocket," and we would have a material object
(writing on paper), but the same conundrum: does it correspond to the
reality? The same *impossible* conundrum, because how can a linguistic
statement ever be said to correspond, or not correspond, to a material
object? Only (again) because of the practices, customs, of a
community. They are both equally material - or equally imaginary.
Ilyenkov cited Marx making the same point. Ilyenkov writes:
"[Marx] went on: “'Real talers have the same existence that the
imagined gods have. Has a real taler
any existence except in the imagination, if only in the general or
rather common imagination of man? Bring paper money into a country
where this use of paper is unknown, and everyone will laugh at your
subjective imagination.'"
Martin
On Sep 23, 2009, at 8:35 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> But Vera, all the complexity and nuances of the idea of
> consciousness and its relation to the material world (both its
> substratum in the body and in culture and in its relation to its
> objects) do not obliterate the categorical difference between the
> President and my thought of the President. And reflecting on this
> overnight, I am now convinced that this is an *important* as well as
> a "bleeding obvious" difference.
>
>
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