[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] Consciousness "only a part of the material quality of the man-sign"



Thank you Tony. I love Peirce. America's Hegel.
Pity Hegel didn't have friends like James and Dewey to help communicate his ideas.
Andy

Tony Whitson wrote:
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.

> >
_______________________________________________

xmca mailing list

xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca