Hey Andy,
Interesting quotes. Sometimes I feel like Peirce is writing in another language, and then other times - I'm sure he's writing in another language. Sometimes I think he's a brilliant and revolutionary thinker, and sometimes I think he was just writing all this to piss everybody off.
I would guess in your first quote the money line to me is
The adoption of a synechistic
perspective does not require the neglect of real
differences; it only requires conceiving differences in such
a way as not to block the road of inquiry
Meaning to me that the process of inquiry supercedes either thinking about mind or thinking about matter.
I think in the second quote you have to take in to account that Peirce was many things, but idealist is definitely not one of them. When he talks about thought preceding signs I would argue that he is actually talking about thinking preceding signs - and when he talks about thinking he is talking about acting and using signs. This was another thread a little bit back, but it seems he saying signs don't exist outside of the thinking that accompanies the actions that use the sign. He's not being an idealist, but as I said in my previous post he's tryng to annoy the realists as much as possible.
So is consciousness what we are thinking about what we are doing while we are doing it in the material world?
Michael
________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden
Sent: Fri 9/25/2009 8:55 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [POSSIBLE SPAM] Re: [xmca] Consciousness: Ilyenkov
From: Peirce's Approach to the Self. A Semiotic Perspective
on Human Subjectivity, by Vincent Michael Colapietro
"In this context, mind and body do not designate two
radically different substances but two empirically different
aspects of the same substance. The adoption of a synechistic
perspective does not require the neglect of real
differences; it only requires conceiving differences in such
a way as not to block the road of inquiry. 'In view of the
principle of continuity, the supreme guide in framing
philosophical hypotheses, we must ... regard matter as mind
whose habits have become fixed so as to lose the powers of
forming them and losing them, while mind is to be regarded
as a chemical genus of extreme complexity and instability.
It has acquired in a remarkable degree a habit of taking and
laying aside habits'" (6.101; 1902).
and
"... meaning is something consciousness confers upon the
signs it uses, rather than something these signs possess
intrinsically (CN vol. 3, 290). Accordingly, thought must be
seen as independent of and prior to the symbols in which it
clothes itself" (cf. 5.250).
make of that what you will! :)
Andy
Michael Glassman wrote:
Andy,
I think whether or not signs have a material substrate is irrelevant to Peirce, as to Pragmatists in general. Why argue about when you can never really know one way or the other anyway. The only thing we actually engage with in human action are the signs. Sort of a Willie Sutton type thing - "Why do you rob banks - because that's where the money is" "Why do you concentrate on signs and not argue about where they come from - because that's where human action is."
This use to drive realists like Russell nuts (and actually still does if you raise the point to any realists or positivists).
Michael
________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden
Sent: Fri 9/25/2009 11:49 AM
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [POSSIBLE SPAM] Re: [xmca] Consciousness: Ilyenkov
You are pointing to the form/matter distinction, is that
right, Tony? I suspect that there may be a trap in this. Not
sure. But the form/matter distinction is a different one
from the consciousness/matter distinction.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slessenc.htm#SL129
The idea is that we can describe something as a distinct
form of matter because although made of the same stuff, it
is put together differently. OR, we can say the two things
are made of different stuff.
EG the different types of Carbon are all made of carbon
atoms, likewise ice and water; but oxygen cannot be turned
into carbon.
I think this is a slightly different question. Cs rests on
certain forms and not a distinct matter, but it is not
itself a form of matter.
CS Peirce has that all signs have to have a material
substrate, doesn't he, whatever the form.
Andy
Tony Whitson wrote:
On Fri, 25 Sep 2009, Martin Packer wrote:
<We agree with Spinoza, who considered thinking to be a capability of
certain kinds of material bodies. Bodies with this capacity can adjust
their activities with respect to other material bodies. This is to say
that one of the attributes of substance (matter) is thinking.>
I think it would help a lot to recognize the formal determinations of
things (substances?) as well as their material determinations.
What is reproduced in the mirror is not the matter, but the form.
Thought is the activity of sign-relations in*formed by physical and
semiosic relations within and among the objects of thinking.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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--
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Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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