Soren -
I would appreciate help from you, as emcee of chapter nine, in
initiating a response to my post from two days ago (forwarded below).
I am happy to revise its form/simplify its content if you feel that is
indicated.
All best,
Charles Murray
Begin forwarded message:
From: charles murray <charlesmur...@charter.net>
Date: May 27, 2014 4:08:28 PM EDT
To: Peirce List <Peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind,
self, and person
Reply-To: charles murray <charlesmur...@charter.net>
List -
As a first-time contributor, by way of introduction: I am a long
time follower of peirce-l, especially appreciative of the recent de
Waal seminar. My interest in Peirce dates from courses with Richard
Smyth and I am most indebted to his work for such understanding as I
have of things Peircean.
My focus here is on section 9.4 of Kees' book. I note that he gives
a fuller treatment of similar material in an essay, exploring
implications of Peirce's concept of self, mind, thought, and person
for our understanding of scientific inquiry and its end results (see
his essay "Science Beyond the Self" _Cognitio_, v.7 n.1, 2006, pp.
149-63). I note furthermore that Kees there indicates his own
interest in Smyth's work (citing Smyth's "Normative Science
Revisited", _Transactions_, 38, 1/2, 2002, pp. 283-306).
Accordingly, I would appreciate comment on some questions about
Peirce's account of the person which Kees and Smyth would apparently
answer somewhat differently.
They agree on the importance of Peirce's idea that selves are what
explain individuals' ignorance, and that selves develop - becoming
less indeterminate - through semiosis (for Kees view see 9.4, p.
153-54). Smyth would also agree with Kees that personhood is for
Peirce a kind of coordination or connection between ideas and that
this is "not the simple product of a unique relationship to a
particular human body" (9.4, 154-55).
However I am unsure how things stand with Kees' positive
characterization of personhood, at least as it is expressed in the
confined space he has available in the _Guide_. There he says
personhood is "a product of consistency in thought". (section 9.4,
pp. 154-55).
Kees' first reference for this claim is to CP 6.228. Here the
personality is said to be based upon a "bundle of habits". There is
another supportive text at 6.155-6 which he does not mention, in
which the coordination of thoughts is said to involve their
"teleological harmony". Further along, though, at 6.158, it seems
that this harmony is not the only thing involved: coordination of
thoughts, as a general idea, also involves an indefinitely large
number of relationships to - instantiations by - material
particulars. Here Peirce emphasizes that these relationships
require us to suppose that matter is mind hidebound with habit, that
material particulars have some mental aspect on the basis of which
the general idea resembles its instances.
Kees' second reference is to W2:241 (CP5.313). This text echoes
the requirement for relation to material particulars: Peirce speaks
of our capacity to regard thoughts as similar, and explains this by
appeal to the "material qualities", or the "pure denotative
application" of a sign. Although these qualities do not belong to
signs as signs, the role of material qualities shows how we must
suppose a physical aspect of the mental, just as we have supposed a
mental aspect of the physical.(5.287-89)
Kees does not bring these material qualities of a sign to the fore
in explaining personhood, either in the _Guide_, where space is
tight, or in "Science Beyond the Self", where he explains that he
wishes to explore Peirce's concept of the agent of inquiry without
invoking a semiotic view of the self. However, in Kees' essay there
are several indications that he would affirm that the coordination
of thoughts involves relationships of the sort I have just
mentioned, e.g.:
"Peirce is advocating a panpsychism of sorts: mountains, trees, ...
are all instantiations of mind _that is bound in a certain
way_." ("Science Beyond the Self" p. 155, my emphasis.)
There are other hints, e,g, on pp. 150, 153, 157,158,160. On 158
Kees speaks of "exosomatic extension" of the mental, so that for
example Peirce's inkstand becomes a necessary part of his thought.
(7.366) I wonder whether this example provides Kees a non-semiotic
way of getting at Peirce's point about the material qualities and
pure denotative application of thoughts. Incidentally, with all
this material from Kees' essay in mind, the reader will see that by
including the inkstand reference in the tightly compressed
discussion in 9.4 (155), he may after all affirm even in those
confines that physical relations are involved in the coordination of
thoughts of a person.
If this is so, there may be more agreement than is at first apparent
between Kees and Smyth. In any case Smyth is emphatic that
personhood is to be addressed in terms of the material qualities of
signs: a person is individuated in the way that a sinsign is.
(_Reading Peirce Reading_, pp. 162-67)
My first question then is whether and to what extent Kees would
agree with or how he might otherwise respond to Smyth's account of
personhood.
A second question has to do with Kees' argument, in "Science Beyond
the Self", that what he calls "institutions" or "supra-individual
persons", have physical efficacy. His argument suggests a way of
looking at the physical efficacy of _individual_ persons, although I
do not find this point addressed explicitly in the essay.
Nonetheless one might elaborate his argument as follows. As he
notes, what we ordinarily think of as individual persons are for
Peirce, strictly speaking, on the same spectrum of complexity with
institutions. (5.421) Therefore his argument for the physical
efficacy of institutions suggests a Peircean angle on ("individual")
personal responsibility for physical actions. Clarity about
Peirce's view of this matter is especially important to me because I
take seriously Smyth's insistence that minds are introduced as
theoretical entities which have no power of efficient causation.
Physical efficacy is another matter, and Kees may feel his argument
is consistent with Smyth's analysis. I would appreciate others'
reaction to this second issue.
Finally, returning to Smyth, I note that he makes his way to
Peirce's analysis of personhood by way of medieval developments in
semiotics. Thus he has occasion to remark that "it is fair to
assume that [Peirce] knew his own view that we know things only
through their phenomenal manifestations or signs came down on the
Catholic side of the metaphysics at issue in the Eucharist dispute.
That agreement is either concealed in his 1877-78 essays, or his
views had changed." (RPR, 164) I would add that if Peirce's views
had changed they seem to have changed back. As I read 5.541, c.
1902, Peirce would say that, among the conceivable practical effects
of the real presence of flesh and blood despite what to all present
appearances is bread and wine, is the layman's discovery in the
hereafter that the Roman church's representatives had it right.
I mention this partly to balance the apparent message of Jeffrey's
April 30 post on transubstantiation, and to question the way
Peirce's treatment of the Eucharist at 5.401 was then taken up as an
example of using the pragmatic maxim to rid us of meaningless
distinctions.
More importantly, I wish to follow Kees' exploration of consequences
of Peirce's treatment of personhood, bearing in mind the unexpected
consequences of following Smyth in his account of Peirce's semiotic
treatment of this issue. With Kees' and Smyth's readings of
Peirce's person in mind, what are the implications for our
understanding of the pragmatic maxim? Perhaps it is obvious that
I'm fishing for the idea that the maxim must permit a distinction
between blood and wine that is comparable to that between a legisign
and one of its absolutely determinate sinsigns, or a person enduring
over time and that person as they are at an instant.
Best regards,
Charles Murray
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