> > On Aug 3, 2016, at 6:42 AM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Of course you’re welcome to use words like “mind” in a way different from >> Peirce’s usage, but I don’t see that substituting the term “mind” for >> “consciousness” here throws any light on what Peirce was talking about in >> this lecture. >> > Gary, I do not understand, why percepts and thoughts are not enclosed within > our brains or individual minds.
While I can’t speak for Gary, I suspect he’s simply drawing out a feature of how Peirce uses ‘mind’ which is a very externalist conception of mind rather than the more internalist. Further, unlike more Cartesian conceptions, Peirce draws a big distinction between mind and consciousness. More or less Peirce sees what we might call computation is broadly mind. This means mind can’t be separated out from practices and comportments. So to limit the mind to the brain or even the nervous system is wrong because something fundamental is lost. The mental part of walking can’t be logically separated out from the legs to just the brain or even nervous system. The classic example of this type of externalism I like to use to explain Peirce is the 90’s film Memento. If we were to ask about the character’s mind or memory it can’t really be separated from the signs on his skin. Of course we can still for particular types of analysis make a difference between what’s going on in the brain versus the broader nervous system and so forth. I think the question is just when talking about mind whether we can. Effectively this view of mind sees it in terms of 3rd person perspective semiotic processes rather than brains. Consciousness is different from mind. Of course consciousness also is a term with a lot of ambiguous senses. Narrowing things down somewhat we might distinguish between awareness of an object in a first person fashion from the general capability of first person perspective. So mind is 3rdness and consciousness is a type of 1stness. But how Peirce discusses consciousness is kind of weird. At times he brings up his notion of chance he picks up from the Epicureans. > …whatever is First is ipso facto sentient. If I make atoms swerve - as I do - > I make them swerve but very very little, because I conceive they are not > absolutely dead. And by that I do not mean exactly that I hold them to be > physically such as the materialists hold them to be, only with a small dose > of sentiency superadded. For that, I grant, would be feeble enough. But what > I mean is, that all there is, is First, Feelings; Second, Efforts; Third, > Habits - all of which are more familiar to us on their psychical side than on > their physical side; and that dead matter would be merely the final result of > the complete induration of habit reducing the free play of feeling and the > brute irrationality of effort to complete death (CP 6.201) > > What further is needed to clear the sign of its mental associations is > furnished by generalizations too facile to arrest attention here, since > nothing but feeling is exclusively mental. But while I say this, it must not > be inferred that I regard consciousness as a mere “epiphenomenon”; though I > heartily grant that the hypothesis that it is so has done good service to > science. To my apprehension, consciousness may be defined as that congeries > of non-relative predicates, varying greatly in quality and in intensity, > which are symptomatic of the interaction of the outer world,— the world of > those causes that are exceedingly compulsive upon the modes of consciousness, > with general disturbance sometimes amounting to shock, and are acted upon > only slightly, and only by a special kind of effort, muscular effort,— and of > the inner world, apparently derived from the outer, and amenable to direct > effort of various kinds with feeble reactions, the interaction of these two > worlds chiefly consisting of a direct action of the outer world upon the > inner and an indirect action of the inner world upon the outer through the > operation of habits. If this be a correct account of consciousness, i.e., of > the congeries of feelings, it seems to me that it exercises a real function > in self-control, since without it, or at least without that of which it is > symptomatic, the resolves and exercises of the inner world could not affect > the real determinations and habits of the outer world. I say that these > belong to the outer world because they are not mere fantasies but are real > agencies. (Pierce, Pragmatism EP 2.418-419) > Again this seems a controversial metaphysical position. I think one can adopt it more as a kind of logical analysis rather than embracing the metaphysics full heartedly. Still as a metaphysical position it is quite interesting and perhaps in a way compelling. There are obvious echoes of Spinoza and Leibniz in the view although it’s not entirely clear what is persisting. That is to be conscious would seem to have a connection so we experience a flow. But if we tie it just to the swerve it’d seem like each conscious moment is unconnected.
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