Frances to William and others... Thanks to you for the comparative insight into consciousness. It is not yet clear to me if recent research advances into the field of consciousness are consistent with the early Peirecean position or not. In any event, below are some of my immediate reflections on the issue of Peircean consciousness ready for correction. (1) With consciousness claimed by him as "living", yet also phenomenal and categorical and initially in essence "feeling", then it would be as "seeming" to be "something" albeit "anything" and perhaps even like the empty category of zeroness, but it could not be merely of "nothing" at all if it is phenomenal. (2) The concept of "feeling" is not aligned by Peirce only with the psyche of emotion and imagination, nor only with the human organism, nor with the physical brain, but is a much broader thing that he deemed exists in the whole world of matter and life. It seems to mean that even atoms have a "feeling" to grow by disposition in a direction. The state of "feeling" for him is broad and of all phenomena and "being" from matter to life and mind, while consciousness is of "feeling" but only of life. (3) There does not seem to be a split of matter from mind for Peirce because to give "feeling" a broad cosmic base he held that matter is effete mind that engages in quasi thought, and thus matter and mind do feel to varying degrees. This was likely his evolutionary way of extending subjectivism back into original and causal objectivism. (4) Peirce held that consciousness is phenomenal, so therefore it is my guess that it is not spiritual or epiphenomenal. This phenomenal stance would not be consistent with any religious position that is supereal or suprematist. Furthermore, life for him is not death or before and after death, but is of dead matter, yet the dead body is not in any way for him a body that is somehow alive in a spirit form. He guessed and believed that eventually in the evolution of normal humanity and rational thought that religion and science would converge and merge together, but that this would occur corporeally. (5) Peirce extended consciousness and pure brute "feeling" into the biotic sphere of nonhuman organisms in that he claimed even microbes are aware of their own well being and self. For example, a bacterium will not eat part of its own body as the only available food source when it is driven to eat food when hungry, because it seems to feel that such an act would defeat its chances to survive and thrive. (6) The blending of "feeling" as unconscious unawareness and "reasoning" as conscious awareness was not mentioned by Peirce in regard to human consciousness, but it would seem to be a direction consistent with his thinking on the issue. He did posit the brackets of "feeling" and "knowing" that acted as poles which contain a blending of "sensing" as sensation and "willing" as volition and "thinking" as cognition. My guess is that "reasoning" would be the eventual summation of them all together.
(7) You suggested that biologists have not yet found if consciousness might be anything at all, and thus is not something that might even be in the world, aside from whether it could even be defined in material terms. It seems to me that theists also would deny the being of consciousness, at least if it is predicated on phenomenal grounds, because phenomena denies any notion of the soul or the spirit or the ghost in life or death. It must be remembered that religious issues of god for Peirce are facts of hypothetical belief, and not matters of scientific law. William wrote... With respect to definition, if consciousness is nothing except living then it is nothing at all. It's rather quaint to speak of pure consciousness, brute consciousness and sure consciousness. We can't blame Peirce for that because he had to work in the dark regarding how the brain functions. Nowadays, the Cartesian mind-body split that relies on the division of reason from emotion or emotion from imagination is largely put aside, except in religious beliefs that assert a spirit world or life after death of the body (like Peirce). But Peirce did seem to see necessary interlinking among his three types of consciousness. So far, the biologists can't say what consciousness is, or if it is, in material terms. Yet we assume it is a functioning of our awareness, somehow. Neurologists now claim, based on clinical evidence, a unity of feeling and reasoning where one can't function without the other. This unity of mental processes (in continual loopback rather than linear activity) does echo Peirce at least in suggesting he was on to something modern. I do think Peirce came too soon. If he were working today, with the benefits of new technologies and clinical options, he'd probably be a major contributor in both science and philosophy.
