This comment by Frances brings up a fundamental problem I have with Peircian philosophy. His Type-Token idea is essentailly Platonic in defining the Type as concept, not an object, that is imitated by an object, the Token. Then he also says that this Token can itself be a Type (if I get understand it) so that the Type has two conditions, one as a non-existing but independent idea and another as an existing object that is also a Token. Thus the self can have a Type (concept of self) and a Token ( sign of the self in various conscious acts, etc.) and that Token can also be a Type (somehow). This, to me, at least in the primary notion of the Type, is pure Platonism and the secondary notion of Type that is also a Token is more complicated. Here, if a Token is an imperfect sign of a Type, then there must be another Token that it does perfectly match but is different from the original Token. I envision this as an object (token) being the mirror reflection of a Type but when it is traced back to the originating Type, a different Type is evidenced. So the path from Type to Token is not the same as from Token back to Type. Suppose you walk from your house to the corner store. Then you retrace your steps from the store back to your house, except they don't take you to your house but to a neighbor's house, making it seem as if you began from there in the first place. In this way, we may infer, our concept of self reflects a different self that the the mysterious "real" but non-existing and Platonically Ideal?) self.
Peircian thinking is like a muzzle-loading gun, (those in use before "rifled" barrels that spun the bullet like a well-thrown football). The muzzle barrel is just a tube and the bullet's trajectory can wobble a lot, like a poorly thrown football, and miss its target. That's why in muzzle-loaded earlier warfare, enemies could fire at one another close range and the bullets might go whizzing every which way, missing most soldiers and hitting the poor sparrows in yonder trees instead. So it is with Peirce's Types and Tokens. The Tokens cannot be traced back to a particular muzzle. Instead of admitting that the Tokens actually create the Types Peirce insists that some a-priori perfect Type must initiate the process. My problem with this is that it assumes a prior, independent, stable --but immaterial -- "thing" that can never be exactly identified. I say, forget that and just admit that the wobbly Tokens, which are assembled in continually shifting contexts, create the Types, also always different moment to moment, like Amando's gardinia. All the rest, the supposed correspondence between the Type and Tokens (like concepts and meanings), are just transient truces and treaties for the sake of getting on with existence. wc ----- Original Mes From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, October 13, 2010 12:01:37 AM Subject: Re: challenge My notion about yesterday's gardenia is never the same ________________________________ From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, October 12, 2010 6:37:05 PM Subject: RE: challenge Frances to William and Cheerskep and others... This is an interesting discussion as always for me, on the sense and mind of the self and the other. The concrete examples of notions and their associations help put Peircean phenomenology and other theories of his into a clearer light. His phenomenology for example is based only on "observations" by the self of its feelings for stuff, and then on the "expressions" of those findings to others for some validity. There is a point of confusion for me however in regard to notions by the self of notions expressed by the other and notions expressed by the self to the self. Perhaps this might be posed better as a curiosity. If the self is always unsure about what it feels is sensed or known of the notion in some other mind, say via their public expression of their private notion, then the self could also be wrong about what it feels is sensed or known of its own mind or soul or spirit or consciousness and awareness of its very own self. You would think that the self should be sure of its own self, but then maybe it never can be, any more than it could be sure of the other. My thought here turns to the physical symptoms of referred phantom pain that the self can indeed feel as real, but for which the self can be very wrong. It seems that Peircean phenomenology attempts to account for this hazy vagueness in minds, by resorting to the agreed group for some tentative assurance. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 1:02 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: challenge William writes: "I think I agree with Cheerskep here. Can I ever be sure that I can fully agree with anything another says or am I agreeing to my inner creation of what another says?" That's a perceptive and illuminating question about a highly deceptive subject. Let's distinguish between what another person says, and what he is thinking. To put that differently, should we say we agree with the other guy's "expression", or the notion behind that expression - its "meaning for him"? Let's first talk about agreeing with someone else's notion. I say William is right in his insinuation that we can never be sure our notion is a perfect replica of another person's notion. (My own view is a bit more extreme: I'd say it's not a matter of being unsure; my notion can NEVER perfectly replicate someone else's notion. This is true because no matter how ostensibly simple the notion may seem, it is always multiplex - always. My notion at any given moment is a compound of myriad previous associated memories, and the new results of the receiving and processing apparatus in my head. Moreover, No notion remains stable in my head. Whether it be a notion "of" New York, Cleopatra, "art", or any word whatever in the dictionary, as I reflect on the alleged subject of the notion, my conscious "picture" morphs. For me to speak of "my notion of New York" is a mistake, a self-deception, because it suggests a determinate, stable bit of consciousness.) Still, though perfect replication of another's notion may be impossible, the difference is -- as so much in philosophy of mind is -- a matter of degree. If I give a half hour speech explaining why I think we should not vote for Wintergreen for President, someone in the hall may rise and say, "I agree with Cheerskep," when in truth he doesn't agree with all my reasoning, but he does agree we should not vote for Wintergreen. And even as he says that, his and my notion of Wintergreen will differ in certain particulars. An interesting way in which our notions of the same man may differ though we don't differ on a "fact" about him is the "size" we give to that fact. Let's say Wintergreen is known to have said some bigoted things about gays. While one voter may shrug it off, saying there have probably been very few presidents in the past who haven't said or smiled at a bigoted remark about gays, for a second voter the remark terminates all possible allegiance to Wintergreen. In the second voter the accumulated mental associations with anti-gay bigotry were much more numerous and intense than in the first voter. The "inner creation" William cites is the mind's pulling together and manipulating memories associated with what one has just sensed (heard/seen/smelled etc). In the speaker's endeavor to convey his
