Charles, List,
You've asked a number of hard questions about Peirce's account of the self.
What we mean by the 'self, ' I take it, is the kind of thing that is expressed
by saying "I'm trying to gain a better understanding of some of Peirce's
arguments," where the emphasis is my having truth as an aim--and that this aim
is something that 'I' have in mind.
Your goal is to clarify some suggestions Smyth makes in Reading Peirce Reading
about how we might better understand some of Peirce's arguments--especially the
arguments in "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," where he
considers the case of a young child who is learning the meaning of falsehood
and error upon discovering that the stove is indeed too hot to be touched.
In Chapter 2, Smyth introduces two conjectures about the owners of scientific
knowledge, along with a definition of human minds as causes:
Conjecture 3 (Self-knowledge as Discursive and Inferential)
The ‘I’ as the owner of knowledge is an occult or theoretical object, which is
known to us by reasoning from signs.
Conjecture 4 (Plotinian Self-Identity)
The identity and continuity of a human life can be explained on the model of
the identity and continuity of a science or a rational system of knowledge,
but, in order for this to give us a coherent account, the logical operations
involved in science must themselves have been conceived on the model of what is
living, rather than of mere mechanisms. Mere mechanisms produce wholes by
operations that only assemble or aggregate a pre-existing stock of parts by a
fixed and unchanging set of rules; what is living cannot be defined by an
enumeration of parts.
Definition 3 (Human Minds as Causes)
Our theory of the mental should treat a human mind as a theoretical object
introduced to explain signs or public and physical evidences of logical
reasonings associated with human beings. A theory of logical forms as “living
forms” explains these changes in the signs of thought by a teleology (rational
purpose) governing possible changes in the laws of the changes in signs. But
efficient causes or causes that commence or alter motions are always only
physical causes and human minds are not efficient or moving causes.
You have posed the following question: "For me, Smyth's account highlights
questions about the relation between the person as vague particular and the
person as concrete individual. He compares it to the relation between a
legisign and its sinsigns. (RPR 166-67) My query is how to better comprehend
this semiotic relationship."
In a letter concerning his review of Royce's The World and the Individual,
Peirce offers this comment: "Your statement of the relation of the individual
to God is sublime and fit to satisfy the soul in life and in the hour of death.
It must stand for age after age." After praising his account, Peirce adds,
"My feeling is that the individual just fills his little place in the
relegation of the universal and except for the sake of what fragment of
universal meaning he bears is no account. Like the word 'to' which fills out
'Be or not be' and so helps the effect of the drama of Hamlet." He ends by
saying, "Individuals are cells."
In order to gain a clearer understanding of the semiotic relationship you are
asking about, I think that it will help to consider a diagram. In his review
of Royce's book, he offers the following rather puzzling mathematical diagram:
"Every reality, then, is a Self; and the Selves are intimately connected, as if
they formed a continuum. Each one is, so to say, a delineation, -- with
mathematical truth, incongruous as the metaphor is, we may say that each is a
quasimap of the organic aggregate of all the Selves, which is itself a Self. .
. . It will be observed that if the Selves did form a continuum, each would be
distinguished by its own point of Self-consciousness. This would not generally
be the same as the point of self-consciousness of an idea within self, since
each idea is distinguished by its own exclusive self-consciousness. The systems
of delineation must be different. Here we see an inadequacy in the metaphor of
the map; for what, more than anything else, makes my ideas mine is that they
appeal to me, and are, or tend to become, represented in my general
consciousness as representations. But, of course, the map-metaphor must be
inadequate, since a map wants several of the essential characters of the class
of signs to which ideas belong. Again, in the map the boundaries of the selves
are somewhat indeterminate; each must embrace no more nor less than a complete
map of the whole surface; but the boundary of any one can be considered to be
drawn in any way which fulfills this condition, the boundaries of the others
being drawn accordingly, just as on the Mercator's chart, which gives an
endless series of representations of the whole globe, any one line from pole to
pole may be taken as the boundary of the globe as represented in each chart.
But the boundaries between Selves are not so indeterminate, because all that is
in one Self appeals by a continuum of representations to that Self's
self-consciousness. It will be necessary, therefore, to replace the idea of a
map by that of a continuum of maps overlying one another. A map is a section of
a projection of which the surface mapped is another section. The projection
itself is a sheaf of lines which diverge from one point. Instead of saying that
a Self is a map, a more adequate metaphor would call it a projection of the
reality, of which projection any one idea of the Self is a section. At any
rate, it is plain that the map-metaphor requires deep emendation in order to
answer the purposes of philosophy. At the same time, it is a considerable aid
even as it is; and the initiating of the introduction of such exact ideas into
philosophy is one of the momentous events in its history." (CP, 8.125)
My assumption in reading this passage is that Peirce is spending more effort
explaining his own conception of the self and is less concerned with the task
of articulating and evaluating Royce's conception. For the sake of teasing out
this puzzling passage, I think we could start with the claim that the self is
like a projection. This idea of projection is drawn from perspective and
projective geometries. Peirce offers a nice explanation of the construction of
a perspective image in his "easy" introduction to non-Euclidean geometry (W, 8,
25-9). I think it will be worth the time needed to tease out this manner of
diagramming the relationship between the self considered generally and any one
idea of the self. He refers to these more particular conceptions of the self
as the domestic self, the self of business, the better self, the evil spirit
that sometimes possesses him, etc. [8.123]).
How might we understand this metaphor? What we have is the idea of a set of
rays that radiate out from a point of perspectivity to some thing that is
located in the object plane. A representation of the object is constructed on
the image plane by determining where the rays from the object intersect to form
an image. Quite literally, the representation is a mathematical image of the
object. Peirce's suggestion is that a particular manifestation of the self is
analogous to some particular image plane that cuts through the rays that
radiate out from the point of perspectivity. There are a continuum of possible
image planes that could cut through these rays, and the many different
particular manifestations of self are related to one another in a manner that
is analogous to this continuum. Each of these possible image planes will give
rise to different images of the objects in the object plane--depending upon the
orientation of the image plane with respect to the point of perspectivity and
the object plane.
Another way of picturing the relationship between the point of perspectivity,
the object plane and the image plane is to think about the object plane as a
sphere--such as the earth. If the image is placed underneath that sphere, and
the point of perspectivity is placed above it, then it is possible to construct
a map by radiating rays down through the sphere and onto the image plane (e.g.,
as with a stereographic projection). Alternately, we could form the image
plane into a cylinder that wraps around the sphere and place the point of
perceptivity at the center of the sphere (e.g., as with a Mercator projection).
The idea that I find particularly interesting is the notion of the projective
absolute. The absolute can be thought of as the cone of rays that radiate down
from the point of perspectivity and just touch the surface of the spherical
earth as a continuous series of tangents. The image plane can be oriented to
cut through that cone at different angles. The cone will cast the shape of
different conic sections (e.g., elliptical, parabolic or hyperbolic) depending
upon the orientation of the image plane to the cone. The conic section that is
cast onto the image plane is analogous to the line of the horizon on a
perspective image. Peirce often refers to the idea of a projective absolute
that Cayley used as a basis for setting up a projective metric. In projective
geometry, Cayley's conception of the absolute is important because it serves as
a basis for mapping from one metrical system (e.g., elliptical) onto another
(e.g., hyperbolic) metrical system.
Using these kinds of mathematical diagrams, I think we might be able to arrive
at a clearer understanding of Peirce's account of the relationship between the
logical conception of the self and other key conceptions such as error,
falsity, truth and reality. My hunch is that the self that has the aim of
seeking truth and that is committed to acting on the basis of the requirements
of reasonable inquiry has a special status in this metaphor of a projection.
This conception of the self is a very special symbolic legisign that reflects
the formal requirements that are necessary to achieve this purpose. It should
not be thought of as one image plane that just happens to have a particular
orientation to the point of perspectivity and the objects that are real.
Rather, the activity of the logical self is more analogous to the rays of light
that are tangent to the sphere and that cast the conic section onto the image
plane. The conic section is called the absolute because it represents an
infinitely distant horizon. On this horizon, all parallel lines converge on a
point. The absolute horizon sets the standard needed for comparing different
perspectives on the world as we seek the truth. The particular self that looks
out on the world from a given perspective is a particular image plane that
contains representations of the world. The representations are incomplete and,
in many respects, they are in error. In representing this to myself, I
acknowledge that this is my representation of the world around me. In doing
so, I recognize a obligation to identify the errors of my ways and to correct
the image by mapping from this particular perspective onto others. In doing
so, I recognize an obligation to broaden my horizons by comparing my
incomplete, fragmentary, and somewhat erroneous outlook on the world to the
larger continuum of other possible perspectives.
This is only a first stab at an interpretation of this passage, but I'm hoping
that we might be able to use this diagram for reflecting on the semiotic
relationship between particular manifestations of the self and the larger self
of which each of us is just a part.
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________
From: charles murray [charlesmur...@charter.net]
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2014 5:05 AM
To: Peirce List
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and
person
Kees, Gary, Jerry, List -
Thank you for your very rich responses. I will continue to study them.
Respecting time pressures alluded to in Kees' post, I hope I will be forgiven
for taking the helpful replies in hand to extend my queries a little.
First I emphasize Smyth's appreciation of the point Jerry alludes to in
speaking of the "intimacy of mind-body" or of Gary's observation that a person
is ""dividual" in the sense of being more like a cluster of personalities that
a single personality". I take it that Kees has a similar view, since he did
not contest the idea I tried to float in response to "Science Beyond the Self"
pp. 159-60, following CP 5.421, that Peirce's person can be thought of as a
"tightly compacted supra-individual institution". Smyth also recognizes
Gary's ""individual" in strictly logical terms [which] exists instantaneously".
Smyth calls a person in the first sense a vague particular, and in the second
an absolutely determinate concrete individual. The distinction depends on
whether or not the law of excluded middle holds. Of a vague as opposed to a
determinate individual it can be true that the person is mental or physical
without it following that the person is mental or that the person is physical.
(RPR,154,167)
Second I should take more care representing Smyth 's view of a person's
unification and causal efficacy through relationship with physical particulars.
A vague particular is unified through _indirect_ relationships with physical
particulars, by means of "material qualities" that are not the person's in the
person's being as a sign.(RPR, 162ff) I take it that the vague particular's
unity turns on how its associated absolutely determinate individuals are
related to other concrete particulars. In related fashion the vague
particular person does not act on the physical realm directly through efficient
causation but "indirectly through the body and acts through the body by
affecting the rule or the habit which is exemplified in bodily behavior".
(165-66) I take it that the exemplification in behavior is again, in part, a
matter of direct relations involving the person as an absolutely determinate
concrete particular, in relation for example to the stuffy room's window.
For me, Smyth's account highlights questions about the relation between the
person as vague particular and the person as concrete individual. He compares
it to the relation between a legisign and its sinsigns. (RPR 166-67) My query
is how to better comprehend this semiotic relationship. It touches upon
Peirce's theories of continuity and final causation, but in accordance with his
classification of the sciences we should turn for understanding toward the
normative sciences, mathematics and ultimately phenomenology. Smyth pursues
this course in "Peirce's Normative Science Revisited", cited by Kees.
(_Transactions_, 38, 1/2, 2002, pp. 283-306)
Smyth confronts the "paradox that, while the rewards of inquiry may go to the
community, the obligations of inquiry fall on specific individuals ... beings
in the ... category of secondness". (NSR,288) I take it that the deepest
problem here is in making contact between such beings in the category of
secondness (individuals strictly speaking) and beings in the category of
thirdness ("obligations of inquiry"). After examining the paradox in terms of
normative science and mathemetics, Smyth comes ultimately to phenomenology, to
Peirce's aim to achieve contact between the two categories as part of his
effort to motivate individuals to be logical, and by trusting the rhetorical
effectiveness of his appeal to a perfect example, which will cause an ultimate
ideal to reveal itself. (302) The ultimate ideal is of course concrete
reasonableness, and it manifests the connection between secondness and
thirdness that we are asking about. Smyth suggests that the perfect example is
the individual inquirer "isolated from others by the necessity of taking
personal responsibility for his or her individuating scientific acts" (290) and
that the hoped-for response to Peirce's rhetoric is "our realization of what
these individuals are sacrificing in the way of achieving their ends ... not
even allowed to console themselves with the thought that at least they know
they are doing their duty". (304) Smyth makes all this part of the story he
tells about "Fixation of Belief".(304)
I would appreciate any response to flaws in what I say here, in its relation to
Peirce or to Smyth or both. I would especially welcome comments from other
students of Smyth's work, including some recent contributors to the list, who
are much more conversant than I with his thought. I again appreciate making
some contact with Kees' ideas on these matters, and the responses from Jerry
and Gary F., and hope they will consider saying a bit more.
Again, the links to Kees' "Science Beyond the Self"
http://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/cognitiofilosofia/article/view/13591
and Smyth's _Reading Peirce Reading_
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~tmoore/docs/smyth/RPR-24Aug96.pdf:
All best,
Charles Murray
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