(Sorry if Figure 1 is distorted. Please refer to one of my previous
emails for a undistorted version.)
Clark wrote:
" . . . It seems that for Peirce experience (and thus (110214-1)
cognitive thought) consist of three worlds: the internal,
the external and the logical."
I wonder if this triadic nature of experience can be diagrammatically
represented as follows:
f g
External world -------> Internal world -------> Logical World
(Object) (Representamen) (Interpretant)
| ^
| |
|________________________________________________|
h
Figure 1. Experience as an irreducible triad.
f = perception/cognition
g = reflection/modeling
h = validation/grounding
To the extent that Figure 1 is true, experience would belong to the class
of the Peircean sign and the mathematical category.
With all the best.
Sung
___________________________________________________
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
>
>> The pragmatistic character of that last paragraph should be obvious
>> enough. What may not be so obvious is the definition of consciousness as
>> âconnection with an internal world.â This is rather vague on the
>> face of it, but I think it offers the key to a concept of
>> âconsciousnessâ which harmonizes very well with contemporary
>> neuroscience â at least among those who, like Peirce, hold that
>> consciousness is functional and not an epiphenomenon â and with the
>> von Uexkullâs Innenwelt/Umwelt distinction, which is widely applied in
>> biosemiotics. I wonât say more about it just now, but Iâm hoping
>> that as the seminar continues weâll be able to draw on these other
>> disciplines to spell out more clearly what âconnection with an
>> internal worldâ might mean in a pragmatistic semiotics.
>
> A few quotes to go along with Garyâs great post. The first is an excerpt
> from Peirce speaking on the meaning of experience.
>
> But in order to bring what I have to say to a close, I will quote from the
> definition of experience given by the father of modern experiential
> philosophy, Dr. John Locke. In the Essay concerning Humane Understanding,
> (II, i, 2) we read (and the italics are in the original): "Whence has [the
> mind] all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one
> word, from _experience_: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from
> that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about
> _external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds,
> perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our
> understanding with all the materials of thinking._" This definition so
> formally stated, by such an authority, quite peerless for our present
> purpose, should be accepted as definitive and as a landmark that it would
> be a crime to displace or disturb. (Collected Papers 5.611, 1906)
>
> I had this in my notes discussing experience where there are three
> aspects: the sensory, brute compulsion and habituation (now more better
> captured by the word disposition). Quoting from a post of Joe Ransdellâs
> from Feb 25, 2004 (which included the above quote)
>
> Sometime after Locke, the idea of experience became associated in
> philosophy primarily with the idea of physical sense-perception; but even
> as late as Locke that is not yet its primary sense inasmuch as what he
> calls "reflection" is regarded as one of the two forms of experience, and
> although it is referred to by Locke as "inner sense", what that means for
> him is not what we would now tend to associate with that, namely,
> awareness of our own feelings, passions, and emotions, but rather what we
> now think of as introspection of the operations of our mind. (Roughly,
> Locke's "reflection" is the rubric under which he deals with what the
> scholastics called "second intentions", i.e. sensation and reflection are,
> respectively, first intentional and second intentional awareness.)
>
> By the time of the 20th Century "experience" had come to be associated in
> philosophy primarily with sensation, sense-data, etc. But the Greek
> "empeiria" and the Latin "experientia" were primarily used to refer to
> what one had learned in consequence of practical action, which is what
> "experience" is still used to refer to in ordinary discourse in English,
> as when employers want to hire somebody with the sort of experience
> relevant to a given task. They are not interested in a record of one's
> sense-data but are interested rather in what one has learned by doing or
> attempting to do something.
>
> I raise this for the consciousness discussion because I think itâs
> rather hard to separate out the notion of experience from the notion of
> consciousness. They are intertwined in many ways. I think in particular
> reading Joeâs comments one can see consciousness lurking in the
> background.
>
> Finally hereâs an other quote from Peirce I find helpful. Itâs from
> Peirceâs early period (1865) but still worthwhile.
>
> There is a third world, besides the inner and the outer; and all three are
> co-extensive and contain every experience. Suppose that we have an
> experience. That experience has three determinations -- three different
> references to a substratum or substrata, lying behind it and determining
> it. In the first place, it is a determination for an object external to
> ourselves -- we feel that it is so because it is extended in space.
> Thereby it is in the external world. In the second place, it is a
> determination of our own soul, it is our experience; we feel that it is so
> because it lasts in time. Were it a flash of sensation, there for less
> than an instant, and then utterly gone from memory, we should not have
> time to think it ours. But while it lasts, and we reflect upon it, it
> enters into the internal world. We have now considered that experience as
> a determination of the modifying object and of the modified soul; now,
> say, it may be and is naturally regarded as also a determination of an
> idea of the Universal mind; a pre-existent, archetypal Idea. Arithmetic,
> the law of number, was before anything to be numbered or any mind to
> number had been created. It was though it did not exist. It was not a fact
> nor a thought, but it was an unuttered word. En archei en ho logos. We
> feel an experience to be a determination of [i.e. it is determined by]
> such an archetypal LOGOS, by virtue of its //_depth of tone_/logical
> intension//, and thereby it is in the logical world.
>
> Note the great difference between this view and Hegel's. Hegel says, logic
> is the science of the pure idea. I should describe it as the science of
> the laws of experience in virtue of its being a determination of the idea,
> or in other words as the formal science of the logical world.
>
> In this point of view, efforts to ascertain precisely how the intellect
> works in thinking, -- that is to say investigation of internal
> characterictics -- is no more to the purpose which logical writers as
> such, however vaguely have in view, than would be the investigation of
> external characteristics.
>
> (W1, 168f; 1865, Harvard Lecture on Logic I) [the slash mark enclosures
> are the editor's way of showing that in the MS Peirce hesitated between
> two alternative wordings.]
>
> It seems that for Peirce experience (and thus cognitive thought) consist
> of three worlds: the internal, the external and the logical. Joe felt (and
> argued here quite regularly) that this should undermine the readings of
> Peirce by figures such as Tom Short. The place of the logical world is
> perhaps very much wrapped up in our discussion of dicisigns.
>
>
>
>
>
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