Sorry, correction, incorporated below (Kant's sense of the word
"feeling" as a restriction of Tetens's sense of the word "feeling", not
vice versa). - Best, Ben
Thomas, Jeff D.,
Despite Peirce's use of the phrase 'emotional interpretant' (in 1907,
"Pragmatism", CP 5.475
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/emotional-interpretant ) for the
feeling produced by a sign, he often enough in the 1900s said that
pleasure and pain are not feelings, or are 'secondary' feelings at best.
We usually regard joy and sorrow as kinds of pleasure and pain, or as
involving pleasure and pain in some way. I've posted on this question
often enough, with quotes and links, so I'll end up linking to my
earlier posts for extended discussion. On Dec. 1, 2014, I began a reply:
Peirce did not regard pleasure, pain, and other kinds of affectivity
mainly as qualities of feeling. By "feeling" Peirce seems to mean
something more like sensation, although across his work it has
seemed to me that he doesn't mean only sensation.
1. I should have written "mainly as feelings," not "mainly as qualities
of feeling". 2. I've since found Peirce somewhere distinguishing
sensation from feeling, because a sensation is an individual event,
associable with a date and place. Anyway, I went on with Peirce quotes
and discussion, see at link:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15055 .
The next day, in reply to Jeff D.'s summary of Peirce's definition of
"sensation" in the _Century Dictionary _, I wrote
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15075
discussing Peirce's _Century Dictonary _ discussion of Tetens's and
Kant's definitions of feeling. Peirce himself means it in Tetens' sense,
not Kant's sense (pleasure and pain), which, in the _Century Dictionary
_, Peirce characterizes *Kant's sense* as a "restriction" of Kant's
*Tetens's* sense, although later Peirce sometimes disputes that pleasure
and pain are feelings at all.
Yes, I find it a bit confusing, and wonder what Peirce meant by
"emotion" when he coined the phrase "emotional interpretant". His
example is that of feelings produced by music. It seems so difficult to
exclude pleasure and pain from this sort of thing. Another time, in
defining the dynamical interpretant, he said that it could consist, not
in a feeling, but in the agitation produced by a feeling. I would have
thought that 'emotion' is a kind of such agitation, for Peirce. Anyway,
when feeling is regarded as the 'voice of instinct', are we supposed to
include emotion, but not joy or sorrow to the extent that they are
pleasure and pain?
I wouldn't minimize, any more than you would, the importance of
affectivity (pleasure, pain, desire, sentiment, etc.) to human life, as
our natural form of valuation of things as being good or bad, and its
importance as a kind of 'energy' or 'wattage' rewarding, punishing,
fueling, etc. But Peirce's ways of dealing with it seem intricate and
unsettled. His trichotomy of faculties of the psyche is 1. feeling (such
as a feeling of redness, whether in sensation or, usually less vividly,
in imagination), 2. sense of reaction/resistance/effort (where he places
volition), and 3. general conception. Well, he formulates that
trichotomy more than once, with slight variations. Anyway, it's not the
same thing as the commonplace division into the affective, the conative,
and the cognitive.
Peirce in later years says that plausibility in the sense of facility,
naturalness, is what guides abductive inference. In 1910 he defines it
with a normative "ought": "By plausibility, I mean the degree to which a
theory ought to recommend itself to our belief independently of any kind
of evidence other than our instinct urging us to regard it favorably."
(A Letter to Paul Carus 1910, CP 8, see paragraph 223.) Such
plausibility is not the selfsame thing as an affective satisfaction
which one may get with an abductive inference and which helps motivate
one to abductive inference. Even if the feeling of such plausibility is
really an affect, it's not the same affect as a pleasure that one takes
in such affect of plausibility. (Note, I'm using 'affect' in a loose
sense, I don't mean something readily observable in a person by another
person.)
Best, Ben
On 7/15/2015 1:51 PM, Thomas wrote:
Jeffrey -
I believe you have reiterated my point, that Peirce said there is an
emotional aspect of abduction. This is in contrast to "instinct."
(Your second sentence almost reiterates your first one, and your third
makes no reference either to emotion or instinct. "Some conscious
awareness of the particularities" points to neither.)
My point is that Peirce did not (to my knowledge) explain the *source
of the emotion which rewards abduction, or what makes it a regular
part of our character. He assumed its existence.
I think we would perceive the situation more clearly if we describe
the emotion mentioned by Peirce as the energy (or force) that
motivates and propels logic. Logic is the engine, and emotional
rewards are the fuel that makes it run. If we fail to clearly
separate the effects of emotion and logic, then we have a model whose
components are indistinct, which in turn will impede a higher level of
abstraction, where "logic" is an object and "emotion" is a separate
object.
Emotion propels a lot of activity other than logic. Usually they are
considered as opposites. Their mutually reinforcing partnership when
abduction occurs is the paradox of Man's success.
Regards,
Tom Wyrick
(Ozzie903 is an email address)
On Jul 15, 2015, at 12:09 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard
<[email protected]> wrote:
Ozzie, Neal, List,
On Peirce's account, every act of interpretation involves a feeling
on the part of the subject that is engaged in the semiotic process.
As such, we shouldn't be surprised to find that every abductive
inference involves an emotion on the part of the individual who is
exerting some degree of control over the processes of reasoning.
Without some conscious awareness of the particularities of what is
involved in bringing together the object of inquiry, the sign and the
interpretant, there could be no self-control over the process.
As such, I think Peirce is committed to the view that every abductive
inference both involves and evolves relations to a range of emotional
interpretants--both actual and possible--as well as to the logical
interpretants that form the conclusions of the reasonings.
Neal, here are some places in the CP where Peirce discusses the
relations between instincts and the different kinds of
interpretants: 8.327-341, 4.539-551. Both discussions are rather
dense. On Peirce's account, all perceptual judgments are instinctive
in character, so you might look at what he says about perception in
order to get a clearer picture of how instincts fit into his account
of the interpretative process.
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Ozzie [[email protected] ]
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 9:51 AM
To: Jeffrey Brian Downard
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Instinct
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