> On Feb 19, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote: > > "[B]y the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way or > in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds > to any real thing or not. If you ask present when, and to whose mind, I reply > that I leave these questions unanswered, never having entertained a doubt > that those features of the phaneron that I have found in my mind are present > at all times and to all minds." (Adirondack Lectures, 1905; in Collected > Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1 [eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul > Weiss; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931], paragraph 284) > > So Peirce has not entertained a doubt. But that is not a scientifical > premiss. Or has he justified this idea somewhere else? Because this idea of > the phaneron perhaps is the only idea from Peirce I cannot approve, because I > do not understand it: Our minds are separated, arent they? Besides very rare > events that seem to be telepathic. >
The other problem of course is what presence means in this context. (Not a small point - as I’ve noted Derrida’s critique of presence draws a lot on Peirce’s semiotics) Sticking with Peirce it’s worth asking about the relationship between place and time in the formulation of presence. Especially when a doctrine of continuity of some sense is part of Peirce’s thinking. I tend to read Peirce as speaking rather loosely here to get the general idea of the phaneron in experience without necessarily making it a definite idea. That is it is something pointed to in experience rather than an artificial category with carefully delineated meaning. This would of course also be more in keeping with Peirce’s maxim and his logic of vagueness. The other interesting part are the universal aspects of the phaneron. Again this pops up in German phenomenology with Husserl as well as post-Husserlean phenomenologists. Peirce is of course doing something different from Husserl. One has to be very careful reading one in terms of the other as there are so many places they differ. But the question of what is common to minds is a problem for Husserl as well. I think Peirce’s assumption something is common is a typical one. However I again think that some of Peirce’s other arguments and ideas should make us careful here.
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