Helmut - I'll try to be brief because I really don't think this is a
topic for this list.
1] Democratic change, whether gradual or via leaps, has in my view,
nothing to do with the LEAP Manifesto.
2] Yes - the best laid plans of mice and men could be compared with
'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.
3] A call for action is, in my view, based on a theory of 'How To
Live as a community'.
They are recommending a particular socioeconomic system - and this
has nothing to do with democracy. The term 'democracy', to my
understanding, refers only to a method of choosing a particular
action/person/govt/ etc.
4) Peirce was, if I recall correctly, against gradual evolution and
did suggest 'leaps' in evolutionary change.
That's it.
Edwina
On Mon 26/06/17 8:17 PM , "Helmut Raulien" [email protected] sent:
Edwina, with "it" I meant a basic-democratic, maybe leap-like,
change: In Cochabamba (was it in the 1980ies?) a citizens initiative
had regained the water rights that were stolen from the people by a
collaboration of the government and a US- water company. Before they
were not even allowed to collect rain water. In Chiapas (1990ies) the
people have achieved to govern themselves, see: Zapatista uprising.
How it is there nowadays I dont know, I hope still democratic. You
wrote: 'The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft awry' I
dont understand (not a native speaker), does that mean: "The way to
hell is paved with good intentions"? With which I would agree. You
wrote: "4] You are suggesting that a theory 'explains things
afterwards'. But fascism, communism - and the LEAP manifesto are not
explaining things 'afterwards' but are recommending a particular mode
of socioeconomic and political organization that IF ONLY it is
followed - will bring 'the best life' and well-being and so on." I
do not see the Leap Manifesto as a theory (do they claim that?), but
a call for action. That they promise best life and well-being- I too
do not like that either. I agree that this is wrong. But are they, as
you said, "recommending a particular mode of socioeconomic and
political organization"? Or is it simply democracy, they recommend?
About the kind of freedom Luther meant I am overasked. Perhaps he just
gave in to the princes one of whom had protected him before. The
farmers fought against all princes, but Luther could not accompany
them at this point, because without the help of one of these princes
he would have had ended on the pyre long before. You ask: "And what
does any of this have to do with Peirce?" Nothing I admit. But I had
argued that you (from my humble opinion, which may anytime be altered)
should not refute the Leap-Manifesto with Peirce, so be not
Peirce-related either with this subject. Well, trying to suck
something Peircean off my fingers... Peirce had an idea of
continuity, and the leap manifesto wants a discontinuity, a leap. So
it might hopefully be Peirce-related, to say, that modern theories
talk about leaps, revolutions, bifurcations, emergences, sudden
changes from quantity to quality, which Peirce at his time could not,
or did not want to be, aware of. Or? Best, Helmut 27. Juni
2017 um 01:13 Uhr
"Edwina Taborsky" wrote:
Helmut - you wrote:
1] " I spontaneously recall at least two places where it has worked:
Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Chiapas, Mexico."
What does 'IT' refer to? What worked?
2] The Marxist-Leninist theory of linear socioeconomic phases is
simply a Seminar Room Theory. It's not a FACT.
3] You wrote:
"Luther edited pamphlets against the peasants, who wanted the same
freedom, he advertised before for christian people, and he argued
with his theory of the two realms"
What freedom?
And what does any of this have to do with Peirce?
4] You are suggesting that a theory 'explains things afterwards'.
But fascism, communism - and the LEAP manifesto are not explaining
things 'afterwards' but are recommending a particular mode of
socioeconomic and political organization that IF ONLY it is followed
- will bring 'the best life' and well-being and so on.
As is said: 'The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft awry'...
I think pragmatic realism is the sensible path..It doesn't dwell in
the land of 'If Only'.
Edwina
On Mon 26/06/17 6:14 PM , "Helmut Raulien" [email protected] sent:
Edwina, Gary, List, I am against utopism too, but I do not see what
should be wrong with the Leap Manifesto: They are not propagating an
utopian regime, but a basic-democratic change. And that is not
utopian (no place), I spontaneously recall at least two places where
it has worked: Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Chiapas, Mexico. In the
Spanish revolution 1936 the Soviet Union fought against the
revolutionists, because they had success in changing the politics too
fast for marxist theory, in a basic-democratic way, establishing a
socialism after feudalism, skipping capitalism, which is not allowed
by the marxist-leninist theory. In the 16nth century, Martin Luther
edited pamphlets against the peasants, who wanted the same freedom,
he advertised before for christian people, and he argued with his
theory of the two realms. With these two examples I want to say, that
I think, that a theory (neither the Peircean one) must be not
normative, but only explanatory. It should not forbid social
evolution (and evolution is not always continuous, but leaps
sometimes), but merely explain it afterwards. And if something
happens, that cannot be explained by an existing theory- Well, we are
good at making up new, suiting theories, aren´t we? Best, Helmut
26. Juni 2017 um 22:26 Uhr
"Edwina Taborsky"
Gary R, list:
Yes, I think that any utopian regime, to maintain its 'purity of
type', must act as an Authoritarian regime to maintain the holistic
purity and prevent the natural dissipation of type that occurs within
the natural operations of both Secondness and Firstness. That is - it
must reject any incidents of Secondness and Firstness. [Entropy is a
natural law and utopias cannot function within entropy].
My own view of utopias is that there are two basic types. One
'yearns for' the assumed and quite mythic Purity-of-the-Past. The
image of this Past is pure romantic idyllic scenarios - purity of
behaviour, purity of genetic composition, purity of belief - This is
the utopia commonly known as Fascism where the idea is that If Only
we could go back to The Way We Were - then, all would be perfect.
That would be the Ernest Bloch one - and similar to that of Rousseau,
Mead etc - which all focused around The Noble Savage or some notion
that early man was somehow 'in a state of physical and mental
purity'. Or course the most famous recent example is Nazism.
The other utopia, equally mythic, sets up a Purity-of-the-Future.
The image of this Future is equally romantic and idyllic - where
no-one really has to work hard, where everyone collaborates and gets
along, where debate and discussion solves all issues; where such
psychological tendencies as jealousy, anger, lust, hatred etc - don't
exist. This utopia is commonly known as Communism. This is the LEAP
manifesto idea - where - If Only we all learn to behave in such and
such a way - then, we'll all have enough, won't have to work hard,
will all have loving families and etc. Equally naïve and mythic -
and ignorant of economics and human psychology.
I don't agree that Peirce's philosophy involves any utopian ideas,
for the reasons I've outlined. Utopia is by definition 'no place';
and Peirce's phenomenology is deeply, thoroughly, pragmatic. That is,
it is enmeshed, rooted, in Secondness and the brute individual
realities of that category. Equally, it is rooted in Firstness and
the chance deviations, aberrations of that mode. Thirdness doesn't
exist 'per se' [which would make it utopian if it did] and exists
only within the hard-working dirt and dust and chances of Firstness
and Secondness.
I feel that Peirce's agapasm is an outline of constant networking,
informational networking and collaboration - where for example,
plants will interact with insects and animals and vice versa - but-
this complex adaptive system is not a utopia, but...a complex
adaptive system, busily interacting and coming up with novel
solutions to chance aberrations...etc.
Edwina
On Mon 26/06/17 4:00 PM , Gary Richmond [email protected]
sent: Edwina, list, The LEAP manifesto sounds like North Korea?
Well, while I agree with you that the manifesto is at least
quasi-utopian, I think equating it with the brutal NK is way off the
mark. In any case, there was an op-ed piece today in The Stone,
that section of the New York Times editorial page where philosophers
comment on cultural, social, political, etc. issues. Today's piece,
by Espen Hammer, a professor of philosophy at Temple University, is
titled "A Utopia for a Dystopian Age."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/opinion/a-utopia-for-a-dystopian-age.html?ref=opinion
[1] Hammer's piece concludes: Are our industrial, capitalist
societies able to make the requisite changes? If not, where should we
be headed? This is a utopian question as good as any. It is deep and
universalistic. Yet it calls for neither a break with the past nor a
headfirst dive into the future. The German thinker Ernst Bloch argued
that all utopias ultimately express yearning for a reconciliation with
that from which one has been estranged. They tell us how to get back
home. A 21st-century utopia of nature would do that. It would remind
us that we belong to nature, that we are dependent on it and that
further alienation from it will be at our own peril. While Peirce
was a fierce opponent of "social Darwinism," I'm don't recall him
discussing utopia as such (or even Utopia for that matter), while he
was most certainly an advocate of meliorization. However, this
author argues that the philosophy of Peirce (and that of Mead) do
indeed involve utopian ideas. See: "The Agathopis of Charles Sanders
Peirce, Maria Augusta Nogueira Machado Dib, International Center of
Peirce Studies :
[2]http://ruc.udc.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/2183/13424/CC-130_art_131.pdf;sequence=1
[3] Abstract The subject of this article is the specificity of
Peirce’s Agathotopia and the relevance of his thought for the
«actual global crisis».. . Peirce . . . focused on the research of
the evolutionary process which leads to the summum bonum where
aesthetics, ethics and logics converge into the same purpose, . .
Wellness (EP 2.27). Locus of Wellness - Agathotopia - term used by
James Edward Meade, Nobel Prize award in economics (1977), has come
out in the universe of political economy. it would possibly be a
model for the construction of a good society to live in . . neither a
socio-political nor an economic model to promote the collective
welfare in the reality of the existential universe. Peirce’s
Agathotopia has been proposed in all his scientific metaphysical
architecture, in his realistic philosophy and logic of his objective
idealism, in his synechism, into the ongoing semioses between his
three categories, and the evolving process of reasonability, a
continuous teleological selfcorrective movement toward the
evolutionary enhancement. if Peirce believes in a dynamic mental
loving action (evolutionary love) that tends to the admirable, Fair
and True Purpose then he might not be proposing just one more utopia
in the history of Philosophy, but Agathotopia for the first time. A
tópos to the Summum Bonum. See also, Utopian Evolution: The
Sentimental Critique of Social Darwinism in Bellamy and Peirce by
Matthew Hartman.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20718007?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[4] Best, Gary R Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical
Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City
University of New York C 745 718 482-5690 On Mon, Jun 26, 2017
at 3:30 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
I don't see that it is Peirce-related for it is utopian; operating
purely in the realm of Homogeneic Purity; it is Hegelian, i.e.,
rejecting the reality of individual Secondness and finiteness;
rejecting the adaptive reality that is chance; rejecting even the
openness of genuine Thirdness [which is never finite].
It instead is filled with unverified assumptions, lacking
evidentiary support for these axioms, [massively ignorant about
economics and human psychology]and assuming, like all utopian
theories, that If Only We All Behaved in Such-and-Such a Way - then,
all will be well.
This is the mindset of all fundamentalist and totalitarian
ideologies - which all operate within the Seminar Room mode of
Thirdness - i.e., alienated from the pragmatic daily realities of
Secondness and Firstness. I'd call this Thirdness-as-Firstness,
alienated from physical reality, operating within an insistence on
iconic homogeneity of its population. Sounds a bit like Animal Farm
or 1984.
And - its mindset includes not only a profound ignorance of
economics but - a complete ignorance of the psychological reality of
the human species - which is not and has never been, able to operate
within only the abstract generalities of Thirdness. Certainly, you
can get small populations operating within the abstract generalities
- these are isolate communities sustained by the external world [a
convent, a monastery]; or cults. Since they are not operating within
all three categories but only within degenerate Thirdness, they are
all unable to provide continuity of Type. Their membership must be
replenished from external sources; or - most of them implode after a
few years. And all of them require enormous external authoritarian
Force to prevent any intrusion of Secondness and Firstness - i.e.,
individual realities, individual emotions and sensations. And to keep
the population submissive and entrapped within a homogeneic
perspective. Sounds a bit like N. Korea.
Edwina
On Mon 26/06/17 3:03 PM , Gary Richmond [email protected]
sent: Gary F, Edwina, Gene, list, Well, before we accept or
reject the LEAP proposal (which has implications far beyong Canada),
let's consider what it says. See:
https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ [5]. If we do
consider it here, please try to keep the discussion Peirce-related.
I've copied and pasted the text of the manifesto from the pdf below
my signature. Best, Gary R (writing as list moderator) the
leap manifesto A Call for Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and
One Another We start from the premise that Canada is facing the
deepest crisis in recent memory. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission has acknowledged shocking details about the violence of
Canada’s near past. Deepening poverty and inequality are a scar on
the country’s present. And our record on climate change is a crime
against humanity’s future. These facts are all the more jarring
because they depart so dramatically from our stated values: respect
for Indigenous rights, internationalism, human rights, diversity, and
environmental stewardship. Canada is not this place today -- but it
could be. We could live in a country powered entirely by truly just
renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in
which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to
systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one
another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest
growing sectors. Many more people could have higher wage jobs with
fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and
flourish in our communities. We know that the time for this great
transition is short. Climate scientists have told us that this is the
decade to take decisive action to prevent catastrophic global warming.
That means small steps will no longer get us where we need to go. So
we need to leap. This leap must begin by respecting the inherent
rights and title of the original caretakers of this land. Indigenous
communities have been at the forefront of protecting rivers, coasts,
forests and lands from out-of-control industrial activity. We can
bolster this role, and reset our relationship, by fully implementing
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Moved by the treaties that form the legal basis of this country and
bind us to share the land “for as long as the sun shines, the grass
grows and the rivers flow,” we want energy sources that will last
for time immemorial and never run out or poison the land.
Technological breakthroughs have brought this dream within reach. The
latest research shows it is feasible for Canada to get 100% of its
electricity from renewable resources within two decades1; by 2050 we
could have a 100% clean economy2 . We demand that this shift begin
now. There is no longer an excuse for building new infrastructure
projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the
future. The new iron law of energy development must be: if you
wouldn’t want it in your backyard, then it doesn’t belong in
anyone’s backyard. That applies equally to oil and gas pipelines;
fracking in New Brunswick, Quebec and British Columbia; increased
tanker traffic off our coasts; and to Canadianowned mining projects
the world over. The time for energy democracy has come: we believe
not just in changes to our energy sources, but that wherever possible
communities should collectively control these new energy systems. As
an alternative to the profit-gouging of private companies and the
remote bureaucracy of some centralized state ones, we can create
innovative ownership structures: democratically run, paying living
wages and keeping much-needed revenue in communities. And Indigenous
Peoples should be first to receive public support for their own clean
energy projects. So should communities currently dealing with heavy
health impacts of polluting industrial activity. Power generated
this way will not merely light our homes but redistribute wealth,
deepen our democracy, strengthen our economy and start to heal the
wounds that date back to this country’s founding. A leap to a
non-polluting economy creates countless openings for similar multiple
“wins.” We want a universal program to build energy efficient
homes, and retrofit existing housing, ensuring that the lowest income
communities and neighbourhoods will benefit first and receive job
training and opportunities that reduce poverty over the long term. We
want training and other resources for workers in carbon-intensive
jobs, ensuring they are fully able to take part in the clean energy
economy. This transition should involve the democratic participation
of workers themselves. High-speed rail powered by just renewables and
affordable public transit can unite every community in this country
– in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that
endanger and divide us. And since we know this leap is beginning
late, we need to invest in our decaying public infrastructure so that
it can withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events.
Moving to a far more localized and ecologically-based agricultural
system would reduce reliance on fossil fuels, capture carbon in the
soil, and absorb sudden shocks in the global supply – as well as
produce healthier and more affordable food for everyone. We call
for an end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to
rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging
extractive projects. Rebalancing the scales of justice, we should
ensure immigration status and full protection for all workers.
Recognizing Canada’s contributions to military conflicts and
climate change -- primary drivers of the global refugee crisis -- we
must welcome refugees and migrants seeking safety and a better life.
Shifting to an economy in balance with the earth’s limits also
means expanding the sectors of our economy that are already low
carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and
public-interest media. Following on Quebec’s lead, a national
childcare program is long past due. All this work, much of it
performed by women, is the glue that builds humane, resilient
communities – and we will need our communities to be as strong as
possible in the face of the rocky future we have already locked in.
Since so much of the labour of caretaking – whether of people or
the planet – is currently unpaid, we call for a vigorous debate
about the introduction of a universal basic annual income. Pioneered
in Manitoba in the 1970’s, this sturdy safety net could help ensure
that no one is forced to take work that threatens their children’s
tomorrow, just to feed those children today. We declare that
“austerity” is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a
threat to life on earth. We declare that “austerity” – which
has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and
healthcare, while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy
privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a
threat to life on earth. The money we need to pay for this great
transformation is available — we just need the right policies to
release it. Like an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial
transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties. Higher income taxes
on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to
military spending. All of these are based on a simple “polluter
pays” principle and hold enormous promise. One thing is clear:
public scarcity in times of unprecedented private wealth is a
manufactured crisis, designed to extinguish our dreams before they
have a chance to be born. Those dreams go well beyond this
document. We call for town hall meetings across the country where
residents can gather to democratically define what a genuine leap to
the next economy means in their communities. Inevitably, this
bottom-up revival will lead to a renewal of democracy at every level
of government, working swiftly towards a system in which every vote
counts and corporate money is removed from political campaigns.
This is a great deal to take on all at once, but such are the times
in which we live. The drop in oil prices has temporarily relieved
the pressure to dig up fossil fuels as rapidly as high-risk
technologies will allow. This pause in frenetic expansion should not
be viewed as a crisis, but as a gift. It has given us a rare
moment to look at what we have become – and decide to change. And
so we call on all those seeking political office to seize this
opportunity and embrace the urgent need for transformation. This is
our sacred duty to those this country harmed in the past, to those
suffering needlessly in the present, and to all who have a right to a
bright and safe future. Now is the time for boldness. Now is the
time to leap. Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical
Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City
University of New York C 745 718 482-5690 On Mon, Jun 26,
2017 at 2:16 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Gary F - as you say, these issues really have no place in a Peircean
analytic framework - unless we want to explore the development of
societal norms as a form of Thirdness - which is a legitimate area of
research.
I, myself, reject the Naomi Klein perspective [all of her work] and
certainly, reject the LEAP perspective- and would argue against it as
a naïve utopian agenda. You cannot do away with any of the modal
categories, even in Big Systems, eg, as in societal analysis - and
coming up with purely rhetorical versions of Thirdness [rather than
the real Thirdness that is in that society] and trying to do away
with the existential conflicts of Secondness and the private feelings
of Firstness is, in my view, a useless agenda.
Edwina
On Mon 26/06/17 1:50 PM , [email protected] sent:
Gene,
Thanks for the links; I’m quite familiar with the mirror neuron
research and the inferences various people have drawn from it, and it
reinforces the point I was trying to make, that empathy is deeper than
deliberate reasoning — as well as Peirce’s point that science is
grounded in empathy (or at least in “the social principle”).
I didn’t miss the point that it is possible to disable the feeling
of empathy — I just didn’t see that point as being news in any
sense (it’s been pretty obvious for millennia!). I see the
particular study as an attempt to quantify some expressions of
empathy (or responses that imply the lack of it). What it doesn’t
do is give us much of a clue as to what cultural factors are involved
in the suppression of empathic behavior. (And I thought that blaming
it on increasing use of AI was really a stretch!) As I wrote
before, what significance that study has depends on the nature of the
devices used to generate those statistics.
There are lots of theories about what causes empathic behavior to be
suppressed (not all of them use that terminology, of course.) I think
they are valuable to the extent that they give us some clues as to
what we can do about the situation. To take the example that happens
to be in front of me:
The election of Donald Trump can certainly be taken as a symptom of
a decline in empathy. In her new book, Naomi Klein spends several
chapters explaining in factual detail how certain trends in American
culture (going back several decades) have prepared the way for
somebody like Trump to exploit the situation. But the title of her
book, No is Not Enough, emphasizes that what’s needed is not
another round of recriminations but a coherent vision of a better way
to live, and a viable alternative to the pathologically partisan
politics of the day. I can see its outlines in a document called the
LEAP manifesto, and I’d like to see us google that and spend more
time considering it than we do blaming Google or other arms of “The
Machine” for the mess we’re in.
But enough about politics and such “vitally important” matters.
What interests me about AI (which is supposed to be the subject of
this thread) is what we can learn from it about how the mind works,
whether it’s a human or animal bodymind or not. That’s also what
my book is about and why I’m interested in Peircean semiotics. And
I daresay that’s what motivates many, if not most, AI researchers,
including the students that John Sowa is addressing in that
presentation he’s still working on.
Gary f.
} What is seen with one eye has no depth. [Ursula LeGuin] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ [6] }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Eugene Halton [mailto: [email protected]]
Sent: 26-Jun-17 11:09
To: Peirce List
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: AI
Dear Gary F,
Here is a link to the Sarah Konrath et al. study on the decline
of empathy among American college students:
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/eob/edobrien_empathyPSPR.pdf [7]
And a brief Scientific American article on it:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/ [8]
You state: " I think Peirce would say that these attributions
of empathy (or consciousness) to others are perceptual judgments —
not percepts, but quite beyond (or beneath) any conscious control, and
. We feel it rather than reading it from external indications."
This seems to me to miss the point that it is possible to
disable the feeling of empathy. Clinical narcissistic disturbance,
for example, substitutes idealization for perceptual feeling, so that
what is perceived can be idealized rather than felt.
Extrapolate that to a society that substitutes on mass scales
idealization for felt experience, and you can have societally reduced
empathy. Unempathic parenting is an excellent way to produce the
social media-addicted janissary offspring.
The human face is a subtle neuromuscular organ of attunement,
which has the capacity to read another's mind through mirror
micro-mimicry of the other's facial gestures, completely
subconsciously. These are "external indications" mirrored by one.
One study showed that botox treatments, in paralyzing facial
muscles, reduce the micro-mimicry of empathic attunement to the other
face in an interaction. The botox recipient is not only impaired in
exhibiting her or his own emotional facial micro-muscular movements,
but also is impaired in subconsciously micro-mimicking that of the
other, thus reducing the embodied feel of the other’s
emotional-gestural state (Neal and Chartrand, 2011). Empathy is
reduced through the disabling of the facial muscles.
Vittorio Gallese, one of the neuroscientists who discovered
mirror neutons, has discussed "embodied simulation" through "shared
neural underpinnings." He states: “…social cognition is not only
explicitly reasoning about the contents of someone else’s mind. Our
brains, and those of other primates, appear to have developed a basic
functional mechanism, embodied simulation, which gives us an
experiential insight of other minds. The shareability of the
phenomenal content of the intentional relations of others, by means
of the shared neural underpinnings, produces intentional attunement.
Intentional attunement, in turn, by collapsing the others’
intentions into the observer’s ones, produces the peculiar quality
of familiarity we entertain with other individuals. This is what
“being empathic” is about. By means of a shared neural state
realized in two different bodies that nevertheless obey to the same
morpho-functional rules, the “objectual other” becomes “another
self”. Vittorio Gallese, “Intentional Attunement. The Mirror
Neuron System and Its Role in Interpersonal Relations,” 15 November
2004 Interdisciplines,
[9]http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1 [10]
Gene Halton
On Jun 20, 2017 7:00 PM, wrote:
List,
Gene’s post in this thread had much to say about “empathy” —
considered as something that can be measured and quantified for
populations of students, so that comments about trends in
“empathy” among them can be taken as meaningful and important.
I wonder about that.
My wondering was given more definite shape just now when I came
across this passage in a recent book about consciousness by Evan
Thompson:
[[ In practice and in everyday life … we don’t infer the inner
presence of consciousness on the basis of outer criteria. Instead,
prior to any kind of reflection or deliberation, we already
implicitly recognize each other as conscious on the basis of empathy.
Empathy, as philosophers in the phenomenological tradition have shown,
is the direct perception of another being’s actions and gestures as
expressive embodiments of consciousness. We don’t see facial
expressions, for example, as outer signs of an inner consciousness,
as we might see an EEG pattern; we see joy directly in the smiling
face or sadness in the tearful eyes. Moreover, even in difficult or
problematic cases where we’re forced to consider outer criteria,
their meaningfulness as indicators of consciousness ultimately
depends depends on and presupposes our prior empathetic grasp of
consciousness. ]]
—Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness
in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Kindle Locations
2362-2370). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.
If we don’t “infer the inner presence of consciousness on the
basis of outer criteria,” but perceive it directly on the basis of
empathy, how do we infer the inner presence (or absence) of empathy
itself? In the same way, i.e. by direct perception, according to
Thompson. I think Peirce would say that these attributions of empathy
(or consciousness) to others are perceptual judgments — not
percepts, but quite beyond (or beneath) any conscious control, and .
We feel it rather than reading it from external indications. To use
Thompson’s example, we can measure the temperature by reading a
thermometer, using a scale designed for that purpose. But we can’t
measure the feeling of warmth as experienced by the one who feels it.
Now, the statistics cited by Gene may indeed indicate something
important, just as measures of global temperature may indicate
something important. But what it does indicate, and what significance
that has, depends on the nature of the devices used to generate those
statistics. And I can’t help feeling that empathy is more
important than anything measurable by those means.
(I won’t go further into the semiotic nature of perceptual
judgments here, but I have in Turning Signs :
[11]http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/ [12]blr.htm#Perce.)
Gary f.
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Links:
------
[1]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/opinion/a-utopia-for-a-dystopian-age.html?ref=opinion
[2]
http://ruc.udc.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/2183/13424/CC-130_art_131.pdf;sequence=1
[3]
http://ruc.udc.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/2183/13424/CC-130_art_131.pdf;sequence=1
[4]
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20718007?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[5] https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/
[6] http://gnusystems.ca/wp/
[7] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/eob/edobrien_empathyPSPR.pdf
[8] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/
[9] http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1
[10] http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/1
[11] http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/blr.htm#Perce
[12] http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/
[13] http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
[14] http://www.cspeirce.com/
[15] http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
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