Dear Drake,
You make it seem as though the meaning of Aristotle could not grow,
just because Aristotle the man happened to be dead. That is the curious view of
materialism, and legacy of Cartesianism, with its dualism of mind and body.
But consider that if pragmatic meaning is the conceivable consequences
signs engender, that the pragmatic meaning of a self is the conceivable
consequences it engenders. As such, the self is a sign-complex, a communicative
medium in transaction with its inner and outer environment. A self's
conceivable consequences do not end with the death of the individual bodily
portion. These words you are reading are the true expression of my self, even
if I were no longer living. But there is also an element of social
consciousness inherent to a self, such that, "a man's spirit is embodied in
others, and which continues to live and breathe and have its being very much
longer than superficial observers think" (Peirce [1893] 1998:3).
As I tried to put it in an essay titled "Mind Matters," "It is the life
of signs of the
body social, in which we are participant. Suppose, for example, I perished
after tapping
out these words you are gazing at. They, and hence a part of me, would live and
breathe as social consciousness, independent of my carnal consciousness, through
you. They would continue minding both as signs and as conceivable consequences,
as Peirce also does in this discussion, which can also be considered as one of
the
conceivable consequences of pragmaticism.
By claiming that humans are capable of spiritual consciousness, Peirce
does not
mean religion in the everyday sense but participation in truth, however that
comes
about. His doctrine of synechism is an aspect of his scientific philosophy,
though he
saw it as conducive to eventually reconciling religion and science. In Peirce's
semiotic
sense of 'spiritual,' the life of science is an example of spiritual
consciousness.
It is inquiry into the truth of those eternal forms such, as Peirce the
mathematician
would put it, that mathematics makes us aware of, or of those generals that
result
from a specific research, or in a different context, that art manifests.
Science and art
"parasitize" the bodies they incorporate, as all mind, in mattering, might be
said to
do...." (Halton 2008: 126).
Indeed, one might say that the idea of pragmatism engendered by Peirce
is still engendering
further consequences through "parasitizing" the body-minds of all of us here.
Not to worry
though, some would say that the parasite is conceivably curative.
Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of d_obrien
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 2:02 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis
Process"
Benjamin, you say:
" Peirce believed in a spiritual consciousness, a soul-consciousness,
confusable with social and carnal kinds of consciousness but becoming clear
to one, as Peirce came to believe, in surviving the body's death."
That statement makes little sense to me, and I was brought up a Roman
Catholic. I might think of the consciousness of a person, e.g. Aristotle,
in which case I say that Aristotle was conscious of the ideas that he
taught, along with all the things his consciousness roamed over in his
well-examined life. This consciousness of one or the other object is
*identical*, it is Aristotle's and none other that I mean. Now,
Aristotle's consciousness didn't "survive his body's death", as if such
disassociation from reality were possible. Unlike his consciousness in his
life of learning, the written record of his teaching remains static,
unchanging, and unless we can find a long-lost volume somewhere, the
intricacies of his terminology will forever have to be judged as-is,
finished. What survives Aristotle isn't some "spiritual soul-consciousness
surviving Aristotle's death", but only his body of writings in context of
histories written of that epoch. In those writings Aristotle speaks of
"eternal truths". But Aristotle isn't speaking about some
"eternal-spiritual-soul-consciousness", he's speaking (in a precise and
definitive manner) about certain declarative sentences. It is the
declarative sentences that he's speaking of that are "eternally true", but
only as defined - and this sense of 'eternal' is not identical with some
mystical "eternal consciousness" or "soul-consciousness".
Drake
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L
listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to
[email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the
message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L
listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to
[email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the
message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
