Clark, list:
“It seems to me that 1907’s famous MS 318 is pretty key to all this the
more I think about it. That’s partially because he speaks of three
habit-interpretants and changes how he talks of habit somewhat.”
Yes! J
one two three… C A B… utterer interpreter commens…
esthetics ethics logic…
very nice,
J
On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
> On more thing before I leave for the weekend. It seems to me that 1907’s
> famous MS 318 is pretty key to all this the more I think about it. That’s
> partially because he speaks of three habit-interpretants and changes how he
> talks of habit somewhat. Part of the manuscript is in EP 2:398. I didn’t
> see it available online anywhere. The primary focus is the pragmatic maxim,
> but I think he gets at many of the issues we’re discussing.
>
> The main focus is the relationship between the inner world and outer world
> in terms of the effect of a sign.
>
> It is to be noted that in calling a habit “self-controlled,” I do not mean
> that it is in the power of the man who has it to cast it off,— to cease, in
> the example just given, to try to make his decorations beautiful; for we
> well know that he has no such power,— but what I mean is that it has been
> developed under the process just described in which critical feelings as to
> the results of inner or outer exercises stimulate to strong endeavors to
> repeat or to modify those effects. I may mention that I do not recognize
> pleasure and pain as specific feelings but only as being whatever feelings
> may stimulate efforts, in the one case to reproduce or continue them, or,
> as we say, “attractive” feelings, and in the other case to annul and avoid
> them, or, as we say, “repulsive” feelings. (MS 319 EP 2.431-2, 1907)
>
> Now Peirce is explicitly talking here of humans and not general semiosis
> as we’re concerned with. So I recognize we have to be careful.
>
> reiterations in the inner world―fancied reiterations―if well-intensified
> by direct effort, produce habits, just as do reiterations in the outer
> world; and these habits will have power to influence actual behaviour in
> the outer world; especially, if each reiteration can be accompanied by a
> peculiar strong effect that is usually likened to issuing a command
> to one’s future self. (MS 319: 94; CP: 5.487, 1907)
>
> Also
>
> Habit. Involuntary habits are not meant, but voluntary habits, i.e., such
> as are subject (in some measure to self-control). Now under what conditions
> is a habit subject to self-control? Only if what has been done in one
> instance with the character, its consequences, and other circumstances, can
> have a triadic influence in strengthening or weakening the disposition
> to do the like on a new occasion. This is as much to say that voluntary
> habits is conscious habit. For what is consciousness? In the first place
> feeling is conscious. But what is a feeling, such as blue, whistling, sour,
> rose-scented? It is nothing but a quality, character, or predicate which
> involves no reference to any other predicate or other things than the
> subject in which it inheres, but yet positively is. [...] Our own feelings,
> if there were no memory of them for any fraction of a second, however
> small, if there were no triadic time-sense to testify with such assurance
> to their existence and varieties, would be equally unknown
> to us. Therefore, such a quality may be utterly unlike any feeling we are
> acquainted with, but it would have all that distinguish all our feelings
> from everything else. In the second place, effort is conscious. It is at
> once a sense of effort on the part of the being who wills and is a sense of
> resistance on the part of the object upon which the effort is exerted. But
> these two are one and the same consciousness. Otherwise, all that has been
> said of the feeling consciousness is true of the effort consciousness; and
> to say that this is veracious means less if possible than to say that a
> thing is whatever it may be.
>
> There is, then, a triadic consciousness which does not supersede the lower
> order, but goes bail for them and enters bonds for their veracity.
> Experiment upon inner world must teach inner nature of concepts as
> experiment on outer world must teach nature of outer things.
>
> Meaning of a general physical predicate consists in the conception of the
> habit of its subject that it implies. And such must be the meaning of a
> psychical predicate.
>
> The habits must be known by experience which however exhibits singulars
> only.
>
> Our minds must generalize these. How is this to be done?
>
> The intellectual part of the lessons of experimentation consists in the
> consciousness or purpose to act in certain ways (including motive) on
> certain conditions. (MS 318 EP: 2.549–550, 1907)
>
>
> But feeling simply is chance for Peirce as seen from the inside.
>
>
>
>
> -
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