Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8672] Re: self-R
Jeff D., Helmut, lists, I agree, I found myself using, or at any rate thinking of, the word 'self' ambiguously, so I turned around and de-emphasized it. 'Self' goes back to pretty basic ideas, as in 'self and other', 'same and other', 'one and another', 'oneself', 'selfsame', etc. Through the idea of reflexivity it's taken on various special senses. In biology of course the boundary between organism and outside is a big deal, so maybe I'd say something about 'self' in one sense and the biologists here would take it some well-established other sense. Peirce's idea that personal self-control is always self-inhibitive is quite interesting. Years ago I read, I forget where, that the human nervous system seems a structure of inhibited or checked reflexes. Of course, I should find not only Peirce but myself corroborated by that since I'm the one who says that _/telos/_ or end as culmination should be distinguished from entelechy, a 'check' or 'checkedness', i.e., checked and balanced, a more or less stable structure (even if it's not static but active, flexible, energetic, etc.). But when one considers, say, a building or a building's getting built or a science as a system of checking and balancing, a third word tends to come to mind - _/supporting/_, in a structural sense. Of course, such supporting inhibits falling or failing, but still there seems in that picture a kind of double negative that leads to a positive. And of course Peirce would have taken into account that a self-inhibiting could amount to a structural support, and still could rightly say what he said, so I'm not even sure what keeps nagging at me here. Meanwhile something about this self-control, the checking and balancing, seems essential not only to (deliberate) reasoning, but to diagrammatic reasoning in particular in some 'redoubled' sense. Best, Ben On 5/21/2015 11:58 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: Helmut, Ben, Lists, I agree with what you say here, Helmut: Pitifully, this sort of distinction is not a scientific one. What I mean in saying this is that I don't believe that the distinctions you are making are problematic for the practice of doing science. That is, scientists don't start by reflecting on the kinds of worries you are expressing about the nature of the real relations between observer, observation, and phenomena observed. For the most part, they get the enterprise of scientific inquiry off the ground by just making observations and then trying to explain the phenomena that have been observed. For my part, I think there is much to be gained by starting in philosophy in a similarly naive way. Where the phenomena are well explained by the theories that have been developed, then there is no need to have doubts about those theories. It is the surprising phenomena that lead us to doubt some part of the accepted theories--and then we have reason to search for better explanations. Based on what I have seen so far about the recent discussions of the self that has been taking place on the list--I don't yet see a clearly delineated set of phenomena that call out for explanation. As such, those who are taking up these questions would do well to focus their attention at this observational stage of the process before jumping to big conclusions about which kinds of explanations are or not sufficient to account for the phenomena they are trying to explain. Let me offer an example: one kind of phenomena that Peirce devotes considerable attention to is the phenomena of how an individual person is able to exert self-control over their thoughts. For his part, Peirce does not think that the kinds of explanations offered by the likes of Descartes, Leibniz, Hume or Mill are sufficient to account for the phenomena associated with the exercise of logical self control. As such, there are aspects of the phenomena of what a person--such as a young child--realizes when he discovers that his beliefs about something like the suitability of a stove for being touched are in error. Peirce claims that the stages the child goes through in learning about the logical conceptions of error and falsity as well as the conceptions of self and other are entirely analogous to the stages that the human species must have gone through as these powers of rationality of thought and action evolved. It isn't clear how this logical conception of the self is related to the chemical or biological conception of a system that is auto (or self) organizing. They seem to be very different conceptions that are associated with very different kinds of phenomena we're trying to explain. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 From: Helmut Raulien [h.raul...@gmx.de] Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 1:37 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee Subject: [biosemiotics:8672] Re: self-R The difficult thing about a phenomenon is,
[PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8672] Re: self-R
Helmut, Ben, Lists, I agree with what you say here, Helmut: Pitifully, this sort of distinction is not a scientific one. What I mean in saying this is that I don't believe that the distinctions you are making are problematic for the practice of doing science. That is, scientists don't start by reflecting on the kinds of worries you are expressing about the nature of the real relations between observer, observation, and phenomena observed. For the most part, they get the enterprise of scientific inquiry off the ground by just making observations and then trying to explain the phenomena that have been observed. For my part, I think there is much to be gained by starting in philosophy in a similarly naive way. Where the phenomena are well explained by the theories that have been developed, then there is no need to have doubts about those theories. It is the surprising phenomena that lead us to doubt some part of the accepted theories--and then we have reason to search for better explanations. Based on what I have seen so far about the recent discussions of the self that has been taking place on the list--I don't yet see a clearly delineated set of phenomena that call out for explanation. As such, those who are taking up these questions would do well to focus their attention at this observational stage of the process before jumping to big conclusions about which kinds of explanations are or not sufficient to account for the phenomena they are trying to explain. Let me offer an example: one kind of phenomena that Peirce devotes considerable attention to is the phenomena of how an individual person is able to exert self-control over their thoughts. For his part, Peirce does not think that the kinds of explanations offered by the likes of Descartes, Leibniz, Hume or Mill are sufficient to account for the phenomena associated with the exercise of logical self control. As such, there are aspects of the phenomena of what a person--such as a young child--realizes when he discovers that his beliefs about something like the suitability of a stove for being touched are in error. Peirce claims that the stages the child goes through in learning about the logical conceptions of error and falsity as well as the conceptions of self and other are entirely analogous to the stages that the human species must have gone through as these powers of rationality of thought and action evolved. It isn't clear how this logical conception of the self is related to the chemical or biological conception of a system that is auto (or self) organizing. They seem to be very different conceptions that are associated with very different kinds of phenomena we're trying to explain. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 From: Helmut Raulien [h.raul...@gmx.de] Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 1:37 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee Subject: [biosemiotics:8672] Re: self-R The difficult thing about a phenomenon is, that it is a phenomenon in the observers mind. An observer who wants to distinguish a phenomenon of his/her own mind from a phenomenon, that is a phenomenon of another self, might ask: Have I asked to have this phenomenon? Or am I observing something that can only be explained by some entity other than me, having a phenomenon, because this special phenomenon is so weird, that I never would have made it up. Pitifully, this sort of distinction is not a scientific one. But it indicates, that a self can only be detected by another self. Id say, a self is something with a need. But assigning a need to something is always a supposition, and a supposition is an action only a nother self can do. So, at least, what remains is to say you have hit the nail on its head by saying preferably some that are surprising. A self is something surprising, but surprise can only be felt by somebody who is surprised. So maybe there is no way of getting a better grip, or is there? Helmut Von: Jeffrey Brian Downard jeffrey.down...@nau.edu Ben, Lists, I, too, find the thread puzzling. In order to get a better grip on what the discussion is about, I wanted to ask a simple question: what are the phenomena that need to be explained? We use the word 'self' to talk about a wide range of things. As such, I was hoping that someone might point to sample phenomena--preferably some that are surprising in one respect or another--so that we could compare different explanations in terms of their adequacy in accounting for the phenomena. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 From: Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 5:52 AM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee Subject: [biosemiotics:8665] Re: self-R Kalevi, Howard, list, I've been trying to understand this discussion thread's idea that the individual self is founded in
Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8672] Re: self-R
Jeff wrote: It isn't clear how this logical conception of the self is related to the chemical or biological conception of a system that is auto (or self) organizing. One concrete example of self is what Stan recently described so clearly -- as the activities of the neural networks of our brain, in other words, certain neural firing patterns, called dissipative structures. Just as there are almost infinite number of equilibrium structures that make up the Universe (including our fossilized brain skeletons), so there are almost infinite number of dissipative structures such as the calcium waves inside living cells (formed whenever we move our muscles) to the cosmic microwave background radiations originating some 13.8 billion years ago. Of course, Stan's self is not the only kind of self. There may be almost infinite number of selves in the Universe, depending on how one defines them. I am comfortable to define self as any self-organizing systems, including abiotic ones such as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, which may serve as the irreducible units of all dissipative structures including the most complex ones such as our consciousness, just the set of about 100 elements in the periodic table serve as the basic units of all equilibrium structures in the Universe. They seem to be very different conceptions that are associated with very different kinds of phenomena we're trying to explain. Whatever phenomena you are trying to explain (using your brain, of course) may be intimately connected to dissipative structures, i.e., neural firing patterns in your brain. It is important to keep in mind that dissipative structures result from combining energy and equilibrium structures, e.g., lighting (i.e., energy) the candle (i.e., equilibrium structure) to generate the flame (i.e., a dissipative structure). If this view is right, we may say that philosophy and natural science are not that different and are the two different aspects of the same reality or phenomena. For the convenience (or the necessity) of thought, philosophers may (have to) prescind certain aspect of the reality/phenomena and scientists prescind certain other aspect/phenomena. Because of the human intellectual limitations, philosophers and scientists may do better by learning from each other's experiences in order to accomplish not only their personal goals of inquiry but also for the advancement of human knowledge in general. I suggest that such a beneficial cooperative strategy for advancing human knowledge also applies to the relation between science and religion, thus the triad of Science (including logic), Philosophy (including aesthetics), and Religion (including ethics) forming Borromean rings. All the best. Sung On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard jeffrey.down...@nau.edu wrote: Helmut, Ben, Lists, I agree with what you say here, Helmut: Pitifully, this sort of distinction is not a scientific one. What I mean in saying this is that I don't believe that the distinctions you are making are problematic for the practice of doing science. That is, scientists don't start by reflecting on the kinds of worries you are expressing about the nature of the real relations between observer, observation, and phenomena observed. For the most part, they get the enterprise of scientific inquiry off the ground by just making observations and then trying to explain the phenomena that have been observed. For my part, I think there is much to be gained by starting in philosophy in a similarly naive way. Where the phenomena are well explained by the theories that have been developed, then there is no need to have doubts about those theories. It is the surprising phenomena that lead us to doubt some part of the accepted theories--and then we have reason to search for better explanations. Based on what I have seen so far about the recent discussions of the self that has been taking place on the list--I don't yet see a clearly delineated set of phenomena that call out for explanation. As such, those who are taking up these questions would do well to focus their attention at this observational stage of the process before jumping to big conclusions about which kinds of explanations are or not sufficient to account for the phenomena they are trying to explain. Let me offer an example: one kind of phenomena that Peirce devotes considerable attention to is the phenomena of how an individual person is able to exert self-control over their thoughts. For his part, Peirce does not think that the kinds of explanations offered by the likes of Descartes, Leibniz, Hume or Mill are sufficient to account for the phenomena associated with the exercise of logical self control. As such, there are aspects of the phenomena of what a person--such as a young child--realizes when he discovers that his beliefs about something like the suitability of a stove for being touched are in error. Peirce
