SUO: Re: Peirce's "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man"
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Phil,
I will await a more detailed consideration from John Sowa,
but as someone who is in the middle of (putting off) the
umpteenth re-write of the chapter of his dissertation
that has to do with these very questions, I cannot
help tossing in my two sou's worth at this point.
Still, I will try to limit myself, for now,
to merely inserting a couple of glosses
to clear up the easier brands of
misunderstanding that usually
develop at this juncture.
Here is a summary of the "Questions", available in full at:
http://www.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/question/qu-frame.htm
| QUESTION 1:
| Whether by the simple contemplation of a cognition,
| independently of any previous knowledge and without
| reasoning from signs, we are enabled rightly to judge
| whether that cognition has been determined by a previous
| cognition or whether it refers immediately to its object.
|
| QUESTION 2:
| Whether we have an intuitive self-consciousness.
|
| QUESTION 3:
| Whether we have an intuitive power of distinguishing between
| the subjective elements of different kinds of cognitions.
|
| QUESTION 4:
| Whether we have any power of introspection, or
| whether our whole knowledge of the internal world
| is derived from the observation of external facts.
|
| QUESTION 5:
| Whether we can think without signs.
|
| QUESTION 6:
| Whether a sign can have any meaning,
| if by its definition it is the sign
| of something absolutely incognizable.
|
| QUESTION 7:
| Whether there is any cognition not
| determined by a previous cognition.
It ought to be clear that Question 1 is the omnibus issue,
whereas the rest of the Questions are taken up pursuant to
the usual sort of "divide & conquer" or recursive strategy,
or else, in some cases, they develop corollary side-issues.
The chief thing to understand about the context of these Questions
is the Cartesian and Kantian assumptions and doctrines that Peirce
is critiquing, in which context all of the key words, for instance,
"independent", "immediate", "introspective", "intuitive", & so on,
are "terms of art", with specific technical meanings, and that he
is only speaking to these particular senses and uses of the words.
Here is the core of the "Incapacities", available in full at:
http://www.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/conseq/cn-frame.htm
| In the last number of this journal will be found a piece entitled
| "Questions concerning certain Faculties claimed for Man," which
| has been written in this spirit of opposition to Cartesianism.
| That criticism of certain faculties resulted in four denials,
| which for convenience may here be repeated:
|
| 1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of
| the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning
| from our knowledge of external facts.
|
| 2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition
| is determined logically by previous cognitions.
|
| 3. We have no power of thinking without signs.
|
| 4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable.
|
| These propositions cannot be regarded as certain;
| and, in order to bring them to a further test, it is
| now proposed to trace them out to their consequences.
| We may first consider the first alone; then trace the
| consequences of the first and second; then see what else
| will result from assuming the third also; and, finally,
| add the fourth to our hypothetical premisses.
If you would permit me to summarize these "Four Incapacities"
in the manner to which I have become accustomed, I can write:
| No Immediation of Mind.
| No Infallible Intuition.
| No Intuitive Introspection.
| No Conception of Incognition.
Here, I have added in the adjectives that modern readers,
not too consciously Cartesian and Kantian modern readers,
will most likely need in order to get the gist of it all.
To elaborate, "intuition" is a technical term that refers
to an "incorrigible", "infallible", "immediate" cognition,
information, knowledge, a sense of some fact, some object.
Here, "incorrigible" means "not possible to correct",
whereas "infallible" means "not necessary to correct",
and finally, "immediate" means "not mediated", that is,
not at all like the sort of thing that is got via signs.
To aver that you have "a conception of the 'absolutely incognizable' (AI)"
means, as distinguished from the sheer possibility of stringing together
any sequence of signs that you may fancy to arrange for your own delight,
whether in your favorite external medium or as the signs called thoughts
inscribed within the internal medium of your mind, means, as one says,
to the Magus, that the spirit of the letter comes when it is called.
I hope that this very brief glossary will help you and others
with your reading of these very crucial and critical articles.
Many Regards,
Jon Awbrey
P.S.
Of course, when it comes to the most succinct summary
of these papers, you could hardly beat what more than
one feminist wag, more than once, was heard to quip:
"But that's just Men!"
J.A.
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