[Inquiry] Re: Examples Of Inquiry -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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EOI.  Discussion Note 18

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Auke, Kirsti, List,

I'm preparing to return to this more systematically,
but here is one incidental, rather more interesting
point of comparison between Peirce and Freud that I
had been studying:

ESD 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2003-February/001628.html

Copied here:

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Expectation, Satisfaction, Disappointment

Compare and Contrast:

Exhibit 1

| Reasoning and Expectation
|
| But since you propose to study logic, you have more or less faith
| in reasoning, as affording knowledge of the truth.  Now reasoning
| is a very different thing indeed from the percept, or even from
| perceptual facts.  For reasoning is essentially a voluntary act,
| over which we exercise control.  If it were not so, logic would
| be of no use at all.  For logic is, in the main, criticism of
| reasoning as good or bad.  Now it is idle so to criticize
| an operation which is beyond all control, correction,
| or improvement.  (CP 2.144).
|
| You have, therefore, to inquire, first, in what sense you have
| any faith in reasoning, seeing that its conclusions cannot in
| the least resemble the percepts, upon which alone implicit
| reliance is warranted.  Conclusions of reasoning can little
| resemble even the 'perceptual facts'.  For besides being
| involuntary, these latter are strictly memories of what
| has taken place in the recent past, while all conclusions
| of reasoning partake of the general nature of expectations
| of the future.  What two things can be more disparate than
| a memory and an expectation?  (CP 2.145).
|
| The second branch of the question, when you have decided in what
| your faith in reasoning consists, will inquire just what it is
| that justifies that faith.  The stimulation of doubt about things
| indubitable or not really doubted is no more wholesome than is
| any other humbug;  yet the precise specification of the evidence
| for an undoubted truth often in logic throws a brilliant light
| in one direction or in another, now pointing to a corrected
| formulation of the proposition, now to a better comprehension
| of its relations to other truths, again to some valuable
| distinctions, etc.  (CP 2.147).
|
| As to the former branch of this question, it will be found
| upon consideration that it is precisely the analogy of an
| inferential conclusion to an expectation which furnishes the
| key to the matter.  An expectation is a habit of imagining.
| A habit is not an affection of consciousness;  it is a general
| law of action, such that on a certain general kind of occasion
| a man will be more or less apt to act in a certain general way.
| An imagination is an affection of consciousness which can be
| directly compared with a percept in some special feature, and
| be pronounced to accord or disaccord with it.  Suppose for
| example that I slip a cent into a slot, and expect on pulling
| a knob to see a little cake of chocolate appear.  My expectation
| consists in, or at least involves, such a habit that when I think
| of pulling the knob, I imagine I see a chocolate coming into view.
| When the perceptual chocolate comes into view, my imagination of it
| is a feeling of such a nature that the percept can be compared with
| it as to size, shape, the nature of the wrapper, the color, taste,
| flavor, hardness and grain of what is within.  Of course, every
| expectation is a matter of inference.  What an inference is we
| shall soon see more exactly than we need just now to consider.
| For our present purpose it is sufficient to say that the
| inferential process involves the formation of a habit.
| For it produces a belief, or opinion;  and a genuine
| belief, or opinion, is something on which a man is
| prepared to act, and is therefore, in a general sense,
| a habit.  A belief need not be conscious.  (CP 2.148).
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 2.144-148.

Exhibit 2

| The Experience of Satisfaction
|
| The filling of the nuclear neurones in Psi has as its
| consequence an effort to discharge, an impetus which is
| released along motor pathways.  Experience shows that the
| first path to be followed is that leading to 'internal change'
| (e.g., emotional expression, screaming, or vascular innervation).
| But, as we showed at the beginning of the discussion, no discharge
| of this kind can bring about any relief of tension, because endogenous
| stimuli continue to be received in spite of it and the Psi-tension is
| re-established.  Here a removal of the stimulus can only be effected
| by an intervention which will temporarily stop the release of quantity
| (Q-eta) in the interior of the body, and an intervention of this kind
| requires an alteration in the external world (e.g., the supply of
| nourishment or the proximity of the sexual object), and this, as
| a "specific action", can only be brought about in particular ways.
| At early stages the human organism is incapable of achieving this
| specific action.  It is brought about by extraneous help, when the
| attention of an experienced person has been drawn to the child's
| condition by a discharge taking place along the path of internal
| change [e.g., by the child's screaming].  This path of discharge
| thus acquires an extremely important secondary function -- viz.,
| of bringing about an understanding with other people;  and the
| original helplessness of human beings is thus the primal source
| of all moral motives.
|
| When the extraneous helper has carried out the specific action in
| the external world on behalf of the helpless subject, the latter
| is in a position, by means of reflex contrivances, immediately
| to perform what is necessary in the interior of his body in
| order to remove the endogenous stimulus.  This total event
| then constitutes an "experience of satisfaction", which
| has the most momentous consequences in the functional
| development of the individual.  ...
|
| Thus the experience of satisfaction leads to a facilitation between
| the two memory-images [of the object wished-for and of the reflex
| movement] and the nuclear neurones which had been cathected during
| the state of urgency.  (No doubt, during [the actual course of]
| the discharge brought about by the satisfaction, the quantity
| (Q-eta) flows out of the memory-images as well.)  Now, when
| the state of urgency or wishing re-appears, the cathexis
| will pass also to the two memories and will activate
| 'them'.  And in all probability the memory-image of
| the object will be the first to experience this
| wishful activation.
|
| I have no doubt that the wishful activation will in the first
| instance produce something similar to a perception -- namely,
| a hallucination.  And if this leads to the performance of the
| reflex action, disappointment will inevitably follow.
|
| Sigmund Freud, "Project", pages 379-381.
|
| Sigmund Freud,
|"Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1895),
| pages 347-445 in 'The Origins of Psycho-Analysis:
| Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes:  1887-1902',
| Ed. by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris,
| Trans. by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey,
| Intro. by Ernst Kris, Basic Books, New York, NY, 1954.

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