[Inquiry] Re: Grounds And Respects -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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GAR.  Discussion Note 6

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BB = Bill Bailey

Re: GAR 10.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002455.html
In: GAR.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2441

BB: I'm having a lot of difficulty with this paragraph:

CSP: | If now we wished to make a determinating analysis of Innateness, since it is
     | the constitution of the mind as an element of thought, we should consider what
     | the Constitution of the Mind is so far as it thinks 'of' anything.  The prime
     | element in it is clearly its receptivity.  Receptivity enters into of-thought
     | as mere sensation.  Sensation has neither truth nor falsehood for whether it
     | be predicated or not doesn't alter the fact.  It is not even thought of as
     | external.  Sensation then is the first category of Innateness.

BB: The prime element of the mind is its receptivity.  Does that mean its capacity to
    receive?  Is Peirce setting up the mind as a faculty, the principle attribute of
    which being it's ability to "receive" something?  But the receptivity enters into
    thought as sensation.  Where is the "reception" in the experience of sensation?
    I agree that it has neither truth or falsehood because it simply is.  But where
    is the reception of something that simply is in experience?  "It is not even
    thought of as external."  I can accept that too, with certain qualifications.
    In the naive subject, sensation is not experienced in terms of "inner" or
    "outer".  It and the response state are identical in an organic system.
    For example, a pain sensation is simply the quality of the experience
    and has no "outer" reference.  Later, in a more sophisticated subject,
    pain is "caused" by perceived exteroceptive stimuli, and is constructed
    as such.  And, then, "Sensation is the first category of Innateness".
    In reference to what?  If in reference to mind, wouldn't receptivity
    be the first category?

BB: What troubles me about this formulation is my perception that
    Peirce views mind as a pre-existing faculty of "receptivity"
    while at the same time maintaining sensation to be primary.
    Help?

Bill,

This manuscript is from 1861-1862, when Peirce was just shy of 23,
and the argumentation is formulaic, if not positively telegraphic,
so my interest in it is mainly that it presages persistent themes
that we will see again later in more developed forms.  A lot of
the language sounds like echoes of Aristotle (e.g. "receptivity")
and Kant (e.g. the "thought-of" by the "I think").  But let me
just say what comes to mind as I read it.

The question that occasioned this analysis into
the factors of Truth, Innatenes, Externality was:
"How should the conceptions which spring up freely
in our minds by virtue of the constitution thereof
be true for the outward world?"

In analyzing each of these factors, we have the terminus of the external world,
the terminus that I personally like to call the constitution of interpreters,
and the line of mediation or medium of relationship between them.  One of the
routine questions that we ask of each phenomenon that comes before us is this:
How much of it can be attributed to external, internal, relational influences?

Since thought is a product of the action of the object on the interpreter,
we can ask how the thought is determined by (1) the nature of the object,
(2) the nature of the interpreter, and (3) the relation of the object to
the interpreter.

The first question is a question about the objective reference of representations,
in other words, their truth.  The kind of truth available to a representation can
be classified according to whether it is objective (verity of symbols), relative
(verisimilitude of icons), or subjective (veracity of indices).

The second question is a question about how the constitution of the
interpreter determines or influences the representations of objects.
What I get from what Peirce says here is an early version of the
"No Use Criticizing What You Can't Control" (NUCWYCC) thesis.
The ideal of innateness is the blank slate, pure receptivity,
and thus pure subjectivity -- it's not so much that the slate
has to be literally blank, but that anything written on it by
anything other than the external world has no bearing on the
facts of that world.  Sensations are those uncontrollable,
and thus uncriticizable signs, and so the criterion of
truth does not apply to them, not in their own right,
but only in the anamnesiac comparison of their likes
to other signs.  But that's another story.

Jon Awbrey

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