Peirce and Consciousness

Posted on September 25, 2008
Filed Under Peirce, Philosophy |

OK, I’m still pretty swamped. In the meantime here’s an interesting quote from Peirce that popped up at Peirce-L.

The psychologists say that consciousness is the essential attribute of mind; and that purpose is only a special modification. I hold that purpose, or rather, final causation, of which purpose is the conscious modification, is the essential subject of psychologists’ own studies; and that consciousness is a special, and not a universal, accompaniment of mind. Von Hartmann, as long ago as 1869, proved conclusively that unconscious mind exists. True, we may suppose that, in the cases instanced by him, there is a rudiment of consciousness; but such an objection would not meet his argument, which goes to show that the mental phenomena may be strong where the consciousness, if there be any, is almost nil, and where there is reason to believe that more consciousness would be rather unfavorable than otherwise to the action of mind. A psychologist cuts out a lobe of my brain (nihil animale me alienum puto) and then, when I find I cannot express myself, he says, “You see your faculty of language was localized in that lobe.” No doubt it was; and so, if he had filched my inkstand, I should not have been able to continue my discussion until I had got another. (CP 7.366)

Peirce actually got the Latin a bit wrong. It’s a quote from Terence and should be, Humanus sum, nihil humanum a me alienum puto, meaning, “I am human, I think nothing human alien to me.”

Comments

One Response to “Peirce and Consciousness”

To add on the quote - it’s obviously a bit of a joke since the thought experiment has a person being treated like a laboratory animal.

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