Avoiding Correlationism

Posted on February 18, 2010
Filed Under Heidegger, Peirce, Philosophy | 11 Comments

Enowning linked today to Graham Harman explaining Meillassoux’s correlationism critique in Philosophy Today. I thought this would be a great place to engage Peirce and Heidegger with each other.

The critique is roughly a Kantian critique. To think things in themselves fails since to think of it immediately turns itself into something not itself. All that is left then is some correlation between the thing and thought.

Now Peirce famously rejects the notion of the Kantian thing-in-itself. Peirce claims that a realist like himself would “deny that there is any reality which is absolutely incognizable in itself, so that it cannot be taken into the mind” (CP 8.13)

Peirce has an extended critique of the Kantian position.


The first thing to be taken into consideration is the general upshot of Kant’s Critic of the Pure Reason. The first step of Kant’s thought – the first moment of it, if you like that phraseology – is to recognize that all our knowledge is, and forever must be, relative to human experience and to the nature of the human mind. That conception being well digested, the second moment of the reasoning becomes evident, namely, that as soon as it has been shown concerning any conception that it is essentially involved in the very forms of logic or other forms of knowing, from that moment there can no longer be any rational hesitation about fully accepting that conception as valid for the universe of our possible experience. To repeat an example I have given before, you look at an object and say ‘That is red.’ I ask you how you prove that. You tell me you see it. Yes, you see something; but you do not see that it is red; because that it is red is a proposition; and you do not see a proposition. What you see is an image and has no resemblance to a proposition, and there is no logic in saying that your proposition is proved by the image. For a proposition can only be logically based on a premiss and a premiss is a proposition. To this you very properly reply, with Kant’s aid, that my objections allege what is perfectly true, but that instead of showing that you have no right to say the thing is red they conclusively prove that you are logically justified in doing so. At this point, the idealist appears before the tribunal of your reason with the suggestion that since these metaphysical conceptions, that repose upon their being involved in the forms of logic, are only valid for experience and since all our knowledge is relative to the human mind, they are not valid for things as they objectively are; and since the conception of existence is preeminently a conception of that description, it is a mere fairy tale to say that outward objects exist, the only objects of possible experience being our own ideas. Hereupon comes the third moment of Kant’s thought, which was only made prominent in the second edition, not, as Kant truly says, that it was not already in the book, but that it was an idea in which Kant’s mind was so completely immersed that he failed to see the necessity of making an explicit statement of it, until Fichte misinterpreted him. It is really a most luminous and central element of Kant’s thought. I may say that it is the very sun round which all the rest revolves. This third moment consists in the flat denial that the metaphysical conceptions do not apply to things in themselves. Kant never said that. What he said is that these conceptions do not apply beyond the limits of possible experience. But we have direct experience of things in themselves. Nothing can be more completely false than that we can experience only our own ideas. That is indeed without exaggeration the very epitome of all falsity. Our knowledge of things in themselves is entirely relative, it is true; but all experience and all knowledge is knowledge of that which is, independently of being represented. Even lies invariably contain this much truth, that they represent themselves to be referring to something whose mode of being is independent of its being represented. This is true even if the proposition relates to an object of representation as such. At the same time, no proposition can relate, or even thoroughly pretend to relate, to any object otherwise than as that object is represented. These things are utterly unintelligible as long as your thoughts are mere dreams. But as soon as you take into account that Secondness that jabs you perpetually in the ribs, you become awake to their truth. Duns Scotus and Kant are the great assertors of this doctrine, for which Thomas Reid deserves some credit too. But Kant failed to work out all the consequences of this third moment of thought and considerable retractions are called for, accordingly, from some of the positions of his Transcendental Dialectic. Nor in other respects must it be supposed that I assent to everything either in Scotus or in Kant. We all commit our blunders. (CP 6.95)

Now getting beyond Peirce’s tendency towards ridiculously long paragraphs I think his argument is reasonably clear. He claims that within experience (although not necessarily representation) we experience the things in themselves.

This is basically a restatement of the externalist position. That is the only way one can form Meillassoux’s critique is if one can say that thought consists only of ideas (or representations). If you reject that position, as the externalist must, then of course the argument falls apart. This is why I brought up externalism and realism relative to Heidegger earlier this week.

For Peirce this aspect of externalism can be found in his notion of Secondness. Peirce breaks experience up into three categories (which were intended to replace the categories of Kant). Firstness is pure ‘feeling’ or that part of experience which is what it is in itself. Secondness is pure action and is the part of experience which logically involves only two entities. (It corresponds roughly to the phenomenological consideration of the Other in the Heideggarian and Levinasian tradition) There is then thirdness which is best characterized by signs but is the part of experience involved with three logical terms.

Peirce’s argument is that in secondness (or the experience of the Other) we experience the thing in itself. This makes a lot of sense in externalism where mental content can’t be seen purely in terms of what is present to consciousness but is in terms of the entities experienced themselves. Since we experience the thing in itself in our thoughts we can’t say it is uncognizable.

(We’d actually discussed aspects of this topic over at The Peirce Blog some time ago.)

Getting back to Heidegger this then means that the thing in itself isn’t truly uncognizable but that it is hidden or absent. Which is a very different way to think about it. Now one can object and say that our talk of the mental or thought should be purely about what is present to consciousness. Peirce’s critique of this is that this is “nominalistic sensualism so disguised that it does not recognize itself.” (See here: Draft D)

I’ve noted before that Kant says in Opus Postunum (653)

…the difference between the concept of a thing in itself and the appearance is not objective but merely subjective. The thing in itself is not an other Object, but is rather an other aspect of the representation of the same Object.

If this difference is even for Kant merely subjective I think we have to be careful — especially once we make the move to externalism.

As I mentioned earlier this week though none of this is an argument for externalism. But we should note that this change in premise changes what one can raise as an objection to Heidegger.

Related posts:

  1. More Against Correlationism
  2. The Problem of Evil and Wanting to Not Get What You Want
  3. Heidegger’s Transformations of Husserl
  4. Multitasking: Missing the Point?
  5. Grace II
  6. Does Physicalism Entail Cosmopsyhcism

Comments

11 Responses to “Avoiding Correlationism”

I agree that one could not perceive anything unless it were possible to perceive some things directly, or rather, that perception of anything real is impossible unless there is a transitive, causal chain of physical interaction connecting the subject and the object of perception.

Where I get off with externalism is the suggestion that one can directly perceive anything with no causal chain whatsoever, as if (for example) the optic system was a waste of hardware. If you deprive a person of his eyes, surely many of the photons that emanate from his surroundings will bounce around his brain just the same, but that doesn’t mean that any information will be gathered. And it seems even less likely that if a tiger walks into the room of a man deprived of all of his senses that the man will have the idea of “tiger” pop into his head unbidden, let alone uncaused.

Externalism doesn’t make that claim however.

Peirce is once again the obvious example since he pushes continuity of mediation. That is between any two points there will be mediation. Likewise Derrida emphasizes this point, even saying in On Grammatology that Peirce comes closest to his notion of deconstruction. In the analytic tradition Davidson’s externalism is very much wrapped up in causal mediation. Likewise with Heidegger one of his major breaks with Husserl is over the notion of an unmediated phenomenological intuition. Instead we shift to hermeneutics.

I understand that I would definitely be placed on the externalist side of the internalist vs. externalist divide. Reading the article though, I find it amazing that internalism could gain such a following in the first place. It is (paraphrasing) like philosophy committing suicide and leaving the field to empirical science.

I would like to hear more about the argument that the necessary existence of anything (laws of nature?) is a catastrophe for philosophy. That is a thoroughly odd position.

I think internalism is a fairly logical position to take. On methadological grounds if nothing else. That said I think the very questions Descartes asked which set that trajectory of modern philosophy make presuppositions about ontology from methadology. They may be easy and obvious assumptions to make – but obviously many people feel they are erroneous ones.

5 Rich Knapton on March 3rd, 2010 3:59 pm

The problem I have with the “thing-in-itself” is it relies on an anthropomorphic perception of the object. When we perceive an object we also perceive the function of that object. Studies have shown when we perceive a cup, for example, that part of the central nervous system involved with grasping is activated. Take for example a comb. There are those who simply don’t know what a comb is because of brain damage. They are unable to access the “combness” schema in the brain which contains information about function. Even though they can draw the object before them, they have no idea what the object is.

Given the above, when we view an object we do not simply see an object but an object with function. Take Heidegger’s hammer. We do not simply see an object we see an object which contains hammerness. Place the hammer and walk a way and it ceases to be a hammer. A dog comes along and see an object which has “chewness” (if the hammer has a wooden handle). A butterflies comes along and perceives a “landing platformness”. The hammer only has hammerness when viewed by a person. The only reason a hammer has hammerness is because of the development of neural schemas created by the interaction of our bodily sensorimotoer movement with regards to the external world. Therefore, I think the best we can say is we see the thing-in-itself as it relates to us.

Rich

Certainly Heidegger sees our conception of an object as bound up in our practices (often practices done at an unconscious level). I think Heidegger’s central insight here though is that we are able to see the hammer as an object when there is a breakdown of practice. So we see a hammer as a hammer beyond being just equipment only when it has ceased to function as equipment. That is the very ability to see an object as an object rather than utility is due to the ability to fail.

We encounter the so-called “think in itself” precisely because in a breakdown we recognize the thing is more than our utility. Of course this isn’t Kant’s thing in itself because for Kant the thing in itself is precisely outside of cognization whereas for Heidegger it is what enables us to congnize it at all. (Recognizing here I’m not following Heidegger’s particular use of Kant)

7 Rich Knapton on March 10th, 2010 5:24 pm

Clark: I think Heidegger’s central insight here though is that we are able to see the hammer as an object when there is a breakdown of practice. So we see a hammer as a hammer beyond being just equipment only when it has ceased to function as equipment. That is the very ability to see an object as an object rather than utility is due to the ability to fail.

In my opinion, Heidegger was wrong. We cannot recognize the hammer without its action. It becomes simply an unrecognized object. It is like the fellow who could no longer recognize a comb once he could no longer access the neuro-network schema in the brain that tells him that is a comb. That schema is built through the recurring inter-ACTION between the embodied mind/brain with the external. There are no little pictures in the brain to tell us what a particular object is. So, if there is a break between the object and it’s related action all we will see is an unidentified object.

So where Heidegger sees action as hiding the object; it is action that allows us to be able to see the object.

Rich

I think you are confusing two issues here. The first is whether we can recognize theoretical objects independent of use. There I think we’re bound to the fact that the brain does both but that use typically is foundational and takes place unconsciously.

What you are saying is pretty much just that the brain is primarily organized around embodied actions. (Which I agree) Without that processing then objects couldn’t “be” anything. But Heidegger would completely agree. Heidegger’s point is that we see objects as theoretical objects only when our practices break down. This isn’t the cognitive apparatus of being able to process practices at a low level. Rather it’s when an object doesn’t behave as expected. Effectively when we lose mastery of it.

The best example of this is our normal experience of driving where we often don’t notice the car at all versus when the car isn’t functioning properly (say when there is slop in the steering so it doesn’t respond to our directions) At that point we recognize that the car is more than our practices and can treat it as a theoretical entity with properties in its own right.

Now the counter argument agains this would be that we have cognitive apparatus for processing entities as theoretical. But this ends up being a bit trickier argument to make than it first appears. (IMO) That’s because it gets into the issue of language as well as the details of how the brain processes theoretical entities. (When they aren’t being processed in the manner you outline)

So short story, you’re actually making an argument for Heidegger’s view, not against it.

9 Rich Knapton on March 17th, 2010 9:26 pm

I’m not doing a very good job of explaining myself. I’ll try to do better. From the time we were infants (perhaps in the womb) we began to form neural sensory/motor patterns of the external. Most learn the concept such as hammer as a child. We learn what it looks like, that it has a head and handle, that certain bodily motions are required in order to use it, what kind of ways to best use it, etc. The schema retains all the elements needed for a concept of hammer. By concepts I do not mean mental entities that represent external realities. Here concepts are neural activation patterns. They contain the meaning of hammerness. When you need to nail something, it is this schema that allows you to recognize the hammer as the tool need and how to use it. In other words it provides you the meaning of hammer. With out this schema, the hammer would simply be an unknown object. Further, even when we simply think about a hammer this same schema is accessed to provide meaning. We know the meaning of the things we are thinking about because of these schemas. It is accessed when we are thinking about a hammer and not just when we use one.

Forming neural sensory/motor patterns through the interaction of our embodied mind/brain and the external, begun when we were very young, is pretty straightforward when there is something physical to interact with. It is also scientifically proven. People with brain damage such that they cannot access these neural networks cannot determine the meaning of common objects such as a comb.

As far as theoretical entities, I’m not sure what you mean by entities. At one time Uranus was a theoretical entity (that is an entity not encountered by direct sensory perception). With Uranus we simply related known objects such as the moon or Mars and projected that onto the theoretical Uranus.

Perhaps that’s not what you meant. Maybe you had in mind something more abstract such as mathematics or logic. There is a book referenced in “The Meaning of the Body” by Mark Johnson (philosopher at U of Oregon) called “Where Mathematics Comes From” by Lakoff and Nunez. Their thesis states that along with an ability for math, mathematics arises from through the interaction between the embodied mind/brain and the external world.

“There is no mystery about the effectiveness of mathematics for characterizing the world as we experience it: That effectiveness results from a combination of mathematical knowledge and connectedness to the world. The connection between mathematical ideas and the world as human beings experience it occurs within human minds.”

In other words, the schemas building system we build as we begin to explore the external and to obtain information about the meaning of objects is the same type of system that are needed for the foundation of mathematics and logic. If I were to put this into LDS terminology: mathematics and logic are terrestrial tools used to explore terrestrial worlds and created by the interaction of terrestrial beings and their terrestrial world.

If you’re interested, Johnson presents how he believes even abstract ideas of philosophy are fundamentally derived from our ability to create schemas through the interaction of the embodied mind/brain and the external world. He is a pragmatist of the Dewey persuasion. :))

Rich

By theoretical entities I basically mean highly abstract concepts that aren’t really directly tied to practices. Roughly the kind of thinking one engages with in the hard sciences – although even there in the experimental aspects things are still caught up in practices.

I guess I’ve not been quite clear enough either because from what I see you are describing Heidegger’s position. Even when you say abstract ideas are derived from our interactions that is still Heidegger’s position. His is a claim of how this derivation functions.

11 Rich Knapton on March 28th, 2010 6:37 pm

I was watching the Science channel and they were discussing Einstein’s theory of general relativity. To explain gravity they had a graphic sheet displayed. On the sheet they placed a round object that made an indentation in the sheet. Next they placed a smaller round object that also made an indentation in the sheet but not nearly as large as the first object. This smaller object circled the larger object. Of course this was to represent the sun and the earth and gravity. It struck me that this was a visual conceptual metaphor. It took the concept of gravity and broke it down into more basic metaphors. It is Mark Johnson’s theory that abstract ideas are built from more basic conceptual metaphors that can be back traced to the foundational metaphors of meaning contained in sensory/motor patterns.

The opposite is also true. Einstein’s account of how he discovered relativity is a case in mind. If I remember correctly he was on a tram in Zurich and was watching the city clock recede. The story is full of common conceptual metaphors which, when integrated, created an extremely abstract idea.

Now the point of all this is there are no theoretical objects in the mind/brain. In fact there are no objects in the brain. However, I’m still not satisfied with my answer. I want to go back to Heidegger and his hammer. According to Heidegger, in order to know a hammer, we must first know about fixing things. From there we observe which objects are used to fix things (tools) and how they are used in particular ways to fix things. For example, the hammer is a tool, it is an object used to fix things in a certain manner. It attaches other things to each other through the use of nails and hitting the nails to accomplish the goal of fixing something. And it is grouped with other objects used to fix things and are called tools. Out of this background of objects (tools) used to fix things, the hammer emerges as a tool to fix things in a particular way.

Now the hammer breaks. It is no longer a tool used to fix things. Since it can no longer fix things it is no longer a tool. That whole background by which the hammer presented itself to us has been stripped away. We now see it as an object without a background. It thereby becomes a theoretical entity.

If I have the general idea correct, I’ll try to show how Heidegger went wrong. Much of certain kinds of philosophies are ‘self-referential’. And the being they reference is a mature being. This is what I think Heidegger did. The problem as I see it is there is little or no displayed understanding of how the mature being grew and became that mature being. Take a toddler and place a little toy workbench in front of him. The bench has round holes, square holes and triangular holes. The idea is for him to put round, square and triangular dowels into the correct holes. He then takes a small mallet like thing and hit the dowels through the correct holes. This is to help him learn about shapes. It also helps him create the embodied meaning of hammer. As he matures this meaning of hammer also grows and matures. Long before he understands about fixing things and tools he has a neurological network of meaning developing.

He is given another toy workbench. This bench has a number of different sized holes in which dowels with threads are screwed. He is also given objects that look like a wrench and a screwdriver. As he uses these objects to help screw in the appropriate dowel his mind brain is forming more neural networks of meaning. Or perhaps the child was never given workbenches but observes his father with certain tools. After the tool is laid down the child goes over to the tool, picks it up and tries to emulate the father without much understanding of what the father was doing. New neural networks of meaning begin to form. The child doesn’t understand what fixing means or of a category of objects dedicated to fixing things in particular ways. But the neural network of meaning has begun for the hammer, the screwdriver, and the wrench. It is only later that the child learns these “tools” can be used to fix things and that they are grouped together and called tools. By the time the child becomes an adult, he knows what fixing things means, the meaning of tools and that the hammer, which began as a toy, can be grouped together with other objects which also had been toys,

When the hammer brakes there is no background to be stripped away. There exists an established neural network of meaning for the object. However, that meaning is now modified. The neural network of meaning is modified by another neural network of meaning called ‘broken’. These meanings provide us with the understanding of the current situation. When we are told someone broke his hammer, the neural network of meaning provides us with the meaning of hammer and the meaning of broke. The one meaning modifies the other and provides us with the understanding of what has been said. The words ‘hammer’ and broke’ are, themselves, conceptual metaphors for the meaning embodied in those neural networks.

I hope this makes more sense.

Rich

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