David Chalmers has a new blog, Fragments of Consciousness. (Thanks to Mixing Memory for the link) We have some great blogs on free will, ethics, epistemology, and then a few graduate department ones, along with some low volume ones on aesthetics, biology and then quite a few more general ones or ones more targeting specific philosophers. So it's nice to have one gap, mind, filled in. Chalmers is known for editing most of the work on mind for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy we've all come to love.
I should add that while I know few people look at the sidebar of blogs, that I've tried to put most of the active blogs that focus primarily on philosophy, along with pretty good resource links to the things I'm interested in. (Primarily philosophy and physics)
One reason I'm appreciative of having a philosophy of mind blog is because I must confess I've largely neglected philosophy of mind the past few years along with philosophy of language to a lesser extent. Originally, out of college, those were the two topics I primarily studied. I got side tracked by the topic of language into semiotics and from semiotics into Continental philosophy. Continental philosophy in a way made many of the approaches in both philosophy of mind and language problematic to me. Not that I don't think many of the things I studied valuable. Just that somehow they seemed so frequently to rest upon problematic assumptions. However even that was, I suspect, more an issue of interest than anything else. Particularly in philosophy of mind I began to wonder whether the whole approach was really useful.
In a sense that's my Peircean tendencies coming out. In a way Peirce approached the whole issue is a very different way. Everything is mental in way. To be is partially to be "mental-like." That sounds like an idealism that many might find problematic. I don't think the idealist label really fits Peirce, anymore than it fits figures like Heidegger or Derrida. It simply is a different way of thinking.
Probably one way to view Peirce is as a panpsychist like Spinoza or Liebniz, although quite different from those figures in important ways. Everything is both mind dependent and mind independent, depending upon how you look at it. Further Peirce often speaks of a "quasi-mind."
"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there. Consistently adhere to that unwarrantable denial, and you will be driven to some form of idealistic nominalism akin to Fichte's. Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there. But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying it, so there cannot be thought without Signs. We must here give "Sign" a very wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense to come within our definition. Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic. You may say that all this is loose talk; and I admit that, as it stands, it has a large infusion of arbitrariness. It might be filled out with argument so as to remove the greater part of this fault; but in the first place, such an expansion would require a volume - and an uninviting one; and in the second place, what I have been saying is only to be applied to a slight determination of our system of diagrammatization, which it will only slightly affect; so that, should it be incorrect, the utmost certain effect will be a danger that our system may not represent every variety of non-human thought." ('Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism', CP 4:551)
Peirce sees mind not as a "thing" or an "emergent thing" the way many have thought of it at least since Descartes. (Even, in a way, many of those who adopt epiphenomenalism) Peirce approaches mind through the four types of causation that Aristotle discussed. Where there is final causation or purpose, there is mind. However he obviously takes this much more expansively than I think most philosophers do, who assume when we speak of mind we speak of a human mind or the "me" (even if they reject dualism).
Mind has its universal mode of action, namely, by final causation. The microscopist looks to see whether the motions of a little creature show any purpose. If so, there is mind there. Passing from the little to the large, natural selection is the theory of how forms come to be adaptive, that is, to be governed by a quasi purpose. It suggests a machinery of efficiency to bring about the end - a machinery inadequate perhaps - yet which must contribute some help toward the result. But the being governed by a purpose or other final cause is the very essence of the psychical phenomenon, in general. There ought, therefore, one would think, to be under the order of psychonomy, or nomological psychognosy, a suborder which should seek to formulate with exactitude the law of final causation and show how its workings are to be traced out." ('Minute Logic', CP 7:366)
My own thought is the following. (This isn't researched extensively, so feel free to take me to task on it) I think Peirce's own view is somewhat like Donald Davidson's anomalous monism. Of course the main complaint against Davidson is that it just ends up being a sneaky form of epiphenomenalism. (Epiphenomenalism is the view that there are mental states but without causal powers) The problem for some is that Davidson ascribed causal powers to mental events but not mental states. Davidson's response, in "Thinking Causes," was that a relation holds between events regardless of how they are described. (A very pragmatic response) My sense is that if we view Davidson in terms of Peirce's holism, that his objection makes quite a bit more sense. Critics wish to reduce the mental to something very limited, such as my being angry. But if we have holism that entails a thoroughgoing externalism then the mental can't be so limited. What counts is how we describe an event and the generalizations we can make of it. Yet we can't separate out the event in the way I think the critics wish.
Put more simply, what counts in terms of causations or relations are the descriptions and not something "behind the scenes." In a very real way, Davidson is demanding that the mind be conceived of semiotically. I don't think he quite discusses it the way Peirce does, but I think he is getting at a very similar view.
Of course all of this is just a very long way of saying that just as Davidson's critics may have missed the point, despite his largely speaking their language, I think Peirce is even more out of the normal line of discussion of mind. However I think he does so in a very helpful fashion. I really ought to bring up later some of his illustrations of dealing with the mind-body problem.
I should add that we don't need to introduce Peirce's holism to make sense of Davidson's view of mind. Davidson explicitly asserts holism. This holism also introduces what in the Continental tradition is called the hermeneutical circle. We can make a description on on the basis of previous assumptions about meaning. And we can make assumptions about meanings only on the basis of prior descriptions. (Davidson, like Peirce, usually focuses on these issues in the context of belief and behavior)
I probably should also relabel this post Davidson, Peirce and Mind rather than open with a discussion of Chalmer's new blog. However sometimes one starts posting on one thing and then your post takes a mind of its own.
Nice link. The nice thing about lists is they are public. So I don't have to do a philosophy list, I just come look at yours. I use A Soft Answer for my complete B'nacle reference. And so on.
So how does Searles' new Mind: A Brief Introduction (OUP, 2004) stack up? I bought it before Christmas but haven't had a chance to read it yet.
I've not read Searle's new stuff. Originally, back in college, I was quite into Searle. Indeed I loved his Rediscovery of the Mind although in hindsight I don't think he really did a good job explaining his position on materialism. (i.e. he says what's wrong with all other views, explains his view as materialism, but there's this big "gap" in that he doesn't have a real detailed explanation of how his claims are possible) On the other hand I always thought he had a great argument against the eliminative materialists and the functionalists. In a way his approach led me into Leibniz and Peirce though, as I think the way out of the "gap" I mentioned is to admit a kind of quasi-mind out of which a full mind emerges. But that requires a reconsideration of materialism that I just don't see Searle as willing to take.
After I started reading Heidegger and those he heavily influenced, I saw Searle's approach as much more problematic. Probably at this stage I'm not even that interested in reading him, unless there is something new and significant. Searle and Dreyfus had an ongoing debate that was somewhat related. Most of Dreyfus' papers in the debate are here. Many of Searle's papers are here.
Of course the debate highlights a problem in philosophy that is quite common - the speaking past one an other because of fundamentally different ways of thinking. I think that this is what happened with Davidson, for instance, as I mentioned above. With Searle and Dreyfus, Dreyfus thought Searle was doing phenomenology while Searle was actually doing logical analysis. So especially in the early papers of the debate, one ought to keep in mind this fundamental miscommunication that's going on.
I should add that the problem of logical analysis vs. phenomenology is a problem in reading Peirce as well. I want to talk on that someday, since I've often found myself incorrectly reading Peirce as a phenomenologist. There are many parallels, but many argue there are important differences.
Clark:
I guess I could click through to all the blogs in your sidebar, but would you point out the low volume blog(s) in aesthetics to me?
It looks like I'd taken it off my sidebar due to the lack of significant posts. (The last while it's mainly been call for papers or conference notes)
Unfortunately this happens all to often. A blog starts up, has a few interesting posts, but no one posts thereafter and it dries up.
I should add, relative to my original post, that I think there is a place where Davidson and Peirce differ and it is likely on that whole issue of state/property. Peirce believe that there are three irreducible categories for all phenomena. By denying state/property it may well be that Davidson is denying Peirce's firstness. I'm not prepared to defend that in the least just yet. I'd need to reread Davidson a bit before claiming that too strongly. However that is my first impression and thus it is possible that some element of the critique against Davidson would be in keeping with Peirce.
Thanks, Clark.
Yeah, it's too bad when that happens -- especially as that blog has so many contributors it seems like they should be able to keep up a regular posting schedule.
I probably should clarify Davidson's own claim somewhat, for those not familiar with him. He presents three assertions that appear incompatible but which he argues are all true. I'm here drawing on his article for the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Mind. (I discuss these in more depth here)
1) Mental events are causally related to physical events
2) Two events related as cause and event can be subsumed under a strict law
3) There are no psychophysical laws.
Davidson's approach to justifying the above is to argue for a concept dualism. i.e. we can't translate talk of the mental into the physical and vice versa. The reason for this arise from two claims. The first is a holism in which one mental event depends upon all others. "Individual beliefs, intentions, doubts, and desires owe their identities in part to their position in a large network of further attitudes; the character of a given belief depends on endless other beliefs; beliefs have the role they do because of their relations to desires and intentions and perceptions. These relations among the attitudes are essentially logical: the content of an attitude cannot be divorced from what it entails and what is entailed by it." What this ends up doing is rejecting a kind of "atom of meaning" that could then be correlated to the physical.
As I mentioned Davidson parallels Peirce in certain ways. This issue of translation is, for Peirce, found in his notion of continuity. His Lectures on Pragmatism from late in his development are probably the best source for the discussion.
Words then do produce physical effects. It is madness to deny it. The very denial of it involves a belief in it; and nobody can consistently fail to acknowledge it until he sinks to a complete mental paresis. But how do they produce their effect? They certainly do not, in their character as symbols, directly react upon matter. Such action as they have is merely logical. It is not even psychological. It is merely that one symbol would justify another. However, suppose that first difficulty to have been surmounted, and that they do act upon actual thoughts. That thoughts act on the physical world and conversely, is one of the most familiar of facts. Those who deny it are persons with whom theories are stronger than facts. But how thoughts act on things it is impossible for us, in the present state of our knowledge, so much as to make any very promising guess; although, as I will show you presently, a guess can be made which suffices to show that the problem is not beyond all hope of ultimate solution. (Lectures on Pragmatism 4.2, Essential Peirce 2:184)
Peirce's solution is somewhat akin to the old paradox from Greece about motion, where in someone goes half the remaining distance to the end each step. He presents the equation ? = 1/( log(P-r) - log(r-Q) ) which produces in its limit a circle of radius (P+Q)/2.
Peirce argues that we could move through an infinite series from the mental to the physical or vice versa. But he most explicitly believes this must be infinite. As he says, "the only difficulty is to imagine an endless series of operations taking place in a finite time. But that is no more than happens to Achilles and the Tortise."
Here then thought directly influences nothing but thought and matter is directly acted upon only by matter and yet mind is represented as acting upon matter without any tertium quid... (ibid 186)
Now thus far we have quite a few parallels. We have the holism of both and both accepting claims (1 -3). (Claim 2 follows from Peirce's view of thirdness, discussed in this same text) The main remaining problem is whether Peirce's symbols would include Davidson's notion of mental events. This is important as it is Davidson's notion of mental event that is most controversial among Analytic philosophers. Further we must understand why Davidson asserts mental states can't enter into these causal relations discussed above.
My sense, and I may well be mistaken in this, is that Davidson believes that a mental state can only be such if we have a first person authority who states what state they are in. i.e. it is tied to communication.
The existence of first-person authority is not an empirical discovery, but rather a criterion, among others, of what a mental state is. (Davidson, Blackwell Companion to Mind, 234)
The implication is that what counts isn't the mental state, but the representation of the mental state. But this is fairly close to what Peirce asserts.
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