There's been some confusion, I think, regarding signs in the recent discussion on evidences and religious experience. Let me be clear that I don't think there is any experience which innately signifies something. That is, in terms of being a symbol (as opposed to an index or icon) there is a certain arbitrariness to the sign. That means that there is no experience that avoids interpretation. So to me the key in the discussion about religious experience isn't whether something is a feeling or emotion. Rather it is the interpretive process that provides meaning to the symbol. That is, the overall situation in which a sign is a sign.
Clearly feelings can signify. If I feel I am in pain it signifies that my body is being hurt. Likewise clearly feelings can signify incorrectly. For instance I may have ghost pains in an arm that has been amputated. I have the same feelings but their instinctive interpretation is wrong.
Please, let it be clear, that while I don't think we ought discount out of had our instinctive interpretations, neither can we rely on them. That ought be the lesson of all the illusions that cognitive scientists are often so fascinated with.
Also realize that when I talk of religious experience I'm talking much more broadly than any particular feeling. If I have, for instance, an intuition that something is so, then that can be a religious experience independent of any particular feeling. I do not think that religious experience as a label covers a single phenomena. Far from it. Even if we discount the majority of experiences that are covered by the rubric of "religious experience" which a Mormon might hypothetically judge as false, I don't think there is a single phenomena.
Now LDS will often talk about feelings of the spirit. And I think these can function as tokens for certain judgments regarding types of experience. That token-type relationship is important. But I don't think most LDS will consider such feelings as the key feature of religious experience nor will they even see them as a necessary component. Indeed, judging from discussions with fellow Mormons, many experiences judged as important religious experiences don't even have these feelings. Some are even only judged as religious experiences in hindsight as one evaluates ones past.
So, as I've said elsewhere, I think the whole "burning in the bosom" bit is a bit of a red herring. It's important for Mormons (although I don't think that description universally apt) but it really isn't what I'm getting at.
Ultimately what I'm after is how anything becomes a token for a type. What I'd suggest is that we (a) have an interpretive model. That is, a theory which predicts certain phenomena and allows us to categorize phenomena. We then have (b) the experiences in question. Finally we (c) generate new hypothesis which modify (a) and (b). We then finally (d) test our hypothesis.
Now this doesn't have to be done in a formal fashion the way say a scientist conducts experimentation. However I do think it has to be present for religious experience to count as knowledge. That is we have a theory, we have experiences as predicted and explained by the theory, we have new phenomena predicted, we then test it. Everyone does this as a matter of living in terms of how we learn and know anything. I'm suggesting it is no different with religion.
Now where the valid criticisms can be made is over the theory we use to interpret the results. And I think that fair as a process of continuing inquiry. However, if we are asking if the justification component of knowledge (as opposed to the truth component) is met, I think we have to be careful. That is, given some predicted phenomena if one is praying whether God exists and as one prays that phenomena is met, then there is prima facie evidence for justification. Further inquiry may change things. But let us be clear that we're talking about justification rather than truth.
This is part of a series of post relating issues of epistemology to LDS thought. I'm primarily taking a fairly Peircean approach but will hopefully touch on many issues. There are several posts related to this topic, listed below.
Mormon Epistemology: An introduction of the problem and why it is a problem.
Mormon Epistemology 2: A brief overview of the typical critique of the LDS position. In the comments I get at checks and balances and why I think "burning in a bosom" is largely irrelevant to the question at hand.
Reasoning and Reasons Giving: An important distinction to understand for the debate.
Fixation of Belief: I introduce the Peircean approach to the problem of epistemology.
Book of Mormon Evidence: The evidence for and against including spiritual experience. A rather involve and diverse set of discussions in the comments.
What Makes a Sign?: More discussion of Peirce and why I think it undermines the argument from emotion.
Hermeneutics and Semiotics 1?: Slight aside to explain hermeneutics, semiotics and abduction. I see these as key to understanding religious knowing.
Failure of Religious Experiences: When do religious experiences fail and how do we tell?
Alma 32: Discussion of what Alma's seed analogy is discussing.
Just to be clear, the idea that some signs signify innately is sometimes called the transcendental signifier. I just don't believe such things exist.
I recognize that folks like Jeff aren't necessarily claiming this. Rather they are suggesting that a strong and powerful experience need not signify what we think it does. I fully agree. But the question is then how we find out what (if anything) it signifies. There are standard processes we, as humans, go through to do this. I think that overall while we mischaracterize a lot of phenomena we actually get a surprising amount right.
Now in one sense merely meeting the justification requirement for knowledge is kind of pointless. After all what we're concerned with in these religious discussions isn't whether a believer is justified in their beliefs given their particular situation. As Jeff adroitly notes one might be able to do this for Santa Claus. (Although I don't really buy into coherentism.
Rather what is at question aren't the justification conditions of knowledge but rather the truth conditions. That is, given sufficient inquiry, what can we say about religious experience in the big picture rather than in the small picture where a believe may be justified in their beliefs but be wrong.
To that I can but say I've not addressed that. I think I've touched on some of the approaches in the post above though.
I must confess that I have no clue what corrective your account of signs actually offers my account of emotions. I see feelings as being of secondary importance to emotions, at best. You seem to say that same thing.
I say that what is most important about an emotion is both its formal object, the judgments we pass on that object and our expression of such judgments. You say that interpretation is most important. I see no difference.
Where I think you are placing most of your emphasis, in terms of refuting my argument is here:
"Ultimately what I'm after is how anything becomes a token for a type. What I'd suggest is that we (a) have an interpretive model. That is, a theory which predicts certain phenomena and allows us to categorize phenomena. We then have (b) the experiences in question. Finally we (c) generate new hypothesis which modify (a) and (b). We then finally (d) test our hypothesis."
But this is exactly where I have no clue what you are talking about. I don't see how one can meaningfully distinguish the experience of emotions, our interpreting them as being in one category or another, and testing them. These things all seem to be the same thing. Perhaps you could elaborate.
The point is that the emotion has significance in its context and repetitions. Just as with text. So to say that an emotion can't signify its origin is (in my mind) to say that emotions can't function as signs.
I think that I responded to this in my reply to Blake on the other thread. Emotions are great guides to engaging the world, but as to discovering the objective world it is terrible. Thus, to maintain that emotional experience can distinguish the origin, rather than the formal object of an emotion seems far too optimistic.
Just to add, I can say where there is smoke there is fire, thus smoke signifies its origin. I can say a breeze signifies its origin by direction. To argue that this isn't possible with emotions requires more argument than I think you've provided.
As I see it, all things can potentially in context signify origins even if that significance can be weak and vague.
By type-token I mean something like our concept of "person" versus the token that signifies it. In our case the word "person." So we have the token that signifies a type. This pops up in philosophy of mind, btw, since you can have multiple neural states each acting as tokens for a single type. Now we can of course have multiple different tokens all tied to the same type.
So if we are doing any kind of hermeneutic based inquiry into knowing and significance the type-token relationship is pretty fundamental in understanding what is going on. The debate then becomes how a token gets associated with a given type.
For Peirce there are three kinds of signs.
The first is an icon which signifies by resemblance. i.e. it shares properties. So a portrait painted of me is an icon of me. It resembles me. Arguably an allegory works iconically as well.
The second is an index which signifies because of a direct existential connection. So a weather vane signifies the direction of the wind because the wind causes the direction of the weather vane.
The third is a symbol which basically are signs that don't signify by a shared property or existential relationship. This is where the term the arbitrariness of the sign comes from. So "apple" can signify an apple but there is nothing inherent to the token (the word) that makes it signify an apple.
Now for icons and indexes it's obvious that we can discern the type-token relationship and justify them. But how do we do this with symbols? Clearly we can. But how do we do it and can it be justified?
Peirce would reply we do this basically with what is termed the hypothetical-deductive method. (He describes it somewhat differently, but it's the same general idea) That is we make a guess regarding the meaning of a token, test it out inductively, work out the implications deductively and then repeat.
So if an emotion can function as a symbol (and given the arbitrariness of the sign, anything can function as a symbol) the issue isn't whether it can signify anything. Clearly it can, contra your position. The question is how we can possibly justify this.
However what the semiotic approach suggests is that how we establish this isn't much different from how we discern any sign.
To repeat, of course, I don't think religious experiences are solely emotional. I don't even think them primarily emotional. But even if one considers the emotional aspect it can act as a normed sign. Indeed we frequently use them in that fashion to understand unconscious motives, fears and so forth. Both in terms of self-understanding and the understanding of others. So to suggest that they can't be helpful in understanding the "objective world" seems demonstrably false. Unless one means by that purely the objects of science. But I'm not sure if God counts as a scientific object any more than my wife does in terms of my relating to her as a person. (Rather than as a simply biological object)
I was following you up til that part about emotions being symbols for something and our testing if something is a symbol or not.
First, who ever said that emotions are symbols for something? I've never heard any such claim by a religionist.
Second, what exactly are we supposed to be testing for in the religious case?
Third, the whole idea of testing for what symbols objectively stand for seems unusual at best.
Clark: Let me be clear that I don't think there is any experience which innately signifies something. That is, in terms of being a symbol.
Of course, by definition a symbol is arbitrary and abstract. But at this point the story is half over. Before a sign can exist within the mind there must first be the concept of a ‘me’ and a ‘not me’. How that gets created is interesting. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to look at a new born baby without smiling. This may be part of our firmware. When the baby sees its first smile it has no meaning with regards to the smile. However, nature has taken care of that. We have within us mirror neurons. Have you noticed when someone yawns everyone yawns? These are mirror neurons at work. We are born with the need to mimic. What happens with the baby is that the mirror neurons are engaged and the baby smiles also. The baby is not smiling because it feels happy. The baby smiles as an automatic response to the baby’s own mirror neurons. But then something interesting happens. When the muscles of the face form into a smile, automatic signals are sent to the pleasure centers of the baby’s brain. You can try it for yourself. Signals are sent to our pleasure centers as an automatic reaction to the muscles in the face forming into a smile. After a time, the baby has learned its first sign. It is indexible to be sure but a sign none the less. Smile means pleasure. It will be a long time before the child is ready for arbitrary and abstract. But more importantly the baby is beginning to learn there is a ‘me’ and a ‘not me’. When the baby smiles and this other smiles in return, the baby is beginning to learn that it can interact and have some control with the ‘not me’. One of the problems with autism is this breakdown between ‘me’ and ‘not me’. [There are other ways by which our senses help define ‘me’ and ‘not me’ but this is a very with a smile is a very significant way.]
This leads to something even more significant. Our whole ability to be rational rests upon the body’s ability to feel. Sensory deprivation studies show that when the mind/brain is deprived of access to the body’s senses the mind ceases to function in a rational manner. This is why the example of the brain in the vat is so absurd. So yes, we have an innate ability to create significance within ourselves for an experience.
Clark: What I'd suggest is that we (a) have an interpretive model. That is, a theory which predicts certain phenomena and allows us to categorize phenomena. We then have (b) the experiences in question. Finally we (c) generate new hypothesis which modify (a) and (b). We then finally (d) test our hypothesis.
That sounds very organized but I don’t think that is what we go through when encountering a new experience. All experiences are acquired through one or more of our senses. All our senses first pass though the thalamus. The thalamus contains a very rough map or pattern of what is normal for each sense. If what the thalamus perceives as a normal experience, the experience is passed on to the neocortex to be processed. However, if the experience is perceived to be out of the normal an alarm is sent to the amygdala to get ready. It is from the amygdala that the initial electrical and chemical messengers are sent throughout the body to fight or run. The amygdala is the originating center for our emotions and feelings. The amygdala then receives a shot of serotonin to calm it just long enough for the neocortex to analyze this new information. Even though the alarm was sent, if the neocortex finds there is no danger involved it sends a message to the amygdala to stand down. If indeed it finds there is danger it sends a message to the amygdala: all system go. This is all processed outside of our awareness.
When the new experience leaves the neocortex it passes on to the hippocampus for preparation for long-term memory. However, the neurons which carry it to the hypocampus are intercepted at the rhinal cortices by neurons from the amygdala. Here the experience is imprinted with negative or positive somatic marker (feeling). Some call it emotional imprinting. The experience, with the somatic marker, is then processed in the hippocampus for inclusion in long-term memory. Without that somatic marker, the experience will be lost immediately after it leaves working memory. It never becomes part of our memories. It never becomes part of us. Once it is in long-term memory, the experience, along with its somatic marker, is available to modify our interpretative models. Or is available for decision making through the reasoning process. Information also loops back to the thalamus. If the event was not dangerous, the pattern of normality expands to include this new information. If the event was threatening then the thalamus increases its sensitivity to that event for the future.
That’s how new events are processed in the brain. Once processed as long-term memory the event becomes available for making decisions. Decision making is the cognitive process called reasoning. The purpose is to make a decision on a course of action or an opinion. What we think we do is review all courses of action and choose the best. What actually happens is that the brain immediately eliminates events which have little or no significance to this problem. Significance is defined by somatic markers. If an element has a weak somatic marker, regardless of its actual significance for this event, it is not even brought forward in the reasoning process. I suffer from combat trauma and have to constantly review decisions with other to insure I have considered all the relevant elements. My access to somatic markers (feelings) has been compromised by the trauma. There are those who do not have access to these somatic markers due to lesions in the brain. It is almost impossible for them to make even the simplest of decisions. There is nothing wrong with their recall. The problem comes in defining what is relevant and what is not.
So while we may think reasoning is objective and not influenced by irrationally of emotions (the ideal of course), in reality the process is heavily influenced by emotions and feelings. If it wasn’t the process wouldn’t work. Thus, whether we like it or not, ultimately justification rests not on reason but on feelings and emotions. Religious event are processed much as any other event (although I’m not sure of the exact process). They are justified (made real to the person) by feelings. This does not mean we cannot challenge this justification in light of addition information. But the reconciliation process must also go through the same process of justification as all other events. So if the Lord is to work with us it will be through feelings and emotions because this is how the brain justifies events. These justifications may, at first, not be that noticeable. The realization may come over a period of time. But, ultimately that realization will appear.
So one can say that ideas (cognitive events) are not ‘real’ until they have justified by somatic markers (feelings). I’m guessing but I think Pierce may have had an inkling that something like this must be happening when he wrote that when our beliefs are challenged we are aware of it by a feeling of unease. And, that knowledge has been gained when that feeling of unease has left. However, Clark would know much more about that than I.
By the way much of my information comes by way of Stanley I. Greenspan, MD author of The Growth of the Mind and the Endangered Origins of Intelligence and The First Idea: How Symbols, Language and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Human (Dr. Greenspan is an authority on autism); Antonio Demasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain; Joseph Ladoux, The Emotional Brain: the mysterious underpinnings of emotional life, Synaptic Self: How our brains become who we are; Gregory J Quirk & Ivan Vidal-Gonzalez, “Keeping the memories flowing”, Nature Neuroscience - 9, 1199 - 1200 (2006) and others.
Rich
Clark: Clearly feelings can signify. If I feel I am in pain it signifies that my body is being hurt. Likewise clearly feelings can signify incorrectly. For instance I may have ghost pains in an arm that has been amputated. I have the same feelings but their instinctive interpretation is wrong.
That’/s not quite accurate. It seem we have a pattern or map in our brain of our body. If we could see it, it wouldn’t look like our body but all the parts are there. When we receive a wound in our arm two signals are sent to the brain. One is that of pain and the other is that of the location of the pain (in the arm). Thus in the brain the pain is assigned to that part of the map in the brain representing that arm. The sensation of pain is in the brain. The sensation of where the pain is located is also in our brain. This pain is still felt in the arm after amputation because the map of the arm still exists in the brain. Over time, as the brain ceases to receive information from the ‘real’ arm, the map of the arm in the brain gradually fades until it no longer exists. So the pain in the arm is real because the map of the leg still exists in the brain even though the leg itself is gone.
Rich
Rich, I'll answer most of your points later when I have a tad more time. I'd just like to address this one.
Before a sign can exist within the mind there must first be the concept of a ‘me’ and a ‘not me’.
For Peirce this isn't true simply because he doesn't equate "meness" with mind. It's an elegant solution. Typically the emphasis in semiotics is on an interpreting mind. However Peirce puts the emphasis on the token. Thus for Peirce a sign involves something determining an effect in an other. So there are three components. I'll not get into those right now. So Peirce would argue that the universe is suffused with quasi-minds simply because semiosis is going on throughout the universe. This isn't really idealism but rather a "third way." However this third way avoids a lot of the problems that (IMO) pop up with either a Morris based or a Saussure based semiotics. (Yes Morris was heavily influenced by Peirce but his semiotics is different in some important respects)
To see this consider one of Peirce's many definitions of a sign:
I define a sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former. (EP2, 478).
Now here Peirce is limiting things to a person, but once again let me note that elsewhere Peirce doesn't limit things to people. But typically when we're interested in signs we're interested in human interpretations.
But note what this definition gets us. The emphasis is on the object that determines the interpretant. (Typically a thought) Most considerations go the opposite way and thus require a careful consideration of inside/outside that just doesn't apply to Peirce. This becomes significant when considering traditional critiques of the notion of the self, such as in Derrida. Thus the first half of On Grammatology which is an extended attack on the notion of inside/outside in semiotics is irrelevant to Peircean semiotics but devastating to Saussurean semotics. (IMO)
Rich (#8), regarding pain. Note that I'm taking the term "interpretation" a bit more broadly than you are. Thus to me the nervous system is doing the interpretation. I'm not using interpretation in the sense of having a conscious presentation which I then consciously interpret. Indeed I'm arguing against that. So I agree completely with what you say but merely point out that the presentation that is given me is of a pain in my arm when I have no arm. Talking about the underlying semiotic processes is fine but it still is an interpretation that is wrong.
Clark, I don’t have a problem with Pierce. I think his interpretant is miles ahead of what Saussure developed. The problem is with signs themselves. One of the problems for autistic children is the failure to understand signs whether those signs are social signs or linguistic sign or whatever. For some reason they fail to develop a sense of ‘me’ and ‘not me’. Thus they are trapped in an internal world with little recognition of an external world. When an autistic baby mimics the smile, somehow that never registers as an aspect of ‘not me’. Either the forming of the smile somehow doesn’t trigger the pleasure zones or if it does the concept of it being generated outside the baby never develops. This leads to a failure to develop a sense of ‘me’ and ‘not me’ necessary in order to be able to recognize signs and work with signs. Thus in order to develop a sense of signs one must first develop a sense of ‘me’ and ‘not me’. So I’m not criticizing Pierce so much as saying there is a prerequisite in order to get to the point where Pierce discusses signs. Without that distinction you cannot get to the level Pierce is talking about.
I think much of what I said can be reconciled with Pierce’s concept of the interpretant. When Pierce says that the sign creates something in the mind, I think he views this as a cognitive process. I’m suggesting it is both a cognitive process and a somatic marker process. This ‘something’ has a cognitive and a somatic marker aspect to it
Furthermore it is this justificational process by emotions and feelings which creates reality within us. Autistic children are hindered in their recognition of emotions and feelings and are locked into a fantasy world.
Rich
Rich once again I don't dispute what you say, it's just that I'm discussing signs in a broader sense. Certain some kinds of signs require some sorts of capabilities to work. Which is what I take you to be addressing. I'll touch on your other points later tonight.
Clark: Talking about the underlying semiotic processes is fine but it still is an interpretation that is wrong.
Pain is never interpreted to be in the actual arm. Pain is interpreted to exist in the mental arm in the brain. This is true whether the arm exists or not. There are no sensors in the arm by which to register pain. The sensors are connected to the mental arm. Thus the whole process of pain and the somatic localization of the pain is all done in the brain. It is only in our consciousness that the process is assigned to the arm. Also, the sense of pain in the arm can originate outside the existence of an arm. It doesn’t have to be created by something being done to the arm itself.
Rich
Pain is never interpreted to be in the actual arm. Pain is interpreted to exist in the mental arm in the brain.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree here. When I feel a pain in my arm I don't have any notion of a distinction between a "mental arm" and a real arm. I just feel pain in my arm. Now we can abstract and say, well you're just feeling a mental arm. But that's not a natural attitude. Rather it is a theoretical construct we place to make a distinction between us and the world.
OK, I finally had a chance to read over your comments in more depth Rich. Sorry for the delay. I was pretty burnt out at work with chocolate dust in my eyes. I'll answer your comments in my next comment.
First let me address Jeff's comments which I'd overlooked.
Jeff, when a Mormon says that the spirit led them to an idea I think there is implicit in the claim that the spirit is a symbol for something else. It signifies. But even in say a simple case like D&C 9:9 where one is more or less appealing to a kind of truth detector the emotional state is acting as a symbol. (A sign with arbitrary connection between it and its object) Now for the record I don't think, as far too many do, that D&C 9:9 is intended as a general guide to religious experience. I just bring it up as an example.
As to the testing issue - the test is for the content of the religious experience. If it is contentless then of course this isn't an issue. If there is any content at all we can test it. The easiest test of course is a test of correlation. See if instances of the experience correlate with the signified state. If there is a content claimed see if it pans out. (i.e. the Alma 32 test) There are numerous tests one could try, depending upon the nature of the experience. It's pretty much the same sort of thing one does in science where one has tokens indirectly tied to some type of abstract phenomena.
Now I think for regular people this is done in a fairly lax and often unconscious form.
As to the idea of testing symbols for object facts is unusual. I'm surprised at that. That happens quite regularly. Look at archaeology. Look at translation of dead languages. Those are all perfect examples of objective symbols being discerned. Cryptography is the most obvious example of this.
Rich regarding your comments about Autism. They are very important, albeit not quite what I was getting at. I can't recall if you were involved in the discussion or not. But last year we had a reading club on Michael Tomasello's The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. He had a somewhat controversial claim regarding the evolution of human thought. His key arguments were based on autism. Most of my comments in the discussion arose out of Peirce. (Tomasello himself may have be influenced by Peirce, although I don't know for sure) A lot of what you discuss in your comment (#7) was brought up in that discussion.
The underlying issue of the opposition between me/not-me is more interesting though. In my initial (admittedly somewhat addled) comments earlier this afternoon I was thinking in terms of Paul Ricouer's work on the notion of the self and the me/not-me opposition. The problem is that what counts as "me" isn't stable. Depending upon the kind of discourse we're engaged in, it varies. Now Heidegger tries to get out of this with Dasein by looking for an existential analysis of some phenomena that is uniquely "mine." I don't want to give too much away here as I've been working on a forthcoming post on the subject for a while. But I think many phenomena beyond death have a kind of unique "mineness." Further the notion of death isn't quite as clearcut as Heidegger would have it. (As Derrida critiqued him on) I can't recall how familiar you are with Heidegger so I'll not bore you with all this.
I'll just say that I think cognitive processes need a notion of self. I'm not at all convinced all cognitive processes in practice share a notion of self. That is each process may function differently as may different parts of the brain. Unlike some I don't believe in an "unified mind."
Thanks for the detailed discussion of how signals are processed. Some I was familiar with but a lot I was not. I found it terribly interesting though. Let me say that this issue of "normal" is fascinating to me. We're all familiar of the optical illusion of staring at a spot for a while and having that spot "vanish" if nothing is moving. As things "work properly" they disappear. This is interestingly a big deal in Heidegger's thought. There he suggests that things disappear as equipment and that we notice them only when they cease functioning correctly.
I think that is an important facet of the religious discussion although I'm hard pressed to pin a finger on how.
An other thing you touched on in your neuro-physiology discussion was the issue of "importance." Clearly the value of an interpretation affects the interpretation. If I'm thinking about things calmly while drinking a cup of hot chocolate it is quite different from me say fearful that a predator is about to eat me. We can guess that this makes sense as false positives are obviously more acceptable when your life is in danger. Some atheists use this fact in an analysis of religious experience. Both in general (false attribution of intelligence to objects) but in particular (they note how mood affects religious experiences - especially stressful situations).
I tend to agree and I think we have to take those into consideration.
Regarding Peirce and unease. Your idea of needing somantic markets is fascinating. It's enough to perk my interest to inquire about this. I confess I don't know. I think while that might be compatible with Peirce I doubt he was thinking along those lines. To Peirce feeling is roughly a "whole" of a perceptive awareness. But it is one of three components to any event. Regarding his "unease" I think he thinks it is a possibly unconscious awareness of strength of belief. The analogy would be more to a gymnast who has practiced a move repeatedly over several years to a person just learning it. A habit has been developed and he's making analogy to how we view habits. (At least that's my guess as to how he is thinking)
I don't think Peirce knew much about the workings of the brain. While I'm sure he picked up some psychology from James, even that was primitive at the time. Peirce was primarily a logician and physicist and most of his approaches are in terms of those.
BTW - thanks for the list. Several of those books were already on my reading list for next year when I want to dive back into cognitive science some more.
Oh, regarding your (#10) Rich. I don't think Peirce's notions are quite as defined as you outline, although I suspect your analysis is correct. It's important to recall that Peirce defines mind as pretty much any logical sign-process whether in a person or not. Thus to him a bee hive is an example of mind and certain chemical reactions in crystals might be. (I forget the details of his analogy) Anything that can be described as a reasoning process regardless of whether we'd say consciousness is involved is mind for Peirce. Peirce does discuss consciousness but he's not quite as successful and there are problems with his thought there which I won't get into here.
I think regarding the autistic problem Peirce would say that autistics deal with many signs. To take an obvious example consider the mathematical prodigy kind of autistics. The math they do is a very difficult sign-process most can't do in their heads. Yet some autistics can. What is disabled in autistics is certain kinds of sign processes. Perhaps partially for the reasons you mention (the me-you divide). Perhaps simply because different cognitive sub-centers don't develop right. To make one of my favorite analogies, one can lose the ability to deal with verbs as signs if the proper part of the brain is damaged.
The issue of somantic markers is a good one. I'd just say that the brain as it operates is, from a Peircean perspective, fully made up of sign processes. Thus one can even analyze the way neurons and axions work in semiotic terms. Semiotics is a very broad and abstract topic.
Just thought I would give an appreciative nod to the level of discussion here. {s!} (No comment particularly yet.)
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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