Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman Understanding 0802037046, 9780802037046

Citation preview

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebo Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

SENSING CORPOREALLY: TOWARD A POSTHUMAN UNDERSTANDING

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This page intentionally left blank

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

FLOYD MERRELL

Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Understanding

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2003 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-3704-6 (cloth)

Printed on acid-free paper Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication Editors: Marcel Danesi, Umberto Eco, Paul Perron, Peter Schulz, Thomas A. Sebeok National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Merrell, Floyd, 1937Sensing corporeally : toward a posthuman understanding / Floyd Merrell. (Toronto studies in semiotics and communication) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-3704-6 1. Semiotics. 2. Consciousness. 3. Comprehension (Theory of knowledge) I. Tide. II. Series. P99.M4752003

121'.68

C2002-903637-2

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Contents

Preface vii Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction: Change Accompanies Corporeal Sensing

3

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

1 Becoming Conscious Becoming 16 2 Bodymind Flows 33 3 The Peircean Decalogue 52 4 Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream

62

5 From Signification to Understanding 82 6 Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges

101

7 Doing It Tacitly 120 8 Bodymind Doing 135 9 When There Is Nothing on the Mind 149 10 Hasta la Vista Descartes 165 11 Language Fixation 191 12 Topology at the Core 208 13 On What Is New 222 14 Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 239

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

vi

Contents

15 Maximizing the Maxim 251 16 Distinctly Human Umwelf? 265 17 Space Dancing through Time 286 Postscript: Posthuman Understanding through Sensing Corporeally 296

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Notes 313 References 331 Index 349

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Preface

This book, I would like to believe, slightly lifts the veil to give us a peek into posthuman understanding. Sensing Corporeally attempts a swim against the current of linear, mechanical, quantitative, dualistic, Boolean logical and rational thinking, by submerging itself in the flow of nonlinear, organic, qualitative feeling and sensing and thinking. It draws heavily from qualitative and analogical feeling and sensing rather than quantitative and digital reasoning. It does this through continuous topological drifts and folds rather than discontinuous breaks and crisp lines of demarcation. A few words along these lines would be prudent at the outset, I suspect. Overtures toward the qualitative rather than the quantitative way were emerging at the turn of the twentieth century. Perhaps, surprisingly enough, it was the geometer and mathematician, Jules Henri Poincare, the last of the mathematical generalists (as many historians of mathematics conceive him), who most emphatically made these overtures. Rene Descartes, of the seventeenth century, was also a geometer. Geometry prior to his day was still chiefly that of visual shapes. It was soon to experience a radical transformation, however. After the seventeenth century, the trend turned away from geometry (i.e., visual images) toward algebra (i.e., abstract equations scratched on paper). The heyday of abstractions came in the form of group theory and set theory, which were invented in the nineteenth century and brought to overpowering dominance in the following century. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, there was Poincare, who made some headway toward reversing the stranglehold enjoyed by analysis and abstract, quantitative equations. However seminal Poincare's work was, however, the mathematics community largely ignored him during most of the twentieth century. Yet he

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

viii Preface set the stage for the science of complexity, fractal geometry, and chaos theory which had become the rage by the 1980s and 1990s. Poincare threw a monkey wrench into the mechanical view of the world. According to Newtonian physics, if one billiard ball collides with another one, and if the conditions are known to precision, theoretically, we can predict the behaviour of the two balls. Simple enough. But if on the pool table the cue ball strikes a ball that in turn strikes a couple of other balls and each of those go on to strike a ball or two, the situation quickly becomes more complex. Still, classical mechanics can usually handle the situation quite well. One reason the classical picture is not placed in a quandary is that it is reductive; or put another way, classical mechanics is artificially simple. A pool table is nearly a flat plane; it is merely two-dimensional. This is not the sort of conditions we generally encounter in our three-dimensional world. If we include a few moving bodies in three-dimensional space - for example, the sun, the earth, and the moon - the situation becomes sticky. Their motion relative to one another in an extra dimension of space allows them considerably greater degrees of freedom. Let's see what an exceedingly complicated situation would look like. Suppose we put 6 x 1023 molecules of a gas in an enclosed chamber and alter the temperature. The pressure of the gas molecules on the walls of the chamber will change. Classical physics can account for this change. But the yield is no more than a computation of statistical averages. The answer can never be as cut and dried as 2 + 2 = 4. Statistical averages are necessary, for it is impossible to ascertain the behaviour of each molecule. Even if we had an omniscient microscopic scientist among the molecules capable simultaneously of taking measurements of all the molecules as if they were billiard balls, the collection of these molecules would be susceptible to hardly more than statistics. Strictly applying classical mechanical laws becomes a pretty hopeless proposition with respect to relatively complicated systems. Now enter Poincare. Poincare demonstrated that slight perturbations within a system, even if they were virtually infinitesimal, could eventually lead to its collapse. Poincare's work involves such apparently simple phenomena as threebody systems, for example (again), our sun, earth, and moon. Poincare demonstrated how, when all three bodies are included in a classical equation, irresolvable problems arise. The moon's revolving around the earth affects the earth's orbit around the sun, and in turn the sun is affected, however slightly, by the interaction between the earth and the moon. The interaction between any two of the three bodies is relevant to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Preface ix their interaction with the third body. This means that Newtonian equations cannot be worked out with absolute precision with respect to a three-body system. Rather, due to reasons of formal mathematics, they can account for no more than a series of statistical approximations. The best we can do is converge toward an absolutely precise computation, since the absolute exists only at the infinite stretch. That is, if the measuring instruments were of infinite precision and the three bodies in question were absolutely perfect spheres moving in a complete vacuum, an accurate picture could in principle be forthcoming. But nature and our instruments are inevitably somewhat flawed. What is worse, we cannot know with absolute precision the initial conditions of this or any other system in order to calculate its present and its future. Even if we had access to this information, knowing the initial conditions would require our going back to the beginning of time itself, which, of course, we cannot do (Poincare, 1914). Poincare's discovery that the very slightest of perturbations causes some celestial bodies to wobble and weave drunkenly along their orbits in apparently random fashion bears sober tidings: prediction becomes impossible, even though the entire system may be guided by deterministic laws. One must bear in mind that the behaviour of such a system is not intrinsically indeterministic; rather, it is unpredictable. But it does become indeterministic relative to other systems, and those to others, until the entire universe is taken in. The initial conditions, then, are tantamount to the primal instant of the 'Big Bang' itself. Moreover, since the condition of the universe at a given moment cannot be determinately known in its entirety, the condition and moment of the end, the 'Great Crunch,' cannot be known either. Given Poincare's work, it becomes quite apparent - however painfully - that the universe must be teeming with phenomena we can't ever know completely and consistently. Two initial states that are almost identical, but not quite, will swerve away from each other along non-linear paths until they become radically distinct. This sensitivity, writes Edward Lorenz, one of the pioneers of a phenomenon in chaos theory known as strange attractors, 'implies that two states differing by imperceptible amounts may eventually evolve into two considerably different states. If, then, there is any error whatever in observing the present state - and in any real system such errors seem inevitable - an acceptable prediction of an instantaneous state in the distant future may well be impossible' (1963: 133). Chaotic dynamical systems can be modelled on computers with a significant degree of accuracy, by rounding off the calculation to the twentieth or so decimal

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

x Preface place. Yet such precision proves to be of no avail, for the system's sensitivity dependence quickly brings about a radical divergence in one of a potential infinity of directions. It becomes impossible to compute exact ends by almost, but not quite exactly, specifying the origins. Sensitivity-dependent systems exhibit what Lorenz labels the 'butterfly effect.' It goes something like this. The earth's weather behaves like a chaotic system, and thus is potentially sensitive to perturbations so apparently trivial as a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon River basin, which can eventually - by a countless sequence of steps - make the difference between calm weather and a tornado in Oklahoma. However, if a tornado happened to occur in the American Midwest, it would by no means be the fault of the butterfly's inconsiderate behaviour. There is no linear cause-and-effect chain involved here; rather, the tornado would have been the product of a virtually infinite set of non-linear processes. These processes are deterministic regarding the whole, but unpredictable with respect to a grasp of any of their parts. These sorts of nonlinear phenomena play havoc with all attempts to forecast the weather with precision. Hence, as in the case of all chaotic systems, a qualitative approach becomes necessary. Strange attractors are 'strange' in part because they are somehow capable of reconciling two contradictory phenomena. They are attractors, the locus toward which the trajectories of elements in a system converge; and they are repellers, rapidly forcing the trajectories of those same elements outward. There is a combination of folding and stretching, of convergence and divergence, of a tendency toward the oneness of a single point and the manyness of widely disseminated points, of continuity and discontinuity, reversibility and irreversibility, simplicity and complexity, and - as we shall note - of atemporality and temporality. Strange attractors of the Lorenz sort also exhibit fractal characteristics. They call for fractional consideration of spatial dimensions rather than spaces that come in whole integers. Strange as it may seem, a fractal space may not be of two dimensions but rather of, for example, 2.1739 dimensions. If you trace a figure 8 on a piece of paper and then repeat the operation over and over again while varying, ever so slightly, the size of die two loops, you might think you've made a two-dimensional doodle. Wrong, at least according to fractal geometry. At midpoint on the figure 8 your lines crossed time and time again, which is to say that after a virtually uncountable number of overlaps, the figure begins very tenderly easing its way out of two-dimensionality and into three-dimensionality. Hence the term 'fractal dimension.'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Preface xi Strange attractors, fractals, complex systems, and topological forms are susceptible to qualitative study rather than strictly defined quantitative analysis. Topology is the geometry of 'playdough' surfaces - that is, surfaces that are deformable and reformable into an infinity of shapes. Topology enables us to transform a square into a circle by an infinity of continuous steps. Or a triangle into a rectangle, a star into an ellipse, a pyramid into a baguette, a box into a ball, a coffee cup into a doughnut. Because of these possibilities of continuous stretching and twisting and doubling, this branch of geometry, topology, is called 'rubber sheet geometry.' Knots are topological forms. In topological theory, a knot is a loop that cannot be untied, no matter how many deformations it suffers. Take a string, tie a square knot with its two ends, and then connect the ends. Can you untie the knot? No, not without separating the ends of the string once again. Holes are something else that can't be undone topologically. Both a doughnut and a coffee cup have a hole. No matter how you manipulate this form, it will still have a hole in it. However, the hole making up the concave portion of the coffee cup doesn't qualify as a genuine hole, topologically speaking. This is because a continuous line can be traced from any point on the circumference of the hole to all the other points on that same circumference by travelling along the inner surface of the cup. In contrast, the hole in a doughnut surrounds the entire doughnut, and the doughnut surrounds the hole. The hole and the doughnut are inextricably linked (Adams 1994, Kauffman 1991). Strange indeed, all this. So, suppose we ask a topologist, '"What is topology? What is it good for?' We put her in a bind if we expect a straightforward answer. About the best she can say is that topology is a kind of geometric thinking useful in many areas of advanced mathematics. This, of course, doesn't satisfy us. So she whips out a piece of paper, scissors and paste, and constructs a Mobius strip (take a look at Figure 12, if you wish). Then she cuts it along the centre to show us how the space is deformed and interesting things happen. Or she takes some string and shows us how three separate loops can be enlaced without their being linked. If she gets carried away with herself, she might even demonstrate how topologically she can take off her vest without removing her coat. These exercises might appear to us as no more than parlour tricks. They are also based on serious topology. To explain them topologically would require hours of apprenticeship on our part and patient classroom instruction on her part. We would be seriously taxed, and boredom

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

xii Preface would probably overtake her. Most likely, we still wouldn't understand much about the application of topology. But we should try to get a feel for topology, for it is at the heart of life itself. One of the greatest mysteries of DNA is topological in nature. DNA consists of a couple of ribbons whose edges are two oppositely twisted filaments. Many metres made up of billions of atoms must somehow be folded, doubled, twisted, wound, pleated, braided, and packed into the microscopic confines of every living cell. This is a volume so small that a million or so 180° bends of the ribbon are required. During every cycle of cell division, the entire bundle must unravel and expose every one of its billions of minisurfaces in order to interact with enzymes. Then the strands separate and make copies of themselves. All this takes place without the bundles becoming hopelessly entangled and knotted. In all this, the topological theory of knots comes into the picture, for DNA must avoid knots, in some inordinately complex topological way (see Frank-Kamenetskii, 1993; Wang, 1982; Wasserman et al., 1985). At this juncture, one might wish to retort that knots are so mundane, so much a part of our everyday affairs, that they should have no place in a serious consideration of DNA or in sober-minded mathematical concerns. More disconcerting still, where's the sensing corporeally and the posthuman understanding in all my palaver? Of course. The question is pertinent. But I would suggest that we should really take first things first. For the moment, the important point is that mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology - and even to an extent the social sciences - have begun thinking with visual signs of the topological, knot sort. They have also begun thinking with non-visual signs of the haptic or tactile variety, and with auditive, olfactory, and gustatory signs. These are signs of surfaces - vague, topological surfaces - that cannot be quantitatively determined, though they lend themselves to qualitative, intuitive feeling and sensing and thinking. These are modes of thinking not with numbers and Greek letters but with images, visual and non-visual alike. Such visual and non-visual images are not of the precision of quantitative analysis, of linear equations and formulas. They are, so to speak, vaguely precise. They emerge from instinct, intuition, feeling, emotion, and sensing. Yes, sensing, corporeally sensing. Many quantitative statistical equations can be written to a dozen or so decimal places as the investigator hones in on a more precise solution to a problem. Another decimal place, and she is closer still. But if the approximation is asymptotic, she'll never get there, unless she continues expanding the decimals to an infinity of places over an infinity of years. In contrast to this quantitative

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Preface

xiii

precision, qualitative vague precision is not digital, like numbers and binary values; rather, it is analog, a matter of continuous variation, of more or less values. Qualitative values are felt and sensed corporeally. They are also intuited and thought about and reasoned qualitatively, rather than digitally, formally, and analytically. This is not to say that the qualitative values of feeling and sensing and intuiting and thinking lack rigor. There is rigor, for sure, but it is of a different sort. The rigor is continuously variable or alternatively put, it is topological. There are not a lot of parameters, but merely a few pliable parameters; no statistical averages, but a scattering of implications that dive down deep in order that one may get a feel for the matter at hand; no abstract equations, but a sense of concrete, living processes; no confusion of myriad details, but patterns felt; no identities and distinctions, but a sense of similarities and differences tha make a difference; no dualisms, but a feeling of multiplicities; no phobias regarding contradictions, but their gleeful embrace with a sense of their giving rise to something different, something new, something fresh. This book, then, is about posthuman understanding through subjective, qualitative sensing, and above all it is about sensing corporeally. It focuses chiefly on modes of feeling and sensing and thinking by way of sign use and abuse. In this sense, topology plays a key role in all aspects of semiotic activity. That is to say, I consider feeling and sensing and thinking in terms of continuous change, in time, of signs that can perhaps best be accounted for as spatial forms. After all, we ourselves are topological: each of us is a two-dimensional surface with a few holes enclosing an impressive, mind-bogglingly complex collection of three-dimensional temporal processes, each enclosed within a two-dimensional surface, most of these with a few holes. Why should we expect our feelings and sensations and thoughts and our perceptions and conceptions and our sign making and taking to be of a non-topological nature? And how is the topological strategy carried out between the covers of this volume? Through the creative, insightful, and highly suggestive work of neurologist Antonio Damasio and psychiatrist Oliver Sacks, and through the equally impressive fictions by Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, and through brief meditation on writings from science and postanalytic philosophy. The topological strategy in this book also emerges visually, through my rather liberal use of figures, diagrams, and tables. These images depict interrelations that might appear static in their spatial outlay. Yet they are dynamic, within the unfolding of time. I'd best take my leave for the moment. Whatever else I might say in

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

xiv Preface

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

this preface would surely lead only to more question marks. It behooves us, then, to move on to concrete and living examples. Perhaps they will give us clues about the ways of our body and mind and signs, and how we can get beyond the mere human and toward the posthuman, where we are no longer separated - where we no longer separate ourselves - from everything the world has to offer, but where we realize that we are, as physicist Niels Bohr once said, participants, not spectators, in the unfolding universal drama of processes.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my appreciation to Professor Naomar de Almeida Filho, director of the Institute de Saiide Coletiva (Institute of Public Health) at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Federal University of Bahia), Salvador, Brazil. Naomar afforded me the opportunity to teach a seminar with the Graduate Program of Public Health titled 'Semiotica e Saude' (Semiotics and Health) during June and August of 2000. My stay in Brazil as a visiting professor was made possible by a grant from the Brazilian government under the auspices of CAPES. In preparation for this course, and while in Brazil, I wrote the initial draft of part of what eventually became this book. I am also indebted to Waldomiro Jose da Silva Filho, professor of philosophy, and the best of friends, for preparation of the proposal for my invitation to Brazil, for his valuable assistance and advice, and for his easing me into the bureaucratic labyrinths of university life in Salvador without undue travails, traumas, and tribulation. I thank Purdue University for supporting my work at the Universidade Federal da Bahia in 2000, and indeed, for its support of my ventures over the past decade, during which time I have been invited to teach seminars and give lectures at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica (Catholic University) of Sao Paulo and various other Brazilian institutions of higher learning. These years were productive, I would like to believe. During a couple of months of each year in the energized cultural setting Brazil offers, I was always able to take a look at my work in a new light. This enabled me to see some of the errors of my ways, correct them insofar as that might be for me possible, and move on. Finally, this volume could not have emerged into the light of day without the assistance of Siobhan McMenemy and the staff at the University of Toronto Press. To those dedicated and very professional coworkers, my hearty thanks.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This page intentionally left blank

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

SENSING CORPOREALLY: TOWARD A POSTHUMAN UNDERSTANDING

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This page intentionally left blank

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Introduction:

Change Accompanies

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Corporeal Sensing

Chance is amazing. Whatever happens to come from it quite often presents itself as just one damn thing after another. Henry Ford said the same about history. History as the outcome of pure chance would be pretty much just that. On the other hand, chance plus selection and choice is something else altogether. Chance by itself is a throw of the dice. When selection by way of choice is exercised, the dice have been conveniently loaded, or they are thrown until the desired number shows. Either way, there's usually some cheating going on. Whether cheating on chance is good or bad, we constantly do it, knowingly or unknowingly, and intentionally or unintentionally. We select from that often chancy array of things and happenings we call 'reality.' 'Reality,' that indefinite extension of possibilities: we select from it, and then we repeat the selection in a slightly variant, fuguelike way time and time again. Although monotony is often the outcome, the practice can and sometimes does culminate in some remarkable achievements. How are selections made? Mainly by instinct? Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who favoured pre-Socratic ways, says that's the best way — that is, if we can maintain some checks and balances based on hard-rock reason. Socrates, in contrast, counselled that we should use reason and reason alone when exercising selections, and then evaluate our outcome using intuitive good sense. At any rate, selections and choices must constantly be made. Otherwise we would run into problems. Consider the case of Buridan's ass, who, as hungry as he was thirsty, happened to find himself equidistant between a bale of hay and a pail of water. He remained where he was, unable to make a choice, and ended up starving to death. Or did he die of thirst? Either way, he paid the price of non-selection and the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

4 Sensing Corporeally incapacity for choice. John Earth's schizophrenic antihero, Jack Horner of End of the Road (1969), occasionally suffered from a mental breakdown. He froze solid wherever he happened to be and could not reinitiate his movement. He just remained there, unable to budge. Hamlet was slightly more fortunate. He began with an unknowing 'Who's there,' and ended with the inability to articulate a choice and then act on it. Perhaps he should have carried a pair of dice around with him. But that probably wouldn't have helped him much. He would likely have repeated the tosses, over and over again, remaining indecisive after each of them. For a study in knowing certainty, observe a squirrel, sparrow, crow, or chipmunk. When time comes to act, they act, more often than not with hardly a shadow of a doubt. They know what to do and they do it, almost invariably without hesitation or remorse. But how do they decide when and where to decide? Really? I often see two squirrels frolicking at the base of a maple tree outside my kitchen window. One gets the other's attention by flicking her tail provocatively, as if to say, 'Come on, see if you can catch me.' I'm always amazed. Why and how did she suddenly decide to send these signals? Only a few seconds earlier she'd apparently been searching for food. Why did she not continue? Did she decide she wasn't really hungry when she saw the other member of her species? After all, it's not exactly mating season. Besides, is the other squirrel a male? Or is the teasing squirrel male and the other female? Or are they both females? Or males? Gender becomes confusing for a novice ethologist. In fact, gender among squirrels is obviously not as important as it is among human animals, except when it's time to mate. So why did she decide to flick her tail at that particular moment? Ah, now they're off again! Round and round the tree trunk. Ms provocateur tries to keep herself at 180 degrees and opposite her pursuer at the circumference of the tree trunk. Then she makes off for the telephone pole in the distance. Up she goes with her playmate in hot pursuit. Then Mr pursuer decides he's had enough and gives up the chase. My same question applies here as well. Why did he stop at this particular point? Does it take too much energy to climb the vertical pole that doesn't have all the convenient contours of the maple trunk? Did he decide he was tired? Did hunger pangs win out over just having fun? Did he sense some sort of danger? Or did he spy a more attractive female somewhere else? Ms provocateur is now near the top of the pole. She decides to amble along the telephone line toward the maple, where she can jump over to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction

5

one of the waiting branches. Her dexterity is admirable, she's a naturalborn athlete. Oops! She pauses to look at a nearby tree branch, teeters dangerously, then catches herself and moves on. She passes the tree and approaches the house near the upper north corner of the kitchen window. I'm still in the same spot, observing the drama. Does she see me? It seems she does. But she pays me no mind, no more mind than when she occasionally climbs up the bird feeder, scatters seeds in all directions in search of the succulent, darker sunflower shells, and ignores my rapping on the window (a futile attempt to scare her off). Sure, she sees me from the telephone line. She's looking right at me. Isn't she? Yet she keeps slowly coming, coming. She reaches the vinyl siding of the house where the telephone line disappears, at which point she has nowhere to go. She perches there for a few seconds. I am motionless, my head craned around to the right so as to keep her in focus. She's observing me. Checking me out. She knows she's safe, that there is an almost invisible barrier between her and me, and that humans are capable of no more than a few sluggish lunges and no match for her sprightly leaps and bounds. Then she's off in the other direction, with the greatest of ease. What made her decide to return from whence she came? Did she suddenly remember her playmate and decide to renew the game of hide and seek around the maple? Had I become too boring for her? Did a slight change in the temperature of the air current tell her she really ought to stop this nonsense and fill her belly or hide something for the winter months ahead? How are her choices made, anyway? Is instinct at the base animal level the prime factor? What about some sort of intuition? To what extent does some form of reason enter the picture? What particular style of squirrel reasoning can we possibly be talking about here? Is it in any sense cerebral in the presumed supreme human sense? Or is human reason in large part guided by cultural conventions and a little bit of instinct? If so, are there not many possible 'styles of reasoning' for varying human cultures and 'styles of reasoning' for other organisms? Many possible 'styles of reasoning.' This might be Ian Hacking's (1984, 1985) conclusion. In contrast, there are those who argue that reason is reason: there is only one reason, our reason, and that's the end of the argument. They tell us that in its pure form, our reason is one and invariant, and like logic is distinctively human and impeccable when properly played out, whatever the cultural context (however, see Horton, 1984; Taylor, 1984). Moreover, what about wilfulness, when reason is

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

6 Sensing Corporeally used and decisions are made? In the all too human sense, is the rational mind not a conscious mind? Regarding consciousness, philosopher of science Karl Popper writes: 'Much of our purposeful behaviour (and presumably of the purposeful behaviour of animals) happens without the intervention of consciousness. ... Problems that can be solved by routine do not need consciousness. ... But the role of consciousness is perhaps clearest where an aim or purpose (perhaps even an unconscious or instinctive aim or purpose) can be achieved by alternate means, and when two or more means are tried out, after deliberation. It is the case of making a new decision' (Popper and Eccles, 1977: 125, brackets added). Put a different way, body takes care of routine matters, but when problem solving becomes a serious matter, the conscious mind takes over. But if we follow Hacking's varying 'styles of reasoning' among human communities and among humans and animals, the conscious mind avails itself of whatever 'style of reasoning' is expedient or happens to suit its fancy, or whatever 'style of reasoning' has been most deeply internalized. When mind consciously selects the 'style of reasoning' it deems most suitable for the occasion, it is exercising a wilful choice. But when mindlessly making use of a 'style of reasoning' it has internalized, it is following entrenched pathways of least resistance. In this case the 'style of reasoning' comes into play in a routine manner without need of consciousness. In other words, body carries on with its habitualized form of 'reasoning,' while mind tends to the more immediate problem at hand. This might remind us of William James's notion that when doing what has been done often in the past, the body just does it, and the mind is left free to pursue its own line of interests with respect to problem solving or whatever. Or more in keeping with James, perhaps we should say that mind and body operate in concert, and that there is really no Cartesian distinction between the two - rather, they are one, they are bodymind. This flies against Popper and especially John Eccles, who remained mind/body Cartesian philosophers to the end, though their thesis and kindred theses have been waning over the past couple of decades. At any rate, the premise that will become increasingly pronounced as this inquiry proceeds involves the human animal, who like our affable squirrel is largely unaware of much of what she does in the coming and going of her daily activities. These activities, repeated over and over again, tend to sink into consciousness and outside the mind's wilful doings to become bodymind doings. I write sink into consciousness rather than drop out of consciousness or drop into unconsciousness, since con-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction

7

sciousness is, well, just consciousness. It is one, not plural, whether accessible to the awareness of the subject or not. It involves involuntary as well as voluntary, wilful as well as willess, and mindful as well as mindless, doings. The remarkable physicist Erwin Schrodinger (1967) says as much. He even attributes the involuntary workings of heart and lungs and liver and guts to this sinking into consciousness. Schrodinger writes that there must have been in the beginning some drive that led to a collection of chemicals that eventually brought about life processes. These processes could be qualified by purposefulness emerging from some primitive sort of consciousness - which is usually dubbed subconsciousness or unconsciousness by psychologists and psychoanalysts and mainstream mindspinning philosophers. Over time, much time, there evolved within these life processes heartbeats, lung heaves, liver garbage disposal, and gut peristalses. These functions were eventually left to vast collections of orchestrating cells consisting of trillions of complex molecules. These molecules had somehow learned to carry out their role without any intervention on the part of a mind; thus, the organism as a whole was left to do what it did best - selecting and choosing in order to survive. That is learning at the phylogenetic level. Do the heart, lungs, liver, guts actually make selections and choices? That seems like a ridiculous question. Even absurd. Of course they don't. They just do what they do. But perhaps our body's organs did not always do what they do, even though it is difficult for us to conceive of their doing otherwise. Perhaps these organs somehow had to learn to do what they do. For instance, we are proud of our ability to manoeuvre about in our physical world. We can, for example, ride a bicycle with the greatest of ease. We have learned to do so over the years. However, if while pumping along an accustomed bike lane some unexpected event occurs, we are startled, and the heart spontaneously beats faster. Or we rapidly move up a flight of stairs, and without our necessarily becoming aware of the fact, our lungs respond to the occasion. Or our liver gets busy after last night's party of blood-oozing steak and hard spirits and frantic dancing, and our intestines collaborate. Are there selections and decisions in all this? Perhaps at some very primitive level, yes. Perhaps also, these primitive functions were at a deep level learned in somewhat the manner of our learning to ride a bicycle. Eons ago, after simple organisms painfully pushed their way a few links along the evolutionary chain, perhaps they were learning, at the phylogenetic level, very gradually to carry out basic biological functions in virtually spontaneous

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

8 Sensing Corporeally fashion. Now our bodies just do what they do, often with no prompting whatsoever. Learning as we ordinarily conceive it generally follows these same lines ontogenetically. Becoming adept at tying our shoes, driving a car, speaking another language, playing chess, or dancing or engaging in a sport, involves habituated, sedimented moves of the body. All these activities involve an intricate range of selections and choices by body and mind - bodymind — that gradually become part of the activities we engage in as a matter of course - automatically, so to speak, and without giving the doing much thought. Eastern practices take the learning of such activities to the extreme. Thus 'Zen in the art of archery' (Herrigel 1953) requires countless hours of mind's letting go, ceasing its tireless effort to control body and world and just letting go, allowing body to become one with the bow and the arrow and the target and the entirety of its surroundings, so that body can do what it does. The process highlights how we select and choose and do what we do in our everyday lives, though much of what we naturally do we do without giving it a bit of mind. Many things we now do quite naturally required in the beginning much concentration and considerable practice. When we drive down the street we don't consciously and intentionally guide each of our muscles through each of its moves. Trying to do so would virtually paralyze us, like the proverbial centipede, who was asked by the nearby toad how in the world he knew which leg came after which, and then he thought about it and lost his ability to ambulate. We drive the way we drive now because bodymind moves as an orchestrated whole. Yet when we were learning to drive, mind found itself consciously interceding in the doings of body, as if mind and body were two, not one. In contrast, the fine art of Zen archery involves intensive interdependence, interrelatedness, interaction, and resonance between body and mind, acquired by years of practice; in concert, these things bring about bodymind rhythms. (I expect that the central importance of the italicized words to my thesis will become increasingly clear in the pages that follow.) Jazz pianist David Sudnow (1978; 1979) wrote a fascinating book on bodymind's learning to do what it does when becoming proficient at jazz. His teacher provided him with explicit instructions on matters such as chord production and constructional rules - matters that could be mechanically obeyed but that contributed very little toward the teaching of jazz. After receiving the proper litany of linguistic instructions, and after making a few exemplary moves, the young Sudnow tried to select

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction 9 and choose the proper keys at the propitious moment and play jazz. His teacher offered advice, but the advice fell on partly deaf ears, for it was inordinately vague and of little use or comfort. The apprentice wanted explicit guidelines. But they were not forthcoming, nor could they have been. Following the counsel that he 'get the phrasing more syncopated,' he responded the only way he could, by fumbling and faltering. It was as if he had been told to go out in the world and speak Chinese after having been given a few grammar rules and a handful of words. Then the master showed him how it was done with a little of his own improvisation. His fingers flew over the keyboard. The apprentice saw how it was done. But he didn't really understand it, and he couldn't do it. After a particular move by the master, Sudnow asked: 'What was that?' The master was puzzled: 'What was what?' Sudnow: 'What you just did.' The master: 'Nothing really, you just do it.' Sudnow: 'Do what?' How could the master respond? There was no what, no when, no that, no there, no how, no why. There was just doing, and in the doing, a little bi of vague showing. There was no jazzist here and fingers there in contigu ity with a piano and melody that emerged and extended out somewhere else. There was only jazzing,' which in its jazziest form consisted of a resonance of fingers, piano, melody, and the entire context. There was no conscious and intentional selection and choice of keys at a particular moment. The fingers just did what they did, like the heart, lungs, liver, guts, except that the jazzing mind - bodymind-vr&s a more active monitor of the goings on. As Sudnow very gradually learned the tricks of the trade, he tacitly picked up little bits and pieces of jazzing. The little bits and pieces slowly showed themselves to him, in-formed him, as they dis-membered him so as to allow for re-membering. Jazzing is an integrated practice, interrelating codependent facets of the jazzist's entire bodymind in such a way that the sounds emerge. Thus Sudnow could eventually write: 'To define jazz (as to define any phenomenon of human action) is to describe the body's ways' (1978: 146). But, of course, to describe the body's ways is to engage in the process of jazzing, or cycling or tennising or driving or thinking or writing or talking while at work or at play. Jazzing becomes sort of a nonconsciously extended self-consciousness. In a subtle way, jazzing is like the blind person using a cane to feel her way about. Her fingers are not doing the walking, her feet are. But her fingers are talking to her feet, telling them where the impediments are and how they must manoeuvre through and around them as they make their way along a given route. However, her fingers are not in direct

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

10 Sensing Corporeally contact with the impediments. The cane is in contact with them, and her fingers pick up the signs from the extremity of the cane as she moves it back and forth and up and down. Of course, there's no direct equivalent of a white cane in Sudnow's jazzing, yet the analogy in a certain sense holds. In a manner of speaking, the cane is in the sound. Sudnow's ears tune in to the sounds the fingers are producing, and the sounds tell him when and how to alter the beat, the tone, the emphasis, and the general flow. He follows the sounds, those same sounds he has made, like the blind person following the messages the tip of her cane is sending her following her inquiries made with that same cane. In both situations, the process is self-reflective and self-organizing. Sudnow reports that he can now sit himself at a piano and be almost immediately oriented and ready to engage in jazzing. Before, he had to begin by shuffling himself around in his seat until he found the right spot, roaming the keyboard with his fingers, getting his mind properly attuned to the task at hand. Now he just does it, like the accomplished speaker who before an audience has a vague idea in mind and opens her mouth and begins speaking, confident that the most appropriate words will spill forth, as she makes up the sentences, one after another. Jazzing took Sudnow years to learn. It was not a simple matter of learning the chords and listening to a few jazz pieces and then happily sitting down to improvise. There were years of listening, years of chording, years of roaming about with the fingers, years of tentatively selecting and choosing, before jazzing began emerging. Sudnow recalls Charlie Chaplin on the assembly line in Modern Times. The conveyor belt carries a stream of nuts and bolts to be tightened. Chaplin falls farther and farther behind, missing more and more nuts and bolts until eventually he becomes completely caught up in the machinery and is ejected in a spasmodic dance step. Sudnow felt the same way when he first began jazzing with a combo. Like Chaplin, he was within the jazzing but couldn't quite keep up. He was 'a bucking bronco of my own body's doings, situated in the midst of these surrounding affairs. Between the chordchanging beating of my left hand at more or less regular intervals according to the chart, the melody movements of the right, and the rather more smoothly managed and securely pulsing background of the bass player and drummer, there obtained the most mutually alienative relations' (1978: 30). During that stage of his development, his hand jumped around from place to place like Chaplin jerking about with a wrench in each hand. He felt there was little coordination, little flow, little continuity, only fits and starts and stops. Then at some point he began jazzing, genuinely jazzing. Eventually he

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction

11

found himself singing to himself while he was jazzing, talking to himself, dialoguing with himself. He found himself- that is, he found his fingers - carrying out various tasks simultaneously. His fingers were singing, talking, dialoguing. As the conversations with himself began taking form, he found himself 'looking down at these hands of mine, their ways, my ways of employing them, seeking practically useful terms for conceiving "my relationship to their ways," reflecting upon how I could employ them, and what it meant, as manageable practices at the keyboard, to "employ them" for this music to happen - a thoughtful scrutiny over such matters, and over the very consequences of the thoughtfulness itself, became a central part of what practicing the piano now came to involve' (1978:84). His hands have become, are in the process of becoming, jazzing hands. He is familiar with the sight of these hands, but not in the way he was before. Early on he painfully, hesitatingly, tentatively, had to will them to move along the keyboard, and as a consequence things often came out wrong. He tried to get them right, but to no avail. He knew his task was not to try intentionally and wilfully to do it, but rather to allow his fingers the freedom to just do it, with no further ado. So he tried gravely to try no more. And he failed, time and time again. It was like the aspiring Buddhist monk trying to try not to try. The proper moves should come spontaneously, but they resisted. Finally, they came. Nowadays his hands have their own way, of which he is in large part unaware, and their own control, for which he has no inclination or desire. He gets a kick out of watching his hands do what they do, and he is often surprised that he is not surprised that what they do is of their own accord, without any prompting or reprimanding or correcting on the part of his wilful mind. The subtle bodymind jazzing moves simply emerge, as if out of the clear blue sky. It all now comes quite naturally. The non-jazz pianist who one bright day decides to do some jazzing may think she is making jazz. But Sudnow knows better. He could never have decided to jazz, tried to jazz, and ended up jazzing, as simple as that. He knows that bodymind - piano, hands, conscious and non-conscious self, emerging sounds - does all the jazzing. No single thing is in control. In fact, there is no control. Not really. There is just jazzing. When it is happening it is happening because it was happening, it is happening, it will have been happening. Happening happens, that's all: From an upright posture I look down at my hands on the piano keyboard during play, with a look that is hardly a look at all. But standing back I find

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

12 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

that I proceed through and in a terrain nexus, doing singings with my fingers, so to speak, a single voice at the tips of the fingers, going for each next note in sayings just now and just them, just this soft and just this hard, just here and just there, with definiteness of aim throughout, taking my fingers to places, so to speak, and being guided, so to speak. I sing with my fingers, so to speak, and only so to speak, for there is a new T that the speaking I gestures toward with a pointing at the music that says: It is a singing body and this I (here, too, so to speak) sings. (1978: 152)

Sudnow's 'so to speak' testifies to the difficulty of articulating this process. It is impossible to articulate, because language is attuned to the mind's workings, and mind is a sluggard in comparison to bodymincFs doing what it does naturally. In the case of Sudnow, or any proficient chess master or martial arts expert or basketball player, or whatever, non-conscious mind and body bodymind — can select and make a choice so deftly and fleetingly that conscious mind has no chance whatsoever of following the whole show. One problem is that bodymind's moves are many moves, along parallel and non-linear pathways, whereas mind, much like language, is pretty much limited to linear sequences. Another problem is that conscious mind cannot hope to catch up, for it is always a step behind; there is a time lag from the instant bodymind makes a move until conscious mind becomes aware of it. Benjamin Libet (1981, 1985) gives experimental evidence of the time lag required for a stimulus to be made conscious. It's a matter of about 50 milliseconds. Consequently, conscious mind is always a small step behind bodymind. Try as it may to catch up, the task is impossible. Today I see the squirrel again. I focus on the grey, furry, frisky ball of energy, and at the same time I am peripherally or subsidiarily aware of my surroundings: the window through which I see the animal, the window frame, the maple tree, the garage to the left, the lilac bushes to the right, the peonies at the far right, the alley farther back, the table where my hands rest clinging to the morning newspaper, the chair on which my buttocks flopped a few minutes ago, a steaming cup of coffee nearby, my wife, Araceli, across from me, and so on. I also sense that I can act on many aspects of the scenario if I so desire. I can beat on the window to get the squirrel's attention, or I can go outside and scare her off; I can take a sip of coffee; I can turn my attention to the newspaper article I was reading, and make a remark to Araceli about the squirrel's antics. Yet there is a time lag between the instant my eyes focus on the scurrying squirrel and the instant I become conscious of my seeing it,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Introduction

13

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

seeing it as a squirrel, and seeing that she is busy flinging birdseed right and left in search of her breakfast. There is a delay between the instant my eyes focus on a particular word in the newspaper and the instant I become aware of the word as a word and that it means such-and-such in the context of the unfolding narrative. When my eye turns to the coffee I don't become aware of it at the same moment, but slightly later. So the question is, once again: How do / select, decide, and choose? Who decided rather mindlessly to turn attention from squirrel to words on a piece of paper to coffee in a cup? We are often told that it is a matter of my brainmind deciding to do something. I am not yet conscious of a decision, yet action as a result of the decision was already underway when I become conscious of the decision and of the action. If a laboratory technician were busy observing my brain waves during this decision and the ensuing action, she would become aware of them at about the same time I became aware of them. Then who was actually doing the deciding and choosing? A tiny homunculus inside my head? Another homunculus inside the technician's head? And so on? Neurobiologist William Calvin writes: This intriguing issue is all mixed up with the sticky subject of time, what physicists since Einstein have called the simultaneity problem, because the theory of relativity shows that there is no such thing, or at least no way to measure if two events are truly synchronous, without worrying about how long messages take to get from here to there. The brain has simultaneity problems in a big way, if only because messages move faster in some directions than others. Unlike electrical signals in a computer, which travel at nearly the speed of light (about 300,000 meters/second), neural messages propagate using a burning-fuse effect, which is very slow in comparison (the faster-conducting nerves use a string-of-firecrackers scheme; just imagine the firecrackers daisy-chained). When I start to move my right leg, a message starts out from my left frontal lobe. It travels down to my back and then out the nerves to my leg, usually taking more than a tenth of a second just in travel time. The same message is also sent over to my right brain, just to keep it informed about what's going on. (1989: 80-1)

This 'paradoxical postal principle,' as Calvin calls it, has kept not a small number of philosophers and psychologists off the unemployment lines. The problem is intriguing, to say the least. Whatever answer is in store for us sometime in the future, mind for sure is always a step behind, and body - or better, bodymind - does what it does, and leaves conscious

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

14 Sensing Corporeally awareness in its wake to marvel at its nimble creativity or to mop up the mess it just made. This morning, one of the squirrels is out there, under the maple. We are now in the fall season. The maple is almost leafless, its dark arms stiffly stretched up and out over an inch or so of newly fallen snow. The squirrel is digging around, obviously for some black walnuts she buried a couple of months ago from a mature tree down the alley. 'Now, let's see,' she says, 'where was it? Oh, yes, right there. No? Ah, a little to the left. Yes, success!' This is amazing. The snow has concealed most of the landmarks except for the nearby bushes. How does she do it? How does she remember where she hid the morsel of food some time ago? How could she locate it without reference to a particular clump of grass nearby or to some other familiar signpost, since these are now blanketed with snow? How did she decide her next meal was precisely here instead of there or somewhere else? What in the world is her particular squirrel bodymind 'style of reasoning'? How is it that (in my hopelessly anthropomorphic way of conceiving her world) she decided to turn left instead of right in order most probably to locate the object of her search? How did she tell herself, 'Now, this is what I will do next'? That is, how, if her own squirrel awareness of her choice comes only after some temporal lag - which is less than our lag since the travel distance of the electrical impulses is considerably reduced - did she decide what to do next? The 'paradoxical postal principle' is obviously common to all living organisms. Morris Berman writes that the view of nature predominating in the West down to early days of the Scientific Revolution 'was that of an enchanted world. Rocks, trees, rivers, and clouds were all seen as wondrous, alive, and human beings felt at home in this environment. The cosmos, in short, was a place of belonging. A member of this cosmos was not an alienated observer of it but a direct participant in its drama. His personal destiny was bound up with its destiny, and this relationship gave meaning to his life.' This type of consciousness - Berman calls it 'participating consciousness' - involves 'merger, or identification, with one's surroundings, and bespeaks a psychic wholeness that has long since passed from the scene' (1981: 16). Before the Renaissance, the enchanted world was a participatory world. Each individual, all individuals, were one, and in bodymind and regarding their 'style of reasoning,' they were one with the world - much like, it is not difficult to imagine, my squirrel friend. They and their world were mutually interdependent, interrelated, and interactive. What transpired in the world affected the individual, all individuals, and vice versa.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction

15

Our contemporary disenchanted scenario actually began long before the Renaissance, as Berman argues at length. It began with the Greeks. Plato's ideal world contained individuals organized around a centre - in our times we would call it the ego. Each individual used his will to control his instinct and thereby unify his psychic forces. Reason eventually became the building blocks of one's personality. This personality was characterized by distancing oneself from the world, maintaining one's identity distinct from all others at all cost. Poetry, mimesis, the entire Homeric tradition, on the other hand, involved common sentiment and a common language of the senses and of emotion, hence the surrender of identity. For Plato, the abolition of this tradition was necessary in order to create a situation in which the individual could properly set himself off from the rest of the universe. Plato saw participating consciousness as pathology, as the archenemy of the intellect. Why and how did we lose it? Participating consciousness, that is. Why can we not live something like the way David Sudnow jazzes? Now that is genuine participation. Sudnow and his piano and the music are one, interdependently, interrelatedly, interactively one. In concert they jazz. Jazz is going on. Jazz jazzes jazzingly. Sudnow- bodymind- piano, jazz, are the music while the music was lasting, lasts, will have been lasting. Why do we always feel compelled to exercise carefully calculated selections and choices? Why can't we do what we do more naturally, spontaneously? Like the squirrel? Or like Sudnow? Why is mind so obsessed with control? Why can't it just let go, so things can get done to the music of bodymind's surroundings? Why cannot bodymind return to its role as participating consciousness? Or perhaps I should turn the questions around: Are we indeed better off in our disenchanted world? Should we not give in to it and make the best of what we have made of our world and ourselves? These, then, are the problems that must entertain us in the pages that follow: (1) the mystery and intrigue of selection and choice, (2) the becoming of awareness, some sort or other of awareness, in all organisms, of the selection and choice, (3) the fusion of body and mind into the interdependent, interrelated, interactive unity that I label bodymind, and (4) how disenchantment can become reenchantment and disjunctive consciousness can become participating consciousness - if indeed they should. The first three items will be directly under the spotlight; the fourth one will lurk around in the shadows, occasionally appearing covertly, but never ceasing to make its presence felt as the pages flow by. So let us begin.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER ONE

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Becoming Conscious Becoming

Chapter 1 begins with a brief meditation on the concept of consciousness as developed by neurologist Antonio Damasio. Damasio argues convincingly that body and mind are not two but one. As mentioned in the Introduction, throughout this inquiry I label the body-mind fusion bodymind. Consciousness and bodymind also are not two but one. Conscious bodymind includes consciousness that there is something 'out there' other than conscious bodymind. Especially in the human sense, conscious bodymind includes consciousness of the self that is conscious of itself and its world. This entails a paradox: consciousness and consciousness of consciousness are wrapped within the selfsame consciousness. There is no mind outside, as it were, enjoying a detached view from nowhere. Damasio posits two prerequisites for this sort of consciousness: (1) images that are held by consciousness (by which he specifies not only visual images but also auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory images), and (2) a self, that is in some way or other aware of the images. I present numerous Damasio case studies and my own thought experiments in an effort to illustrate Damasio's concept of consciousness within the conscious - and in humans, the self-conscious - bodymind. Chapter 2 discusses the body's role within bodymind oneness, using dance as a metaphor. The notion of dance, of continuous process, brings in consideration of Charles S. Peirce's conception of the sign, which has three components: representamen, semiotic object, and interpretant. As processes, signs are always becoming something other than what they were becoming. Signs becoming signs introduces us to the notion of translation of signs into signs. This is translation, but not in the ordinary sense; rather, it is a matter of signs that are at each moment becoming

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Becoming Conscious Becoming

17

other signs whose meanings are in the process of translation into something other than what they were. Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness appear, and in conjunction with the three sign components they give rise to the three basic sign types: icons, indices, and symbols. In chapter 3 the trio of signs becomes a subset of Peirce's nine sign functions. Then the nine signs and their functions become ten signs that range from signs beginning the process of merging into consciousness to signs as arguments, texts, and narratives. This prepares us for further discussion of Damasio's seminal ideas on bodymind, qualified by three terms used throughout this study: interdependence, interrelatedness, and interaction.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Unknowing Becoming Consciousness bubbles up from deep, dark somatic domains, from the biological as well as the psychological, the physiological as well as the mental. Those who study the brain customarily talk about mind more comfortably than they talk about consciousness. Those who study mind would most often rather distinguish it from brain than try to integrate it with consciousness. William James refused to separate brain from mind, and until recently was usually either ignored or critically blasted. Sigmund Freud's programmatic view of the workings of mind as a sort of repressed romantic machine, or from another perspective an oversexed robot, was easier to cope with. The lingering doubt with respect to Freud is that there seems in his findings to be a ready-made formula for any and all issues, which never cease proliferating. But that is only part of the problem with respect to Freud. If there's always an answer from a particular view that admits of little possibility for dialogue with alternative views, the theory remains more closed than open. Jacques Lacan largely reduced Freud to language and empty or deceased signifieds and floating signifiers, and thus played into the hands of those scholars who couldn't really sense life because their obsession with language always got in the way. In fact, since the later 1960s a parade of scholars have marched to the tune of language and discourse in the name of poststructuralism, deconstruction, postanalytic philosophy, and postmodernism-postmodernity. I suspect that their role in the 'linguistic turn' stems from the hoary idea - itself an outcropping of positivism - that if we can just get a firm grip on language, our destiny will be ours. Of course a host of deconstructionists, poststructuralists, and postmodernists would take issue with my suggestion that they retain

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

18 Sensing Corporeally more than a tinge of modernity's search for security in their bones. Yet it has always seemed to me that nostalgia for yesteryear's smugness tends to linger. After all, Freud - one of their heroes - does seem conveniently to have most of the answers. And if the answers are reductive and mechanistic, at least he allows us the comfort of thinking we have the answers too. Yet they are still subjective, rather romantic, and contradictorily mechanistic answers to all problems: that is Freud at his intriguing best. In the Freudian sense, consequently, whatever we do we do out of lurking, repressed desires. Nevertheless, we have to do it because we can't do it any other way, and our way is often done as predictably as if we were machines.1 The problem with Carl G. Jung, in contrast to Freud, is that he seems dark and mysterious, exceedingly slippery. He offers a free flow of interpretations, and many possible answers rather than one definitive answer. Yet Jungian fortuitous conjunctions always have their day, come what may. So things aren't as chaotic as they might seem. In this respect, Jung at times is more postmodern than many postmodernists. So why have postmodernists not clasped him to their breast instead of Freud? Perhaps it's for the reason already mentioned: Freud is easier to get a firm grip on. At any rate, during the century past, the matter of mind disregarded matter, and the mindfulness of matter, and matter's function in the affairs of mind, never really materialized. It never materialized mainly because the social sciences and the humanities were busily engaged in their love affair with Freud, Marx, and others. Consequently, social scientists and humanists remained so lodged in the Great Age of the Machine and the Great Dream of Reason and Logic that they didn't notice how, after relativity and quantum theory, after the loss of certainty in logic and mathematics, and more recently, after the science of complexity came into view, the cogs and pulleys of mechanism had been abandoned for an emergentist, processual, self-organizing view of life and of the world.2 Among students of the brain, Antonio Damasio is one of the most notable exceptions to the lingering desire for rock-solid, fixed knowledge of what there is. He suggests that knowing how we know through our interrelationship with ourselves and the world is of utmost importance. Damasio writes that the 'matter of mind, in general, and of consciousness, in particular, allows humans to exercise, to the vanishing point, the desire for understanding and the appetite for wonderment at their own nature that Aristotle recognized as so distinctively human.' What could be more difficult and more intriguing, he asks, 'than to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Becoming Conscious Becoming

19

know how we know? What could be more dizzying than to realize that it is our having consciousness which makes possible and even inevitable our questions about consciousness?' (1999: 4). Indeed, what could be more intoxicating than the sense of body and mind as one, bodymind, jazzing with the world's jazz? Our squirrel knows what she is up to, presumably without the need to be explicitly conscious that she is conscious of her knowing. We humans, perhaps somewhat unfortunately, are condemned to consciousness and selfconsciousness. Consequently, we have a compelling drive to know howwe know. One of the chief problems is that we almost invariably arrive at the point where we are confident that we know, when actually we have hardly taken more than a couple of baby steps, perhaps in the right direction. Damasio never ceases questioning everything. He doesn't view consciousness as the culminating point of biological evolution. He sees it as a turning point in the history of life that just happened to have reached the human stage as we know it, and where it will go from here is anybody's guess. The idea that we and we alone are conscious is a security blanket that is high time we toss away. Consciousness has undoubtedly endowed us with the capacity to create our religious, social, political, and economic systems, and our art, technology, and science. It allows us to become aware of our sorrow, joy, pleasure, and pain, and it gives us the wherewithal to grieve for others, throw blame where we think blame is due, and to lie, cheat, and steal, and make war on others because our might makes us right. But what is consciousness, really? How conscious are we of our surroundings and ourselves? Do we actually know what we know? Or more perplexingly in Damasio's words, can we ever know how we know? Indeed, can we ever really know ourselves at all? Time has transpired, and I'm once again revising these pages. The sun is out today. It's unseasonably warm for this time of year. Our squirrel or perhaps it's another one - comes for a visit, on the deck, where I am somewhat blankly staring at these pages. I slowly get up and carefully approach her, talking softly, inching forward. I look at her; she looks at me ... at least I think she does. I talk, in hardly more than a whisper. She jerks and flits slightly. I talk. She remains motionless for a few seconds. A few inches closer. I talk, barely a murmur, a few coos. She spreads her front and hind legs out at 180 degree angles, belly flat on the warm deck, one eye angling up toward me, ready for a lightning manoeuvre in case I make an unexpected move. I remain motionless. She remains motionless. A strange, almost mystical lapse of six or seven seconds transpires. Suddenly she jumps up and is off the deck in a flash. Consciousness? A

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

20 Sensing Corporeally mere squirrel? Of course not! we might wish to retort. Yet who can possibly have any doubts? This is not human consciousness, but surely some sort of consciousness. Getting to know this squirrel form of consciousness? Intriguing, enigmatic, and virtually impossible. Unwitting Unknowing

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Allow me a brief story, if you will, a fiction about consciousness becoming. Assume you are somebody. Well, actually you must assume you are nobody, since, as you will gather, I am thinking of a sort of non-person. Call him Mel, who happens to be a man, but that's really of no account, since he is really nobody ... or perhaps he is everybody, for in order that he be nobody he must be everybody according to that infamous paradox of the One and the Many - Eastern philosophers take it in their stride, but it has managed to drive Western philosophers up the wall for centuries. Mel - that is, you - awakens. No, ... that's not right. You don't really awaken, for you are not yet genuinely awake: you are very slowly, with the viscosity of coal tar in the wintertime, awakening, as your consciousness very gradually emerges into the light of day. Did I write 'light of day'? That's certainly an understatement. You try to open your left eye, and the light is blinding. No, that's not a good description. Too will-oriented. Your left eye opens, it just opens, very slowly, very painfully, to the screaming intensity of the morning sun now high. You, your-self, your emerging consciousness doesn't really do anything at this moment. It can't do anything. It's just there, inert. And your awareness of the painful brightness is hardly there; your left eye just reacts. Both of your eyes gradually force their way open and then react. That's all. Chest, stomach, legs, right cheek: pain, and coldness, wet coldness that penetrates. Tongue, thick. Mouth, pasty, a horrible taste. Hands: limp and useless. Ears: ringing terribly. Nose: oblivious to any and all odors. Everything, so cold, and wet. A drop or two slithering down the left side of the forehead, toward the ground, enticed by gravity's beckoning. The same beckoning that keeps the entire body, excruciatingly cold, plastered to the ground. Ground? You're on the ground? Yes, you are: cold and hard. What's the ground doing under you? What are you doing on top of it? What are you doing here in the first place? How did you get here? The

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Becoming Conscious Becoming 21 right hand quivers slightly, biceps and triceps struggle mightily to lift the torso slightly. Palm on the ground, against a sharp stone. But you hardly feel it. Hand pushes, biceps and triceps strain, tremblingly. A knee moves. Then the other one, and the left hand. Head still there, puffy cheeks, the right one cold and the left one now warmed slightly by the sun's rays. Left eye opens again. Then it quickly closes in reaction to the onslaught of countless photons sprayed on it. Futility. Arms and legs limp, as before. What? Where? The ringing, puffy cheeks, bitter taste. How? When? You? Did you? Why? Hands and feet renew their effort. This time somewhat more successfully. Slowly, painfully, you drag yourself up to a trembling sitting position. The drops on the forehead. Your forehead. A hand goes up. Touches it, there. Pain. Blood? It's blood! How? Why? When? Rising to a prone position? Impossible. Too much to ask. Slowly becoming aware. Consciousness seeping in. Fuzzy memory struggling for clarity. What happened? Vodka? Must have been. Eyes wander. Over there,... yes ... an empty bottle. Oh God! Again? Yes, again. How long has it been? About three years. So, why now? Nothing comes to mind. Mind? What mind? There is no mind of any consequence. Only the pain, the cold, the humidity, the distraught feeling, the sense of futility. What's the use of it all? Just give up. Better dead than a helpless and hopeless, an ephemerally dry retread, time and time again: the merry-go-round ride is all too familiar. But hadn't that futile life been consigned to the past? How long ago was it? Oh yes. About three years. Three years off the bottle! The battle was brutal. And now? It has all come back, and with a vengeance. Another effort to rise to a prone position. Dammit! How, why, where, when did this begin? It's so useless. You can't try to try any more. No, ... that's not right... You'll never cease trying some more. But you might as well give up the ship. It's time to say no ... No ... You know you'll never say no. You can't go on. You must go on. You will go on. There, finally, painfully, shakingly, you're up. Then, almost toppled. Left leg extending itself to catch the fall. Stumbling a few steps. With great effort, in the prone position again. A building over there. What is it? Who knows? Who cares? A door. Your hand extends, pushes. Legs wobble along. Your body enters. Warmth, bright lights that cause an automatic response from the eyes surrounding you, ... treacherous waxed floor, unfamiliar smell, and the terrible taste in the mouth. Must look for a rest room. Body angles on, mind still a haze. Searching. The people look, look again, and stare. You

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

22 Sensing Corporeally feel the curiosity, then the tinge of surprise, then the contempt. Contempt. That familiar reaction. You've sensed it a million times. Contempt. They get that look on their face. Lips turned down slightly, eyebrow turned down, forehead wrinkled, eyes penetrating, then darting about, now on your face, the blood, your clothes, your unsteady shuffle. But you have no time for them. You pay them no mind, as if you knew what you were up to. And you do. You, your body, aching, still numb, is looking for a rest room. Eyes painfully spot the sign. You push your way in. A mirror is there. You soon find yourself in front of it. Face faces face. Good Lord! Who is that? What is that? A nightmare meets your horrified stare. Never in your life have you gone this far. Never. But, of course, you've said that before. Many times. And as always, you deceive yourself. Actually, it's the same old story. A moment of despair. Despair over what? It doesn't matter. Despair, whether real or fabricated in order to create an excuse. Then you jumped on the merry-go-round again. It was done, it has been done, it is done, it will have been done, like so many times in the past. As usual, in zombie fashion you slapped down some money for the bottle, as if you were an old pro at it. And you were, you are, you will have been. Then, in some secluded spot, God only knows where, there was some hesitation, a little doubt. Then a healthy swig straight from the freshly opened bottle. You gasped. White lightning. After that, it was easy, the most natural thing to do, like the newborn babe suckling at whatever comes in contact with her lips. Just as natural as can be. What you do you do because it's as if that's what you were born to do. A natural born swiller, all right. That's you. Nothing to it. Relaxed, despair vanishing. A few more hefty belts from the bottle, then, after a while, that warm sense of oneness with things seeped in. Ah, just you and your good ole' friend, here, clasped in your hand. That oceanic feeling. It's been a long time. Why haven't you done this more often? Slowly, the outside world becomes blurry; awareness of the self wanes, consciousness submerges into the body. The body, now relaxed, free of pain, oblivion begins taking its course. Memory fades. The future is of no consequence. Neither is the past. There's simply the moment, the moment, when it's all here, warmly embracing you. Bliss. But now. Now, very painfully, it's all coming back again, slowly, as you re-enter the world from the timeless zone. Coming back. Gradually. Emerging into consciousness. Able to focus again, rather than

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Becoming Conscious Becoming 23

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

everything a blur. Yeah. Get things in focus. Water splashes on the face from faucet and hands, a few dabs in the hair, the neck. Eyes become slightly more accustomed to the bright lights. A few sounds begin to make themselves known for what they are, not just a lot of mind-bursting racket. Smells, pasty tongue, hands reaccustoming to their previous sensations. Consciousness. Emerging. Here. Now. Memories falling into place, except for eight or so hours yesterday that are gone forever. A sense of the future is now entering: anticipation of things to come. How to explain the past twenty-four hours away? Must put on the familiar act, a good con game. Yeah, we people are good at that sort of thing. Put on a face of innocence when it will do the trick. Then on occasion a cynical or ironic countenance becomes effective: some jokes, a few fibs here and there, feign indignant outrage when you think it will put your accusers on the defensive. Coming back, back to normal. Getting it together. Ah ... See there? It isn't really as bad as you thought, is it? Losing consciousness and becoming conscious, falling asleep and awakening, suffering from a seizure and coming out of it, slipping into old age and Alzheimer's and becoming aware of the self at an early age. Let your mind wander. Without consciousness, your awareness of yourself entering into consciousness after a binge would not have occurred. Without consciousness, you - that is, Mel - would not have been aware of your pain in that familiar, distinctively human way. Without consciousness, the people in that unidentified building would not have responded in the way they did. Without renewed consciousness, you would not have been concerned over their reaction toward you, your feelings toward them, your physical appearance, or your sort of mindless state of mind. Above all, without consciousness, you would not have become aware of your present condition in contrast to your condition of some twenty-four hours ago in comparison with a similar condition in which you found yourself countless times over the past few decades. 'Consciousness is, in effect, the key to a life examined, for better and for worse, our beginner's permit into knowing all about the hunger, the thirst, the sex, the tears, the laughter, the kicks, the punches, the flow of images we call thought, the feelings, the words, the stories, the beliefs, the music and the poetry, the happiness and the ecstasy' (Damasio, 1999: 5). Thus, we are introduced to Antonio Damasio's concept of emotion and feeling and consciousness and thinking and reasoning and planning and choosing. And thus, we enter the drama of that which is

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

24 Sensing Corporeally incessantly in the process of unfolding and enfolding, of rushing in and ebbing back, like waves on the beach, the drama intermittently of our becoming aware and unaware, mindful and mindless, of our world and ourselves.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Consciousness, without Feeling It

Damasio tells the fascinating story of Phineas P. Gage, a construction foreman who, at the age of twenty-five in the summer of 1848, became somebody other than who he was. He was the foreman of a gang working for the Rutland & Burlington Railroad in charge of blasting a path through solid rock so that rails could be laid. An ample hole had been pounded into the rock with an iron rod slightly over three feet in length and a little less than an inch in diameter and tapered at one end, and weighing approximately thirteen pounds. Powder was to be put in the hole, then a fuse, then some sand, and all of this was to be packed with the bar before detonation. Distracted for a moment, Gage started to tamp at the powder before sand had been poured into the hole. There was a spark, and then an explosion. The bar punched through Gage's left cheek, penetrated the front of his brain, flew out his skull, and landed more than a hundred feet away. Gage was violently thrown backward to the ground. He didn't have to regain consciousness because, strangely enough, he never lost it in the first place. When the horse-drawn wagon arrived and took him to town, he engaged in an amiable conversation with the driver. On arriving in town, he told incredulous bystanders about the accident. The wound was dressed, with massive doses of disinfectant and whatever other chemicals were at hand. After a few days of high fever, and much drainage, by something of a miracle, Gage recovered. But not really, for he was no longer the same Gage. Damasio provides Dr John Harlow's account of the new Gage: As Harlow recounts, the 'equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his [Cage's] intellectual faculty and animal propensities' had been destroyed. The changes became apparent as soon as the acute phase of brain injury subsided. He was now 'fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity which was not previously his custom, manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operation, which are no sooner arranged

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Becoming Conscious Becoming 25

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

than they are abandoned ... A child in his intellectual capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a strong man.' The foul language was so debased that women were advised not to stay long in his presence, lest their sensibilities be offended. The strongest admonitions from Harlow himself failed to return our survivor to good behavior. (1994: 8)

Gage had suffered such a change of personality that his former employers would not take him back. The problem was not loss of skill, for he was physically as robust and as coordinated as ever. The problem was not due to any loss of verbal ability, for he could express himself as well as he could when his job performance elevated him to foreman status. The problem was not loss of reasoning capacity, for his thought processes seemed to be impaired hardly a whit. Gage's becoming somebody other than who he was had little to do with his memory, language, intellect, or physical skills. It had to do with his emotions, his feelings, his relations with other humans, his values, his sense of right and wrong, his sense of guilt or remorse, sorrow or shame, compunction or regret, his show of basic emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, and happiness. In short, there was not much of anything in Gage's head as far as basic human qualities go. Gage felt no responsibility for his actions. In fact, he lost his ability to plan his own future as a social being. To the question 'What should you do next?' he could give no answer (compare this situation to my questions in the Introduction about our squirrel's behaviour). Consequently, he could not make a reasonable, reliable, and responsible decision regarding what course of action he should take at a particular juncture in his life. This is not to say that he could not reason. Logically and reasonably speaking, he could with remarkable dexterity map out what plan a hypothetical subject should formulate for herself, given a certain set of circumstances. I repeat, Gage's intellectual capacities were intact. He could (logically and rationally) provide a list of alternative actions in response to situations. But he couldn't decide (emotionally, sensibly, and intuitively) upon a general plan of conduct and apply it to his own particular situation. In a hypothetical and abstract sense, he could tell you what anybody should do, but he couldn't decide what he - an actual, concrete, living and breathing human animal - should do. He could figure things out for somebody who is anybody, but he couldn't do the same when that somebody was he. He could with the detached, sober face of a dull university professor go through the necessary mental gyrations to create an imaginary problem and its

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

26 Sensing Corporeally solution. Yet he couldn't emotionally and with a human dose of feeling put himself in the same situation. He could cope with life in the hypothetical sense, but not with real life, his life, in the concrete sense. Contrast Gage's condition with Mel's. Mel lost consciousness though imbibing too much of a dangerous chemical. While he was emerging from his stupor, consciousness was in the process of emerging, gradually. First, feeling, sensation, and emotion, which reflected back on sensation and feeling, which fed emotion. Then a relatively formless world became formed, very slowly, agonizingly, and tortuously. Awareness of the world's distinctions was entering conscious mind. Then linear thinking was becoming: wavering and stumbling toward a building, the process of becoming aware of biological needs, the desire to investigate the damage in a mirror, the wish to clean up. Very slowly, it was all coming back: feeling, emotion, intuition, and logical and rational thinking. Once Mel was most all there, unlike Gage he could feel guilt, remorse, shame, regret, disgust, sadness, fear, and all the emotions. He could also decide and choose and act, with himself in mind, his self, a self among other selves in his community. Yes sir, Mel is genuinely human - except, that is, when he lets the bottle decide for him. And when he does, forget about his self-conscious self in control of itself. And forget about his behaving like anybody but a con artist when defending himself against the accusing looks and words by friends and relatives, all of whom quickly become foes. So much for ruminations on Mel, and back to Gage. The discrepancy between Gage's degenerate personality on the one hand, and his remarkable capacity regarding attention, perception, memory, language, and intelligence on the other, is in neuropsychology known as dissociation. Dissociation emerges when 'one or more performances within a general profile of operations are at odds with the rest. In Gage's case the character was dissociated from the otherwise intact cognition and behavior' (Damasio 1994: 11-12). Anyone - Mel, you, me, anybody and everybody - may at one point have suffered, or be suffering, or expect to suffer - temporarily or permanently, from a greater to lesser degree of dissociation as a result of an accident, natural brain deterioration, or substance abuse of one form or another. None of us is immune from dissociation, and whether it happens naturally or as a result of misadventure, it tends to follow the same path. Some cases of it are minor, others severe; some are tragic, others simply pathetic. All need greater understanding. Gage is too far removed in time for proper study. Fortunately, Damasio ran into a patient he refers to as Elliot, who like Gage had undergone a radical personality change. Elliot was an intelligent, skilled, able-bodied

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Becoming Conscious Becoming 27 man who should have been able to function in society and hold down a job. But he couldn't. He had been labelled lazy, irresponsible, a goodfor-nothing misfit who had no ambition except to become a parasite on society. But that wasn't the real problem, Damasio writes. Actually, Ellio had suffered from a brain tumour the size of a tangerine. It had been removed, but not until it had destroyed a portion of the prefrontal brain area, approximately the same area that was removed from Gage's brain when the iron rod shot through his skull. Damasio remembers being impressed by Elliot's 'intellectual soundness,' but he also remembered thinking that 'other patients with frontal lobe damage seemed sound when they had in fact subtle changes in intellect, detectable only by special neuropsychological tests.' These patients' altered behaviour had often been attributed to defects in memory or attention. Elliot would relieve Damasio of that notion (1994: 39-40). How? Damasio eventually realized that Elliot knows, but does not feel. During laboratory sessions, Elliot consistently produced an abundance of options for hypothetical responses and the ensuing actions with respect to different circumstances. Then, when everything had been hypothetically imagined and said and nothing actually done, Elliot would remark: 'And after all this, I still wouldn't know what to do!' (1994: 49). Elliot could hypothesize, to be sure, but he couldn't feel, and when the proper occasion arose, he could hardly generate any emotion worthy of the name. Like Gage, he could create imaginary situations and provide remarkable prescriptions for appropriate action, but he couldn't apply them to his concrete, real-life, yet unfeeling self. Damasio came to realize that ongoing, open-ended, concrete, real-life conditions were missing from Elliot's laboratory tasks, which he had performed with remarkable dexterity. Perhaps of utmost importance, those tasks had been presented to Elliot almost exclusively through language. Actual people, real objects and their interrelations, and above all, extralinguistic clues available through sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations were virtually absent. In the laboratory, Elliot dwelled principally in language, in what so-called structuralists and poststructuralists refer to as signifiers divorced from their erstwhile signifeeds, in freewheeling words related to other words and those to still others, with no concrete end accessible to corporeal sensations. In the laboratory, Elliot had found his element: he dwelled within inscriptions, and he himself ultimately became inscribed. Damasio concludes: The results strongly suggested that we should not attribute Elliot's decisionmaking defect to lack of social knowledge, or to deficient access to such Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

28 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

knowledge, or to an elementary impairment of reasoning, or, even less, to an elementary defect in attention or working memory concerning the processing of the factual knowledge needed to make decisions in the personal and social domains. The defect appeared to set in at the late stages of reasoning, close to or at the point at which choice making or response selection must occur. In other words, whatever went wrong went wrong late in the process. Elliot was unable to choose effectively, or he might not choose at all, or choose badly ... I was certain that in Elliot the defect was accompanied by a reduction in emotional reactivity and feeling. (In all likelihood the emotional defect was also present in Gage, but the record does not allow us to be certain. We can infer at least that he lacked the feeling of embarrassment, given his use of foul language and his parading of self-misery.) I also had a strong suspicion that the defect in emotion and feeling was not an innocent bystander next to the defect in social behaviour. Troubled emotions probably contributed to the problem. I began to think that the cold-bloodedness of Elliot's reasoning prevented him from assigning different values to different options, and made his decision-making landscape hopelessly flat. (1994: 50-1)

What is happening here? Another person, whom Damasio called 'patient A,' suffered from a brain tumour on the frontal lobes. When the lobes were removed, his orientation to person, place, and time remained normal. He still had normal memory, his language and motor abilities were unaffected, and his intelligence was for all intents and purposes greater than normal. Yet his modesty had vanished. He often became an embarrassment to those around him because of his antisocial actions, and he became cruel to his wife and unbearable around his associates. Linguistically, he was adroit, especially regarding word use in the general, hypothetical, impersonal sense. Emotionally, he was a disaster. He had no concrete feelings for himself or his human companions, and his ability to choose an advantageous course of action for himself in a given situation had all but disappeared. In other words, he was much like Mel when he had too much to drink and found himself in a social setting: his only means for coping was to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Indeed, we might imagine that Mel's mood swings must seem quite comparable to Damasio's descriptions of Gage, Elliot, and 'Patient A.' How can we account for these radical turns in human comportment? Before beginning to address these questions, I must present another case. Damasio writes of a patient who was apparently in control of his faculties when carrying on a normal conversation. But, on one particu-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Becoming Conscious Becoming 29

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

lar occasion, he suddenly stopped in midsentence. His mouth was open, poised and ready to emit the next word, but it did not come out - it was frozen. His eyes were fixed vacuously on some point on the wall. After a few seconds he began to stir a little. He picked up his coffee and took some. Damasio ventured a question, but received no reply. The patient's face was expressionless. He seemed completely unaware of Damasio's presence, yet he was able to move about, albeit in automaton fashion. However, he was not a zombie; he was just confused, nervous. What happened was, the man had suffered a brief epileptic seizure, during which consciousness was shunted aside. Then he entered a stage of automatism, and finally he took up more or less where he left off. But with an important difference: he had no memory of what had transpired when consciousness took its leave (perhaps somewhat like Mel's alcoholinduced blackout). This man had not collapsed into a comatose state. He had not fallen asleep. He was awake, but he was not really there. He was both there and not there. He was corporeally present, but with respect to his personal self he was unaccounted for, AWOL. Damasio writes: I think now, that I had witnessed the razor-sharp transition between a fully conscious mind and a mind deprived of the sense of self. During the period of impaired consciousness, the man's wakefulness, his basic ability to attend to objects, and his capacity to navigate in space had been preserved. The essence of his mental process was probably retained, as far as the objects in his surroundings were concerned, but his sense of self and knowing had been suspended. The shaping of my notion of consciousness probably began that day, without my noticing it, and the idea that a sense of self was an indispensable part of the conscious mind only gained strength as I saw comparable cases. (1999: 7)

Bouts of epilepsy — of automatonlike behaviour — are rarely prolonged. If the condition endures, the situation might be labeled amnesia. There would be a loss of sense of self, of identity. Identity would have dissolved into unsolicited unknowingness. Then, a return from the period of amnesia would mark a return to consciousness, for sure. There would be consciousness. Yet non-consciousness might continue to rule with respect to a certain period in the patient's life. Life during that period would remain a blank, a blackout. Mel's case did not entail a sharp transition but rather a gradual becoming of consciousness, after a gradual sinking of consciousness under the effect of alcohol. Yet the end

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

30 Sensing Corporeally product was much the same: he imbibed until he passed into oblivion and then passed out. There was loss of consciousness, of self. There was no more than automaton behaviour, loss of memory, and then a blackout.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

What Does It All Mean?

As Damasio sees it, there are two prerequisites for consciousness. For there to be consciousness at all, mind must be able to engender what Damasio calls 'images' - for 'lack of a better term,' he confesses. Damasio explains that he lacks a better term because we have become so accustomed to our essentializing habits that we can hardly think of an object as anything other than a physical thing 'out there.' Damasio, in contrast, alludes to non-essentialized objects the likes of fleeting glimpses of baseballs and bats, and in addition, happenings as diverse as places, musical tunes, words in the air or on a page, toothaches, the taste of lasagna, the feel of soft leather, the smell of fresh daisies, and even happiness and sadness, and all sorts of imaginary happenings. 'Objects' are mental patterns, fleeting images of happenings. I write 'happenings,' for nothing is simply static. Rather, everything, in interdependent, interrelated interaction with everything else in its vicinity, in the past, the present, and likely the future, is always already in the process of becoming something other than what it was becoming. Images of objects, then, include all the sensory channels. This notion of images and objects goes against the grain of our obsessively 'ocularcentric' mind set, against the grain of our desire to reduce everything meaningful to words, words, words. It runs counter to our propensity to give priority to 'primary qualities' that can be objectified, measured, and explained scientifically, while relegating 'secondary qualities' - our subjective grasp of the colours, smells, feels, sounds, and tastes surrounding us - to relative unimportance. Obviously, in light of the above, images and objects are not limited to the presumed 'objective' world 'out there.' They can exist solely in the mind, as imaginary constructs, dreams, hallucinations, or whatever. Damasio's second prerequisite for genuine consciousness - at least as far as humans go - is a sense of self. The person writing these words at some past moment and the person reading these words at present are in a manner of speaking two people, separated by time and space. There must be some sense of T when each of us is doing his thing. There must be 'the understanding of how as I write, I have a sense of me, and how, as

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Becoming Conscious Becoming 31 you now read, you have a sense of you; of how we sense that the proprietary knowledge you and I behold in our minds, at this very moment, is shaped in a particular perspective, that of the individual inside of whom it is formed, rather than in some canonical, one-type-fits-all perspective' (Damasio, 1999: 10). In other words, there must be a sense of the self in the act of becoming conscious of some set of images and objects. In its most simple to its most complex form, consciousness is the mental pattern or image that mediates the object and the self in the same manner in which the self and object mediate the other two terms of the triad. So, it might appear, we have image, object, and self, which in concert make up the effervescent flow of consciousness. Image, object, and self fall closely in line with what Charles S. Peirce calls the categoriesofthe world, of life, and of thought (see chapter 2). The categories are apparently simply labelled Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness - although by no means are they merely simple, as we shall note. All our signs, emerging from images and objects and into the selfs consciousness of them, are in the process of becoming, by means of interaction among the categories. At their most basic, we have Peirce's qualisigns (from qualia, quality, the feeling of something), sinsigns (singularities, fleet happenings), and legisigns (singularities of like qualities collected into generalities, by the self, itself also considered - albeit falsely so - as a generality). Corresponding to this trio of signs, we have icons (images - non-visual as well as visual - resembling other images past, present, or in the expected future), indices or indexes (those with which the images interdependently interrelate), and symbols (thoughts and words about a set of images and objects, so regarded by some self, also a symbol [somewhat artificially] concocted out of myriad images and objects). I suggest that these Peircean concepts can help us come to terms with the nature of brain and body and mind, bodymind, and consciousness, as Damasio sees them. Before proceeding, we really must take a look at Peirce, however briefly I can encapsulate his concept of interdependent, interrelated, interaction between organisms and world and organisms and other organisms by way of signs.3 I write 'between organisms and world and organisms and other organisms' in the broadest possible sense. If I am to enter into a consideration of 'posthuman understanding,' as promised in the subtitle of this book, I must come clean. And I write 'interdependent, interrelated, interaction,' for I would submit that whether the imperious and imperialistic Western mind knows it or not, and whether it likes it or not, we have always been interdependently, interrelatedly in interaction with the entirety of our world.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

32 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This is to say that in the posthuman sense, there is no all-or-nothing demarcation between humans and other humans, or between humans and other organisms, or between organisms and the world, or between life and non-life. All of this is becoming increasingly evident, at the most basic level, in light of the new 'physics of complexity,' especially following the work of Ilya Prigogine (Prigogine and Stengers, 1983). Though limited space does not allow for adequate expansion of this topic, it rests at implied levels throughout the remainder of this disquisition.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER TWO

Bodymind Flows

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Living Dancing

Before entering directly into a discussion of Peirce, I offer some preliminary words on the body's role in our lives. This, I trust, is necessary, in order properly to prepare the terrain. No art form makes so much use of the body; few recreational activities place more emphasis on form; few athletic events stress aesthetics so much; no ritual is more into rhythm, than dance. Dance is a patterned sequence of non-verbal body language that has a purpose, but rarely is it utilitarian. The body language is intentional, though the intention hardly involves more than rhythm; it is aesthetic, though there is ordinarily no material product 'out there,' since the product is manifested through the body. No two art forms can be combined more effectively than dance and music, though each form can do quite well without the other: whether we are listening to music or dancing, dance and music can be respectively in bodymind, nonetheless. Regarding music and dance, these are the key words I have in mind. Dance, sympathetic resonances between body and mind and between bodymind and culture and between culture and nature. Resonance: sympathetic vibrations of the universe from subquantal to galactic levels, and from undulating DNA spirals to the entire organism. Vibrations: myriad undulating rhythms that non-linearly pile onto one another, sympathetically composing the polyharmonic and enchanting world concert. Rhythm: an emergent performance evoked by collaborative feeling, purpose, and action on the part of a community in dancing resonance. With respect to these words, when music and dance are doing their thing, the proper injunction might seem to be: 'Just do it.' But, ... no ..

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

34 Sensing Corporeally that's not right. Who does 'it'? Actually, nobody. What is happening just happens. Better put, then: 'It is doing it,' or 'It is king.' What is doing the doing? What is iting the iting? It is. Just It. It is like the dancer that can no longer be distinguished from the dance because both are intricately intertwined in the process of dancing. It becomes. In the process of this becoming: 'It dances,' or 'Dancing is going on.' The notion of 'It' is more basic than 'Dancing' because 'Dancing' is an 'It' among the unlimited array of other 'Its.' So: 'It is iting.' We now see Sudnow's 'Jazzing' in a broader light. 'Jazzing,' like 'Dancing' and all such activities, is 'It,' the 'It' that happens to be 'Iting' at this particular moment, the 'Happening' that 'Is happening.' 'Happening happens happeningly.' All of this is admittedly exceedingly elusive and vague, virtually ineffable and unthinkable. The notion that 'It is iting' hardly includes any form or fashion of space and time as we usually think we know them. It is prior to all physical entities and prior to consciousness. It is, so to speak, no more than a 'hole' in space and time. But, ... no ... that doesn't describe it either. A hole in something is something that was or can be filled. This absence of space and time is nothing that can be filled; it is 'nothing' at all. It is just 'emptiness.' More on this topic later. At any rate, judging from the above, I'm sure none of us would like to think of ourselves as a mere 'It.' We are more, much more. We are something, somebody, some body. As a body (with a mind trailing along behind in most instances), we are always in the process of living. Engaged in this process, our bodymind is carried along within spacetime, and it carries a minuscule piece of spacetime within it. Our living implies motion, whether physical in the physical world or mental within the mental world. Since there is living, there is changing. The how of the living and the changing implies the way of the living and the changing, and the way implies the what that is the living and acting subject and the object of the living and acting subject and how they are interdependent, interrelated, and interactive. But what is the what'? There is no what, in the traditionally conceived, relatively fixed sense. What there is is what happens to be happening now, which is not the same as what was happening and what will have been happening. What there is is process. As process, there is really no what to which a linguistic label can effectively be attached. Yet in order to talk we must have some notion of some what about which the talk becomes talk. So in talking we provide some passing sense of what, though we should maintain awareness that the what is not really what but 'whaling.' So finally, we have the how, the way, and the happening of the 'whating.'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Bodymind Flows 35 Representamen

Semiotic object

Interpretant

Figure 1: The Peircean sign

More adequate comprehension of these terms calls for a consideration of Peirce's concept of semiotics, drawn from the process of semiosis.1

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Dancing with Signs Most philosophers, I must reveal at the outset, have largely ignored Peirce's concept of the sign. It has been given lip service by a few stalwart social scientists, and it has provoked knee jerks among humanists due to its antagonizing and apparently forbidden nature. The reasons for this are quite obvious: an exposition of Peirce's signs is a daunting task indeed! Consequently, the first steps taken in this section will in all probability seem more akin to those triple jumps of track and field events than the baby steps to which we have become accustomed in many books these days that pander to current fads and fashions. The leaps are from stone to stone in the ebullient Whitewater rapids along some stretch, somewhere, in the unruly semiosic cascade. These preliminaries are necessary, however. The smoother going later on will help effectively bear out Peirce's concept of the sign. Peirce's sign sports three components (see Figure 1). What usually goes for a sign in everyday talk Peirce calls a representamen. Peirce called it that in order to distinguish the representamen from the other two sign components, which, as we shall note, are or can become signs in their own right. The representamen is something that enters into interrelation with its object, the second component of the sign. In this essay I often

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

36 Sensing Corporeally allude to Peirce's object, as the semiotic object. This is for two reasons: (1) the semiotic object is that with which the sign interrelates and should be specified as such, and (2) it should be distinguished from Damasio's object which he interrelates with images. The semiotic object can never be identical to the 'real' object in our physical world, since according to Peirce our knowledge of the 'real' is never absolute. Our knowledge can be no more than an approximation to the 'real' world as it is - or better, is becoming. Hence, in a manner of speaking, the 'semiotically real object' we smell, taste, touch, hear, and see is never identical to the 'really real object.' We simply can't know the world just as it is in the process of becoming. Our minds are too limited, and the world is too subtle and complex. Consequently, since this 'real object' cannot be completely known once and for all, it can never be more than 'semiotically real' for its interpreters: it can never become more than a sign, which is known only to a greater or lesser degree, never absolutely. Our squirrel friend has her 'semiotically real' signs engendered by her species-specific Umwelt — her 'environment' as she experiences it (see chapter 15) - and we have ours. Both sets of'semiotically real' signs must remain content with no more than a partial account of the whole world. Within basically the same human Umwelt, Mel and Gage and Elliot and other of Damasio's patients had their 'semiotically real' signs, however impoverished they might be. These signs were for Damasio's patients 'real,' however hazily they perceived and conceived them. Yet their 'semiotically real' world was a far cry from ours, due to varying degrees of consciousness. Consciousness, then, goes a long way toward qualification of the way we make and take signs, and to what purpose and in what respect. (This very important point should become increasingly apparent in the pages that follow.)2 The third component of the sign is the interpretant. Roughly speaking and sufficient for our purpose, this is quite close to what we would usually take for the sign's meaning. The interpretant, like the representamen and the semiotic object, is a mediator and moderator. It interrelates with and mediates between the representamen and the semiotic object in such a way as to bring about an interactive interrelation between them at the same time and in the same way that it brings itself into interactive interrelation with them. As we shall note, this process was sorely lacking in many of Damasio's patients, for there was little or no mediation between their mind and self and thought and feelings and emotion and intuition. That is to say, their mind as interpreter was

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Flows 37 incapable of mediating between its signs and other humans making those signs who were, themselves, signs in their own right. Gage and Elliot and others simply took the humans around them in an impersonal way as no more than inanimate signs among others within their physical world. In other words, people and other sentient organisms were placed on the same level as their inorganic world of signs. What I mean by mediation is that a legitimate sign component acts as an inter-mediary between the two other sign components. In this act of mediation, most prevalent in the role of the interpretant, the sign component becomes involved with its two companions in such a manner that all three enter into interactive, interrelated interdependency.3 A fullfledged sign, then, must have a representamen, a semiotic object, and an interpretant, and each of these sign components must enjoy the company of the other two, along with their makers and their takers. Otherwise, there is no genuine sign. Some examples of the sort I have offered in previous studies of the sign are in order. A representamen can be a caricature of Winston Churchill found in a history textbook describing the meeting between Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin at Yalta. The semiotic object is Churchill seated with Roosevelt and Stalin. The interpretant of the sign consists of the relation between the Churchill caricature and the actual figure caught up in an earth-shaking historical event. This event aids us in drawing meaning (the interpretant) from the sign with respect to our knowledge of the Second World War, the defeat of the Third Reich, the rise of Russia's international political stock as a result of its role in the war, Stalin's power move, Roosevelt's poor health, which rendered him less diplomatically effective than he might otherwise have been, and Churchill's astute, occasionally prophetic, views. All this emerges from a solitary caricature. But that is not all. Subsequently, the semiotic object, Churchill as a physical specimen of humankind, can become another representamen or sign whose own semiotic object is his scowl in the photograph at Yalta. The interpretant - a mediative interrelationship between the man and his facial expression - becomes stubborn pride and dogged persistence in the effort to defeat what Churchill conceived as terribly destructive forces. Or perhaps the original interpretant, Churchill at Yalta, can become yet another representamen. In such case the Yalta Conference itself can become the semiotic object, and the interpretant has to do with the outcome of the meeting among the three world leaders. Notice that each sign began with a representamen. The representamen interrelated

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

38 Sensing Corporeally with its semiotic object. Then the semiotic object became a representamen in its own right. Still later, the interpretant became a representamen that subsequently took on its own semiotic object and interpretant. For an alternative example, take Mel. While his consciousness is struggling to emerge, Mel's sign processing, as we would expect, is severely impoverished. When he unthinkingly makes an effort to rise and the palm of his hand presses against a sharp stone, we have a 'real' physical object that takes on particular semiotic value as this object here that is causing pain. But in his numbed state Mel can hardly feel it. The pain caused by the stone is no more than a dull representamen that hardly penetrates his consciousness to become a semiotic object, something as yet unidentified that is bringing about some vaguely sensed discomfort. Yet the semiotic object is there, able and willing to enter consciousness and become a full-fledged sign. At the level of Mel's consciousness, its development as a sign doesn't stand much of a chance. He vaguely senses the pain - indication of a sign - and the source of the pain - the object of the sign - but given his excruciating condition, he is in no position to endow the sign with a robust interpretant. He just senses it and acknowledges its presence, however foggily. Now assume that Mel is sober and in control of his faculties. It is a hot summer day and he is crossing the gravel driveway on his way to a building a few dozen yards away. A sharp stone makes its way into his left sandal and causes a sharp pain at the ball of his foot. There is a representamen: the sign that has brought about some displeasure. There is a semiotic object: the source of displeasure that brought on the sign. And there is an interpretant: a sign whose object has brought about an undesirable effect, an effect that causes pain, the pain serving as mediation between object and sign to establish the interdependent interrelation between them and interrelate them interactively with the mediator or interpretant. Mel almost immediately kneels down to take off his sandal and shake it to relieve it of the unwanted intruder. There were no words here, no visible images, no thoughts to speak of - Mel, for instance, might have been at the time concentrating intensively on an impending divorce that has occupied his mind for months. There is just a sign, its object, a rather mindlessly engendered interpretant, and appropriate action in response. Suppose that in other circumstances Mel happens to be walking across the gravel with a friend. The impediment enters his sandal. He turns to his friend with: 'Just a second, I got a rock in my sandal.' And he stoops down to remove it. Here the pain-representamen has given way to a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Flows 39 stone-object that has been translated into a linguistic or symbolic sign, 'rock.' This linguistic sign interdependently and interactively interrelates with the pain-representamen to create a newly translated object, pain. Pain, a extralinguistic semiotic object, can then become endowed with a symbol in the order of: 'Ouch! Hold on, there's a rock in my sandal that's killing me.' The interpretant is now a rock-pain-interpretant, a translation from the previous interpretant. Now that language is on the scene, Mel's consciousness begins interacting with all signs present. He focuses on them more directly. Let's assume that Mel's friend happens to be Damasio's Gage. We can surmise that Gage is able to hypothesize about stones between a foot and the heel of a sandal and pain and removal of its cause. But he can't empathize with Mel, not really. He may simply stand there passively while Mel removes his sandal and the stone. Or he may walk on, unconcerned with Mel's discomfort. He may even say 'Forget it, we're in a hurry,' due to his incapacity to empathize with another human. In other words, Gage is not able to put himself in Mel's place and process the sign in terms of feeling pain and awareness of the feeling of pain. His signs remain basically at cognitive levels, with all the reason and logic in the world, perhaps, but devoid of distinctively human qualities. There is no mediation between a comparable sign that he might be experiencing and the sign Mel is experiencing. In the above examples, with each musical chairs exchange between sign components, there has been a semiotic translation. The nature of these will occupy us in the next section. Signs Becoming (Translated into) Signs

According to Peirce, the meaning of signs - especially linguistic signs - is found in their interrelations and interdependency with other signs. An interpretant gives purpose, direction, meaning to a sign. But this interpretant, on becoming an interpretant charged with meaning, can become in the process another sign (representamen), which comes into interactive interrelation with the first sign in its interactive interrelation with its object. This newly engendered representamen can then take on its own object - which can be the same object, now slightly modified and in its turn the representamen engenders its own interpretant. This interpretant then becomes yet another sign (representamen), and so on. Semiosis becoming semiotics is a never-ending process. Umberto Eco (1976: 69) dubs Peirce's ongoing sign process 'unlim-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

40 Sensing Corporeally ited semiosis.' The succession of signs along the semiosic stream becomes a network of glosses, or commentaries of signs on the signs preceding them. Or perhaps better put, signs are alterations or translations of their immediately antecedent signs (Savan, 1987-8). The process of signs becoming (translated into) other signs is in principle endless. Everything is incessantly becoming something other than what it was becoming. Consequently, for Peirce there is no ultimate meaning (interpretant). The meaning of a given sign is itself a sign of that sign. This second sign must be endowed with its own meaning, which in turn is in the process of becoming yet another sign. So there can be no final translation. A given translation of a sign, on becoming endowed with meaning, calls up another sign. That meaning then becomes different from that of the sign in the process of becoming translated, and that second meaning becomes yet another sign to be translated and given its own meaning. (Peirce does in fact write of a 'final' or 'ultimate' interpretant, but it is inaccessible for us as finite, fallible semiotic agents.)4 I bring up Peirce's triadic concept of the sign rather abruptly not for the purpose of creating confusion, but hopefully to set the proper mood for what follows. Just as we are indelibly inside semiosis, so also both you and I are at this 'moment' suspended 'inside' these pages and 'inside' the context within which we happen to find ourselves, and we must try to make heads or tails of the whole concoction. On so doing, we must cope with a non-linear, back-and-forth, spiralling, self-enclosing, text and context in the making, which gives us pieces from ajigsaw puzzle rather than linear A—B-C development. Since these pages - and both you and me and our contexts besides - are inside semiosis, why should I, how could I, expect to give account of that selfsame process of semiosis as if it were of a nature any different from semiosis itself? The very idea would be presumptuous, if not to mention preposterous. Furthermore, if (as according to Peirce) the universe is an ongoing 'perfusion' of signs (Peirce, 1931—5, CP: 5.448 n 1), how could these very pages give a linear account of semiosis? The best I can do is provide a certain feel for - and if I am lucky maybe even a sense of - what this disquisition on Peirce is about: signs becoming (translated into) signs from within the semiosic process. Like this text, translations are not comparable to that deterministic linear, cause-and-effect parade of events envisioned by classical logic and classical science. Translations are complex, not simple; they are more chaotic than orderly; they by and large favour asymmetry over symmetry. And they are more non-linear than linear. However, we cannot simply have either linearity or non-linearity. We need both our well-reasoned

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Flows 41 linearity and our 'chaos' principle if we are to negotiate effectively the now placid, now elusive, now winding and heaving stream of semiosis (or translations). By the same token, if we construed semiosis as we would a map we could study with the presumed detachment of a classical scientist studying bacteria under the microscope, we would be destined to deluded hopes and unfulfilled dreams. For unlike the traditional concept of knowledge (or a translation) as a map or mirror of nature (or the text), we would be squarely within the map. We would have no recourse but to try finding our way around by groping in the dark. We would be doing so with a certain element of intuition, premonition, inclination, educated guesses, and even sheer chance, as well as by using our customary faculties of reason as best we know how. So there is little use trying by linear methods to 'get the picture' of what I am trying to write. There is no 'picture' that we are capable of 'seeing' from some imperious outside vantage point at least. Moreover, we are ourselves signs among signs. As Niels Bohr once remarked with respect to the world of quantum theory, we are both spectators and actors in the great drama of existence. The traditional Western idea of a neutral spectator surveying her world and cramming it into a Fredric Jameson (1992) 'cognitive map' that mirrors the world is rapidly becoming defunct. So if the Peircean terms representamen, semiotic object, and interpretant at this stage remain to a large extent foreign to you, I would expect that at least they have etched some trace or other on your mind. I suggest that we let the Peircean sign components grow on us, and we on them, as we attempt to continue on this labyrinthine journey. So much for the introductory salad from Peirce's semiotic menu. Now for a healthy serving of meat and potatoes (and I should say that I must I ask of your patience, because for the time being the concept of translation must be held in abeyance, like the dessert that follows the main course). Not a Matter Merely of Three, but of Threes Since in the Peircean sense almost anything can be a sign, the definition of a sign must be of the most general sort. It is not simply a matter of asking, 'What is a sign?' Rather, 'How are signs in the process of signing, and how is their way of signing?' Signs are not special kinds of things; rather, in the process of its signing, anything is a sign insofar as it is manifesting sign functions.5 The Peircean sign is often taken in reduced fashion as something that

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

42 Sensing Corporeally stands for something to someone msome respecter capacity (CP: 2.228). With respect to the mindset of our contemporary milieu, I must express my displeasure with the concept that a sign 'stands for' ('refers to,' 'corresponds to,' 'represents') something. More correctly, a sign codependently emerges, and it interrelates and participates with something (its object). Also, it codependently interrelates and interactively participates with the someone who made it and the someone processing it, and with whatever it is being processed into (its interpretant), which in turn is becoming another sign by way of its triadic interrelations with the sign, the object, and the sign maker and interpreter. Peirce himself once defined a sign as 'anything that determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum (CP: 2.303). For example, the sign or representamen 'cross' can interrelate with (signify) an interpretant (roughly a concept, meaning) of the sign within a particular group of sign makers and takers regarding conventional ceremonies and the everyday life of the Christian community. But the function of the sign and its interpretant remains incomplete unless there is also interrelatedness with some semiotic object. Suppose the semiotic object is a particular cross in some chapel with which you are familiar during a Sunday ceremony. Once the sign and interpretant have been interrelated with their semiotic object, the interpretant - which mediates between the sign and its semiotic object becomes in its own turn another sign (representamen) within this particular context in this chapel. The sign then engenders its own interpretant regarding this activity within this context. And as the ceremony proceeds, at each and every juncture the sign (representamen), its interpretant, and the semiotic object take in a string of different (translated) countenances as they become something slightly other than what they were becoming during the moment of their antecedent becoming as signs. In other words, with each feeling or sensation or thought of a cross, with each verbal evocation 'cross,' with each furtive glance or fixation on the actual cross standing 'out there' in the chapel, the sign - whether engendered from the semiotic object (cross), from a previous instantiation of the word 'cross,' or from the interpretant (a thought or concept in the mind) - is in the process of becoming another sign. It cannot do otherwise. In this sense, and given the thrust of these pages, I would rephrase the customary Peircean definition of the sign as follows: anything that interde-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Bodymind Flows

43

pendently interrelates with its interpretant in such a manner that that interpretant interdependently interrelates with its semiotic object in the same way that the semiotic object interdependently interrelates with it, such interdependent interrelations serving to engender another sign from the interpretant, and subsequently the interactive process is reiterated. Now that's a lot to swallow in one gulp without a chaser. Yet it's basically the way of all signs, I would submit, with stress on the notions of interdependence, interrelatedness, interaction, and above all participation. I have taken my cue from Peirce, who writes: 'A sign is something by knowing which we know something more' (CP: 8.332). That is to say, ideas and thoughts themselves are signs. Thus, just as signs in the world and signs in the mind multiply and grow, so also knowing. But there is more, much more.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

One, Two, Three, and Back Again Since the process of semiosis implies mediation, it is deeper and more comprehensive than the ordinary expression 'derivation of meaning' or 'interpretation.' Engendering and processing signs and making them meaningful involves more than merely getting information out of them or making sense of them. It is a matter of interplay between Peirce's categories: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. In schematic form, Firstness is possibility (a might be), Secondness is actuality (what is), and Thirdness is potentiality, probability, or necessity (what could be, would be, or must be, given a certain set of conditions). But like all definitions, these are somewhat deceptive. In reality, Firstness in and of itself is not an identified concrete quality of something. It is nothing more than a possibility, a pure abstraction - abstracted, separated from everything else - something enjoying its own self-presence and nothing more: it cannot (yet) be present to some conscious semiotic agent as such-and-such. It is an entity without defined or definable parts, without antecedents or subsequents. It simply is. As such, it is the bare beginning of something from 'emptiness,' of something from the possibility of everything. It is at once everything and nothing; it simply is what it is. Thirdness can be tentatively qualified as that which brings about mediation between two other entities in such a manner that they are interrelated to each other in the same way they are interrelated to the third entity as a result of its mediary act. The mediary act is like Firstness,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

44 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 2: The semiotic knot

Secondness, and Thirdness twisted into an intertwined Borromean knot that clasps them together, like the sign itself, byway of a central 'point' in such a way that they are 'democratically' conjoined (see Figure 2). Each of the 'bulbs' or 'loops' can intermittently play the role of any of the categories; however, at a given space-time juncture, one of the three loops will be a First, one a Second, and one a Third. If this 'democratic' process is to be played out, correlations among the three loops can exist only by way of the central 'point' - or better, 'vortex.' This 'vortex' is the 'emptiness' about which I wrote earlier in an inordinately vague sense. It is not 'emptiness' of something. It is just 'emptiness,' pure 'emptiness.' You might visualize the 'vortex' as the centre of an axle that holds the spokes of a wheel together. The wheel is in constant motion, but the centre of the axle just sits there: it is the point around which the continuity of movement regarding the whole emerges.6 The peripheral loops can be occupied by any of the three categories; thus, whatever at a given space-time slice happens to be a First is a vague sensation. What is a Second entails bare consciousness of the First on the part of some semiotic agent. What is a Third brings the two together and potentially gives them some meaning as a genuine semiotic entity. That is to say, if Secondness entails the becoming of consciousness to the extent that an image of Firstness is perceived as such-and-such, Thirdness entails the becoming of consciousness to the level of awareness that what is perceived is the instantiation of a class of like phenomena. Conscious-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Flows 45 ness sees that the phenomenon, like all comparable phenomena, has a certain meaning within one's life and within the life of one's community. Thus, Thirdness has to do with a sign as generality - the particular instantiations of the sign belonging to Secondness - according to what Peirce called social convention as a result of habit-forming tendencies to use the same sign in relation to a class of similar objects in the physical world. Once again, we see that the interdependently interrelated interaction of sign, semiotic object, and interpretant is not a 'standing for' or 'representing' or 'corresponding' or 'referring' act. It is an act of interdependent interrelation with and at the same time interaction with, whereby everything participates with everything else in the selforganizing operation of semiosis. Signs are not mere surrogates for something else. No sign component is an island unto itself; rather, each component is dependent on and interrelated with all other sign components (Peirce, CP: 5.474). Unfortunately, Peirce's triadology is sometimes passed off as a combination of binaries. A possible reason for this confusion is that when we think of threes, despite our better judgment, Euclidean triangles almost invariably come to mind. Consequently, Peirce's sign triad often finds itself diagrammed as a triangle, with three lines connecting representamen, object, and interpretant, and without the necessary 'point' or 'vortex' (e.g., Ogden and Richards, 1923). However, the Peircean sign is by no means Euclidean. As will become increasingly evident in this inquiry, it is topological rather than Euclidean. It is topological, because the Euclidean triangular form is not properly triadic in the Peircean sense. It merely consists of a set of three binary relations connecting the three corners of the triangle along its three sides, no more, no less. In contrast, Figures 1 and 2 tie each sign component to the other two, and also to the relation between them. For example, the relation between representamen (R, sign-representamen) and semiotic object (O) is no relation at all outside consideration of the relations between .Rand the interpretant (/) and between O and I. None of the interrelations hold outside the 'vortex' connecting them to one another. The 'vortex' can be conceived as a sort of 'pre-sign,' without which the sign could not have become a sign. At the same time, the 'vortex' is an infinitesimal 'porthole' or 'emptiness' through which the sign in question can pass and become yet another sign. Put another way, the Peircean triadic sign follows the nature of the three categories.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

46 Sensing Corporeally In this vein, the categories can be given broader definitions, as follows:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

• Firstness: What there is such as it is, without reference or interrelation with anything else (i.e., a quality, sensation, sentiment, or, in other words, the mere possibility of some consciousness of something). • Secondness: What there is such as it is, in interrelation with something else, but without interrelation with any third entity (i.e., it can include the consciousness of the self-conscious self of some thing other than itself). • Thirdness: What there is such as it is, insofar as it is capable of bringing a second entity into interrelation with a first one (i.e., by way of mediation of the categories of Firstness and Secondness). 'One, Two, Three.' At the outset it might seem as simple as that. But from simplicity, complexity emerges. If we include 'Zero' and 'Infinity' at the front end and back end of 'One, Two, Three,' we can see why. Nevertheless, in schematic form, to all appearances the categories are quite straightforward. Firstness is quality, Secondness is effect, and Thirdness is product in the process of its becoming.7 In art, Firstness might be a two-dimensional rectangular patch of colour on a Picasso canvas. Secondness in such case would be that patch's interdependent interrelations with other rectangular, triangular, and irregular patches in the painting. Thirdness would be the product of the viewer's interactively putting them all together into an imaginary, three-dimensional image as if seen from the front, from the back, from the right side, from the left side, from above, and from below, all in virtual simultaneity. In literature, Firstness might be a few lines of avant garde poetry as marks on paper in terms of their possibility for some reading somewhere and somewhen by some poetry lover. Secondness is their actual reading and their interrelation with the reader's present mindset and memories of the past and readings of many other lines of poetry. Thirdness is the reader's interaction with the lines of poetry in such a manner that meaning emerges for her at that particular moment. In everyday life, Firstness is a double-arch of bright yellowness in the distance. Secondness is the interdependent interrelations established by some hungry observer between the parabolically curved, elongated yellowness and a colourful building below it. Thirdness is the interactive recognition of that familiar establishment as 'McDonald's' - since language can now enter the picture. However, like all schematic formulations, this one is somewhat decep-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Flows 47 tive. Firstness, in and of itself, is not an actual concrete quality (like, for example, a mere sensation of the colour and form of an apple that we might be looking at at this moment). It is nothing more than a possibility, a pure abstraction - abstracted, separated from everything else - something enjoying its own self-presence and nothing more: it cannot (yet) be present to some conscious semiotic animal as such-and-such. It is an entity without defined or definable parts, without antecedents or subsequents. It simply is what it is, as pure possibility. This pure possibility, it bears mentioning, is almost entirely absent in the Cartesian body/ mind distinction. The body/mind distinction is most prevalent in Western science's obsession with what there purportedly is, and what there is is what has been actualized and presumably can be properly measured, mathematized, and cognized. Pure possibilities elude such manipulation, and are therefore usually categorically ignored. What there is, as something actualized, is the sign in conjunction with its semiotic object. It is that ephemeral w-ness that appears to be, at some timespace slice. As the w-ness of what is perceived, it properly belongs to the category of Secondness. It is a matter of something actualized in the manner of this happening here, now, for some contemplator of the sign. As such it is a particularity, a singularity. It is a selection from what we had before us as Firstness - for example, a vague 'redness' without there (yet) being any consciousness of it or its being identified as such-andsuch. Now, a manifestation of Secondness, it has been set apart from the self-conscious contemplator, willing and ready to be seen as, say, an apple. And we thus might assume we now enter into the domain of Cartesian mind eternally divorced from body. This is a deceptive assumption, for it is devoid of genuine Thirdness. There is no genuine Thirdness, for at this point the sign is not (yet) an 'apple.' It is not (yet) a word-sign identifying the thing in question and bringing with it a ponderous mass of cultural baggage regarding 'apples' (the particular class of apples of which the one before us is an example, what in general apples are for, their role in the development of North American culture, in folklore, in fairy tales, health lore, and so on). At the first stage of Secondness, the apple is hardly more than the possibility of a physical entity, a 'brute fact,' as Peirce was wont to put it. It is one more thing of the furniture of the self s physical world. It is otherness in the most primitive sense. If Firstness is what is as it is in the purest sense of possibility, Secondness is pure negation insofar as it is other, something other than that Firstness. Thirdness can be further qualified as that which brings about mediation between two other happenings in such a manner that they interre-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

48 Sensing Corporeally late with each other in the same way they interrelate with the third happening as a result of its mediary role. This mediation creates a set of interrelations the combination of which is like Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness twisted into the Figure 2 Borromean knot. The knot clasps the categories together by means of a central 'vortex' in such a way that they become 'democratically' interlinked. Each of the categories can intermittently play the role of any of the other categories; yet at a given space-time juncture, one of the three will be a First, one a Second, and one a Third. Peirce's conception of Thirdness, I must once again emphasize, diverges radically from the traditional mind/body dichotomy, which is indelibly binary in nature, with no mediating function bringing mind and body together in a liquid, interdependent, interrelated, interactive embrace. Some of Damasio's patients give us plenty to think about regarding Peirce's interdependent, interrelated interaction between sign components and the categories. Gage and Elliot had lost their precarious balance between intellectual, cognitive, rational, and logical sign making and taking (representamens, semiotic objects, and interpretants reaching category Thirdness), and personal, emotional, sentimental, feeling and intuitive sign making and taking (representamens, semiotic objects, and interpretants chiefly of quality or category Firstness). They experienced no loss of reasoning capacity. Yet they had no human empathy for other humans, no sense of the self and its interrelation with abstract signs of the intellect. They could intellectualize with respect to hypothetical situations, but they could not interrelate this intellectualizing with their self-conscious self. We might surmise that they were able to take in the semiotic objects from their environment in competent fashion, but those objects remained at the level of abstractions - abstractions integrated with any situation and any context. In other words, they were not semiotic objects here and now for the concrete, feeling, and sensing self as interpreter. In short, Damasio's patients knew (Thirdness of signs), but they couldn't in a genuine human sense feel (Firstness of signs). They could apply abstract hypotheticals regarding their knowing to their concrete world, but they couldn't apply this knowledge to themselves within concrete real-life situations and contexts. Consequently, they had no authentic sense of right and wrong; they felt no remorse, no sorrow or shame, no compunction or regret. More on Peirce's signs, before continuing.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Bodymind Flows Possible signs (largely of the nature of Firstness)

Actual signs (largely of the nature of Secondness)

Conventional signs (largely of the nature of Thirdness)

Qualisigns

Icons

Terms (words)

Secondness

Sinsigns

Indices

Propositions (sentences)

Thirdness

Legisigns

Symbols

Arguments (texts)

Firstness

49

Figure 3: Interdependent, interrelative interactions between Peirce's nine sign functions

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Nine Sign Functions

Daunting as the Peircean set of multiple sign functions is, I know of no other way to present it except to present it. So without further ado, I reiterate six of Peirce's sign classes, and add three more to make up three triads of signs qualified by the three categories of thought and of all semiosis (see Figure 3):8 1. Qualisigns, Sinsigns, and Legisigns 2. Icons, Indices, and Symbols 3. Terms ( Words), Propositions (Sentences), and Arguments ( Texts)

Very briefly, Peirce's qualisigns, sinsigns, and legisigns are signs that have not (yet) been actualized as signs in the physical world 'out there' or in the mind 'in here.' They are signs of possibility. Icons, indices, and symbols are signs that now present themselves to some potential interpreting organism. Terms, propositions, and arguments are signs chiefly of linguistic nature, where we are considering natural languages or artificial languages such as logic, mathematics, and computer language. The qualisign is a possible sign of pure feeling, before there can be consciousness of the feeling as such. When it has become an actual sign,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

50 Sensing Corporeally it can be felt by the body in terms of touch, taste, sight, sound, or smell, or it can be a feeling in the mind, that is, bodymind -1 continue to resist the body/mind distinction. A possible sign phenomenon presented to bodymind as a sinsign is that of an individual or singular happening Peirce called it a 'token.' A sinsign, having become an actual sign of some sort or other, evokes awareness in bodymind of a 'semiotically real' happening either 'out there' or engendered within bodymind itself, which is also a sign. Active entry of bodymind onto the scene involves the legisign-ness of the happening as a possible general sign 'type,' byway of the habitual making and taking of the sign in the customary fashion and according to natural instinct or inclination or social convention. In other words, interdependent interaction of bodymind in the semiosic process enhances the engenderment of yet another possible sign, the legisign. This interaction involves mind's entering into the interrelationship with sinsign interrelations, those interrelations themselves interrelating with a qualisign - which had hitherto remained at an implicit or tacit level within bodymind - to bring both the sinsign and the qualisign into interdependent interrelation with a legisign that is in the process of emerging into the light of day. During the entire process, an interpretant is potentially engendered. The qualisign-sinsign-legisign trio can be contained within, and can thus become, a single sign in bodymind - that is, it can become a bodymindsign. It makes up an even larger, more encompassing triad, which includes its own (now somewhat altered) representamen, semiotic object, and interpretant (recall Figure 1). In terms of signs presumably 'out there' or in the mind, a representamen can be depicted as an actualized iconic, indexical, or symbolic sign, or some combination thereof, that is engendered by the sign maker and potentially interpreted by the sign taker. An icon, a sign of resemblance, stands as it is: it is self-contained, self-reflexive, and self-sufficient. An index, a sign relating to (indicating) its semiotic object by some necessary natural or culturally contrived means - smoke for fire, cause for effect, cup for coffee - can also sport some degree of iconic properties. A sign's symbolic exemplification is made possible chiefly by means of social convention, and by habitual relations in terms of the sign's nature as a generality, since it depicts a general class of objects, acts, or events. Languages, both artificial and natural, are prime candidates for symbolicity. Thus, a symbol can appear in the form of a term (or word), a proposition (or sentence, combination of terms), or an argument (or text, intertext, combination of sentences) .9

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Flows 51 Each of these signs enjoys an interpretant and a semiotic object, in addition to some degree of qualisign-sinsign-legisign and icon-indexsymbol properties. As we move from qualisign to argument, then, the more developed signs are interrelated with the less developed signs by inclusion. Just as the legisign plays a mediating, synthesizing role, so also the interpretant, as well as the symbol and argument. And just as there are three levels of semiosis with respect to a genuine sign - unary selfcontainment, dyadic interrelations, andfriadzcor mediary interrelations so also with respect to a qualisign, sinsign, and legisign, and with the other triads, icons-indices-symbols and terms-propositions-arguments. We are now honing in on the importance of Peirce to human consciousness as Damasio articulates it. Gage and Elliot were quite adept at handling signs of the nature of legisigns and symbols and language, in admirable fashion, and they could interrelate them with the nature of sinsigns and indices, more often than not to the satisfaction of the most demanding rhetorician. Their dilemma stemmed from their incapacity to interrelate all this with the nature and function of qualisigns and icons, signs chiefly of Firstness, except in the sense of hypothetical or deductive Thirdness: they could not inject their signs with a healthy dose of their self, their sensing and feeling self. As a consequence, their signs remained mere skeletons of what they had been before the traumas that severely affected their emotional lives. We have in Damasio's examples ample indication of signs in search of their heart and soul, signs that have lost their home in the world, signs that have been stripped of their living flesh of semiosis. And, of course, there's Mel. Poor Mel. If he only knew how rich his life could be were he to let go of his compulsion to drink himself into oblivion and give in to life's (that is, semiosis's) processes. The next step is to see how Peirce develops his ten types of signs.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER THREE

The Peircean Decalogue

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

How Do You Get Ten Signs from Nine Sign Functions? The nine sign relations from the three triads in Figure 3 combine according to the categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness to form ten signs. Peirce devised a set of terms for labelling these ten signs. Most of them are quite technical. Nevertheless, I believe a sense of the ten signs and their interrelations with the categories is necessary at this point, since it will bear on virtually everything that follows. To facilitate this introduction to Peirce's decalogue of signs, I will use more common words to designate them, along with numbers in sets of threes that depict degrees of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. The number ' 1' indicates Firstness, '2' indicates Secondness, and '3' indicates Thirdness. For purposes of economy, the ten terms for Peirce's ten classes of signs appear in future pages in the form of number triplets (see Figure 4). For example, if I make reference to sign 321 it indicates a sign that has reached the Thirdness of its representamen, and the Secondness of its semiotic object, but remains in the Firstness of its interpretant. The ten signs consist of combinations of such triplets, from the simplest, 111, to the most complex, 333. Whenever these number triplets occur in the text, if you are not certain as to the sign type to which they are related, it might be helpful to return to the following definitions as a memory refresher. So without further ado, here are the ten signs:1 1 FEELING (Peirce's own technical term, qualisign). This sign involves an exceedingly vague feeling of something or other. The sign of bare feeling is a self-contained, self-sufficient sign without interdependent, interrelated interaction with any other sign or anything else. It Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

The Peircean Decalogue Terms (or 'mematic signs')

Icons

Qualisigns

Propositions (or 'dicent

Indices

Sinsigns

53

signs')

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Legisigns

Symbols

Arguments

1

RiO-|l

Feeling

Qualisign

2

R^l-i

Imaging

Iconic sinsign

3

R2O2I-|

Sensing

Rhematic indexical sinsign

4

R2O2I2

Awaring

Dicent sinsign

5

R3O1I1

Scheming

Iconic legisign

6

R3O2I1

Impressing-saying

Rhematic indexical legisign

7

R3O2I2

Looking-saying

Dicent indexical legisign

8

R3O3li

Seeing-saying

9

R3O3I2

Perceiving-saying

10

R3O3I3

Realizing

Rhematic symbol Dicent symbol Argument

Figure 4: Ten sign classes from nine sign functions

simply is what it is, a sign enfolded within itself. Consequently, there is as yet no awareness on the part of the potential sign maker or sign taker of the sign, for the semiosic process with respect to this sign has not begun its entry into consciousness. Examples: an inordinately fuzzy sense of, say, 'blueness,' upon one's becoming subject to a blue object; a sound of no variation whatsoever that as long as it lasts remains unrelated to any other sound; a faint sense of taste that at the particular moment seems

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

54 Sensing Corporeally indistinguishable in the mind from any other taste; the whiff of an odor unrelated to any other odor; a dim sense of touch of something that at that juncture in time and space has not yet been differentiated from other possible senses of touch in order to identify it. [The sign of FEELING consists of the Firstness of the representamen, Firstness of the semiotic object, and Firstness of the interpretant. Subscripting the representamen, semiotic object, and interpretant, the sign of feeling is sign RiO\Ii\ 2. IMAGING (technical term, iconic sinsigri). This sign includes the sign of FEELING. It is an image within bodymind or in the world 'out there.' But it is still so vague that the subject is not yet consciously aware of any interdependent interrelation between herself and the sign with respect to anything else. In the very least, the sign of IMAGING marks the beginning of its entry into consciousness. Examples: a picture, scheme, or diagram apart from that to which it is possibly related; a vague shape that cannot yet be labelled as the shape of anything in particular with respect to any other possible shape; a sound that is not yet identified as anything in particular; a taste that at this point remains unidentified; an odor, the source of which the subject is not consciously aware to the extent that it can be acknowledged as the odor of some particular object; a touch that does not yet give in the conscious mind any notion of the object of the touch insofar as it is distinguished from other possible touches. [Secondness of the representamen, Firstness of the semiotic object, and Firstness of the interpretant: sign T^Oj/J 3. SENSING (technical term, rhematic indexical sinsigri). This sign involves recognition, or even the sudden jolt of surprise, regarding the existence of the sign as a sign. It can be a sign that does not deviate noticeably from what might have been expected, given the conditions and context of the sign's emergence. Or it can evoke surprise in the event that its nature is something that was unexpected, at least within its particular context. As such, it is something different, something new, that calls attention to itself. Thus it piques curiosity, creates an uncomfortable sensation, or automatically provokes the sign maker or taker to some spontaneous reaction. In any event, this sign stimulates the mind to give it its due share of attention. Now, the sign is definitely entering the level of the subject's conscious awareness. But at this stage it is still hardly more than a vague sense of awareness. It cannot yet be decisively identified, much less given a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The Peircean Decalogue 55 name or interpreted, since the interpretant remains at the level of Firstness. There is at this point in the sign processing no more than the awareness on the part of the subject of some sign apart from that subject as a potential interpreter of the sign, without recognition of what the sign is a sign of. Examples: awareness that upon turning the page of a book being read there is another page on which words of the same language and same type are found; a spontaneous cry resulting from attention abruptly drawn toward an unexpected object, act, or event; the sudden entry of what is sensed as an unusual odor; the sensation of an unexpected taste when something comes into contact with the tongue; a sharp sound that can potentially be identified as an alarm, a piece of important information, a musical rendition, or whatever, that pierces the ears; something that lightly touches the nape of the subject's neck. [Secondness of the representamen, Secondness of the semiotic object, and Firstness of the interpretant: sign R^O^Ii} 4. AWARING (technical term, dicent sinsign). This sign has become the object of direct experience insofar as it is a sign indicating something other than itself and providing information regarding that something other; in other words, it must be affected in some way by its respective semiotic object, since both the semiotic object and the interpretant have reached the Secondness of their development. It is important to note that that with which this sign is interdependently and interactively interrelated is at least tacitly acknowledged by the subject, but language has not yet entered the scene: the sign cannot yet be given a name, which is the function of more developed symbolic signs. Nor can it be genuinely interpreted, since the interpretant has not emerged from Secondness. Yet, since this sign has attained the Secondness of each of its three components, it is a sign in interaction with its semiotic object in a direct, natural, and necessary way, one that compels the subject to begin processing it in a manner that follows the sign-object linkage. Signs of AWARING can be called 'natural signs,' for the link between sign and semiotic object is quite often the product of interrelated interlinkage between cause and effect, part and whole, container and contained. Examples: a weathervane indicating wind direction, a road sign with a curved arrow giving an indication of what lies ahead; the odor or taste of an onion; a sudden sound piercing the hubbub of New York City traffic sensed as a police siren; a sensation that the object

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

56 Sensing Corporeally that came into contact with the nape of the subject's neck is a human hand. [Secondness of the representamen, Secondness of the semiotic object, and Secondness of the interpretant: sign R^O^I^} 5. SCHEMING (technical term, iconic legisign). This is a general type of sign insofar as it is a patterned sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch, that manifests some likeness with something other than itself and interrelates with instantiations of the same sign or like signs in the past that have been catalogued in the memory bank of the sign maker or taker. In this manner the sign of SCHEMING incorporates a definite quality that renders it fit to evoke in the mind the general idea of the sign as a sign with respect to its particular semiotic object. There are three important characteristics of this sign. First, it is the first sign to reach the Thirdness of its representamen, thus endowing that representamen with genuine semioticity. This means that the sign has now entered the subject's awareness, and the subject acknowledges it as a sign, and as a sign that interdependently and interactively interrelates with some semiotic object, though that semiotic object has not been definitely specified, since it has not emerged from Firstness. Second, since Thirdness has entered, there is consciousness of the sign-processing self as apart from the sign, and thus the sign is subject to the initial stages of its interpretation. And third, since the sign has now entered into the Thirdness of its representamen, it is a sign acknowledged in terms of its nature as a generality, as a sign of a general class of signs of the same or comparable sort (up to this stage, since there was no Thirdness or legisignness, the signs were no more than sinsigns, signs of singularity or particularity). Examples: a picture, scheme, or diagram coupled with and related to that of which it is a likeness; a form and a sense of what the form is a form of; a sound that is acknowledged as a musical sound that is sensed not as rock but rather as classical music; consciousness that a particular odor or taste is of a certain general type, though it remains unspecified in terms of a word labelling it; awareness that the feeling of a hand in contact with the back side of the subject's neck is most likely of friend rather than foe, since it is caressing rather than pressing, but identification of that friend remains unspecified. [Thirdness of the representamen, Firstness of the semiotic object, and Firstness of the interpretant: sign R$OiI\\

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The Peircean Decalogue 57 6. IMPRESSING—SAYING (technical term, rhematic indexical legisigri). The sign has now made a definite and lasting impression on the consciousness of the subject. Here, language begins at least the initial and as yet vague - stage of its entry into the semiotic process. This involves language use in an implicit rather than explicit way, and requires a linguistic context and contextualization within a cultural setting for its proper interpretation. This is a general type of sign, and requires that each of its instantiations be affected by its respective semiotic object in a particular context that it indicates, but from which it remains distinguished. In other words, the sign is of something familiar to the subject, yet the sign itself affords little or no indication of what the sign is a sign of, nor does it reveal the nature of its possible interpretation. The sign, in this manner, is a sign of IMPRESSING, for it has impressed on the mind, within a particular context, the sign's interrelationship with its semiotic object, though there is still hardly any meaning, since the interpretant remains at the level of Firstness. Examples: a pronoun (whether spoken or heard) such as 'this,' 'him,' or 'it' that requires a linguistic and cultural context for specification of its semiotic object and interpretant; a Mercedes Benz logo standing in for a familiar car; a brief series of three chords that call to mind a familiar Beethoven symphony, though it has not yet been specified; recognition that an odor or a taste is of something familiar, though not (yet) explicidy identified in terms of a label or name; awareness that the human hand on the subject's neck, due to the slight, caressing pressure, is most likely that of a male friend. [Thirdness of the representamen, Secondness of the semiotic object, and Firstness of the interpretant: sign RZO^I\\ 7. LOOKING(ACKNOWLEDGING)-SAYING (technical term, dicent indexical legisigri). This is a type of sign, each instantiation of which supplies information in terms of the effect of its object on it and the manner in which that object is apart from it. There is, then, awareness of the sign as a sign of someone or something with respect to someone or something else. Yet this is a sign so familiar to the subject that its meaning is hardly more than tacitly acknowledged. It is a sign often used in the coming and going of everyday culturally conventional affairs, a sign that the inhabitants of that culture make and take as a matter of course, though a foreigner to that culture might have hardly a clue as to what the meaning of the sign should be, since the interpretant of the sign has not emerged from Secondness. This sign

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

58 Sensing Corporeally is a sign of LOOKING, and ACKNOWLEDGING, since its 'semiotic object' has been perceived, or in the absence of the semiotic object has been at least acknowledged. Perception of the semiotic object entails acknowledgment of its presence. Absence of the semiotic object entails acknowledgment that if it were present it would enjoy interrelationship with the sign. The term 'looking' (or' perceiving') indicates initiation of the sign's interpretation, since the interpretant has emerged to the level of Secondness. Examples: commonplace expressions such as 'Hi!' 'You doin' all right?' 'Bless you'; a hand extended to open a door for someone, or to shake another hand as a salutation; recognition that the series of sounds is from the first measures of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which the subject has heard many times; awareness that the perfume must be Chanel No. 5, or tacit acknowledgment that the taste must be Italian pasta and that it is reminiscent of one of the chain of Olive Garden restaurants, though names here and in the previous examples are not (yet) forthcoming; recollection that the hand on the subject's neck must be that of a particular friend, though his name is not yet present to the subject's mind, since a name is a more developed sign.2 [Thirdness of the representamen, Secondness of the semiotic object, and Secondness of the interpretant: sign /?3C^/2] 8. SEEING THE SIGN AS SUCH-AND-SUCH (IDENTIFYING): AND SAYING (technical term, rhematic symbol or symbolic rheme [term, or word]}. The sign is now seen, seen as such-and-such, and given a name. We are now in the sphere of predominantly symbolic signs, signs chiefly of natural language humans speak, and technical languages such as logic, mathematics, computer language, and the Morse code. Such language use involves symbolic signs within the context of social practices. This is to say that the interrelations between the sign are not by their nature necessary but rather conventional (the word 'horse' bears no intrinsic interrelation with an object or the set of objects with which it interrelates; rather, the interrelation is by convention). The sign of SEEING (IDENTIFYING): AND SAYING is a sign - perhaps in the beginning arbitrary - that is interrelated with its object by an association of a general idea or image in the mind that, due to certain habits or dispositions of that mind, tends to produce a general concept with respect to the object to which it relates. Notice, however, (1) that this sign is no more than a noun or a sign identifying its semiotic object, (2) that without a predicate attached to the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

The Peircean Decalogue

59

sign, none of the semiotic object's attributes are explicit, though many of them may be tacitly acknowledged by the sign's maker and taker, and (3) that the sign cries out for a linguistic and cultural context in order that it may be further qualified, for as an isolated individual label or name, it remains vague - thus the Firstness of the interpretant. Examples: a common noun, an adjective, adverb, or verb; remarking aloud, 'Beethoven's Ninth!' upon hearing the first couple of measures of the piece; using the word 'Chanel No. 5' when identifying the perfume the subject smells; identifying the Italian dish as tasting like the Olive Garden's 'Fettuccine Alfredo'; blurting out 'Hank!' in response to the pressure on the subject's neck. [Thirdness of the representamen, Thirdness of the semiotic object, and Firstness of the interpretant: R^O^I\\

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

9. PERCEIVING THAT THE SIGN POSSESSES SUCH-AND-SUCH A SET OF

ATTRIBUTES: AND SAYING (technical term, dicent symbol or proposition [sentence}}. This sign interrelates and interacts with its semiotic object by way of an association of general ideas, each of which acts like sign 8, except that its interpretant is available only when the predicate of the PERCEIVING: SAYING sign is taken into consideration. That is to say, sign 8 consists of the word as a sign that makes up the subject of a proposition or sentence as a composite sign that is an exemplification of the act of PERCEIVING: SAYING. In this manner, the sign of PERCEIVING: SAYING, at a minimum, consists of a subject, sign 8, and a predicate consisting of one or more qualifications (also signs 8) of the subject. Sign 9 is of sufficient complexity that it linguistically identifies the semiotic object of the sign (the sign is perceived as such-and-such that is of such-and-such a set of properties). Examples: 'Beethoven's Ninth is of the romantic period,' 'The Olive Garden serves great sauce with its Fettuccine Alfredo,' 'You are Hank, aren't you?' (identification of the author of the neck hold); 'Yeah, I know your roughneck tactics' (specification of one of Hank's attributes). [Thirdness of the representamen, Thirdness of the semiotic object, and Secondness of the interpretant: sign /?3O3/2] 10. REALIZING (technical term, argument [text, discourse, narrative}). The word REALIZING is used with respect to this final sign of the Peircean decalogue, since it is the most efficient sign for making some aspect of the world 'semiotically real' - not 'real' in the absol-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

60 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

ute sense - from within whatever cultural world we happen to live in. Our cultural world is a world 'made semiotically real' chiefly by way of signs of type 10, for as we shall see in more detail below, it is more made than simply given to us through the senses. The sign of REALIZING is a sign whose interpretant, now having reached the Thirdness of its development, relates to its semiotic object in terms of that which is conventional and accepted by a given community as the general ways of the cultural world (hence also of what is generally perceived and conceived as the physical world) .3 Examples: 'All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, Therefore Socrates is mortal' (a simple argument in the form of a syllogism); an essay on Beethoven's Ninth or the Olive Gardens; a term paper presented by a graduate student arguing in favour of a particular feminist policy on abortion; a copy of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, as a linguistic (and fictional in this case) portrayal of a particular time in the history of the cultural life of the United States; a round-table discussion on a particular topic. [Thirdness of the representamen, Thirdness of the semiotic object, Thirdness of the interpretant: sign #36)3/3] Further contemplation of Figure 4 might help one get a sense of these sign interrelationships. In fact, let's take the table itself as an example of signhood. In its bare, iconic form, Figure 4 becomes sign 2 after its emergence from sign 1 and before it is interrelated with any of its potential semiotic objects. If you turn the page where the figure appears and it sort of slaps you in the face since you didn't expect such a monstrosity, it is sign 3. When you suddenly realize that by its very nature the figure interrelates and interacts with Peirce's sign types, you are considering it in terms of sign 4, a sign that carries acknowledgment of its semiotic object in terms of Secondness of representamen, semiotic object, and interpretant. The figure considered as a scheme or diagram useful for conceptualizing Peirce's sign types is sign 5, since it encapsulates the means for getting ten signs from nine signs and the interrelationships between Peirce's ten signs. If toward the end of this inquiry I make mention of a couple of particular sign types and you think to yourself, 'I must look at that figure,' the 'that' of your thoughts is sign 6, an indicator without specific naming, description, or explanation. If Figure 4 eventually becomes almost second nature to you - assuming that the very thought is not abhorrent to you at that stage - suppose that at some future moment you are flipping through the pages of this book

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The Peircean Decalogue

61

and you see it, with the thought, 'Oh, yes.' The figure-sign of this thought is sign 7. Then call it 'Figure 4,' and you've made sign 8. If you say, 'It's a scheme showing the interrelations between Peirce's ten signs,' you have sign 9. Explain it to someone in as much detail as you can, and you've engendered an argument, sign 10. Simple as that. But not so simple, not really. This is for two important reasons. First, I have oversimplified Peirce's ten signs for the sake of succinctness - I hope without doing cognitive damage to the elaborate sophistication of his sign theory. And second, I may have left you with the idea that the ten signs are pigeonholes into which we can deposit any sign we happen to encounter in our daily travels. This is erroneous. The categories are by no means precise, for the lines of demarcation between them remain fuzzy; also, they are not categories in the ordinary sense, but processes. Note that in my numerical qualification of the ten signs and my rundown of the signs in the preceding paragraph, the signs are never static. They are incessantly in the process of becoming other signs. This is the nature of all signs: they never sit around waiting for some interpreter to come along and slap a label on them and stick them into some convenient cerebral file. They collaborate with their maker and taker, and in the process become developed into more complete signs. Signs as well as sign makers and takers - who are also themselves signs - undergo transformation during this process.4 It must seem that this chapter holds little relevance to the issues at hand in the first chapter and to the general tenor of this inquiry. The relevance will become apparent, I expect, but only after certain matters of posthuman communication have been aired insofar as that is possible. But before moving on I need to clear up some still cloudy issues regarding the sign.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER FOUR

Up and Down the Semiosic

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Mainstream

What we need at this juncture is a more penetrating look at Peirce's concept of the sign in order to bring it in line more closely with the work of Antonio Damasio. This will be the focus of the present chapter, which, I must warn you, involves a relatively abstract level of discourse, though of a different sort than the last chapter. Nevertheless, I believe I must make this turn in order to till the terrain properly for what is to come. In chapter 5,1 place the sign within an even broader context that includes recent work in philosophy of science and hermeneutics. This equally abstract move is essential also, since, I trust, it will allow us a more adequate notion of sign processes with respect to consciousness (or the lack thereof). Then in chapter 6,1 introduce additional 'case studies' of the Damasio sort, but this time from the fictions of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Fluxing the Vortex

Figure 5, a mere point with three lines emanating from it in tripod fashion, presents what might become construed as a static picture in the minds of many onlookers: there is no necessary indication of dynamism, movement, process, fluidity, though all of this is certainly implied. To create the proper image of the figure, and in keeping with the previous couple of chapters, with each and every reiteration of the sign, the / becomes another R interrelating with its O and engendering its own /, which is already in the process of becoming yet another R, and the process begins anew. However, this notion of meaning change or sign translation as a trembling, effervescent, 'revolving' image is not simply that of a circle repeating itself. There is no 'eternal return.' Rather, with

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream

63

1. Semiosic —K Semiotic

2. Ontic phenomenal

3. Epistemic doxic

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 5: Sign, world, knowing

respect to an individual sign, the /is already in the process of becoming an R interdependently interrelating with ('revolving about') its own O and /, the latter in the process becoming another R, and so on. All this activity generates a syncopated, off-balance, off-beat flow. It is resonant and consonant, but at the same time it is at least just a little dissonant, asymmetrical, out of whack. The beat has rhythm, to be sure, but it often sort of manages to catch us off guard, for with every turn, the rough semiosic sea within which we are sailing becomes something other than what it was becoming. How can we more properly account for this process? The first step, perhaps, entails our becoming more aware of our limitations, finite, fallible human animals that we are. As a preliminary step in this direction, consider Figure 5. We have a triadic, signlike relationship among (1) the general process of semiosis, actual signs made and signs taken by interpreting organisms, (2) what is perceived as the world (the flux of possibility that, when a portion of it is actualized as phenomena, becomes ontically perceived and conceived by the individuals making up a particular community), and (3) what is conceived and presumably known of that world via signs (doxa — opinion, belief, whether intuitive or reasoned - and episteme- knowledge, or whatever is the result of the process of knowing at a given timespace juncture). 1 I must point out the obvious, however: Western tradition has maintained a conception of Figure 5 at odds with the Peircean notion of sign processes developed in this essay. According to practices in classical Western science, logic, and reason, the upper leg of the tripod is best represented by theory (codified semiotics), and science is the discipline most nobly carrying out the charge of theory making. Leg 2 of Figure 5, according to this tradition, highlights the on^zcworld of presumably fixed objects, acts, and events filling that cosmic container, space. Science depicts leg 3 as that fixed, epistemic world insofar as it is adequately linked

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

64 Sensing Corporeally to theory (consequently, mere doxa is pushed out of the picture). In this conception of things, once we have the correct theory, semiotics-onticepistemic is neatly wrapped and tied and topped with a bright ribbon tied in a bow. And according to the venerable tradition, our tripod stands strong and tall. Within this traditional Western scheme, translation becomes a cutand-dried affair. During translation, 'correspondence' from one sign to another or from one language to another exists between leg 1 and leg 2 of Figure 5. The signs to be translated into other signs are intimately linked to a fixed world at leg 2 and leg 3. This linkage endows the signs with immutable meanings, and when the meanings of one set of signs come into one-to-one correspondence with those of the other set of signs at leg 3, epistemic 'knowledge' (in contrast to the doxic process of 'knowing') is (we hope) expanded. The operation is quite mechanical. In essence, it is a mere algorithmic procedure, as easy as One, Two, Three. Why, an adequately computerized robot should be able to do it. Human translators would become obsolete. (I really should apologize for exercising so disrespectful a reduction of the classical ways of science and language. Nevertheless, in a nutshell, that's about it.) However, as we know all too well, life is never simple. In the case of Figure 4, the life of signs and the process of signs translated into signs becomes inordinately complex. How can I explain this complexity with respect to the terms in our tripod? I can't, in the semiotic-doxic-epistemic sense of clear and distinct ideas. Yet I'll at least try to do justice to the terms involved in the tripod, without I hope doing it undue verbal violence. Under the Peircean spotlight, leg 1 of Figure 5 is by and large comparable to category Firstness - possible signs becoming signs without those signs yet enjoying interrelations with anything else. It is quality, feeling; it is no more than tacit acknowledgment, entrenched participation in a form of life. Without legs 2 and 3, leg 1 is more of the nature of semiosis, flux and flow, than the usual notion of semiotics as signs carved out of the flow and frozen and cognized and fixed as if they could remain as they are for all time. Leg 2 merges into category Secondness chiefly as phenomena. It involves whatever has been selected as a candidate for actualization as that which is other than the possible and actualized signs of leg 1. Secondness is a matter of what is perceived and conceived as particulars that are always becoming something other than what they were becoming along the semiosic flux we call our world. It is the shimmering, scintillating, undulating, fluctuating world stage on which phenomena dance their dance. There is no cut-in-stone ontology, but

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 65 rather a gush of becoming. Leg 3, of the nature of category Thirdness, brings Firstness and Secondness into a flowing embrace in the same fashion that it in turn embraces each of them. However, rather than the Thirdness of episteme (i.e., as cold, immutable 'knowledge'), Thirdness in the Peircean sense is more a matter of episteme-doxa ('knowing' as process) - the ebbs and flows of opinions and beliefs within a given community that follows what is at a given time and place taken as 'knowing.' All this, of course, presents problems for the classical scheme of things. Big problems. If Firstness by itself is of the nature of the merely possible, then it includes literally everything, from possibilities of near zero probability to possibilities that can hardly be denied. What holds the earth up? One possibility is that it rests on an elephant's back; another, that it holds onto its natural place in the celestial hierarchy; another, that the force of gravity keeps it obediently gyrating about the sun; still another, that it merely follows the curvature of space. Which possibility provides us with the true picture of the universe? All of them, and none of them. That is, each of them, within its respective cultural 'horizon,' and none of them, from within some new and hitherto unknown 'horizon.'2 Put all these possibilities into one bag, and many others besides, and it becomes evident that from a timeless perspective, the venerable classical principle of non-contradiction hardly holds water. In this manner, how could we translate the notion of the 'centre' of the cosmos from the language of one cultural 'horizon' to another? Elementary, one might wish to assume. If we qualify 'centre' of the cosmos as the earth in one 'horizon' and map it onto 'centre' of the cosmos as the sun from another 'horizon,' the reader from the second 'horizon' can grasp what 'centre' means for a reader from the first 'horizon,' and hopefully vice versa. The same applies to any set of possible 'centres.' But things are more complex than this description would imply. How do we properly qualify use of the word 'centre' within a so-called horizon? It is not a matter of some relatively static term or terms that can be mapped. Rather, from the view of semiosis in leg 1 of Figure 5, 'centre' of the cosmos is interdependently, interrelatedly interactive with all its adjacent words in a particular cosmos, and those words with other words, and those with still others, and so on, virtually without end. The words and their meanings and the extralinguistic modes of communication they involve and are involved in make up a vast cultural flow. For proper understanding of the word, the entire flow must be included. The problem with classical thought looms large, when we consider

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

66 Sensing Corporeally sign processing to be a matter of flow. Eventually, the bivalent model of classical logic falters and falls in a heap, for inconsistency and contradiction eventually raise what the well-groomed logician considers their ugly heads. In other words, from within a given horizon, local consistency may seem to rule - though according to the ramifications of Kurt Godel's notorious proof this is also problematic (Nagel and Newman 1964). But at the global level, when any and all cultural horizons, possible and actual, are ushered onto the scene, inconsistency inevitably becomes immanent at some point or other. Consequently, we see once again that the classical logical principle of non-contradiction falls by the wayside (Rescher and Brandom, 1979). As we shall see below, absolutely clear and distinct translation from one horizon to another, from one language to another, from one theory to another, or (in science) from observation sentences regarding perceived phenomena to theoretical statements, is generally considered to be difficult and at times well-nigh impossible. It is as if one culture and its respective language roughly had meaning! for a given word, while another culture roughly had meaning2 for what seems to be the equivalent word. Yet the two meanings are radically at odds.3 How many cultures and languages and meanings can there be, anyway? Many, virtually uncountable many. So how can meanings in one language be mapped onto meanings from another culture? They can't, at least in a clear and distinct Cartesian manner. Disconcerting, all this. Thus if leg 3 of our Figure 5 tripod is caught up in doxa, we must concede that there are many values, many worlds, many truths, and many meanings. From this vantage it may not be the case that the earth is the 'centre' of the cosmos, or that the sun is the 'centre'; some alternative always stands a chance of entering the scene and forcing its way into minds and cultures. Between any two contradictory sentences and meanings of the words contained therein, other meanings can always emerge. Thus the classical principle of the excluded middle takes its leave as well. Within the purview of semiosis in leg 1, then, inconsistency and selfcontradiction arise when all possible meanings and truth claims are taken into consideration. Doxa, of leg 3, forces us to realize that though there is no embarrassment of the principle of non-contradiction suffering a knockout punch, many meanings and truth claims must be given equal time, and the principle of the excluded middle also becomes leaky. (I would very modestly suggest that we must come to grips with the limitations of classical logical principles before we can take a step

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 67 outside the circle of imperial Western humanism which assumes that might is right, and that since we have might our way is the only way. Then, and only then, may we be able to enter into some sort of 'posthuman understanding.') This may strike some as no more than mushy-minded relativism. However, look at it this way. If we insist that 'our signs' must be held sacrosanct and hence we must formalize them, then we are in semiotics (signs selected from the flux of semiosis and put to use for specific theoretically or analytically oriented purposes according to a specific mindset). But if we put all possible expressions of semiotics, past, present, and future, into one bag, then we can have none other than semiosis (the range of all possibilities). If according to 'our signs' as we make and take them it is apparently the case that 'our world' is the one and only world, then we live in merely one semiotic world from among many possible worlds. Yet 'our world' is 'our world,' and definitely not any other 'world' engendered from within some other cultural context. Here, at least, the principle of identity seems to hold, at least for us. So in this respect the cithers and the ors of classical logic manage to maintain a certain degree of hegemony. However, if 'our knowledge' of 'our world' is up for consideration when compared and contrasted with some other community's 'knowledge' and 'world,' in leg 3 we do not have epistemein the fixed, Cartesian sense, but rather doxa ('knowing'), as it is unfolded here and now for a particular community.4 In other words, if we wish to hold on to a vestige of classical logic, we must stick to semiotics, the ontic, and the epistemic; if we wish to include semiosis, phenomena, and doxa, then we must set aside our cherished classical principles. It is all so much relativism, nonetheless, one might retort. Yes, so it might still seem. It is one form of relativism, to say the least. However, look at the problem this way. Ancient relativism of the Protagorean sort held that (1) individual humans are the measure of all signs, the perceived and conceived world, and knowledge; (2) there can be no independent, invariant reality, rather, everything is dependent on everything else in a participatory, self-organizing universe; (3) the combination of (1) and (2) is not incoherent, nor is it self-defeating, rather it includes individual humans and everything else, humans as participants rather than spectators in the universal processual drama; and (4) what is considered viable in (1) holds episteme in an embrace with doxa, hence contradiction enters (1) only when two distinct ways of perceiving and conceiving the world are brought together, and something emerges

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

68 Sensing Corporeally between two otherwise mutually exclusive alternatives only when a combination of (1) and (2) presents what seem to be mutually exclusive alternatives. I certainly agree that the world is a flux of incessant change. However, if we extend Protagoras - for whom one person's truth is another person's falsity, and vice versa - we enter (4), which ultimately yields a multivalued, multisemiotic, multimeaningful plurality of worlds and mindsets. Joseph Margolis classifies these two varieties of relativism as relationalism (of the Protagoras sort) and robust relativism (of the multivalent sort). In Margolis's words, according to the robust relativist's thesis: 'There is no purely formal reason why many-valued truth-values should function inconsistently or incoherently; or why such values cannot be distributively applied in an advantageous way in this or that particular sector of inquiry. In fact, the relativist claims there is no reason for supposing that bivalent and many-valued truth-values cannot be systematically used together (with due care) without risking conceptual disaster' (1991:9). Margolis's manoeuvre is this: where many-valued truth-values (of robust relativism) take over the game played by bivalent values, they become a semiotic option, in view of phenomena as they are perceived and doxically conceived, not as ontological and epistemic mandates (recall Figure 5). There is not necessarily any contradiction, inconsistency, or paradox here. Rather, there are many alternatives, between any two of which yet another alternative may at some point in time arise to claim its place under the sun. In contrast, relationalism would have everything accounted for, the possible as well as the actual, and contradictorily so, from the big picture. This is to say that robust relativism (the doxic alternative of leg 3) allows for the possibility of emergent values from the erstwhile excluded middle of binary, either-or thinking. In contrast, relationalism holds all possibilities, contradictory as well as non-contradictory, compatible as well as incompatible, and incommensurable as well as commensurable, in one whole package (within semiosis, of leg 1). Now, one might observe that taking the whole of Figure 5 into consideration, there is no way to pin down meanings and hence engage in legitimate sign translation. Yes, that's it. But on second thought, that's not it, not really. We humans do pin down meanings and we are often able to come up with some quite remarkable translations. In a further effort to render account of what I have in mind, a turn directly to the idea of translation may be in order.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 69

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Indeterminacies The above allusion to meanings of words within theories, languages, and indeed, entire horizons, bears on philosopher Willard V.O. Quine's thesis (1969), which was inspired in part by philosopher of science Pierre Duhem (1954). This thesis often goes by the label 'holism.' According to Quine's brand of holism, a word's reference depends on that of another word within the system, and that reference depends on that of yet another word, until the entire 'web of meaning' has been taken into account. But account of the whole is impossible, given our human limitations. The very notion of 'reference of all the terms' - of an 'all-inclusive' theory, language, or perception and conception of the world - 'becomes meaningless, simply for want of further terms relative to which to ask or answer the question' (Quine, 1969: 54). We can only determine the semiotics and ontology of a particular theory, language, or perception and conception for the sake of episteme ('knowledge') relative to some other theory, language, or perception and conception, which constitutes a 'background' against which the first theory, language, or perception and conception stands out in relief. But what is the 'background' for that 'background'? Another theory, language, or perception and conception, and so on, it would appear. An infinite regress seems to ensue. However, leaving aside such imponderables for the moment, let us see what Quine's thesis has to do with the idea of translation. From the perspective of our venerable Western classical tradition, translation in the best of all worlds raises one's expectations that there is some mechanical, algorithmic procedure for transforming the terms of one theory, language, or perception and conception into another one. If such an algorithmic program could be established, one might expect that the fields of semiotics, ontology (essence, beingness), and episteme ('knowledge') would be ripe and there for the plucking. Quine plays havoc with such dreams with his now notorious thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, which is predicated on his inscrutability of reference (1969: 29-31). Reference can never be objectively determined once and for all, Quine writes, since there will always be several choices available to the translator (e.g., the multivalent leg 3 of our tripod). So-called reference of words is capable of slicing the world in a variety of ways, none of which can be determinably called the only way. The translator can choose a particular referent for a particular word only relative to a selection from

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

70

Sensing Corporeally

a loosely associated collection of words from the background language. In other words, there is no fact of the matter that can serve as an anchor inextricably linking words to the world. Quine illustrates his point through an imaginary field linguist's dilemma when attempting to translate the word 'Gavagai!' from some unfamiliar native language into English. Does the word mean 'Rabbit'? 'Unattached rabbit parts'? 'A space-time rabbit stage from the fourdimensional continuum'? Or perhaps something else? Perhaps an indefinite number of something elses? There is no way to tell, determinably: 'If you take the total scattered portion of the spatiotemporal world that is made up of rabbits, and that which is made up of undetached rabbit parts, and that which is made up of rabbit stages, you come out with the same scattered portion of the world each of the three times. The only difference is in how you slice it. And how to slice it is what ostension or simple conditioning, however persistently repeated, cannot teach' (1969: 32). There are simply no empirical grounds for deciding the reference of words beyond a shadow of a doubt. In other words, the meaning and translation of the word 'Gavagai!' remain underdetermined, hence incomplete.5 This is no cause for concern, one might assume. When we translate, we translate the meaning of one word into that of another word, with no regard for reference. In fact, it's a matter of connecting part of one language to part of another language. Why do we need the idea of reference between words and things at all? Yes. It's the same old story. Connecting part of one language to part of another language is reminiscent of mapping, the problematics of which were noted in the previous section. We might persist in our assumption - or is it a wish? - that each of the two languages involved in translation - background language and target language - has a sort of 'ontology,' whether the 'ontology' consists of things in the hard-core physical world or of nothing but words. Either way, we risk falling into the practice of considering that 'ontology' to be a fixed entity. In such case, knowledge of what there is would seem to be just around the corner. Actually, there is no fixedness, nor is there entityness. Rather, phenomena within the pure stream of semiosis are a matter of doxa (opinion, 'knowing') and doxa alone, instead of the hoary dream of episteme (hard-core 'knowledge'). To repeat the now familiar aphorism: everything is always becoming something other than what it was becoming. Semiotics always risks coming to believe it is fixing a particular world selected from an indefinite array of possible worlds. In spite of ourselves,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 71 we set aside semiosis in favour of (erroneously 'linguicentric') semiotics, (linguistically expressed) ontology, and (strictly linguistically based) episteme.6 That is the problem. As this essay unfolds it will become increasingly evident that, entrenched in our customary practices, we tend to prioritize language. In this regard, Quine is one of the most successful propagators of 'linguicentrism.' He argues that extension of the words and the behaviour of speakers is sufficient for translation of meanings from one language to another. In this regard, since words like 'unicorn' and 'Sherlock Holmes' have no extension, their meanings cannot be accounted for simply in terms of the extension of the words. Quine maintains faith in language as the supreme and indeed the solo actor in pinning down behaviour and meaning as effectively as that may be possible. All other signs, including linguistic signs without reference, are relatively superfluous. Nelson Goodman has a different approach. He asks us to consider two types of extension of words, primary and secondary. If 'unicorn' and 'Sherlock Holmes' have no primary extension, then we can at least resort to secondary extension such as 'unicorn pictures' and 'Sherlock Holmes illustrations,' or a story about a 'unicorn' or a novel by Conan Doyle. Such pictures and exemplifications might put art and fictional constructs on a respectable footing in regard to the hard-nosed disciplines. So we aren't really forced to resort to subjectively mushy 'intensions' if we at least have 'secondary extensions' (Goodman, 1976a). Words without hard-rock reference to the furniture of the world can take a seat beside words hooked to things that exist in the world. Well and good, it might seem. However, 'linguicentrism' - the primacy of words - is still the name of the game. Moreover, regarding Goodman's primary and secondary extension, we run the risk of falling into another trap. For example, Nicholas Wolterstorff believes his own brand of fictive exemplification - comparable to Goodman's secondary extension - is 'ontologically true.' A fictional something either has a certain property or it does not, according to how it is exemplified. Thus we should be able to ascertain everything possible about that something in terms of the evidence we have regarding its exemplification. So our knowledge of it can be complete and consistent according to the information given. In this manner, Wolterstorff obediently adheres to the principles of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, as he thinks he should, in his determination of the truth of any and all fictional somethings. His

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

72 Sensing Corporeally fictional entities do not exist, but they nonetheless enjoy certain 'ontological' respectability by virtue of their portrayal within a fictional world (Wolterstorff, 1980). Yet taking the well-worn question whether or not Sherlock Holmes has a mole on his back, the most obvious answer is that it is neither determinably true that he does nor determinably true that he doesn't. So the excluded middle principle doesn't really hold, it would seem, and let us not forget the inherent incompleteness and undecidability regarding our possible knowledge of a fictional exemplification within an imaginary world. Moreover, if there is much we don't know about Sherlock Holmes, since we have no alternative but to depend on Conan Doyle's say so, then our knowledge of the fictional character must remain inordinately vague. In this sense, some property possessed by the notorious sleuth could well be both true and false, depending on the whims and fancies and perspective and inclinations of the reader. So it's dejd vu one more time: the non-contradiction principle becomes even more anemic (see also, in general, Walton, 1990). Wolterstorff, it seems, places undue faith in classical principles. The same can be said of 'linguicentric' practices, those of Quine and Goodman included.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

From Whence Have We Arrived Where We Are, Wherever That Is?

What we have is this: if inscrutability of reference and indeterminacy of translation, pace Quine, carry any weight, then from one language to another we can hardly do more than proceed in a straight line with little confidence that we are on the right track. For between one language (or theory or mode of perception and conception) and another, incompatibility and even incomparability may give us a slap in the face. The problem is that if between signs, incompatibility and incomparability endure, then transformation (hopefully, translation) from one sign to another must be quite wooden, as in Figure 6. It must be a matter of one sign simply mapped onto another sign in objective or pseudoobjective fashion. This might involve Quine's 'Gavagai!' as 'Rabbit,' 'Undetached rabbit parts,' or 'Rabbit stage,' according to the brain of the interpreter. This pseudo-objectivism evinced by the structure of Figure 6 bears witness to the possibility of an unreliable interpretation without you, me, or anybody else becoming aware of the flaw involved. As far as we might be concerned, one sign is transformed (hopefully, translated) into another equivalent sign in another language (or theory or perception and conception), and that's that, make no bones about it.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream

73

Figure 6: Sign mapping

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 7: Incompatibly translated signs

We take things as we so desire, and thus each and every one of us tends to become the measure of all things in our own little private world. From another perspective, sign transformation (hopefully, translation) could consist of two different nominative signs, presumably of the same reference but with radically distinct meanings. The distinction between the meanings would remain outside the consciousness of the sign makers and takers. This we see in Figure 7. It is much like the case of Hilary Putnam's notorious variation on the analytic philosophy paradigm utterance, which is used ad nauseum: 'The cat is on the mat.' Putnam asks us to imagine that one interlocator takes the utterance the way we would ordinarily take it. In contrast, it is strangely interpreted by another interlocutor as 'The cat* [that is, 'cherries,' from an alternative and incompatible perspective] is on the mat* [that is, 'trees' from that same alternate perspective]' (Putnam, 1983b). In other words, 'The cat is on the mat' can for one interpreter be used in the same way as 'The cat* [= cherries] is on the mat* [= trees]' by another interpreter. For this to occur, however, there must be a one-to-one correlation of words and things in the world between 'cat' and 'cat*' and 'mat' and 'mat*' when the sign 'cat' is assigned to cats and 'mat' to mats and cherries to 'cat*' and trees to 'mat*.'7 This would imply that one interlocutor might use 'cat' signs and the other interlocutor might use 'cat*' signs, and since phonetically the two signs are virtually identical, they would think they were

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

74 Sensing Corporeally communicating groovily, when in fact an unbreachable gap existed between the meanings of their pairs of signs. A strange world indeed. And a puzzlingly problematic world. If we take Putnam's 'cat' and 'cat*' at face value, with one-to-one mappability between them, then we have semiosic flow coming to a standstill, at least for the moment. This simply won't do. We, as signs ourselves, are always in the flow, wherever we are, just like all our signs. If we think we are stopping the flow, we are doing no more than deadening our mind, for the stoppage can be no more than artificial cuts and breaks. We must find a more adequate way to keep the flow going and at the same time somehow say what it is that needs saying. As a counterpart to Putnam's thought experiment, sign transformation-translation might consist of two different predicate signs, which perhaps seem well-nigh incommensurable. Example: Goodman's 'Grue emeralds.' For a society of imaginary Grueworlders, emeralds are 'Grue.' That is to say, in our language the Grueworlders 'Grue' means emeralds are 'Green' up to time t\ and 'Blue' thereafter. In contrast, as far as we are concerned, emeralds are 'Green' yesterday, today, and presumably forever (Goodman, 1965). This would be comparable to one scientist for whom 'atoms' are 'solid spheres' up to time t\ and 'largely empty space' after that point in time (i.e., the transition from the Greeks' 'atoms' into quantum theory 'atoms'), and another scientist for whom 'atoms' have always been, are, and will always have been, none other than 'solid spheres,' period. Put the two scientists together and there may not be any more communication between them than there would be between Goodman's Grueworlders and us Realworlders. At any rate, we have signs used across presumably incommensurable chasms, with interlocutors on both sides of the chasm talking past each other. There is no necessary overlap of meaning between the sign on the left and the sign on the right; there is merely incompatibility or incomparability, and at best incommensurability. Moving closer to signs becoming continuously (translated into) signs in light of a more genuine conception of Peirce's sign tripod, we have Figure 8. In the first place, we notice that R, O, and /are not static sign components but rather undulating, spiralling flows about the central sign 'vortex.' Indeed, Peirce himself pointed out often that an R can develop in the mind of its contemplator into an O, and an O into an /, and then back again. This semiosic merry-go-round is never at a standstill; it is always in the process of becoming something other than what it was becoming. And it is always becoming transformed (translated) into

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream

75

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 8: Signs of same reference, different meaning

another sign. Thus we see not the R, the O, or the /becoming signs in their own right, but rather the entire sign combination metamorphosing into another sign by means of that 'emptiness' or 'vortex' that is at once everywhere and nowhere. According to the rushing, gushing flux depicted in Figure 8, the sign's becoming another sign from the 'vortex' entails its returning to Firstness, pure possibility, where nothing is absolutely prohibited and everything has some chance, however remote, of emerging into the light of day. This dynamic process of self-organizing signs is capable of accounting for Democritus's 'atom' becoming (translated into) John Dalton's 'atom,' then John Rutherford's 'atom,' then Niels Bohr's, then Erwin Schrodinger's, then Richard Feynmann's, and so on, from the historical perspective of some imaginary scientist who lived through all these transitions of meaning of the word 'atom.' There is no necessary radically discontinuous incompatibility, in comparability, or incommensurability here. There is the possibility of the sign's comprehension from a veritable host of alternative perspectives. Moreover, the sign's comprehension is now the becoming of the sign that is other than what it was previously becoming. Properly interpreting the sign breeds a sense of the continuity of its becoming and a sense of what it is - its identity, however transient, through time. In this manner the maker's making of the sign is taken in by the taker and becomes another sign, albeit a comparable sign. And they communicate, by means of the sign's continuity, not its discontinuity. This is a far cry from Putnam's distinction between one speaker's using 'Cat' and the listener's understanding 'Cat*,' with a hoary semantic void separating them and never the twain shall meet. It is also quite alien to Goodman's Grueworlder trying to make herself understood by us Realworlders regarding the colour of emeralds from the remote past into the unforeseen future. In both cases, the tendency is to assume that a word has

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

76 Sensing Corporeally this meaning here and now — that the sign is within this context relatively fixed. The problem, I would suggest, is that with due respect, Putnam and Goodman limit their consideration to words; hence they remain caught up in 'linguicentrism.' As such, they are a giant step removed from a genuine semiotic holism according to which all signs - absolutely all signs, linguistic and extralinguistic alike - are codependent, interrelated, and in a perpetually interactive process.8 In everyday language use, Figure 6 is tantamount to, say, the translated flow of the Brazilian Portuguese word 'saudade' into the English 'nostalgia.' Is the translation valid? Yes and no. That is to say, neither yes nor no 'Saudade' is a longing mix of memories of times long gone and lands far distant and African rhythms and tropical breezes and lazy rivers and beaches receding in the distance and loves never before experienced and future times utopianized, and soccer and samba and carnival and euphoric pride in everything Brazilian, as well as slavery and the hierarchization of society and the atrocities that result and the tightly knit human bonds and community spirit developed within and in spite of the institution of slavery. It is all this and much more, infinitely more than could ever be meant by the relatively impoverished English word 'nostalgia.' In other words, genuine translation, within semiosis, entails no word-by-word or sentence-by-sentence mapping. Every word, to a greater or lesser degree, is codependent and interrelated with, and incessantly engages in interaction with, the whole of its respective language, and of all culturally laden extralinguistic signs to boot. Adequate comprehension of 'saudade' requires total immersion in Brazilianized Portuguese language and the entirety of Brazilian culture, I would submit. It demands knowledge of Brazilian swings and sways of the body when talking, incessantly wandering hands, keenly expressive facial expressions, subtie voice inflections, an enthusiastic audience participating with each of the speaker's words and moves, and indeed, the entire collective past of all these clever semiotic swerves and slides, the present context becoming something other than what it was becoming, and anticipations of what the future may hold. Anything less, and one's understanding of the word 'saudade' remains impoverished. So much for the vicissitudes of semiotics drawn from semiosis. The Flow Beckons, But We Are Already in It Peirce gives us some enigmatic but enticing words on the nature of meaning indeterminacy of signs becoming signs. Signs, he tells us, are Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream

77

general insofar as the principle of excluded middle does not apply to them, and they are vague insofar as the principle of non-contradiction does not apply to them. In other words, a sign of vagueness implies myriad possible meanings and the contexts within which the meanings can be engendered. From within those possibilities, there will invariably be some meanings that stand opposed to other meanings, though within a given set of social conventions at a particular time and place attempts may be made to avoid contradictory meanings insofar as that is possible. Nevertheless, given signs of generality when subjected to the tides of semiosic change, the erstwhile excluded middle will somewhere along the stream suffer a breakdown, and new and unexpected signs and new meanings will emerge to rupture entrenched generalities and force the conventionalization of new ones. Peirce then goes on to write: 'Thus, although it is true that "Any proposition you please, once you have determined its identity, is either true or false"; yet so long as it remains indeterminate and so without identity, it need neither be true that any proposition you please is true, nor that any proposition you please is false. So likewise, while it is false that "A proposition whose identity I have determined is both true and false," yet until it is determinate, it may be true that a proposition is true and that a proposition is false' (CP: 5.448). The prototype of a vague sign is a sign of Firstness, feeling, quality, possibility of many meanings but the actuality of no meaning. Of the three sign components, the one that most closely fits the bill is the sign itself, or R. Until an R has been specified and interrelated with an O and an 7, it remains radically indeterminate, and vague. Consequently, its meaning can be possibly many, some of them apparentiy excluding others. In this sense a particular meaning as possibility can be both true and false; hence the sign itself is both true and false. After all, let us apply Peirce's words to a solitary sign by asking, What is the 'earth'? Is it that about which the 'sun' revolves, or that which revolves about the 'Sun'? Or is it that mass upon which we dwell and which rests on the back of a turtle? 'Earth,' as a bare representamen unlinked with any O or 7, is all of the above. Once a semiotic object, O, for the sign has been determined and specified, the sign interpreter can usually state with hardly a shadow of a doubt that the correct interpretation is a choice between an either and an or, and she is usually quite certain about the one over the other. However, once that sign is properly interpreted and takes on its respective 7, it continues slithering along the stream of semiosis and becomes subject to changes in time. Given time, the interpreter is even-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

78 Sensing Corporeally tually forced to conclude that a proper interpretation is neither the one nor the other of the either and the or; rather, something new has emerged between the poles of the bivalency. To reiterate the above suggestions, regarding the nature of R in terms of Firstness or possible interpretations, the principle of non-contradiction falters, and regarding the nature of/in terms of Thirdness or actual interpretations over a range of spacetime junctures, the principle of excluded middle cannot be universally applied. So (yawn), what's new? What's new is that, contrary to the classical view of language, no sign is such that it is not to a degree both vague and general; hence, it entices the demands of non-contradiction and the excluded middle to lighten up a little. The world itself, as quantum theory and chaos physics and the physics of complexity reveal in our century, is indeterminate and paradoxical at its core, as well as incomplete. It is a dynamic, self-organizing whole. The implication is that we are ...

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

In the Stream, Wherever and Whenever

I discuss philosopher Donald Davidson's (1984) concept of 'radical interpretation' below. For the moment, it behooves us to make brief mention of his critique of the 'very idea of conceptual schemes' predicated on the notion of incommensurability between theories, languages, and perception and conception, and the impossibility of any neutral ground from within which to compare and contrast those conceptual schemes and bring about any form or fashion of translation between them. One of the problems with Davidson's truck with conceptual schemes is that the incommensurabilists, most notably Thomas Kuhn (1970) and Paul Feyerabend (1975), never emphatically claimed that they, or anybody else, was, or is, or will be, privy to any neutral or middle ground beyond all theories, languages, and horizons. The very idea would be for them out of the question. Neither do they believe there can be any algorithm for translatability between conceptual schemes either within or including theories, languages, and horizons. Nor can there be an invariant method or a priori procedure for determining translatability. Yet Richard Bernstein (1983) points out that incommensurable schemes can submit themselves to translation even though there is no neutral ground to provide a vantage from which translation can be exercised - it is, to repeat, incompatibility and incomparability that do not allow for translation.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 79 In this respect at least, though not in many other respects I must add, Davidson seems conveniently to miss the point. He seems to assume that if translatability is possible - and he believes it is - then there must be some sort of a working theory as well as a viable method, however tentative, for translation. This is to say that both speaker and listener have some conception of truth, although it may well be their own truth. It is up to the listener to assume that the speaker is delivering her message with the best of intentions and in such a manner that what she considers the truth of her utterance is available to the listener. In this manner the speaker's truth and the listener's sense of that truth are at least a beginning. Consequently, when the listener becomes speaker she assumes that her sense of the previous speaker's truth is largely correct. Then, if they continue communicating in good faith and with hope and charity, they will eventually get along just fine. But in light of the above sections, there is neither available theory nor available method, nor can there be, at least in some clear and distinct sense. Without defined or definable theory or method, what is left is tacit feeling, sensation, and intuition. Translation in this manner is carried out tacitly, at implicit as well as explicit levels, by she who feels, senses, and intuits similarities and differences between language, perception and conception, whether she can articulate her reasons for so doing or not.9 Feeling, sensing, intuiting, tacitly or implicitly? Well, yes, ... and no. What I mean to say is that we usually try to say what we mean and mean what we say, even though we are not aware precisely of how we do it and even though we may know all along that the project is impossible. If we think we're saying precisely what we mean in Humpty Dumpty fashion, then we are deluding ourselves. For there is no way we can mean precisely what we say - in general and as a matter of Thirdness, that is — without some degree of vagueness, as a matter of Firstness. Comfortable bivalency consequently takes its leave. However, this is not a defeat, not really. When we vaguely mean what we wish precisely to say in general terms, to a degree, and in spite of our quirks and idiosyncrasies and fallibility, we usually manage to say more or less what we mean. We give due acknowledgment to both vagueness and generality, and we become aware that most likely more by luck than by management, we can say what we mean. But our saying will always remain incomplete, for we can never say all we mean. There is something meant that remains unsaid; hence inconsistency often enters into our obsession for completely saying what we mean.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

80

Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 9: Translation within the flow Do I not contradict myself in the way I'm saying we usually contradict ourselves? Of course I do! That's roughly and vaguely my point. Every sign we make or we take is an alteration (translation) of signs past and expectations of signs future. We are in our signs; I must reiterate that we are signs, and signs are us. So when we translate - make and take signs we can hardly do other than feel, sense, and intuit their meanings, all of which are interdependent, interrelated, and perpetually interacting with one another. Peirce, we have noted, dubbed that field of feeling, sensing, and intuiting, Firstness, and with respect to creativity and cognition, he attached the label abduction (to be discussed below), which would make up the first leg of yet another tripod including induction and deduction. Figure 9 might give us somewhat of a picture of intertranslatability within semiosic fluxes and flows. A sign becomes (is translated into) another sign, a sign of itself; yet it is something other, a sign that is other yet is itself. If we consider the left-hand sign in Figure 9 to carry subscript 1 and the right-hand sign to carry subscript 2, we might say that /i of R\ becomes R% and thus endows it with /g by way of the interdependent, interrelated interaction between the two signs. The solid arrows are actualized interrelations, and the broken arrows are implied interrelations that reflexively allow for translation between the signs to come about. There is no neutral ground, no cognitive neutrality, not even in the 'vortices.' Once a sign is actualized, the 'vortex' of R\ carries with it the implication of presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudices, since it became a sign by way of at least a certain element of what Peirce calls habit— the propensity to make and take signs in the way they are made and taken according to convention and within cultural contexts (Boler, 1964). Consequently, the 'vortex' of R^ cannot help but inherit a tinge of those presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudices from its ancestor.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 81

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

I would suggest that the 'vortices' by themselves, in this manner, are merely 'nothingness' or 'emptiness'; however, when their swirl brings about the emergence and engenderment of signs, they become much like the idea of the 'empty set' of set theory. The 'empty set' implies a 'noticed absence' of something that was there but no longer is, or something that was never there but could be at some future bend in the stream. In this respect, 'noticed absence' is a far cry from 'emptiness.'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER FIVE

From Signification to

Understanding

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Interpreting Interpreting

In my abstract scheme of things, it might seem that I give no central place to an interpreter, human or otherwise. Surely, one would like to think, signs don't of their own accord just lift themselves by their bootstraps and come into existence. But actually, they do; that is, we do, for we are interpreters and at one and the same time interpretants: to reiterate, we are ourselves signs among signs. If, as Peirce puts it, 'everything indeterminate is of the nature of a sign,' then we, as questioning and doubting, sceptical and believing, yet vacillating and uncertain organisms, fit the bill. For to reiterate, the 'entire universe - not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of existents as a part, the universe - ... is perfused with signs' (Peirce, CR 5.448n.l). In other words, as tentative organisms caught up in the undecidability of signs, our capacity to survey the whole is beyond us. The vast majority of the possible signs before us at a given juncture remain just that: signs of possibility. The sum of these signs of possibility includes the collection of signs both actualizable and actualized (existent), all signs that have been selected and chosen, and all those that remain non-selected and yet possibly to be chosen. (In this regard, recall Gage, Elliot, and others, whose incapacity to select and choose for themselves rendered their semiotic world of possibilities for selection and choice exceedingly impoverished. They enjoyed a mere fraction of the signs of Secondness and mediary signs of Thirdness that are available to the more self-conscious and conscientious person.) What I believe I am trying to say is this: if a given sign is merely a sign

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

From Signification to Understanding

83

of possibility, of Firstness, then it includes whatever actualization and interpretation it may at some future point enjoy as Secondness and Thirdness. As a sign of actualization and interpretation, it takes its place among all the signs within this actualized domain, and at the same time it preserves a certain interdependent interrelationship with any and all signs within the infinitely larger sphere of possible signs. When we interpret signs that have been actualized, we interpret some of them conceptually and cognitively and most of them - often the vast majority of them - tacitly, implicitly, and relatively passively. Yet in one way or another we interpret them all insofar as we come into contact with them. Those signs we interpret mindfully have been raised to the level of our attention; their interpretation has been fully actualized. Those signs we interpret relatively mindlessly remain as possibilities for our active awareness; nevertheless in a certain very real sense they have been interpreted. When we interpret mindlessly, we as signs are just there, as possibilities for interpretation rather than as actual signs. We are possible signs soon to take on interpretants, to become actualized signs. And what does all this have to do with translation? When we interpret, whether mindfully or mindlessly, we are always in the process of translating signs into signs, for signs are incessantly in the process of becoming something other than what they were becoming, whether we are mindful of the process or not. When we mindfully, and in the most intense way, concentrate on the process of interpretation, we at that moment are also translating ourselves in the act of translating the signs before us. For within ourselves, I would respectfully submit, there is that swirling, spiral ling, fluctuating 'centre,' the 'vortex' within the process, somewhere and everywhere. We cannot help but translate signs into signs, during every moment of our lives. Semiosis lives to translate itself into what it is becoming. It translates itself into itself so that it can live for another day in order to translate. In other words, translation translates itself. From the genuine Peircean view, how could things be otherwise? For a further account of this phenomenon of signs translating themselves into signs from within different languages and broad semiotic modes of communication and distinct contextual patterns from within different cultures, take a look at Figure 10. There is a set of general categories. But,... no,... no ... that's not the best way to put it. Topologically speaking, we should call them 'areas.' The idea of 'categories' seems too cut-and-dried, as if carved in granite. In contrast, topological space is amorphous and pliable, with vague boundaries. So we have area A (which is, let us suppose, hitherto quite unfamiliar to the translator) and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

84 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 10: Signs becoming signs across distinct semiotic worlds

area B (the known culture, language, broad semiotic modes of perceiving and conceiving the world and of communication, and the entire range of all possible contexts). There is what seems to be an overlap between A and B forming A n B. And there are the shaded areas, Ax and By, that can be within either some aspect of A or some aspect of B.1 There are, in other words, two distinct areas of semiosis. Each realm remains exclusively within either A or B. Yet there is interdependency, interrelatedness, and interaction among Ax and By and A Pi B. This seems to imply that in spite of the apparent incompatibility (mutually exclusive cultural traditions, perspectives or conceptual schemes) between Ax and By, and notwithstanding any apparent incommensurability (cultural traditions, perspectives or conceptual schemes that cannot always be compared on a point-by-point basis) between A and B (A n B), there is, nonetheless, the possibility of translation - always with a tinge of vagueness, of course - between one area and the other. This seems to be the implication, since if you will look ahead to Figure 11, the two areas actually exist on different planes within a three-dimensional world such that there is a complementarity (disjoint cultural traditions, perspectives, or conceptual schemes that together or jointly compose a broader, albeit ambiguous, picture) between them by means of the interdependent, interrelated interaction through Ax and By and A n B.2 Now imagine, if you will, that the two ovals in Figure 10 are separated until they meet only by a point. Areas A n B and Ax and By are in the process collapsed into that very point where A and B barely come into contact with each other. Is this any problem? Not really, at least topologically speaking. In a metaphorical way of putting it, a mathematical or geometric point is a 'nothingness,' an 'emptiness' of infinitesimal

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding

85

thickness of zero dimensions. Of course, we need some graphite on paper or whatever in order to render this imaginary 'emptiness' visible therefore, the 'point.' But the mathematical ideal of a 'point' is merely infinitesimal, virtually 'emptiness.' Mathematically and geometrically speaking, in this regard, if we place an infinity of infinitesimal points side by side, we construct a line. By the same process, an infinity of contiguous lines makes a plane, an infinity of planes stacked on one another makes a cube, and a cube expanded in all directions would theoretically construct a four-dimensional hypercube - that, for obvious reasons, is more difficult to depict visually. There is no riddle involved, then, in collapsing by a topological transformation a finite area into an infinitesimal point. So to transform our two ovals barely touching each other into Figure 10, all we have to do, topologically speaking, is expand the point of contact into a line, into many lines, into a portion of a two-dimensional plane separating the lines, into a slight overlap where lines cross such that there is an ever-so-slight nudge into the third dimension. So much for topological expansions and contractions through time and space. We will return to this issue later. For the moment, let's take a closer look at the implications of Figure 10. Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Interpreting Understanding through Hermeneuting Richard Bernstein's (1983) admiring yet slightly critical review of HansGeorg Gadamer's (1979) hermeneutic process suggests that all understanding involves translation, and all translation involves interpretation, and in the process the reader's 'horizon' is invariably enlarged and enriched. Bernstein sees Gadamer's project as 'extraordinarily paradoxical,' a description calling for some explanation. Gadamer understands the hermeneutic process as a rejection of the Cartesian-inspired Enlightenment project of guiding reason by means of transcendental values generated by a subject operating autonomously and uncorrupted by mundane, worldly affairs. The Gadamerian hermeneuticist is within her cultural milieu, and there she is bound to remain. Her understanding cannot appear transcendentally and as if out of the clear blue. Rather, she works within the 'hermeneutic circle' that includes her 'horizon of meaning' (the broad sociocultural tradition within which each human finds herself and from within which there can be no complete extrication), and the 'horizon' of the other. She is in the process hermeneutically of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

86 Sensing Corporeally coming to an understanding. The circle is a way of interpreting different traditions. It involves a tension between different perspectives: that of the other tradition and that of one's own tradition and historical consciousness. Every encounter with another tradition involves experience of this tension between the 'horizon' of that tradition and the historical consciousness or 'horizon' of one's own tradition. Gadamer alludes to, and argues at length for, a circular process of hermeneutic interpretation within which meaning is negotiated between one's own presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudices and those of the 'horizon' of the other (1979:274-5). According to Bernstein, this is problematic. On the one hand, Gadamer insists that we must be able to heed.what is given by the 'horizon' of another culture. We must open ourselves to the citizens of that culture, listen to them, get in tune with them, so that we can communicate with them and they can communicate with us. On the other hand, under the advice of the chief author of phenomenological method, Edmund Husserl, we cannot simply bracket out or ignore all our presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudices. Bernstein argues that actually, our presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudices are precisely what can enable us to understand the other's 'horizon.' In contrast to exclusively textual understanding by taking the text as an object from which the analyst extracts meaning, Gadamer emphasizes the habituated predispositions of the interpreter, who is caught within her tradition and compelled to intuit an understanding of the text from some vantage point within that tradition. This intuition and understanding is what provides the interpreter a degree of interdependent, interrelated interaction with the other's 'horizon' in order that that 'horizon' may be opened and a dialogue established between the interpreter and that other tradition. I cannot adequately do justice to the complexities of hermeneutic practices here, but I will attempt a summary. Hermeneutics emphasizes understanding and interpretation, in contrast to description and explanation, which are the chief foci of natural science. The unified sciences idea as conceived in good positivist fashion during the 1930s propagated the hypothesis that the hard sciences objectively study nature and, in the best of all worlds, the social sciences are capable equally objectively of studying human nature. In contrast, many hermeneuticists - though certainly not all of them - separate the social from the natural sciences. The goals are intersubjective understanding in the human and social sciences and objective description in the natural sciences, interpretation in the human and social sciences and explanation in the natural sciences.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

From Signification to Understanding 87 A distinction between the two broad endeavours stems from the notion that we are always thrown into a tradition - our tradition — and whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not, we are, at each moment in our lives, influenced by that tradition, even and perhaps especially when we get the presumptuous idea that we are free of it. Our tradition is not something 'out there,' in our culture. It is us and we are it. We embody it and live it and it lives through us. Philosopher Charles Taylor (1971) believes this way of living and understanding is the road toward 'intersubjective meanings.' Here he is not alluding simply to the beliefs and dispositions that the members of a given culture are aware of, and that they use as guides in their daily lives. Intersubjective meanings involve feelings and emotions and intuitions and ideas so deeply buried within that culture's articulated and unarticulated values, that they in large part are inaccessible to awareness. Intersubjective meanings engendered out of these feelings, emotions, and intuitions make up a sort of collective non-consciousness. They are taken as the way things are in everyday experiences. They organize and make sense of experience. But intersubjective meanings are not the same as Kantian categories. They are pliable. They exist within the flux and flow of semiosis. They are in perpetual change, as cultural signs become (are translated into) other signs. Consequently, it is impossible to tease them out of collective cultural non-consciousness, for they are always there, as a background for perception and conception. Thus there is no explicit and specifiable set of rules for all cultural conduct, of whatever nature. Some rules are explicitly formulated, for sure. But many of them remain entrenched within cultural practices, and are incessantly undergoing change to a greater or lesser degree, whether we are aware of the change or not. Along these lines, Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of the concept of following rules will be taken up starting in chapter 13. Anthropologist Mark Schneider writes of Taylor's concept of intersubjective meaning: There is ... no more reason to expect agreement about readings of intersubjective meaning than there is about readings of literary texts. Referential competence is thus quite meager, a difficulty compounded by the fact that intersubjective meaning behaves in unpredictable ways: it is, Taylor suggests, an 'open system' as little given to consistency as the weather - apt not just to change quite unexpectedly, but so radically as to alter the very terms in which it must be understood. Thus both because the subject matter of hermeneutic science behaves so capriciously and because hypotheses

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

88 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

with regard to it are thoroughly context dependent, predictions are not in the offing. (1993: 22-3)

Most hermeneuticists, like Gadamer, reject the Cartesian persuasion that reason can free itself of prejudices, prejudgments, and preconceptions. According to these hermeneuticists, we cannot transcend our cultural roots, our 'horizon.' Our 'reason,' of whatever style, cannot ferret out a universal method by which to secure firm foundations for knowledge and then construct a rock-solid edifice within which to house science. We cannot through self-reflection free ourselves of our historical context and know things the way they really are. Peirce would agree, though there are profound differences between Peirce and the general hermeneutics doctrine, since Peirce maintained greater faith in the future of the scientific enterprise than all but a handful of hermeneuticists. Nevertheless, Peirce, like the hermeneuticists, rejects lock, stock, and barrel reason/tradition, reason/prejudice, reason/authority, reason/ intuition, and other related dichotomies. One might be inclined to agree with Richard Rorty's estimation (1979: 315) that hermeneutics is not a method for reaching goals that remain beyond science and the pursuit of knowledge fixed for all time; rather, it is 'an expression of hope' that the vacuum left by the loss of certainty in solid foundations for knowledge 'will not be filled.' Rorty doesn't want that vacuum filled, because it would create once again the image of some finality at the end of the trail. In Rorty's view, knowledge swims along the stream of cultural customs and conventions that, since they are flow, cannot be held firm. In a comparable light, Mary Hesse (1980: 167-86) and, following her example, Richard Bernstein (1983: 30-4) contend that the sciences have actually always been hermeneutic through and through. Like the hermeneutical project, scientific knowledge cannot be fixed - it is always in flux (Agassi, 1975). To wit: 1. Data, or facts, cannot be separated from theory. Both are equally sedimented at the bottom of the river of cultural life, and like a river's sediment, they are perpetually shifted about according to the stream's flow. Even the likes of Karl Popper (1972) argue that cultural activities, whether instinctive or conventional and habitual, are of the nature of theories (recall the above words on Taylor's 'intersubjective meaning'). 2. Theories do not accompany models that are extraneous, hypotheticodeductive constructs squeezed out of life's experiences. Theories and their models cannot be divorced from concrete experiences.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding 89

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

3. Lawlike relations are not simply 'out there,' to be described by a neutrally objective theory. As Albert Einstein (1949) remarked, theory lets us see what we see; theory is not the product of what we have seen. What we see, whether we want to call it facts or data or whatever, is never neutral. 4. Language does not reside in some ethereal neverland such that we can have a word here, the thing to which it refers there, and meaning somewhere else. As Putnam (1988) argues effectively, words, things, and meanings are always contextualized, within incessantly changing pragmatic human situations. 5. Meanings are determined by theories, which are themselves embedded in 'forms of life' - a Wittgensteinian notion to be taken up later. Thus we have returned to the beginning, and thus, a sort of hermeneutic circle has been completed, though it is never an enclosed circle but rather a spiral that is never exactly self-repeating, but instead weaves and swerves and converges and diverges, like phase attractors that run the gamut from relatively stable to quasi-periodic to chaotic (Merrell, 1998a). In this regard, there is no science/non-science dichotomy. There is a continuous spectrum involving all cultural practices, from feeling and emoting and intuiting to thinking and reasoning and languaging. All cultural practices are hermeneutical through and through, in spite of attempts to detach the spectator and endow her with a neutral, objective view of the world. Thus the 'hermeneutic circle' is expanded to include the whole of culture, and the relatively confined definition ordinarily given it is up for alteration. Embodying the Mind and Hermeneuting the Body A shift in the significance of the 'hermeneutic circle,' implying acknowledgment of our prejudices and prejudgments and preconceptions in any and all cultural practices, enables us the possibility of more encompassing understanding. This hermeneutical understanding is, itself, the very process of our becoming, the becoming of the whole of our interdependent, interrelative interaction with ourselves and our world, with our signs and with ourselves as signs among signs. I repeat: all understanding involves interpretation, and all interpretation involves understanding, whether we are speaking of hard science or soft science or everyday life's comings and goings. But contrary to the usual hermeneuticist rhetoric, understanding and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

90 Sensing Corporeally interpretation are never entirely grounded in language. Rather, as we noted earlier with the help of Antonio Damasio and our hapless Mel, and as we shall observe further in works by Oliver Sacks and Jorge Luis Borges, language itself is grounded in those more encompassing signs chiefly of Firstness and Secondness, of iconicity and indexicality, signs of body as well as - and in many cases even more than - mind: signs of bodymind. In this regard, any hermeneutic account - indeed, any textualist account - predicated obsessively on language and virtually language alone cannot but remain deficient. There is something else, something more in tune with one's 'form of life,' something that remains implicit as intersubjective meaning, something that can be understood and interpreted quite efficiently, but it does not lend itself to hyperselfconscious articulation in words, words, and more words. Remembering this, take another look at Figure 8. Assume that A and B are distinct 'horizons.' Ax and By enjoy no intersection, literally speaking. But through them, there is a certain commonality between A and B, since there is a continuum from Ax to By through A n B, which is shared by A and B, but not by Ax and By. This commonality becomes more apparent in Figure 11. This figure is topologically of more significance, since A and B have been thickened so that they appear three-dimensional rather than paper thin and two dimensional, and they are looked at from the side rather than the top. Here, obviously there is overlap. But strictly speaking there is no merging or fusion. Nor is there any interpenetration; that is, there is apparently no interpenetration. It would still seem that A and B are autonomous of each another. It would also seem that they are incommensurable, such that each entails its own conceptual scheme, its own static frame of reference, a prison house of perception and conception and language, an impenetrable perspective by means of which the world is constructed. In other words, it might seem that to interpret something within A and something else within B is a matter of interpretation exclusively either within A or B or Ax or By. Not so, however. Actually, Ax is part of A, and A enjoys intersection with B through A n B, and By is part of B, and B enjoys intersection with A through A n B. So through these interdependent interrelations in topological space, there is commonality, or mutual interpenetration, such that neither A nor B has its own unique identity. Yet there is a collective or transpersonal identity made up of both A and B. So in a manner of speaking, there is A - identity that is notB - and there is B - identity that is not-A. Now what do I mean by that? What I would like to mean is that an interpreter can reside in horizon

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding

91

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 11: The commonality between semiotic worlds

A, or she can reside in horizon B. She can also ephemerally navigate in both A and B within Ax and By through A n B, although she cannot exist within both at the same time. In other words, given different increments of time, we can have either A orB, and we become smug with ourselves logical, rational animals that we think we have become, for we have avoided contradiction. But not so fast. We can also have both A and B, as complementary partners, though we can do no more than exist intermittently within each of them. In this respect, classical logic once again goes into spasms, for we have in a manner of speaking violated the principle of noncontradiction. Or perhaps not, one might wish to respond. After all, there seems to be no problem with our asserting A within one context at one time and asserting B within another context at another time. So there is no genuine contradiction, for the A-assertion and the Bassertion come at different times. Well and good, logically speaking. However, if we are in the process of flowing to and fro between A and B in what is for all intents and purposes a continuous process, then the logical prohibition of contradiction becomes elusive at best. Things get fuzzy. In other words, in trying to escape from Cartesian imperatives, the historically repressed body, stuck away in the closet of the epistemological household in hopes nobody will notice it, gnaws its way through the woodwork and into the bright lights of logic and reason to take its place alongside mind. And what do we have here? Clarity and distinction. How sweet it is! Now we quite comfortably and securely have either A or we have B, and we dare not mix them, for if we do, dark clouds of anarchy and ignorance will surely wipe out our knowledge, that product of our noble struggle toward distinctively human status. However, there is also the non-Cartesian form of enlightenment. This is the more modest enlightenment of bodymind, where there

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

92 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

are no clear-cut and distinct either/ors. While mind wants binaries at all cost, body - that is, bodymind - subsidiarily feeling and sensing bodymind can quite comfortably rhythm with both the either and the or. It is mind that takes anything and everything to be now the either, now the or, with no possible alternatives. Mindbody thinking is something else altogether. It blends bland binaries; it smoothes out dichotomies; it rounds off contradictions; it does not get bent out of shape by a few inconsistencies but takes them warmly into its embrace. This is where logical fudging comes about. In all this, after countless generations of existence in the cultural cellar, a number of women thinkers and writers - those subtle connoisseurs of bodymind feeling and sensing and thinking - are finally making themselves known. This we learn very effectively from the likes of Gloria Anzaldua (1987), Carol Bigwood (1998), Susan Bordo (1987), Rosi Braidotti (1991), Judith Butler (1993), Rey Chow (1993), Jane Flax (1990), Luce Irigaray (1985), and Maria Lugones (1994), among others. Woman and body are at long last beginning to take their rightful place in semiosic processes, as illustrated in a couple of citations, the first from Adrienne Rich: I am convinced that 'there are ways of thinking that we don't yet know about.' I take those words to mean that many women are even now thinking in ways which traditional intellection denies, or is unable to grasp ... In arguing that we have by no means yet explored or understood our biological grounding, the miracle and paradox of the female body and its spiritual and political meanings, I am really asking whether women cannot begin, at last, to think through the body, to connect what has been so cruelly disorganized. (1976: 192)

And the second from Luce Irigaray: Those who have distanced themselves from their bodies so greatly that they have forgotten them, need to have the truth. But their 'truth' immobilizes us, like statues, unless we lose our fondness for it, unless we shake ourselves free of its power, by trying to say, here, there, at once, how we are moved. (1985: 214)

What I am trying to get at also follows the stream of Richard Shusterman's (1992, 1997) 'philosophy as a way of life,' as 'psychosomatic integration.' Shusterman's way entails a move from linguicentric, Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding

93

ocularcentric, textualist, and lingering linear thought toward non-linear flows. Yet the structuralists and poststructuralists, many hermeneuticist and postmodernists, and even such rebellious spirits as Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, and Fredric Jameson, and Richard Rorty and most of the neopragmatists, have remained ensconced within language and can't see the extralinguistic signs for the plethora of words ground out by their semantic sausage machines. Our twentiethcentury linguistic, textualist, and hermeneutic turns were at the outset welcome, to be sure. Shusterman concedes as much:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Textualist ideology has been extremely helpful in dissuading philosophy from misguided quests for absolute foundations outside our contingent linguistic and social practices. But in making this therapeutic point by stressing what Rorty terms the 'ubiquity of language,' textualism also encourages an unhealthy idealism that identifies human being-in-the-world with linguistic activity and so tends to neglect or overly textualize nondiscursive somatic experience. (1997: 173)

Yet the point Shusterman makes has been conveniently ignored. Many scholars tenaciously continue on, in linguicentric, ocularcentric, textualistic bliss, apparently with little or no awareness that the world is passing them by. What I mean is that mind and body become bodymind, that the conceptual and the corporal become one, that theory and practice are never completely separated, however comfortable armchair philosophy may become and however complex everyday work and rough-andtumble street living may appear. What we all need to do is learn from those more-human-than-human examples Damasio reveals. What we need to do more often is go outside and observe the squirrels, smell the daisies, try to find some fresh air to breathe, and above all, get in tune with ways of life 'out there.' Yes, the squirrels, and such: there is more wisdom there than initially meets the eye. Between the Line

It has become quite obvious according to the above paragraphs that hermeneutics relates to the controversy over incommensurability. In spite of what hermeneuticists and Donald Davidson say, one of the chief problems that has plagued scholars as diverse as Paul Feyerabend, Clifford Geertz, Sandra Harding, Mary Hesse, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

94 Sensing Corporeally Hilary Putnam, Charles Taylor, Stephen Toulmin, Peter Winch, and a host of others bears on how we can come to grips with the idea of paradigms or conceptual frameworks or schemes that communities are locked into. When someone from one community confronts someone from another community, how can we understand the tradition of the other, which seems so strange and alien? Whether one is trying to make sense of Aristotle's physics, Hellenistic art, the Hindu or Islamic religion, Zande witchcraft, or Javanese or Balinese culture, the problem is fundamentally the same. The hermeneutical labour is to find the resources in one's language and experience that may enable one to understand unfamiliar cultural traits without imposing blind or distorted prejudices on them. If one were confronting cultural practices so strange that they had nothing in common with one's language and experience, there could be no intelligible talk about the idea of understanding. According to the above discussion, this problem is just as fundamental for Gadamer as it is for Davidson. What Gadamer and the genteel creme de menthe and comfortable swivel chair crowd rarely point out — mainly, I suspect, because of their linguicentrism, their textualism, their ocularcentrism, is that when we understand, we feel it in our bones, in our guts, and not simply in our heads. Our bones and guts have a sense of the past and a style of reasoning about which the head knows litde. This point is brought home effectively in the work of Paul Connerton (1989) and Morris Herman (1981) and in recent 'sensuous scholarship.'3 And yet, in Gadamer and others there are cracks here and there that allow us a peek into something else, some alternative, some other way or middle way that emerges from bodymind rather than strict Cartesian mind. Let us, then, return to Gadamer for a moment. On the 'fusion of horizons,' and taking cues from Nietzsche and Husserl, he writes: Every finite present has its limitations. We define the concept of 'situation' by saying that it represents a standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence an essential part of the concept of situation is the concept of 'horizon.' The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. (1975: 269)

In a later passage from the same book, we read: The closed horizon that is supposed to enclose a culture is an abstraction. The historical movement of human life consists in the fact that it is never

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding

95

utterly bound to any one standpoint, and hence can never have a truly closed horizon. The horizon is, rather, something into which we move and that moves with us. Horizons change for a person who is moving. Thus the horizon of the past, out of which all human life lives and which exists in the form of tradition, is always in motion. It is not historical consciousness that first sets the surrounding horizon in motion. But in it this motion becomes aware of itself. (1975:271)

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The horizon is limited and finite. In this regard we're into the same groove. Gadamer also argues at length that it is open, always changing, fluid, flowing along with other horizons. Still the same groove, we might wish to say. But not quite. Does this notion of a horizon not seem to be something exclusively textual? Linguistic? Crammed into classes, categories, taxonomies? However profound the break with Cartesian mindstuff as an autonomous and imperious adjudicator of reason and knowledge of body-stuff and the world out there, Gadamer, hermeneutics in general, and in large part theories of incommensurabilism, paradigms, and conceptual schemes, don't quite get the point. That point is, in Shusterman's words: By acute attention to the body and its nonverbal messages, by the practice of body disciplines which heighten somatic awareness and transform how one feels and functions, one discovers and expands self-knowledge by remaking one's self. This quest for self-knowledge and self-transformation can constitute a philosophical life of increasing embodied enrichment that has irresistible aesthetic appeal... Philosophy needs to pay more critical attention to the variety of somatic practices through which we can pursue our quest for self-knowledge and self-creation, for beauty, potency, and pleasure, for the reconstruction of immediate experience into improved living ... Experience, in this somatic sense, should belong to the practice of philosophy. (1997: 176-7).

The 'quest for self-knowledge and self-transformation' is a body quest as well as a mind quest - or better, it is bodymind quest. A sound body sound mind philosophy of concrete living would certainly be a healthy switch in our days of academic isolationism. That, hardly anybody could deny. It could also give us a clue as to how we can phase into Gadamerian hermeneutics. Hence, the question: How does all this happen? Or to use Gadamer's term, how does this 'fusion of horizons' come about during which time

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

96 Sensing Corporeally

AB-lessness

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 12: The mark of distinction's function

we risk and test and translate and interpret and understand our own 'horizon' and the other'?, 'horizon'? And how is it that we become aware of our own prejudices, prejudgments and preconceptions and those of the other, whereby our 'horizon' is expanded and enriched and in the process the same occurs to the 'horizon' of the other"? 'Horizons,' surely, must be in words common to the present disquisition, interdependent, interrelated, and interactive; they are participatory among themselves and participatory with the world. They entail a certain enchantment, or re-enchantment as it were, with the world.4 To repeat the question: How does it all come about? Return to Figure 11 for a moment. As we noted, there is what might seem a terrifying gap between Ax and By. But through A n B, A and B have some perceptual and conceptual and corporeal territory in common - especially when we reduce the entire area to a lonely point. Yet a boundary exists between them even in this territory. However, Ax and By are transversal: they are themselves apparently intransigently separated; yet through their transversality within A n B, they merge into each other; they mutually interpenetrate to become one. And their mutual interpenetration brings about an interpenetration of A and B. Now, A and B is not simply a matter of 'both A and B.' The interrelations are considerably more subtle. So let's take things a step at a time by considering Figure 12. One might wish to conclude that there is a natural incommensurability between A and B. One paradigm or conceptual scheme is A, and the other is B, with no chance of their happy fusion into one. Yet A and B share a disjoint property: AB-lessness. The line of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding

97

demarcation between A and B is neither A nor B. It is both A-less and Bless. Yet by way of A-lessness, the line has something in common with B: it is A-less. And by way of B-lessness, the line has something in common with A: it is B-less. In a manner of speaking, the line is both A and B, at least in the sense that it has something in common with each of them and both of them. But that is by no means all. There is not only yet another abrogation of the principle of non-contradiction through the topological function of the division in Figure 12. The excluded middle principle is temporarily placed on the back burner as well. For if one can say that the line, ABlessness, can be described as at once both A and B, one can also say that it is neither A nor B. It is neither A because it is A-less, nor B because it is B-less. In Figure 12, then, we can have the possible assertion 'A,' we can have 'not-A' or 'B,' we can have 'not-B' or 'A,' we can have 'both A and B,' and in addition, we can have 'neither A nor B.' All this fusion and confusion is wrapped up in one labyrinthine package.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Not Merely Complementary but Incongruously Complementary

But what is a line, anyway? The line in Figure 12, for example. Mathematically or topologically speaking, we have noted that it is nothing an infmitesimally thin, imaginary nothing that separates something from something else. Actually it is nothing, no-thing, but at the same time it is some-thing. It is a boundary that divides and hence allows for at least some initial move toward perception and conception of a world, of the world as it is perceived and conceived from within a particular cultural setting. Yet it is no-thing, a no-thing that divides and hence becomes perceived and conceived as some-thing. In order to represent a line, of course, there must be a mark of distinction, something visible, so that mere imagination can emerge into the world of some-things. But the mark is in and of itself an unfortunate and practical necessity that creates a deception. It threatens to deceive its onlooker by its appearance as some-thing. Yet it is no-thing. The line of demarcation is a no-thing, 'emptiness,' that brings about an embrace of A and B. It provides the function of the composite terms Ax and By and A n B, as if they were all collapsed into a line, into a nothing, into nothingness or 'emptiness.' It is, nonetheless, an 'emptiness' that holds - 'holds' is admittedly a misnomer, but words are with difficulty forthcoming here - that holds within itself, the possibility for the actualization of every-thing. From no-thing, everything mutually arises.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

98 Sensing Corporeally Something from nothing? Yes. But not in the way we customarily think about it. The notion actually comes from the ancient Buddhist tradition. It has also been emerging slowly in the West since quantum theory entered the scene - notwithstanding all the euphoric pop versions of quantum theory that have us all creating our universe by the force of our consciousness. Yet the quantum theory story is not as simplistic as it might appear at the outset. In an attempt to explain myself, I would ask that you briefly return to Figure 12. If we consider the line separating A from B to be fuzzy, cloudily spread out over an undefined area that includes both A and B as vague topological areas, then it can become tantamount to Ax and By and A n B of Figure 11 once again. Or conversely, if the middle areas of Figure 11 are squeezed into a line, that line could take on the characteristics of the division in Figure 12. In Figures 10 and 11, in other words, there are subdivisions of the divisions in Figure 12. In this sense we have the central portion of Figure 11 as depicted in Figure 13. The term at the lower left, 'incongruous complementarity,' is a response to terms that are common in recent postanalytic, postempiricist discourse: 'incompatibility,' 'incommensurability,' and 'comparability.' I suggest that incongruous complementarity allows for lines of comparability and sympathetic resonance. It also provides for concession of charity between cultural traditions, horizons, and perspectives, and even between conceptual schemes. This concession implies interdependency, interrelatedness, and interaction; these are depicted by the two-way arrows in the shaded portion of Figure 13. And how is this impossible task - impossible according to the incommensurabilists, that is - carried out? Not by jumping out of our culture, our horizon, or our perceptual and conceptual skins, but rather by carefully working back and forth from one 'we' to 'them,' 'this idea' and 'that idea,' 'our practices' and 'their practices.' In this manner, little by little, and painfully, one can hopefully work out an acceptable comparison and contrast. This project is comparable to what anthropologist Clifford Geertz calls 'experience near' and 'experience distant.' An experience-near concept is, in a nutshell, one that a patient, a subject, or an informant might herself naturally and effortlessly use to define what she or other members of her community see, feel, think, imagine, and so on, and that she would readily understand when similarly applied by others. An experience-distant concept is one that the specialist - an analyst, experimenter, ethnographer, priest, or ideologist - employs to forward her scientific, philosophical, or practical aims (1983: 55-71 ).5

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

From Signification to Understanding 99 Experience distant Experience near

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Incongruous Complementarity (Both some aspect of A and some aspect of B or either some aspect of A or some aspect of B or neither some aspect of A nor some aspect of B but something else) Figure 13: Experiencing complementarity

If the specialist is within A (including Ax) of Figure 13, and the informant is within B (including By), they share topological sensitive, perceptual, and conceptual space A n B. They are ideally capable of feeling, sensing, and perceiving and conceiving, through good will and Donald Davidsonian 'charity' toward each another - and through a degree of Richard Rorty-Bakhtinian conversational-dialogic exchange, we would suppose - some portion of the other's felt, sensitive, perceptual, and conceptual space or horizon. In this manner, experience near and experience distant are not dichotomies, but part of a continuum, as are focal and subsidiary awareness, consciousness and tacitness, body

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

100 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

and mind, and, we must admit, Peirce's categories and the classes of signs. They are all incongruously complementary. Holistically put, semiosis is all, and all is semiosis. Yes, ... I know the rebuttal. What I have put forth is inordinately schematic, programmatic, formulaic, and reductive to the mind-wrenching extreme. Figure 13, as well as Figures 10, 11, and 12, seem to be all there all at once, in static block form. Unfortunately, that might be the initial appearance. When attempting to slap process down on paper and articulate it, one invariably runs into a dilemma. Diagrams and words invariably take on the countenance of fixed sets of categories, rather than rubbery topological forms. If we keep in mind that the areas in question are topological rather than static pigeonholes, that they are supple, malleable, and plastic rather than immutable, perhaps we can get the process in our perspective. We might come to realize how there is flow between the apparently intransigent categories in question. To illustrate process more effectively, some illustrations are in order. I begin with stories about three fictional characters in search of some answers.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER SIX

Interim: From the Pen of

Jorge Luis Borges

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Translation across Presumed Incommensurables?

In Borges's 'Averroes' Search' (1962), the Muslim scholar Averroes wants to know the nature of a pair of Aristotle's terms, 'tragedy' and 'comedy,' from a culture that seems incommensurable - namely, Hellenic culture. But Borges leaves some subtle hints that in order to understand and interpret Aristotle's terms, Averroes must already have a foot at least partly within the presumably incommensurable cultural sphere within which Aristotle worked. Averroes tries gallantly to get inside Aristotle's head to comprehend the concepts of 'tragedy' and 'comedy,' without the benefit of comparable concepts in his own culture or existence of the theatre, to say nothing of Hellenic aesthetic, logic, and ethics. Perhaps more by luck than management, more by a fortuitous conjunction than by pure intellectual power, he comes quite close to the mark, relating 'tragedy' to 'panegyrics' and 'comedy' to 'satires' and 'anathemas,' adding with a note of ethnocentrism that they both abound 'in the Koran and the Mohalacas of the sanctuary' (Borges, 1962: 155). How does he manage this? The narrator reveals Averroes's dilemma, which is also his, the narrator's, dilemma. In the first place, the problem of translation enters the picture. Averroes depends on an Arabic translation of Aristotle to interpret Greek literature; Borges (the narrator) resorts to secondary sources - the works of Ernest Renan, Miguel Asin Palacios, and Edward William Lane - in his attempt to re-create Averroes's world. In the second place, the narrator confesses that his goal, like that of Averroes, is monumental if not impossible: in order to compose the story, he must be Averroes, but in order to be Averroes, he must com-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

102 Sensing Corporeally pose the story, and so on. This regress corresponds to yet others. Early on, Averroes ruminates that for a person to become incapable of sin, he must first have tasted sin. And, following Averroes's hypothesis of poetic discovery, the poet must create not the astounding, but what each person - which is to say, all persons - knows, but does not yet know he knows: the knowledge paradox. In this sense, if Averroes happens to hit upon the answer to his problem, then he becomes like all people, and at the same time he becomes nobody, in which case he ceases being Averroes. Averroes solves his problem, at least to his satisfaction. And quite surprisingly - or perhaps not - as a consequence he ceases being Averroes. At the end of the story, satisfied that he has discovered the meaning of 'tragedy' and 'comedy' and in doing so has managed successfully to embrace Aristotle's culture, he ceases to exist exclusively within his own culture. At that point he looks at himself in the mirror in his bedroom, and he - as well as everything and everybody - fades into oblivion. At th same time, we read that the narrator, having embraced Averroes's dilemma, Arabic philosophy, and indeed, the whole of 'Averroes' Search,' likewise passes away into 'emptiness.' Yet the fact remains that Averroes has somehow partly intuited a solution to his problem, and that Borges (the narrator), on writing his story, has somehow resolved his own conundrum. While engaged in their respective tasks, both men, Averroes and Borges (the narrator), perhaps existed in some sort of imaginary or invented form; but after the fact they ceased to so exist, for they had in a sense become everybody and nobody. Thus Borges is in effect revealing to us the knowledge paradox: the logical impossibility of doing what we do naturally during the course of our everyday efforts to know, to know what in a certain manner of speaking we already knew but didn't know we knew. 'Averroes' Search' is at once a narrative about (1) the problems of narrative, (2) the difficulty (though not the impossibility) of at least partly acquiring knowledge of the Other, and (3) the equal difficulty of breaching the gap between presumed incommensurables. Borges seems to be suggesting that a modicum of communication may be possible across apparently incommunicable chasms. A translation across radically distinct - and perhaps even incommensurable - world images and languages such as Spanish, Quechua, Arabic, and Japanese can always be made; however, such a translation will always be accompanied by a loss, for violence is inevitably done to the languages concerned. Nevertheless, we persist in our efforts to make feasible a degree of communication between languages.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges 103 Paul Feyerabend (1975: 223-85), like Richard Bernstein, also contends that communication across incommensurables is somehow possible. However, it does not involve comparability of meanings; rather, it involves a capacity on the part of the communicator to move intermittently between what at least seem to be mutually incommensurable languages and world images. This is comparable to a to-and-fro movement from Geertz's 'experience near' to 'experience distant' and back again.1 For example, Borges, a native speaker of Spanish, and Averroes, a native speaker of Arabic, can to a degree communicate by Borges's interpreting Averroes's utterances into Spanish and Averroes interpreting Borges's utterances into Arabic. They most likely will sort of muddle along, each oblivious to the violence he may be inflicting on the other's language. Yet they somehow manage to communicate. In this sense, two sentences, p (perhaps Aristotle's definition of 'tragedy' and 'comedy') and q (say, a certain passage from the Koran), can potentially have some sort of meaning approximation toward a genuine interpretation, even though q is generally incommensurable with Borges's world image and p is incommensurable with Averroes's world image. The point is that the two sentences can cooperate and collaborate with each other with relative degrees of success (Korner, 1970: 63-5). The meaning approximation I refer to comes about through information transfer by way of the core constituents of a word or a set of words - core constituents that at least in part are common to what appear to be two incommensurable conceptual schemes. In contrast, interpretation, which cannot be absolute across incommensurables, involves peripheral or subsidiary constituents (i.e., incommensurable words such as 'mass' or 'energy' or 'simultaneity,' from the Newtonian to the Einstein framework). In other words, information from core concepts can ideally be transferred between two incommensurables, which can then serve to approximate valid meanings in both; however, interpretation, which includes peripheral and tacit meanings, cannot be made totally explicit across those same incommensurables. (This formulation falls in line with Michael Polanyi's 'tacit knowing' [1958] by means of focal [ core] and subsidiary [peripheral] awareness; see chapter 7.) Thus, Averroes is quite correct insofar as both 'tragedy' and 'panegyrics' involve public assemblies and formal, serious, and laudatory discourse about a rather dignified individual who is generally conceived to be superior to the social norm. But he errs in that his analogy does not reveal the conflict between this person (who inherently possesses a 'tragic flaw') and a superior force (his destiny), which leads ultimately to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

104 Sensing Corporeally his downfall, thereby inducing pity and/or terror in the audience. Yet, Averroes is partly correct in this regard: when ruminating on his problem, he remarks that destiny, which seems to trample all people indiscriminately, brings to mind the readers' own misfortunes in such a manner that they can empathize with the dead Averroes's plight. Averroes's coupling of 'comedy' to 'satire' and 'anathema' partly hits the mark also, for both 'comedy' and 'satire' ridicule and deride human vices and follies (which are anathema, hence they are to be cursed and banned). But he fails to reveal the light and amusing nature of comic discourse, or its customary happy ending - though the Arab's amusement concerning his friend, Abulcasim, who had experienced a theatre in China and had ridiculed that bizarre Chinese practice, was itself somewhat of a comic nature. Hence Averroes's writing in his manuscript that tragedies and comedies 'abound in the pages of the Koran and in the mohalacas of the sanctuary' (1962: 55) presumably corresponds to core terms and concepts that Averroes's world image shares with that of Aristotle's Poetics, though disjunctions prevail at their periphery. In another sense, Averroes misses the mark altogether. He fails to recognize that tragedy and comedy are dramas, produced on stage; he is unable to grasp the concept of actors and spectators. Of course, for the Chinese the very notion of a play is most tacit in their consciousness. It is simply the way things are, and hardly anybody would pay this fact of life any mind. If Abulcasim's Chinese informant is not explicit in describing Chinese theatre to him, it is for basically the same reason that the word 'camel' is absent in the Koran: camels, being ubiquitous in everyday living, simply warrant no mention. Rather ironically, throughout Borges's story Averroes receives various subtle clues suggesting the nature of drama. For instance, while in his study, and baffled over the pair of Aristotelian terms, he overhears some children who, in 'the vulgar dialect, that is, in the incipient Spanish,' are spontaneously acting out a Muslim prayer ritual, some assuming the part of actors and others of the audience. Steeped in his Islamic tradition, however, Averroes pays the children's game no mind and continues his search among the books in his library (a condition comparable, we are reminded, to that of Gage and other Damasio patients, who were adept at abstract thinking, but only along detached, non-human channels). Borges himself intercedes at the close of the story: I tried to narrate the process of defeat. ... I reflected that it would be ... poetic to tell the case of a man who sets himself a goal which is not Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges 105

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

forbidden to others, but is to him. I remembered Averroes who, closed within the orb of Islam, could never know the meaning of the terms tragedy and comedy. ... I felt the work was mocking me, I felt Averroes, wanting to imagine what a drama is without every having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I wanting to imagine Averroes with no other sources than a few fragments from Renan, Lane and Asin Palacios. I felt, on the last page, that my narrator was a symbol of the man I was as I wrote it and that, in order to compose that narration, I had to be that man and, in order to be that man, I had to compose that narration, and so on to infinity. (The moment 1 cease to believe in him, 'Averroes' disappears). (1962: 155)

A bootstrapping, self-organizing operation. The 'real' Borges creates Averroes, who creates Borges, who is in the process of becoming a dream that disappears the moment Averroes disappears. This problem is indeed important, in light of the core and peripheral constituents. Core awareness is chiefly linear, an ephemeral focus on one thing, then another, then another. Peripheral awareness is non-linear; it tends toward the holistic, a tacit acknowledgment of a pattern and indeed of the entire form of life it implies. In this fashion, core awareness entails distinctions, signs and what they are not, signs differentiated from other signs. In other words, it is chiefly of the nature of Secondness. Classical logical principles usually reign supreme in this linear processing of signs and the world, our 'world.' In contrast, peripheral awareness draws from the myriad, holistic possibilities of Firstness; it processes signs and the world in light of conventional, habitual pathways of thought and behaviour, which are the product of Thirdness. Combining the Firstness and Thirdness embodied in peripheral awareness, we have signs and aspects of the world that can be both one thing and its contradiction at different times and places, and that can be neither one thing nor the other but something else in the process of emerging into the light of some semiotic perspective or other. The becoming of consciousness of something new, something different, whether in everyday life or in a text by a process through core awareness and peripheral awareness, is akin to Clifford Geertz's 'experience near' and 'experience distant.' This bears on Averroes's problem. Geertz writes that grasping another person's experience-near concept, and doing so in such a way as to illuminate one's own experience-distant concepts, is a task 'at least as delicate, if a bit less magical, as putting oneself into someone else's skin.' The task seems well-nigh insurmountable because experience-near concepts constitute a large part of one's

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

106 Sensing Corporeally tacit knowledge, and hence they are rarely recognized as concepts at all, much in the manner of Feyerabend's covert meanings in the language of a given theory (e.g., 'drama,' which is a tacit and rarely explicated given within the Chinese form of life). More precisely, it is the nature of experience-near

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

that ideas and the realities they inform are naturally and indissolubly bound up together. What else could you call a hippopotamus? Of course the gods are powerful, why else would we fear them? The ethnographer does not, and, in my opinion, largely cannot, perceive what his informants perceive. What he perceives, and that uncertainly enough, is what they perceive 'with' - or 'by means of,' or 'through' ... or whatever the word should be. (1983: 58)

Geertz reveals that in the field he arrived at his most intimate of notions not by imagining himself to be someone else - a rice peasant, a tribal sheik - and then thinking about what the other person thought and felt. Rather, the path entailed 'searching out and analyzing' symbolic forms - words, images, behaviour, institutions, in short, a form of life - in terms of how people actually represent themselves to themselves. This involves, properly, and rather without thinking about the process, an oscillation between experience-near and experience-distant, and between core and peripheral constituents (or focal and subsidiary awareness). In this respect, while the small group of interlocutors in 'Averroes' Search' extol the virtues of Arabic ways, it is significant that Abdalmalik refers to the mundane, the commonplace - the water of a well, a blind camel - when labelling as antiquated the poets who adhere to pastoral images and the Bedouin vocabulary. For the Arabs, these are ordinarily experience-near concepts, which are deemed relatively unworthy of linguistic embodiment, much like the concept of the theatre for the Chinese. In contrast, Abdalmalik applauds the poet who evokes experience-distant concepts - that is, unique images - and who like Geertz's 'analyst, experimenter, ethnographer and even priest or ideologist' employs these images to promote his craft. Averroes's refutation of Abdalmalik represents a defence precisely of such experience-near terms in his own form of life, which could have aided him in tacitly relating Chinese theatre to his enigmatic Hellenic terms, though they did not. Averroes embeds the two terms in the Koran, where 'tragedies and comedies abound.' He remains incapable of the proper oscillation

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges 107 between experience-near and experience-distant, core concepts and peripheral concepts. In sum, if Averroes's experience is placed within Figure 11, we have him within the experience-near and experience-distant area, which, if contracted to the dividing line in Figure 10, places him in neither one culture nor the other, but betwixt and between any and all dichotomies and cultural categorical imperatives. There, like the narrative, he becomes nobody, for he is within neither one culture nor the other, within neither one language nor the other. Yet he is everybody, for from his non-vantage vantage he enjoys the possibility - however remote many of those possibilities may be - of all vantages.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Or Impossible Translations?

We have a variation on the theme presented through 'Averroes' Search' in the antagonistic pair of characters, Lonnrot and Scharlach, from Borges's 'Death and the Compass' (1962). Lonnrot, the supercogitating detective, thought he had things all wrapped up in a tidy package. After Scharlach had presumably committed three murders, Lonnrot, by way of an intricately complex interplay of simples - a well-reasoned combination of threes and fours, a harmony of time and space symmetries, logical inferences derived from the JudaeoChristian tradition, and the regularities of human behaviour reduced to a minimum - had determined precisely when and where a fourth murder was to occur, even though the assassin himself had predicted its nonoccurrence. There, according to Lonnrot's fine-tuned calculations, he would finally apprehend his antagonist, Scharlach. At first it all seems so logical to Lonnrot. The three murders plotted on a two-dimensional map of the city compose an equilateral triangle, and the murderer has declared that the final crime has been committed. But Lonnrot is less than satisfied. Three is tension. In contrast, four is balance and harmony, the closest thing to perfect symmetry since breaking out of that sphere of unity and into the world of struggle, tears, and death. Lonnrot is convinced that a harmonious - albeit static - and timeless order is destined to triumph. Availing himself of the tools of his obstinate reason, he has calculated the day of the fourth crime, and with a compass he has extrapolated the lines of the triangle on the map of the city before him to construct a rhombus: unwieldy one-dimensional lines stretched through an infinity of steps to join with one another, thus yielding two-dimensional order.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

108 Sensing Corporeally However, after entering the Villa of Triste-le-Roy, the spot on his map where the fourth homicide is to occur, Lonnrot's erstwhile intractable ideals are given a slap in the face by the befogging, bewildering reality confronting him. Lonnrot becomes aware that his world of ironclad logic is tragically flawed. Scharlach appears with his assistants, who apprehend Lonnrot, who suddenly realizes that he is to become the fourth victim. How did Lonnrot err? A brief recapitulation of Borges's story will reveal his tragic flaw. On the third day of December, the third Talmudic congress began in which Yarmolinsky, victim of the first murder, who had endured three years of war in the Carpathians and 3,000 years of oppression, was to be a participant. Yarmolinsky's assassin left a note in the typewriter - 'The first letter of the Name has been uttered' - along with Hebrew books on the Tetragrammaton and other esoteric topics. This homicide, occurring to the North, was followed by a second one, to the West of the city, on 3 January, and a third one to the East on 3 February; both also accompanied by notes that the second and third and final letters of the Name had been uttered. But since the obvious Name, J-V-W-V, contains four letters - that is, four tokens, though three types of letters - Lonnrot concluded that there was surely to be a final homicide somewhere. To his surprise, on 1 March Inspector Treviranus received a large envelope containing a letter signed 'Baruch Espinoza' — that most architectonic of philosophers — and a map of the city with three lines drawn in red ink between the sites of the three crimes. The letter prophesied that on 3 March there would not be a fourth murder. Treviranus sent the map and the letter to Lonnrot, the mental geometer. After studying them, Lonnrot noticed that the events called for 'symmetry' both in time and space. The locations of the three crimes mapped out an equilateral triangle, which was asymmetrical and hence inadequate. For space to be symmetrical, a triangle must duplicate itself to form a rhombus. For time to be symmetrical, there could be no murder on 3 March, since February has three fewer days than December and January, it would have to be committed on 6 March. With calipers and a compass, Lonnrot 'completed his quick intuition,' pinpointing the spot to the South on the map where, on 6 March, the fourth crime was bound to occur. He then left for Triste-le-Roy to become Scharlach's victim. The note Treviranus received was correct: there are three types of letters in the Name, but one letter is repeated, giving four actual letters. The interplay between threes and fours collaborates with the generational

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges 109 principle whereby the triangle, by duplicating itself and rotating its twin 180° on the two-dimensional plane, becomes a quaternary structure. However, not only does trinary space become quaternary, but the same occurs to time also. But not as Lonnrot had calculated. The first three murders occurred on the third day of three successive months, and each murder was separated by thirty-one days from the others, to give equidistant temporal separation. The fourth murder, Lonnrot obviously inferred, must occur on 6 March to separate it by thirty-one days from the third event, since February has but twenty-eight days. Hence Lonnrot rushed to Triste-le-Roy precisely on 6 March. But after being overpowered, disarmed, and handcuffed, Scharlach tells him: 'You are very kind. You have saved us a night and a day' (1962: 84). How can this be? Scharlach explains that Lonnrot had omitted the fact that the deaths had actually occurred on the fourth days of the first three months, for the Hebrews compute days from sunset to sunset. Lonnrot had been calculating with threes, which were fours in Scharlach's scheme; hence, the fourth death was to occur on the seventh rather than the sixth day of the month. Very significantly, then, Lonnrot's scheme, developing linearly through time, was viewed from Scharlach's scheme in toto, as if he were in a higher, more complex, dimension looking down upon Lonnrot's trajectory: it is much as if we were to observe, from above, a rat running what for us is a simple two-dimensional maze; for the rat it is of exceeding complexity. (This is also comparable to Mavrits Escher's topologically ingenious woodcut, 'Relativity': from above, in three-dimensional space, we can see all the alternative possibilities for actualization of the stairways, but the confused inhabitants of Escher's world, from 'within' their two-dimensional sphere of existence, cannot). As a consequence, the 'symmetry' of time as Lonnrot conceived it was that of time in the strictly reversible sense. His triangle replicated itself by undergoing a 180° rotation on the planar map, thus forming a parallelogram. Reverse the operation, and things are once again like they were. It is as if Lonnrot's own time were in a figurative sense that of a one-dimensional 'world line' on his two-dimensional map, whereas Scharlach's time in the Einsteinian sense consists of a 'world line' in three-dimensional space coupled with one dimension of time. From his additional dimension, Scharlach can gaze down on Lonnrot's movements as they trace a 'world line' on his planar space-world, the map. In this manner, Scharlach sees Lonnrot's time within his scheme in terms of another dimension of space added to Lonnrot's two-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

110 Sensing Corporeally dimensional plane consisting of the map of the city. Within his onedimensional 'world line,' Lonnrot inched his way on the two-dimensional map toward his destination; all of this was seen from 'above' by Scharlach in a timeless instant. That is, Lonnrot's time in Scharlach's conception was metaphorically a dimension of space incorporated within his own three-dimensional space - metaphorically comparable to our time within our own Einsteinian space-time continuum. Just as Lonnrot creeps along his 'world line' within the equivalent of a two-dimensional spatial world, so also Scharlach - for whom Lonnrot's world is all there all at once - creeps along his own 'world line' within his own threedimensional spatial world.2 In other words, a rat running its maze traces a single irreversible line over a certain lapse of time in its effort to land its reward. But from our imperious, three-dimensional vantage we can in one perceptual grasp see where it should and should not proceed. And after it has run the maze, we can see where it entered, where it went along its uncertain route, and how it came upon the pellet of food. In comparable fashion, construction of the mapped parallelogram from within Scharlach's world entailed first a replication of the triangle on the map. Then Scharlach enacted the equivalent of a 180° flip in three-dimensional space such that the triangle's base lay adjacent to the base of the original triadic form. He had now located, from within another dimension, and timelessly so, the site of his next crime. The consequence of this flip rested outside Lonnrot's field of vision. For Lonnrot, the solution to his problem was a matter of seeing that the previous crime was here on the map, and now,according to his calculations, the next crime would be there. It was as if he were limited to a relatively helpless two-dimensional perspective. There is a past, a knife-edge now racing through time, and a future. For Scharlach, in contrast, on viewing Lonnrot's trajectory as if on the two-dimensional map, there is simply a before and an after, in the sense of what J.M.E. McTaggart (1927) labels the timeless 'B-series.'3 Scharlach lives in time, to be sure, but his world consists of three spatial dimensions and one dimension of time. Lonnrot also lives in time. However, his 'map-world,' in contrast to that of Scharlach, consists essentially of two spatial dimensions and one of time, all of which are compacted into Scharlach's three dimensions of space in an instant. If incommensurability there be, it would exist in the hoary gap separating Lonnrot's and Scharlach's distinct 'worlds,' which are separated by dimensionalities. It is as if Lonnrot existed within Figure 8, with no fusion of Ax and By, whereas Scharlach enjoyed a higher, three-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges 111 dimensional perspective - metaphorically the equivalent of Figure 13. This, we have observed and shall observe further in later chapters, marks Gage's dilemma and that of other individuals discussed in the essay. Gage could create hypothetico-deductive constructs quite effectively in the order of Lonnrot, but he couldn't put himself, his self, into them; he had no access to the equivalent of Scharlach's more encompassing view. In short, Gage had no feeling for what might be happening within his world construct, for there was no feeling, no sentiment, no emotion; he was as limited within his cultural setting as was Lonnrot within the world Scharlach masterfully wove. Consequently, Geertz's experience-near experience-distant interaction was for him out of the question.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Or Is It a Matter of Who Interprets?

There is yet another variation on this theme, in Borges's (1962) 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.' Briefly, Menard, after a few hits and misses, somehow manages to reduplicate a few passages from the Quixote without previously engaging with Cervantes's work. However, the two orthographically identical texts of Cervantes and the French writer are, according to their readers, nonetheless diametrically opposed. Cervantes's praise of history is conceived to be mere rhetoric; Menard, in contrast, 'a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened, it is what we judge to have happened.' Cervantes's style is 'the correct Spanish of his time'; Menard's is 'quite foreign,' 'archaic,' and it 'suffers from certain affectation' (1962: 43). Cervantes's text, 'in a clumsy fashion, opposes to the fictions of chivalry the tawdry provincial reality of his country.' Menard, in contrast, 'selects as his "reality" the land of Carmen during the centenary of Lepanto and Lope de Vega' (1962: 42). In sum, a reading of each of the two texts is a reading of two worlds. This represents a sort of 'naive textual realism.' Identical texts in distinct contexts are conceived to be radically distinct. That is, iteration (rereading) of a text becomes, rather than a difference, pace Jacques Derrida, something partly to wholly incommensurable. Moreover, if the same text by two different authors can become two contradictory texts, then one might suppose that the historical context of those texts' writings and readings becomes all-important. At any given moment in time, writers and readers are restricted by their finite limitations, but over the broad expanse of time, virtually nothing is impossible.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

112 Sensing Corporeally Yet as Menard once wrote to the narrator: 'Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case' (1962: 44). Hence there is, in effect, no constraint preventing one from interpreting Menard's text as if it were Cervantes's, or vice versa. Or from interpreting, in light of Borges's particular style of intertextuality, Kafka as Cervantes, as Zeno, as Kierkegaard, as Browning, as Menard, or even as Borges himself. Or from reading a scientific text as fiction (which is eventually the case, since, if it is not already falsified, it will be in the future, and if not, then it was not scientific in the first place - at least according to Karl Popper, 1972). Very roughly, such 'schizophrenic' readings of texts are patterned on a variation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's celebrated and sometimes maligned use of the 'rabbit-duck' icon. The same set of marks can be labelled either one or the other according to the disposition of the reader. On the other hand, if the drawing is placed in the context of 'rabbitlike' characteristics, the reader ordinarily disposed to see it either way will almost invariably report it to be a 'rabbit.' And vice versa. Regarding Cervantes's and Menard's texts or Wittgenstein's 'rabbit-duck' example, though identical phenomena exist on the surface, there is a mindgenerated underlying incompatibility. Incessantly altering contexts breed invariably differentiating readings and therefore differentiated worlds. 'Death and the Compass' - two authors and two apparently incommensurable (topological) interpretations that stand no chance of finding a happy meeting ground. 'Averroes' Search' - two authors and one (hermeneutic) interpretation from within apparently incommensurable cultural forms of life, yet the latter author is somehow able to feel, sense, and intuit the meaning of a couple of terms left by the former author, so some form of communication across the incommensurables must be possible. 'Pierre Menard' - two authors and two interpretations by criti who take the two texts as if they are incommensurable. Yet they are able to make comparisons and contrasts and talk about the incommensurability - like Einsteinian physicists who compare and contrast 'mass' and 'energy' within two virtually incommensurable world views, the Einsteinian and the Newtonian. In light of the narrative surrounding Figure 3 and Peirce's ten signs, if we label Cervantes's 'Quixote' as an isolated term sign 331 j, and if we label Menard's 'Quixote' sign 3312, the same sign with different interpretants, then we have the possibility of ambiguity. Now, if a literary critic makes a statement about 'Quixote,' is he addressing himself to the Cervantes sign or to the Menard sign? Does the interpretant of a particu-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges

113

lar sign pertain to Cervantes's work or to Menard's work? Who can say that if one says 'Quixote' he is saying Cervantes's 'Quixote' rather than Menard's 'Quixote'? It is impossible to tell, unless the entire context of the utterance is taken into consideration. Conversely, as we have observed in Goodman's case of 'Green emeralds' in contrast to 'Blue emeralds,' we have different signs for the same set of semiotic objects as well as different interpretants. This makes for the possibility of incommensurability. Regarding a particular emerald, a Realworld jeweller says 'Green' and her counterpart from Grueworld says 'Grue,' or perhaps an apparently confused earthling jeweller friend says 'Blue.' What for one person has become one embodied, embedded, and entrenched sign can be something entirely different for another person. When time is included in the equation, there is ambiguity as far as the Realworlder is concerned, for the Grueworlder used to see and say what is for the Realworlder 'Green' emeralds, but now she sees and says they are what the Realworlder would consider 'Blue.' Yet as things now stand, one person says 'Green' and the other person says 'Blue' with respect to the same semiotic objects. The question obviously arises anew: How can these two people hope to communicate at all? The hopeful companion query is: Do not the contradictory signs and their interpretants used by the interlocutors affect all other signs and their contexts within the interdependent, interrelated stream of semiosis - linguistic and extralinguistic alike - as it cascades along, whisking them through a rush of signs all the ramifications of which they cannot possibly be aware? Is it true that they cannot possibly be aware of the possible ramifications of the other's sign use short of gaining knowledge of its entire context? Which is to say, in other words, that they cannot possibly be aware. So we would expect little communication between a Realworlder and a Grueworlder as far as emerald predicates go. This being the case, for one person the other person's terms would remain suspect, since the emerald predicate is awry, and since one term is interdependently, interrelatively interactive with all other terms. Yes, each sign does affect the whole of semiosis, at least to a minimal degree, no matter how apparently insignificant the sign. No sign is an island. All signs are in their composite one, and the one is in all signs. Ye in view of the above, and in light of the theses held by Davidson, Gadamer, Geertz, and other kindred spirits, if the composite one is in all signs, then it is reasonable to think that communication between interlocutors inhabiting apparently incommensurable worlds is possible after

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

114 Sensing Corporeally

Figure 14: Mobius strip all, though the task is of excruciating difficulty. This virtually unfathomable character of signs bears witness to our fallibility and our limitations. More on this topic later. For now, a query remains with respect to the question ...

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Are Fixed Demarcation Lines Possible, or Are They Merely Fictions? The fuzziness, the vagueness, the ambiguity, the oscillation, the resonance and dissonance, between core-peripheral, near-distant, inside—outside, subject-object, this-that, self-other, sign-object-interpretant, and so on, is according to the above implications the means, through our sign 'vortex,' of interlinguistic, intersemiotic, intercultural communication. This can be imaged with the Mobius strip drawing in Figure 14. How so? And why a Mobius strip? Construction of the Mobius strip begins with an elongated sheet of paper that has a front side and a back side. The strip is folded back onto itself, one end is given a twist, and then the two ends are connected. We now have a two-dimensional plane that was transformed in three-dimensional space such that it has neither a front side nor a back side and at the same time it has both front side and back side, according to the eye and the whim of the beholder. The Mobius strip form is implied by many of the above diagrams. Figure 10 is slapped onto a flat plane as it would be seen from above. If the areas are transparent - actually, nothing is absolutely transparent the topological form embodies a twist in three-dimensional space in order to create a two-dimensional form that would have been impossible

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges

115

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 15: Flattened Mobius strip

had the topologist been confined to a two-dimensional world as if sh were a Flatlander. Figure 11 is also set down in two dimensions, as if w could see the whole of A and B andA xand By and A n B, which we cannot do; yet imagination can project through the two dimensions an into a third dimension to create the image of what would have bee impossible with a two-dimensional domain. Figures 10 and 11 afford n more than imaginary grasps, somewhat like the imaginary grasp of th line of demarcation in Figure 12. In their composite, however, Figures 1 and 11 give, I hope, a fair picture of what is going on. This is because the combination of Figure 10 and Figure 11 consists two two-dimensional pictures that collude and collaborate to give a image of something that occupies three-dimensional space, though thre dimensional space is nowhere to be found in each of the figures, ind pendently perceived and conceived. It's all made up of a bunch of line And what is a line? To reiterate, a line is an infinitesimal no-thing; it is its purest form mere 'emptiness.' Yet line upon line of demarcatio myriad marks of distinction, and vague no-things, are that of which our entire universe is made. And it is that of which the entirety of our signs ourselves as signs included - is made. Speaking of signs, let us consider - once again the tripod model a presented in Figure 1, but this time in light of our 'Mobiusized' Figure 10 and 11, and in conjunction with Figures 11 and 12. First, construct Mobius strip and then flatten it on a plane, and you have Figure 15. Now the two-dimensional strip twisted in three-dimensional space and connected is properly present on a two-dimensional plane. But not really, for there is an 'overlap' of the infmitesimally thin strip folded over an

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

116 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 16: Penrose triangle onto itself to bring about a push, ever-so-slightly, into the third dimension. You have three 'corners' that are not exactly on the same plane but within an extra dimension. (Recall, Lonnrot, who sort of metaphorically travelled along his two-dimensional world, unaware of its limitations, in contrast to Scharlach, who, as if from above, and within a threedimensional sphere of existence, could see it all, past, present, and future, in one massive perceptual and conceptual gulp.) Now, notice that Figure 16, called the 'Penrose triangle' (after internationally renowned physicist Roger Penrose), is a three-dimensional depiction of Figure 15. In addition, we have the gut portion of the tripodic sign, made up of a point and three lines on a plane, the surface of which must be warped and twisted and convoluted in three-dimensional space in order to make up the Penrose four-dimensional topology. This, I would submit, is of the essence of the Peircean sign - that is, if we wish to take the sign in a three-dimensional world of space along with one dimension of time, which falls quite in line with the timespace continuum of our current view of the world. Now for the next move - an exceedingly more radical one. To construct Figure 17, take Figure 11 and compact the shaded area into one domain. Give domain B a twist, which warps the shaded area, then bring the extremities of domains A and B together and connect them. You have in this manner formed a Penrose triangle. Empty the shaded domain along two elongated planes from the extremities of domains A

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges

117

Figure 17: Twists in Penrose space

and B, and indirectly connect them at a point. Then extend the elongated planes toward the third corner of the Penrose triangle to form the familiar tripodic model. You have just constructed a three-dimensional depiction of the Peircean model of the sign, warped and twisted in four dimensions. This model is structurally comparable to the flattened Mobius strip in Figure 16 warped and twisted in three dimensions. Is this all useless mind spinning? In a manner of speaking, yes. However, these topological-morphological mutations are germane to everything that I have written up to this point and everything that I will write hereafter. Given this topological-morphological fission and fusion and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

118 Sensing Corporeally involution and convolution, I would submit, experience-near and experience-distant, core awareness and peripheral awareness, inside and outside, and self and other, merge into one. But... no. That's not right, not really. If these erstwhile oppositions, and all others as well, had genuinely become one, then there would be nothing, no-thing, against which to sense anything and set it apart and interpret it as a sign. There would be no sign perpetually in the making, nor would we as signs flow along in the process of becoming signs. So there is not exactly any mergence or fusion of everything into one timeless whole, for we and our feeling and emotion and sensation and thought are, like all signs, time-bound processes. There is complementarity here, an incongruous complementarity, that entails rhythming, shimmering, effervescent semiosis, from which we construct our semiotic world. In this manner, and following Figures 14, 15, 16, and 17, there is bothand, for oppositions are no longer oppositions but complementarities, from within the area of possibilities (Firstness) in their process of becoming something other than what they were becoming. There is also neithernor, for in the process of this becoming, every possible opposition is not really any opposition at all. For in its becoming something other than what it was becoming, there is neither the one term nor the other term of the opposition, but always something else, something different, something new, that arises from what was the excluded middle that was closely guarded lest some foreign term find a way to make its presence felt (within the area of Thirdness, novel signs emerging from between other signs). So once again we see the relevance of ephemerally subverting the principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle. What we have here is a general case of Borges's Averroes, Lonnrot, and Menard. Averroes deals with images within concrete, everyday life situations involving experience-near and experience-distant in order to solve his apparent incommensurability problem. Lonnrot thinks he is in control of sheer intellection, and avails himself of topological geometry and carefully calculated measures to create his visualizable text for solving his real world problem. However, his text, which is limited to the Cartesian plane, backfires on him, since Scharlach, as if he were dwelling within an extra dimension of space, can see beyond Lonnrot's feeble efforts. Menard works with textuality and textuality alone. Unfortunately for Menard, the limits of textuality become evident, since his critics, limited to intertextuality, interpret his and Cervantes's texts as if they were nothing but marks on paper interacting with other marks on paper, and in limbo with respect to any and all concrete, real-life situations.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges

119

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

What we have here also is Damasio's Gage and other patients suffering from comparable symptoms, who could operate logically and rationally in the order of Lonnrot and Menard and his critics, but who couldn't intuit in the manner of Averroes. They could operate within textuality handily enough to pass the IQ test for postmodern deconstructive aplomb, we might surmise. But that is all words as generalities and their manipulation with respect to possible worlds within assorted hypothetical situations. When it came to the real test - that of concrete, everyday dialogue within everyday life situations of the Averroes sort - they fell far short of the mark. Though they were all too human with respect to those cerebral manipulations that required a vigorous dip in the interdependent, interrelated, interactive maelstrom of logical and rational fluxes and flows, they were able hardly to get wet behind their ears regarding deeply important human issues. As we have seen, it is as if they could make and take signs of the upper echelons of symbolicity (signs 321, 322, 331, 332, 333 in Figure 4) with remarkable facility, but their signs chiefly of indexicality and iconicity (111, 211, 221, 222, 311, and to an extent 321 and 322), left much to be desired. We need to deal with this problem in more detail.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Doing It Tacitly

In this chapter I focus intensively on Peirce's ten sign types as illustrated in Figure 4, and in light of additional Damasio case studies, Borges episodes, and an assortment of patients described by Oliver Sacks. Michae Polanyi's special hermeneutic model sheds still more light on signs and various manifestations of human feeling and sensing and emotion and perception and conception. The watchword is embodiment, sign processes of bodymind in their myriad manifestations. Damasio's seminal concept of consciousness through the proto-self, core-self, and autobiographical-self comes to the fore, offering further insight into Peirce's sign processes. These processes, qualified by notions of vagueness and generality, overdetermination and underdetermination, and inconsistency and incompleteness, round out the image of bodymind in the process of contradictory complementarily interdependent, interrelated interaction with itself and its world. In chapter 9 I present Damasio's hypothesis regarding human feeling and thought when certain aspects of consciousness are lacking. These studies highlight the limitations of language, and how language, without the baser signs of iconicity and indexicality, of chiefly Firstness and Secondness, cannot sustain itself. All of this prepares the terrain for an all-out Damasio-Peirce critique of the classical linear, mechanical, quantitative, dualistic view that has held the West captive, especially since the time of Newton and Descartes. This critique begins in chapter 10, and then picks up steam in the remainder of this book. The Feeling of the Doing Is All-Important As in Gage's shortcoming, many of the things that are most important for us, or at least should be most important, nevertheless remain hidden

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Doing It Tacitly 121 because of their familiarity. They are like Edgar Allen Poe's 'Purloined Letter.' The letter remained concealed because it was so open to view. On a comparable note, much of what we feel or intuit, and much with which we have emotional involvement, lies beyond our ordinary powers of conception and articulation. K., in Franz Kafka's The Trial (1957 [1925]), was asked 'How are you?' He was paralyzed, frozen in his tracks. The question is of the ordinary sort that should elicit a canned answer. It is a question one asks without giving it any thought because the asking is done rather non-consciously, tacitly. A simple response of a few syllables is given in the same way. 'How are you?' somebody asked K. Obviously he was miserable. But how could he articulate his state of mind and body clearly and distinctly? He couldn't, given the very nature of his state of mind and of being. He was like the centipede mentioned earlier, who was asked how he coordinated all his legs at the same time when he walked, so he tried to think about it, and couldn't walk. Somebody asks us: 'How're you doin'?' We respond: 'OK,' 'Fine,' 'Not so great,' or whatever (signs 322). This is a rather mindlessly uttere question that calls for an equally non-conscious and automatized response. What if I answered to the query: 'Well, this morning I woke up with this pain in my shoulder; it is nothing extraordinary, you know, it happens often, arthritis, I think; I went to the doctor a couple of months ago and he prescribed some pills that haven't done me much good; and I'm thinking about divorcing my husband, yes, again; he won't give me any slack, I feel so trapped; I wake up in a cold sweat almost every night...' And on, and on. Someone asked for a commonplace response and she's in for an autobiography of complaints, a series of signs 331 and 332 making up an entire narration, 333. She expected a sign 322 and she got considerably more than she bargained for. She wanted an opening so she could get on with a healthy conversation and she's given a grievance list as long as her arm. Instead of a sign in the order of 'OK/ implying something like 'Hey, there you are, nice to see you, yeah, I always enjoy encountering a friend,' meaningful communication is shunted aside to make way for a litany of complaints. Thank God for the normal people and paranoiacs like K. K, knew what he knew, implicitly; he felt it, in his guts; he had no doubt whatsoever about his condition. But he couldn't articulate it. PL's physical and mental state is outside his conception and articulation, because his condition has to do mainly with those baser and more fundamental signs: 111-211-311. We listen to our favourite piece of music, and then we listen to it again, and again, and never seem to tire of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

122 Sensing Corporeally it. We feel it in our guts, these most fundamental signs. We have it all right there, in those implicit, tacitly felt signs: 111-211-311. If we break the music up into its smallest parts for analysis and conceptualization and articulation - that is, primarily signs 331-332-333 - part a of the entire piece may have little or no meaning for us, nor b, nor c, and so on. So while listening to the entire piece for the nth time, how is it that we are able to reintegrate the parts into the whole such that it is made meaningful? We do it all at the level of feeling, at a visceral level, where those more basic signs dwell. The entire piece is there, in the feeling and emoting and intuiting bodymind, in 111-211-311. Hermeneutic circles aside, it is at this level of feeling-emoting-intuiting, of unthinking-thinking, that we encounter the perennial dilemma of reductionism and analysis. If a and all the rest of the atoms of sound waves of certain frequencies are just that, disconnected atoms as Seconds with no genuine Firstness, then there can be no feeling for them like there is in our vague feeling for the whole of these integrated atoms. And, we are forced to remark, regarding human perception that was Gage's plight. He could quite proficiently process abstract signs of Thirdness and particular signs of Secondness insofar as they remained divorced from his feeling and emoting and sensing self, but he fell far short in the arena of signs of Firstness. And he was at a loss when it came to interrelating his impoverished signs of Firstness with those of Secondness and Thirdness. Lonnrot thought he was quite adept at manipulating signs chiefly of Thirdness, but, as a counterpart to Gage, he erred, for his perceptual and conceptual field was severely limited. Averroes could intuit in fine order, but also much like Gage, he couldn't integrate his signs of Firstness from Hellenic culture with those of his own culture after somewhat successfully translating signs of symbolicity or chiefly Thirdness from one language to the other. Menard, with more luck than management, accomplished his dream of duplicating symbols written over three centuries in the past, but, alas, he forgot the importance of cultural context, and the myriad concoction of signs therein contained, signs chiefly of iconicity or Firstness and indexicality or Thirdness. The moral to this tale of three sad characters is: the categories simply cannot be separated without collapse of the semiotic tripod. Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, interdependency, interrelatedness, and interaction. You sim ply cannot have the one without the other two, given the rolling, swirling, swelling, heaving, receding 'vortex' within the topological, processual forms of semiosis.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Doing It Tacitly 123 In a nutshell, there is no Firstness regarding the whole if each atom has no genuine Thirdness - which is presumably the case in hard-nosed analytical thought. And it hardly needs saying that there can be no genuine Thirdness - mediation between Firsts and Seconds - if there is no rhythming to the music of Firstness. Kafka's K. could not say how he was, though he viscerally knew how he was: he was an existential mess. In effect, he was suffering from thinker's block. Analysing and articulating his lousiness was another matter. Where to begin? How to begin? Where to go from there, wherever that might be? How to know where to go in the first place, if there is no known goal? Without true-blue Firstness or fleshed out Thirdness there is only what is', that is, what is is what happens to be the focus of attention at the moment, with no awareness of what lies at the periphery.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The Separated Categories Syndrome

K.'s problem bears comparison with Jimmie G.'s dilemma. As reported by Oliver Sacks, 'charming, intelligent, memoryless Jimmie G.' could not remember his feelings, thoughts, memories, reflections. If K., somewhat like Gage, couldn't conceptualize and articulate his feelings, Jimmy G. couldn't even remember them. Like the purloined letter, they were surely there, somewhere in his memory bank, but they were irretrievable. Sacks suggested to Jimmie G. that he keep notes every day about his experiences. At first he kept losing his diary. Then it was attached to him around his neck, and he kept it as best he could. But after a day's note taking, if he went back to the previous day's notes he couldn't recognize anything - he couldn't even recognize his own handwriting. There simply was no 'previous day' for him. His mind appeared to have been 'reduced to a sort of Humean drivel [after philosopher David Hume], a mere succession of unrelated impressions and events' (Sacks, 1987: 35; brackets added). Jimmy G. exists in stark contrast to Borges's Funes the Memorious in a short story by the same name (1962). Funes's mind is also a Humean drivel. However, his memory is complete, to the very last detail; in fact, it is infallible. Possessing a photographic mind, he can reduplicate any and all his past sensations, and he can reduplicate his self in the act of experiencing the objects, acts, and events that produced those sensations. Jimmie G. could not even begin to reduplicate his past, for he had no past. He could not, for he had in a manner of speaking lost his self. If one loses an arm or a leg there will be memories of that loss, to be sure.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

124 Sensing Corporeally Jimmie G., in contrast, didn't even have any memories of losing his memory, because, quite simply, he had lost all his memories. The teeming Seconds of his experiences, shorn of all feeling, all qualities, all Firstness, and never having been charged with meaning, with Thirdness, flitted into his mind and felicitously flew out like the lightest breeze, gone forever. Jimmie G.'s Seconds were nothing but completely disconnected Seconds, as signs 222 without iconic input - from signs 221, 211, 111 - and they had never enjoyed the fullness of a healthy ingestion of symbolicity - from signs 321, 322, 331, 332, 333. Jimmie G.'s signs were like the Cheshire cat that was nothing but a grin in the first place and then the grin disappears without a trace of its former existence as an index of what it never was. Nothing but virtual 'nothingness' remains of the past. Jimmie G. was lost in 'spatial time,' that 'timeless time' philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart (1927) labelled B-Series time consisting of a static 'before' and a static 'after,' but no mobile 'now.' However, he seemed to be at home in McTaggart's A-Series time, the flowing time of Henri Bergson (1911) consisting of a knife-edge 'now' incessantly moving from 'past' to 'future,' except that for Jimmie G. there was no 'past' and hence hardly any anticipation of the 'future.' It was as if there were only the 'now.' He could briefly find pleasure in the mental challenge posed by puzzles or games of calculation, but he would fall into the abyss of nothingness and amnesia once he lost interest. Sacks reports that Jimmie G. would usually be found fluttering around, bored and lost. But at times he could be deeply attentive to the beauty of the world around him in the 'now.' Unfortunately for him, there was hardly any 'then,' either in the past or the future. Signs 111, 211, 311, and to an extent 221 are closest to the 'now' of our senses, our sensations, experiences, feelings, sentiments, emotions, desires, wishes, inclinations. They are closest to the body, to what the bodymind knows without our needing to be conscious of its so knowing. While in tune with these signs, we walk and talk without giving our walking and talking much mind. Our mouth at times unfortunately goes out of control because we mindlessly fail properly to engage it. And we walk to where we want to go without the act of walking in mind. Our nonconscious, tacit walking and talking usually serve us quite well. They are an indication that we are integrating the categories and their respective signs in proper order. They tell us we are not suffering from the 'separated categories syndrome.' Yet, the fact remains that we sometimes mindlessly put our foot in our mouth; we occasionally run into the door

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Doing It Tacitly 125 when leaving a room; we absent-mindedly turn up the wrong street when driving home while concentrating on our latest earthshaking idea; and we misplace things, forget appointments, fail to honour the daily niceties with our spouse, and so on. Throughout these mindless acts, we are living in the 'now.' Indeed, there's a little of Jimmy G. and Averroes and Lonnrot and Menard in the best of us. We really should be more mindful of the hows and whys and ways of our walking and talking and driving and doing other things. Mindfulness, however, is another issue. For now, let's stick to what we do tacitly, and mindlessly.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

When What Is Done Is Unthinkingly Done

'Tacit knowledge,' Michael Polanyi (1958) calls this non-conscious form of knowing that is revealed in what we just do without having to think about it or will our body to do it. In addition to hermeneutic knowing, it bears on Charles Sherrington's (1940) 'sixth sense,' Mary Douglas's (1975) 'implicit meanings,' Wittgenstein's (1953) 'forms of life,' HansGeorg Gadamer's (1979) 'horizons,' Gregory Bateson's (1972) 'grace,' Peirce's 'feeling' of Firstness combined with habit, and it variously goes by many other names and takes other forms besides. It is that which is known without one's necessarily being conscious of so knowing it. And what one does by way of this knowledge one does, as if it were second nature. And in a sense it is. When limiting ourselves to a consideration of what the body knows, we might begin by consulting Sherrington, as does Oliver Sacks. Regarding the body's doings — and by association the mind's doings — Sherrington labels this hidden sense proprioception. Proprioception is indispensable for our sense of ourselves, and of our body, its position, its moves, some of which are involuntary or implicit. It has to do with kinesthetics, with motility, with somatosensory awareness. What our body does is of utmost importance, though usually we hardly give it any thought. It is comparable to squirrel knowing in the example with which I opened this inquiry. The squirrel knows what to do, and does it without hesitation and without a lot of idle speculation about alternatives. In contrast, when mind intercedes in the doings of body (or bodymind), we often consider mind, owrmind, in contrast to everything else. Perhaps this is part of the reason why we like to consider our body in terms of some other. It is 'my body,' 'my leg,' 'my arm,' and so on, as we say in English. The body and body parts tend to be taken as Seconds. They are taken as if they were something other, other than the self - part of the self s possessions, with

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

126 Sensing Corporeally the self, in the most ideal sense - as a disembodied, disinterested bystander, a hollow shell of Firstness, with hardly any embodied Thirdness to brag about. This is the Cartesian split in its most vicious form. This quality of the Cartesian split is why the person Oliver Sacks calls the 'disembodied lady' is so disconcerting. Christina dreamed that she had lost control of her body, and on awakening, sure enough, she began progressively losing control of her body. She was becoming 'disembodied.' She eventually lost virtually all her proprioception. From top to toe, she had hardly any sensations, though she maintained some awareness of temperature, light, and pain. She could focus her eyes and keep tabs on a conversation, but while doing so, she had literally no idea what was happening to her body. In fact, if while ambulating across the room she closed her eyes, she could lose all control and fall into a heap. Her movements had to be consciously and very carefully monitored, perhaps because the body had forgotten what to do; that is, perhaps the mind had forgotten implicitly how to send directions to the body to tell it what to do; that is, perhaps the body had ceased taking orders from the mind in a silent act of rebellion. Or whatever. For someone with Christina's problem, it becomes well-nigh impossible to separate body from mind. Perhaps a couple of Polanyi's terms regarding tacit knowledge will help us get a feel for Christina's condition: focal (or proximal) attention and subsidiary (or distal) attention. Ordinarily the mind focuses on the task at hand, while remaining subsidiarily aware of other activities, which are left to take care of themselves. This is the proprioceptive bodymodel. Thus when hammering a nail into a board, the carpenter is focused on the head of the nail. At the same time, his left hand holding the shaft of the nail, his right hand grasping the hammer, the tension in his biceps and triceps, the angle and bend of his elbow, the angle of the hammer and its weight, the nail now leaning slightly to the left with the third blow, the board sliding approximately one inch forward due to the hammer blows, and more remotely, perhaps some hammering next to him, a circular saw that just kicked in some ten yards to the right, cars whizzing past on the street outside, a jet plane flying overhead: all of this belongs to subsidiary attention. These subsidiary activities are more immediate and less mediated than focal attention. They are closer to the sphere of Firstness and somewhat removed from Thirdness. They consist of signs in interdependent, interrelated interaction with other signs in what has come to be taken as the most natural ways of signs. These signs are most at home as signs 222. A weathervane, for example, indicates the direction of the air current whether or not anyone is

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Doing It Tacitly 127 around to acknowledge the sign as a sign and properly interpret it. In a sense, the weathervane 'knows' what to do and does it, because that is its nature. That is its 'habit,' as it is the 'habit' of the hand to wield the hammer that hits the nail that is driven into the wood. Suppose the hammer has been around for some years and the head is loose. While the tool is being used, the head gives a little. Its owner stops hammering and shifts his focal attention to take a look. The hammer's head is now the sign of his focal awareness, and his left hand itself has become the subsidiary sign 222 that moves the hammer shaft that causes the hammer's head to wobble slightly for his focal attention. The hand knows how to do this, just as it knows how to hold the hammer when engaged in the act of hammering, because that is its 'habit.' The tool is inspected, and tossed in the junk heap: time to buy another one anyway. Focal attention has been redirected, and part of what previously constituted subsidiary attention has fallen out of the picture. Christina, to repeat, lost her proprioceptive capacity. Put another way, her subsidiary attention had become virtually null, and she was capable of hardly more than focal attention. Consequently, she had no body image, no sense of the body's interdependent interrelation and interaction with the signs in its immediate environment. But at the same time, as compensation, she acquired especially acute hearing. Normally, when we are speaking, our own voice inflection and tone remain subsidiary. In contrast, Christina had fundamentally lost her capacity for subsidiary attention, and as a result she found it necessary to concentrate on this aspect of her speech. At first she had difficulty in doing so, but gradually she made progress and her conversation took on a more 'normal' countenance. Christina applied this same type of retraining to her body. Since she had very little proprioceptive awareness, she found it necessary to compensate for this loss by paying close focal attention to her body's posture. She was eventually able to improve on the positioning of her body. The problem was that her pose seemed forced, wilful, and histrionic, 'like a dancer in mid-pose.' Nature having failed her, she resorted to artifice, 'but the artifice was suggested by nature, and soon became "second nature"' (Sacks, 1989: 49-50). In other words, signs 222 had been part of Christina's subsidiary awareness and its scant interrelations to and interactions with the signs around it. This allowed her focal awareness to rest on signs of more immediate importance (221, 321-322, and 331-333 during a conversation). Now, given her lack of proprioception, she found it necessary to bring signs 222 into her focal awareness as well, and consciously and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

128 Sensing Corporeally wilfully orchestrate the whole. This is indeed taxing. It requires attention to too much detail for comfort. As a consequence, Christina's moves seemed unnatural, as if coming about in automaton fashion. Her compensatory act, having become available to her without her having consciously to think about it, became part of her nature. Yet she was still lacking in natural proprioceptive awareness, so it appeared to onlookers to be unnatural. What for us are signs 222 of our proprioceptive awareness, Christina found she had to boot up to signs 321 and 322 - to indexical and linguistic 'pointers' or 'indicators' (321, or pronouns) and customary and entrenched or embedded language use (322, 'How are you?'). However, though we habitually take signs 321 and 322 in and process them as part of our subsidiary attention and in automaton fashion, she was required explicitly to concentrate on them. Hence her moves seemed to be those of an automaton. Now according to Peirce, when signs 322 and 321 are repeated over and over again they begin to be made and taken as if they were signs 222 and 211 respectively. They have become second nature, they have become part of our 'habits of thought and of action.' Christina, in contrast, could not afford the luxury of their becoming habituated: each actualization of signs 322 and 321 must be taken as if they were there for the first time, and she reacted accordingly. Her self necessarily remained apart from them. Ordinarily there is hardly any distinction between our self and our sign replications at this habituated level; we take them all in our stride, and act appropriately and proprioceptively. Christina, as a consequence, felt that her body was 'blind and deaf to itself,' that it had 'no sense of itself.' Sacks observes that neither Christina nor society has the proper words to describe her strange condition: The blind, at least, are treated with solicitude - we can imagine their state, and we treat them accordingly. But when Christina, painfully, clumsily, mounts a bus, she receives nothing but uncomprehending and angry snarls: 'What's wrong with you, lady? Are you blind - or blind-drunk?' What can she answer - 'I have no proprioception'? The lack of social support and sympathy is an additional trial: disabled, but with the nature of her disability not clear she is not, after all, manifestly blind or paralysed, manifestly anything - she tends to be treated as a phony or a fool. This is what happens to those with disorders of the hidden senses (it happens also to patients who have vestibular impairment, or who have been labyrinthectomised). (1987: 51)

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Doing It Tacitly 129 Christina, in short, is condemned to dwell in an indescribable, unimaginable world. It is a 'non-world' that Sacks refers to as 'nothingness.' She has lost all sense of her identity with respect to her body; ultimately she has no body-ego. Whenever she wishes to use her hand, she must reinvent it as 'her hand' (signs 331, then 322 and 321) and then concentrate on using that otherwise alien appendage for a specific purpose (as sign 222). She has succeeded in being able to 'operate' within her surroundings, but she cannot simply 'be' - she cannot be 'herself,' 'herself.' Her signs of chiefly Secondness have no past; they must be reactualized in the present as if they were there for the first time. Yet she has learned to survive, an indomitable, irrepressible, and impressive human being.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Becoming Aware of the Doing Now that we have tentatively journeyed up and down the semiotic ladder once again, what more do we have in light of Antonio Damasio's intriguing studies? Damasio specifies three areas of the becoming of knowing: (1) an emotion, (2) the feeling of an emotion, and (3) awareness of the feeling of an emotion. In Peircean form, feeling itself is the Firstness of Firstness, the qualisign or image, sign 111. The becoming of awareness of that emotion in regard to some happening 'out there' or in the mind ushers in the Secondness of the image, while leaving everything else within Firstness. This is comparable to sign 211. Awareness of the feeling as feeling with respect to an image and its respective object begins happening as the image scales the semiotic peak to reach the first level of Thirdness, analogous to sign 311. But what was happening in the meantime? Sign 221 brought on the surprise that what was happening was happening, thus preparing awareness for that which brought on the emotional flow. And 222 was responsible for bringing the interdependent, interrelated image and object into an ephemeral embrace so that awareness could become awareness of something happening. Now, to move up the scale, we are primed for language. First there is 321, perhaps a pronoun as a reminder, a recall, of something in the past that can be brought to the fore at the present moment to merge this moment with past moments or expected future moments. 322, interrelating with commonplace happenings and expressions, brings on the nod of acknowledgment that the image and object are not exactly alien to the self, but are part of the selfs familiar activities.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

130 Sensing Corporeally Then signs 331, 332, and 333 allow for words, sentences, and elaboration of stories and arguments, with all of which the human animal is quite adept. But we need not go that far up the sign scale. Indeed, we can remain within 111, 211, and 311 for the present, for there is plenty to talk about and ponder over with respect to these proudly humble signs. In capsule form, there is emotion, and feeling (111), feeling of the emotion (211), and awareness of the feeling of the emotion (311). All this was lacking in Gage, as reported by Damasio. After he suffered bilateral damage to his prefrontal cortices, his social behaviour deteriorated. He could no longer hold a decent job; he would quickly lose interest in whatever activity he might be engaged in; he was incapable of sticking to routines; he had a bad temper; reward-punishment incentives had very little effect on him; he would lie, cheat, and steal to get whatever he wanted, with apparently no concern for those around him; he couldn't become emotionally involved with anybody; he gave no outward show of his feelings. He seemed neither happy nor sad, neither angry nor content, he was neither here nor there, then nor now. Above all, he had no idea how to organize his future rationally and make decisions to his own benefit. The first set of deficiencies has to do with emotion and feeling, and they seem to reveal an inability properly to process signs 111, 211, and 311.1 The latter deficiencies involving reason, decision making, and projections into the future are a matter chiefly of signs 321 and upward. Gage, it would appear, could not go from the indexical 321 (a pointer toward the meaning of signs in context) to 322 (entrenched, conventional, commonplace signs, the interrelations among which bind humans into a community). Nor could he appropriately make and take signs 331, 332, 333, which involve effective verbal communication by means of the virtually infinite possibilities of language regarding polyphonic, polysemous, dialogical interaction. If Gage in any form or fashion experienced emotions and feelings (emerging from 111), there was little or no feeling of those emotions and feelings (211), and there certainly was no awareness of the feeling of those emotions and feelings, since he outwardly registered virtually no signs at all. Consciousness of emotions and feelings must be present if those emotions and feelings are to influence the subject having them in the here and now. There must be awareness of similar or contrasting emotions and feelings that the subject has experienced in the past and that are now stored in her memory bank, and there must be expectations of possible or likely similar or contrasting emotions and feelings that will

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Doing It Tacitly 131 occur in the future. In other words, time-binding regarding signs made and taken must play a role in properly embodied communication. So how could human communication for Gage be properly embodied when making and taking signs 321 to 333? The problem is that these signs were not embodied, hence they were mere skeletons of what they could have been were they properly embodied. Emotion is integral to the process of decision making and reasoning. This becomes evident in the studies Damasio offers of individuals who ran their lives in entirely rational ways until an accident damaged a specific portion of their brain. After that, those individuals were still in control of their logical and reasoning faculties, but they were out of tune with their feelings and emotions. The problem, we have observed, was that they could not apply their logic and reason to their own lives, for embodiment wasn't there. They had no necessary sense of emotion or feeling regarding their own self, nor did they have any appreciable empathy regarding their fellow humans. Their personal and social behaviour became illogical and irrational. Their processes of logic and reasoning were no longer influenced by conscious or non-conscious 'somatic markers' emerging from bodymind and bodybrain in the form of emotions and feelings. The somatic markers were no longer there, because the point of their origin - the prefrontal area of the brain - was now non-existent. The 'before' and the 'after' of these patients functionally revealed two different personalities: Selective reduction of emotion is at least as prejudicial for rationality as expressive emotion. It certainly does not seem true that reason stands to gain from operating without the leverage of emotion. On the contrary, emotion probably assists reasoning, especially when it comes to personal and social matters involving risk and conflict. I suggest that certain levels of emotion processing probably point us to the sector of the decision-making space where our reason can operate most efficiently. I did not suggest, however, that emotions are a substitute for reason or that emotions decide for us. It is obvious that emotional upheavals can lead to irrational decisions. The neurological evidence simply suggests that selective absence of emotion is a problem. Well-targeted and well-deployed emotion seems to be a support system without which the edifice of reason cannot operate properly. These results and their interpretation called into question the idea of dismissing emotion as a luxury or a nuisance or a mere evolutionary vestige. They also made it possible to view emotion as an embodiment of the logic of survival. (Damasio, 1999: 42)

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

132 Sensing Corporeally Embodiment. That is the key word. Embodied are signs 111, 211, and 311 that were under the spotlight a few paragraphs ago. Embodied also are signs 221 and 222. In fact, whether poststructuralists, deconstructors, postmodernists, Foucauldians, textualists of various and sundry stripes, and even some feminists, are willing to admit it or not, embodied also are signs chiefly of conceptualization and articulation, signs 331, 332, and 333, following the seminal study by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind (1993).2 How so? Damasio reports on a patient he calls David, who can make choices but isn't aware of his making the choices because both his cerebral lobes have been damaged. There is raw emotion, but no feeling for the emotion or acknowledgment of the feeling. David's choices are spontaneous, automatic, for he lives only in the 'now'; there is no past that he can bring to bear in his decision making, nor is there any future that can help him govern his expectations and desires and fears and hopes and anxieties with respect to what may ensue if he makes certain choices. In other words, David's choices are somewhat like those of animals that take flight when a predator comes in sight. One animal of the flock or herd senses danger and begins flight, and all the others follow that cue even though they have neither spotted nor smelled nor heard the source of danger. Like these animals, David is simply not in control of the reasons for his emotions. Actually, none of us can control effectively all our emotions. They often swell up, whether by raw instinct or socially inculcated habits of thought and action, and there is little we can do about it. There is little we can immediately do about it, that is, for once we feel the emotion and become aware of that feeling and think about it, there is some hope for us to exercise at least a modicum of control. David, unfortunately, cannot exercise such control. I am here writing of the primary or virtually instinctive or habitual emotions: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust. Some or most of these emotions may well be beyond the control of many of us. Then there are the other, secondary emotions, which Damasio calls 'background emotions.'' These include jealousy, guilt, embarrassment, remorse, pride, and envy. Reward and punishment, and pleasure and pain, play a role in these emotions. All emotions, whether primary or secondary, are called up by inducers. First there is the feeling (111) of an image (211). This is followed by acknowledgment that what is there is customary, or surprise that it is not (221). Then a reaction - or at least the impulse to react ensues almost spontaneously. This entails inducer signs of cause-effect,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Doing It Tacitly 133 part-whole, one thing that contiguously follows or is followed by another thing. Such signs are often called 'natural signs'; examples include lightning (evoking the idea of thunder), smoke (bringing on the idea of fire), a thermometer (indicating the temperature), a spider (provoking fear), and billiard ball A colliding with billiard ball B (resulting in a vector force causing B to careen at one angle or another). Emotions and feelings are inseparable from signs coinciding with or in collisions with expectations and natural signs of action-reaction. Inducer signs from the world 'out there' or from imagined situations 'in here' (211-221-222) are not preset, as are internal signs of emotions and feelings and the images they conjure up (111, 211). They are either instinctive, or they are signs so sedimented that they cause a reaction so spontaneous that it is as if it were virtually instinctive. Signs of induction, inducer signs, require some definite other of the sign and some other of the sign maker and taker. They provoke some action or reaction as a result of some imagined or real action or reaction on the part of the other. An important characteristic of inducers is that they can block emergent emotions. An animal while consuming food shows what in human terms we might call satisfaction, or perhaps happiness in an anthropomorphic sense. If a barrier is suddenly placed between the animal and the food, frustration and even anger can result. The barrier, of external source, induced an emotion that contradicted and shunted off the prior emotion.3 Such emotion alteration is common in human sign taking and making, when one is suddenly unable to attain that which one desires. More subtly, a more positive emotion is induced when a turn of events creates a satisfactory state. At a basketball game, the score is tied with half a second remaining and a player on the home team is at the free-throw line. The spectators are tense and anxious. When the ball swishes the net, they scream with euphoria. At a political demonstration, the situation is tense between representatives of the law and angry demonstrators. A brick from somewhere flies in the direction of the police barricade, a nervous finger presses on a trigger, a shot rings out, and there is mayhem. Relatively simple inducers brought about volcanic changes of emotion. David's problem, Damasio reveals, is that he can make a choice in automatic fashion, but he cannot become aware of his feeling of the emotion that led to that particular choice. There is plenty of action-reaction (signs 221-222), but there is little or no embodiment (111-211) or awareness of the embodiment or of the choice as such (311). Indeed, signs of embodiment and of awareness (111-211-311)

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

134 Sensing Corporeally are necessary so that the signs of induction and of action-reaction can emerge into consciousness and be made known. Another of Damasio's patients, simply called S, has no problem learning new facts as a result of inducers. In this respect she seems quite normal. However, she can induce no negative feelings, only positive feelings. She can see no fear in other people. When asked to draw a picture of a human face given a set of models, she cannot draw a face showing fear, for she is unable to induce fear in herself. In other words, she can induce from signs 221 and 222, but at the level of 311 there is nothing of a negative note that is registered from those signs. It seems that some of her signs - the positive ones - are embodied, but not all of them. Her embodiment as a consequence remains incomplete (1999: 62-7). She is a capable inducer; she can induce signs effectively; but she has no real feel for them nor can she become aware of her feelings for them. Those baser signs of Firstness are not adequately processed. This is comparable to Gage's condition. Gage continued to think he was of sound body and mind, but he was not. He was, once again, lacking in 211, 221, and 311. If someone had asked him 'How do you feel?' (321, 322), his response would invariably have been 'Fine' (322). This contrasts with Kafka's K., who simply could not respond, and if he had, it would obviously have been something like 'Terrible!' In Damasio's experience, a patient can be paralyzed on one side yet think everything is OK; there is complete lack of concern for her less than ideal condition. Patients suffering from these effects of anosognosia don't usually cooperate with their therapists, because they think there is nothing wrong with them; they are caught up in a self-deceptive condition. They deceive themselves into believing they still possess skills they no longer have. They apparently worry not a whit over themselves (1999: 70-3) .4 In other words, mind thinks it is doing all the thinking within signs 331-333 while fabricating a false image of body's condition. Body remains divorced from mind, and mind remains ignorant of body; there is no genuine fusion of the two into bodymind. It seems that a closer look at the effects on consciousness of bodymind fusion is in order.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bodymind Doing

What Are the Ways of Consciousness?

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

I begin this chapter on bodymind and consciousness with a summary of Damasio's concept of consciousness: 1 Some aspects of the processes of consciousness can be located in specific regions of the brain. 2 Conscious and mere mindless wakefulness can be distinguished, as can consciousness and inattention. 3 Consciousness and emotion and feeling are inseparable; when the brain is impaired such that consciousness is in part or entirely absent, emotion and feeling are also affected; hence, the connection between emotion and feeling and consciousness on the one hand, and the body and consciousness on the other, must be a factor in any study of consciousness. 4 Consciousness is not monolithic; though its functions can be separated for the purpose of analysis, ultimately consciousness is one. On the basis of these concepts, Damasio subdivides consciousness into core consciousness and extended consciousness. Core consciousness is a simple, biological phenomenon; it has one single level of organization; it is stable across the lifetime of the organism; it is not exclusively human; and it is not dependent on conventional memory, working memory, reasoning, or language ... [Core consciousness] provides the organism with a sense of self about one moment - now - and about one place - here. The scope of core consciousness is the here and now. Core consciousness does not illumi-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

136 Sensing Corporeally nate the future, and the only past it vaguely lets us glimpse is that which occurred in the instant just before. There is no elsewhere, there is no before, there is no after. (1999: 16) Extended consciousness, on the other hand,

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

is a complex biological phenomenon; it has several levels of organization; and it evolves across the lifetime of the organism. Although I believe extended consciousness is also present in some nonhumans, at simple levels, it only attains its highest reaches in humans. It depends on conventional memory and working memory. When it attains its human peak, it is also enhanced by language ... [Extended consciousness] provides the organism with an elaborate sense of self - an identity and a person, you or me, no less - and places that person at a point in individual historical time, richly aware of the lived past and of the anticipated future, and keenly cognizant of the world beside it. (1999: 16) Along with core consciousness and extended consciousness, Damasio specifies a proto-self, a core self, and an autobiographical self. The proto-self 'is an interconnected and temporarily coherent collection of neural patterns which represent the state of the organism, moment by moment, at multiple levels of the brain. We are not conscious of the proto-self (1999: 174). The core self 'inheres in the second-order nonverbal account that occurs whenever an object modifies the proto-self. The core self can be triggered by an object. The mechanism of production of core self undergoes minimal changes across a lifetime. We are conscious of the core self (1999: 174). The autobiographical self is based on autobiographical memory, which is constituted by implicit memories of multiple instances of individual experience of the past and of the anticipated future. The invariant aspects of an individual's biography form the basis for autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory grows continuously with life experiences, but it can be partly remodelled to reflect new experiences. Sets of memories that describe identity and person can be reactivated as neural patterns and made explicit as images whenever those are needed. Each reactivated memory operates as a 'something-tobe-known' and generates its own pulse of core consciousness. The result is the autobiographical self of which we are conscious (1999: 174). Basically, the core self is an 'album' of images in a non-linear succession, a sort of wordless narrative. It is process, but in conjunction with core

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Doing

137

consciousness, it is not exactly continuous process. Rather, there is pulsation, oscillation, and vibration, in rhythmic, effervescent, scintillating fashion. Core self and core consciousness flow in tune with the whole of the body's and the mind's processes; they are the supreme expression of body plus mind, of bodymind. Moreover, with respect to core self and core consciousness, there is no line of demarcation between bodymind, or between self and the world's rhythms. In Damasio's T.S. Eliot phrase, 'You are the music while the music lasts.' That is the fundamental nature of core self and core consciousness. They are the self processing its imaginary and perceived and conceived signs and changing as a result of making and taking signs. The self knows it is conscious; it feels it is in the process of knowing due to the flow of images that pass in and out of it; it knows the flow because it is that flow, and that selfsame flow is the flow of the self's world. Indeed, the self is the music while the music lasts, during that fleeting moment, deep down, where there is no separation, where all is continuously united, there, pulsating to the unified rhythm. It is, in view of the above meditation on David Sudnow, jazzing. There is no musician here and instrument there and music somewhere else and audience out there taking it all in. There is just jazz jazzing jazzingly.1 Thus William James's 'stream of consciousness' emerges. But it is no single rail along which the pulses of becoming are confined. Rather, there are multiply interrelated rails that converge and diverge and occasionally become convoluted and involuted. The process is radically nonlinear. It is non-linear, because at any point artificially placed in the stream there are many - potentially infinitely many - possible directions that may be cut out at a given future moment. We have interrelations, then, as illustrated in Figure 18. From protoself through core consciousness to core self, non-verbal forms of communication pervade. In the case of human semiotics, from that point onward language can then enter the picture. But not before the more fundamental aspects of semiosis have had their way. And what is their way? Perhaps to say 'way' is a misnomer. There is no 'way.' There are many 'ways' - potentially an infinity of 'ways' - because there is nonlinear flow rather than linear language, after whatever linearly binary indexical signs, 221, 222, 321, 322, which are organized around experience present and past, have had their day. At the most fundamental level, these non-linear signs are signs of emotions and feelings and images that lie behind the mask of language. They are by their very nature more sincere, more honest, or more sincerely dishonest (if that is

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

138 Sensing Corporeally Sign types Autobiographical self (projecting into the future)

Autobiographical self (organized around past experience)

331,332,333

221,222,321,322

Core self

211,311

Proto-self

111

Core consciousness

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 18: Functions of the self

the sign maker's choice) than those more precisely demarcated signs of indexicality or Secondness (often of binary nature) and of symbolicity or Thirdness (in the process of becoming radically non-linear in their projection into futurity). Oliver Sacks tells another intriguing story, this one about a group of aphasiacs who, while watching a speech by then President Ronald Reagan on TV, saw through his act. Sacks heard a commotion in the recreation room and entered to see what was going on. To his surprise, they were watching a performance by the President of the United States. This Great Communicator, this actor with his polished and practised anecdotes, folk tales and quips, had many of them howling with laughter. Others were bewildered; some were outraged. On this occasion, Reagan was obviously dead serious about the content of his speech, yet the patients saw something else in his message. What was going on here? After some puzzlement, Sacks concluded that though they understood the president's words only to a nominal degree, they understood to the letter the subtle, implicit messages behind his non-verbal cues and clues. And they could tell he was lying through his teeth. In other words, they were considerably less than adept at deciphering linear, relatively precise signs of 321-32, and the linguistic complexity of non-linear signs 331333, but give them vague, non-linear signs of Firstness, from 111 to 311, and they could see right through any subterfuge. Here, Sacks writes, lay

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Doing 139 the aphasiacs' 'power of understanding - understanding, without words, what is authentic or inauthentic. Thus it was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of [Reagan's] voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients' (1987:82) (brackets added). The aphasiacs of which Sacks was writing suffered from a disorder of the left temporal lobe that impaired their linguistic ability in terms of sign types (Thirdness, signs of general nature) and tokens (Secondness, signs of particular nature), of which language offers the most effective examples. Yet they were supremely gifted in their capacity for deciphering tones (Firstness, subtle nuances, gestures, voice inflection, body sways and swerves), to which they were especially sensitive.2 What would be the comprehension of patients of an entirely opposite kind? Sacks asks. There were a number of such patients, also in the aphasia ward, who technically speaking did not have aphasia, but rather agnosia, a disorder of the right temporal lobe. These individuals understood language more effectively than the average speaker did. Their problem was that tone, timbre, and a proper feel for the words they heard were virtually nonexistent. Listening to the president's speech, these patients could not tell very well whether the voice was angry, cheerful, sad, or whatever. They could understand the words and virtually nothing but the words. They were masters of signs 331—33 (compare to Lonnrot), but they were babes in the woods when it came to signs 111-311 (compare to Averroes). These patients suffering from aphasia were in a situation comparable to the one in which Gage, David, and other patients found themselves suspended. They were remarkably adroit when within the range of signs of indexicality and symbolicity, but oblivious to the clever meanings contained within signs chiefly of iconicity. Thus they were incapable of sharing appropriately human feelings, sentiments, and emotions. (Unfortunately, I must interject at this point, Peirce's magnificently rich and complex range of signs is almost entirely ignored by many linguists, psychologists, and researchers of communication and the media, and also by the great majority of our current prattling, dialogic propagators of textualism. The trouble is that these investigators remain linguicentric through and through. They choose to overlook that vast field of signs without which language would be entirely devoid of meaningful meaning.) With Eyes Wide Shut

Thus, in light of Figure 16, consciousness, extended conscious, and Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

140 Sensing Corporeally Focused expression

331,332,333

Subsidiarily knowing feeling-emotion

322

Focally attending

321

Subsidiarily attending

311

Focal or subsidiary action-reaction

222

Subsidiary feelingemotion

221

Emotion-feeling

211

Wakefulness

111

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 19: The sign decalogue synthesized

autobiographical self are born as they flow along. They flow in time and in space, from 111 to 211 and up to 311. Then they ease into indexicals of Secondness, and finally to symbolicity or language, 331, 332, 333. In concert, these are processes of bodybrainmind as a set of multifaceted levels. Each level consists of a melody emerging in interdependent, interrelated interaction with the other levels. The other levels are melodies in their own right. Yet they can play the role of harmonies to the melodies of other levels. What we have is a polyvocal, polyrhythmic merging and diverging of waves the whole of which makes up what usually goes by the composite label unconscious-preconscious-conscious. This composite marks the entry of wakefulness - recall Mel's becoming of wakefulness. As wakefulness emerges, there is a flow of emotionfeeling into subsidiary feeling-emotion, and then into focused attention, action action-reaction, knowing feeling-emotion, and finally into expression, as patterned in Figure 19. Figure 19 is a combination of Damasio and Polanyi regarding Peirce's basic modes of feeling, sensing, knowing, and thinking and saying. Feeling and emotion, perpetually interdependent and interrelated, interact with subsidiary and focal attention and expression. This is not to imply that in Figure 19, signs are available only when one is in the wakeful state. Actually, dream, hallucination, imaginary musing, and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Doing 141 such can also go along the same flow, from signs 111 to 211 to 311, while wakefulness or consciousness is in the process of emerging, through 221 and 222. Responses at these levels can be virtually automatic and nonconsciously habituated to quasi-consciousness and self-consciousness, from signs 321 to 322 to expressions 331, 332, and 333. The latter expressions of the compound symbolic sort are ideally the product of Polanyi's focal attention when on its best behaviour. Such expressions are a process of focal consciousness attending to the idea behind the words in complementation with a background of subsidiary consciousness that engenders a flow of symbolic signs, every one of which does not require specifically focused attention. However, this interplay of focal and subsidiary consciousness is not always the case, as in soliloquy and occasions of mindless jabbering, when words pour forth before the supervising mind is properly in gear. In these cases, the mind gives subsidiary consciousness the liberty to do whatever it does, with hardly any supervision. In whichever event, the process is from emotion-feeling to attending-expression, from subsidiary to focal, from Firstness to Thirdness, from non-consciousness to consciousness. This recalls another of Borges's stories, 'The Circular Ruins' (1962). A magician-priest wishes to dream a son and insert him into reality. After failing in his first attempt, he achieves success, and he sends his newly created son downriver for a period of apprenticeship. One day the magician finds himself meditating on the frightening possibility that his son might discover that he is a mere figment of the imagination rather than real, since fire is incapable of consuming him, as well as all other dreamt images. The magician's thoughts are soon cut short, for a jungle blaze threatens him. Aware of his imminent death, he decides to walk boldly into the 'concentric' blaze. But on so doing, he realizes 'with relief, with humiliation, with terror' that the flames cannot consume him, for 'he too [is] a mere appearance, dreamt by another' (1962: 50). The magician's task is in its entirety of a non-verbal nature: to create an image (signs 111, 211, 311) and, during periods of wakefulness, interpolate it into the world by means of natural processes (221, 222). After so doing, in order to interpolate his dreamt son into the physical world, he gives him explicit instructions (321, 322, 331, 332, 333) that - it is presumed - endow him with proper referentiality. However, let's not get carried away with our analogy. We can suppose that the magician's project, developed within a dream, was largely nonverbal. That being the case, there is no ironclad guarantee that whatever linguistic window dressing might be attached to his dreamt son - or to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

142 Sensing Corporeally himself for that matter, since he is also a fabrication of the imagination of someone else - those words will be a faithful account of the image. The words may very well be a lie, the same way that Reagan's rhetoric was negated by his non-verbal cues, which Oliver Sacks's patients adroitly picked up. That is to say, the words could fabricate their own dream, as it were, that belied the magician's dreamt images. The magician as dreamt image was presented as a real being; the actual images belonged to the somnolent mind of someone else, told "by the narrator in symbols, linguistic dream-signs. The moral of the story is that - as Damasio argues throughout his written works - signs conveyed by way of feeling and emotion are absolutely essential for reliable communication by way of reason through linguistic means. For without proper non-verbal messages, verbal signs can take off on a runaway course and leave their interpreters in the dark. Premier linguistic signs (331, 332, 333), signs of generality or types, are signs chiefly of Thirdness. These signs are oriented toward the future, toward qualification and quantification of the world. This signified world will have been perceived and conceived in such a manner that it will serve to confirm what was perceived and conceived in the past. However, since as in the magician's case, any and all generalities are invariably subject to change at some future juncture, they are incomplete, underdetermined. Further determination of their meaning is always possible, for their meaning is never so complete that it cannot tolerate a tad more meaning determination. Moreover, images, dreamt or otherwise, as signs chiefly of Firstness (111, 211, 311), are vague, as proved to be the case with the magician. Hence there are invariably points of inconsistency between these signs and the determination of their meaning, which is to say that the signs can be indefinitely opened to new and further meaning; hence their nature as signs of overdetermination.3 There is also Sacks's case of the autistic artist, Jose, who with photographic memory saw things and then re-imaged them and drew them to the most minute detail. He drew all the details, but he also distorted them, for each instantiation of an object was for him another object altogether. In his world, as in Gage's, there were only particulars; hence his signs were radically overdetermined signs chiefly of Firstness. When Jose drew a watch, each number was different; some were large and others small, some of Roman, Gothic, modern, or block sort and others only vaguely represented. Like many autistic individuals, Jose was lacking, or indisposed to, the general: he composed his pictures as particulars; indeed, his entire world was no more than a set of particulars (i.e., tokens rather than types). He lived not in a universe but rather in a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Doing

143

radical sort of William James pluriverse. He was much like Borges's Tunes the Memorious,' who was 'almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort ... In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence ... No one ... has felt the heat and pressure of a reality as indefatigable as that which day and night converged upon the hapless Ireneo [Funes]' (Borges, 1962: cited in Sacks, 1987:229). Each of Jose's fleeting images of particulars had its own unique 'qualities.' He 'felt' that they afforded him a certain 'grasp of things.' Their 'feel' was brought out strikingly in his drawings. There was 'an odd mixture of close, even obsessive, accuracy, with curious (and, I felt, droll) elaborations and variations' (Sacks, 1987: 215). These 'qualities,' these 'feels,' were a sequence of Firsts, of iconic images, without internal interconnectsty (of Firstness), external interrelations (Secondness), or conceptual or interpretive input in the customary human sense (Thirdness). Jose dwelt in his own world. He was an island enclosed within itself, a self-contained, self-reflexive sign of itself. He was the consummate icon, it would seem. On the other hand, in certain ways Jose was more human than most of us; in fact he may have been all too human for our tastes. For this reason he did not live in our world, not really. He couldn't, for his world excluded those complex signs of the more 'developed' sort. We can perhaps begin to approximate Jose's world by peeling away the signs, from 333 'downward,' in order to get at signs of 311 and 'downward.' But, alas, our signs of 311 and 'downward,' unlike those of Jose, are most often considered not as full-blown signs, but rather as signs of a lesser and hence inferior semiotics - 'lesser' and 'inferior' insofar as our culturally inculcated biases in favour of linguicentric signs of symbolicity go. As a result, our signs of generality (321-33), unlike Jose's signs of particularity, cannot help but remain burdened with memories of those semiotic peaks they once scaled with the aid of iconic signs (111-311). Yet those signs of generality choose to ignore these memories, as if those 'lesser' and 'inferior' signs were of no consequence. This can limit our capacity for human qualities of feeling, sentiment, and emotion - of empathy. It can even threaten us with that now familiar malady suffered by Gage and David. We can become, in our own way it would appear, as crippled as Jose. Shunting the Mind, Without Shutting It Down

Then there is the case of Sacks's Ms B., a former research chemist who Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

144 Sensing Corporeally suddenly suffered a radical personality change, after which her thoughts were a free association of ideas. At least that is how her mind seemed to her friends and the nurses. After much effort, Sacks came to see the working of her mind in another way. One day he suddenly realized that depending on the occasion, Ms B. saw him as a priest (because he had a beard), as a Nun (because of his white uniform), or as a doctor (since he carried a stethoscope), and it was all the same to her. As far as she was concerned, a sign in its multiple variations, like the right glove or the left glove, or any enantiomorphic form for that matter, consisted of the same sign. She did not distinguish between them. There were no dichotomies or incommensurables; everything took on the same value. A metaphor or metonym was just as 'real' and just as 'irreal' as anything else for her, since everything consisted of images, whether imagined or real, in the here and now. She 'had been voided of feeling and meaning. Nothing any longer felt "real" (or "unreal"). Everything was now "equivalent" or "equal" - the whole world reduced to a facetious insignificance' (Sacks, 1987: 117). More surprising still, Ms B. was entirely unconcerned over her bizarre non-conception of things. Ms B.'s world of meaninglessness was almost entirely lacking in Thirdness, in interpretants for the symbols she used. It was also impoverished regarding Secondness in terms of distinctions established between things and between the semiotic agent and her world. In other words, Ms B. also lived in a world for all practical purposes devoid of Firstness properly actualized into a bewildering array of Seconds. There was in her world hardly more than Firsts, Firsts without value, Firsts without their being properly distinguished from one another. The autistic child, Jose, lived in a world of nothing but particulars. But each particular was its own island and clearly distinguishable from all other particulars, even though they remained unclothed in a genuine garb of Thirdness for Jose. Ms B.'s pseudo-particulars, in contrast, could at a moment's notice take on any one of a range of possible qualities as a First, and in the next moment they could be something else altogether, though there was really no difference that made any difference at all between the two as far as she was concerned. Jose's world consisted of clearly distinguishable Seconds without the possibility of their belonging to any class of things; Ms B.'s world consisted of Firsts without the possibility of their becoming Seconds in terms of their relations to other Seconds. It seems that Ms B.'s Firsts were as deprived of Seconds and genuine Thirds as Jose's Seconds were of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Doing 145 Thirds and genuine Firsts. Accordingly, for Jose there was sheer linearity, sequentiality, of signs without generalities. In contrast, for Ms B. there was random movement of virtually pure Firsts without their standing a chance of becoming Seconds as particulars or Thirds as generals. Her world remained of the utmost vagueness, and inconsistency with respect to one instantiation of a sign and another (Sacks as priest, as nun, as doctor), hence her signs were radically overdetermined. There simply were no signs of generality (underdetermination) as we would ordinarily perceive and conceive them. Also well worth noting are the autistic twins, John and Michael. They were like enantiomorphs, mirror images, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. These twins specialized in 'calendar arithmetic.' Given a date, any date say, 6 July 1099 - they could in short order produce the day of the week to which it corresponded. Yet with IQs in the 60s, they could barely manage the most simple of mathematical computations. Toss a bunch of toothpicks on the floor and they could look at them and quickly respond in unison, '79,' or whatever the sum of the toothpicks might be. They saw entire arrays of things, including numbers, holistically and at a glance. Their perception was something like that of Funes, who in one perceptual grasp could catch all the leaves, twigs, branches, and contours on the trunk of a tree. Yet they were also very much unlike Funes, in that they inhabited a world of numbers, not things. On recognizing certain numbers, they would nod and smile, as if savouring a fine wine. They felt a special affinity, even an intimacy, for certain numbers and combinations of numbers, like a child with a teddy bear, a teenager with a car, an adult with a recently purchased boat. The twins, Sack wrote, live exclusively in a thought-world of numbers. They have no interest in the stars shining, or the hearts of men. And yet numbers for them, ... are not just' numbers, but significances, signifiers whose 'significance' is the world. They do not approach numbers lightly, as most calculators do. They are not interested in, have no capacity for, cannot comprehend, calculations. They are, rather, serene contemplators of number - and approach numbers with a sense of reverence and awe. Numbers for them are holy, fraught with significance. (1970:207-8)

Their universe of numbers consisted of signs 111-211-311, to be sure, since they had an intimate feel and an emotional attachment for the abstract, arbitrary signs surrounding them. And they had a holistic grasp of numbers within the equivalent - their own equivalent - of signs 221,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

146 Sensing Corporeally 222, and 331. But they could not use algorithmic properties linearly to combine their signs as generalities into strings comparable to 322 and 333; they could not calculate in the usual sense of the term. They were also deficient in their comprehension of signs 321 and 322, since (I suspect) they were incapable of taking sign replicas (tokens) and using them as genuine signs (types). Their number signs were not really overdetermined, nor were they vague, for the twins knew precisely what they were about when they interrelated with their numbers. Nor were these signs signs of generality, nor were they underdetermined, for the twins hardly made a mistake. When they did make a mistake they weren't able to correct it, we can suppose. For their numbers were for them hardly more than tokens, albeit tokens manipulated with remarkable facility, considerably more efficiently than most of us would be able to use our number types in linear fashion. The twins' world was enriched beyond our wildest imagination, yet at the same time, it was impoverished in a way we can hardly begin to imagine. Borges's Funes, it bears mentioning, once devised his own system of enumeration. Since he could not conceive of numbers as an ordered series, he substituted ordinary nouns for them. For example, 5 might be 'oak,' 13 'pampa,' 27 'quebracho,' 286 'plata,' and so on. Since he could hold them all in his mental checking account holistically, they were easily retrievable and quite efficient for his purposes. Mathematician and logician Kurt Godel, author of the now notorious 'incompleteness theorems,' held that ultimately, numbers could serve as 'markers' for people, ideas, things, events, or whatever, which could pave the way for an 'arithmetization' of the world. Godel, I hardly need write, was a Platonist mathematician: as far as he was concerned, numbers had the same reality status as tables and trees and you and me (Nagel and Newman 1964). As if he had Godel's concept of numbers in mind, Sacks (1970: 213) concluded: 'It is possible that the twins, and others like them, do not merely live in a world of numbers, but in a world, in the world, as numbers, their number-meditation or play being a sort of existential meditation - and, if one can understand it, or find the key ... a strange and precise communication too.' Our World Perpetually in the Making

In light of the above words on Ms B.,Jose, Funes, and the twins, we have Figure 20. It consists of a combination of Figures 18 and 19 plus Peirce's categories and their implications, all of which cries out for qualification. Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Bodymind Doing

147

Sign types Autobiographical self (oriented toward the future)

Autobiographical self (organized around past experience)

Core self Core consciousness Proto-self

Thirdness Future Underdetermination Generality

331,332,333

Incompleteness Secondness Past Firstness Present Overdetermination Vagueness Inconsistency

221,222,321,322

211,311

111

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 20: Functions of the self within the sign decalogue

Within signs 111, 211, and 311, everything that happens happens in the now. The next now is always becoming something other than what it was becoming; occasionally it can be in the process of becoming something entirely different, as the cases of Funes, Jose, and Ms. B. illustrate to the hilt. These signs, then, are vague, overdetermined, and more likely than not inconsistent with other signs in the past, the present, and the expected future. Signs chiefly of Secondness, 221, 222, 321, 322, are signs of indexicality. These are signs made and taken as they have always been made and taken and as they will in the future be made and taken, unless some surprise (221) leads to a revised image (311) that brings about altered sign making and taking. Signs of the future, 331, 332, 333, are signs expected to be made and taken in such-and-such a way, though there is no guarantee of this. These are signs of generality. They are underdetermined, since as generalities they are invariably incomplete in some form or fashion; hence they are always potentially subject to alteration or replacement by what are considered more adequate signs for whatever task might be at hand. The emphasized terms in the previous paragraph are protean, I would suggest. For indeterminacy, at the heart of the vagueness and generality and the inconsistency and incompleteness, and the overdetermination and underdetermination of any and all signs, is no less than the fulcrum

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

148 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

point of the life of signs and hence of their meaning. I repeat, signs of generality are never so general and replete with meaning that their meaning cannot be either revised or taken a step further; hence signs are always to a degree incomplete, and underdetermined - so the excluded middle principle is often subverted. These signs of generality are not really of ultimate importance, in spite of all the postmodern hype and hoopla over disembodied sign floating around in some ethereal sphere of textuality, without those baser signs, signs of 'vagueness' as the term is used here. These more fundamental signs, overdetermined to the extreme, are signs for all reasons and all seasons. Hence, in their conglomerate, they gleefully embrace inconsistencies. For after all, if none of them are actualized signs basking in the light of day, not to worry over logical rigor, for contradictory possibilities can make quite congenial bedfellows - and the principle of non-contradiction is of hardly any consequence. But if indeterminacy is the fulcrum point of the life of signs, it is by nature a sliding fulcrum point. Consequently, the concept of meaning eludes us at the very moment it seems to be within our grasp. Back to Damasio on consciousness.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER NINE

When There Is Nothing on the Mind

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Acting on Consciousness Damasio's concept of behaviour is accompanied by flows of feeling and emotional processes as part of their unfolding. Background feelings and emotions incessantly serve to guide the subject's actions. Non-verbal signs - diverse facial expressions, body postures, motions of the limbs relative to the trunk, spatial profiles of limb movements, motions in time and space - are premier signs of feeling and emotion, signs chiefly of Firstness or iconicity, signs that so effected Sacks's patients described earlier. Even when a subject speaks, the feelings and sentiments and emotional aspects of her communication - types of words chosen, the emphasis given them through voice inflections — are maintained in separation from the content of the words and sentences spoken in such a way that they contribute a massive input of Firstness to the symbolic signs of Thirdness. Words and sentences, from a simple 'Yes,' 'No,' or 'Hello' to 'Have a nice day' or Til see you tomorrow,' are usually uttered with a background of feelings and emotions (321, 311, 221, 211, 111). The voice inflection is an instance of prosody - the musical, tonal accompaniment to the speech sounds that constitute the words. Prosody can express not just background feelings and emotions, but specific ones as well. One can tell one's partner, in the most loving tone, 'Ah, get outta here.' Or she can say, 'You look great tonight' with a prosody that unmistakably registers complete indifference, or irony - once again recall Sacks's aphasiacs. Specific feelings and emotions can and often do follow the interactions that apparently motivate them in sign makers, as judged from the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

150 Sensing Corporeally perspective of sign takers. In other words, normal behaviour exhibits a continuity of feelings and emotions induced by a continuity of interdependent, interrelated, interactions and thoughts in both sign makers and sign takers. The contents of such interactions and thoughts make up the meaningful coming and going of all members of a given human community in the course of everyday life. These ongoing streams of interaction and thought can bring about feelings and emotions, from background or past feelings and emotions (Secondness), which can take on the appearance of novel situations in the present (Firstness), and from habitual expectations of future interaction and thought (Thirdness). The continuous display of feelings and emotions emerges from this stream of interactions and thoughts, whether these are expected or unexpected, simple or complex, habitual or spontaneous. Damasio, obviously, writes on consciousness insofar as he studies its absence. Now this sounds like an anomaly. If there is an absence of consciousness, how is it possible for someone to experience the absence of her consciousness and at the same time serve as an informant of that very absence? Damasio doesn't give up easily, however. He asks the reader to consider certain circumstances when we may be close to an experience of the absence of consciousness - for example, after an episode of fainting or anesthesia. When coming out of these non-consciousness states there is a brief period during which we can get a glimpse of the impoverished condition preceding our becoming non-conscious. We are forming images of things around us or of pure mind spinning, yet there is no sense of the self. We are in a manner of speaking selfless, as well as, we might posit, mindless: there seems to be no individual ownership of the images that are in the process of emerging. In other words, when coming out of non-consciousness, it takes a certain increment of time for the autobiographical self to switch on (in contrast, recall our pathetic Mel's delayed becoming of consciousness). During that fleeting moment, we are aware but we are not really consciously or self-consciously aware; there may be activity - our body may be engaged in some process or other - yet we, our autobiographical selves, are not the authors of this activity. There is cognition, yet we cannot say that it is genuinely our cognition - it is nowhere and everywhere, it is nobody's and everybody's. Consequently there is neither exactly focal nor subsidiary awareness, neither tacitness nor explicitness, neither bodily nor conceptual knowing. Everything just is; it is that it is. All of this is like coming out of a dream. If we happen to remember a dream, we can then become consciously aware of it, think about it and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind

151

talk about it, analyze it and interpret it. However, during the process of our dreaming, one image after another popped up, in the here and now. There was no then or there, of either past memories or future expectations. There was just a series of nows. That's all. Now, when there is consciousness and self-consciousness of that which transpired, we can call up the memory bank and we can become aware of our expectations, with all their attendant hopes and fears, desires and anxieties.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

When Consciousness Fades

The above section bears on Damasio's patients suffering from complicated phenomena known as elliptic automatism and akinetic mutism (suggestions of which we saw above). In both types of patient, core and extended consciousness are severely affected. Both phenomena can appear during seizures or immediately following seizures. Damasio's interests particularly rest on 'absence seizures,' which he believes are among the purest examples of loss of consciousness. If a patient who suddenly falls victim to an absence seizure is in a conversation, she may freeze in mid-sentence and simply stare blankly at nothing, her face entirely devoid of expression, like an empty mask. I discussed a mild case of this in chapter 1. The patient is awake. Muscle tone is there and the body is there, but consciousness is gone, at least for a few seconds or so. Then automatism begins. The situation is not unlike the unfreezing of film images when you release a freeze-frame control or when the jammed projector in a movie house gets to be unjammed. The show goes on. As the patient unfreezes he looks about, perhaps not at you but at something nearby, his face remains a blank, with no sign of a decipherable expression, he drinks from the glass on the table, smacks his lips, fumbles with his clothes, gets up, turns around, moves toward the door, opens it, hesitates just outside the threshold, then walks down the hallway ... In the most likely scenario, the patient might stop and stand somewhere in the hallway, appearing confused, or he might sit on a bench, if there were one. But the patient might possibly enter another room or continue walking. In the most extreme variety of such episodes, in what is known as an 'epileptic fugue,' the patient might even get out of the building and walk about in a street... Most frequently within seconds, more rarely within a few minutes, the automatism episode would come to an end and the patient would look bewildered, wherever he would be at that moment. Conscious ness would have returned as suddenly as it had disappeared, and you would

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

152 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

have to be there to explain the situation to him and bring him back to where the two of you were before the episode began. (Damasio, 1999: 97)

The patient suffering through these estranging experiences has no recollection of the intervening time. He has no idea what he has done or what has transpired in his surroundings. He has temporarily lost all core and extended consciousness, his core self and his autobiographical self. He remembers, however, what went on before the seizure, and he is obviously in general control of his faculties after the seizure. During the seizure there is unmistakable wakefulness, and there is evidence of his ability to create neural patterns and images (signs 111 and 211). He is capable of attention (221). He is even able to execute rather mechanical actions (222) with some degree of success - for example, in manoeuvring his way around a room, into the hallway, and onto the sidewalk outside. But with litde or no core or extended consciousness, there is hardly any sense of feelings and emotions (311). Consequently there is little or no development of indexicals of the higher sort (321, 322), or of symbols (331, 332, 333). All this serves to indicate that the patient suffered no permanent impairment. Akinetic mutism involves the patient's inability to initiate movement, as well as the absence of speech. Like epileptic automatism, akinetic mutism entails severely diminished consciousness. Damasio reports that one of his patients suffering from akinetic mutism had suddenly become motionless and speechless, and, by and large, she was to remain motionless and speechless for the best part of the next six months. She would lie in bed, often with her eyes open but with a blank facial expression. On occasion she might catch an object in motion - me, for instance, moving around her bed - and track for a few instants, eyes and head moving along for a moment, but the quiet, nonfocused staring would be resumed rapidly ... Together, body and face never expressed any emotion of any kind, background, primary, or secondary, although there were plenty of inducers offered, day to day, in the attempts at focused conversations or just plain bedside banter of physicians, nurses, medical students, friends, and relatives. Emotional neutrality reigned supreme, meaning that not only was there no response to external inducers, but no response, either, to internal inducers, those that might be present in her thoughts but, as it turns out, obviously were not. (1999: 102)

Such patients remain imprisoned in thejailhouse of their immobility. There is hardly any mind to speak of, and not much that resembles core Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind 153 consciousness. Unlike patients suffering from the temporary effects of epileptic automatism, akinetic mutism reduces patients to mindless, catatonic oblivion. There is apparently no sense of feelings and sentiments and emotions (311). Furthermore, there is no execution of action (222) or attention (221), except only ephemerally, and obviously no creation of neural patterns and images (211). It is not that these patients cannot use language. Rather simply put, they cannot speak their mind, for there is not much at all in the order of mind. When Damasio's patients emerged from such conditions, it became apparent that there had not been anything resembling core consciousness, let alone extended consciousness. Their passivity of face and body reflected their lack of mental activity. They had no recall of particular experiences during their period of languagelessness. They felt no fear or anxiety, nor did they have any desire to communicate. It is not merely that they were unable to say anything - they really had nothing to say. They drew a complete blank with respect to both mind and language. Damasio's work on disturbed consciousness reveals the following regarding Peirce's communicative process. First, there is a sharp distinction between signs 222 and above and extended consciousness, and signs 222 and below, which include core consciousness. Category Secondness comes into its own in the brute, automatized, entrenched action-reaction function of 222. What has been done in the past time and time again to become habituated is induced in the present and done again and again during successive present moments. This doing includes 111, 211, and 221, to be sure. But these signs are largely unavailable to the process of consciousness that would have emerged above 222 in Damasio's patients had that process not been disrupted. Consequently, 111, 211, and 221,1 would expect, were not properly integrated into the processual stream and registered in consciousness. The result is that there is no emotion, no feeling, no awareness of the emotion and feeling, when consciousness has completed its course. This is an exceedingly impoverished course, since signs 111, 211, and 221 are not able to emerge and do their undulating, throbbing, rhythmic thing at the dancing surface of the ongoing stream of semiosis. Second, wakefulness and minimal attention and action-reaction are preserved, as most notably illustrated in the cases of akinetic mutism and epileptic automatism. Disrupting core consciousness while allowing the process of consciousness to continue its flow is like the Army Corps of Engineers chopping down the trees along the banks of a river and rechannelling it. The river is the same river, but it is now severely limited in terms of its capacity for deciding on its flow; it has lost its

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

154 Sensing Corporeally natural power of expression. If there is a flash flood at its origins, the river has no 'empathy,' so to speak, for its surroundings. It now uncharacteristically overflows its banks and reaps destruction. It has no 'feelings,' no 'emotion,' no 'conscience,' no 'concern for others'; it is unable according to its 'natural born logic' to 'make plans' for its future course. In short, it is sort of an inorganic equivalent of Gage and David and a host of Damasio's patients. If, on the other hand, there is disruption of core consciousness and the process is not allowed to continue, it is as if the Corps of Engineers had constructed a check dam to halt the river's flow. A mental shutdown, or 'coma,' can result: there will be nothing indicating any sort of wakefulness at all (Damasio, 1999: 105-6). I would expect that the above example is ample illustration that language alone cannot create consciousness, self-consciousness, and the self of selfconsciousness (i.e., or self-identity). Consciousness and self and identity are not simply language's playground. The very nature of consciousness and self and identity includes those prelinguistic signs on which all symbols rest. Language: that which wishes to control the park and bully any and all other communicative processes that cannot produce proper linguistic credentials — linguistic credentials that are the prerequisite, according to some observers, for entering into that raucous poststructuralist free play of ethereal floating signifiers. Language: possessed solely by we overconfident human knowers who think only we possess genuine knowledge by the mere fact that we are loquacious animals, unlike other creatures, who presumably must limp along with those supposedly lesser and impoverished modes of communication. Language: that which for the mainstream propagators of linguicentrism and textualism is tantamount to the whole of culture and communication. Language: proud language, unaware that without its extralinguistic predecessors, it would fall in a heap Language's Limits

Language is actually no more than a translation of and an elaboration on the semiosic process that preceded it - that is, all processes up to and including 321 and 322 (recall the above words on sign translation). Language is a conversion of extralinguistic images that are interdependently interrelated with and that interact with other images and objects, acts and events, emerging consciousness and self-consciousness and the self and identity.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind 155

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

All these extralinguistic processes precede verbal communication. If they are thwarted or in any manner frustrated, verbal communication suffers a loss as well. This loss, in light of Damasio's studies, can include loss of feeling, sentiment, and emotion, loss of awareness of feeling and sentiment and emotion, loss of knowledge of the speaker's or listener's interrelations with her surroundings, and loss of realization of a sense of empathy for what is there in view of her memories and expectations. Language does not merely spring out of a vacuum. It stands on the broad yet fluid shoulders of those processes that preceded it and that swiftly carry it along in such a way that it must more often than not follow the course of those processes rather than make its own way at every twist and turn of the stream. After all, amnesia victims, Damasio (1999: 11321) points out, retain language, in spite of their loss of a sense of self and identity. Damasio's patients with language deficiencies nonetheless remain awake and attentive and can behave purposefully. More importantly they are quite capable of signaling that they are experiencing a particular object or detecting the humor or tragedy of a situation, or picturing an outcome that the observer anticipates. The signaling can be made via impoverished language or via a hand gesture, body movement, or facial expression, but it is there, promptly. Just as importantly, emotion is present in abundance in the form of background, primary, and secondary emotions, richly connected to the ongoing events, obviously motivated by them, recognizably comparable to what our own emotion would be in comparable situations. (1999: 109)

In contrast, in the case of global aphasia - where there is a breakdown of all language capacities - if the patient remains with her core consciousness and core self intact, she can usually function in the same way as you or me, despite her inability to express herself in language as a translation of the deeper processes going on within. She is apparently all there, except for her ability to use language. She is in possession of consciousness, for sure, though she is lacking in extended consciousness and the autobiographical self. Language is hardly in any need of consciousness at these deeper levels: consciousness is in the process of emerging in spite of what language says or does. Language is not the architect and construction engineer responsible for the self, either. The self can often get along fine without language, even though its development in the human sense

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

156 Sensing Corporeally remains unrealized. Those who have enjoyed the companionship of members of the canine and feline families for years are sure to agree with me on this point. In fact, animal lovers are often the first to admit that all organisms, from the most humble to we imperious humans, to a greater or lesser degree have a 'mind of their own.' Language's nomination for an Oscar will be for something other than acting out consciousness or the self. It will most likely be for insisting on and egocentrically directing the whole show once consciousness and the self are already doing their act in first-class fashion. An aphasiac may not be able to reveal through language the sophistication of her thoughts and her creative mind, but this is no indication that the whole of her cerebral powers is deficient. Cerebral capacity may be there; it just cannot effectively be clad in linguistic garb. Language is not responsible for the patient's creative mind and thoughts; it only elaborates on them once they surface. Damasio's David, unlike the aphasiac, had lost virtually all his memory. But he could speak, and he could handle himself linguistically in somewhat better than average fashion. To the question Ts he conscious?' Damasio responded that his core consciousness must have been intact, for he had a certain sense of a self. He was also capable of carrying on a stream of consciousness effectively. But, contrary to Funes, strangely enough he thought only in generalities. There was a certain lack of a specific content, a lack of a particularity here and now that was interrelated with David's past experiences of comparable particulars. He could not conjure up specific images of the past, because that part of him had been lost. Consequently, his extended consciousness had been impaired. As a result, when he used words as generalities, these generalities were used as if they were particularities. But they were not particularities. They were generalities that had been shorn of interrelations with other generalities and particularities of past experience and expectations and goals with respect to future signs of generality and particularity. David simply used generalities as if they were particularities. But they were not particularities, at least not in the sense that we would tend to make them and take them. When David uttered a noun, it was for him the same noun used anywhere and at any time. It was uncontextualized. When Damasio referred to January, David was capable of talking about cold weather and snow and such. But when Damasio told him that the present month was January, though it was actually a muggy day in July, David could not

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind 157 correct the error. A moment later, if July was on his mind, he could only talk about July in terms of hot weather and long days, without reference to the present July day. If he was told 'Today is July 15' he might respond, 'Wow, it must be warm, we should go outside and take in some sun.' As far as David was concerned, each sign of generality used as a particularity was complete, and hence there was no underdetermination. The sign was a sign of Thirdness, but it was used as if it were no more than a sign of Secondness put into practice here and now. It was used as if it were a sign of Secondness, but in David's use the sign enjoyed no interdependent interrelations with past uses of the sign. So there was no chance of altered use and hence underdetermination within Thirdness. David used the sign in the present because there was no more than the present. Neither was there any genuine Firstness, for as far as David was concerned, there was no overdetermination of sign use in an indefinite number of varying contexts and hence no possibility for awareness of vagueness and difference and inconsistency. David simply spoke. He remained oblivious to other possible ways of using the words he used. He was largely unaware of the richness of language when backed up by signs of Secondness and Firstness. He simply could not learn new uses of words. His mind remained locked into the way he used words when at the age of forty-six he was struck by encephalitis that caused major damage to selected regions of his brain. Damasio noticed that when he tried to tie David down on some of the specificities regarding the generalities he talked about, he got nowhere. David simply had no opinion. There was nothing on his mind with respect to the particularities of their conversation. For instance, they could be engaged in what seemed to be a normal dialogue between friends. Then Damasio would break it off with the query, 'Who am I?' to which David would respond, 'You are my friend.' Then: 'Of course. But David, who am I really, what is my name?' David could respond with no more than: 'Well, I do not know, I can't think of it now, I just can't.' David took Damasio for a friend - any friend in the most general sense without the ability to particularize him and concretely humanize him and make him part of his, David's, feelings and sentiments and emotions. He did not know who Damasio was, whether he had ever seen him before, what he did for a living, what he was doing there at that particular moment. Yet he could talk to Damasio about the weather in the most general sense without missing a beat, as if the two were longtime friends. Damasio wrote:

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

158 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

If I stay away from specifics of people, places, events, or times, the conversation returns to normal. David knows his way around in a nonspecific world. His words are well chosen; the speech is melodic; the prosody rich with the emotions appropriate to the moment; and his facial expressions, his hand and arm gestures, and the body posture he assumes as he relaxes in the chair are precisely as you would expect for the situation. David's background emotions flow like a large, wide river. But the spontaneous content of David's conversations is generic, and whenever he is asked to produce any nongeneric detail, he often declines to do so and confesses, quite candidly, that nothing comes to mind. Pressed to venture the specific description of an event, or to place it in time, or to offer the name of a unique person, he will throw caution to the winds and produce a fable. (1999: 114)

A few weeks after David developed encephalitis he could no longer learn any new facts, any new particulars. What remained were only the generalities he retained from his past life. As a result, he was unable appropriately to process his signs of indexicality, of Secondness. It didn't matter whether he encountered new people, witnessed new events, saw new cities and cars and landscapes. They simply didn't stick. He could talk about them in terms of people and events and cities and cars and landscapes, but not this person - or whatever - right here and now with a particular name and a particular set of characteristics. If Damasio left the room after a conversation with David and then returned five minutes later, he could engage David with a new conversation. To David's way of thinking, it was a new person before him. But not really - it was also the same person before him. This was the case, since to David one person was virtually all people and all people were one person. All people were generalities of the most general sort in the same way that one person was general in the most general sort, strangely enough, within David's world. Compare David to Sacks's Ms. B. from the earlier discussion. David scored well in the core consciousness test. He was awake and apparently alert. His speech was normal; his non-verbal gestures were standard; his emotions and feelings were quite human; and he responded to the world around him in about the same way as you and me and Dr Damasio. Before his encephalitis, he knew how to play checkers. He still knew how, and he played well. All this made him distinctly human. His problem was that he couldn't remember anything, and his mindset was obliged to remain in the general; there was a sheer lack of specific content to anything he said or did. Moreover, he could not appraise a situation with respect to his future, and make what appeared to be a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind 159 rational decision: purposefulness was not genuinely there. He couldn't plan for the future, because planning ahead requires the intelligent use of specific images and thoughts of the past brought to bear on the present situation and on expectations of possible future situations. In other words, everything tells us that David had a normal sense of the basic self, for he was in tune with a core self and core consciousness. However, extended consciousness and the autobiographical self had been reduced in David to mere skeletons of what they once were. The social conventions he knew in the past were still there, as evidenced in his usual polite manner with everybody. He conducted himself - himand-his-self so to speak - with all the appropriate formalities, just as he had in the past. But his conduct with this particular person here and now flew by him without his ability to register the fact. As far as he knew, he was conducting himself here and now with this particular person in the same way he would with anyone anywhere and anywhen.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Self, Consciousnness of the Self, and Feeling

All this is to say in the semiotic sense that David experienced no genuine feelings, no emotions (111, 211, 311), as do most humans. There could be for him hardly any surprises, hardly any experience now that differed from comparable past experiences (221), and very little use of words in the general sense with a liberal dose of generality or Thirdness (331, 332, 333). His language was quite properly induced, for sure (222), but the words he uttered were devoid of genuine Thirdness in the human sense. It is as if his words or signs never reached the peak of the semiotic climb to the level of Thirdness and remained imprisoned in Secondness, as if there were linguistic signs of Secondness of the representamen, as if his linguistic signs were of deformed development, as if they were disembodied signs something like 131, 231, and 232, incapable of attaining genuine Thirdness of the semiotic object and interpretant. In light of David's story we can conclude that, first, factual knowledge - that of unique particulars - is not a prerequisite for core consciousness, for it streams along after the throbs of core conscious. Actually, core conscious and core self are more iconic than indexical (111, 211, 311), while the beginnings of autobiographical consciousness, where Secondness makes its play, are more indexical than iconic (221, 222 Autobiographical consciousness introduces at least a tinge of symbolicity (321, 322), and extended consciousness and autobiographical self are more symbolic than indexical or iconic (331, 332, 333, recall Figure 18)

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

160 Sensing Corporeally Second, if core consciousness and core self are impaired, then forget about more developed notions of self and autobiographical consciousness - as we saw in the cases of epileptic automatism and akinetic mutism - which hardly get off the boat ramp and into the semiosic stream (111, 211). Third, as Damasio argues throughout his work, consciousness is far from monolithic, and like the various phases of sign making and taking within the stream of semiosis, a distinction must be made, however loose, however processual, and however ephemeral, between core consciousness and extended consciousness. Such a vague distinction is important, since a bad core consciousness inevitably makes for a bad extended conscious, but not vice versa. Fourth, emotion and feeling are interdependently interrelated with core consciousness, while a sense of past, present, and future is of the nature of extended consciousness and autobiographical self. Core consciousness focuses and enhances subsidiary and focal attention and working memory. It is indispensable for the normal working of language, especially regarding the necessary input of feeling and emotion and of the non-verbal complements to verbal language. Core consciousness is essential to reason and logic in creativity, problem solving, and planning and decision-making processes. It is consequently the central arena where what Peirce calls the 'abductive' process occurs.1 It is prior to induced and inferential processes, which are Secondary to the Primary impulses of core consciousness, and both the induced and inferential processes and the Primary impulses are prior to Tertiary symbolic, deductive, sentential processes. The upshot is that behind the explicitly conscious workings of the mind lay visceral pulses that are essential to those very mental workings. In short, we need to wave our hands and create facial gestures to speak effectively; we need feeling and sentiment and emotion before reasoning faculties can do best what they do; and we need sparks of imagination in order for new ideas and concepts to emerge. After all, we move about, however slightly, when we listen to and especially when we play music. We gesture when we appraise the taste of fine wine. We use rhythmic movements of the hands when smoothing down a bedspread, tucking in a shirt, or making love. We use a minimal number of facial twitches when detecting the character of the food in a friend's house we have just entered by its aroma. We also wrinkle our brow, stare at the sky, or place a hand on our head or prop our chin up with a fist, when we think. And we pay attention to images and ideas that seem to pop up from nowhere.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind 161 All this has to do with bodymind, and bodymindsigns, body and mind and signs operating in concert with one another to the extent that there is no knowing where one leaves off and another begins. Indeed, there are intimate interdependent, interactive interrelationships between bodymind, bodymindsigns, and world: they are wrapped around and into one another like slugs mating in a slimy, flowing elongated embrace. This is as enchantingly participatory as you can get. Indeed, the essence of core consciousness is

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

the very thought of you - the very feeling of you - as an individual being involved in the process of knowing of your own existence and of the existence of others ... The images that constitute knowing and sense of selfthe feelings of knowing - do not command center stage in your mind. They influence mind most powerfully and yet they generally remain to the side; they use discretion. More often than not, knowing and sense of self are in subtle rather than assertive mode. It is the destiny of subtle mental contents to be missed, and not just those that constitute knowing and self. (Damasio 1999: 127, 128)

As implied in our earlier discussion of focal-subsidiary complementarity, merely a fraction of what goes on in the mind is accessible to conscious awareness. Most of what we do remains in the obscure passageways of subsidiary awareness, waiting its chance to slip into the well-lit areas near the open windows of the mind. The items of subsidiary awareness usually go unnoticed. Yet they are there, not far away at all, and perhaps available if we would only try to bring them into focus. Yet rarely do we try — really try - to do so. This is often because context, the vast majority of which also lies beyond conscious awareness, like subsidiary awareness, spreads out all-too-comfortable indications that what the focal mind is up to is well with the world. It seems to be well with the world, except, of course, when expectations are thwarted. Then it's time for an appraisal and perhaps a change, at which point some of what had been relegated to subsidiary attention has a chance to slither into the light of day. What with focal attention and context providing so many soothing indices that confirm our wish for security, it is more often than not advantageous to resist the tendency to notice ourselves in the act of knowing. In fact, during the flow of our bodymind's coming and going in everyday life, and especially when engaged in peak activities, the consciously aware mind's chance of following the flow is minimal at best and virtually absent at worst.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

162 Sensing Corporeally For example, during our daily activities we often find ourselves caught up in the written word, in textuality, in the graphic symbol on the monitor, in the image on the big screen and the boob tube, or in the bright lights and massive ads and commercial come-ons screaming from every angle. It all deadens the senses, creates repetitive zombie moves, and provokes little change from the well-worn pathways of least resistance in cultures that place a premium on products rather than on processes, on selling ourselves and our products rather than on salvaging some modicum of sanity, on self-serving self-promotion rather than on self-preservation by getting the life-sustaining creative juices to flow once again. Consequently, we can under 'normal' circumstances find ourselves going along with our culturally inculcated moves, having assumed that we are doing what will reap the biggest rewards for us. Meanwhile, those things that remain in subsidiary attention - above all, those gentle nudges from somewhere prodding us to notice, really notice, what we are doing - go unheeded. All these activities rush along at such a breakneck pace that the conscious thinking and reasoning, scheming and rationalizing mind has no chance of keeping up. However, bodymind can keep up quite well, thank you. This is because it doesn't feel the compulsion to keep everything in its proper place, everything in focus. It just does what it does, in the same way it has done it many times in the past. Bodymind has no obsessive need of focal awareness or of language, since subsidiary awareness can in most situations get along quite well. Since in our daily affairs language is obviously what we know at our most explicit best, let's focus on it for a few moments. Tacitness Again

Words move, and they change. So that's where we might get a wedge into the topic at hand. The grammar rules of whatever language or languages we speak, the meaning of our words and those words themselves, and, above all, the voice inflections, facial contortions, manual gestures body language - are all so much a part of us that we co-participate with most of them while hardly giving them a moment's notice. Their use makes up a large part of our implicit or tacit knowing. They are what we do without the mind's ordinarily needing to be aware of the doing or of being in control at every turn. Examples abound. During motion and changes in the ring for the pugilist, on the track for the race car driver, on the court for the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

When There Is Nothing on the Mind 163 basketball player, in the mind for the typist composing a message or for the champion orator in an auditorium delivering a talk, on the printed page for the reader, or on the tongue for she who is engaged in a casual conversation, most of what is done, in large part bodymind does, leaving the mind itself free to engage in what it does best in relatively linear fashion. Actually, what mind does best it does at an exceedingly torpid pace. Were the expert typist forced to concentrate on each of the letters she wished to put on the monitor, where her fingers must be placed in order to send a command to the computer hardware, she would be reduced to a slothful performance indeed. Bodymind has no time for sluggards: it leaps along, leaving the mind far behind with its relatively lethargic, largely linear and one-by-one account of its doings. Suppose we are reading a book. We skip over most letters and many words, perhaps avoiding entire sentences, while getting the message, more or less. Bodymind is doing a giant share of the reading. It scans, taking words as wholes, nimbly leaping over many words and occasionally even sentences, reading between the lines. And all the while, mind remains attuned to the general meaning behind the sentences. Then ... what's that? An unfamiliar word. A hand automatically stretches out toward a nearby dictionary, and another hand aids it in finding the word. 'Ah, so that's it,' says mind. OK. Now we can go on. Most of the words read were not part of our active, sedimented vocabulary, so we had to pause and take a refresher course in lexicology. But what about the words we use daily or almost daily? They are another matter. They are habituated. They are of bodymind. Brain takes them in, body feels them in one way or another, and bodymind knows. We know. We don't have to pontificate on our knowledge. We just know, and we know we know, tacitly. These tacitly known words enable us to get on with more important words and their meanings, to create new words, and to contemplate their use, their interdependent, interrelated interaction with the world. Quite unfortunately, these can also be the words that indoctrinate and control us, that blind us, that reduce us to automata-like behaviour. In such cases we can become slaves of group pressures; we can become dogmatic ideologues; we can become intolerant racists or obsessive, tunnel-minded sexists or rabid feminists or wild-eyed terrorists or whatever. This can be a severe problem. In order to avoid this problem, there should always be a call for mindfulness - insofar as that is possible - of the whys and the hows of our using these words and the whats on which they have a bearing. We have to raise these words to a level of consciousness and examine them time and time again. This takes a new way of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

164 Sensing Corporeally looking at them instead of using them without giving them any thought. We should not, we cannot, reach the stage where we can't imagine anything except what we are used to. The sentence I just finished has to do with more than words - and here we might have the first key to the extralinguistic aspects of our feeling and sensing and experience and spacetime and motion and change. Simple words, hundreds of which are found in every book and in every conversation of lengthy duration, have their own meaning with which we are mind-numbingly aware. These words, like 'and,' 'is,' 'are,' 'then,' 'there,' 'now,' 'then,' and so on, are rarely used alone; rather, we use them in conjunction with strings of words. Children use many of these words as whole sentences, so-called 'holophrastic sentences.' For instance, the mother of the household enters the living room after work, where father is playing with their young child. The toddler looks up, raises her hand with index finger pointed straight up to the ceiling, stiffens her little body, smiles a big smile, and with glittering eyes screams: 'Mama!' Now that's a sentence for you. What she is saying is: 'Hi! Mother! Haven't seen you for a while, and, gee, it's nice. You look great. In fact, just seeing you again makes my entire day.'2 Of course that's not what she said. But it's more or less what she meant, we can suppose. Most of what she said she said tacitly, with her body, not her words. Her hand, her arm, her mouth, her eyes, her entire body, spoke. Did she need to say any more? Certainly not. She said all that was needed. And her saying it most likely made her mother's day also. As the child grows, her words will gradually take on their conventionally proper meanings, her vocabulary will increase by leaps and bounds, and more and more of that vocabulary will become sedimented, entrenched. All this implies motion of words sinking into non-consciousness and changes of word meanings. By and large, no matter how deeply sedimented a word may be, with each and every successive use there will be some movement, some slippage of the word within the spacetime and its interrelations with all other words. At the same time, the meanings of those words will change, however slightly. As time goes by, our child passes through adolescence and into adulthood. There are more and more words with increasingly complex meanings, all of which continue to change. What are the implications of the form of contextualized, tacit language use? One implication, I would suggest, is that if we properly become attuned to tacitness, it will make us freer than we could have imagined. To illustrate this sense of 'freedom,' a few more words on tacitness are appropriate.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER TEN

Hasta la Vista Descartes

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Freedom from Anxiety

Daniel Dennett (1991) asks the reader to imagine what he calls the 'Cartesian theater.' It consists of a movie house context equipped with wrap-around screen, stereophonic sound, proper smells, and tactile sensations. The tactile aspect of the theatre is like the 'feelies,' the movies in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1946) that provide tactile sensations as well as visual images and a sound track. Everything is 'in there,' in the theatre, where the mind resides, and everything is readily accessible to mind. The 'Cartesian theatre' concept, Damasio writes, fortifies the hopeful wish that the mind is in a position to see all and control all. It is part and parcel of that attractive dream according to which the mind is captain of its own ship, the body. This desirable but 'false intuition shared by many who enjoy thinking about how the brain works is that the many strands of sensory processing experienced in the mind - sights and sounds, taste and aroma, surface texture and shape - all "happen" in a single brain structure. Somehow it stands to reason that what is together in the mind is together at one place in the brain where different sensory aspects mingle' (1994: 95). Damasio argues against this hoary Cartesian dream. He tells us there is no single region of the brain capable of processing, in simultaneity, representations from all sensory modalities. Sensations of sound, taste, smell, sight, touch, and even kinesthetics (i.e., body position and movement) occur in different parts of the brain by way of parallel multiprocessing. In terms of the concepts presented in this book, these multiple complementary processes are interdependently, interrelatedly, interactively correlated, by way of focal and subsidiary

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

166 Sensing Corporeally awareness, to give meaning to our world. Separate processes are integrated into meaningful combinations through time. As a consequence, any malfunction in timing can lead to disintegration of the normal integration. In other words, a time-binding process develops from signs 111 —> 311 and upward. When there is disruption of signs primarily of Firstness, problems arise: the mind is thrown out of step with the body. For example, when asked how she is, a terminally ill patient might respond 'I feel fine,' when she has all the reason in the world to bemoan her fate. Regarding one of Damasio's anosognosic patients, half her body could be paralyzed, yet she might lay claim to perfectly normal coordination. In a somewhat comparable manner, this false sense of well-being pervades certain aspects of every life. For example, if I am trying to influence someone else (boss, lover, colleague, associate), I might blurt out, 'I'm in the best shape of my life.' Sometimes I feel rotten because something is terribly out of synch. Nevertheless, in the circumstances I tend to declare, 'Everything's under control.' These instances are the inverse of K.'s situation in Kafka's novel The Trial The patients' and my explicit messages (331, 332, 333) have not listened or have refused to listen to implicit messages (111, 211, 221, 222, 311). Messages have failed, or they have refused signs of the past and obvious signs of the future. There is only the now of the messages, messages that have disintegrated to the extent that they are used as if time were of no consequence. It is as if the messages were signs 111, 211, and 311 before the sequential march of time entered the picture. Ordinary reasoning processes are not getting or are refusing to get the message from those signs of the body and of subsidiary awareness; hence they have no chance of further development, of formulating plans for the future and exercising responsible choices. There is little chance of recalling images of the past and bringing them to bear on the present in order that there may be a projection into the future. Under ordinary conditions, these various images - perceptual images from all the sensory channels recalled from the past and with respect to plans for the future - are constructions of one's brain. All one can know for certain is that they are real insofar as one's self is concerned, and that other living organisms must surely make comparable images, for we 'share our image-based concept of the world with other humans, and even with some animals' (Damasio, 1994: 97). There is remarkable consistency in the constructions that different sentient organisms make of the essential - that is, essential for them - aspects of their environ-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

167

ment (sounds, shapes, colours, space, smells, tastes, textures). Had these organisms been designed differently, their constructions of the world around them would be different as well, because they would then inhabit a distinct Umwelt, or life-world (see chapter 15). Consequently, we do not know, and we will probably never know, the absolutely true nature of the 'real.' This very important point Peirce reiterated time and time again. Every new construct is a retranslation of images past and images present and images projected into the future. Every new construct is a reinterpretation, a reformulation of what presumably was in the past and what is hoped for in the future. Images are already becoming something other than what they were becoming during moments past, and they are something other than what will have been becoming at any given moment. However, new constructs are not mere simulacra, in the sense of French cultural critic Jean Baudrillard (1983a, 1983b, 1988). They appear as replicas, for sure. But they aren't exactly the same as they were. There is always some difference, however slight, between what is becoming and what was becoming and what will have been becoming. One might wish to say that all this is quite in line with Funes's supernominalistic account of the world as he perceives it. He is apparently of consummate impartiality. He is completely unemotional regard ing his enumeration of virtually everything in his surroundings down to the most minute detail. His problem is that he can't plan; he can't make a decision for himself, because, unlike Damasio's Gage and Elliot and others, he can't abstract, generalize, think, reason. It is as if his basic bodymind processes (111, 211, 311) were impaired, in such a way that what is before him here and now is all there is (222, 321, 322 and the rest of language). For Funes, there aren't any genuine surprises (221). Granted, he was surprised that a dog seen from the front at 3:00 was considered by other people to be the same dog if seen from behind at 3:15. As far as he was concerned, it was an entirely different dog. This is surprise of sorts. However, the surprise is not genuine, since it doesn't lead to anything new (an 'abduction' in Peirce's terms) in the sense of a novel generality or concept. Funes's perception, is pretty much a Humean form of perception consisting of an interminable series of sensations that come in atomistic bundles. Hardly anything more. Funes's plight seems comparable to that of the Tlonians, the inhabitants of the planet Tlon in Borges's story 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' (1962). Both Funes and the Tlonians reconstruct their perceived world at every instant. However, Funes constructs his world in terms of what is 'out there.' In contrast, whatever pops into the Tlonians' mind 'in here'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

168 Sensing Corporeally becomes their world out there; they are subjective idealists in the George Berkeley tradition. But there is another very important difference between Funes and the Tlonians. The Tlonians generalize about what is not: counterbooks, counterarguments, countertheories, refutations. In other words, their generalities are pure mind spinning, ethereal fabrications. In this regard, the Tlonians know about sensing and ultimately thinking (signs 221, 222, 321, 322 and the rest of language). Such generalizations are entirely out of the question for Funes, who sees only particulars in their myriad array and is incapable of thinking, of abstracting, of generalizing. Yet the Funes and the Tlonians have something in common: both seem entirely incapable of emotions and feelings in the genuine human sense. The dilemma of Lonnrot the super-reasoner was that he couldn't image properly, for he lacked the means (he was incapable of genuine signs developed out of 111, 211, and 221). He dwelled almost exclusively within Thirdness, which specializes in hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Consequently, he paid hardly any mind to what we might call the available inducers, the signs of inductive particularity that surrounded him (222, 321, 322). He attended solely to what he already (thought he) knew without a shadow of a doubt. So for Lonnrot there were no surprises; there was nothing new under the sun, nothing to be abducted from scratch, nothing to be accumulated and inductively placed in pigeonholes as classes; there was only that of which he was certain (deduction), that which would in all probability lead him to his predetermined ends. Funes, the Tlonians, Lonnrot. As mutually exclusive personalities they are hopelessly and helplessly inadequate. In concert, however, they might stand a chance of functioning as a halfway decent human being. The problem is that this human being would inherit their shared inability genuinely to 'abduct' (I briefly discuss 'abduction' in chapter 1). She would not be able to realize the surfacing of emotions and feelings of the human sort. She would be incapable of sensing, after a surprise, that things might be in the process of becoming in a way that is different from the way they are now becoming; hence, she would be incapable of creating the image of a solution to some problem or other that happens to be at hand. This is the conundrum in which many of Damasio's patients are caught up. They generally seem normal, except in their emotional life and in their capacity for engendering feelings for their own well-being and feelings of empathy for other humans. But they are unable to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

169

conjure up images with which to create patterns of thought and reason that could, with proper planning and decision making, provide a wellrounded life for them. To be sure, they can express disembodied, impersonal, general thoughts. But these are skeletal thoughts lacking the fleshiness that extra- and pre-linguistic images could have given them. I expect that such images are of the type that Albert Einstein enjoyed when doing his most fertile work:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my [Einstein's] mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above mentioned elements ... The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and ... muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will, (in Hadamard, 1945: 142-3; brackets added)

William James wrote that if we took emotions away from someone we would be left with no more than cold intellection: What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? (James, 1950 [1890], in Damasio, 1994: 129)

I would expect that James is referring here to the absence of bodily abduced and induced emotions and feelings of signs 111 —> 311. These are feelings and sentiments and emotions that boil up later to enter extended consciousness and autobiographical self. And finally they are fleshed out with language. They can be instinctive, or they can be culturally inculcated at deep and well-nigh instinctive levels (the baby chick that scurries for cover when a hawk flies overhead, the dog that

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

170 Sensing Corporeally leaps to defend its territory when it is invaded, the male human animal that begins fantasizing when on the beach with a beer in hand and in the presence of attractive bodies). Or they can be entrenched, habituated, automatized action-reaction (a bow and arrow in the hands of a Zen archer in Japan, a high five slap in the New York ghettos, slowing down on the highway when a patrol car is spotted, proper placement of a napkin before eating).

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Doing Outside Conscious Mind The move is from tacitness to explicitness, or, so to speak, from Polanyi's subsidiary awareness to focal awareness. In other words, as William James puts it, fear, rage, happiness, sadness, and so on, would not be induced from the depths but imposed from above. The process would not be bottom-up but top-down. The direction would be, then, 333 —> 311. It would be a matter chiefly of deduction rather than abduction. It would be feelings and emotions triggered only after largely non-habituated, non-automatic, voluntary thought processes emerged to take control of the situation. Whether the case is 111 —» 333 or 333 —> 111, any ensuing action is triggered by Damasio's inducers (222). Inducers, chiefly of Secondness, come into play by way of a surprise that there is something different, or by way of acknowledgment that it is business as usual (211). If sign making and taking at this is business as usual, the inducer emerged from the creation of an image (111 —> 211). In this sense, then, the deductive move within 333 didn't pop up out of the clear blue sky. It was, itself, the product of a creative act, an abduction. But it wasn't an abduction nudged to the surface after the unexpected occurred. It was an abduction that what happened is what should ordinarily have happened ('All emeralds are green,' 'This stone in the jeweller's shop is green'), and it led to the accustomed conclusion ('Therefore this stone is an emerald'). The first premise is a tacit given (though keep in mind that there is no absolute guarantee that it is correct). The second premise confirms the expected (however, there exists the possibility that the stone might have been a diamond that because of the angle of view, and the quality of the background, reflected what appears as 'green'). The conclusion then completes the operation, and the knowing subject is armed and ready with a full-blown argument with which to impose some preconception or other on some aspect of her world. One might wish to surmise that in the case of 111 —> 333 the body does

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Hasta la Vista Descartes 171 the walking, whereas in the case of 333 —» 111 the mind does the talking. Foul, once again. That entrenched propensity Cartesianly to separate body and mind has once again surfaced. Yet 111 —> 333 comes about more tacitly than explicitly. It is more in rhythm with subsidiary awareness than with focal awareness. It is more a matter of emotion and feeling than of intellection. It is closer to core consciousness and core self than to extended consciousness and autobiographical self. It is the offspring of Firstness and the stepchild of Thirdness. The inverse, it hardly needs saying, usually happens when top-down 333 —> 111 occurs. The bottom-up phenomenon goes more with the flow of Damasio's 'Primary Emotions'; the top-down phenomenon onstreams more to the tune of 'Secondary Emotions.' 'Primary Emotions' are more hard-wired and programmed (instinctive) than habituated; 'Secondary Emotions' become entrenched, and the emotional and feeling component of the series comes about only after the phenomenon in question has been sensed and experienced and conceptually processed over and over again. This is by no means to imply that the process is a one-way street in one direction or the other. No. To a greater or lesser degree it goes both ways. You see a green stone embedded in a ring in the jeweller's shop. Bottom-up processing tells you it is an emerald; top-down processing tells you the same. They agree. But ... no ... wait a minute! Bottom-up tells you that a small white rectangle attached to the ring is a price tag; top-down tells you some wanted information is there. Bottom-up searches for some black marks on the rectangle; top-down reads them, and a brow is non-consciously furrowed. Bottom-up says: 'Surprise!' Top-down screams: 'This can't be! The price is outrageously high for an emerald.' To make a long story short, it isn't an emerald at all. You ask the salesperson. She tells you it is a diamond. You take another look. Ah, yes, the dark green velvet background, the light at an angle, the glittering gold watches farther back, and so on. So that's why it looked like an emerald at first glance. The entire operation is a non-linear, undulating, rhythming concert of focal and subsidiary attention, with Thirdness, Secondness, and Firstness combining into a semiotic process. This process involves backand-forth movement between and through Damasio's levels of consciousness and self. Primary feelings and emotions swell up from beneath the surface (111 -> 221 —> ...). When there is consciousness of the emotions and feeling of the emotions and awareness of the feeling of the emotions, there can be action-reaction, thanks to the inducer from

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

172 Sensing Corporeally the top-down direction. A secondary emotion is the product of an initial feeling and emotion, for sure. But since nothing seems out of the ordinary (within 222), it is taken directly to the conceptual and intellectual assembly line where a hypothesis is forthcoming. The direction of the processing is then reversed (222 —> 332 —> ...). And a hypothetical, tertiary construct emerges out of the experience of the experience of feeling and emotion. The process, I should add, begins with the conscious, deliberate entertainment of a phenomenon. (I use the arrows in the sign mentions, because they are intended to depict process, since the whole affair is processual.) These considerations come about in the form of mental images organized into a thought process. The images are organized according to conventions and dispositions that have become deeply habituated. Then the top-down process begins, and feelings and emotions are engendered for the purpose of confirming or justifying what the subject wanted and expected in the first place. If instead the complementary bottom-up process is in effect, at a non-conscious level the subject automatically and involuntarily responds to a phenomenon. If there is no surprise (221), things usually go uninhibited along accustomed pathways of least resistance. If there is a surprise, however, the phenomenon must be appraised. In this case, it's up to the top for a little deliberation and a possible hypothesis (abductively emergent from the bottom again). Then there is some testing with the proper inducers (222). If all goes well, a comfortable answer surfaces. In other words, secondary emotions make use of primary emotion processes. If things don't go well, then it's back to the drawing board. Thus we have Figure 21. Feeling, emotions, the images patterning them, and their attributes are the initiators of bottom-up semiotic processes. Inducers, patron signs of indexicality, fall into the midrange processes. Then decision making, both of the purely hypothetical sense (that was Lonnrot's undoing) and of hypotheticals put into practice within one's personal life (of which Gage and David were incapable), begins its trek toward more and more explicit levels of communication and interpretation. An important point is that non-conscious, automatic, involuntary processing - whether initially developed or developed after there has been some thoughtful deliberation - invariably leads us back to the underlying, background, subsidiary semiotic arenas. And then the process begins anew. This is a matter of Damasio's prefrontal dispositions and proclivities, in addition to instincts. It is precisely what was lacking in Gage, and in David and other patients Damasio studies. However,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

173

Sign types 331,332,333

Autobiographical Self

Top-down

Language Logic Reason Planning

Focal

Decision making

221,222,321,322 Indexicals

Core self

Subsidiary

Images

211,311

Attributes Emotions Feelings

Proto-self

111

Bottom-up

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 21: Self, signs, and top-down, bottom-up interrelations the emotional processing impaired in patients with prefrontal damage is of the secondary type. These patients cannot generate emotions relative to the images conjured up by certain categories of situation and stimuli, and thus cannot have the ensuing feeling. This is borne out in clinical observations and special tests ... Those same prefrontal patients can have primary emotions, however, and that is why their affect may appear to be intact at first glance (they would show fear if someone screamed unexpectedly right behind them, or if their houses shook in an earthquake). On the contrary, patients with limbic system damage in the amygdala or anterior cingulate usually have a more pervasive impairment of both primary and secondary emotions, and thus are more recognizably blunted in their affect. (1994: 138-9)

Prefrontally damaged patients whose core self and core consciousness are more or less intact can have primary emotions. But their secondary emotions remain depersonalized, cold and aloof, and undeveloped. They can have feelings and emotions, but they cannot humanly sense them. Nor can they conceptualize them either with respect to their own self or regarding empathy for others. In other words, they can have feeling (111 —> ...), emotion (211 —> ...), and sensing of feeling emotion (221 -» ...). But they cannot go substantially beyond that. They cannot

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

174 Sensing Corporeally very effectively have a feeling of the sensing of their feeling of the emotion (311), nor can they develop their signs at higher levels. Here's an example. 'Smile, and the whole world smiles with you; frown, and you frown alone.' When I was a kid I must have heard that folk saying at least 50,000 times. What, exactly, does it entail? First, you have to make yourself smile. This presents a problem. It is like the father telling the child 'Be spontaneous!' If the child decides to obey the order and makes a gallant attempt to act spontaneously, she must obediently struggle non-spontaneously to become spontaneous. So she has not complied with the order spontaneously. If at some non-conscious level she happens to begin behaving in a spontaneous fashion with respect to a certain set of tasks, she has not set about conscientiously and intentionally to follow the order. So one could say that she has not genuinely followed it. She is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. In this sense, in order to smile so that the whole world will smile with us, we have to make ourselves smile. The smile will be fake. So will the whole world smile with us? Why should it, if our smile isn't sincere and if perhaps we might even rather be frowning than smiling? We might think we, our mind, is fooling our body into thinking we are smiling sincerely. In such case can we realize success any better than did Ronald Reagan's TV image in front of Sacks's aphasiacs? Our response that 'the devil made me do it,' or 'my body made me do it,' is the downside of this equation. The upside is 'my mind made my body do it,' in good Cartesian fashion. The problem is precisely that: the procedure is indelibly Cartesian. It's as if we were to give ourselves the injunction, 'Make yourself smile' (333 —> 311 —> 222 —» ...) 'and you'll feel happy' (111—» 311 —> ...). First the arrow goes one way as mind imposes itself on body; then, when body obediently does what it must do, the arrow is reversed. Finally Facing Up to Ourselves

Interestingly enough, Damasio (1994: 148) reports on work by Paul Ekman (1992) on making people make themselves smile. Ekman gave his subjects instructions on how to position their facial muscles - for example, to form a smile, or some other position to pattern other emotions. He found that when the subjects were instructed to contort their faces to form the equivalent of a smile, they soon experienced an emotion and a feeling corresponding to the smile. A happy facial expres-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

175

sion led to happy experiences, a sad face to sadness, an angry face to rage:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Ekman's experiment suggests either that a fragment of the body pattern characteristic of an emotional state is enough to produce a feeling of the same signal, or that the fragment subsequently triggers the rest of the body state and that leads to the feeling. Curiously, not all parts of the brain are fooled, as it were, by a set of movements that is not produced through the usual means. New evidence from electrophysiological recordings shows that make-believe smiles generate different patterns of brain waves from those generated by real smiles ... Although they reported the feeling appropriately to the fragment of facial expression, the subjects were well aware that they were not happy or angry at any particular thing. We cannot fool ourselves any more than we can fool others when we only smile politely, and that is what the electrical recording seems to correlate with so nicely. This may also be the very good reason why great actors, opera singers, and others manage to survive the simulation of exalted emotions they regularly put themselves through, without losing control. (Damasio 1994: 148-9)

Gage, David, and others put on a smile or talked about something in the general sense without the ability to specify it; hence they did not have the genuine feeling and emotion. They had feelings and emotions, but not with respect to any particular thing or person, especially themselves. In contrast, at least in the beginning, Eckman's subjects did what they were supposed to do while maintaining consciousness of the 'as if character of their feelings and emotions, and hence they did not identify themselves with their feelings and emotions. Nor did they empathize with the characters they were portraying in a deep human sense, because their empathy was also 'as if.' Later, the 'as if became 'is,' and they began genuinely to sense the corresponding feelings and emotions of their actions. What lies behind the 'as if in feigned feeling and emotion and the 'is' in genuine feelings and emotions is a background. If the outward expression of feeling and emotion is genuine, then the process is 111 —> 331 ..., from background to foreground, with the surfacing of the proper expressions. But if it is 'as if,' then we have the necessary background of experiences that makes possible the decision voluntarily to create fabricated feeling and emotion, 333 —» 311 ... In the first case, the body does what it does in interdependent, interrelated interaction with mind in

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

176 Sensing Corporeally such a way that we have neither body nor mind in separation but bodymind. In the second case, the mind does what it does in the same interaction with the body. However, the difference is that the mind mediates and to at least a limited extent monitors what the body does. For example, suppose you are reading this book when a few hunger pangs attack. You rather mindlessly put the book down and make your way toward the kitchen. Your body just does what it does, and needs little or no coaching from the mind. Bodymind is operating in concert. Perhaps your mind remains on some perplexing issue discussed in this book, leaving your body to do what it does. Your body does what it does so as to leave your mind free for other matters. What about patients who suffer from a loss of proprioception? What is the importance of proprioception to the nature and function of consciousness? According to empiricism in its early twentieth-century interpretation, body orientation - a sense of what the body is doing - is really of little or no consequence. Basically, all we really need to do science is the proper empirical method and a pair of eyes to see and a mind to control the brain and a tongue to wag and some fingers to tap computer keys. After the work of Heidegger and especially Merleau-Ponty, following Husserl, and in light of interest in the body from many quarters over the past couple of decades, if one remains of the opinion that the body has little to do with consciousness, one had better reconsider the entire issue. Granted, taking focal attention as the sole author of consciousness and knowledge is quite in line with traditional empiricism. And exclusively from within this perspective, granted, the body is of relatively little consequence. But if we adequately contemplate the complementary functions of focal and subsidiary attention, we cannot help but conclude that you simply can't have the one without the other, like the Yin and Yang of the bodymind's doing at conscious and non-conscious levels. By way of subsidiary attention, the background doings of the body are monitored during each and every ripple along the stream. If this is the case, the question emerges: What might happen if this monitoring of part of the body's doings were suddenly to cease? If I ask you to walk across the room and pick up a piece of paper on the floor, your body can do it while your mind is wondering who I am to think I can order you around. Your body carries out the command subsidiarily while at the same time your mind is left to focus on something else. Now I ask you to walk across the room and pick up another piece of paper while at the same time reciting the Lord's Prayer, moving one arm in clockwise direction and the other arm in counterclockwise direction,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

177

and manipulating your eyebrows in the fashion of Groucho Marx. Will you be able to do it? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Either way, your subsidiary attention to such a complexity of tasks will be taxed to the limit. If you try focally attending to all the tasks simultaneously, your mind may get into a muddle. It simply isn't up to such multiples of attention. Even though focal mind and subsidiary mind operate in concert, as an activity increases in complexity, focal-subsidiary resonance threatens to fall into dissonance. On the other hand, if somebody with impaired proprioception is asked simply to walk across the room and pick up a piece of paper, could she do it? If she could, it would be with great difficulty. As isolated activities, her body might be capable of ambulating from one end of the room to the other, and she might be able to stoop down, grasp the piece of paper, and return to her upright position. But her mind would have to rest focally on each and every move, telling her body what to do in order to carry out the appropriate action. The focal and subsidiary levels of her mind couldn't operate simultaneously as if it were one process. She would have to think each move out individually and in slow, distinct, linear fashion. She would not have access to simultaneous focal and subsidiary awareness, as you do. She would have to process individually her entire sequence of mind-signs and their corresponding body-signs, whereas you are capable of processing, in parallel, many signs at focal and subsidiary levels. The body can engage in quite complex activities without the focal mind's monitoring its every move. This is because the body needs no more than surveillance by the subsidiary mind. But if one's activity becomes so complex that one has to focus on various activities at once, one falters and fails. And if one happens to lose the monitoring role of one's subsidiary attention, one's body will likely stumble and fall while concentrating on the Lord's Prayer and at the same time ambulating across the room and bringing about a number of other activities. Damasio's patients suffering from anosognosia, described earlier, were unaware of the state of their body. When asked about their condition, they invariably responded that they were fine. This is conceivably comparable to a person's plight after losing proprioceptive awareness. As far as she is concerned her body is fit as a fiddle and can function fine. But when she actually begins doing something, her limbs begin flailing away in many directions as her body wobbles and weaves uncontrollably. Proprioception. As discussed earlier and illustrated in Figure 21, proprioception is a necessary component of Polanyi's tacit awareness, this

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

178 Sensing Corporeally non-conscious or subsidiary form of knowing that is revealed in what we just do without having to think, and without having to will our body to do it. It is that which we know without our necessarily being consciously aware of our so knowing it. What we do by way of this knowledge we do as if it were second nature. And in a sense it is. This is also why Sacks's 'disembodied lady' is so troubling. Christina had no adequate body image. She had no sense of her body's interdependent interrelation to and interaction with the signs in its immediate environment. Since she had very little proprioceptive awareness, she found it necessary to compensate for this loss by paying close focal attention to her body's posture. She was eventually able to improve on the positioning of her body. The problem was that it all seemed forced, wilful, non-spontaneous, and fake. Nature having failed her, she resorted to apparent artifice, but to repeat Sacks's words, 'the artifice was suggested by nature, and soon became "second nature."' In other words, signs 222 - Damasio's inducers - had been part of Christina's subsidiary awareness from bottom-up, and its scant interrelations to and interactions with the signs around it. The subsidiary nature of signs 222 allowed her focal awareness to rest on signs of more immediate importance (221, 321, 322, and 331-333 during a conversation). Now, given her lack of proprioception, she found it necessary to bring signs 222 into her focal awareness as well. As a consequence, they appeared unnatural, as if coming about in automaton fashion. Her compensatory act, having become available to her without her having consciously to think about it, in a certain sense became part of her nature. Yet she was still lacking in natural proprioceptive awareness. That's why her movements seemed unnatural to onlookers. What for us are signs 222 of our proprioceptive awareness, she found she must boot up to the equivalent of signs 321 and 322. That is, she had to boot the equivalent of her signs 222 up to indexical and linguistic 'pointers' or 'shifters' or 'indicators' (321, pronouns) and customary and entrenched or habituated language use (322, that is, 'How're you doin',' and comparable phrases). We habitually take signs 321 and 322 in and process them as part of our subsidiary attention in automaton fashion. In contrast, Christina was required to concentrate on them at every step of the way. Hence her moves appeared to be those of an automaton. Now according to Peirce, replicas of 322 and 321 can become habituated with repetitive use. As such, they become sedimented, and part of bodymind sign processing, much like signs 222 and 211 respectively. That is how we most normally

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

179

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

take them, not as signs 322 and 321 but as 222 and 211, for they have become second nature for us; they have become entrenched, part of our habits of thought and of action. Christina could not afford the luxury of her signs becoming habituated and of second nature: she had to take each actualization of signs 322 and 321 as if they were there for the first time, and she had to react accordingly, thinking each sign out to its logical end. Her self necessarily remained apart from them. Ordinarily there is hardly any distinction between our self and our sign's replications by habituation; we take our signs in our stride and act appropriately and proprioceptively. Christina, as a consequence, felt that her body was 'blind and deaf to itself,' that it had 'no sense of itself.' In this same view, Damasio reports that patients with anosognosia are unaware of the condition of their body. They do not seem to know they are suffering from a severe illness - often a stroke or a brain tumour or cancer in some other part of the body. If they have had a limb amputated, it becomes a 'phantom limb' and they seem to want to conduct their affairs as if the limb were still there. They are apparently unconcerned over their condition, though when pressed, they admit to some lack of movement in some of their limbs. Strangely enough, they ordinarily evince hardly any emotional display whatsoever over their condition. They have no background feeling. Cross-talk between the right and left hemispheres has been cut: Unable to avail themselves of current body input, anosognosics fail to update the representation of their bodies and as a result fail to recognize, through the somatosensory system, promptly and automatically, that the reality of their body landscape has changed. They still can form in their minds an image of what their bodies were like, an image that is now outdated. And since their body was fine, that is what they venture to report. (1994: 154)

It is as if their bodymind processing of signs from 111 to 311 had been shunted aside and remains in limbo with respect to sign processing from 321 to 333. There is no dialogic exchange between the two processes, roughly localized in the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere respectively. If an amputee feels her limb is still there (111-311), when asked about her condition, quite often she will admit that it is not there (321-333; compare this to Christina's plight). In such case, she is not suffering from delusion or hallucination, so there is really no 'phantom limb.'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

180 Sensing Corporeally Logically and rationally speaking, she is all there. She just has the feelings she had before her amputation; she hasn't accommodated herself to her new condition. Anosognosics have no such reality check. Perhaps because their condition involves knowledge about the whole of their body instead of part of it (as in the case with amputees), or perhaps because visceral information is to a greater degree unavailable, anosognosics suffer from more severe 111 to 311 incapacity than amputees. Their condition is even more severe that than Christina's. Regarding anosognosics, Damasio tells us:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The lack of updated body signals leads not only to irrational reports about their condition, some being inappropriately jocular, others monotonously sullen. When forced to reason about their state, on the basis of new facts presented through other channels, verbally or through direct visual confrontation, they momentarily acknowledge their new situation, but the realization is soon forgotten. (1994: 154)

It would appear, in other words, that in the beginning an actor's mind puts her body into motion 'as if it were something other than what it ordinarily is. Eventually, the whole of bodymind operates on the basis of the 'as if premise. In contrast, the anosognosic's bodymind functions 'as if it had never been an act but was a matter of business as usual. In a manner of speaking, anosognosics suffer from self-deception, while actors at the outset feign self-deception, and gradually it becomes 'as if there were no deception. Anosognosics aren't fully aware that body cannot function as before, while actors begin by willing the body to function in a manner unaccustomed to the prior body. Bodymind Styles of Reasoning A rebuttal to what I am asserting might be forthcoming to the extent that what I am saying aids and abets Cartesianism in the sense that I resort to the mind's willing the body to do what it does and hence I presuppose a distinction between mind and body at the most fundamental level. This observation might appear reasonable. However, my stories in the earlier sections aren't simply a matter basically of mind willing body or body lying outside willing mind. Rather, at the most fundamental level it is a matter of bodymind flowing jazzily, with each interdependent, interrelated, interactive part of the combo coordinating and complementing its efforts with the whole. In this respect, it could well be that the anosognosic has become so engrossed

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

181

with her bodymind whole in past times that she is incapable of understanding her present artificial split between mind doings and body doings. She believes she is still whole, whole bodymind. She senses that she is the same as she was in the past, like the jazz group that has reached peak experience such that all the sounds are coordinated and complemented, as bodyminds that just do what they do without minds having to give the doing any thought. There is no musician here and another one over there and a third one somewhere else. There is no piano here and drums there and bass and saxophone somewhere else. There is just jazzing going on. 'It'jazzes. Bodyminds are bodyminding bodymindingly. They are Tt'; instruments are 'It'; sounds are 'It'; 'It' is just 'It.' The problem is that what has become the anosognosic's bodymind is what it used to be in times past but no longer is. The jazzists' bodymind loops are continuous. The ongoing process of jazzing is continuous: the jazzists and their instruments are the music while the music is processing. In contrast, there is a rupture in the anosognosic's bodymind loop. The mind remains 'as if it were in the body's past, while the body's present remains outside the mind's doing. The anosognosic has emotions and feelings within 111-311. But she lacks in feelings of those emotions and feelings and awareness of her feelings of those emotions and feelings within 321-333. There are the chiefly iconic workings of Firstness (the abducers: 111, 211, 311), and there is an automatized, mechanical and 'as if instinctive function of indexicality and Secondness (inducers: 221, 222, with a smattering of 321 and 322). And that's about as far as it goes. There are signs or representamens (R), and there are objects, acts, and events (semiotics 'objects' [0]) either 'in here' or 'out there.' But there is little genuine moderation and mediation and meaning from the third part of the triad, the interpretants (/) (deducers: 321, 322,331,332,333). Actually, our anosognosic's dilemma can be patterned by some of our normal everyday activities. Case One. In light of one of our above examples, our blood sugar drops, and we feel hunger pangs. So we rather mindlessly head for the kitchen. We have no conscious knowledge of what took place, nor, perhaps, do we say to ourselves: T feel hungry, therefore I'm going to the kitchen to see what I can find.' The pang attacks. We rise like zombies, while our thoughts remain on whatever we were doing in a seated position. And we rather mindlessly ambulate in a certain direction (111 -» 211 -> 221 -» 222 ...). All might well be virtually of the nature of instinct. We do not yet have a definite image of what we would like to consume in order to satiate our belly's desires. We just get up and move in a certain direction.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

182 Sensing Corporeally Case Two. We are strolling in the local park and you suddenly realize that a Frisbee is headed in your direction. You take prompt action in order to avoid the projectile, almost immediately raising your hand to ward if off. What happened here? In a fraction of a second, you felt a rather shocking surprise, quickly constructed an image, decided on a plan, and took appropriate action (111 -» 211 —> 221 -» 311 -» 321 -» 222 ...). Bodymind did most all the thinking, and it was rapid fire thinking at that. Were mind and mind alone to have consciously and intentionally - and logically and rationally - formulated the plan, the head would have realized a Frisbee blow before the obedient body could have taken action willed by the self-conscious mind. The process has been largely non-conscious, it has been carried out by the deeply jazzing bodymind. Case Three. You need to buy computer disks, a pair of shoes, and some groceries. So you think it out. The shoe store is at A, half a mile from the house, and electronics equipment can be purchased at B, which is more or less equidistant between A and the supermarket C, and in the direction of the house. So you buy shoes first, disks next, then the groceries, and off for home before the ice cream melts, for it's a hot day. Now, at the outset mind is doing the talking and it tells the body how to do the walking. But once the action begins, the whole of bodymind and cognitive processes are jazzing, winding and weaving and wrapping into one another. We now have logic and reason and language included in the equation to take in the entire gamut of signs: (111 < > 333). You were presented with a minor problem, you had feelings, you conjured up images, your body, viscerally, sensed the movement your mind had mapped out from A to B to C, and then it was back to the origin. You rationally constructed a plan, made a decision, and acted on it. Plans, decision, and action, of course, are precisely what many of the patients and fictional characters presented in the above pages were incapable of bringing about. The problem is that up to this point almost everything has been positive. It all pays dividends and promises success. What bodymind does seems quite cut and dried. Appraise a situation. Devise the most convenient plan that promises little pain and a lot of gain. Make a decision. And take action. It's all so positive, as 'American as apple pie.' Are there never any warning signs? Of course there are, and quite often. What if it's rush hour and traffic is terrible between B and C? What if there is a detour between home base and A due to construction of a bridge? Assume you throw caution to the winds and take the devised route.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

183

Between A and B you cross an intersection and you see multiple flashing lights from patrol cars. Or, when crossing the intersection a car to your left runs the red light and plunges into the crossway and slams into your newly purchased pride and joy. Or, you glance at the fuel gauge and notice it's running on empty because you forget to put gas in the tank yesterday. Warning signs! These signs begin as images (211) and then the ordinarily unexpected jumps up and slaps you in the face (221), automatically promising an unexpected sequence of events (222 —> ...). So you create a rather unpleasant scenario regarding what could happen if the protracted sequence of events continues undisturbed (333 —> 311 —> 222 —» ...), you quickly abduce a possible solution and devise a plan (311 -> 333 —>...), you let the action and reaction begin (222 —»...), and bodymind does its thing. Notice: there is not necessarily any language here. Not yet. For instance, you didn't ask yourself, 'I wonder how the gas reservoir is doing?' Once your eyes focused on the gauge, there was no, 'Oh no, where's the nearest station?' (332). There was no 'Empty!' (331). There wasn't even any exclamatory 'Oh hell!' (322). An impulse subsidiarily struck you, your eyes moved downward, and there was a sense of emergency. That's all. The body did the gesturing, the eyes did the walking, and there was no necessary talking in the least. Only after the fact did the interior dialogue begin. Only then did you quickly set yourself to devising an alternative plan. Damasio calls these warning signs 'somatic markers.' They occur at the prefrontal areas of the brain, which many of his patients lack. Somatic markers are of the body portion of interdependent, interrelated, interactive bodymind. They are a combination of deep visceral levels and surface non-visceral levels. They force attention onto the possible negative outcome of an unexpected situation through integral changes of body, of muscles and viscera and emotions and feelings. They involve the virtually spontaneous (abductive) creation of an 'as if possibility, which the mind portion of bodymind in concert with the body portion can then act on hypothetically (deduction) and by practical application (induction). In Damasio's conception, it is from within somatic markers that birds decide to take flight, that a squirrel decides it's time to quit looking for food because there's an attractive member of the opposite sex over there and it's springtime and some raucous play would be nice. In these organisms, whose brains do not provide for consciousness and reasoning, covert mecha-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

184 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

nisms are the core of the decision-making apparatus. They are a means to build 'predictions' of outcome and bias the organism's action devices for behaving in a particular way, which may appear to the external observer as a choice. This, is, in all likelihood, how worker bumblebees 'decide' on which flowers they should land in order to obtain the nectar they need to bring back to the hive. (1994: 185; see also Poincare 1952: 188-9)

Damasio rephrases Blaise Pascal's 'the heart has reasons that reason does not know at all' to read, 'the organism has some reasons that reason must utilize' (1994: 200). The entire bodymind, rather than body and disembodied brain and mind operating autonomously, is involved in this process. Mind is neither something otherworldly that transcends brain, nor is it something squeezed from brain, nor does it operate in parallel with brain in order to maintain its autonomy. Mind emerges from the entire organism to create bodymind. But there's no 'Here's the body and there's the mind.' Body and mind as bodymind swing to the same tune. They merge into each other such that it becomes impossible to separate them. In fact, bodymindsigns form an inextricable whole. When contemplating this whole, where's the dancer and where's the dance? How is it possible to determine where body and brain leave off and mind begins? Where is the line of demarcation between emergent signs, on the one hand, and bodymind, on the other, that is emerging in the process of processing the signs that are in turn processing the emergent bodymind? The only way we are able to conceptualize the whole made up by body, mind, and signs is by mutilating it, and artificially breaking it up into some set of constituent pieces. The pieces are no picture puzzle that can be put together, piece by piece, to reconstruct the whole. They are like a shattered windowpane. The shards are randomly scattered throughout the entire room. So many of them are so much like so many others that there is no way we can reconstruct the mess into its original whole. We might as well melt the shards down and form another windowpane. That is the key. The shards were originally fused into a continuous whole that appears undifferentiated from the 'inside' and allows the viewer to see the scene 'outside.' The windowpane consisted of a diaphanous separator that is ordinarily indistinguishable from the one side and the other side of the separation. It is nothing, a boundaryless boundary, yet it separates. This windowpane was fused into a diaphanous separator that is ordinarily indistinguishable from the one side and the other side of the separation. It is nothing, a boundaryless boundary, yet it separates.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

185

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This is like the artificial boundaries between body, mind, and sign. There are boundaries, for sure. But when bodymind and signs are at their living best, they flow along as if there were no boundaries, or as if the boundaries were no more than diaphanous, permeable films. From within the flow there are no divisions. Outside the flow, distinctions can be artificially made, but they give a mutilated view of what was an uncut process.1 And so we have a swirling, gyrating, undulating, scintillating rhythm of signs encapsulating semiosis as it emerges in human consciousness through distinctively human semiotics. The entire scheme implies some basic human penchant for feeling, emoting, sensing, perceiving, and conceiving our world, as we co-participate with our physical and cultural surroundings, and as our world and we become other than what we were becoming. Since our world and we are always becoming other than what we were becoming, the process actually involves multiple ways of perceiving, and conceiving. That is to say, it involves reasoning and emoting and feeling and sensing through bodymindsign concerting. All this, to repeat, patterns distinctively human semiotics according to our speciesspecific Umwelt - a few words about which will be forthcoming. But first a further, and very troubling, word on the interdependency of bodymind. Madness, without a Bite to Eat

In Death without Weeping (1992), Nancy Scheper-Hughes paints a stark picture of hunger in the state of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil. But I shouldn't really call it 'hunger,' not in the ordinary sense of the term. It isn't mere hunger, a matter of physiology and biology. It is a matter of mind as well as body, or — in the terminology of this inquiry — of bodymind. It is delirio de fame ('madness resulting from hunger'). It is madness, since the assumption has it among the informants Scheper-Hughes studies that mind can no longer cope with the impositions placed on body. This is because body wants one thing, but mind - because of social conditions - is forced to receive and create information contradicting body wants. The problem is that a Cartesian split remains in effect, way out there, in northeastern Brazil, whose impoverished inhabitants are so caught up in the deeply entrenched Western paradigm that they can't sense bodymind for their fixation on a body/mind division. Scheper-Hughes reports that the poor of northeastern Brazil have

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

186 Sensing Corporeally seen many people commit absurd acts, nonsensical acts, acts of violence and apparently sheer madness for which they later repent - that is, if they have lived to tell about it. These people were driven to the brink by hunger madness. At first Scheper-Hughes considered these tales a product of wild-eyed, dramatic, extravagant imagination. Then she reconsidered. The anxiety from hunger did not end in the destruction of social cohesion, with individual turning on individual for the remaining morsels of sustenance. This is what one would expect in a society of those who have not in revolt against those who have, or a society in a dog-eatdog struggle for survival. Nor was hunger articulated by Scheper-Hughes's informants as a metaphor, a symbol, for other social ills. Hunger was real enough. But it didn't bring about a disintegration of society, so a Marxist materialist reduction of the phenomenon of hunger couldn't tell the whole tale. After pondering the situation confronting her, Scheper-Hughes concluded that the problem entails 'three bodies.' There is the individual or 'natural' body, that of the psychological make-up of she who is suffering from hunger madness. There is the physiological-biological body, which suffers atrophy as a result of hunger. And there is the symbolic body, of the body-self, the self as a social and linguistic construct according to the conventions of the individual's particular culture. In other words, what we have is a rough counterpart to Peircean Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness with respect to the self of bodymind. There is the self-contained individual self; there is self and bodymind and its interdependent, interrelated interaction with its physical surroundings; and there is cultural and conventional self within bodymind as a symbolic construction.2 Among the cane-cutting people of the area Scheper-Hughes studies, hunger of bodymind 'is the hunger of those who eat every day but of insufficient quantity, or of an inferior quality, or an impoverished variety, which leaves them dissatisfied and hungry.' Hunger is there as a constant reminder. It is rarely so acute as to become life threatening; yet it is sufficient to give perpetual discomfort. In contrast, the hunger of the people of the hinterlands of northeastern Brazil, the seasonally drought-plagued sertdo ('hinterland'), 'is cyclical, acute, and explosive. It descends ruthlessly on people who are generally energetic, self-sufficient, and well nourished' (1992: 137). In the sertdo, people eat during good times and have virtually nothing to eat during bad times; hence they are pushed to action in the form of migration, or violence and perhaps revolt. Among the cane cutters of Pernambuco, the incessant wish for more than has just been eaten but

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Hasta la Vista Descartes 187 without the means for obtaining it- this slow deterioration of bodymind breeds a kind of 'manic-depressive' personality that is strangely reminiscent of what has occasionally been dubbed 'Brazilian melancholy' (Freiro 1957). This is the enigmatic but suspicious 'tale of three races': the 'listless' and 'sentimental' Portuguese conqueror and settler, the enslaved African whose sense of self and identity was all but snuffed out, and the dark, mysterious Amerindian who once called the land home (Prado, 1931). This is the tale of people who vaguely and numbly stare death in the face every day but realize it will be quite a while in coming because it is slow death. It is the tale of people who become familiar with their fate. Their fate becomes something personal; it becomes their best friend, however unwelcome it may be. It is the story of Terezinha's seven-yearold son, Edilson, who more than once had been given up for dead but who somehow continued to survive. His mother once told ScheperHughes: 'He's not going to live long. Soon he will join the others [i.e., his dead siblings].' The anthropologist-nurse reprimanded Terezinha for speaking that way in the presence of the boy. Terezinha began justifying herself. But Edilson interjected: 'Hush, Mae, hush. I'm not afraid, I'm ready to go there' (1992: 142). Seven years of age, and death had lost its sting. These people eat beans, rice, and macaroni, the cheapest of things that will 'kill the hunger pangs.' Other substances that fill the belly are only to fool hunger; these include sugar water, manioc flour, sugar cane, and bean broth to which a little more water is added for every meal until it loses its last tinge of colour. They fool their bellies the same way their bosses fool them with promises of better working conditions, higher wages, and meager benefits. The adults placate the belly by engaging in sex: if they can't fatten up their body, they might as well satisfy one of its other appetites. Abundant food and sex comes relatively easy for the middle class of Brazil and elsewhere. As complementary symbols, they also entertain these people in movie houses and nightclubs and on TV. For the poor of Pernambuco, food and sex are not merely symbols: they are real. Sex becomes a meager compensation for nourishment that never exists in sufficient quantity. One is available only in minute and insufficient instalments, the other is always ready and waiting, if energy permits. These people consider hunger madness a matter of frazzled nerves, nervousness. To them, hunger is mental as well as physical, moral as well as biological, symbolic as well as sensed. Hunger is biological (Second-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

188 Sensing Corporeally ness), for sure, but it is also a nervous condition, therefore it is psychological (Firstness), and it is a social manifestation, conventional, symbolic (Thirdness). 'Nervous attacks,' Scheper-Hughes writes, are

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

a common complaint among poor and marginalized people in many parts of the world, but especially in the Mediterranean and in Latin America ... [It] has generally been understood as a flexible folk idiom of distress having its probable origins in Greek humoral pathology. Often [it] is described as the somatization of emotional stress originating in domestic or work relations ... In all, [it] is a broad folk syndrome (hardly culturally specific) under which can sometimes fall other common folk afflictions ... What all of these ills have in common is a core set of symptoms. All are 'wasting' sicknesses, gravely debilitating, sometimes chronic, that leave the victim weak, shaky, dizzy and disoriented; tired and confused, sad and depressed, and alternately elated or enraged.' (1992: 173)

'Nerves' have become the 'primary idiom' through which hunger and hunger anxiety express themselves. If these people can't sleep, it's nerves; aches and pains are due to nerves; going to bed hungry and waking up shaking is the destructive force of nerves; weakness is a matter of nerves, as are a cough, hoarseness, and splotches or rashes on the skin. Nerves (Firstness) are first, then comes body (biological, Secondness) and linguistic justification (symbolic, Thirdness). The problem is that their linguistic justification avoids their body needs and obsessively focuses on nerves as a product of mind; hence they are caught up in the Cartesian distinction. Things aren't right with the body, so there must be some effect on the mind, and there is: it is nerves. So the remedy should be something to calm the nerves rather than to give the body what it needs. Consequently, the people go without enough food, and they believe that nerves are the harvest. So they see the doctor, and he prescribes pills or shots, when what they needed was food. They don't eat, and they are given tranquillizers for their nerves. They complain of weakness, and you guessed it: medication. They see themselves as weak rather than exploited, suffering from nerves rather than malnutrition. When one suggests that the real problem is that they don't get enough to eat, the response is that hunger is one thing, nerves are something else, and the two shouldn't be confused. In light of previous sections in this study, it would seem that these people of the cane-growing area of Pernambuco suffer from a tragic and often fatal form of Cartesian dualism. They are

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Hasta la Vista Descartes

189

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

certainly not merely like Damasio's anosognosia patients. Nevertheless, they separate mind from body. In a cane cutter's culture, body should be the source of power, strength, potency, and fertility. But it isn't. It's apparently the opposite. Mind should proudly possess intelligence, courage, control. But it doesn't. Body experiences spells, fits, and so on, as does mind, and mind is affected by the weakness of body just as that mind's very weakness in turn affects body. As I have argued throughout this disquisition, there is no distinguishing clearly between mind and body, notwithstanding the cane cutters' artificial separation of them. Body and mind are intimately linked; they are one, they are bodymind. Scheper-Hughes's informants, nevertheless, make them distinct, perhaps in the fashion of R.D. Laing's (1965, 1971) romantic heroes, those suffering from schizophrenia. The people of Pernambuco's cane-cutting culture suffer from acute somatosensoriness. Their lives are embodied. Their culture is somatic through and through. They privilege body: Among the agricultural wage laborers living on the hillside shantytown of Alto do Cruzeiro, who sell their labor for as little as one dollar a day, socioeconomic and political contradictions often take shape in the 'natural' contradictions of sick and afflicted bodies. In addition to the expectable epidemics of parasitic and other infectious diseases, there are the more unpredictable explosions of chaotic and unruly symptoms, whose causes do not readily materialize under the microscope. I am referring to symptoms like those associated with [nerves], the trembling, fainting, seizures, and paralysis of limbs, symptoms that disrespect and breech mind and body, the individual and social bodies. In the exchange of meanings between the body personal and the social body, the nervous-hungry, nervous-weak body of the cane cutter offers itself both as metaphor and metonym for the sociopolitical system and for the weak position of the rural worker in the current economic order. In 'lying down' on the job, in refusing to return to the work that has overdetermined most of their child and adult lives, the workers are employing a body language that can be seen as a form of surrender and as a language of defeat. (1992: 185-6)

Yet mind in presumed separation from body is the culprit for body's ills. The symptoms of nerves (Firstness, as if psychological rather than physiological) are deposited in body (Secondness, as if biological rather than interaction of bodymind and world) by mind, and given symbolic

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

190 Sensing Corporeally dress (social, Thirdness), all of which ends in sheer madness. Yet ScheperHughes's patients - yes, I will also call them her patients, for she as a professional nurse also treated them - see themselves as something in the order of Cartesian machines with minds. Their body is to do the work, and their mind is to suffer from nerves that affect body so that it cannot work. The hoary gap between body and mind is bottomless, for there is simply no possibility of any collaboration between the two. Body is of no real consequence, and it is left pretty much to fend for itself. In contrast, mind must be attended to, for it is suffering from nerves that affect body's performance. Attention rests more on nerves than on hunger. Medication is considered more in tune with the failings of mind than of body. Hunger madness is a malady that evokes concern for head and mind more than body. Scheper-Hughes's informants, then, represent the worst in somatosensorial semiosis. Whatever remnant of Cartesian dualism they might profess is imaginary at best. In spite of what they say about their body and their mind, bodymind continues to do its thing, notwithstanding modern medicine and Western exploitative economic and consumerist practices. Yet in a deeper sense, the cane workers of Pernambuco know bodymind intimately. They know it considerably more profoundly than do we, witness: Body is always crying out for attention and nourishment and rest. For its part, mind cannot separate itself as an autonomous foreign guest at the end of the banquet table, because it's thrust into the garbage heap of society, forced to become a scavenger in a futile effort to placate body's incessant call. Perhaps, however unfortunate their condition, these poor souls sense at tacit levels a oneness of bodymind the likes of which remain outside our consciousness. Perhaps, in spite of their vestigial Cartesian mind/body separation in their sense of themselves, their signs 111 —> 333 are clasped in a holistic embrace in a way that is inaccessible to our own lingering disposition to engage in conceptual Cartesian thinking. I now take a radical turn to ruminations on language in analytic and postanalytic philosophy. This is necessary, I would suggest, since it will reveal the severe problems that arise when bodymind is ignored.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Language Fixation

Chapter 7 ended with the suggestion of further talk about the apparent gap between language, the premier playground of signs 321 to 333, and signs of the other, extralinguistic modes, chiefly signs 111 to 311. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 implicitly and at times directly dealt with this same problem. In order to engage in talk about the problem of inordinate language fixation, or 'linguicentrism,' in this chapter I take a radical tangential walk toward those philosophers who have been largely infatuated with language, and who have contributed massively to the 'linguistic turn.' These include Putnam, Davidson, Rorty, and Goodman, of the postanalytic movement. I believe this deviation will prove to be more healthy than hazardous, for in order more effectively to know the nature of the mental processes and methods of communication and miscommunication with respect to Damasio's patients, Sacks's strange cases, and Borges's bizarre literary figures, it will be necessary to resort to that which presumably makes us distinctively human. Then, perhaps, we may be on our way toward an understanding of what makes Damasio-Sacks-Borges's supposedly 'less than human' individuals in certain ways more human than human. I might warn that doing so will, in chapter 12, land us squarely within considerations of complex numbers, geometry, and topology, all of which are themes that have been lurking in the shadows throughout the pages of this book, awaiting the propitious moment to make their presence felt. I begin chapter 12 with a few more words on Putnam, Davidson, Rorty, Goodman, and other scholars. This discussion will likely be much too brief for many onlookers and fail to do justice to a considerable corpus of sophisticated philosophy. However, my motive is not philosophical nit-picking but stage setting. The play on this stage finally begins with a consideration of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

192 Sensing Corporeally Dedekind and Peirce 'cuts,' which eventually lead us back to notions of bodymind topology. The message will ultimately be that bodymind is topology, and topology is materiality. I cannot overemphasize these most important points. 'But how,' comes the query, 'can you entertain the ideas of these philosophers and in almost the same breath discuss a topic that is entirely alien to their thought? As you yourself have implied, the very notions of embodiment, of collusion and collaboration, and - perhaps even - a fusion of body and mind, are customarily ignored in neopragmatist circles. Where is the rationale for this strange venture?' Rationale? I have none. I could allude to Peirce's 'concrete reasonableness,' to Alfred North Whitehead's 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness,' or to Henri Bergson, William James, John Dewey, and other process philosophers, in an attempt to justify a return to bodymind concerns. For example, I could insist with John Dewey that aesthetic experience and concrete, everyday-life experiences are rooted in prelinguistic, psychosomatic rhythms we share with birds and beasts. I could suggest that we enhance our bodily experiences as well as our minds, and that (following Dewey) we could stand to learn more from real-life situations than from books (Dewey 1985 [1925], 1987 [1934]). Or, I could resort to that recent outpouring of books and articles from anthropology, sociology, feminist and gay studies, and literary criticism and the arts. I could look for support in the embodied mind idea in linguistic and psychological circles, as well as critics of artificial intelligence. But how could I possibly reconcile all that with the topological conception of semiotics and bodymind underlying this essay? They just don't seem to jibe. Yet I introduce notions from the most abstract of disciplines - a move that surely must seem anomalous. The most I can ask is that you bear with me. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. After you have devoured the words on these pages, then, perhaps, you may get a certain feel for my feeble effort to say what it is that renders bodymind doings well-nigh ineffable and hence I cannot say outright what I wish to say. Al I can say is that at each and every moment, what I am in the process of writing is always already passing away and becoming something other than what I am writing. So the process is all-important; the product is relatively unimportant. Likewise with your reading: it is always already becoming other than what you are reading. There is no fixed world out there, and the same goes for writing and reading books, as well as the process of getting a sense of bodymind: everything is impermanent. So, with these inordinately vague words, I turn to ...

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Language Fixation

193

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Probleming In the somewhat less than smooth interface between philosophers Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, and Richard Rorty over the nature of one another's antirepresentationalism, some interesting interrelations emerge. Very briefly, Putnam in his recent writings rejects 'metaphysical realism' and opts for 'internal realism.' Metaphysical realism, in brief, is the belief that any theory purporting to map links between mathematical and linguistic signs and an independent world out there is destined to futile hopes and failed dreams. Putnam argues that there can be no such theory anyway, for our world is not independent of our mode of perceiving and conceiving it. Rather, as suggested in the above chapters, body and mind or bodymind and world are interrelatedly and interactively interdependent (surprising as it may seem, this also applies to my words on numbers and geometry and topology that follow in this chapter). Putnam goes on to counsel us that the world gives itself up to descriptions that are different from one another yet at the sime time are entirely adequate in their own right. All these descriptions can be 'true,' given their premises and methodological assumptions, even though they are on a collision course with respect to one another. Moreover, if we put any pair of conflicting theories together, their interaction may produce yet another theory that is valid in its own right. In time, perhaps two or three or any number of alternative theories may emerge, though there is no guarantee that any of them will prove valid. In other words, to use a set of now somewhat familiar terms, the world of our perception and conception and theories is underdetermined (there is no telling when and where an alternative interpretation of an old theory or a radically new theory may pop up). In contrast, the World, the range of all possible worlds, is overdetermined (since it lends itself to a virtually unlimited number of descriptions and interpretations, some of them contradicting others) (Putnam, 1981, 1983b). So far, so good.1 Davidson's beef is with the incommensurabilists. As we have noted in passing, the incommensurabilists would have it that paradigms, which entail broad 'conceptual schemes,' are closed universes of discourse. Hence there is no intertranslatability between them (Davidson, 1984). This can easily lead to conceptual relativism, against which Davidson untiringly rails. He points out that if the impossibility of intertranslatability is a necessary condition for distinguishing between conceptual schemes, and if language is the organizing force for distinguishing between con-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

194 Sensing Corporeally ceptual schemes (such distinctions adroitly outlined by the incommensurabilists, at least according to their story), then this presupposes some neutral and common ground that lies beyond any and all conceptual schemes. There must be some neutral ground, Davidson writes - otherwise incommensurabilists could not legitimately talk about distinctions between incommensurables. Yet they talk about them. They talk, because they believe they can find a dwelling place in the neutral and common ground beyond incommensurables. That neutral ground, that something, can't be the subject matter of those incommensurables, or the world, for if so, then intertranslation should be possible. But it isn't possible, so the incommensurabilists claim. Yet it is at least possible for them, the incommensurabilists, to find a home in the presupposed neutral ground. Davidson believes that by and large, effective intertranslation is possible. He tells us that it occurs during the course of everyday communica tion, when learning other languages and cultures, and in the course of tough talking in scientific debates and of dialogue and discourse in all disciplines. Intertranslation can take place between language and language and between tradition and tradition, because (1) the notion of autonomous, hermetically sealed conceptual schemes is bogus, since words and meanings between languages, cultural forms of life, and theories are never fixed but flow with the tide of interhuman communicative affairs. Given this flow of words and meanings, (2) there is no neutral ground, and what is more demeaning, we are immanent within the flow. Furthermore, (3) in view of the first two premises, there is no incommensurability between languages, cultural forms of life, and theories. Belief in incommensurabilism is belief in what Popper (1972) calls the 'myth of the framework.' As far as Davidson is concerned, the 'myth of the framework' leads us into a blind alley. It limits us to that relativist humdrum according to which we are locked within our closed modes of perception and conception of the world. Each language, so this form of relativism has it, entails a world, and between languages and worlds there is a hoary gap that cannot be breached - that is, of course, for all except the incommensurabiiist, who thinks she resides in the timeless neutral zone. Davidson, like the incommensurabilists, discards language as a medium of representation standing in determinate relation to an extralinguistic entity, the world. But, as stated, he doesn't buy into the idea of incommensurables, for he believes a solution can be at hand. And Davidson's solution? Logician Alfred Tarski's semantic concept of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Language Fixation 195 truth and what is known as the 'principle of charity,' according to which two speakers assume that what the other is saying bears some commonality wherein truth lies.2 Truth, in this sense, resides in language within contexts of use. The 'principle of charity' says that I believe what I believe is true and this bears some commonality with what you believe is true - whether it is actually absolutely true or not is not the question here, for we are interested in contextualized, 'working ideas' truth. On the basis of this tacitly shared commonality, we can at least begin communication, changing a little here, adding some there, whittling something down somewhere else, and eventually we will get along swimmingly. I repeat: false beliefs are not up for question here. Rather, Davidson's 'radical interpretation' is intended 'to solve the problem of the interdependence of belief and meaning by holding belief constant as far as possible while solving for meaning' (1984: 131). Meaning is engendered by my tentatively assigning truth conditions to your words in line with my beliefs and you doing the same with my words. If we are honest and wellintentioned interlocutors, we will eventually agree on what is right, or at least on what seems right for us. (However, before I get myself into a pickle with an excessively detailed summary here, best I move on and leave more on Davidson for chapter 12.) Rorty agrees with Putnam that an independent world is an age-old obsession we could very well do without. And he more or less buys into Davidson's 'charity.' Rorty has speakers engaged in amiable chitchat as part of what he, following Michael Oakeschott, calls the grand 'conversation of humankind.' The idea is that if all of us can just continue to talk without engaging in self-defeating, closed-minded verbal combat, we can arrive at some working consensus, though the idea of total consensus is no more than a pipe-dream (hence his argument against Jurgen Habermas's [1987] lingering 'Enlightenment project'). It follows that we reside not in incommensurable frameworks, but rather in loose and limber contextualized, situated language use, in conversation and texts. If we have any form or fashion of a point of view, it exists within language and its use, not in any determinable links with any independent world 'out there.' The 'conversation of humankind' includes the collection of local languages and talk and texts, using particular vocabularies. Such conversation, however, is always from within local purviews. There can be no embrace of the entire collection of languages and vocabularies and their use in talk and texts (Rorty, 1979, 1982, 1989). Rorty's philosophical heroes are Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, William, James and John Dewey. The Rorty-Dewey connection

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

196 Sensing Corporeally bears passing comment, especially in light of Dewey's focus on corporeal experience and his deprioritizing of language. Rorty follows Dewey in privileging a particular aspect of human interactivity. But what the two philosophers privilege and the manner in which they do their privileging is at odds. Dewey privileges science and non-linguistic experience. For Rorty, science is a sacred cow, and non-linguistic experience has no place in books and in amiable chitchat. Rorty, like Habermas, privileges language. But the similarities between Rorty and Habermas stop there. Rorty elevates aesthetics over reason and irony over theory and rhetoric over logic and postmodernity over modernity; by and large, Habermas reverses the equation. Habermas notoriously holds true to the Enlightenment dream of reason and rational solutions to human problems and eventually the emancipation of all peoples. In contrast, as seen from Rorty's post-Enlightenment perspective, two problems are, (1) how to get rid of theory and reason and logic without theorizing rationally and logically, and (2) how to reconcile public language and private language while preserving some facsimile of an elaborately knit community and championing individual freedom. Cantankerous problems indeed. Richard Shusterman argues that in his attempt to remain at a remove from theory and reason and logic, and to maintain a distinction between public and private language and at the same time bring them into a warm embrace, Rorty leans too far toward the idea of a socially constituted and structured community. This 'suggests a lurking linguistic essentialism that differs from the one he [Rorty] repudiates, but seems even more pernicious. His view that the self is nothing but a linguistic web or set of narratives comes uncomfortably close to an essentialist view of human nature as exclusively linguistic. All that matters for selfhood and human being-in-the-world is language' (1997: 122). In Rorty's book, we are no more and no less than vocabularies made flesh. Words make us what we are. They create us as we create them. Thus we are no more than a bundle of sentential attitudes and behavioural patterns, a presence of the absence of linguistic dispositions that bring us to say and write and understand what is said and written. We are essentially mind, and mind is essentially language. This linguistic-textualist idealism is, Rorty writes (1982), the twentiethcentury counterpart to nineteenth-century idealism. But now, mind, linguistics, and textualism make up one tightly bound package. That, precisely, is the problem. Rorty's loose and limber program takes a deep bow to language or symbolic signs. Then it elegantly extols conversation and texts, while lambasting representation and the metaphysically and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Language Fixation

197

ontologically real. Extralinguistic signs and cultural practices are conveniently pushed aside. Their only recourse is to play the role of court jester. Regarding this prioritization of language, Shusterman writes of Rorty:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Despite his emancipatory progress, Rorty remains the product of a puritan America. Ignoring somatic satisfactions, his aesthetic program is one-sidedly driven by the restless, relentless production of new vocabularies and narrative identities. It is more a toiling poetics, a theory of industrious verbal making, than an aesthetic of embodied delight... There remains the ultimate paradox that the very attempt to theorize the body as something outside our linguistic structures self-refutingly inscribes it in those structures. As T.S. Eliot's Sweeney complained, 'I gotta use words when I talk to you.' In one sense, this is a trivial sophism, but in another a deep truth. Discourse about the somatic is not enough, as even Socrates realized in advocating and practicing dance for his philosophical life. (1997: 129)

Rorty thinks Dewey should have dropped the term experience (implying the somatic and corporeal) and replaced it with language, and that he should have seen science for what it is: the futile dream of connecting terms, whether in natural or formal language, to the world's furniture. Rather than a continuum of experience, Rorty would have us believe in a continuum of purely linguistic propensities and proclivities. Indeed, neopragmatism, following Rorty, has generally given up experience and embodied or somatic and non-discursive experience for textuality, nonrepresentational textuality.3 When one reads about a particular Peircean concept of the sign regarding language, one might conclude that he was quite in tune with Rorty's linguicentrism. For example, when Peirce (CP: 5.314) declared that 'my language is the sum total of myself,' I take it that he was alluding to the self as chiefly a linguistic construct (for Peirce's self, see Colapietro, 1989). Given the self as linguistic construct, one might be inclined to consider the self and language as coterminous. In this respect, Peirce writes: there is no element whatever of man's consciousness which has not something corresponding to it in the word; and the reason is obvious. It is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

198 Sensing Corporeally of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. (CP: 5.314; see also Burks, 1980, Ponzio, 1990)

He then goes on:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

It is hard for man to understand this, because he persists in identifying himself with his will, his power over the animal organism, with brute force. Now the organism is only an instrument of thought. But the identity of man consists in the consistency of what he does and thinks, and consistency is the intellectual character of a thing; that is, is its expressing something. (CP: 5.315)

Note that 'every thought is a sign' and that 'life is a train of thought.' Note also that 'the organism is only an instrument of thought.' Are symbolic signs prioritized here? Granted, as Homo loquens, the signs most specifically, explicitly, and effectively conveying our thoughts are linguistic signs, symbolic signs, partly or chiefly of Thirdness (321, 322, 331, 332, 333). However, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner (1983, 1987) has compellingly demonstrated that there are 'multiple intelligences' and that thought is found not only in language but also in embodied signs of all sensory modes. This includes those most fundamental indexical and iconic signs, chiefly of Secondness and Firstness (311, 222, 221, 211, 111), signs we as humans most intimately share with other living creatures. Peirce, I cannot overemphasize, maintained no absolute distinction between human and non-human and organism and world (Short 1982). Nor did he prioritize symbols over those more basic signs, indices and icons. Textualism in its own way prolongs the Cartesian disdain for body and non-linguistic signs. Rorty thinks that philosophy, and life in general - as if all us armchair philosophers and academicians knew about real life in the trenches - are at their best in language. Therefore, he counsels, let's stick to it. The limitations of this view, I would suggest, have become apparent in light of the preceding chapters, and they will become increasingly apparent as the remainder of this volume unfolds. So much for a quick look at Rorty. In nutshell form, Putnam's Rorty occasionally borders on solipsism (private language), yet Rorty sees himself revelling in the 'conversation of humankind' (public language). Rorty misinterprets Putnam's Davidson, even though Rorty considers Davidson to be a kindred spirit. Davidson's

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Language Fixation 199 Davidsonian truth is in sentences we take to be true because we mutually groove to the 'principle of charity.' Rorty's Putnam supports his own view that the very idea of a reality independent of language has collapsed. Putnam's Putnam says no such thing. Rather, Putnam's Putnam argues - at least, has been arguing in recent years - that, while he believes the world does not have its own language and that it is out there waiting for the proper reader, it is nonetheless there, for sure, and it lends itself to an indeterminately diverse number of possible interpretations. Still, there can be no God's-eye, omniscient view, for given the world's complexity, no finite human organism can conceptually grasp it all in one fell swoop. So much for philosophical wrangling over distinctions, which often become so small as to be of no consequence in a natural world that is now gasping for dear life.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Uncertainties of the World We Think We Found

Then there is Nelson Goodman. Where does he fit in? Above all, Goodman's intriguing 'New Riddle of Induction' - developed around the Grueworlders' strange colour term briefly introduced earlier — has often been thrust to the centre stage of philosophical debates. It is also germane to the nature of this inquiry. Unfortunately, Goodman - and the vast majority of scholars during the heyday of logical positivism and since have essentially ignored Peirce's very seminal concept of abduction. Quickly put, abduction is a term Peirce coined for the process of inference by which a hypothesis is formulated. According to Peirce, deduction is the process of deriving the consequences from a hypothetical situation, and induction is the process by means of which the hypothesis is put to the test in actual situations. Abduction, in contrast to the other two inferential processes, is a tentative conjecture that if a certain situation happens to be the case, then some imaginary set of consequences might possibly follow. In this light, and with respect to Peirce's categories, abduction chiefly entails sign possibilities or Firstness, induction is primarily a matter of signs actualized or Secondness, and deduction posits that something should, would, or could be the case, given a certain set of conditions; hence deduction is primarily a matter of Thirdness (CP: 5.171). Obviously, Peirce believed in a 'logic of discovery' - that is, of abduction. It is by no means a cookbook recipe for finding answers to questions, however. It is lithe and supple, within Firstness. It realizes its initial urges through feeling, emotion, sentiment, intuition, signs of bodymind at their deepest - of the sort that Gage,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

200 Sensing Corporeally Elliot, and others, as well as poor Mel, were lacking. It is a knack for guessing in ways that are quite often more right than wrong.4 James Harris (1992: 60-1) writes, and justifiably so, that if we adopt Peirce's distinction between abduction and induction, 'then [Nelson Goodman's] new riddle of induction is properly viewed as a riddle of abduction.'5 In brief, Hume's dilemma regarding induction was how to explain how what we have seen in the past can justify predictions regarding what we will see in the future. Goodman's riddle, in contrast, rests on how hypotheses are chosen for confirmation in the first place. Shall we agree that 'All emeralds are green' (i.e., according to our experience, 'Green' they've always been and so 'Green' they will always be)? Or shall we also consider 'All emeralds are grue' (i.e., according to Grueworlders' experience they are 'Green' before a certain time and 'Blue' thereafter)? Hume focuses on legitimizing our present perception and concep tion of the world in view of our past experience; Goodman focuses on how experience gives rise to our particular perception and conception of the world. Properly separate Goodman from Hume, and roughly we have Peirce's abduction-induction pair. The two statements 'All emeralds are green' and 'All emeralds are grue' are in principle equally confirmable 'by evidence statements describing the same observations' according to inhabitants from two different speech communities (Goodman, 1965: 74). All possibilities for both speech communities are at the outset there and. waiting, as candidates for future abductive acts on a more or less equal and democratic basis. Once one of the possible solutions to a problem is forthcoming in the abductive arena, and a hypothesis is formulated and given temporal, asymmetrical, irreversible actualization of confirming inductive grasps, the game toward possible semiotic success has been initiated. The problem is that success, from whatever point of view, can more often than not be made available by fudging around with the rules of convention. This is because abductions often present themselves as deceptively enticing and alluringly promising. How much faith should we place in the power of abductions anyway? After all, they are only the 'might bes' of Firstness, possible answers to questions that just happen to emerge when we are confronted by unexpected occurrences (sign 221). As such, abductions hardly get beyond signs 111, 211, and 311. Inductive grasps motivated by convention are what is habitually taken to be the case. They are what 'is,' of the nature of Secondness, chiefly signs 222, 321, and 322. Hypothetico-deductive constructions for the purpose of putting abductive insights to the inductive

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Language Fixation

201

test are the 'would bes' of Thirdness, the most probable answers (formulated in signs 331, 332, and 333) to questions according to apparently real or imagined contrary-to-fact conditions. Abductions as possible answers, then, involve imagined happenings that are like other happenings, and if the likeness is valid, then the solution to the problem presented by these happenings might be comparable to the solution devised for those other happenings. In this respect, abductions involve Goodman's concept of 'similarities' (1976b). Goodman claims that similarities, the same as regularities, are wherever and whenever they happen to be found, and they can be found in one form or another virtually anywhere and at any time. Similarities, like generalities, however, are no panacea, no royal road to success. In fact, although they may be 'right' from some particular perspective, they are inevitably 'wrong' from many other perspectives. For they could have always been other than what they are. In this light, Peirce also recognized 'there is no greater nor more frequent mistake in practical logic than to suppose that things which resemble one another strongly in some respects are any the more likely for that to be alike in others ... The truth is, that any two things resemble one another just as strongly as any two others, if recondite resemblances are admitted' (CP: 2.634). This statement implies Peirce's philosophical posture that he intriguingly called 'objective idealism.' Peirce's notion of similarity regarding 'objective idealism' is no less radical than Goodman's notion of similarity regarding his 'nominalism.'6 If virtually any and all resemblances — even the most blatant and the most recondite - stand a gaming chance of gaining entrance into the 'semiotically real' (of Secondness) from a virtually aleatory background (of Firstness), then there is no ironclad, infallible method for determining beforehand whether 'All emeralds are green' or 'All emeralds are grue' - or any other combination of likely candidates. Neither possibility is necessarily any more likely or less likely than any other one. But abductive intuition (literally, instinct, as Peirce occasionally called it) can at least give the vague promise of making it so. What is certain, following what Peirce dubs the 'rule of predesignation,' is that when we take all the characters into account, any pair of objects resemble one another in just as many particulars as any other pair. If we limit ourselves to such characters as have for us any importance, interest, or obviousness, then a synthetic conclusion may be drawn, but only on condition that the specimens by which we judge have been taken at random from the class

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

202 Sensing Corporeally in regard to which we are to form ajudgment, and not selected as belonging to any sub-class. The induction only has its full force when the character concerned has been designated before examining the sample. (CP: 6.413)

So an abduction (conjecture, educated guess, intuition) precedes a deduction (formal statement of a hypothesis), and only then do successive confirmatory acts (the inductive process) follow. A conjecture must be made as to whether emeralds are 'Green' or 'Grue' before there can be either a deduction regarding particular empirical grasps and the hypothesis following from them or an inductive process of confirmation. Regarding the ensuing confirmatory acts, Peirce gives the following example:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

A chemist notices a surprising phenomenon. Now if he has a high admiration of Mill's Logic... he must work on the principle that, under precisely the same circumstances, like phenomena are produced. Why does he then not note that this phenomenon was produced on such a day of the week, the planets presenting a certain configuration, his daughter having on a blue dress, he having dreamed of a white horse the night before, the milkman having been late that morning, and so on? The answer will be that in early days chemists did use to attend to some such circumstances, but that they have learned better. (CP: 5.591)

The 'surprising phenomenon' can lead to a conjecture, which then spills into a hypothesis, and confirmatory acts ensue. But if the phenomenon of each and every confirmation is to be a truly legitimate repetition, then there must be sameness or at least resemblance of every aspect of that phenomenon when properly contextualized, down to the apparently most insignificant details. It seems, then, there is an impossibly drawn-out task in Peirce's example. Obviously, there must be a selection and what Goodman terms a 'projection,' which is in its initial stages a matter of Peirce's abduction, not Goodman's induction. Assuming that 'All emeralds are grue' might have been at some time in the past selected, then eventually, we must suppose it would have come in conflict with our ordinary experience and replaced by the 'projected' alternative 'All emeralds are green.' In other words, the 'Grue-Green' dilemma regarding the 'semiotically real' world of actualized signs is a matter of asymmetry, temporality, and irreversibility. An unexpected and incongruously contradictory event calls for a hypothesis's replacement by another one, thus testifying to the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Language Fixation 203 incompleteness of the conceptual scheme within which the first hypothesis dwelled. In the final analysis, the abduction-induction-deduction process does not aid and abet that oversimplified image of pragmatism in terms of 'truth' as whatever happens to work or whatever happens to be in style. Peirce's pragmatism remains perpetually attuned to the future, to the general thrust of the entire community of dialogic semiotic agents. It is not simply a matter of what surprising turn of events happens to pop up in the here-now (abduction, Firstness), or what has happened in the past and how it predicts the future (induction, Secondness), but, in addition, how our conception and hence perception of signs will fare in the future as a consequence of signs present and signs past (deduction, Thirdness). Put another way, if all the words in the English language were projected and entrenched in the manner of what is for us 'Green,' then they would be as far as we are concerned completed generalities. They would be pristinely pure universals, consummate Thirds, properly anointed and confirmed and standing tall in all their glory. There would be no reason for us to expect that emeralds can ever be anything but 'Green.' In other times and places in human history, it is virtually the same as our assuming that whales are by nature 'Fish,' that swans are never anything but 'White,' that the earth can be none other than the 'Centre' of the universe, that atoms are naturally 'Solid, impenetrable spheres,' or that lightning is the 'Wrath of Jove.' In other words, if emeralds are taken to be '"Green," clearly and distinctly and there is no way they can be anything but "Green,"' then there would be no possible underdetermination, no abduction from the overdetermined possibilities of Firstness of something other than 'Green' emeralds - or 'Non-fish' whales or 'Non-white' swans or the earth as 'Non-centre' of the universe, for that matter. There would be hardly any consideration of anything other than Thirdness projected into Secondness for all time. The possibility for semiosic change would hardly exist; everything and every process would remain what it is; signs would cease incessantly becoming other than what they were becoming. This simply won't do. Yet it seems to be the sort of world we more often than not want. Perhaps a Peircean Bailout from the Quandary?

It would seem that a Grueworlder's projection of 'Grue' with respect to emeralds would be for us totally off the wall. We would see her as given to Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

204 Sensing Corporeally bizarre idiosyncrasies, or as a poor soul whose perceptual faculties at some point went completely awry. From our view, her classificatory scheme would not be universal but situational, of the nature of disconnected particulars. Each and every instantiation of a 'Grue' emerald would have to be considered in its own right, since at some apparently arbitrary time, the context would dictate that emeralds change from our 'Green' to our 'Blue,' while her predicate word, 'Grue,' remained constant for her. Stated another way, from our view, her view is one of virtually pure and arbitrarily shifting Seconds, while as far as she is concerned her world is as constant as can be (Small, 1961). From both points of view, the desire is for a stable world. The fact is, however, that neither our world nor hers is with respect to the collection of all predicate terms in our languages necessarily constant. There is always the possibility of surprise (by signs 111 to 211 to 221) that what happened in the past and had become customary and conventional (222, 311, 321, 322) could become part of our altered linguistic behaviour in the future (331, 332, 333). In other words, as a general observation, Peirce on abduction is closer to Averroes's intuitive leaps than to Lonnrot's programmatic machinations chiefly by way of deduction, or to Menard's recreation of a fragment of Cervantes's text that is either the product of sheer luck, or more akin to some mystical form of Humean induction. Averroes's expectations were thwarted by the unexpected occurrence of a couple of words in Aristotle's text. Consequently, he was quickly off and in search of an abduction, something different, something new, something that didn't hitherto exist in his own culture. He was not about to impose his preconceived, prejudicial, entrenched presuppositions on this novel conjunction of strange words. Rather, he wanted 'hermeneutic' insight into his problem (recall our discussion surrounding Figures 10,11, and 13). And he certainly garnered no faith in whatever might happen to pop into his head as an answer from on high, in the manner of Menard's mysterious reproduction of Cervantes's words. Regarding conventional practices, one might wish to conclude that Peirce is also closer to Goodman's community consensual projection of predicate terms that become entrenched via community agreement - even in light of Goodman's admitted relativist bias - than he is to Davidson's need for some ineffable element of 'charity' that interlocutors extend to one another in order to enter into something akin to Rorty's Utopian but loosely conceived 'conversation of humankind.'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Language Fixation 205

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

However, this conclusion is somewhat premature, if we take Davidson's notion of 'prior theories' and 'passing theories' into account. When we are making and taking signs, our prior theory is dredged up from the past, and it interdependently, interrelatedly, and interactively engages with our passing theory, which is improvised on the spot. This passing theory is tenderly tentative, fallible, and most often ephemeral, since it is always in the process of becoming what it will have been becoming. This is to say, we begin with charity toward our interlocutors or possible interlocutors, as well as with some prior theory and a passing theory engendered for the particular situation and circumstances. But things are never at a standstill. Our passing theory is always up for revision, and on occasion the same applies to our prior theory. In the specific case of language and text interpretation, we begin the interpretive process by positing a broad area of agreement on beliefs and meanings. But because beliefs and meanings differ (not totally, but appreciably), interpreters find that their assumption of shared agreement on belief and meaning needs modification in places. We begin in other words, by assuming agreement precisely because that enables us to find and make sense of disagreement. When disagreement is encountered, we then adjust our theory about the speaker's beliefs and language use in order to make sense of this anomaly... We begin with a 'prior theory' ... a set of assumptions about the dispositions, beliefs, and language use of the speaker/writer. These are the expectations that impregnate experience. But as we encounter the anomalous, we develop a 'passing theory' ... a modified version of the prior theory adjusted to fit what we have learned about the other. So our end point is not a reification of our own prior theory. (Dasenbrock 1993b: 26-7)

So there is some degree of overlap between Peirce's abduction and Davidson's passing theory (Firstness and tentative Secondness), and between Peirce's generalities as habituated signs applied to particular situations and Davidson's prior theory (Thirdness and entrenched Secondness) (Wirth, 1999; also Short, 1996). We bring a prior theory to our sign making and/or sign taking interaction in terms of what we expect will be happening, and in view of what is happening we engender a passing theory by 'hermeneutic guessing' (Kent, 1993). We hold the prior theory in check while we are in the process of comparing our passing theory to what is happening, and we are in constant oscillation

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

206 Sensing Corporeally from passing theory to prior theory in order constantly to alter and adjust, whether slightly or radically, the former in terms of the latter as a result of our experience of what is happening in the present (Pradhan, 1993). Our prior theory is the expectation of what is happening (Secondness) or at least will be happening (Thirdness) in the present, as a consequence of what has happened in the past. Our passing theory, engendered in the present (Firstness), is a counter factual (from Thirdness), with respect to what should be happening in the future in view of the present context. As such the passing theory is interrelated with what is happening in order to strike a balance between what is happening, what was happening, and what should be happening in the future (Gorman, 1993). This notion of the passing theory as counter factual is germane, for as we shall note in chapter 13, it bears on what Peirce calls the 'pragmatic maxim.' For the time being, take another gander, if you will, at Figures 10, 11, and 13. It would appear that prior theory is to either A or B - depending on where the interpreter resides - as passing theory is to Ax and By and A n B. If prior theory is within B, then it is held in check within Geertz's experience distant, and what is within A becomes experience near, and the relatively immediate focus of passing theory. But where does passing theory come from? I would suggest that it is a combination of what rests within both A and B, that is, of the portion Ax and By. But the function of A n B - especially in collapsed form as illustrated in Figure 11 - is the source of abduction and hence of the passing theory. So in view of the above discussion of the figures in question, abduction emerges from a selected portion of both A and B, and at the same time it rather paradoxically emerges neither from a portion of A nor from a portion of B. In this sense an abduction is exceedingly vague; hence it is overdetermined. This is nevertheless a vagueness that stands a chance, in the to and fro wavering from experience near and experience distant and from passing theory to prior theory, of becoming a bit more determinate. It also contains the possibility for becoming a newly engendered potential prior theory or generality, hence it is underdetermined and at some point in the semiosic stream it will be subject to alteration.7 This generally follows the hermeneutic interpretive process in the sense that 'all interpretation involves a tension between different perspectives - one's own and that of the "other." Thus all interpretation involves a circular process' (Tate, 1998: 12). Take abduction (Firstness) away, and basically you have Damasio's frontal cortex damaged patients, who could think logically and rationally

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Language Fixation 207 with the best of us but lacked human qualities that make us human according to our particular conventions. In other words, Gage was incapable of abducting, of imagining himself, his own self, in a hypothetical situation, and of dreaming up a set of consequences that would likely ensue if he, his self, happened to engage in a particular mode of conduct. Gage could not entertain a passing theory, with himself, his consciously aware self, as one of the actors. He could get along fine in a world of abstract Thirds and their respective Seconds, but these Thirds and Seconds had little chance of enjoying interrelated interaction with any Firsts. Hence Gage couldn't decide for himself, and follow up the decision with the appropriate action. His Thirds and Seconds became pretty much a matter of linear, mechanical give and take. Take some of Sacks's studies of perplexed souls whose perception and conception is a Funes-like Humean outpouring, and you have inductive streams (of Seconds) with hardly any potential for deduction (Thirdness). Place Scheper-Hughes's 'madness of hunger' in the spotlight, and you have split body/mind obsession (Firstness) that is like a runaway freight train carrying crates of dynamite (deduction, Thirdness) in the caboose and cars full of passengers frightened out of their wits and thinking solipsistically, like autonomous atoms (chaotic Seconds, thwarted induction), of nothing other than their own safety. Or, take our hapless Mel. Mel, a turgid case of consciousness becoming after lethargy and mental oblivion and a blackout due to inordinate imbibing. Mel, the body reaching a stage of semiawakening before the mind is in tune to the emerging rhythms. Mind very slowly becoming conscious along habituated pathways (221, 222, 321, 322), without the ability to abduct, because memory was still inordinately fuzzy, and expectations of and projections into the future hardly proceeded beyond gut reactions and biological needs and a few preprogrammed thoughts and their repetitive linguistic window dressing (331, 332, 333). Mel: who for the grace of God go we, as they say in AA. There is some truth to the matter. We could all quite conceivably fall into Mel's body/mind syndrome, which would render us at least temporarily as limited in our own way as the subjects of Damasio's and Sacks's stories. Unlike these case studies, Peirce's semiotics gives the whole balanced picture of overdetermined Firstness, logical principles of Secondness with respect to possibilities of conceptualizing the world as it is perceived, and underdetermined Thirdness. With this in mind, we must look into Goodman's riddle further.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Topology at the Core

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The Cogitating Mind Often Makes What Is So, So

Ian Hacking (1993) gives account of Saul Kripke's (1982) correlating Goodman with Wittgenstein's sceptical problem. Kripke suggests that 'Grue' can be addressed not to induction but most properly to meaning. The question would not be, 'Why not predict that grass, which has been "Grue" in the past, will be "Grue" in the future?' but rather, the Wittgensteinian question, 'Who is to say that in the past I did not mean "Grue" by "Green," so that now I should call the sky, not the grass, "Green"?' (1982:58). In other words, in the past I called emeralds 'Green,' but meant 'Grue,' and now I continue to call them 'Green,' but I actually mean 'Bleen' (what for the Grueworlder is 'Blue' up to a certain time and thereafter is 'Green'). And I once called the sky 'Blue,' but actually mean 'Bleen,' and I still call it 'Blue,' but actually I now mean 'Grue.' My talk would be effective as far as Realworlder is concerned, for she thinks that in the past I thought emeralds were 'Green' and that my thinking on the subject remains constant, for I still call them 'Green.' She also thinks that for me, the sky was, is, and will be 'Blue,' for I persist in calling it 'Blue.' Realworlder would think at the same time that Grueworlder is ready for the loony bin, for the colours she applies to emeralds and sky somehow change at some unexpected point in time. If I translate my Realworlder terms into Grueworlder's language, she will likely take me for a reasonable chap. But my Realworlder companion is in her estimation rather schizophrenic. And since I have translated my colour terms so that I'm now in Grueworlder's groove, Realworlder looks at me with a furrowed brow. This formulation, then, depicts the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core 209 symmetry between Grueworlder's and Realworlder's perception of emeralds and sky. It isn't so much that Realworlder is right and Grueworlder is wrong. Both are wrong, or at least limited, from the outside view, and both are right, from the inside view. Ian Hacking points out that while Goodman's problem is outer directed with respect to what the community thinks and says, Kripke's is inner directed and virtually solipsistic: what I think and say. In this sense, Kripke's question becomes: Why do I now call the sky 'Blue' and grass 'Green' when actually I mean 'Green' ('Grue') and 'Blue' ('Bleen') respectively? To be accepted by my Realworlder peers or to impress my students? To save face? To avoid conflict? To keep on the good side of my superiors? To impress an attractive colleague? To keep a good Rortyan conversation going? Or simply to deceive my associates in my effort to play a good con game? Or perhaps even deceive Grueworlder into thinking I'm an all right guy? Possibly any of the above - or perhaps even all of the above - one would suspect, and there are an indefinite number of other possible reasons to boot, that is, according to Kripke's innerdirected rendition of Goodman. If we take Goodman's original use of his riddle into full account, as does Hacking, then the entire community comes into the picture. As such, the question becomes: Would the majority or perhaps the entirety of the community to which I belong carry on the way I do? If each individual of a particular community were in step to the tune of the community's band, it would be as if the tacit assumption on the part of the community as a collection of individuals might be a variation on the above quote by Wittgenstein, something like the following: Who is to say that in the past we did not all mean 'grue' by 'green' - even though secretly we all knew better - and none of us imagined that everybody else actually meant 'grue'by 'green'?

We, as members of the community, could all be speaking out of the wrong side of our mouths for the sake of maintaining lines of communication intact, and doing so without knowing that everyone else was doing the same. Our dialogue would be reduced to shambles. Everybody would be talking not in good faith, but rather illicitly and for personal reasons - in keeping with Kripke's solipsistic interpretation of Goodman. Yet life could conceivably go on, somehow.1 This would be a world gone mad, a world in which everybody lies, but lies in basically the same way; hence the collection of lies becomes a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

210 Sensing Corporeally strange form of 'truth.' It would also play havoc with John Searle's (1969) well-intentioned, Puritanically honest interlocutors engaging in 'speech acts,' Richard Rorty's amiable conversation would soon fall into chaos, and any form of a coherent and congenial community could barely hope to survive.2 There would be hardly any method at all for knowing whether the community is progressing or retrogressing along its arduous push toward the goal line of knowledge. More likely than not, any smug confidence that what is known is knowledge rather than delusion would be itself delusory. Ultimately, the problem with meaning lies not in its formal proof but rather in its experience as tacit proof. Quite simply, if meaning goes unexperienced, virtually anything may be capable of passing itself off as a proof; and if virtually anything can be a proof, then whatever the experience may prove, it will more often than not be little more than superfluous. I allude to the inextricability, in good semiotic practices, of either the representamen, the 'semiotic object,' or the interpretant, and of either Firstness, Secondness, or Thirdness, from the entire tripod of relations. The thorn in the side of meaning is that most accounts of the 'Grue-Green' dilemma highlight one or two legs of the semiotic tripod in Figure 1 at the expense of the other(s). On the one hand, Goodman's riddle, which focuses on 'projecting' predicates about things and thereby bringing about 'entrenchment' or habituated practices, is a matter not necessarily of 'truth,' or even of meaning per se, but rather of linguistic practices. On the other hand, Kripke's Goodman raises the question of meaning, if not exactly 'truth,' in addition to induction. Goodman's Goodman evokes an attitude focusing more on actuals (Seconds), how they are most appropriately to be taken once seen, and most specifically, how they should be clothed in linguistic garb (Thirds). Kripke's Goodman takes actuals in his stride as a matter of course; of more focal interest is the range of possibles (Firsts) and how, in their interaction with those actuals, they can in the future potentially give rise to alternatives (as Thirds) to the conventions that happen to be in vogue. That is one difference between Goodman's 'true Grue' and Kripke's 'Goodman's Grue.' Another important difference is that of 'outer' directedness and 'inner' directedness, to which I alluded earlier. Kripke, following Wittgenstein on rules, remains tied almost exclusively to considerations of symbolic or linguistic signs - in contrast to Goodman's emphasis on the entire range of signs. Peirce stands out most briskly when placed alongside the GoodmanKripke pair. Most noteworthy is Peirce's non-logocentric and non-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core

211

linguicentric refusal to eschew indexicality, and especially iconicity, from the entire picture. Peirce stressed long and hard that there is an iconic interrelation between the 'semiotic object' that gives rise to abduction and its attendant hypotheses, on the one hand, and the 'semiotic object' as it is actually perceived, on the other. This interrelation is that of analogy or resemblance, proper to iconicity. As an example, Peirce offers the similarity between the image of an ellipse and the data concerning the longitudes and latitudes of the revolution of Mars about the sun that allowed Kepler to draw up his abductive inference (CP: 2.707). As a result of this abduction, a hypothesis was formulated; it was found to conform to the observations, and a new theory saw the light of day. As a consequence, the statement 'The orbit is elliptical' - like 'Emeralds are green (or grue)' - includes a predicate, or icon, in conjunction with subject and an index, as integral parts of the sentence (symbol). This is, of course, most proper to first-order logic. But since Peirce's signs are incessantly in the process of becoming other signs and building upon other signs, with the most complex of them possessing the capacity to function as icons - sign corpora taken as self-contained, self-sufficient wholes - this also applies to a greater or lesser degree, I would suggest, to whatever conglomerate of signs might be available. Above all, indices and especially icons are embodied signs. There is no Foucauldian disembodied gaze that would imply aloof, relatively developed indices (321, 322) and symbols (331, 332, 333). Actually, this manner of disembodied gaze is Cartesian through and through. It stipulates that if body there presumably be, it is a metaphysical body. The body must be so, since metaphysics is so bound up with abstract, formal thinking that it cannot conceive of genuinely embodied signs (Grosz, 1994). Such pseudo-embodiment as we find in most discourse in the guise of the postmodern condition is that of the linguicentrically 'inscribed body.' This is the body as a concoction of symbols and abstract indices. The inscribed body is not the source of concretely embodied modes of communication at all. Genuine embodiment, in contrast to the inscribed body, entails signs of iconicity and concrete indexicality (111, 211, 221, 222, 311). The body made and taken as concrete iconic and indexical signs of everyday living becomes embodied, but the inscribed body in terms of abstract indices and symbols becomes the 'linguicentrically' incorporated body: in-corporated, turning inward and in in-volvement and in-clusion of inscriptions within the fleshless shell of what were once embodied signs. Damasio writes at length on feeling and emotion as corporeal sensing

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

212 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

and signing. Many of Sacks's patients knew about body thinking also. Who could become more aware than Christina that the body has its way of thinking of which the mind is basically unaware? Christina, whose will to survive, her will to corporeal knowing, was indomitable. In contrast, who could be less in tune with corporeal thinking than Gage and various Damasio patients, or Borges's Funes, Lonnrot, or Menard? On the other side of the coin, who could make a more gallant attempt than Averroes to plumb corporeal intuition at the depths of bodymind? Or than one of Sacks's patients, Rebecca, with an IQof 60, who could not function with language as an abstract system (predominant use of the left cerebral hemisphere), but who was a 'natural poet' (predominant use of the right cerebral hemisphere). Striking metaphors and other figures of speech came to her as if they were as natural as could be. Moreover, Rebecca's sense of rhythm, her haptic perception, her capacity for motility, all of these kinesthetic qualities, were remarkable. Regarding the IQ test that Rebecca failed miserably, Sacks speculates: I had the strongest feeling of two wholly different modes of thought, or of organization, or of being. The first schematic - pattern-seeking, problemsolving - this is what had been tested, and where she had been found so defective, so disastrously wanting. But the tests had given no inkling of anything but the deficits, of anything, so to speak, beyond her deficits. They had given me no hint of her positive powers, her ability to perceive the real world - the world of nature, and perhaps of the imagination - as a coherent, intelligible, poetic whole: her ability to see this, think this, and (when she could) live this; they had given me no intimation of her inner world, which clearly was composed and coherent and approached as something other than a set of problems or tasks. (1987: 181)

Rebecca was aware of the world's rich tapestry. But she was unable to articulate the design. She apparently dwelled chiefly in signs 111, 211, 221, 222, and 311, but she did not have the language - the indices and symbols (321, 322, 331, 332, 333) - with which adequately to dress the design in the necessary abstractions for communicating them by explicit language use to 'normal' people. Was she privy to a special form of knowing? Yes. Is her special sort of knowing given its due share in our obsessively linguicentric, textualistic cultures? Obviously not. Rebecca knows a few secrets that remain outside linguicentric, textualistic thinking. There must be something seriously lacking in textualistic thinking; and it might just be that many of us are missing the boat on a cruise

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core

213

toward a presumably posthuman understanding. Rebecca's world was a world exclusively of 'concrete reasonableness,' to use a Peircean term. It was a form of thought entirely different, entirely separate, from our abstract, schematic, linguicentric modes of reasoning. Rebecca was 'out in right field' and could not take in the linear, digital picture; we have pushed ourselves 'out into left field,' given our linear thinking, our reason, our 'logic,' our linguicentrism. Consequently, that non-linear part of the whole picture which Rebecca could take in her stride is totally out of the ball park as far as we can know. Her concrete, extralinguistic powers gave a sense to her world of which we are largely ignorant. Our hyperlinguistic fixation gives a sense to our world that is of value, to be sure, but it is sorely wanting, and incomplete, compared with Rebecca's world. In this regard, embodied practices are first, contextual and concrete rather than abstract. Second, embodied practices are deeply entrenched within the body, which is to say that they are the products of habit (Peirce), which renders them conservative and resistant to alteration. Third, embodied practices are injected with a massive dose of subsidiary awareness (Polanyi) which remains outside consciousness and its obsessive textualizing. Fourth, embodied practices have need of Damasio's feeling and emotion and feeling of emotion and feeling of feeling of emotion (111, 211, 221, 311), for if we do not have it, our plight is that of Damasio' hapless patients, or those of Sacks, or Borges's Funes the Memorious. Embodied practices are enactingpractices (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1993). They are the means by which societies remember (Connerton, 1989). They are behind, and they give rise to the possibility of, a phenomenology of perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). In any case, when the body is properly reintegrated with the mind, thus yielding bodymind, then and only then is there a possibility for re-enchantment with the body, with all life, with the world. Then and only then can humans once again become authentic participants in a posthuman participatory world (Berman, 1981). Perhaps unfortunately, I find genuine bodymind sensitivity sorely lacking in the likes of Putnam, Davidson, Rorty, Goodman, and Kripke. Like deconstructionists, poststructuralists, many cultural studies scholars, and - surprisingly enough - even some feminists, they want virtually everything in terms of language, and if the body becomes a necessary nuisance, then it is often considered an inscribed body, a body made language. In this light, let us turn to topology again in search of a keener sense of concrete life processes. In so doing, with respect to self-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

214 Sensing Corporeally contained, self-sufficient wholes as icons, we enter the domain of geometry of the non-Euclidean sort as developed during Peirce's time especially Riemann geometry.3 Thus, I take a brief turn to that most abstractly concrete and most concretely abstract of disciplines.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

All Signs There All at Once

Riemann geometry made if possible to describe spaces of any number of dimensions and with arbitrary warps and woofs. It also revealed the possibility of multiply connected spaces by way of what are called in contemporary quantum theory 'wormholes' (or in a manner of putting it, the possibility of travel 'outside' ordinary space and time from one place to another in the universe) .4 Quite surprisingly perhaps, Peirce developed a comparable notion of 'wormholes' in his theory of a 'logic of continuity' and his general cosmology. A tangible illustration of the concept is quite simple - and it rather conveniently falls in line with a Peirce 'thought-experiment.' Stack a few sheets of paper one on top of the other and you have various two-dimensional universes as the mere possibility for the construction of art works, geometrical figures, scientific texts, mathematical proofs, philosophical treatises, everyday talk, extralinguistic semiotic practices, or just meaningless doodling and idle sign play. Add an unlimited number of sheets to the stack and you have what Peirce called the 'Book of Assertions.' The stack of sheets making up this empty book is mere 'nothingness,' as Peirce puts it (recall the above allusion to space as 'emptiness'). Now, from your own three-dimensional universe, with a paper punch make a circular hole in the first sheet - which Peirce calls the 'initial sheet of assertion.' You have entered the first universe of possible assertions. By sliding and warping your first sheet, you can now enter any spot on the second sheet or universe from one solitary point on your first universe. Punch a hole in the second universe, and you can enter the third universe at any point from that hole, which could in turn be entered from the hole in your first universe. Further holes - or 'cuts,' as Peirce calls them - in this and successive sheets allow you to 'pass into worlds which, in the imaginary worlds of the other cuts, are themselves represented to be imaginary and false, but which may, for all that, be true, and therefore continuous with the sheet of assertion itself, although this is uncertain' (CP: 4.512). Peirce invites us to regard the 'ordinary blank sheet of assertion' as a film on which there exists the as yet undeveloped photograph of all the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core 215 possible 'events' of the universe. But this is not a literal picture, for when we consider historically the range of 'events' that have been asserted to be 'true,' we must conclude that this 'book' can be none other than a continuum that must 'clearly have more dimensions than a surface or even than a solid; and we will suppose it to be plastic, so that it can be deformed in all sorts of ways without the continuity and connection of parts being ever ruptured' (CP: 4.512). The initial blank 'sheet of assertion' of this 'book' is itself a continuum that contains an infinity of possibilities. Peirce goes on to suggest that 'cuts' in the 'sheet of assertion' are comparable to statements relating to 'events' in the world. The 'cuts' are like a photographic plate that is subject to a scene 'out there,' which we desire to record. Moreover, since the sheet is plastic, it can be deformed so as to yield more or less the world we wanted in the first place. In this manner, an infinity of worlds can come into our 'semiotic reality' according to our collaboration within the flow of semiosis, and depending on our desires, inclinations, preconceptions, and prejudices that is, depending on our 'horizon,' so to speak. Hence, Peirce suggests, the original photograph we might happen to take is, more appropriately, a map on which all points of the surface correspond to points on the next surface, and so on successively, and the continuity is preserved unbroken. Each point, each 'cut,' is interrelated with the initial 'sheet of assertion' where the 'real' state of things (that is, perceived and conceived to be 'real' at a given time and place) finds its original expression. All successive sheets, then, make up an infinite set of potential 'events,' many or most of which can at another time and place become 'real.' And in light of speculations by contemporary physicists themselves, the 'wormholes' alluded to earlier are capable - like Peirce's 'cuts' - of connecting one point in the three-dimensional universe within which we live and breathe with another point light years away, and virtually instantaneously. This is theoretical speculation, of course, worthy of Alice in Wonderland, for whom the 'wormhole' was the looking glass as a passage from one universe to another. Yet it is serious business for physicists, so it should not be taken with a grain of salt. Riemann brought about an evaporation of the spell cast by Euclidean geometry over 2,000 years ago. By the same token, Peirce's concept of the sign, if taken straight as pure spirits and without a chaser, is capable of melting the smoothly contoured ice of Cartesian vintage floating around in the drink and trying to pass itself off as finely honed, sharply cornered, and beautifully hexagonalled crystals of H2O. The Peircean universe of signs is actually as non-Cartesian (and non-Saussurean and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

216 Sensing Corporeally non-Boolean to boot) as Riemann geometry is non-Euclidean. Indeed, it can be said that roughly between 1890 and 1910 Peirce realized the golden age of his intellectual output, and that literature, the arts, and the sciences realized the golden age of Riemann curved space: fourdimensional geometry. The concepts of Riemann geometry - and other geometries - entered avant garde circles in art, literature, and philosophy early in the present century, and were appropriated by physicists, most notably Einstein with his Special Theory of Relativity of 1905. Now, I fully expect, comes the question: 'What has all this to do with abduction, which, after all is presumably the focus of this chapter? In fact, what does it have to do with this entire book?' Yes, I'm trying to ge there, eventually. But first let us consider one more bizarre twist within non-Euclidean space.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

A Cross-Eyed Look at Space

H.A.C. Dobbs (1972) writes on the structure of what in phenomenology is called the 'sensible present.' He asks us to assume that this 'sensible present' includes (1) an imaginary or timeless conception of mathematical time, and (2) real, sensed time. He then shows how imaginary time occupies a spacelike temporal dimension, in addition to the three dimensions of space. This notion of imaginary time follows physicist Arthur Eddington's (1946) suggestion for relativity theory. Imaginary time is so called after imaginary numbers. It is static or mathematical. Thus imaginary time alone is obviously insufficient, for it excludes the concretely felt and sensed time of Firstness becoming Secondness and the incessant flow of psychological time as Secondness becoming Thirdness. Dobbs doesn't actually include Peirce's categories in his text. This, nonetheless, is the nature of his argument. As a counterpart to Peirce's Firstness and Thirdness, I take Dobbs's suggestion - following Eddington's footsteps once again - that a fifth dimension becomes necessary. This dimension consists of a dynamic time accounting for the real time of everyday life and of intuition. Imaginary time is not directed; it is merely a line in Euclidean space, a reversible order without any indication of a moving now: it is a static series of simultaneities. Real time, in contrast, is a directed, irreversible line with an arrow. These space and time dimensions - three dimensions of space plus imaginary time and real time - are most adequately conceptualized when related to numbers. The rational numbers are the whole integers:

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core 217 1, 2, 3, and so on. Irrational numbers are expressed in terms of infinite decimal expansions - such as \2. Imaginary numbers, such as V— 1, are those undecidables - amphibians between being and non-being, as Leibniz once put it - that were stashed away in the closet for centuries because mathematicians were not sure what to do with them. They were a nuisance, because they allow of no solution. Is the answer to \—1 +1? No. Is the answer -1? No. Or, we can say the answer is both +1 and —1 or that it is neither +1 nor —1. The imaginary numbers are mathematically paradoxical. Best they be ignored was the response for centuries. Now, however, they are finding their way into relativity and quantum theory and computer work. What are called real numbers have no imaginary parts and comprise a combination of the rational and irrational numbers. Finally, complex numbers are of the form a + fry — 1, where a and b — called the modulus — consist of real numbers. Imaginary time, like imaginary numbers, enjoys no concreteness; rather, it just oscillates, reversibly, between the +1 and the -1, so to speak. Put another way, imaginary time holds the possibilities for actualization of concrete real time. Dobbs considers imaginary time as a fourth dimension. It can be combined with real, linear time to yield what he considers a non-linear complex time variable comparable to complex numbers. This is comparable to a fifth dimension. It consists of real or experienced time, psychological time, combined with imaginary time to make up the whole of our sensed and perceived and conceived time.5 Purely imaginary time is 'dead' time, much like the time in the storage system of a computer. But it contains possibilities, all of them simultaneously held in memory or a storage bank, to be retrieved at a propitious moment - like a computer printout. It is the equivalent of a 'superposition,' much in the order of the 'superposed' possibilities of your seeing a Necker cube as either one of its manifestations or the other one. The two possibilities are there, in static 'dead' or imaginary time. In real or psychological time, of about fifty or so milliseconds (Libet, 1981, 1985), you are able to actualize one of the two possibilities and thereby perceive and conceive it as a cube of such-and-such a nature. The possibilities were there, in a sort of trembling or twinkling pulsation of readiness for actualization - comparable to the optically illusory moire effect of op art. In fact, Dobbs uses the Necker cube to illustrate his hypothesis that transformation, in the mind, from one of the possible cubes to the other one and back again, is possible only within a fourth, static dimension (of the nature of the possibilities of Firstness). When this imaginary time

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

218 Sensing Corporeally dimension is combined with the real (psychological) time dimension to produce a complex time variable, the near-simultaneity of distinct events such as the flip-flops of the Necker cube - can be perceived and conceived. In other words, the symmetrical, reversible, intransitive, non-linear domain (storage bank), when combined with the symmetrical, irreversible, transitive, linear domain (printout), yields a dynamic, dyadic, pulsational this-that which is neither appropriately symmetrical nor asymmetrical, neither reversible nor irreversible, neither intransitive nor transitive, neither non-linear nor linear (i.e., it is of the nature of Thirdness). This both-and, neither-nor, or either/or, depending on the vantage point, could well constitute the roots of time, and of consciousness and self-consciousness (Kauffman, 1986; Matte Blanco, 1975; Varela, 1979). It is, so to speak, Mobius strip vacillation between 'inside' and 'outside,' continuity and discontinuity, identity and difference. August Ferdinand Mobius suggested in the nineteenth century that continuous transformations between incongruent three-dimensional counterparts - the Necker cube or our now familiar Mobius strip - are mathematically impossible within the three-dimensional manifold. Such transformations require rotation of the entire plane, not merely a line with the plane, which calls for an extra dimension. For example, along a line, no rotation can occur. Within a plane (2-D space), rotation can occur about a point in mathematical or imaginary time (2-D space + 1-D imaginary time). Also within that plane, successive increments along the rotation can be experienced in real, psychological, or personal time (2-D space + 1-D imaginary time + real time). Within a cube, rotation can occur about a line in mathematical time, requiring a fourth dimension (3-D space + 1-D imaginary time). It follows, then, that a fifth dimension is needed in order to account for real or experienced time (3-D space + 1-D imaginary time + real time). As an example of Mobius's observation, a characteristic of complex numbers - the combination of imaginary and real numbers - is that they have no simple linear order, nor is there any meaning in saying of a complex number that it is either positive or negative, or that it is larger or smaller than any other complex number. They are all there all at once (superposed). As such, if no value has (yet) been assigned to them, they are ipso facto valueless. Complex numbers oscillate, vibrate, undulate, in a static wave pattern. They dwell in an enchanted mathematical realm. Their dancing back and forth as points along a real line or in a phasespace on a two-dimensional plane can produce a dynamic wave form as a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core 219 hypercircle or hypersphere (a circle requiring a third dimension, or a sphere requiring a fourth dimension for their becoming). Louis Kauffman and Francisco Varela (1980) demonstrate how this standing pattern can be the result of the complex numbers viewed in terms of a wave form by the oscillation of a + b \—1 between a + b and a— b represented on the Cartesian plane (Figure 22). Technically speaking, oscillation is displayed as the circular orbiting of a point determined by a variable radius - itself determined by b- and by associating the orbit of each point, a, along the horizontal axis with a unit circle in the complex plane. In this manner, each orbit corresponds to two complex numbers, a ± 6V—1, where +1 and -1 are two possible abstract values and ±V—1 is a circle engendered from the two possibilities. This geometrical display of the complex numbers expands the real number line (horizontal axis) not to the entire plane but to an oscillational to-and-fro line with an infinity of dancing, synchronized circular orbits associated with each point on the line. What we have here is the one-dimensional representation of the real numbers, with the plane representing the complex numbers - the plane being necessary for the rotation of a real number to describe the authentic circles. The excluded middle principle does not apply, since what we have here is a continuum within which between any two points a third point can emerge. So the scheme is general in the most general sense. Since all values and their opposites along the continuum exist in a superposed state of potentially infinite possibilities, the non-contradiction principle is also inoperative. This renders the scheme at the same time vague. Figure 22 is both vague and general, both of inconsistent nature when pitted against Euclidean principles and general in the Peircean, nonCartesian sense of perpetual incompleteness. In short, Kauffman and Varela's equation in an abstract manner depicts Peirce's process of semiotic becoming from within semiosis. Moreover, the whole conglomerate represented by Figure 22, when slapped onto a two-dimensional flatland, is such that from our 90° orthogonal perspective outside the plane, we can see the circles in the hme-now all at once. Our 90° orthogonal grasp would be as inaccessible to strictly linear mnemonic thinking - such as a computer printout - as it would be to a Flatlander dwelling within the flat surface, or Lonnrot moving within his two-dimensional map world, which Scharlach could grasp at a glance. Linear thinking could do no more than follow the generation of circles along the line, one after another, like our prover-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

220 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 22: The complex plane

bial rat following an uncertain linear path within its two-dimensional maze. Such a linear computing system is probably no more phenomenologically concrete than a real number series, and the direction of its arrow would reflect not real time as we experience it but linear ordering of the most rudimentary sort. In contrast, our non-linear, 90° orthogonal view of the hypercircle figure knows no definite serial order, for we are capable of seeing the two-dimensional scheme in one perceptual gulp. It is like viewing the juxtaposed grid of an op art object displaying its moire scintillation; we see it as if non-linearly and in simultaneity. Thus, lest we become unduly smug over our phenomenal cerebral powers, we must remind ourselves that within our own three dimensions of space and one dimension of real time (imaginary or mathematical time lies outside the linear becoming of our consciousness), we are able to reach no more than minuscule lumps from the whole of things, much like the hapless Flatlander - or Lonnrot - linearly assimilating, with excruciating torpidity from our point of view, the hypercircle pattern. We are, after all is said and done, helplessly constrained regarding our own world. Thought is chiefly sequential, successive, and one-dimen-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Topology at the Core 221 sional, while our world presents itself as a multidimensional, non-successive and non-linear pattern of indescribable richness and variety. The mind's every effort to grasp this world is like trying to appreciate a beautiful landscape by looking through a narrow slit in a fence. From a perspective beyond our own three dimensions of space and one of time, we would be only slightly more sophisticated than a pocket calculator programmed to spit our linear mathematical expansions. An imaginary demon from that 'higher' perspective would look upon us much as we imagine we would look upon the pathetic world of the Flatlander, or the rat in its maze. But ... I'm afraid it might still appear that I am in Netherland. Why don't I just get to the point? It surely seems that I am taking an inordinately circuitous route. First I bring up Putnam, Rorty, Davidson, Goodman, and others, against the concept of an independent world describable by language or mathematics. Then I subject the reader to all this formalized rigmarole. Where is the rationale for all this? Yes. It would surely appear that I'm somewhat lost in space, or better, spacetime. It has been my own adventure in attempting to account, topologically, for the process of consciousness and the semiotic process. Now let me try to get back home with another tangential move that might suggest that, topologically speaking, and in light of the immediately preceding sections, we are spatially and temporally within the cultural world we inhabit. In fact, we are immanently within it, for we do not have access to, nor can there be, a God's-eye view of things. This move should bring us back to Peirce and the concrete issues raised by way of Borges and Damasio and Sacks.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New

This chapter moves toward what I would like to consider a topological model of abduction, of the origin of the new from within Peirce's triadic conception of signs as they emerge from the semiosic process. To that end, I provide a recapitulation of previously discussed topological forms and their implications with respect to semiosis, and of the set of working terms in this inquiry with which we are becoming increasingly familiar: vagueness and generality, inconsistency and incompleteness, overdetermination and underdetermination. For further illustration along these lines, Peirce's 'pragmatic maxim' enters centre stage. That maxim, in contrast to its usual logico-rational scientific interpretation, flows in this chapter, and in chapter 14, within the stream of everyday-life communication to suggest that it is the way of semiosis and the way of all semiotic practices. I then interrelate the maxim with Wittgenstein's enigmatic notion of rule following. This discussion opens us up to chapter 15, where the maxim and Wittgenstein's paradox regarding rules are brought to a shrill pitch by their combination into one statement. Topology and the abduction act make their appearance anew to illustrate how dimensionalities of space and one-dimensional time (our concrete, experiential 'real' time) play a key role in emerging signs of abduction, as well as induction and deduction. The assumption ultimately presenting itself is that the entirety of these processes is perceived and conceived triadically, in much the Peircean spirit. How Is It Possible for New Ideas to Emerge Anyway?

For many hard-line logical positivists, and even Karl Popper (1959), rebellious son of the logical positivist camp, novel ideas are the product Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 223 of irrational flights of fancy, purely random happenings. There is no guarantee, Popper writes, that one idea popping into one's head has any better chance than any other idea of leading to truth. Knowledge is the result of blind guesses - Popper's Darwinian theory of 'evolutionary epistemology.' Peirce, in contrast - and as we noted in our passing words on abduction - believed that feeling and emotion and intuition have their own 'reasoning,' though it is well-nigh inaccessible to the mind's reasoning. Fitting abduction into his general pragmatist philosophy, Peirce once suggested that it is the instinctive capacity of the sufficiently prepared mind for informed guesses, for the mind has 'a natural bent in accordance with nature' (CP: 6.478). As a consequence, the 'elements of every concept enter into logical thought [from imaginary time] at the gate of perception [real time] and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason' (CP: 5.212) (brackets added). This 'gate of perception' can result from the outward clash of signs in the 'real' world, but it can also be the product of inwardly engendered signs that clash with one another when one doubts what at least might appear to be 'real' (Dozoretz, 1979). Perception, in either case, is primarily of the mode of Secondness.1 In light of the above on the hermeneutic way, this is to say that perception is chiefly uncontrollable: the retina picks up what it picks up, and there is hardly anything we can do about it short of averting our eyes. Perceptual judgment, on the other hand, is tantamount to interpretation. Initially we pick up a crow as a black sensation (signs 111 —> 211 —> 221 —>...); a split second later we abduct from our sensation and we see that given our feeling and our sensations, it might be a crow; so we see it as a crow (222 —> 311 —> ...); then we notice that within its particular context at this moment, if it is indeed a crow, then it must have a certain set of attributes, perhaps that it is doing such-and-such, and perhaps even that it is in a certain interrelation with us. Our successive inductive grasp of our assumption will either confirm or disconfirm it. Since there is no wide-eyed, innocent, immaculate perception, all perception is accompanied by perceptual judgments. And since all seeing is at bottom level interpreting, there is no hard and fast line of demarcation between perception and knowledge (CP: 5.184). If there is - according to the above paragraph - a distinction between abductive judgments and perceptual judgments, the former are usually subject to some degree of control, though they can also shade into the latter, which are by and large uncontrollable. What we seem to have here is a sort

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

224 Sensing Corporeally of 'tense logic' (of consciousness and control, or what we saw in the previous chapter as 'real time') and a 'non-tense logic' (of instinct, or 'imaginary time'). The reader who cavalierly takes Peirce's idea about instinct (non-tense logic) to be outmoded biological thinking has not read him closely, I would suggest. Instinct entails embedded tendencies as well as inborn propensities and proclivities. Although quite obviously these inborn propensities and proclivities cannot be precisely specified - and Peirce, as far as I am aware, never denied this - they serve as a tool offering a conceptual grasp of an exceedingly complex phenomena, to wit, a nonconscious linkage of the qualitative Firstness of sign, semiotic object, and interpretant by resemblance. This linkage can allow the sign to suggest a possible hypothesis (abduction, conjecture) to its interpreter-interpretant. Such a suggestion is prima facie beyond the conscious control of the subject, as are all instincts. After the fact of a suggestion's emergence, and after it has been endowed with Secondness and Thirdness, it can then be increasingly subjected to certain degrees of control. Thus a nonconscious linkage by Firstness can enable the interpreter-interpretant to interpret the sign in conjunction with the character of its object, such interpretation providing for the possibility of an alteration of feeling, action, and thought through at least partial self-control. On the other hand, embedded, sedimented signs can become so habituated that they are quasi-instinctive or 'as if instinctive. As such, they lay dormant in the mind, ready to emerge at some propitious moment. Speaking of this 'presence' of mind, Peirce observes: All that is immediately present to a man is what is in his mind in the present instant. His whole life is in the present. But when he asks what is the content of the present instant, his question always comes too late. The present has gone by, and what remains of it is greatly metamorphosed ... Indeed, although a feeling is immediate consciousness, that is, is whatever of consciousness there may be that is immediately present, yet there is no consciousness in it because it is instantaneous. For... feeling is nothing but a quality, and a quality is not conscious: it is a mere possibility. (CP: 1.310)

The 'immediately present' contains the whole of one's life. It contains the possibilities (Firstness) of signs coming into conscious awareness as something or other (Secondness), which are subjected to perceptual judgments with the accompanying awareness that they are such-and-such and that they contain a certain set of attributes (Thirdness). Quality

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 225 becomes what is and what is becomes what should be the case according to the circumstances surrounding what is. In a nutshell, this is the Peircean triadic process that pervades our lives, that of all living creatures - and, indeed, the entire universe. I must point out, however, that Peirce's concepts of the 'immediately present' and 'immediate consciousness' by no means suffer from those bugbears of deconstruction, namely, the 'myth of presence,' linearly moving 'phonocentrism' (found especially in Western language), and 'logocentrism' (Derrida, 1973). The 'quasi-instinctive' nature of the deeply sedimented propensities and proclivities is a matter of ensemble, timeless ensemble, devoid of history. It is ensemble. But the ensemble, having been thrown into 'time-bound real time,' so to speak, is never immediately available to the human agent. On the contrary, there can be no more than a display of bits and pieces of the ensemble through a traveling time slit in the 'now' of things, beginning with feeling and culminating in knowing. The entire process incorporated in the above quotation from Peirce bears on abduction. Feeling (i.e., signs of chiefly Firstness), issues forth as a radically non-linear stream, or it issues forth not at all. Specification of this sign is possible only after the fact and by way of mediating Thirdness. For example, an abduction emerging as feeling from the quasi-instinctive ensemble of propensities and proclivities is at the moment of its emergence exceedingly vague, though on the spur of that particular moment it may seem to be a paragon of clarity (CP: 5.446). And it might bring with it, as Secondness begins entering the scene, the shock of surprise, for it is entirely different from what was expected; it contradicts sedimented habits of thought and of action. Then, and only then, can abduction emerge in 'imaginary time' and present itself to consciousness. Subsequently, it can be put to the inductive test in everyday-life situations ('real time'). This applies, I would suggest, to abductive acts from the most insignificant to major overhauls in the ways of organisms, societies, and human knowing. In order topologically to suggest a model for and illustrate the abductive act within the semiosic process, allow me to begin at the most fundamental level. Consider the flip of a flattened Mobius strip in 'imaginary time' according to that depicted in Figure 23 as a qualitative, spatial model of Henri Poincare's discovery of the Fuchsian functions in mathematics. Poincare's (1914) own lively account of his discovery has him working on the problem for fifteen days without success. One evening, after drinking black coffee, he spent a sleepless night experiencing jumbles of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

226 Sensing Corporeally 360-degree rotation on plane

Two 90-degree flips

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 23: Mobius rotations and flips

ideas colliding until they interlocked, convincing him that the tentative hypothesis he had constructed was incorrect. Try as he might, he failed to come upon a satisfactory alternative. He then went on vacation, for a rest. Presumably this sojourn should have put his heavy thinking out of his mind. But it didn't. His problem remained, in the back of his mind. One day, while boarding a bus, an inspiration hit him like a flash of lightning. He suddenly realized that the Fuchsian functions were identical to a set of functions that already existed in mathematics, consisting of transformations of non-Euclidean geometry, which he could use to solve his problem. Poincare's explanation was this. The incidents of travel put his mathematical work in a sort of cerebral limbo. There it was not simply dormant; rather it gestated and gelled on its own, to surface at an unexpected moment. This can be illustrated topologically by the nonlinear, 90° orthogonal flips outside the plane in Figure 23, the moment of abduction. An abduction suddenly flashed in the mind. Where did it come from? Who can say, really. It just appeared. It was the sudden appearance of a sign possibility - in this case, the possible solution to a problem. What should one do with this possibility now? Poincare's answer involved the next, somewhat arduous task. He had to patiently, and in a more or less linear continuous set of operations, take up pen and ink and set his abducted insight down on paper. This is like the tempo-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 227 ral, linear process of sliding the Mobius strip in circular fashion on the two-dimensional plane of Figure 23 in 360° rotation. In other words, Poincare's abductive act is patterned by flips of the flattened Mobius strip, thus bringing a disarray of signs into a more benign collection - order from chaos. Then, by relatively smooth transitions punctuated by small steps - a 360° rotation on the plane - the signs can be manipulated to obtain the desired and orderly results. The possible solution to a problem emerges as if out of nowhere (Firstness). If what emerges in the mind is indeed a feasible possibility, then a certain hypothetical set of consequences will most likely ensue (Thirdness). Then the hypothesis is given a reality check (Secondness), and if all goes well, one has a working solution to the problem in hand. Experiences similar to that of Poincare are legion: Kekule's discovery of the benzene ring experienced as intertwined snakes after a coffeedrinking marathon; Coleridge's dream of Kubla Khan and his palace which, on awakening from a drug-induced slumber, so we are told, he wrote down as if the composition were all there and awaiting its realization on the page; Mozart's symphonies coming to him in their entirety in one massive clash. In each case, the flips within the ensemble of possible abductive signs occurred at the level of Firstness, where myriad thoughtsigns and sign-events are possible but none are actualized. Smooth rotations on the plane are a continuous generation of signs in the sphere of Secondness and Thirdness. Now, all this might strike one as nothing more than a few cute parlour tricks, these folds and orthogonals and rotations and such, but nothing we can sink our teeth into. Where is the spark of creativity? In a mere fold in space? In a flip of the mind? In an abstract form without substance? How can this account for the creative act? Yet we're getting there. At least I would like to think so. That is, we're closing in on the idea of abduction, slowly, in our sauntering toward a notion of feeling and emotion and sentiment and intuition and the role of those tender-minded signs, signs of the heart and the gut, bodymind signs, which have throughout history been relegated to the cellar as relatively unimportant in order to make way for those tough-guy signs of chiefly symbolicity and Thirdness. For now, more talk about semiotic concreteness is in order. The Way of All Flesh Semiosis begins with what Peirce called the qualisign, iconicity at its barest. If in the beginning was the word, that word, as a solitary evocaMerrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

228 Sensing Corporeally tion, was not yet a legitimate symbol: it needed interrelationships with other symbols and other signs before it could take on the status of a fullblown symbolic sign. In view of the previous section, I suggested that initially a sign is a sign of and by abductive inference: it often comes as the result of a surprise, for its signness emerges where and when there was as yet no indication of signhood for some semiotic agent in some respect or capacity. At this rudimentary stage, it is the ultimate in autonomy, self-containment, selfreflexivity, harmony, and coherence. In other words, the sign begins as mere sensation (First). Then it is acknowledged as something other 'out there' or 'in here' (Second). Finally, a surprise is registered in consciousness (as a Third), because it appears that there is something rather than nothing and that this something is not what it would ordinarily be. Smugly confident of its ability to stand on its own (as a sign of Firstness), since it knows of no otherness (as a sign of Secondness), an initial sign which is not yet a fully developed sign (of Thirdness) - begins by reiterating itself. In this act it can then relate in good semiosic fashion to some other. But all this must still seem aggravatingly obscure. Consider, then, an example. In line with abductive activity, suppose at a particular juncture in your life the surprising event A occurs. Then you notice that if A, there is the possibility of B. As a consequence, you draw up the gently fallible conjecture (abduction): if A, then there are prima facie grounds for assuming that B. In case B is related to A by mere resemblance, you have no more than a vague sense of iconicity. If the relation is from A to B in terms of some space-time connection, indexicality enters your semiosic activity, and you can now begin the route to cumulative inductive practices. But if B enjoys a place in the conventions of some community of semiotic agents, then in all likelihood you will be able to relate it deductively to A by way of symbolicity (natural language), whether in 'inner' or some form of'outer' dialogic exchange (CP: 5.189). Of course the mind would ordinarily prefer to avoid surprises, except perhaps in play activity. Yet the play of life is serious business, and, according to Peirce it entails incessant acts of abduction, induction, and deduction. Without them there would be no life at all, life being precisely the unfolding of possibilities actualized and congealed into habits that constantly push the process along. During the course of events, vague possibilities (as Firsts) eventually take on breadth to become generalities (as Thirds). In other words, juxtaposed and often inconsistent signs are selected, actualized (into Seconds), and brought into rela-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 229 tion with other signs to engender perpetually incomplete modes of mind and of action. This process, I must emphasize, begins with abduction, the only 'creative act of mind' (CP: 2.624). Abduction is the 'operation which introduces any new idea,' for induction 'does nothing but determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of pure hypothesis' (CP: 5.171). Put another way, an abductive insight is the mere suggestion of learnability, when this insight is invested with a hypothesis, it is tested for its accountability. If things go according to the best of expectations, then the mind is on its way toward knowing something it knew not. In sum, then, with respect to the three forms of inference, (1) abduction is the process whereby sensations become welded together ultimately to form a general idea as mere possibility; (2) induction marks the initiation of habit formation whereby sensations as they are related to similar events (reaction on the part of some other) are combined into a general idea, and then interaction by means of those sensations is repeated over and over again; and (3) deduction is the process of hypothesis formation leading to inductive practices and, when necessary, abductive acts by which habit becomes part of everyday conduct (CP: 6.144-46). It is becoming increasingly apparent, I would hope, that these processes tend to gravitate from vagueness to generality. Now let us incorporate mind and body into the equation. In deduction the mind follows habits, usually according to pathways of least resistance and by virtue of which a general 'idea' suggests some action. But this 'idea' (Thirdness) is not strictly mental, disembodied, abstract, and autonomous of the world. It emerges as the result of a process given a particular direction by some sensation (Firstness). The sensation was followed by some reaction (Secondness) from some other, whether of the physical world, the community, or the selFs own 'inner' other. Ruptures do not mark the move from sensation to reaction to idea to action. Rather, the movement is continuous. Corporeal capacities and tendencies merge into other, incorporeal capacities and tendencies, ultimately to become one undivided whole. Along these lines, Peirce writes in his usual intriguing but obscure manner, with uncanny allusions and bizarre associations, that the way 'the hind legs of a frog, separated from the rest of the body, reason, [is] when you pinch them. It is the lowest form of psychical manifestation' (CP: 6.144). In Peirce's example there is no T think, therefore I am,' but merely some rather vague T think' flowing along in concert with - though at times dragged along by - the body, and the self of 'I am' in incessant

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

230 Sensing Corporeally dialogue - whether amiable or agonistic - with its other self, its social other, and its physically 'real' other. There is no 'I respond to stimuli, therefore I think I think,' but mind orchestrating - though often unwittingly playing second fiddle to - the body's coming and going. In this manner, speaking of 'mind' and 'idea' in the same breath as the impulsive jerks of severed frog's legs is not epistemological heresy. What the frog legs do is at the most fundamental .level what we do in all walks of life. The difference is that for the frog, the body - whether whole or dismembered - can hardly be budged from centre stage. In contrast, our Cartesian mind deludes itself into thinking it has taken over the leading role and has in the process become a ubiquitous celebrity, while the body is merely along for the ride to mop up the stage when the show is over. However, the mind is not as paramount as we would perhaps like to think. In this regard, instead of 'I think,' which presumably involves mind and mind alone, in the sense of Merleau-Ponty (1962), it is a matter of 'I can.' This latter assertion brings the whole of bodymind into play. Peirce's abduction-induction-deduction triad does not enjoy the central role in the inquiry within the covers of this book. I bring it up in order briefly to illustrate the importance of all forms of Firstness to the flux of semiosis. All concepts, as generalities, are invariable incomplete. Hence they are subject to further amendments or deletions; or they may simply be discarded if they prove inadequate to their particular task. This nature of concepts and 'conceptual schemes' can by no stretch of the imagination be divorced from vagueness, which liberally allows for polysemy, plurivocity, through metaphors and other rhetorical devices. Though by their very nature they embody inconsistency, these devices are not thereby rendered meaningless, nonsensical, or false. They are not mere place settings or hors d'oeuvres, but part of the main course. They are the concrete fillings that can bring a bit more completeness and add considerable taste to the liberal serving of generalities. In this sense, iconicity lies embedded at the heart of things. If we can talk of meaning at all, it is due to this centrality of iconicity, which is composed of images, diagrams, and metaphors. This centrality is germane to the ways of corporeal feeling and emoting and sensing as precursors to thoughts, concepts, and habits of mind and action. Linguistic or prepositional knowing is possible solely as an outgrowth of non-linguistic or non-propositional processes. In other words, in light of previous arguments, symbolicity depends on iconicity and indexicality for its very sustenance. Thirdness is made possible by the prior develop-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 231 ment of Firstness and Secondness; consequently, symbols owe their very existence to icons and indices. Ultimately, actualized icons themselves depend for their existence on imagination. This involves images engendered by way of feelings, inclinations, and a sense of what is right for the occasion. From imagination, feeling and sense blends in with experience, which renders signs learnable in the first place. Imagination affords the tools for making semiotic worlds and giving account of them. Ultimately, imagination gives rise to the ways of reasoning toward which knowledge of signs may be forthcoming. In fact, 'styles of reasoning' themselves depend on imagination, Firstness, as I shall argue in greater detail in the final chapter, is categorically ignored by 'objectivist' philosophy (Hacking, 1984, 1985). If meaning there be, then, it emerges from Firstness and encompasses not only what there presumably is, but also inventions, fictions, and even fantasies the likes of unicorn images, unicorn schemes, and unicorn thought-signs, finally to include conceptualization. Meaning emerges from Firstness just as much as Grue/Green emeralds emerge from images, schemes, and develop into concepts. 'Grue' and 'Green' as predicates all constantly collude, collide, collaborate, and conspire to bring about meaning according to whatever contexts and conditions happen to emerge at a particular space-time juncture. Meaning consists in the interrelations emerging during sign engenderment and interpretation. That is to say, meaning is not simply found in the interrelations between words and their referents. First and foremost, it springs out of interrelations between iconicity and indexicality, out of feeling 'in here' and sign-events either 'in here' or 'out there.' And all this, before there are any symbolic signs of the mind - that is, conceptual signs of the perpetually abstracting mind. We would like to think we are rational animals, capable wilfully of creating signs that most effectively give our lives order and purpose. But before we are rational animals, we are rational animals. Our styles of reasoning are embodied in our cultural patterns and propensities, our embedded habits, arid our tacit everyday activities. Consequently, these styles of reasoning enable us to fabricate our worlds according to pathways of least resistance (the demands of Secondness), culturally inculcated imperatives (the necessities of Thirdness), and private idiosyncrasies, whims, and wishes (the desires of Firstness). Taking into consideration these pathways of least resistance, culturally inculcated imperatives, and private matters, we sense that the concrete 'reasoning' of heart, soul, stomach, and even - and on occasion most emphatically- groin, cannot

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

232 Sensing Corporeally be divorced from the abstract 'reasoning' of mind. Feeling and emoting and sensing, and contact with hardcore physical 'reality,' cannot but play a necessary part in the ethereal confines of intellection. The upshot is that body and mind, subject and object, individual and community, nature and culture, are inextricably mixed. The empiricist side of Peirce winces at the mention of innate ideas. But he does believe in a continuity between nature and mind and between mind and body. Consequently, he makes no categorical break between the well-reasoned and logical formulation of a concept and that feeling, familiar to us all, for what is correct: abduction. In contrast to tradition's avoidance of the abductive process, Peirce's abduction should now take its rightful place beside induction and deduction. If there are no innate ideas directly involved with abduction, at least there is, Peirce argues, an innate tendency for the mind to hit upon the correct answer in the face of a bewildering array of possible answers. And if there are innate ideas, an idea's innateness most certainly 'admits of degree, for it consists of the tendency of the idea to present itself to the mind' (CP: 6.416). When mind faces a problem, it begins searching for an answer. It ignores largely irrelevant data and zooms in on more probable avenues toward that answer. It looks where it senses, feels, or intuits a solution must be waiting. The process occurs at conscious and non-conscious levels, as reports from those gifted souls who have had great insights testify. For example, Poincare (1952 [1905]: 39) wrote of'the subliminal self that is 'in no way inferior to the conscious self; it is not purely automatic; it is capable of discernment; it has tact, delicacy; it knows how to choose, to divine.' Poincare's observation echoes Peirce's notion, interspersed throughout his texts, that it is quite reasonable - however unfalsifiable it may be - to assume the mind has a ' natural light or light of nature, or instinctive insight, or genius' that allows it to arrive at the correct answer. This is to be expected, for, Peirce tells us, the three categories of thought and the very existence of thought itself depend on the fact that 'human thought necessarily partakes of whatever character is diffused through the whole universe, and that its natural modes have some tendency to be the modes of action of the universe' (CP: 1.351). Why should the mind not be as much a part of nature as anything else? If it is, then there is no reason to believe that it must be reduced to mere trial-and-error guesses when striving to comprehend nature. Innateness or instinct, in light of Peirce's three kinds of 'reasoning' corresponding to deduction, induction, and abduction, gives a little food for thought. Deductive reason is necessary. But 'it only professes to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 233 give us information concerning the matter of our own hypotheses and distinctly declares that, if we want to know anything else, we must go elsewhere.' Induction depends on probabilities. It can give no guarantees, but 'like an insurance company' it affords us 'an endless multitude of insignificant risks.' And abduction is that 'which lit the foot-steps of Galileo.' 'It is really an appeal to instinct. Thus reason, for all the frills it customarily wards, in vital crises, comes down upon its marrow-bones to beg the succor of instinct' (CP: 1.630). From rational deductive mind to abductive instinctive mind, thought occurs by one style of reason or another along the continuum from consciousness to non-consciousness, from explicitness to implicitness, and from knowing that (in the order of explicitness in symbols) to knowing how (the sense that 'I can,' as a latent capacity for engendering the entire spectrum of signs within semiosis). In a manner of speaking, rational mind is immature, whereas instinctive mind is mature (Roch berg-Hal ton, 1986: 10-11). According to Peirce, inferences arrived at by 'instinctive mind' are a matter of 'concrete reasonableness.' These inferences are 'acritically indubitable,' as long as they are of the nature of 'concrete reasonableness,' since their critique would call for abstract intellection. Inferences through 'concrete reasonableness' are also 'invariably vague,' for at the outset they are, to use concepts from previous chapters, overdetermined and caught up in inconsistencies. Moreover, they are radically fallible as long as they are not given deductive (formal, abstract, intellectual) scaffolding and put to the inductive test (CP: 5.441-66). In contrast to what Peirce calls 'instinctive mind,' rational mind is capable of progressing toward ever-greater generality. But in spite of its Faustian, modernist desires for control and absolute knowledge, and given its finitude, the critical inferences that rational mind engenders, are destined to remain incomplete, and hence undetermined. Unfortunately, the modern tendency is to consider Cartesian introspection, rational argumentation, logical proof, and direct, objective, empirical 'facts' as the final arbiters of knowledge. This tendency ignores 'sentiment,' a 'feel' for what is right, and 'concrete reasonableness.' However, feeling, sentiment and concrete reasonableness are the chief sources of new knowing by way of abduction (CP: 1.615, 5.433). If we suppress instinctive, habituated, sedimented, entrenched knowing how ('I can,' bodymind's capacity to engage in its practices); and if we favour rational, prepositional-computational knowing that ('I think,' the ability to articulate bodymind's practices), we cannot but terminate in Whitehead's (1925) 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness.' It may well be,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

234 Sensing Corporeally however, that knowing how is a greater achievement of humankind than the conscious, intentional workings of rational mind. This may be because knowing how involves (1) instinctive mind and habituated bodymind practices, and it also involves (2) the sinking into non-consciousness of these bodymind practices to become second nature. Put (1) and (2) together and we have bodymind's doing what it does because that is what it does, with no need of the mind's impositions. It is how bodymind goes about its daily affairs. Without (1) and (2), we would be considerably less than human. We would be hardly more than some combination of Gage and many of Damasio's anosognosic patients. Consider (2), for example. The capacity to view a Necker cube and other two-dimensional objects as three-dimensional, to encapsulate threedimensional phenomena on a canvas with cubist techniques, to conceive of the earth as round and travelling around the sun, to take the schizophrenic V-l for granted in relativity physics and quantum theoretical descriptions of 'real world' happenings, to accept infinity and the continuum as an intuitive matter of fact, are by no means negligible accomplishments when considering human culture at large. For example, some cultures are not in the practice of converting two-dimensional objects of the Necker cube sort into three-dimensional interpretations. The inhabitants of these cultures see only a bunch of connected lines. In our culture, obedient to our entrenched bodymind practices, we almost immediately see the drawing as a cube, and we see that the lines are of equal length and connected at 90° angles. All this, empirically speaking, is not the case. Yet we impute these characteristics to the drawing as if it were a three-dimensional object. What is most important is that all these bodymind practices begin in Firstness, where mind is indistinguishable from body.2 But I really must get on to yet a more concrete exemplification of abduction. I will attempt to do so by interrelating abduction with Peirce's 'pragmatic maxim.' The Maxim's Role in Abduction, and Other Uncertainties

To recap, deduction occurs as if within some atemporal setting. It is knowing, of the nature of 'I think' regarding what could be the case if certain conditions were to inhere. Induction is the accumulation, within 'real time,' of knowing what is, according to the particular preconceptions, predispositions, and proclivities, and whims and wishes, of the sign maker and taker in terms of 'I can.' Abduction is the flash (in 'timeless

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 235 imaginary time') of knowing that which might possibly be, with no guarantees that this is so. Put the three interdependent, interrelated, interactive terms together in one tightly bound package, and we have semiotics at its best engendered from the semiosic process. I would conjecture that abduction, along with induction and deduction, invariably comes into play when Peirce puts what he calls the 'pragmatic maxim' to use. And, I would respectfully suggest, the maxim plays a role in all facets of semiosis. It applies, whether we are speaking of science, technology, the arts and humanities, or the coming and going of everyday life.3 In Peirce's first rendition of the maxim in 1878, which is the most commonly cited, we have the following: 'Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object' (CP: 5.402; also 5.2, 5.9, 5.18, 5.427, and MS 327). Notice how a combination of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness is implied in the maxim. We are asked to consider (Thirdness) the practical bearings of the effects (Secondness) that whatever is under consideration might conceivably (by use of faculties of imagination) have (Firstness). We have what we conceive would be or could be or should result if the perceived world were of such-and-such a nature, according to what we imagine might possibly be the case. However, since what emerges out of our imaginative faculties is not only unpredictable but virtually without definite limits, the nature of what we would expect will ensue according to the myriad ways our world could be perceived and conceived would be equally unlimited, given all possibly times and places, here and there and in the past, present, and future. The maxim, in this regard, plays on our imagining what might possible be the case in one of an unlimited number of contexts. So there can be no closure, since tomorrow might usher in some unforeseen possibilities of the imagination or of the perceived and conceived world that might end in new probabilities (of Thirdness) of actualization in the world (of Secondness). The maxim has to do with the semiotic subject's construction of her world. It is a matter of her making what seems to be the case the case, at least for her at a given space-time juncture. It is a method not for determining whether a set of signs - characteristically in the form of a sentence or set of sentences - is timelessly and undeniably 'true.' Rather, it is an indeterminately variable method for interacting with signs in such a way that the 'semiotic world' with which they interdependently interrelate appears to be the case. And in the process their meaning

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

236 Sensing Corporeally emerges: the maxim enables signs - including the semiotic subject, ourselves - to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is to say that the maxim essentially stipulates that the meaning of a sentence regarding what appears to be the case is the product of all conceivable consequences presented by other sentences - and their own consequences - engendered from the original sentence. This product of all conceivable consequences entails the translation of the initial sign or sentence into a series of conditional sentences, the antecedents of each of which prescribe certain interactions between the interpreter and the signs in question. The consequences, ideally, consist of observable sign phenomena that should or would make themselves manifest in the event that the original signs or sentences are indeed 'true.' But 'truth,' I repeat, is not really the goal for the pragmatic maxim. The task at hand is to draw meaning from the signs being processed by way of their interdependent, interactive interrelations. The interpreter takes the initial signs and creates a hypothetical situation by imagining what would most likely ensue. Then she puts her hypothetical signs to the test in terms of a thought experiment 'in here' or by interacting with the signs' objects 'out there' in order to see if she was right. If her hypothesis turns out to appear correct for the time being, the possibility nonetheless remains that other hypotheticals may at future moments present themselves, compelling her to repeat the operation. If her initial hypothesis is found deficient, then back to the drawing board for an alternative hypotheti cal, and she repeats the operation. And so on. We should by no means take the maxim as a method to 'perfect clearness,' as Peirce's long-time friend, William James, put it (James, 1920: 411-12, in Potter, 1996: 94). The maxim is capable of putting us on the road toward clarity, but never perfect clarity. Perfect clarity does not exist for us, since all signs according to Peirce and as we have observed, given their nature as signs, are to a greater or lesser degree caught up in vagueness. What the maxim does is put us on the track toward some future time when we will hopefully know more than we now know. It tells us to entertain our imagination that so-and-so might be the case of the object, act, or event in question if certain conditions are in place. The object, act, or event possesses certain characteristics, but at this point they are no more than that: possibilities (Firstness) as far as our consciousness goes. None of these possibilities has yet become actual (Secondness) for the sign maker and taker. If and when it is actualized for us, then, and only then, can we properly conceptualize it as a sign

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

On What Is New 237 (interpretant, Thirdness). In the sense of the futurity of the maxim, then, we have the possibility that, along with our imaginary conception of the matter at hand, we should by the maxim be able to get an idea in terms of what most likely would happen in the event that certain circumstances were actualized. Another Peircean term is crying out to be revived for another look: habit. When perception and conception of a sign within comparable contexts has occurred over and over again, it becomes sedimented into bodymind; it becomes habituated; it becomes part of individual or cultural practices. The sign maker and taker acquire a certain readiness to make the sign under particular circumstances and to take the sign and respond to it in an accustomed way under comparable circumstances. Habit, then, elicits certain kinds of action and reaction (as Secondness) and customary ways of conceptualizing signs (as Thirdness) within familiar contexts. If action-reaction is Secondness and thought or conceptualization of signs is Thirdness, it stands to reason that a habitual response to a sign is a matter of Thirdness. And so it is. But that is not the entire story. I have addressed myself to a 'readiness' to respond. That readiness is grounded in possibility, not actuality or thought or concept or interpretation. In this sense, the readiness itself is of the order of Firstness. The Firstness of readiness, as pure possibility, implies the possibility of undeterminable future actualization into Secondness and concepts and interpretations into Thirdness. If all the possibilities could be exhausted, then fine and dandy. Complete knowledge of a sign, of all signs, would be ours. We would be in total control. But what is meant by 'all the possibilities'? And why infinity? Once again, that nuisance, I'm afraid. There is theoretically no end to the possible actualizations and conceptualizations and interpretations of a particular sign in an unlimited array of contexts. So, as finite, fallible humans, we have no hope of reaching the end of the trail. Completeness is not for us. In Peirce's words: Intellectual concepts ... - the only sign-burdens that are properly denominated concepts - essentially carry some implication concerning the general behavior either of some conscious being or of some inanimate object, and so convey more, not merely than any feeling, but more, too, than any existential fact, namely, the 'would-acts,' 'would-dos,' of habitual behavior; and no agglomeration of actual happenings can ever completely fill up the meaning of a 'world-be.' (CP: 5.467)

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

238 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness; possibility, actuality, and what would most likely ensue if such-and-such were the case; feeling, actionreaction regarding what is, and thought, conceptualization. In a nutshell, here we have Peirce's non-linear and perpetual flow of sign processes. The problem is that among the vast corpus of expositions, analyses, interpretations, and critiques of Peirce, we have ample work on logic, mathematics, metaphysics, and language. But we have relatively little work on the ethical and aesthetic possibilities of the Peircean sign.4 This is the area where human semiotic animals can either excel or selfdestruct. In whichever case, we must dedicate a few lines to this issue. For it is what was generally found lacking in many of the patients Damasio and Sacks studied, and in some of Borges's characters. And it is what we should cultivate above all else.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Contextualizing the

Pragmatic Maxim

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

From a Broader Perspective

To reiterate, the key words in Peirce's pragmatic maxim are the 'effects' that 'might conceivably have practical bearings,' the 'object of our conception,' and 'our conception of the object.' No sign yields perfect clarity because all signs are to an extent vague. A sign is vague, since, given the element of Firstness that dwells within all signs, that Firstness of quality, feeling, sentiment, sensation - cannot be of sharp specificity. It is, and it will remain, indeterminate. Peirce's maxim calls for signs of general nature. Signs of generality, such as 'cat' as a sign for the class of all cats, are not of some particular experience, as are signs of Secondness and its embodied Firstness. Rather, signs of generality, or Thirdness, are of kinds of experience. Concrete examples are in order regarding both signs of logic and mathematics and signs of moral-ethical-aesthetic considerations. Regarding logic - inductive logic put into practice in this case - consider the statement 'All crows are black.' Most any dictionary or encyclopedia will likely tell us that a universal attribute of all crows (as Thirdness) is their blackness. Our past experience of actual crows (our sensation of them as Firstness and our perception of them as Secondness) also tells us the sentence must be correct. Can we be absolutely certain on this basis that 'All crows are black'? Not really. In order to be certain, absolutely certain in the most absolute sense, we must consider 'the possible effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have.' Notice that the maxim doesn't say anything about our empirical perception of any particular crows. It only mentions our conception of the possible effects of our actually spying a crow in an

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

240 Sensing Corporeally encyclopedia, National Geographic, the local zoo, or its natural habitat. In this sense, 'our conception of these effects' in the most general sense is 'the whole of our conception of the object.' However, assume we are unsatisfied with what we have seen and heard and read about crows in past instances, and we foray out into the world to explore the correctness of the sentence on our own. We see one crow, two crows, and many crows, and observe they are all black. Are we now certain of the sentence's truthfulness? Pretty correct. But not absolutely correct in the absolutely absolute sense. We cannot be in possession of determinably irrefutable knowledge regarding all crows' blackness until we have observed each and every crow, past, present, and future. A big problem, for sure. Moreover, the problem eventually opens a Pandora's box. Carl Hempel (1945), in an unexpected move, argues that the 'All crows are black' hypothesis can be restated as 'All non-black things are non-crows.' How so? Actually, the two hypotheses have the same content; they are different formulations of the same proposition. To demonstrate this, Hempel posits what he calls the 'equivalence condition' between the two hypotheses. Whatever confirms (or refutes) one of the two equivalent sentences, also confirms (or refutes) the other. In other words, one hypothesis is a contrapositive of the other hypothesis. To state 'That crow is black, therefore all crows must be black' also confirms the statement 'All non-black things must be non-crows.' Of course 'All non-black things are non-crows' is the much easier of the two hypotheses to test. Pink flamingos, red cardinals, gray doves, and blue jays all confirm the contrapositive version of the hypothesis, as do yellow lemons, silver coins, red herrings, and green emeralds. So we can go through life, at each step spying either black crows or non-black noncrows, and our original hypothesis asserting that all crows are black will not yet be absolutely confirmed - that is, unless we are little Laplacean superdemons capable of seeing everything all at once - for something will always remain to be observed, including species of insects in the Amazon Basin becoming extinct daily.1 In spite of Hempel's 'inductivity paradox,' we usually do what we do best, and get on with the game of life. We send and take, and engender and translate signs as we can. We cut the world up as we go along. We compare new experiences to old ones, and pack signs into the pigeonholes with which we have become comfortable, in spite of the risk we constantly run that what is correct from one vantage may be absurd from another. Consequently, a set of categories in a given culture is used to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 241 classify everything there is - that is, everything in the world that is cut out, distinguished, and indicated by that particular community. However, during life's processes within that culture, every item of experience that happens to pop up is possibly, and in many cases customarily and dutifully, compared to the classes of things that are already there. For every item, some similarity is abductively fashioned and fabricated, and a fit, deductively and inductively, is hopefully forthcoming. If there is no fit, then it's time for that wily trickster in abductive dress to bring about something new as a result of the surprising non-fit. What does all this imply? Why, limitlessness, and in principle, infinity, with respect to all possibilities for selection and choice and action and thought, from Firstness to Thirdness. Once again I must emphasize, absolute knowledge is not for us. So every one of our signs of generality must remain to a greater or lesser degree incomplete. All signs are to an extent vague, hence they can embody inconsistencies. They can also be general, and if so, their generality cannot escape incompleteness. Now that we have discussed an item of our presumed empirical knowing, 'Crows,' let us consider a term from moral-ethical discourse. For example, 'Justice.' This is a general sign, but unlike black crows, it is not empirically verifiable. We can witness 1,000 courtroom procedures and get a fair idea of the degree of 'Justice' in a particular society. Yet there is no definite crowlike object or event of 'Crowness' we can place beside the term Justice' in order to satisfy ourselves that this particular object and its eventing is proof of'Justice.' This is of the nature of all abstract signs. Their proof lies to a large extent in our conception of the practical bearings the sign will have in a set of conceivable circumstances. The grand majority of signs of moral-ethical nature have this characteristic. In this manner, moral-ethical signs are subjected to our consideration of their effects within a range of imaginary settings. Our verification of a given society's Justice,' then, is a matter of 'thought experiments' in addition to our experience in courtrooms, factories, business offices, and lawbooks, and on the streets. Since signs of an abstract nature are not empirically verifiable to perfection, as in the example of 'Crows,' they are to an extent vague; hence there is often an element of inconsistency. And 'Crows' and other signs made and taken as signs of generality are never so general that their generality cannot stand a little improvement; hence they remain to an extent incomplete. Signs of aesthetic quality might be deemed even more problematic than signs of empirical knowing and signs of moral-ethical discourse. This is because aesthetic signs are exceedingly slippery, and to an extent be-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

242 Sensing Corporeally cause Peirce dedicated relatively few pages to the question of aesthetics. Aesthetic signs raise vagueness to the level of utmost importance. Being vague, these signs are quite often inconsistent, for that is the nature of artistic signs, of creative uses of linguistic and non-linguistic signs in the aesthetic sense. As would be expected, these signs of creativity highlight Firstness, spontaneity, iconicity (mimesis), and novelty or freshness and difference. It is usually the function of creative signs to imply rather than state outright, to suggest rather than dictate, to open one's eyes to possibilities of which one was not previously aware. Indeed, in Peirce's conception, without the creative dimension of aesthetic signs, ethics and logic would be impossible. There would be no signs of generality beyond the humdrum march of meaningless signs of particularity as world events transpire. However, signs as particulars are collected into classes and assigned signs of generality, by virtue of the existence of creative and imaginary uses of those signs when they were in the process of emerging into the light of day. Indeed, to repeat a phrase from the pragmatic maxim, we are asked to consider what effects or consequences 'that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have.' 'That might conceivably have' is an invitation to the imagination. We must imagine what might happen under certain circumstances. This is in the beginning a matter of Firstness, abduction. Then we are asked to consider what effects would likely follow, were this imaginary situation to be actualized. This is a matter of Secondness as a mental construct. And when experience comes into the picture after the imaginary situation is actualized into some object, act, or event, we can have inductive grasps of the world 'out there.' Then the 'whole of our conception of the object' begins taking its course. This is a matter of Thirdness, through hypothesis building by deduction and then trying out the hypothesis with the actualized object, act, or event of Secondness. The process eventually makes up our meaning of that object, act, or event. Back in the terrain of aesthetics, vagueness, Firstness, and outside considerations of Secondness and Thirdness, what we have is implication without explication, signs, many of which notoriously lie beyond effability. This simply won't do, in our pragmatic world of give and take. Just as neither Firstness nor Secondness nor Thirdness can stand alone but need the other two playmakers of the categorical triad, so also aesthetics and ethics and logic and the experienced world are interdependent, interrelated, and interactive.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 243

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The Maxim, and Wittgenstein's Rule Following Now, abduction, once again, is a way of knowing what might be possible. Then, once knowing (and meaning) in the active sense enters the scene, there is attention toward entrenchment and habituation of that knowing. But since abduction is an ongoing process and never entirely absent, then whatever codes or rules or modes of action are developed within a particular society, the possibility always exist for those codes, rules, or modes of action to be subverted in one form or another - indeed, in virtually an infinity of ways. Therefore it behooves us to lend an ear to Ludwig Wittgenstein, to wit, his now celebrated and sometimes maligned opinion on rule following. In Philosophical Investigations (1953), Wittgenstein challenges the very idea of setting language on firm foundations. He strives to undermine rational and logical language use in obedience to standards of correctness and truth. His exposition, I should hasten to add, is highly controversial: it customarily brings either applause or knee-jerk reactions, but it is rarely met simply with a respectful nod or a nonchalant yawn. On the one side of the fence, we have one of Wittgenstein's most notorious critical followers in Saul Kripke (1982), who accepts Wittgenstein's sceptical argument almost wholesale, though he remains somewhat anguished over its iconoclastic demolition of a host of philosophical principles. In contrast to Kripke, David Bloor (1983, 1997) and Patricia Werhane (1987) are willing to stomach Wittgenstein's scepticism as long as it does not go off into the deep end. On the other side of the fence, we have vitriolic criticism from the likes of Colin McGinn (1984), among others.2 Wittgenstein, to put it baldly, slaps us out of our comfortable sense of conventionally coded, rule-guided slumber. If we follow him, his notion of following a rule implies that we have no solid ground on which to construct a set of codes that govern independent normative standards for our practices. Nor do we have any explicit set of rules with which to specify the meaning of our words and our actions. He tells us we don't know what we are looking for when we look for standards and foundations. We don't know what we are looking for, because in our everyday coming and going we more often than not do what we do and say with no conscious and intentional regard for standards and foundations. Since we most commonly just do what we do and say what we say according to the context and situation that happen to inhere, there is no knowing exactly when we might or might not deviate from our doing and saying.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

244 Sensing Corporeally In other words, we are by and large unaware of our motives, intentions, and reasons for doing what we do and say when we do and say it. Now, that much said, I will surely be charged with oversimplifying a complex and sophisticated philosophical argument and the host of arguments that have spewed forth from it. My own purpose for doing what I am doing is to illustrate cultural phenomena. I make no pretences about, nor am I qualified for, contributing to the mushrooming corpus of philosophical discourse on the matter. With that disclaimer, on to Wittgenstein's paradox. Wittgenstein writes in Philosophical Investigations (1953: 201): This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by the rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here.'3 A veritable mindbender, for sure. What we are to make of the paradox is that the rule does not rigidly govern our action, because when we follow the rule we are most often engaged in some culture-laden activity that has become sedimented in bodymind - such as, for example, driving a car, crossing the street on foot, tapping at a computer terminal, eating with friends or family or associates, lolling at the beach, shopping for groceries or clothes or appliances, waiting in line at the theatre, and all forms of 'language games' and their accompanying non-linguistic gestures and nuances. If we are during these activities following rules - and usually we are, in once sense or another - we do so in large part 'blindly,' since our mind is attuned to things other than our entrenched language use and the mannerisms of our body manoeuvrings as we continue doing what we are doing and saying what we are saying. In terms of Polanyi's 'tacit knowing,' subsidiary awareness qualifies our rule following by way of bodymind, of which we are not consciously aware, while focal knowing qualifies our conscious and perhaps conscientious doing and saying within a particular cultural context. For example, while driving my car, subsidiary awareness takes over my physical movements, and leaves me a little space so that my mind can focally wander about, daydream, create a possible scenario for the interview I will have tomorrow, speculate about the weather or the stock market or last night's basketball game, chit-chat with a friend to my right, or whatever. All of the while, I am presumably 'following the rules' of the traffic code quite conveniently, thank you. All of that was left to my body - or, I should say, the tacit workings of bodymind. These activities

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 245 were put on automatic pilot so as to free up my obsessively wandering mind for some serious thinking, or perhaps for idle musings. This does not by any means reinforce the body/mind split. Though body doing and mind doing operate at different levels of awareness, they remain in an intimate embrace with each other, as bodymind. They are one, though their various roles emerge and submerge. After Wittgenstein wrote the above citation on rule following and rule dissidence, he hastened to add that the road to the paradox passes through a misunderstanding, since we - and especially philosophers, I would presume — would like to believe that we (our self, our mind) are always in control of what we are up to. We would like to think we are captains of our own ship. Not so, Wittgenstein says in so many (rather disconnected) words. He concludes that there is a 'way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it" in actual cases' (1953: 201). He follows this observation with: 'And hence also "obeying a rule" is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to obey a rule "privately"' (1953: 202). Kripke takes Wittgenstein to be saying that a rule does not necessarily and irrevocably determine the actions one performs when one is supposed to be following the rule so that an omniscient philosopher can provide a sound argument for the rule's determining the proper course of action. On the contrary. There is no rock-solid course of action, given the stream of different contexts that incessantly emerge. Given the process of contextual coming and going, if a rule appears to be followed to the letter, it is usually followed tacitly — that is, if the follower is entrenched or otherwise indoctrinated into her cultural 'form of life.'4 As such, the rule is not intentionally and conscientiously followed. So it is not 'followed' in the usual sense of 'following a rule' of which philosophers are prone to speak. Hence the rule is not really 'followed' at all, or better, it is followed 'blindly.' Kripke's sceptical interpretation of Wittgenstein, in this manner, becomes: 'There can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word. Each new application we make is a leap in the dark; any present intention could be interpreted so as to accord with anything we choose to do. So there can be neither accord, nor conflict (1982:55). A particular doing or saying carried out tacitly is not in (explicit) accord with the rule, for the doer-sayer did not say what she would do by saying T will now follow rule X.' She just did-said it, within the flow of her everyday life. If what is carried out tacitly is not (necessarily) in accord

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

246 Sensing Corporeally with the rule, then neither is it (necessarily) in conflict with the rule. It is not in conflict, since if the doer-sayer perchance deviates from the rule without awareness of her so doing, it cannot be said - according to philosophical parlance - that she is in conflict with the rule, for her deviation was not conscientious or intentional. So each new application is a leap inasmuch as there is no absolute guarantee regarding what the next moment will bring. Wittgenstein gives a mathematical example. A young pupil is taught to add 2 to the last number of a series after 1,000. Then one day, for some strange reason, he begins: '1,004, 1,008, 1,012 ..." Wittgenstein writes: 'We say to him: "Look what you've done!" - He doesn't understand. We say: "You were meant to add two; look how you began the series!" He answers: "Yes, isn't it right? I thought that was how I was meant to do it"' (1953: 185). The young man learned, and now he just does what he does. If for some Godforsaken reason or other that is unknown to him, he begins doing what he does in a deviant way, he has not broken any rule, for he did not intentionally do so. Of course, ignorance of the rule, like ignorance of the law, is no excuse, so they say. But he's not ignorant of the rule. If he wished, he could rattle it off in much the way he learned it. But that is not the point. When he does what he does, he does not say to himself: 'Now let me see, which of my repertoire of rules must I apply here?' He just picks up his problem and runs with it, doing what he does quite naturally. From Rules to Moral Issues Or we might take David Hume's example: 'I suppose a person to have lent me a sum of money, on condition that it be restor'd in a few days: and also suppose, that after the expiration of the term agreed on, he demands the sum: I ask, What reason or motive have I to restore the money ?' (1739-40: 479) .5 Hume's character might have been feigning ignorance of his moral obligation in an attempt to squirm out of his responsibility, or perhaps he is simply immoral. Wittgenstein's pupil might have simply made an honest mistake, either that or he had the intention of disrupting the mathematics session. In both cases the deviations from the rule can be unintentional and non-conscientious, hence it cannot be said that the rule has been broken in the ordinary sense of 'breaking a rule' (though, once again, ignorance of the law [rule] is no excuse). However, deviation can also be intentional, in which case the assumption might be that rules are made to be broken, either for subversive

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 247 purposes or just for the hell of it. On rare occasions it may well be that the subject actually believes she is obeying the rule, but her interpretation of the rule is flawed. At any rate, every time a rule has been disobeyed, the subversive culprit can always have an obvious reason for her actions. For, 'if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it.' So, Wittgenstein concludes, there is neither accord nor conflict. Neither accord nor conflict, because the excluded middle principle loses its oomph. Neither the one nor the other, since something else, some new practice emerging from a hitherto unavailable abductive insight, might have entered the semiotic scene. All this, of course, opens up a can of worms. If rules are disobeyed either out of ignorance or intentionally, it would seem that an irrational and illogical yardstick comes into use when disobedience occurs. It follows that there is no rhyme or reason why collective behaviour would not fall into chaos. Anarchy would surely threaten. A rebuttal might be that whosoever fails properly to disobey the rule might be doing so by means of her own 'reason' and 'logic.' And why not? It has become quite widely accepted over the past couple of decades that there are many possible 'styles of reasoning' and a host of possible 'logics' (Haack, 1978, 1996). It would appear that the only conclusion - comparable to Shakespeare's Hamlet - is that nothing is absolutely either true or false, but that styles of reasoning and alternative logics can make things so. This is our neither-nor friend, with her bag of included middle manoeuvres, up to her old tricks again. This apparently insane interpretation brings out more than a little philosophical angst in Kripke, compelling him to provide his own sceptical solution. It is all a matter of community agreement, he argues, whether one's acts are tacit and implicit or explicit. If someone tells us something or sends some extralinguistic signals, we can attribute meaning to her message by bringing it into interrelation with the conditions that brought about the message and with the agreements and practices of the community. Yet Kripke's solution is still 'sceptical.' He rules out ironclad reference between signs - whether linguistic or otherwise, I would add - and the cultural world. He leaves meaning up to our ability to discern the interrelations between our signs and the repertoire of community practices. Nevertheless, like Wittgenstein, Kripke holds to intrinsic meanings. In response to the above example from Hume, Thomas Reid attempts to present a logically coherent counterargument. Reid insists that Hume's

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

248 Sensing Corporeally example is all awash. The scoundrel in Hume's thought experiment who came up with the idea that he didn't have to make good on his promise to pay back the loan must be either right or wrong. There is no room for any middle ground. If Hume is right, then, Reid believes, he must have found a loophole in the cultural convention regarding agreements, and if such a loophole exists, then the rules of the game should be altered. But most likely he is categorically wrong, and if he is wrong, he is wrong, period. For Reid, humans are basically moral beings, and a society with conventions that don't prescribe the obligation to make good on a loan is a society founded on erroneous grounds: that 'a man should lend without any conception of his having a right to be repaid; or that a man should borrow on the condition of paying in a few days, and yet have no conception of his obligation, seems to me to involve a contradiction' (1969 [1788]: 451). Lending entails a change of property from one person to another person, and when the second person does not live up to the terms of the agreement, the first person has the right to claim and retrieve what is hers. He who defaults on the loan must be made to pay for it and suffer some community-established punitive measures. However, when social injustices are involved, does not the right to civil disobedience come into the picture? If the lender is engaging in usury, should the contract be honoured come what may? Rules are there to be obeyed, for sure, but they often become the brunt of ridicule, scorn, and contempt. They exist in order that they may be undercut in subtle ways such that the rich and powerful will have no inkling of their being so undercut (i.e., byway of 'cultural guerrilla activity' in the order of Michel de Certeau (1984; seeMerrel!2000b). Then, to repeat, if whatever one does can be made out to accord with a rule, from some interpretation or other, then it would seem that rules, like the Quine-Duhem concept of scientific theories mentioned earlier, are radically underdetermined. That is to say, with respect to Wittgenstein on rules, any two given interpretations of a rule might turn out to contradict each other, even though, considered in their own right and within their particular context, both interpretations are to all appearances legitimate. Moreover, for any contradictory pair of interpretations, there exists another possible interpretation that, given its preconceptions and presuppositions and style of reasoned argumentation, might be deemed superior to the other two interpretations. Hence each interpretation, if disconnected from all other interpretations, actual and possible, sort of hangs in the air. It doesn't yield meaning unless there is some consideration of what it is not. What it is not consists of some

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 249 alternative interpretation against which it can be judged. This might imply that there is an infinite regress operating here. Every interpretation is in need of further interpretation in order (it is hoped) to render it a tad more complete. Yet no matter how far we go, incompleteness will continue to raise its ugly head (Minar, 1990). No set of interpretations is a guaranteed royal road to truth. Interpretations cannot ground a community's practice of rule following. In the first place, if one follows a rule conscientiously- that which Bloor (1997) calls the 'conscientiousness condition' - it is already interpreted. In the second place, if one has already interpreted the rule, then that very interpretation is also already operating within the practice of following the rule. So once again, the infinite regress presents his mocking smile. We are damned if we do one thing and we are damned if we do some other thing. How can we hope to cope with this quandary? As mentioned, much controversial ink has been shed over the pros and cons, the virtues and vicissitudes, of Wittgenstein's so-called paradox. However, not a small number of observers consider it not a paradox at all, but merely a dilemma over which we really need not lose any sleep. I must reiterate that by no means do I wish to enter wholly into this debate. I choose to drill in on the relevance of Wittgenstein's problem to this inquiry with respect to the implication of infinity, as was briefly noted above. But questions arise. How does infinity enter into the equation? If it forces its way in, cannot it be extricated by logical means? Actually, infinity doesn't really enter, for it was there all along. It was there all along, in the sense of Peirce on continuity. Peirce's Beginning In the beginning, there was Peirce's book of assertions, the indeterminable range of possibilities within Firstness. Everything else becomes, is perpetually in the process of its becoming, what it will have been becoming from those possibilities of Firstness. Or topologically put, from what Peirce calls the 'nothingness' (the unbroken, faceless, emptiness continuum) prior to the becoming of anything at all, there appears a 'point.' From the solitary 'point,' an infinity of 'points' can be engendered to compose a 'line'; from an infinity of 'lines,' a 'plane' begins its becoming; from an infinity of 'planes,' a 'cube' begins emerging; and from an infinity of 'cubes,' a 'hypercube' begins the process of its becoming (Benardete, 1964). This process is sensed in Peirce's marring of the continuum. A line, as metaphorical of this continuum he writes, 'contains no points until the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

250 Sensing Corporeally continuity is broken by marking the points. In accordance with this, it seems necessary to say that a continuum, where it is continuous and unbroken, contains no definite parts; that its parts are created in the act of defining them and the precise definition of them breaks the continuity.' This primordial continuum, 'is a collection of so vast a multitude that in the whole universe of possibility there is not room for them to retain their distinct identities; but they become welded into one another' (CP:6.168). Thus, the continuum 'is all that is possible, in what ever dimension it be continuous' (NEM: 4.343). Where should we place the point that disrupts the continuum? Peirce offers a possible answer. There is 'a possible, or potential, point-place wherever a point might be placed; but that which only may be is necessarily thereby indefinite, and as such, and in so far, and in those respects, as it is such, it is not subject to the principle of [non-]contradiction' (CP: 6.182, brackets added). It is not subject to the principle of non-contradiction? Now how can this be? If a topological zone subject to our contemplation is in part 'Green' and in part 'Non-green' (or perhaps 'Grue'), then there must be an imaginary dividing line between what presumably is and what is not. So in the final analysis, 'what is the color of the dividing line; is it green or not? I should say that it is both green and not. "But that violates the principle of [non-]contradiction, without which there can be no sense in anything." Not at all; the principle of [non-]contradiction doesn't apply to possibilities. Possibly I shall vote for Roosevelt; possibly not. Geometrical limits are mere possibilities' (NEM: 2.531) (brackets added). In an alternative to this brief 'thought experiment,' Peirce asks us to imagine him drawing a chalk line on a blackboard. Then he writes that 'the only line [that] is there is the line which forms the limit between the black surface and the white surface ... The boundary between the black and white is neither black, nor white, nor neither, nor both. It is the pairedness of the two. It is for the white the active Secondness of the black; for the black the active Secondness of the white' (CP: 6.203). In the first case we have once again a rape of the principle of noncontradiction; in the second case we have a rape of the excluded middle principle (recall the discussion surrounding Figure 13). Where is the logic in all this? Is there no order in Peirce's concept of the continuum?6 If the continuum implies infinity, it would appear that ordinary logical principles simply don't apply. How can we get out of this morass? Perhaps a return to the pragmatic maxim might be wise.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Maximizing the Maxim

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Bodymind Has Its Ways of Which Mind Alone Is Ignorant

In Figure 1 we had a graphic image of what we might term the becoming of the beingness of space and the beingness of its becoming. Notice that with the exception of the bare point ('vortex'), all the lines of the figure involve continua, the implication of infinity - an infinity of points making up the line. This is significant. In the process from one bulb of the Figure 1 continuum to the next, we have virtually an infinity of possibilities from which some undefined and undefmable number of particulars can begin their becoming. I write 'undefined' and 'undefinable,' since there is no way before the beginning of becoming that one could have been totally aware of what would have been becoming. This is to say that from the range of possibilities, Peirce, on the one hand, and by his own admission in the citation in chapter 14, might have voted for Roosevelt. On the other hand, he might not have voted for him. Suppose Peirce voted for Roosevelt. Well and good. A vote was cast, Secondness staked claim to a particular event, and that's that. Before the vote was cast, the range of possibilities was like the dividing line between Green and Non-green: it was both the one and the other, as possibility. Moreover, in terms of the voting sign as actuality, Peirce enjoyed the possibility of neither voting nor not-voting for Teddy but voting for his competitor in the political arena. Or he might have jotted down a writein vote for one of an indeterminate number of possible alternative candidates he might have had in mind - and so the included middle opens the door to hitherto unforeseen consequences. However, suppose Peirce decided not to vote for Roosevelt, and also to resist voting for his competitor, or for anybody else. In this case he voted

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

252 Sensing Corporeally for neither the one nor the other. He chose to abstain altogether. Secondness emerged, an event transpired, and Peirce's opinion regarding the sorry qualifications of all possible candidates brought about an interpretant, Thirdness, mediating between the event and the range of possibilities. As to the possibilities of Firstness, there is a both-and affair, and with respect to the mediation of Thirdness, there is always a certain probability of a neither-nor affair. Now, a question concerning the relevance of all this to the idea of abduction has certainly forced itself into the mind of any and all readers. Please turn your attention once again to Wittgenstein's problem for a moment. No particular course of action as absolutely determined by a rule implies that before any course of action (Secondness) may be forthcoming, there is the indefinite range of possibilities (Firstness). Since there is no absolutely determining which of those possibilities is destined to emerge at a given juncture, there exists the possibility that either of a pair of contradictory courses of action might ensue. This would seem to conflict, one more time, with the principle of noncontradiction. That is to say, the possibility of contradictory courses of action would conflict with the principle of non-contradiction in terms of possibilities (Firstness), as we have seen from Peirce. For instance, assume that a particular course of action begins the becoming of its emergence into the light of day. At that point, interpretation (Thirdness) of that course of action exists as no more than a possibility. In other words, between any two possible interpretations, some of them conflicting, a Third one might emerge. In fact, many possible Thirds might emerge - this, I might add, is quite in line with the mathematical concept of the continuum. If we place the Firstness of possibilities, the Secondness of action-interaction, and the Thirdness of interpretation within the process of abduction, the question becomes: When I am surprised by an unexpected turn of events, how can I know how properly to proceed or if I am following the proper rule? In order perhaps to confront this dilemma, the maxim, not as it is ordinarily taken in the logico-linguistic sense by Peirce scholars, but as it might be taken in light of Wittgenstein's problem, might prove handy. Suppose, for example, that a surprise catches us off guard while we are making a turn on a country road. We hit a patch of gravel and our car begins swerving. We react spontaneously, turning the wheels in a direction contrary to the swerve. That's proper rule following, as stated in the Driver's Manual and according to the laws of classical physics. In other words, a surprise caught us off guard, bodymind with lightning speed

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Maximizing the Maxim 253 gauged the practical effects of the idea of turning the steering in one direction rather than the other, hands jumped into action, steering wheel turned, car righted itself, and we were safe and sound and ready to drive on. The effects of bodymind's action panned out. During this process, we hardly had time consciously and mindfully to 'consider the effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings," we conceived 'the object of our conception to have.' We just did what we did, without having time to think about it. Body 'thought' it out; that is, bodymind 'thought' about it, bodymind as sign, bodymindsign. And it did so quickly and effectively. Then we did what we did because our obeying that particular rule of the road had become entrenched, habituated, sedimented, and tacit. As Wittgenstein (1953: 202) points out: 'To think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule.' We were obeying the rule virtually in automaton fashion. A dilemma arose, we tacitly grasped the rule and followed it, and the desired effects were forthcoming. It is as if 'our conception of these effects' were the 'whole of our conception' of the situation at hand. However, the 'course of action' could have been quite otherwise. Suddenly confused by the unwanted turn of events, we might have turned the wheel in the direction of the car's spin. Or we might have slammed on the brakes; or we might have shoved our foot on the accelerator pedal in an attempt to outrun the car's spin; or we might have let go of the wheel and emitted a scream of anguish; or we might have frozen out of terror; or whatever. There is no absolutely determinable way we could have foreseen our 'course of action' and hence our possible failure to comply with the rule. There's no knowing for sure. In Wittgenstein's words, we obey a rule blindly, though there is no knowing when we unwittingly might deviate from the rule. Now I don't wish to contest the interpretations of Peirce's maxim that 'consider' only the consciously, intentionally, and cognitively derived 'effects, that might conceivably ...' and so on, when a problem situation confronts us. I do wish to present an extension of the maxim by taking it into everyday practices. In such practices, we have the possibility (Firstness) of indefinite responses to a problem, according to which by our action (Secondness) we either obey or do not obey rules. During this action, we interpret (Thirdness) the rules implicitly, within particular contexts, and without necessarily having consciously, intentionally, and cognitively to think about them. In this light, a surprise overtakes bodymindsign. Bodymindsign then brings about some action in view of the new circumstances. And success or failure is the outcome. The

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

254 Sensing Corporeally process of signs becoming signs, from Firstness to Secondness to Thirdness, takes places just as surely as if we had contemplated a problem, intellectualized a course of action according to some chipped-ingranite rule, and carried our action to its logical end finally to interpret our results. Our squirrel says to herself: 'Now I wonder what effects, that might have practical bearings, I conceive my flicking my tail to get the attention of that fine specimen of squirrelhood over there, to have? Most likely he'll beckon to the call, and we can engage in some exciting hide-andseek. So my conception of these effects is part of the whole of my conception of this and comparable activities.' Following this line of 'reasoning' - albeit through my hyperanthropomorphizing squirrel thinking - she twitches her tail and the chase begins. Or, that bodymindsign we ordinarily refer to as 'Michael Jordan' says to himself as he streaks down the court: 'What would be the effect of my dribbling behind my back and taking the ball in my right hand, leaping high into the air while passing the ball to my left hand behind my back and twisting my body counterclockwise to do a slam dunk in that dude's face? According to my conception, the effect would be one of the possible effects the whole of my conception of this and other comparable situations.' BodymindsignJordan puts his conjecture to the test, and chalk up two more points for the Prince of Air. All this is done in a flash, quicker than the mind can think and more rapidly than the eye can blink. I would suggest that our squirrel, whether we wish to consider her 'mindless' or not, does fundamentally the same thing. In this regard the maxim is not exclusively a question of mind-signs or thought-signs; it involves signs of bodymind, without which abstract, relatively aloof and detached mind-signs would be virtually devoid of meaning. A bodymindsign's capacity to appraise a situation and put the essentials of the maxim to use was lacking in Gage, we should bear in mind. Gage's mind operated quite effectively when it came to purely hypothetical situations. But application by bodymindsign simply wasn't in him. Gage was unable to link what our squirrel and Michael Jordan do with his own mind acts, his logical and rational and analytical and linguistic formulation of his bodymind feeling and emoting and sensing and intuiting. He could link his thoughts to any bodymind with respect to anybody anywhere and anytime, but he could not link them to himself, Gage-bodymind, here and now. In short, the suggestion is this: The maxim, and rule testing and rule tearing, are not a matter of mind and mind alone; rather, the maxim is as

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Maximizing the Maxim 255 natural as can be, the way of all living, what we do in the normal course of our everyday activities. Maximizing Wittgenstein and Deregulating the Maxim

If we wish to bring about a radical move that will provoke even the most analytically minded scholars to howls, let us combine the maxim and Wittgenstein's paradox in this way:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This is the problem: no single practical bearing could be determinately interdependently interrelated and interactive, one to one, with a particular effect that our conception (imagination) of the object in question might have, because given the whole of our conception (imagination) of all the possible effects that might be interdependently interrelated and interactive with that particular practical bearing, a host of alternative practical bearings could always be made out interdependently to interrelate and interact with an indeterminate range of the effects, all those practical bearings and effects serving to make up the whole of our conception (imagination) of the object.

And, what do we have here? We have the implication that no single 'practical bearing' is linearly connected (via Secondness) to a 'particular effect' with respect to our imagination (Firstness) or conception (Thirdness). We take in the notion that the whole of our conception and imagination of the possible 'practical bearings' and their 'possible effects' is destined to incompleteness. Either that, or inconsistency will surface. Or perhaps both incompleteness and inconsistency will come to the fore. They both stand a chance of emerging, since there will remain an unlimited and indeterminable range of 'practical bearings' and 'effects' that our finite, fallible minds were incapable of entertaining, but did not. We become aware of our limitations, of our shortcomings, with the realization that the whole of our conception and imagination is a mere drop in the bucket with respect to everything possible. Above all, we slightly lift the veil to take a peek at abduction emerging. In the above example of our car suddenly hitting a patch of gravel, bodymind abduced a possible course of action, it deduced the likely consequences, it inductively put its tacit conjecture to the test, and it saved its skin. In other words, it created a response to a problem situation, however trivial and mundane or however earthshaking the outcome. This suggests how important the creative process is to how we

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

256 Sensing Corporeally perceive and conceive our world during our daily activities. The implications present in the Peirce-Wittgenstein combination consist of a nonlinear range of possibilities rather than linear cause-and-effect sequences. These implications reveal unlimited interrelated, interdependent interactivity among all possibilities and the 'practical bearings' that will likely result from the 'effects' produced by signs once they have become actualized. Even the apparently most fixed community-based conventional rules of thought and action always stand a chance of varying, from time to time and from place to place. There is simply no predicting what the future may bring. In fact, a minor variance in the use of a rule may mushroom to produce drastic effects on down the road. This view of the Peirce-Wittgenstein fusion, I would submit, follows quite closely Ilya Prigogine's science of complexity, of order emerging from disorder, and of the virtual unfathomability of it all (1980; see also Prigogine and Stengers, 1983). In repeat of the classical example of chaos becoming, a butterfly flaps its wings near an orchid in the Amazon Basin. A slight perturbation is created in the air. The perturbation nonlinearly grows in intensity, and continues to grow. Finally, a hurricane springs up in the Caribbean, and thousands of people are left homeless. The natural train of indeterminably complex events just took its course. No physical law was broken. Quite simply, the customary 'rule' of conduct that butterflies naturally tend to follow brought about dire effects. Comparable examples are virtually unlimited. The president of the United States has a blemish on his nose and checks it out at the hospital, and the Dow average takes a quick spin downward. Martin Luther King said 'I have a dream,' and millions of African Americans took action. A boisterous lad gets hit in the back of the head with a cup while watching a soccer match. A fight ensues, and the entire stadium turns into a riot - a new form of orderly chaos from the previous orderly chaos. And so on. In each case, unwritten 'rules' of proper procedures deviated slightly, and unpredictable though in principle deterministic effects came about. The very idea of some form or other of 'order' springing out of 'disorder' is germane to the abductive process. An abduction (order) appears, as if out of the clear blue sky (as if out of disorder). It seems as if we grasped it from some timeless orthogonal view within some virtually unfathomable other dimension - the discussion of orthogonals in the section on imaginary time and real time in chapter 12 has a direct bearing here. It is all as if we were somehow mentally and bodily exercising an enigmatic and paradoxical multiple flip of the Mobius strip. It is as if figuratively speaking we were within Scharlach's world and able to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Maximizing the Maxim 257 Body Tacitness Subsidiary awareness Interdependency

Awareness Interaction

Focal awareness Explicitness Conceptualization Interrelatedness

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 24: Two dimensions from one

catch Lonnrot's pathetic meanderings in a few perceptual and conceptual takes, as if we were in Averroes's shoes when flowing into the stream of Aristotle's culture, or as if Menard were sensing corporeally and writing what Cervantes must have sensed when he wrote the same passages. I'll try providing a topological illustration of this process. Figure 24 offers our now familiar image of Firstness (a line) twisting and turning within the infinite possibilities of Firstness into actualized form, or Secondness (a plane). This is a Borromean knot that wriggles, torques itself, coiling and braiding, convoluting and involuting, within itself, where mind thinks it can begin taking over the show. But body is never absent. It can't absent itself, for without it there is no mind. There can't be any mind, for mind and its surface thought-signs depend on body and its deeper, more fundamental signs. In this sense, Figure 24 incorporates a topological model of abduction during the moment when consciousness is in the process of becoming, from myriad possibilities to tacit body or bodymind awareness to mind awareness (consciousness and self-consciousness). Thus it brings us into the physical world by abducting something possible (Firstness). That possibility might be no

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

258 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 25: Three dimensions from two

more than the conjecture that a bird I happen to spy in a tree outside is a blue jay. The tacit something becomes by induction something as a blue jay in my perceptual interaction with it. It also introduces Thirdness, wherein conscious awareness is in the process of becoming explicit. Thus I deduce that if the bird yonder is a blue jay, I know that it must have such-and-such a set of qualities (colour, call, flight pattern, and so on). Unfortunately, this explicitness is often taken as disembodied mindstuff, concepts that in their interrelatedness are conceived to paint a picture of what there is as complete, consistent, and fixed. Deluded dreams. Deluded, for incompleteness there will always be, in the underdetermined realm of Thirdness. My feathered friend might not be a blue jay at all, because on further inspection I notice he is more grey than blue, that he is too small, and so on. Topologically speaking, in Figure 24 we have progressed from line (possibility) to plane (something as such-and-such) to a third dimension (something that should be so-and-so). And we have done so through time, our onedimensional time-line. Figure 25 evinces the twisting transformation of a plane into a threedimensional form. Each bulb of Figure 25, containing a Mobius flip, is the democratic equivalent of the other two bulbs. All three bulbs converge at the centre, the 'vortex' or 'emptiness.' This centre is like the spoke of a wheel — or a hurricane or tornado for that matter - that is absolutely necessary for the wheel's movement but which, itself, experiences no movement whatsoever. Like the centre of the wheel, the centre

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Maximizing the Maxim 259

Figure 26: Fracturation within four dimensions of Figure 25 is that through which each bulb ephemerally passes on and into the other two bulbs. Topologically speaking, this phenomenon is that of three dimensions emerging from two dimensions. And through the 'spoke,' a world is in the process of becoming. But not without the participatory maker and taker of the world's furniture, not without objects, acts, and events that are interdependently, interrelatedly interactive with their respective signs and with their interpreters who make and take those signs. All participants are necessary for the process to perpetuate itself. If anything is lacking, the form collapses. Finally, we have Figure 26. Topologically, it is my attempt to portray

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

260 Sensing Corporeally three dimensions twisted and warped through four dimensions. Here, visualization becomes problematic, for obvious reasons. With respect to human perception and conception, it is three dimensions of space and a dimension of 'real time.' The centre, the 'spoke of the wheel,' 'emptiness,' is static. Yet it is a boiling collection of scintillating, effervescent possibilities, and the fractured bulbs are 'democratically' becoming something other than what they were becoming. Throughout this 'democratic process,' when actualized objects, acts, and events take on categorization, they are finally given a name and they become linguistically valued. But they can become what they are becoming solely through time, for the participatory interpreter, who is, herself, in the process of becoming while the interpreted is in the process of becoming. Line to plane to three-dimensional form, and Firstness to Secondness to Thirdness through time. Abduction from body to bodymind tacit awareness to interactive perceptual awareness of something other than the bodymind to mind-driven focal awareness that our surroundings must be the way they are because that is the way we have perceived and conceived them in the past due to our embedded, entrenched, habituated modes. All this is terribly abstract. So let me begin anew. Consider further our topological woofs and warps within spatial dimensions. Figures 24 and 25, depicting one dimension through two dimensions and two dimensions through three dimensions, appear to offer no unbearable complications. From our three-dimensional vantage point we can take it all in, as if we were in possession of some God's-eye view. This is as if the line in Figure 24 were a Linelander's lowly onedimensional world, and we imperious Sphereworlders could view her entire panorama in one visual grasp. The band making up Figure 25, by extension, would be Fladand. We Sphereworlders still think we reign supreme. Imagine what Flatlander's house somewhere along the band would look like. It would be comparable to a blueprint of the rooms at the floor level of a projected house, with Flatlander there, somewhere, slapped on the two-dimensional sheet. But her house, from our view, would be much more than that. We could see everything in her medicine cabinet, the dresser drawers, and the pantry shelves, since all details must be there, in two dimensions. We could see Flatlander, and at the same time we could see her cluttered garage, some dirty clothes tossed in the corner of the closet, and a mess of socks tossed randomly under the bed, for along a two-dimensional plane it is all perceptually available to us. In fact, we could at a glance see Flatlander's heartbeat, lung heaves, and violent stomach activity after an evening meal. Metaphorically speak-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Maximizing the Maxim 261 ing, this is comparable to Scharlach's keeping tabs on Lonnrot's activities, limited as the latter was to the Cartesian plane containing all his mental manoeuvrings. Scharlach, from a higher dimension, could observe it all. Now we enter the third dimension, our world. And problems emerge. An important facet of Figure 26 is that it can't undergo its series of transformations unless there is rotation in four-dimensional space of the two-dimensional form metaphorically warped in three-dimensional space. Either that, or a mathematician could reduce the lines of one form to an infinity of points and transfer them onto the flat sheet, one by one, into the next form. A difficult proposition. Difficult, because we can't stick around long enough to see the infinity of operations. And difficult, because we can't get into the fourth dimension to experience the flipflopping lines making up the forms. But notice. Whether a mathematician is moving points from one place to another to change one form into the next form, or whether a form is distorting itself by a flip in four-dimensional space, a certain increment of time transpires - for us, that is. Lonnrot experienced time within his conceptual scheme, but Scharlach, we might imagine, saw Lonnrot's world, past, present, and future, all there, in one fell swoop. The Linelander resides in a one-dimensional world plus a dimension of time, the Flatlander in a two-dimensional world plus a dimension of time, and we Spherelanders in a three-dimensional world plus a dimension of time. So essentially we live within four dimensions. The problem is that we are capable of becoming conscious of the becoming of future happenings only when they are already becoming present, and as they are becoming present, they are already passing away into the becoming past. Within our three-dimensional spatial existence we can become aware of no more than successive increments of our world along the one-dimensional time line, as if we were in a box car pulled by a locomotive and could see the countryside only by peering out through a vertical slit to catch successive glimpses of it through time. Yet we live within four dimensions. Since we can be consciously aware at particular times and places of no more than fragments of the fourdimensional spacetime continuum, so also the transformations in Figure 24 must appear fragmented. What has this to do with abduction? I would conjecture that as it swims along its stream, abduction shoots a possible plan of action into consciousness on entering Secondness (imaged as the second dimension plus time). Then the plan of action is put to the test in three-dimensional

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

262 Sensing Corporeally space as consciousness enters Thirdness in interaction with Secondness (imaged as the third dimension plus time). Thus the dimensionality; thus the categories that by no mere coincidence are equal to the dimensions of our space; thus time, dimensionality becoming. Granted, all this is metaphorical; yet topologically, it effectively patterns process, I would suggest. For what it's worth, I might add that I composed the Figure 26 fragments by constructing the original form at the bottom and then rotating the fragments in 90° steps along the sides, the combination of which yielded a 180° transformation from top to bottom. I can carry out these transformations of one-dimensional lines on a flat sheet, because the form is two-dimensional. But it is depicted as a two-dimensional band warped in three-dimensional space. So in keeping with its threedimensional appearance, the transformations are taking place within four-dimensional space. In this sense, all transformations are orthogonal, as if in another dimension. Moreover, since the fragments' orientation on the plane is at variance, their rotation reveals the fragmentary existence of the parts making up the whole. Consequently, at the outset it naturally seems that there is neither rhyme nor reason to the concoction of straight lines and curved lines and shaded areas in Figure 24. There is no readily grasped order. Damasio argues that in the beginning, consciousness was not split but rather a seamless whole. Perhaps it should not be called consciousness at all in that primordial stage, for there was no split between self and everything else. This was only Peirce's virtually unlimited possibilities of Firstness, one or more of which might be in the process of becoming Secondness (the line in Figure 24). The split eventually created a self here and a non-self there. Then, what might have been the logical consequence of this split, Cartesian dualism, was born. Secondness eventually reached a high pitch of intensity. But if we leave things at that, fragmentation there is and there will always be (Figure 25 becoming fragmented into Figure 26, but with no regeneration of lost unity in sight). Peirce was not content with that condition, however. A Third category was for him necessary; it would bring about regeneration through mediation. This mediation motivates a move toward successively finer differentiations toward the possibility of non-differentiation - when the differentiations become infmitesimally minute. But the inchoate Eden of complete undifferentiation can never be recaptured in its totality, for any and all formulations are destined to remain incomplete. Thus, as an icon, a model, we have dis-integration and re-integration

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Maximizing the Maxim 263 Warped disk

Disk doubly Mobilised

Disk triply Mobilised

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 27: Mobilising within dimensions

in Figure 26, within three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time. As an alternative, we have a comparable image in Figure 27, by successive Mobius operations. Given the myriad possibilities confronting us at each moment of our lives as re-integrations of the dis-integration of the forms, our parameters of selection and choice and action are of mind-boggling complexity. We can begin to understand the vast difference between ourselves and Gage, Elliot, David, and Sacks's subjects. We begin to sense Mel's becoming of consciousness in all its intricately knotted interdependent, interrelated interactive confusion. We begin to appreciate Averroes's, Funes's, Menard's, and Lonnrot's special talents, the combination of portions of which are what make us human. We become aware of the incessant birth and death, the impermanence of all forms, and at the same time their endurance as what they are becoming.1 I would suggest that all makers and takers of signs enact the triadic process at every spacetime juncture during their living existence. Each species, however, enacts it in its own way. For the process can proceed along multiple, diverging and converging, involuting and convoluting pathways. In moving from one dimension to another through Mobiused space in time, topologically, the process is general in the most general

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

264 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

sense. Its manifestation depends on the individual, the community, and the entire species to which the individual belongs. Species specificity is relatively fixed, biologically speaking. In contrast, community or cultural specificity is pliable, social. It varies from community to community, according to the 'horizon,' the form of life, the ways of focal and subsidiary awareness. Especially within human communities, an individual's particular idiosyncratic ways enjoy considerably wide degrees of freedom. Our experience of those experiences of people and characters from Borges, Damasio, and Sacks allowed us a glimpse into individual, community, and species-specific ways of sign making and taking.2 The name coined by Jakob von Uexkull for the species-specific nature of this process is Umwelt, a topic that cries out for exemplification.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelt?

This chapter takes up Jakob von Uexkull's Umwelt theory, according to which each species constructs its own world from what is tantamount to a virtual infinity of Peircean possible worlds. Account of these worlds comes chiefly byway of spatial and temporal perception and conception, and, I would submit, they are most adequately conceptualized topologically. Chapter 17 introduces various interpretations of topological forms and their importance in perception and conception, all of which are in turn interrelated with the Umwelt idea.. Finally, in the Postscript, we return to the beginning, to a reconsideration of posthuman understanding and sensing corporeally. This discussion highlights the need for a reenchantment with our place in and participation with our world, in light of Damasio's studies, Sacks's narratives, Borges's fictions, Peirce and Wittgenstein, and neopragmatist texts, and the incongruous complementary nature of all processes. The journey, I hope, will not have been entirely in vain. Time, Space, and Umwelten

When all is said and done, we must concede that ultimately we cannot but 'see' the world through filtered goggles. The many commonalities between these goggles from one culture to the next have been the focus of numerous earlier pages. Our filters set up barriers that militate against our understanding other peoples of other places and other times. The case of Borges's Averroes is notorious in this respect. Averroes's problem involves translation and interpretation from one human language and culture to another one. Thomas Nagel (1974) takes a giant step in the other direction. He goes so far as to ask, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

266 Sensing Corporeally concludes that knowledge of how other organisms or humans from another culture feel about their world would be essential for an understanding of that organism or other humans. He also concludes that with respect to a bat, the task is impossible. I would add, in light of the preceding pages, that with respect to Damasio and Gage and Elliot and David and other Damasio patients, Sacks and his multiplicity of patients, Lonnrot and Scharlach, Menard and his critics, the Tlonians and Funes and the Grueworlders and Realworlders, and ourselves and members of another human community for that matter, the task is excruciatingly difficult, though not absolutely impossible. As for me and my squirrels, I can hardly garner any hopes of entering their world. We are tied to the form of life of our human community. However, we are not exactly locked into the customs and conventions of our particular community. Our community, following the semiosic flow, is always becoming something other than what it was becoming. Nevertheless, in a certain sense we are locked into our particular species-specific Umwelt, which I define as that inherited biological capacity for selecting and constructing a particular world from the vast array of possible worlds that reality presents. Within each organism, along the functional cycle or information-conveying loop, external signals enter and become internal signals, having been processed in the transition according to our particular capacities (von Uexkull 1957). Consequently, each organism, from an amoeba to Gage and Funes and Einstein, is limited not only to its unique Umwelt but also to its experientially unique Innenwelt, the inner world. If an amoeba could write its own physics down on paper, that physics would differ radically from our physics. Wittgenstein (1953: 223e) once remarked that if a lion could speak we wouldn't understand a word he uttered. Notions of space and time would seem completely bizarre - perhaps entirely unintelligible - from one species' physics to another. It follows that the 'world' of each species is ordinarily taken by that species to be a self-consistent and complete 'world' by way of its particular Umwelt. It is for it simply the way things are. What lies outside its Umwelt does not exist, period. It might a well be in the 'elsewhere' of relativity's 'light cone,' outside the perceivability of the species. Such are apparently the limitations of a given Umwelt. In conjunction with Peirce's continuity of mind (bodymind) through time and space leading to his idea that the universe is perfused through and through with signs, and the classical mechanics/relativity/quantum theory conflict as briefly mentioned earlier, allow me a few words on

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelt?

267

J.T. Eraser's Umwelt-inspired conception of time. Fraser divides the various Umwelten into (1) atemporal, (2) prototemporal (time and space are indistinguishable, but events and things are interchangeable - i.e., time is symmetrical), (3) eotemporal (time is pure succession; it flows, but pastpresent-future cannot be clearly distinguished), (4) biotemporal (that of sentient organisms, for whom time may either be an eternal present or especially in the case of the human Umwelt — time is asymmetrical and irreversible), and (5) nootemporal (beginnings and endings are recognized; self-consciousness and self-identity are possible) (1979: 22-6; 1982: 30-1). It hardly needs mentioning that bio-nootemporality and to a degree eotemporality are specifically characteristic of the human Umwelt, and perhaps to an extent the Umwelten of simians and other developed animal species. Eo-biotemporality belongs to human and all non-human animal kingdoms. Empirical objects, acts, and events of classical physics belong to the reversible time of eotemporality. And at the most basic level, electrons and other kindred entities are confined to proto-temporality, and photons to atemporality. Umwelten, in this respect, are not exclusively spatial, as many scholars tend to take them; rather, space and time cannot be separated with respect to a species' perception and conception of the world. If for a given species time is hardly of any consequence, it is nevertheless there, in the Umwelt, as possibility. More specifically, regarding successive Umwelt stages, photons are in constant flux. Their world is intrinsically chaotic and restless. However, from the photon's Umwelt, travelling at 300 000 metres per second, the universe would be bleak and dark, an entirely static state of affairs. It would be something like Peirce's notion of pure Firstness containing everything as possibility and nothing as actuality. At the prototemporal level of quantum events, in contrast, particles exist, though fleetingly. They are here as particles in one instant and gone as a wave function in the next instant. They resist the idea of permanence and continuity. Of necessity, quantum theoretical formulations generally divide the electron and its immediate cousins into their schizophrenic manifestations in order to make them somewhat intelligible for us from within our eobio-nootemporal framework, the wave-particle duality being the product of this split. This is fine insofar as it allows the physicist to get on with her equations and the high-school physics instructor to describe the world of prototemporality to her students. The electron can be either a particleevent or a wave, but not both at the same instant. In this sense, the externally 'real' is not the really 'real' but rather the product of an

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

268 Sensing Corporeally Umwelt: it is a 'semiotically real world.' And what would the nimble electron have to say about all this? Most likely little or nothing at all; it would probably have no opinion on the matter. It is unaware of instants and of linear time. As far as it is concerned from within its prototemporal world, it is both a particle and a wave in simultaneity, or it is neither a particle nor a wave, according to the preference of the contemplator. 'Mind,' and mind-engendered time, in the sense of Peirce, apparently enter the scene at higher levels.1 Like prototemporality, the most fundamental aspect of the universe of Peirce's Secondness is motion and change in time, classical linear chronometric time - as picked up by the roving, restless mind. However, these particulars, viewed from within our eo-bio-nootemporal Umwelt, are gathered up into a rather dense concoction of differences refabricated as sameness and even identities: tokens are 'typized,' individuals become universals. One must be aware, nonetheless, that in light of semiosis, rest and stasis are not primitive but rather evolutionary stopping points. They are the temporary repositories of matter as 'mind' that has settled down to automatized behaviour matter as habituated and crystallized 'mind,' in Peirce's cosmological framework. We must, then, ask the question ... Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

What Do Umwelten Let Us Know?

Thure von Uexkull (1987: 248) points out that the theory of Jakob von Uexkiill inverts the classical formula according to which the detached subject renders account of the object, or 'reality out there,' a 'reality' patiently waiting for the proper knower to seduce her and present her with the appropriate signifying attire. The 'reality' of the Umwelt to which all is subjected and from which everything is deduced is not found 'outside,' in infinite space, which has neither beginning nor end and which is filled with a nebulous cloud of elementary particles. Nor is it found 'inside,' within ourselves, in the indistinct, distorted images of this external world created by our 'mind.' Rather, the 'reality' of Umwelt-dri\en subjective-self-worlds consists of sense perception surrounding these worlds and all things, acts, and events to form something like 'bubbles' - 'subjective,' 'self-world bubbles' that are perpetually in the process of change. Ultimate 'reality,' nature herself, lies beyond and behind each and every Umwelt, each and every theory conceived by human minds, each and every world fabricated by human minds and hands. Umwelten also lie behind the con-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelt?

269

structed worlds of ant colonies, beaver dams, burrows, nests, and other makings of non-human organisms. Umwelt worlds, allowing for basically the only 'reality' available to us, are the product of mind acts and physical activity. The laws of nature are the laws the mind has constructed. In this respect, and as Thure von Uexkiill (1982, 1989) seems to acknowledge, Jakob von Uexkiill was quite in line with much non-classical physics of the twentieth century, whose radically distinct perspective and metaphysical underpinnings are only recently catching on in the life sciences and especially the human and social sciences. I write this with Albert Einstein in mind - Einstein, who was instrumental in the creation of an entirely distinct scientific spirit, but who remained with one foot caught in the classical tradition, and who wrote that all scientific concepts, 'even those which are closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen conventions' (1949: 13). In other words, concepts, hypotheses, and theories are relatively free creations of mind, and if mind is in tune with the world in the Peircean sense, then the one collaborates with the other and vice versa. Einstein's observation ironically falls in line with that of one of his antagonists, Werner Heisenberg, among a host of physicists during the first half of the twentieth century, who once wrote: 'The same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds' (1971: 101). A little farther into the left field of pure speculation, we have the controversial words of physicist and astronomer James Jeans: 'The concepts which now prove to be fundamental to our understanding of nature ... seem to my mind to be structures of pure thought ... the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine' (1948: 166, 186). Putting this general sentiment into one bag, we have the notion that physical science 'does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves ... it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning' (Heisenberg, 1958: 81). This notion merges with my earlier comments on John Archibald Wheeler's (1994) participatory quantum universe, and with the basic participatory, interdependent, interrelated, interactive notion of the Peircean universe of signs developed throughout this study. Along comparable lines, Jakob von Uexkull's Umwelt theory postulates 'that the laws of the natural sciences are not laws of nature, but rules, which we derive for our own objectives from our confrontation with natural phenomena.' He remarks further that Umwelt theory resists the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

270 Sensing Corporeally tendency to draw a line 'between nature and man' (T. von Uexkull, 1987: 151). Moreover, 'all living organisms, including cells, behave as subjects, responding only to signs and - for as long as they live - not to causal impulses' (1987: 152). The upshot is that Umwelt theory is in the classical sense neither exactly subjective nor objective; it is exactly the product of neither idealism nor realism.2 Rather, it becomes somewhat akin to Peirce's 'objective idealism.' In Rescher and Brandom's trenchant words (1979), it entails methodological 'realism' in conjunction with ontological 'idealism' (recall, in this light, the narrative revolving about Figure 5). Now, Peirce's 'objective idealism' seems at the outset to be a strange concoction indeed. But look at it this way. Ontology (the nature of being, the beingness of the world's 'stuff) must ultimately rely on faith, faith that what there is in the world is of a certain nature. Methodology, in contrast, is a matter of concrete practice. Yet methodology in the final analysis relies on some tentative notion of what there is, of ontology. Which is to say that over the long haul, methodology relies on theory, itself ultimately based on faith (a notion recalling, once again, the work of Polanyi). And if we accept the postanalytic assumption that our entrenched notions let us see what we see, then what we see is 'ideal,' an 'idealism' based on faith, and it is 'real,' a 'reality' based on practice. According to Peirce, 'reality' - that is, the myriad collection of all possible 'semiotically real' worlds - reflects 'mind-stuff.' Or perhaps as Arthur Eddington (1958a, 1958b) puts it, the 'real' is 'mind-stuff.' But since this 'mind-stuff is never static and never terminal, we must be satisfied with the admission that 'reality,' or 'world-stuff,' insofar as we can know it and insofar as we know it 'semiotically' at any given spacetime juncture, has many faces. These faces are incessantly changing, sometimes even without our consciously altering our 'mind-stuff,' and in spite of our concerted effort to arrest such change.3 As the early Wittgenstein (1961 [1922]: 6.43) somewhat felicitously put it, the happy man and the sad man live in two different worlds. On the other hand, if this 'mind-stuff and the 'laws of nature are ideas or resolutions in the mind of some vast consciousness,' to quote Peirce again, then we are placed in yet another pickle - of which Peirce was wel aware, by the way.4 At the outset, the notion that our minuscule minds are actors on the world's stage seems to present no problem. Or does it? If we take John Archibald Wheeler's quantum cosmology at face value, we as actor-participants bring the world-as-recorded-worldinto existence. In other words, the world as a whole lifts itself by its own bootstraps,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelf? 271 ourselves as the world's contemplators included. This is tantamount to a Grand Interpreter saying what the world is as a Grand Interpretant, but in order for this to be made possible, Interpreter and Interpretant must somehow be coterminous. They interdependently, interrelatedly, interactively merge, one into the other, to compose the vast, unthinkable Cosmic Sign. As such, they simply cannot be separated, though Manley Thompson (1952) takes pains artificially to separate them in his critique of Peirce. On the one hand, how do we reconcile the subjectivity-objectivity and idealism-realism problems? On the other hand, how do we account for the notion, propagated either implicitly or explicitly throughout this volume, of ourselves as re-enchanted navigators in semiosis, in a participatory universe, with the Umwelt hypothesis? The very Umwelt idea involves perception, for sure. And the idea of perception seems to force involvement with a perceiver and that perceived, as well as presumably a knowing subject and the object known. The physical environment can only have an effect on the Umwelt-c\a.d organism by way of offering it a combination of stimuli that are specific to the respective species of which that organism is a member. This is the subjective nature of signs insofar as they are perceived and conceived or interpreted signs. Umwelt theory's view of perception, however, brings with it a sense of participation. There is not simply a subject here and an object there and generation of meaning that takes its place in some ethereal sphere with all meanings. Umwelt perception involves a loop; it is circular; it is feedback oriented in the non-linear sense. In sum, Umwelt theory calls for (1) a perceptual organ possessed by the subject as meaning receiver, (2) an effector organ possessed by the subject that engenders a concept and an interpretation, and (3) a receptor or perceptual sign, the meaning carrier, and the object of the sign (see Figure 28). This aspect of Umwelt theory also falls in line with many of the forerunners of contemporary physics. It was Bohr himself who once suggested: 'All our ordinary verbal expressions bear the stamp of our customary forms of perception' (1961 [1934]: 19). And, as if Einstein for some strange reason happened to harmonize with Bohr, we have from him the notion, now common to postanalytic thought as mentioned earlier, that 'it is the theory which decides what we can observe' (in Heisenberg, 1971: 63). For a third voice in order to create a syncopated beat, Louis de Broglie writes: 'May it not be universally true that the concepts produced by the human mind, when formulated in a slightly vague form, are roughly valid for Reality, but that when extreme precision is

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

272 Sensing Corporeally Perceptual organ of the object (sensation-perception) Receptor sign representamen

Effector sign representamen Effector organ of the interpretant (conception-meaning)

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 28: Umwelt perception

aimed at, they become ideal forms whose real content tends to vanish away?' (1939:280). The upshot is that concepts as (subjective, partly idealistic) free creations of the freewheeling mind let us (somewhat objectively and realistically) see what we see. If what we see is no more than vague and even ambiguous conceptual and linguistic window dressing, then it might march to the tune of the Big Band going by the name of 'objective reality.' However, language is not up to the task; it is always a little out of step. Which is to say that if language is passed off as of perfectly honed clarity and precision, then in that case it will have taken its leave of the world to engender its own 'ideal reality.' Putting this in terms of Peirce's 'objective idealism,' if methodological results are erroneously taken as rock-solid proof of the theory and the observations tied to that theory, then ontological 'idealism' exercises its force. Moreover, if methodology takes a back seat to the conception of a flowing, incessantly varying notion of some elusive sort of ontologically 'real' within the context of a given community's form of life, it is an indication that the methodology has become flexible and hardly conducive to the rigors that absolute clarity demands of it. But a question emerges: What has all this to do with the Umwelt hypothesis? Moreover, what has it to do with the topics I took pains to present above: communication across conceptual schemes, sign interdependent, interrelated interaction, and sensing corporeally and posthumanly, insofar as it is all revealed through topological forms? Quite obviously, I must try a more direct approach.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Distinctly Human Umwelft 273

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Umwelten Let Us Know What We Can Know Consider Figure 28 as a combination of Jakob von Uexkull's Umwelt circle (or better, spiral) and Peirce's sign model. The subject picks up the (receptor) sign and perhaps (but not necessarily) its respective semiotic object by way of its perceptual organ.5 The effector organ then engenders an interpretant, which acts as mediator between the sign and its object, such mediation creating the same relation between itself and the sign and object that it mediated and created between them. Mediation in this manner brings the interpretant into interrelation with the sign, which has now become an effector sign and meaning carrier. Thus the sign is processed, an interpretant is engendered, and the loop is completed. But the project never reaches finality. The loop is periodically opened for another go-round. And the process continues. The mind, or subject (in fact, the whole of bodymind) as it were, is in this process itself an interpretant interpreting the sign. Mind also enters into the sign process and brings it into relation with its object in the same way that the subject is related to both the sign and its object. To re-emphasize a most important point, there is no subject 'here' imperiously interpreting a sign and an object 'out there.' Rather, interpreter-interpretant, sign, object, and the sign-object's interpretant, are all involved, in-volved, wrapped within one another, in a self-emerging process. Thus the semiotic tripod in the centre of Figure 28 depicts a genuine triadic relationship. Each component of the sign is related to the other components through the intersection in the same way that they are related to it. This, we noted in the initial stages of this inquiry, is very much unlike the customary triangular model of the pseudo-triadic relationship. According to Figure 28, sign processes flow through three steps that make up a spiralling process: (1) the effector produces signs through their interaction with the semiotic object such that the signs act as (2) carriers, which (3) are taken in by the organism to engender an interpretant that is one with the selfsame organism as interpreter. The organism in turn informs, merges itself with (1) the effector sign and its semiotic object that act as (2) carriers that embrace (3) the organism, and the organismin turn embraces them, to engender another interpretant ... and so on. We sense, once again, the spiralling process of signs becoming signs, signs translated, translating themselves, into other signs. In light of this process, it can be stated: nothing is a receptor of a semiotic object that is not signifiable by way of a sign; nothing is a sign that is not interpretable by way of an effector signifying some semiotic object; nothing is an

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

274 Sensing Corporeally effector that does not interpret as an interpretant something by way of its signifying a semiotic object. The path, of course, is spiral, mediative, triadic. According to this process, the Saussurean sign consisting of signifier and signified, both of them mental as a sort of nominalistic mentalism or idealism with hardly any consideration of the physical world, is incompatible with Umwelt theory.6 Since the Peircean sign is genuinely triadic in the form of a tripod the legs of which connect sign, semiotic object, and interpretant through the apex or conjunction of the imaginary lines, it is a matter of nothing but democratic interrelations, and interrelations between interrelations that are interdependent and interactive. The tripod is never static. Rather, the three sign components are perpetually in interaction with one another such that neither the components nor their conjunction making up the genuine sign are autonomous. They are always becoming something other than what they were becoming along the now meandering, now swirling, now breaking and onrushing stream of semiosis. Consequently, to reiterate the conclusions in light of Figure 1, the tripod is akin to three spokes of a wheel - the 'vortex' - in perpetual motion such that the sign's object can become another sign with its own object and interpretant, and the interpretant can in its own turn become a sign that engenders its object and then another interpretant. Semiosic musical chairs, one might call it. Yet it is, I would suggest, quite in line with our present quantum theoretical concept of the universe. Now one might be prone to retort that this concept of the sign, as well as Umwelt theory, is much like ... Kantianism, without a Sturdy Leg to Stand On Yes. The Uexkulls themselves, Jakob and Thure, freely admit that there is a Kantian flavour to their Umwelt theory. Kant rejected naive realism, that of an objective observer capable of opening her wide, innocent eyes to see what there is in all its pristine simplicity. Likewise, as far as Umwelt theory goes, and according to Eraser's conception, there is no neutral observer. Above all, there is no knowing time and space as if the observer were taking a gander at them as though they could be observed from 'nowhere,' from an entirely neutral vantage. Time and space are not objects that can be set apart from all other objects in order to examine them as they are in themselves. Rather, they are forms of our onstreaming perception, and we cannot get outside them, no matter how much we might wish to do so. We cannot imagine

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelt?

275

what the coming and going of our physical existence would be outside time and space. Time and space are caught up in all the phenomena that come into our attention, whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. Moreover, the properties, characteristics, and qualities of the items of our perception are the product of the selective, constructive, projective activity of our sensory organs. Hence to know the world is to know bodymind's capacity for selection, construction, and projection, within time and space, or better in the sense of the above chapters, within spacetime or timespace. And what precisely is this Kantian time? What is this Kantian space? Why, it is linear, chronometric time and Euclidean linear, homogenous space. The time and space of classical physics. Newtonian time and space. Umwelt theory is Kantian insofar as it concedes that the physical world cannot go beyond certain boundaries of existence. The world is what it is according to the laws that define it, and given these laws it cannot be anything other than what it is. At the same time, Umwelt theory is non-Kantian in that it admits to distinct realities. Each species, within its own Umwelt, lives in a different world. Put all the species together and you have many Umwelt-driven worlds, the concoction of which makes up a compound world. But this compound world is not The World, which would be the union of all possible world versions engendered by all possible biological species that have been, are, and will have been (Goodman, 1978). The various realities at a given time engendered by the collections of species existing at that time make up an open set that will continue to expand during the course of evolution. In this manner, the future always holds many - potentially infinitely many - Umwelt-worlds in store. Whatever is known by a given species is known according to the capacities of each individual knower within the species, and the collection of capacities of all the individuals making up the entire community. And what about the 'real laws' of the physical world? Their nature, as far as the world's species are concerned, depends on the particular Umwelt of a given species. The richer the evolutionary development of the Umwelt and the development of the mind and body, bodymind, the more complex the theory. But no theory can be the catch-all for all phenomena and all physical laws. 'Ask any molecule,' John A. Wheeler (1980a: 352) once wrote, 'what it thinks of the second law of thermodynamics and it will laugh at the question.' If the Umwelt is a circumscribed portion of the physical world that is made meaningful by a community of organisms, then a molecule after a fashion is guided by its own Umwelt

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

276 Sensing Corporeally (Eraser's prototemporality), assuming that, as Alfred North Whitehead (1925) puts it, all entities, from particle-wave events to humans, are 'organisms.' A molecule's world does not embrace the Second Law of Thermodynamics according to which it is buffeted about virtually at random; hence if it were able to articulate its existence, there is no reason to believe that it would not consider itself free to come and go as it pleases. The Second Law simply doesn't exist as far as it is concerned. In the same vein, a two-dimensional spider web is a remarkable world that the spider knows through its sensory channels. Ask the spider if she needs another dimension of space, and she may consider the very idea entirely irrelevant; a two-dimensional world is ideal for constructing a flytrap. Try to teach a robin about the advantages of human binocular vision for the appreciation of three-dimensional visuality, and you'll likely be met with the response that we humans have much too limited a view to be effective earthworm hunters while at the same time keeping an eye out for predators. Try to explain linear time to the earthworm, and he has no need of it; his world is a vaguely staccato series, somewhat like 'Now this ... now this ... now this ...' as he inches along in silent darkness. In short, time and space are what they are depending on the conditions and the sensory channels entailed by the beholder's Umwelt, whether from the level of a molecule - presumably without sensory mechanisms the individual cell, an earthworm or a spider or a robin or a dog or cat or simian or my charming squirrel friends, or even a human animal. The space-time coordinates that dictate its (prototemporal) Umwelt specify our molecule's behaviour. Plants and individual cells are, in Thure von Uexkull's words, virtually 'solipsists,' since they 'are only able to distinguish "self and "nonself." The signs which enable them to do this are iconic signs, i.e., perceptual signs for a decrease, operational signs for an increase, of the similarity to "self" (1986: 211). Non-human multicellular organisms with a nervous system, a sense of distance, of locomotion, and the capacity to pick up perceptual cues giving them information about the movement of things and acts and events in space and time live in an iconic and indexical universe - in Eraser's biotemporality. In Peirce's conception, indexical signs contain within themselves iconic signs, like an envelope containing a photograph. A pointing finger is an index of that to which it points. The finger is an icon that affords a picture of the indexical function, but that function could operate just as well if it were an arrow or a rod or stick or the drawing of an eye fixated on the object of indication. So the particular iconic content of the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umweltf 277 indexical function is variable, though it is always there as a tacit, silent, opaque partner in the semiotic process. However, a non-human, relatively complex organism is capable of processing signals as indices indicating something of a nature other than the nature of the sign. They are index processors in addition to their role in processing icons. We humans have entered with mind and heart and soul into the illusory sphere of symbolic signs. I write 'illusory sphere' because symbols - signs capable of signifying objects, acts, and events in their absence - are excellent signs of deceit, subterfuge, and out and out lying. A dog can, according to the time of day, process his indexical signs and then lie down at the front door in anticipation of the signs - both iconic and indexical - that tell him his master is soon to appear. Our canine friend anticipates the signs' appearance and the arrival of the object of those signs, his master, because all that has occurred many times in the past to become habituated. We might, however, surmise that it is doubtful whether the dog could create the idea of his master's nonappearance on a certain day. Creation of such an image presupposes the dog's capacity to imagine something that has never happened in her memory bank as if it could happen. In other words, the proliferous human imagination of signs of the absence or negation of objects, acts, and events, which is a prerequisite for lying by use of symbols, is by and large beyond the dog's capacities. Language, and symbolic signs in general, use negativity and contradiction to a remarkable degree in creating the image or idea of something that is not as if it were.7 In Thure von Uexkull's (1986: 213) words, the 'ability to form symbols means that the direct connection between perceiving and operating is interrupted.' The connection is now indirect. That is to say, pure iconicity knows of no relation between itself and something else. It is by and large Firstness. An index enjoys relation with that of which it makes of itself a sign, for sure. But the connection is natural, most often causal, and necessary. Its principle function is that of Secondness. Without the weathervane, the wind direction would lose some of its signifying specificity. Without the mercury level in the thermometer or barometer, temperature and air pressure would be matters of subjectivity, of quality, of feelings, without any somewhat precise measure of qualification. Without lightning, there would be no easily perceptible indication of the thunder that is sure to follow. Without the cup, one could hardly refer to a cup of coffee as simply a 'cup.' Such is the way of indexical signs. Symbolicity is something else entirely. Symbolic interrelations bring Thirdness to a screaming pitch of functionality. Thirdness mediates

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

278 Sensing Corporeally between the Firstness of pure iconicity and the Secondness of pure indexicality, uniting them in such a manner that the sign in and of itself needs no present other - a semiotic object. Nor does Thirdness need any direct relation - as a sign - with that with which it is interrelated. Nor i there any demand for meaning - the interpretant - determined by an connection between the sign and that which it signifies. Rather, the Thirdness of symbolicity creates the possibility that the relation between the sign and its object is not what would ordinarily be the case. The not bears witness to the indirect relation and the element of arbitrariness the symbol carries along in its satchel. A tree as a physical semiotic object (Secondness) or as a sign (Firstness) of something else, is not 'tree.' The sound or marks on paper, 'TREE,' evoking the image and concept of a tree, could relate to a present tree, an absent tree, a spruce, a fir, a maple, a cottonwood, a redwood, or one of any other class of trees, or it could relate to the entire class of trees. Moreover, as we observed in chapter 2 on Peirce's symbols, if the English community so desired, tomorrow instead of 'tree,' we could say 'blecht,' 'kisquaint,' or any other combination of vowels and consonants, in our discussion of what today goes by the name 'tree.' In so doing we could eventually learn to communicate quite well with our newly invented word. So in light of Figure 28, symbols can and often do bring about a break, within the 'mind' of the subject, between the PERCEPTUAL ORGAN picking up cues from the OBJECT through SENSATION and PERCEPTION, on the one hand, and on the other, the EFFECTOR ORGAN that engenders a CONCEPT and the MEANING (INTERPRETANT) of the SIGN. This break opens the door to imagination, to the construction of something that is not what would ordinarily be, yet that might in some future moment become what is from some alternative perspective or other. In the conception of the von Uexkulls, the Umwelt of any organism is a 'subjective universe.' Their point is well taken. But it does not tell the whole tale. By means of this 'subjective universe,' change of behaviour - and when that behaviour becomes habit of bodymind, change of sign processing - can ensue, in the sense of Peirce's 'objective idealism' (see Boler, 1964). That familiar story about macaques is a typical case. On a Japanese beach, a community of macaques learned to wash discarded sweet potatoes in the ocean waters in order to separate the sand from them and eat them without all the grit. We can imagine that an enterprising individual within the macaque community brought about a break between PERCEPTOR and EFFECTOR, and SENSATION-PERCEPTION and CONCEPTMEANING. She engendered an imaginary sense of some condition that

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelt?

279

was not the case as if it were. A new semiotic possibility emerged. She put it to the test. And, presto! A new 'universe' came into existence - another remarkable non-human example of abduction and the pragmatic maxim. It seems that Umwelten are not invariant with a given species. All species, by biological evolution or by the development of the individual, by phylogenetic or ontogenetic change, can alter their 'universes' to a greater or lesser degree.8 So especially the more developed organisms can in some form or other create signs of something that is not as if it were. But it is we humans, for all the havoc we have caused nature, who are masters at radically changing our 'Umwelt universes.' Our capacity exists thanks to symbols, which are in the beginning arbitrarily chosen, though they tend to become conventionally made and taken. This human capacity for changeability has been the focus of too many studies to enumerate. Allow me brief allusion to one scholar and his work: Jean Piaget. Piaget's 'genetic epistemology' revolves around the central idea that our knowledge - principles of logic and mathematics, understanding of space, time, causality, shapes, and motion - grounded in our scientific knowledge, is of biological origin.9 As such, knowledge follows biological laws of evolution. Just as the individual organism and the species survive owing to their ability to engage in an ongoing process of adaptation, so also the survival value of a body of knowledge depends on its adaptability to new circumstances and the problem situations these circumstances entail. Adaptability implies change such that the organism - or knowledge, as it were - brings itself into a state of maximal equilibrium with respect to the environment. This is a universal characteristic of the life of knowledge, just as it is for the life of the organism. The child's capacity for assimilation of crucial aspects of her environment and her accommodation to them is not functionally different than that of a solitary amoeba. The difference is a matter of complexity. Or, in the above terms, the difference is a matter of a chiefly symbol-using animal in contrast to an animal largely limited to iconic and indexical signs. As the individual grows, so also the signs it uses. The individual and her signs grow and develop from iconic to indexical to symbolic, or from signs of principally Firstness to those of Secondness to those of Thirdness. The more the growth and development, the more the ability to adapt to new and different circumstances. The more the ability to adapt, the greater the capacity for greater change. And the greater the capacity for change, the more adept the organism becomes at adapting by re-establishing a desired equilibrium with its environment by means of its self-regulating activity. The basic

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

280 Sensing Corporeally hypothesis is that cognition is the outgrowth and reflection of organic processes.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

A Few Dark Clouds

But there are certain problems with Piaget's theory and various and sundry kindred theories. The goal is toward equilibrium, minimal conflict, and minimum tension. The mechanism for bringing this about is homeostasis. Homeostasis strives to maintain the same state of affairs. Consequently, the laws for maintaining this homeostatic equilibration are fundamentally mechanical in nature, notwithstanding Piaget's contention that his epistemology is genetic. A more appropriate model, I would suggest, would be once again Prigoginean, after Ilya Prigogine, who in 1977 won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. According to Prigogine's science of complexity, the watchword is morphogenesis rather than homeostasis. Morphogenesis implies positive moves bringing about change even when change is not simply a reactionary shift in response to disequilibria. Homeostasis plays chiefly on Secondness: action and reaction in order to re-establish a happy medium, a balance. Morphogenesis involves an active, even curious and inquisitive, questioning of the environment in such a manner that the environment responds to situations that would not otherwise have arisen. As a consequence, new situations emerge that call for active, 'dialogic' give-and-take between bodymind and its environment ('dialogue,' I must mention, is Prigogine's term in this context [Prigogine and Stengers, 1984], and is closely aligned with Peirce's 'dialogic'). Both bodymind and world are in this sense placed on the same level. Bodymind poses questions to the world, and the world responds in a way that it would never have thought of responding had those sorts of questions never been posed. And the world's creative responses to the bodymind's inquiry create new questions, new problem situations. When the process reaches this level, it is just that: process. There's no going back to the original mechanical state, which is largely of the nature of Secondness. Piaget's problem, it appears, is the Kantian problem. Both Piaget and Kant posit a mechanical model of time and space and causality and of the 'mind' as if this model were the only legitimate one and hence in no uncertain terms right. In other words, they assume that something in the order of von Uexkull's Umweltis mechanical in nature, setting the limits of perception and conception, and that the 'universe' engendered by way of the Umwelt is equally mechanical in nature (Wilden,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umweltl

281

1972). Piaget, like Kant, believes 'the forms that appear in rational classifications to be externalisations of the "mind's" cognitive structures: the mind discovers its own patterns in the world around it. If, in addition, these structures are themselves biological, as Piaget believes, then the conclusion that all "natural" hierarchies are variants of the same biological emboitement relation seems inescapable' (Rotman, 1977: 118). Bodymind's penchant for getting in tune with nature is, it would appear, a viable concept. As we have noted, Peirce himself propagated the idea through his theory of abduction, by way of which bodymind understands nature - that very nature of which bodymind is a part - and as such gains an understanding of itself. This, it would seem, is the problem with Gage, Elliot, David, Lonnrot, and others. Damasio's studies and Borges's stories imply that these individuals were remarkably adept at hypothesis formation in the abstract, and could formulate their hypotheses following some form of abductive insight. But their hypotheses remained in the abstract. There was no self-conscious self flowing along with the process. There was no self-application of hypotheses emerging from the depths of bodymind, because the signs by which the hypotheses were created lacked rootedness in signs 111 to 311. These most essential signs had been shunted aside, leaving signs chiefly of symbolicity or Thirdness of fleshless, skeletal countenance. Genuine bodymind was not part of nature, nor was it part of their nature. This, in a different guise, was also the problem of Funes and the Tlonians, as well as many of Sacks's patients. Funes's signs connected to the world, and the Tlonians' subjectively conjured idealistic signs that composed the world, were no more than ephemeral particulars. As lessthan-adequate signs, they were devoid of abductive conjectures and hypothetical generalities collecting the particulars into genuine Thirds as classes to which types of particulars belong. In other words, there were no abductive sparks of imagination that culminated in inductive conclusions as a result of deductive or hypothetical acts. Momentarily and scintillatingly appearing and disappearing signs 222 didn't enjoy the necessary companionship of 111, 211, and 311 that would have brought them into collaboration with more developed signs of symbolicity and Thirdness. Here, as in the destiny that Gage and Elliot and David and Lonnrot were caught up in, the effector signs and receptor signs of Figure 26 were not appropriately linked up with bodymind or subject. Semiotic objects were there, for sure, whether as pure 'mind-stuff or in the world 'out there.' But they were selfless, and hence lacking in human qualities.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

282 Sensing Corporeally Averroes in his mind-wrenching search, and Menard in realizing his impossible dream, and Sacks's Rebecca with IQ 60 yet a natural poet, and Jose the artist, found themselves endowed with an abundance of signs of the deeper self. There was plenty of abduction there for a creative human. Their deficiency involved signs of the hypothetical mold in the abstract. Sensitivity provided Averroes, Menard, Rebecca, and Jose with signs of feeling and emotion, but they could hardly go further. It is as if the perceptual organ of Figure 28 was providing plenty of feeling, but the effector organ was not operating in concert with it. Hence feelings of those feelings and consciousness of those feelings of feelings were not there. Averroes and Menard could get their abductive juices flowing so freely that, we are told, they accomplished what would be out of bounds for any normal human. They could conjure up a plethora of signs that would be virtually impossible in a mere hit-and-miss game. There is no chance affair here, but purpose, design, a will to truth - their own truth, but a form of truth nonetheless. This sort of indomitable will was almost entirely absent in Gage and comparable spirits. Those unfortunate navigators in semiosis, Rebecca and Jose, also enjoyed certain human qualities that Gage and other individuals lacked. But there was a scarcity of that which also makes humans distinctively human: the ability to hypothesize in the abstract. Once again, I feel compelled to write, if we put all these people into one package, we would have a truly remarkable member of our species. Still, the Illusive Umwelt

Notwithstanding the problems with Piaget, Ernst von Glaserfeld (1979a, 1979b, 1984) draws inspiration from the Piagetian model in developing his program of'radical constructivism.' He propagates (1) the idea that cognition is a process of subjective construction of the world rather than discovery of what is there, and (2) the Kantian notion that there can be no rational access to the world as it is prior to and independent of experience. Yet Glaserfeld writes that in spite of Kant's bombshell, 'metaphysical realism' - the belief that there is an accessible and fixed world out there, awaiting our cogitating it in its fullness - persists. The bottom line still has it in many quarters - Glaserfeld writes in so many ways - that 'reality' is discoverable by way of faithful representations, correspondences between signs and things, and faithful points of reference. This notion,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Distinctly Human Umwelt?

283

however, implies an infinite regress tactic that has generally been conveniently stuffed in the closet by hopeful searchers of that Grand Lady, Ultimate Truth. That is to say, in the Peircean sense, if the world is fixedly there prior to its knower's knowledge of it, then the knower's representation, correspondence, and reference points, to be known and judged valid, can be so known and judged solely in terms of some other representation, correspondences, and reference points serving as a standard of comparison, and so on. There is no end of the line. There is simply no preordained and determinable representation, correspondence, and reference between signs and a predetermined and determinable 'objective reality' that can be directly and immediately experienced and known in the absolute, totalizing sense (von Glaserfeld, 1974: 30—1). According to Peirce, everything can in principle be known, ideally speaking, though only in the theoretical long run. And what is this 'theoretical long run'? It can be no less than infinite in extension, along a continuum of possibilities. The verdict, given Peirce's 'theoretical long run,' is that Kant is largely right regarding real practice, but somewhat off track where ideal principles are concerned. In the final analysis, there is no foolproof method for understanding the world through language in the logical positivist sense. Nor is there any one-and-only-one method for understanding language itself, except from within the interacting whole of theories and conceptual schemes and the 'language games' contained therein.10 Von Glaserfeld says much the same, though he enters from the other side of the stage to do so. He asserts that a hypothetical framework or model and the language in which it is garbed maps one possible way of perceiving and conceiving a commonsensical (that is, semiotically 'real') world. So much for von Glaserfeld. I have turned to him briefly to emphasize the somewhat Kantian yet also non-Kantian constructivist thesis. According to Hans Reichenbach's (1956: 24-37) brand of 'conventionalism' - which is somewhat commensurate with constructivism of the von Glaserfeld sort - our visualization of space is neither necessarily Euclidean nor non-Euclidean. It is no more than a particular extract from the three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time manifold. Visualization takes on Euclidean characteristics in line with established conventions, which are normative, historical, and cultural. According to this conception, when we construct visual images we bring to bear on the process some antecedent 'logic' grounded in certain culture-dependent rules of congruence determining the conditions of equal and unequal, straight and curved, homogeneous and heterogeneous spatial metrics.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

284 Sensing Corporeally These rules direct perception from outside as it were, and as a result of choice. To be specific, our history, culture, and education have compelled citizens of the West over the centuries to adopt Euclidean rules. As a consequence, these rules have become so deeply embedded in our psyche that Kant erroneously declared Euclidean geometry to be our only possible mode of visualizing objects in space. In fact, our CartesianNewtonian corpuscular-kinetic heritage is in part still with us, whether we like it or not, and in spite of Wittgenstein's infinite possibilities of rule breaking and Peirce's infinite possibilities of alternative theories by abuctive acts.11 Yet, Reichenbach tells us that perception - guided by a particular Umwelt, we must imagine - has no natural capacity to respond to nature with a specific geometry other than in a partly to wholly illusory manner. In fact, the geometry of a perceptual field can be whatever one makes of it by applying a suitable mathematical transformation to one's conventional Euclidean metric, thus altering the physics of one's world appropriately. We are free to choose almost any rule of congruence for physical space we like, and if it happens to be non-Euclidean, it will allow us to perceive our world with a corresponding non-Euclidean geometry. With such a revised slant on things, a new 'art' of visualization can then be assimilated, and consequently we may come to see the world through different eyes. The upshot is, Reichenbach tells us, that we possess the intuitive capacity to discard our Euclidean maps and adapt ourselves to one of an indefinite number of non-Euclidean constructs, in the process changing our visual imagination of pictorial objects. This capacity, he claims, has been exercised effectively by mathematicians, especially in the budding field of topology. However, one might wish to protest, Reichenbach's positivist-empiricist view fails adequately to account for our Umwelt-based limitations, given the neurophysiological channels available to us. Logic and mathematics alone are not sufficient for training and governing perception and conception. There is a natural compulsion automatically to see pictorial forms according to t/wr/^-determined restrictions and cultural conventional inculcation. If it were merely a matter of mathematics, then there seems to be no reason why our brains would not be strictly Boolean-brained digital computers. Nor would there be any reason why computers could not be programmed to perceive objects in the same way we do, commensurate with the dreams of artificial intelligence researchers (this issue I will take up in the Postscript). Still, in light of Reichenbach's view, it may well be that our Umwelt is to some extent

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Distinctly Human Umwelf?

285

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

pliable, and consequently allows us an indefinite number of alternative Umwelt-worlds. Perhaps, then, a species' particular Umwelt gives it the capacity to engender signs of never-ending variety, given enough time. This idea falls in step with those of the von Uexkiills. It also allows for biological evolution at the phylogenetic level, and for the development of the individual at the ontogenetic level. Ontogenetically - and especially in the human sense, psychologically - Peirce's sign tripod, in its incessant movement of signs becoming signs, equally brings about alterations at all levels, from the onrushing flux of psychological processes to biological processes - which, in comparison, move with the viscosity of coal tar in winter. For the next move, it behooves us to take a look at a pair of alternative perceptions and conceptions of space. This might help integrate this chapter with those chapters previously unfolded.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Space Dancing through Time

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Euclidean versus Hyperbolic Space

Patrick Heelan (1983: 163-4) argues that given certain parameters of choice we enjoy - and to an extent despite Umwelt-bound circumscriptions - a non-Euclidean (hyperbolic) power of visualization naturally antedates Euclidean perception. He also suggests that this power is independent of the perceiver's deliberate act of selection in the Reichenbach sense. Along these lines, Piaget demonstrated quite convincingly that children recognize topological and non-Euclidean properties before they learn to recognize Euclidean properties (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956: 147). Heelan, however, goes a step farther regarding human perception. He postulates that independently of logic, mathematics, and any instrumental measuring technique, 'human perception naturally (i.e. easily) reads the optical clues so as to assume - at least episodically - the form of hyperbolic [non-Euclidean] geometry. Such a geometrical form is not exactly conventional ... it is not the product of deliberate and conventional choice, since it does not rely on a "universal force field," nor does it depend on the constructibility of an instrumented measurement process to provide hyperbolic congruences' (1983: 163). According to Heelan, ordinary folks, artists, and entire communities have at times perceived their world spatially in ways that are difficult to describe in our conventional Euclidean-oriented modes of accounting for objects in space without resorting to languages and images of illusion and distortion. Heelan highlights a hyperbolic and non-Euclidean mode of perception that deviates from our customary pathways of perception. Yet it is at times with us. Although experience of our physical environ-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Space Dancing through Time 287 ment generally seems to be displayed before us in an infinite Euclidean space, from time to time it has been seen in terms of finite hyperbolic spatial trajectories. Heelan provides evidence for this thesis. It falls into three categories: (1) everyday phenomena, such as dynamic flows of space along highways, or in the open sea or sky, (2) common visual illusions, typical of Mavrits Escher's work, and (3) pictorial spaces depicted by ancient architecture and both ancient and modern painting, as especially illustrated in Vincent van Gogh's unique style (1983: 27-36). Distortions created by hyperbolic vision are the result of non-linear, qualitative differences in the ways objects appear when close to and directly in front of the viewer and when far away and to one side. They are also created in the way curvatures appear when near, and when far from the horizon of perception, and in the distorted apparent sizes of objects in optical illusions. Such apparently distorted hyperbolic perception gives the image of objects in space curving toward a vague focal area. It is quite unlike Euclidean space, which consists of straight lines converging on an infinitesimal 'vanishing point' in the infinite distance. In Heelan's example, the difference between hyperbolic vision and Euclidean vision is the difference between viewing a Euclideanly proportioned Renaissance painting following Albert!'s linear perspective accompanied by binocular vision, on the one hand, and on the other, viewing van Gogh's twisted painting of his room, where walls, table, chair, and bed curve inward toward an elusive focal zone giving a distorted image.1 This hyperbolic vision immediately appears unnatural, even bizarre. It goes against the grain of our conventional Euclidean world - though the same human Umwelt engendered it, we must assume. However, according to Heelan, the apparently 'primitive' hyperbolic view is actually the most natural, in contrast to our radically constructivist non-Euclidean perspective. Heelan goes on to write that although Reichenbach erred in assigning the plasticity of our perceptual mode strictly to logic and mathematics - for they are mere adjuncts, not the main characters in the play - he was correct in postulating the idea of plasticity. Our entrenched Euclidean perceptual mode owes its dues not to geometrical models defined by logic and mathematics, but to the technological advances brought about by Euclidean-based science. On the stage of human activity, the Euclidean paradigm gradually reformed the structure of our perception, thus deconstructing and reconstructing the scaffolding, the props, and the angles, vectors, distances, trajectories, and interrelations before us. In short, it is likely that our Euclidean

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

288 Sensing Corporeally construction of space actually plays second fiddle to the leading role of non-Euclidean perception. This is a far cry from Piaget's CartesianNewtonian push-pull mechanical world that his young subjects learned to manipulate. It might appear that what we take to be our human {Traw^-generated world is not the only possible world; rather, according to the von Uexkulls, our Umwelt is itself plastic. It affords us the possibility for an unknown array of perceptions and conceptions of time and space.2 For example, Wolfgang Yourgrau (1966), backed up independently by physicist David Bohm (1965), Erwin Schrodinger (1954), and Heelan, argues that (1) Euclidean space was not really inherent to the Hellenistic mindset or pre-Hellenist common sense, though we would like to believe it was, and (2) the world of children presents an excellent laboratory for studying space perception of the most basic sort. Inspired by the work of Geza Revesz (1957), Yourgrau first points out that topologically speaking, there is no fundamental distinction between circles, ellipses, and polygons, or between cubes and spheres. If the spaces are equivalent, they are not identical in every respect, but merely homeomorphically the same. Children, Yourgrau writes, grasp such topological relations at a much earlier stage, and more easily than they do Euclidean shapes. There is considerable plausibility to this hypothesis. F.M. Cornford (1936) writes that the commonsense space of the ancient Greeks was spherical and finite, like the Being of Parmenides - and much in the order of Nicholas de Cusa's God, or Blaise Pascal's fearful sphere. Consecrated by Aristotle, this heterogeneous and finite but unbounded space became the space of Western thought up to the Scientific Revolution, when infinite, homogeneous Euclidean space and the void of the atomists became virtually axiomatic. Actually, there are quite compelling reasons to perceive and conceive time and space as absolute, along Euclidean lines. The very laws of classical mechanics bear this out. The first law, chiefly the product of Galileo's thought, involves the simplest and apparently the most commonsensical phenomenon imaginable: linear movement of a body along a straight line with constant velocity. It was a revolutionary new view of nature, diametrically opposed to the Aristotelian notion that rest is the natural state of all bodies. More revolutionary yet, the medium required for this linear motion was absolute space. The best example is found in Euclid's fifth axiom of parallel lines. This is a quite commonsensical notion for us these days, even though the eyes following the virtually infinite stretch of a pair of railway tracks apparently

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Space Dancing through Time 289 contradict it. The tracks seem to converge on a point in the distance. But this is illusory. They never converge; they continue on in parallel fashion, as far as the eye can see. The Euclidean universe played havoc with commonsense perception in Hellenistic culture at that time (Szamosi, 1986: 112-44). Yet now, properly inoculated with a massive dose of the abstract, even in our turn-of-the-millennium cultural milieu, we would quite often still like to think there is a smooth, natural continuity between our perceptual and representational relationships. We still tend to believe that the physical world corresponds to Euclidean dictates, and since that is the world we (think we) see, it is undoubtedly the way things are, clearly and simply. Not so, however, if we follow the above words on conventionalist constructivism. According to this view, as well as that of Yourgrau - also Hanson (1958, 1969) - what we see is what we have been trained or inculcated to see and expect to see. And to rub salt in our wounded confidence that we are capable of knowing our world if we would just open our wide, innocent eyes and look, whatever world we happen to perceive and conceive could always have been otherwise. It could have been another construct entirely. In this regard, Yourgrau writes that our more 'primitive,' haptic sense of things, proper to the hands-on, felt world of children, is a pre-Euclidean world quite close to the postEuclidean Einsteinian world of Riemann geometry. However, having been inculcated in Euclidean geometry, like Piaget's children when they learn to get things right, our haptic perception falls by the wayside and our world becomes Euclidean through and through. The Euclidean world has become as natural as can be. Certain mathematicians, most notably Henri Poincare (1952 [1905]: 21-31) shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, pointed out that our adult spatial notions are not immanent in our biopsychological makeup, and that our experience does not necessarily prove space is three-dimensional. Space's being so perceived has merely been a convenience to which we have become so accustomed that we tend to believe it is true without a shadow of a doubt. Alternative geometries, developed in the nineteenth century by J. Bolyai, W.K. Clifford, K. Gauss, N. Lobachevsky, and Bernard Riemann, effectively bear out this contention (Richards, 1979) .3 These alternatives give us, in addition to other fields of research, topology, which has been a motivating theme in this inquiry. The oft-times presumed a priori nature of Euclidean perception was also challenged by the experimental work of Hermann von Helmholtz (1876), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962: 203-5) and as-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

290 Sensing Corporeally sorted phenomenologists during the twentieth century commented on the homogeneous nature of classical space, in contrast to the heterogeneity of visual space. In fact, the Einsteinian world of relativity slaps our supposedly commonsense notions of both space and time in the face, though it remains quite commensurate with the world of the 'prelogical' child. It takes us back to the very finite but unbounded sphere of the preSocratics. In Yourgrau's summary:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

The observation of little children's behavior patterns suggests that the 'india-rubber' world of the topologist and of Einstein, though highly abstract to the uninitiated, and the haptic perception of the child are much closer to one another than haptic perception is to Euclidean shapes and spaces with their rigid properties. We say that the child recognizes objects haptically at an early age. But once the level of representation is reached, the aid of speech is invoked and thereby all doors opened to Euclidean commitment. (1966: 500)

Following Yourgrau, Heelan, and others, that the linear perspective vision is a historical invention, it is quite plausible to conclude that in creating it we have designed and invented our world. That is, our world has become an extension of bodymind, of ourselves, as participants and dialogeurs within our world in the sense of John Archibald Wheeler, Prigogine, and Peirce. In contrast to the world we have relentlessly fabricated, Heelan observes that what he dubs the 'hermeneutical model' of visualization presupposes that 'visual space can take on any one of a family of geometries depending on the hermeneutical context of foreground and background, that is, of object and containing space' (1983: 53) (recall, in this respect, footnote 2 of this chapter). Do Umwelten Allow for Multiple Perspectives?

The preceding section reveals that the spectres of absolutism versus relativism, objectivity versus subjectivity, and - in Richard Bernstein's (1983) condensed version of the age-old dualism - objectivism versus relativism continue to raise their ugly heads at the most inopportune moments. The new wave of enthusiasm over Nietzsche raises the possibility that his 'perspectivism' might offer a way out of the grand Western dichotomy. However, without entering that emotion-clad arena of solipsistic, rela-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Space Dancing through Time 291 tivist perspectivism - according to which my brutalizing people of a different ethnicity is OK by me, even if you disagree - allow me to consider perspectives strictly in terms of distinct and even conflicting modes of sensing and perceiving the world. Nietzsche himself considered perspectivism

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

not as 'contemplation without interest' (which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability to control one's Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service ol knowledge ... There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more, eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity' be. (1968 [1909]: 312)

Perspectivism is a concept of concepts with fuzzy boundaries. In the first place, the term depends for its coherence on visual analogies: perspective (per = through + spective = to look, to look through, as by means of an optical instrument). This lingering 'ocularcentrism' is unfortunate. To say with Nietzsche that there is only 'perspective seeing' and only 'perspective knowing' is redundant, besides its ignoring all other forms of semiotic sensing. However, we could interpret the analogy differently. We could take perspectivism as a matter of feeling and sensing and becoming aware of signs of sound and smell and taste and touch, in addition to signs of sight. At any rate, 'perspective' is the word we most commonly use. So I'll stick with it, with a few appended corollaries emerging from the concept of bodymind. In the second place, perspectivism entails the capacity to employ a variety of perspectives and their accompanying interpretations. This is not tantamount to an 'anything goes' game. Rather, it involves an active search for perspectives and their respective interpretations as alternatives to what has been by and large accepted according to the conventions that reign. It involves, in a word, searching for what is not ordinarily the case. In Nietzsche's words: 'Suppose we want truth: why no rather untruth? and uncertainty? and even ignorance?' (1973 [1909]: 1) Is this no more than a new shuffle step in the perspectivist's dance? No. Not really. It is a search for answers to new questions posed to which standard answers are inadequate. It is entry into the uncharted wilderness where uncertainty lurks behind every bush. It is admission of ignorance. Gregory Bateson (1972) once observed - in line with the initial

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

292 Sensing Corporeally remarks in this volume - that animal species, unlike us humans, harbour few doubts. They most often know what to do and do it, with little undue hesitation. Consequently, they ask relatively few new questions, rarely reveal their ignorance to themselves and their neighbours, and hardly ever falsify or refute their reigning state of knowledge. They simply know, positively and with hardly any doubt. In comparison, we are a helpless, stuttering, stammering species. That is the down side. The up side, we have noted, is that we have a remarkable capacity for change of mind and heart and soul, for bringing about the emergence of something different, something new. Nietzsche once again distinguished between different orders of human perception and thought:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

What distinguishes the higher human beings from the lower is that the former see and hear immeasurably more, and see and hear thoughtfully ... We who think and feel at the same time are those who really continually fashion something that had not been there before, the whole eternally growing world of valuations, colors, accents, perspectives, scales, affirmations and negations. (1974 [1909]: 301)

Once again: Why not untruth? Why not, in order to get away from sheer 'mind-stuff and get in tune with 'body-stuff,' with bodymind, with feelings, with sentiment? We, 'who think and feel at the same time' through simultaneous focal and subsidiary modes. We, who can 'continually fashion something that had not been there before.' The task is to get a feel for other ways of sensing and perceiving and conceiving the world from within the same Umwelt, to know one's self and others. To gain the ability to embrace multiple senses of the world and one's self and others. How can this sense of the world and the self and others come about? How is the embrace of multiple senses accomplished, if we have one and only one Umwelt within which to live? Granted, we have our above comments on a middle way between incommensurables, but here, what is implied is a more intimate embrace of self and world and others. If you look at Figure 29, what I have attempted, in expanding the 'disk triply Mobiusized' of Figure 27, is a sense of the subject folded into the object and the object into the subject and both of them into the sign and the sign into both of them. All told, it is bodymindsign. Sensationperception of the object, the semiotic object, entails sensation-perception of the object unfolded through feeling and emotion, all of which is primarily corporeal activity. Conception-meaning of the sign and bodymind with respect to the object implies subject and object folded

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Space Dancing through Time 293 Sensation-perception of the object

Representamen

Conceptionmeaning regarding the interpretant

Representamen

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 29: Triply Mobilised disk

into conception-meaning unfolded through thought, primarily at the level of mind's activity (compare this, if you so desire, with Figure 28 depicting the Umwelt spiral). The entirety of Figure 29 is incessantly enfolding and unfolding; it is process, within three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time. It is continuous re-integration and dis-integration, birth and death, of multiple feelings and emotions and sensations and forms of objects, acts, and events, and thoughts and intellections. Throughout this process there is impermanence of all forms, yet there is perpetuation of forms made possible by their very impermanence. Feeling, emotion, sensation, form, thought, intellection, are one, and they are many. The many allows for our becoming aware of some of the many, and through becoming aware of some, we are allowed ephemeral glimpses of the one. Surprising as it may seem, Karl Popper's (1972) falsificationist philosophy is apropos here. Popper argued vehemently over the years that a theory's validity has far less to do with its origin or its verification than with its survival value. And its survival value is ultimately zilch, for if it is a legitimate theory it will sooner or later be falsified, and the sooner the better. As far as Popper was concerned, there is no rational method for creating new ideas, and any and all ideas will eventually be negated. So we have irrationalism in the beginning and falsity in the end. Where is the logic in all this? There is none - if we are looking for classical logical principles, that is (Stove, 1982). However, we may find saving grace in the idea that there are many

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

294 Sensing Corporeally possible 'styles of reasoning,' many possible methods the combination of which forces one to conclude that there is no carved-in-granite method, and many possible 'logics,' as mentioned above. For example, we have Peirce's 'logics' of 'vagueness' and 'generality,' which embrace contradiction and included middles that I have occasionally placed under the spotlight in this volume (see also Engel-Tiercelin, 1992). We also have 'fuzzy logic,' 'contradictory logic,' 'inconsistent logic,' 'paraconsistent logic,' 'quantum logic,' and other assorted modes of thinking that grate on minds that are satisfied with nothing less than clarity and distinction.4 Rather than merely identity and contradiction, we have an alternative in sameness and difference (Heidegger, 1953; White, 1985). Arguments are developed by analogy, loose similarities, vague interconnections, fuzzy boundaries, Wittgensteinian 'family resemblances,' or in Nietzsche's notorious phrase, 'metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms.' Examples are numerous, so I trust I have licence to move on. The stable forms we think we have erected turn out to rest on beds of quicksand. That's because their logic is ground in illogical 'prelogic.' At the heart of this prelogic we find Godel's proof, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem, Heisenberg uncertainty, Bohr complementarity, and the square root of minus 1, V—1, which finds its way into relativity and quantum theory and chaos theory and fractals and computer engineering (DeLong, 1970; Devlin, 1997). All these forms of 'prelogic' spell our limitations (Kline, 1980). That, once again, is the down side. The upside is that they allow for our incessantly coming up with something new (Hofstadter, 1979; Nagel and Newman, 1964). Speaking of V—1, Francisco Varela (1979) in biological cybernetics argues, and Howard Pattee in biological physics (1979) speculates, that at the core of life there is undecidability, much of the sort we find in the notorious 'Liar Paradox' and in Bertrand Russell's (1910) 'Paradox of Logical Types.' This provides food for thought. If it is indeed the case, then are not Umwelten and most particularly the human Umwelt the providers of opportunities for multiple perspectives and hence many ways of perceiving and conceiving the world? This would seem to imply that in terms of human notions of value, a human community must set its values down in concrete propositions. These propositions should include statements regarding good and bad, right and wrong, the individual's relationship with the community, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and so on. But what if an unforeseen set of circumstances emerges? Now, this codified set of rules and regulations dictating one's conduct fails to answer the question: 'What should I do?' In order to

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Space Dancing through Time 295

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

know what to do, given the incessantly changing circumstances at that particular moment, one must have developed some a priori moral standard - or at least a Davidson prior theory. But how is it possible to uphold the standard, except by the set of values? And how is it possible to justify the set of values except by some a priori standard? This is one of the dilemmas of analytic thinking. It is also the dilemma, I would respectfully suggest, of putting all our physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology eggs in one basket. In so doing, we risk the Kantian assumption that whatever is taken to be the nature of our world here and now is the world our Umwelt has allowed us to construct, and hence this world is destined to remain just as it is. However, once again, who dictates that the human Umwelt must be invariant? If it is not invariant, to what extent is it pliable? How much freedom does it allow us regarding our perception and conception of time and space and causality and many other things within human societies past, present, and into the unknown future? What, ultimately, are our limitations and constraints, and what are our parameters of freedom? Final answers are in all probability too much to expect. At any rate, Umwelt theory gives us plenty of food for thought with respect to the issues at hand.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Postscript:

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Posthuman Understanding through Sensing Corporeally

I would hope we have witnessed in the preceding pages at least a tinge of posthuman, post-Enlightenment - and also postcritical, postanalytic, post-Cartesian - participation with our world. I resist, however, allusions to postmodernity and postmodernism. I gently lay that pair of overwrought terms to rest.1 As an alternative, I would prefer considerations of 'topological knowing' rather than postmodernism's 'surface,' 'particulate' and 'dis-integrated' knowing. Topological knowing attends to fusions rather than fissions, to nonlinear processes rather than linearly digital fits and jerks. It involves smooth changes of surfaces and volumes in space and through time. It allows bodymindsigns their due. It stresses more-or-less approximations and deviations rather than clear, distinct, and precise dictates, subtle and supple both-ands and neither-nors in addition to apparently intransigent either/ors. It is non-Euclidean, non-Boolean, non-binary, and radically un-Cartesian. It suggests re-enchantment with our world, the world of our signs, and with ourselves as signs. The re-enchantment I allude to is neither a regress to pre-Renaissance times nor anything out of the ordinary. Rather, it involves genuine participation with our everyday world and with others and them with us. A participatory world is a world of interdependent, interrelated, interactive forms at their best. Morris Berman writes with respect to the disenchantment of our contemporary non-participatory universe: The view of nature, which predominated in the West down to the eve of the Scientific Revolution, was that of an enchanted world. Rocks, trees, rivers, and clouds were all seen as wondrous, alive, and human beings felt at home in this environment. The cosmos, in short, was a place of belonging. A

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Postscript 297

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

member of this cosmos was not an alienated observer of it but a direct participant in its drama. His personal destiny was bound up with its destiny, and this relationship gave meaning to his life. This type of consciousness -... 'participating consciousness' - Involves merger, or identification with one's surroundings, and bespeaks a psychic wholeness that has long since passed from the scene. Alchemy, as it turns out, was the last great coherent expression of participating consciousness in the West. The story of the modern epoch, at least on the level of mind, is one of progressive disenchantment. From the sixteenth century on, mind has been progressively expunged from the phenomenal world. At least in theory, the reference points for all scientific explanation are matter and motion - what historians of science refer to as the 'mechanical philosophy' ... That mode can best be described as disenchantment, nonparticipation, for it insists on a rigid distinction between observer and observed. Scientific consciousness is alienated consciousness ... Subject and object are always seen in opposition to each other. I am not my experiences, and thus not really a part of the world around me. The logical end point of this world view is a feeling of total reification: everything is an object, alien, not-me; and I am ultimately an object too, an alienated 'thing' in a world of other, equally meaningless things. This world is not of my own making; the cosmos cares nothing for me, and I do not really feel a sense of belonging to it. (1981: 16-17) An extended quotation of Herman's thesis is apropos, for it effectively encapsulates two important issues behind each page of this inquiry: enchantment and participation. Both terms, I would respectfully suggest, are intimately linked with a sense of continuous topological changes. People who have never heard of topology nonetheless use simple topological concepts during everyday experiences. The ideas are so primitive that we learn of them as infants. Topological concepts such as inside and outside, right-hand and left-hand, connected and disconnected, continuous and discontinuous, forward and backward, and one-, two-, three-, and four-dimensionality, strike a bell comparable to what Mark Johnson (1987) calls 'embodied schemata.' Schemata are analogues of physical processes or operations in space - In other words, they are chiefly of topological nature.2 We pick them up at an early age, they stick with us, and we use them in our everyday, concrete thought process, the basis for which rests chiefly in signs of Firstness (111, 211, 311). Topology is young as a branch of mathematics, though it involves some of the most ancient forms of mathematical interrelationships. It is capable of attacking problems of non-linear nature, which choke other

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

298 Sensing Corporeally branches of mathematics with virtually uncountable and apparently disorderly details. The assumption had it in classical science that events in the physical world lend themselves to linear descriptions using differential equations that yield rates of change in successive fashion. In recent years, it has been conceded that the vast majority of the world's happenings are non-linear: more disorderly than orderly, punctuated by catastrophic changes rather than smooth transitions. For example, according to Hooke's Law, the stress on a physical object is directly proportional to strain. So if we stretch a rubber band, by applying constantly increasing pressure the band will proportionately increase in length. This occurs at least in the beginning. But after a few pulls, the band experiences fatigue, and it begins increasing in length more than it should according to the dictates of continuous classical principles. Then it becomes even more resistant than we would expect according to the proportional equation. And, suddenly, it snaps. This and comparable phenomena follow non-linear processes. These processes are describable only in complex non-linear equations, many of which can be imaged topologically - for example, fractal images that have recently captivated books and magazines and TV ads are common. Topology shows what types of solutions of certain non-linear equations are possible by taking qualitative rather than quantitative approaches. In everyday living, topology tells us what kind of gesture we should make in a given culture to indicate 'OK!' — extend your arm, make a fist with your four fingers, and stick out your thumb with the nail side toward you. But it doesn't tell us exactly how far to extend our arm, twist our wrist, or stick out our thumb. Moreover, a linguistic description of the gesture usually avoids other interdependent, interrelated, interactive topological forms facial gestures, body posture and its subtle moves, positioning of the other arm and the legs - that ordinarily accompany the 'OK!' sign. In everyday human activity, topology is mainly a matter of what are called 'secondary qualities' in post-Galileo scientific jargon, as briefly discussed in chapter 1. 'Secondary qualities' are those of human feeling and emotion and sensations. In contrast to 'secondary qualities' we have 'primary qualities.' These can be subjected to hard-nosed, objective, scientific observation, and measured quantitatively, and clearly and distinctly described and explained. Figure 30 affords us an image of our lost enchantment of the world in the face of the imperialistic disenchantment that has suffocated sensuousness (signs 111-311), due in large part to the bully tactics of symbolicity (331-333), the linear, logical, rational, either/or categories of symbolicity.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Postscript 299 Enchantment

Disenchantment

Predominantly signs 111-311 (c={> 333)

Predominantly signs 331-333 (=£ 111)

Core consciousness and core self become full-blown self

Core consciousness and core self of 111-311 ignored except for readings directly from the cerebroscope

Subsidiary: greater role

Subsidiary: lesser role

Distal: greater role

Distal: greater role

Experience near: greater role

Experience near: lesser role

Bodymindsigns

Mind/body: signs

Participating consciousness

Non-participating consciousness

Yin/Yang

Yang/Yin

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 30: Signs, self, consciousness

It tells us that Polanyi's subsidiary awareness has made way for obsessive focus on particulars, which fall into predetermined pigeonholes of thought and behaviour. It also tells us that Polanyi's distal sensations (of 'secondary qualities') came to the hoedown, but had to play second fiddle to subject/object, mind/body-splitting, proximal observations (of 'primary qualities'), and that Geertz's experience-near and participating consciousness are sent to the back of the tour bus scheduled for a visit to those quaint folks at the hoedown, while detached experience-distant enjoys the big-window view of the bluegrass music. It implies how Western objective knowledge sees a two-dimensional strip as nothing more than a strip, whereas participating consciousness senses it in Mobius fashion: it is enfolded and enveloped within the strip, such that insideoutside become continuous with it and it becomes continuous with the strip. Figure 30 gives a sense of Yin, dark, deep, mysterious, Yin, in compl mentation with Yang to compose the whole form that mediated between the two and created sympathetic, undulating, resonant movement. Unfortunately, disenchanted society has pushed Yin aside to prioritize Yang, proud analytical Yang, the presumed enlightened one, whose uncount-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

300 Sensing Corporeally able Boolean bits pile up to form a heap so large that no matter how many bits are removed, it's still a heap many of whose parts are known digitally but whose whole is unfathomable. Owen Barfield's (1965) enchanted 'original participation' recedes into the distant past, where the medieval Doctrine of Sympathy offered 'sympathetic vibrations' by which subject merged with object and ceded its concrete wisdom to successive abstraction. Now, the self, in R.D. Laing's (1965, 1971) words, experiences unintelligible confusion at the interface between inside and outside, and threatens to become irreversibly divided and disembodied. The world becomes Kafkaesque. You are quantified as a collection of integers; communication is neither visual nor auditory but a collection of phosphors that appear on a screen when fingers are tapped on the concave sides of plastic rhombohedrons; eventually you are scheduled to become a candidate for replacement parts to keep the ticker ticking and the machine chugging; and the most dreaded virus you know of will be in your computer, not your body. Brave New World, this disenchanted form of life. This situation is reminiscent of what Richard Rorty (1979) dubs the 'cerebroscope,' listed in Figure 30. This instrument may be a Laplacean dream for some, but it is a Kafkian nightmare for others. It is capable of mapping every detail of our brain state at a given instant, and hence it can theoretically determine any and all past brain states and predict future brain states. Moreover, it can detect a change in our brain state before that change has entered our consciousness. It can beat us to the punch regarding our every selection, choice, and ensuing action. It will predict our words a split second before they actually come out our mouths, know what we are thinking before we know we ourselves are thinking it, tell us it's time for a beer before we become aware of our craving for a mug of brew, and detect anger, fear, joy, pleasure, pain, before we experience the emotions. It will monitor the neural firings within the confines of our skull and map them onto the types of signs we are about to make or take, from 111 to 333. More specifically, the cerebroscope will be able to chalk up the firing of a neuron - for example, neuron number 6.28351714 x 107 - along with a vast set of other neurons that are firing in virtually the same instant, and list them all in proper order and tell us we have a pleasant feeling because of the chamomile tea we smell brewing in the kitchen. All this, with neither hesitation nor a shadow of a doubt. Impressive, indeed. Our cerebroscope is capable of these feats, according to tested and validated objective, quantitative, scientific methods. It can specify

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Postscript 301 precisely what's in the brain, but it will be able to understand neither the gut nor the heart. It can map out what our brains are doing in terms of neuronal firings, but it will not be able to understand us, for understanding, in view of the preceding chapters - and especially the words on the hermeneutic enterprise - is of a different nature than traditional concepts of description and explanation within scientific methodology. Yet cerebroscopic knowledge is the goal of many - though not all - artificial intelligence ventures. The AI people want to construct a computer that is like what is in the brain, clearly and distinctly. Artificial intelligence. Silicon dreams of fixed reason for all seasons. The possibility of thinking computers fascinated Alan Turing. In 1950 he devised a test, the 'Turing test,' for determining whether or not a computer has human cerebral capacities (see Jagit, 1966). Assume you are chosen to take the test. You find yourself sitting at a computer terminal directing questions to two subjects, A and B, who are in closed rooms. According to the responses to your questions, you are to decide which of the two subjects is carbon brained and which is silicon brained. If one of the two is less than human, ideally you will be able to discern the difference. But if the computer is of human capacity, you cannot consistently distinguish between the two. Imagine that. On the one hand, if either A or B is a computer and it can 'think' as well as its human counterpart, then the human is tantamount to a machine, for we must suppose that the computer has not evolved from a machine to a nonmachine as it has become more and more intelligent until it is like us. On the other hand, if the machine's 'thinking' in algorithmic fashion becomes equal to human thinking, then human thinking must be equally as algorithmic as the machine's 'thinking.' Why, we were machines all along and didn't know it. Then, in 1980, John Searle came along to save us from this dilemma. He devised a thought experiment that, he claims, makes a caricature of the Turing test (Searle, 1980). The Searle test - described briefly in footnote 6 of chapter 4 - comes down to this. You find yourself in a closed room with a book. It is full of a lot of unintelligible marks and squiggles - actually, they are Chinese characters - along with some English. Someone from outside pushes a sheet of paper under the door full of equally unknown marks and squiggles. You take a look at the book, and you rather absentmindedly open it. You discover it is a manual telling you how to match the marks and squiggles on the sheet with those in the manual, write the matched marks and squiggles from the manual on another piece of paper, and pass it under the door to the person

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

302 Sensing Corporeally waiting outside. You don't know it, but you are responding to questions that someone outside is feeding you. Nevertheless, you're in business. Your English instructions carry with them implications of the linguistic algorithm, you make the proper matchings between one language and another one, write them on paper, and send out the response. At the end of this tedious exercise, the person outside, who unbeknownst to you happens to be Alan Turing, declares that you are not a computer but human. Of course you are human! However, you were merely following a set of algorithms, which is a task within the capability of a competent computer. So yet another question is pushed under the door to you that asks, 'May we surmise from your reply that the working parts of your brain are tantamount to those of a computer?' You dutifully look up the match, copy it down, and send it out. But somebody played a trick on you by mixing up the translation manual so that to certain questions you would produce strange responses. And what did the last response you sent out in Chinese say in its English equivalent? It said: 'The next sentence I write will be false. Yes, you may assume I am a computer. The previous sentence I wrote is true.' Obviously, we have a quandary here. You say you are a machine, but in your saying so you lie, and at the same time, according to your own subsequent assertion, you tell the truth. 'But,' comes the retort from somewhere, 'the quandary is actually superfluous. If in sending out my response I was simply algorthming and matching, then I was neither lying nor telling the truth. That is, assuming that in lying I was intentionally saying what was not the case as if it were the case, and in telling the truth I was saying something that was motivated by some belief or other, in which case I thought I was telling the truth. My response implied neither intentionality nor belief. I simply matched one set of signs with another set of signs in robotic fashion. The fact remains, however, that I said something that was not, as if it were. I said that what I would say next would be false, and then I said that what I had just said was true, so if I didn't genuinely lie, I algorithmically created a contradictory and undecidable situation. Then, using your line of reasoning, why cannot it be said that I am nothing more than an algorithm-chomping machine?' OK, then, let's assume you're a machine. But if after you say you are a machine you contradict yourself, then by your own assertion you're not a machine. Yet if you were algorthming and matching when you said what you said, is it not true that your algorthming and matching were carried out as if you were a machine? And if some machine had your algorithming

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Postscript

303

and matching capability, could the machine not qualify as essentially human, just as human as you are or at least as you think you are? So the machine is human, and you are a machine. Or we might say that the machine can be taken either as a machine or as human, and you can be taken either as human or as a machine, according to the mind of the contemplator (all this might remind one of that cult movie, 'Blade Runner'). If there is undecidability here, it is no more than categorical, textual. Since the undecidability is merely categorical or textual, we might wish to think we can brush the problem aside. At least, that might be our elegant wish. However, two other problems arise. First, I have in mind the purely textual nature of both Searle's Chinese room and the Turing test. They rest within the exclusive confines of signs 331 to 333, with a few signs 322 and 321 thrown in for good measure. The computer or human, whichever the case, could be judged of equal human qualities, even though with respect to both the human organism and the computer siliconism, feeling, sensing, and emotion might be of the calibre of Gage and other such cerebrally impoverished individuals - or perhaps even Mel. At an abstract, hypothetical level, your marks and squiggles generated by your matching could create the idea of a human thinker who can feel and engender proper emotions and create humanlike sentiments. Gage, of course, could do the same, hypothetically speaking. Damasio was sly enough to see through Gage's hypothetical mind spinning and realize he lacked basic human qualities. Damasio's discovery would be the other side of the coin involving Sacks's ability to perceive the aphasiacs' keenly human qualities that enabled them to read President Reagan's topological cues even though they could in abstract, algorithmic, hypotheticodeductive, and analytical fashion, understand no more than a few words of what he said. The aphasiacs were in a sense at the same time both more human and less human than most humans. Gage, in contrast, could carry on abstractly, algorithmically, hypothetico-deductively, and analytically, in machine-like fashion. But he was still less human than most humans, for he lacked a particular capacity - the capacity that Sacks's aphasiacs were best at. The aphasiacs evidently interpreted signs 111-311 better than the average human, but they couldn't get into impersonal abstractions of the sort Gage could manipulate quite adeptly. Gage could handle hypothetical posits couched in natural language signs 321-333 effectively enough, but he had no inkling what to do with signs 111-311 with respect to his own personal self and its context.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

304 Sensing Corporeally Damasio, in understanding the nature of Gage's understanding, followed a two-way lane. We might suppose that after experiencing an abductive insight regarding the nature of Gage's use of language, Damasio quickly moved to symbolic signs with which to construct a hypothesis regarding Gage's incapacity with respect to prelinguistic signs. With the hypothesis in hand, he approached Gage's world almost devoid of symbolic signs in order hopefully to understand their particular variant use. And, I would contend, his findings are indeed illuminating. The dilemma, Damasio apparently knew well, is that a strict digital, linear, algorithmic, hypothetico-deductive, analytical, and quantitative, symbolic determination of Gage's understanding cannot tell the whole tale. (Nor, for that matter, can your qualifications as a bona fide human when translating Chinese into English.) Gage could operate with signs virtually divorced from core self and autobiographical self in the concrete sense. The problem was that he couldn't put his personal self into his symbolic constructs. In the same vein, while responding to the questions pushed under the door, your true self - the self of signs of feeling and emotion and abduction (111-311), your historically laden autobiographic self in an embrace with your core self - stood hardly a chance of making itself manifest (recall the narrative surrounding Figures 20, 21, 22, and 23). Signs chiefly of 111-311 were largely suppressed, and they were limited to textuality, 32-333; hence your genuine self by and large remained under cover. Gage, in short, would be able to match signs in Searle's Chinese room as effectively as could you, or a machine for that matter. And quite possibly no human interpreter outside the room would know the difference. But something would be missing, something distinctively human in whatever messages passed back and forth under the door of Searle's thought experiment. The second problem is this. A manual is a manual is a manual: static black ciphers on white. In spite of what the textualists tell us, a text cannot concretely and genuinely create a bodymind sense of the rhythmic, fluctuating, effervescent, scintillating flow of life's processes and signs' processes - which is actually to say the same - within a given culture. A text cannot account for emerging islands of ordered cultural signs 321 to 333, and occasional glimpses of signs 111 to 311, from within the massive sea of chaos. Order out of chaos is of the nature of qualitative, not quantitative mathematics. It is topological. As a corpus of linguistic signs, neither can a text genuinely account for change of all signs, of their meanings, and hence of feelings and sentiment and emotion

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Postscript 305 and perception and conception and intellection. Such change is also qualitative, topologically speaking. As strictly defined translation manuals go, there is no continuous flow in the text; the signs don't grow; there are only crisply cut and dried marks. But... don't get me wrong. Writers and readers cannot help but bring background knowledge, subsidiary awareness, experience near, participatory consciousness, and Davidson prior theories and passing theories - signs all, from 111 to 333 - to the text. Of that I have no doubt. These signs, however, are not explicitly in the text, to be read algorithmically, digitally, linearly, hypothetico-deductively, analytically, and quantitatively. What brings spice to textual signs is corporeal experiences on the part of authors and readers, corporeal experiences in the arena of living bodymind processes within semiosis. These experiences may be very vaguely implied within the text, for sure. But, with respect to the text, as well as Searle's algorithmic translation and Turing's test, it is bodymind that brings experience, past, present, and anticipated future, to the text, all of which is a far cry from sheer algorithmic powers. Experience, I assume I hardly need mention, is qualitative, not quantitative. Actually, Searle makes the very important point that when you were exchanging marks and squiggles for English words, you were strictly following the rules of your translation manual to the letter. In doing so, you had no idea what you are doing; you were completely in the dark with respect to the validity of the translation from Chinese to English; your deception when you translated some marks and squiggles into an undecidable set of sentences in English attests to this important characteristic of language. You were simply following the rules. But of course, in light of the assumptions put forth in this book from page 1 to the present, meaning is not in words and other signs, in the head of the translator, in correspondence between words and things, in the rules, or in interrelations between Chinese and English. Meaning is in the entire semiotic context, and in the behaviour of sign makers and takers as well, including those sly translation theorists who composed your manual, and their entire background that brought them to play you for a fool. Your background must be included as well. This opens up unlimited possibilities to you. Given your background, and your beliefs and habits and propensities and proclivities, instead of obediently carrying out your orders, you might have felt somewhat rebellious that day and said, 'To hell with this, it's silly and I won't do it.' Or you might have had some trick of your own up your sleeve for the person pushing pieces of paper

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

306 Sensing Corporeally under the door; or you might have suddenly experienced a claustrophobia attack and rolled on the floor screaming in agony; or whatever. In whichever case, the process of meaning emergence within the entire context can take one of an indeterminate number of non-linear pathways. There is no predicting what the future holds in store, and there is no predetermining meaning within the semiotic context, both linguistic and extralinguistic. Meaning, in other words, is a holistic affair; it is extralinguistic in its inclusion of extralinguistic iconic and indexical and even symbolic signs; it is semiotic through and through. Put another way, and to paraphrase my words on what might have been taken as that bizarre combination of Wittgenstein's rule-following dilemma and Peirce's pragmatic maxim in chapter 15, meaning is in the whole of our conception and imagination of the possible 'practical bearings' and their 'possible effects.' This meaning, however, is destined to incompleteness, or inconsistency will surface. Or perhaps there will be both incompleteness and inconsistency, since at each and every juncture there will remain an unlimited and indeterminable range of 'practical bearings' and 'effects' that our finite, fallible minds were incapable of entertaining, but did not. Perhaps more by luck than by management, we may become aware of our limitations, of our shortcomings, with the realization that the whole of our conception and imagination is a mere drop in the bucket with respect to everything possible. When this awareness opens itself up to us, we may catch a peek at abduction emerging, from feelings and sentiments and emotions. We may come to an understanding that the implications present in the Peirce-Wittgenstein combination are a non-linear range of possibilities rather than linear cause-and-effect sequences. We may become aware of the unlimited interrelated, interdependent interactivity among all possibilities and the 'practical bearings' that will likely result from the 'effects' produced by signs once they have become actualized. Even the apparently most fixed community-based conventional rules of thought and action may always vary, from time to time and from place to place. There is simply no predicting what the future may bring. Unfortunately, in the final analysis, neither the Searle test nor the Turing test tells us what is of ultimate concern regarding feeling and sentiment and emotion: that is of the viscera, body, bodymind, bodymindsigns. Neuronal firings in the brain and mind spinning simply cannot tell the tale. AI, like science itself and especially classical science, can't tell us everything we need to know about the processes going on around us and the processes going on within us. AI is still in certain ways

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Postscript 307 a holdover from the classical mechanistic world view. In contrast to many - though not all - AI projects, and since the heyday of positivistic science, things they've been a changin'. At the beginning of the new millennium they are changing more rapidly than ever. We glimpse the beginning of these changes in phenomenology and hermeneutics, in relativity and quantum theory, in the limitative theorems (of Godel, Lowenheim-Skolem, Tarski, and others), and in Damasio and comparable efforts to arrive at a non-Cartesian sense of the world.3 To provide an understanding of postanalytic, post-Cartesian, and (yes) posthuman thinking, Michael Polanyi offers the example of a young medical student experiencing an X-ray diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. In a darkened room he gazes at the shadowy traces on a fluorescent screen and hears the radiologist's technical appraisal. At first it's all so much Greek to him. He can see no more than the X-ray depiction of a chest with dark blotches and light blotches representing heart and ribs and a few spidery blemishes. That's about it. At the same time, the knowledgeable expert seems to be spinning a romantic story that is no more than the figment of his imagination. It all seems to be a lot of hocus pocus. After a few weeks of studying comparable pictures carefully, listening to diagnoses, and pondering over the fuzzy light and dark areas, a tentative understanding begins to dawn on him. Eventually, 'if he perseveres intelligently, a rich panorama of significant details will be revealed to him: of physiological variations and pathological changes, of scars, of chronic infections and signs of acute disease. He has entered a new world' (1958: 101). This'New World'emerges after hour on hour of groping in the dark, following feelings and emotions and sensations and intuitive hunches and then guessing and guessing wrong and then trying again, and again. Finally, our aspiring medical student enters this 'New World.' But it is not exactly disenchanted. In order to enter it, our student required a healthy ingestion of signs 111 to 311. That is the concrete qualitative, subsidiary, distal experience near. It is participatory input by bodymindsign. But it is not exactly enchantment either. His activity occurred within Western science and Western medicine. That is the product of abstract, quantitative, focal, proximal, experience distant, non-participatory mind/body objectivity and detachment. There is Yang, for sure, and there is also Yin. Both are now in a swirling, vertiginous embrace, and through them our student gradually gets an intimate feel for the art of his craft. He is on his way toward personal knowing, far from the Western ideal of cold, detached epistemology. As Polanyi's medical student learns more and more about X-ray

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

308 Sensing Corporeally revelations, he forgets himself and becomes enveloped within the images. They are now for him meaning becoming; they give up their understanding to him as he gives himself up to them in the process of understanding. His understanding of himself and of them becomes increasingly visceral. Now there is bodymind understanding: both he and the X-ray images become mutually participatory bodymind signs. He will never again experience the same process of becoming, and their meaning becoming will never again be exactly the same. He and they will be interdependently, interrelatedly, interactively, mutually becoming. In short, the student and the items of his profession gradually become incongruously complementary. Once again I must emphasize that the notion of complementarity as the term is used here owes a debt to Niels Bohr. The classical example is the pair of interpretations of a photon of light as particle or as wave. If there is no interference with a solitary photon, it behaves like a wave; if there is interference, it behaves like a particle-happening. We can't have both wave and particle-happening characteristics in the same instant: the wave and the particle must wait their turn. Wave and particle-happening make up a duality, but there is no simple opposition. Both characteristics of the photon are essential for an adequate understanding of light. Neither is more fundamental than the other. There is no priority here, no favouritism, and no power play to see who will win out in the end. Both interpretations of the photon are of equal value. Yet you cannot simultaneously know both the wave and the particle-happening nature of light. Whether the wave nature of light or the particle-happening nature emerges depends on one's participation with the photon. Non-participation, or non-choice, leaves the photon unmolested. But choosing not to choose is itself a choice. We are condemned to choose in one way or another, whether we like it or not. So in refusing to choose, we are participating in our very nonparticipation. In contrast, if we choose to interfere with the photon, the photon's other personality manifests itself. Now we know. We are still participating with the photon and it with us. To paraphrase Heisenberg and Wheeler, we participate not with nature herself but with nature as she is exposed to our method of questioning, and she participates with us in her response to our questioning and at the same time she questions our method, she puts questions in our own heads that are themselves part of that selfsame nature. Cartesian-Newtonian linear, corpuscular-kinetic, classical mechanics took a leap of faith in logic, reason, objectivity, and analysis, and on so

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Postscript 309

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

doing, as I have suggested, it went whole-hog Yang (emphasis on body/ mind signs 321-333, and symbolism-indexicality). Yin, mysterious Yin (emphasizing bodymind signs 111-311, and iconicity-indexicality), was pushed under the carpet in hopes she would be forgotten. In this classical picture, there is no complementarity here with Bohr's conception. When complementarity is genuinely in play, just as our photon shows no preference for either its wave nature or its particle nature, so also neither should we play favourites. And just as Yang holds no power over Yin, so the interdependent, interrelative, interactive, incongruous complementarity between them holds. Incongruous complementarity forces us to conclude that nature is neither independent of us nor we of her. Everything is interconnected with everything else. Morris Berman writes in this vein: Quantum mechanics ... affords us a glimpse of a new participating consciousness, one that is not a simple reversion to naive animism. As we consider the implications of quantum mechanics, it becomes quite clear that the most significant alteration of our scientific worldview would stem from the deliberate inclusion in our scientific thinking of the awareness that we participate with reality. Historically, we have been limited to a choice of two possibilities. One either asserted the existence of a disembodied intellect as we have done since 1600 A.D.; or one argued (contrary to what we manifestly perceive with our present consciousness) that stones, houses, furniture, clouds, this book and the ink in it are alive, possess an indwelling spirit - as men and women did believe prior to the Scientific Revolution. (1981: 145-6)

I cannot overemphasize the notion of 'participating consciousness.' If 'animism' there may be in participation with the world, it is certainly not animism of the pre-Renaissance variety. Still, we are all, organic and inorganic substances alike, in this vast universe together. And life? Where is the distinction between life and non-life in all this? Am I not throwing life and non-life into the same bag and in the act demeaning humans even more than the AI project? Not really. I do not elevate non-life to the sublime level of life processes, nor do I reduce life to mere non-living chemical processes. I choose simply to ignore the distinction altogether: we are all in this universe together; we and everything in the universe co-participate with respect to all that was happening, is happening, and will have been happening. Ilya Prigogine demonstrates quite conclusively that there is no precise

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

310 Sensing Corporeally line of demarcation between what traditionally goes as life and non-life. We learn from Prigogine that at its most basic, the difference between a hurricane - destructive order out of chaos - and a flatworm is in the degree of complexity.4 By the same token, there is no precise demarcating line between signs, between iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs, or between signs 111 to 333. Signs 333 when on their best of behaviour have a bit of Yin nature, just as much as signs 111 have a tinge of Yang nature. I propound no 'word magic' in this assertion. Rather, as I have suggested throughout these pages, icons and indices as well as symbols, thought as well the thing thought, and mind as well as body, are at heart one (Merrell, 2001). It follows that the book of nature idea propagated by ancient alchemy and taken up in a different guise by Galileo was completely off track. Alchemy excessively played up to Yin, and Galileo and modern science did the same with Yang. This is a far cry from complementarity.3 Postmodern textualists and their everything-is-in-the-text slogan, and by extension, linguicentric and ocularcentric obsessions, still place undue priority on Yang and symbolicity. If everything is in the text, then, as some of the wiser deconstructionists and postmodernists of various stripes are aware, that text is most appropriately qualified as iconindexsymbol; it is bodymindsign, the whole of nature included. Figure 31 offers us, in capsule form, a topology of the becoming of iconindexsymbol or bodymindsign. The imaginary circle, or zero, like the 'vortex' and the centre of our sign model from the very inception, in Figure 1, is pre-First, pure vagueness, pure possibility without any line or mark of distinction. If we begin at a point in the circle and make half a revolution, we trace a line along half the circle's circumference. This is an image of Firstness becoming. It is not (yet) anything, any-thing. It is just Firstness becoming, the becoming of a topological form. If, during the same increment of time, we make an entire revolution along the circumference of the circle, the line we trace out has only to move from one point to its adjacent point through the circle's 'vortex' in the same increment of time. Thus the line, moving along its trajectory at half the rate of our trip around the curve, begins at the uppermost point, bulges to the right until it reaches the 'vortex,' then bulges to the left and ends up at the lowermost point. This is Secondness becoming, the becoming of feeling and form, Yin and Yang. Pure topology. The next step involves two revolutions in the same time it took us to make half a revolution when bringing about the first becoming. Now our line does a swirling, in-your-face undulation in describing our now famil-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Postscript 311

Circle, zero

1/2 turn, Firstness becoming

1 turn, Secondness becoming

2 turns, Thirdness self-organizing in time

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Figure 31: Sign form becoming

iar sign model. This is Thirdness becoming, and it introduces us to time becoming. If Secondness becoming in terms of memory trace or recorded history is McTaggart's Series-B with static before and after, as described above, Thirdness becoming is Series-A, with past and future and travelling knife-edge now. This Thirdness becoming, on incorporating the time dimension, gives us essentially the form in Figure 29, enfolding both subject and object within enfolded representamen-semiotic objectinterpretant. Still pure topology. Not simply Galileo's geometric figures given mathematical expression, but pure topology. This topology, I must emphasize, is prelinguistic. It is silent dialogue that unfolds below the level of verbal awareness and Damasio's autobiographical self. It is in signs 111-311, before what is sensed has been cut up and mutilated later to suffer the embarrassment of a rupture of its tentative rhythms and linguistic tattooing on its soft contours, its vague countenance. The topology of which I write incorporates feeling and sentiment and emotion, and it includes empathy, as Damasio articulates so well; it is that which is absent in Gage and most of the other individuals in this inquiry with whom we have become familiar. As your eyes move more or less linearly along the lines in this book, your hands dialogue with the book and its pages. A hand holds the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

312 Sensing Corporeally

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

book, another hand turns the pages; there is the feel, the dim sound of paper hissing against paper, the faint odor of a new book as yet unfolded in its entirety; and there is the whole context, music from somewhere, perhaps, or some birds, or the traffic, children playing, the wind, the sun, or the rain. But in spite of the sights and sounds and touches, and even a few faint smells and tastes and, you are participating in silent dialogue. It's dialogue in rhythms. Your own rhythms are in the best of possible scenarios attuned to the rhythms surrounding you, and to the rhythms of the words in this book, for, language, in the very process of its becoming, enjoys the passing presence of those extralinguistic signs, 111 to 311. Ah, yes. It would seem that you are enchanted, after all. That you, the you of your subsidiary nature, of experiences close to the heart of things, of visceral feels; that postanalytic, post-Cartesian, posthuman part of you; that you, longing for understanding through the middle way between subjectivity and objectivity, relativism and subjectivism, objectivism and relativism; that you, here, now, in the 'vortex,' sparkling, effervescing, rhythming ...

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

1: Becoming Conscious Becoming 1 Indeed, especially in his early years Freud made a heroic effort to practise good science in the late-nineteenth-century empiricist-positivist mode. However, many consider that he failed (see Fried and Agassi, 1976; Fisher and Greenberg, 1977; Feigl and Scriven, 1956; Griinbaum, 1993; Popper, 1962). 2 For layperson surveys, see Kaku (1994, 1997), Gleick (1987), Klein (1980), andPrigogine (1997). 3 At this juncture I should point out that interdependence, interrelatedness, and interaction are not Peirce's terms but mine, appropriated from a diverse selection of readings in physics, biology, philosophy of science, anthropology, and Eastern thought. 2: Bodymind Flows 1 I use the two distinct terms, 'semiosis' and 'semiotics,' throughout the remainder of this inquiry. Briefly, 'semiosis' is the general process of signs becoming more signs, whether there is any organism around to interpret them or not. 'Semiotics' involves the interpretation and, above all, the study of these sign processes. 2 Actually, I would prefer 'semiotic objects, acts, and events' over the relatively limited term 'semiotic objects,' since semiosis is the process of objects interrelating and interacting with objects such that events or happenings emerge. In this respect, perhaps I should write 'semiotic eventing,' or simply 'eventing,' since semiosis is a perpetual process of happening rather than there existing a thingness of things, a relatively static objectification of objects. However, for purposes of parsimony, I will stick to the customary Peircean term 'semiotic

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

314 Notes to pages 37-49

3

4

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

5

6

7

8

object,' or simply 'object,' with the plea that you bear in mind the processual nature of all that is semiosis. I cannot overemphasize the fact that all I have to say in this inquiry is guided by the interdependent, interrelated, interconnected, interactive emergence of all that is in the process of becoming what it will have been becoming at some receding future but never actually becomes in the full sense of the term. The italicized terms follow the idea, becoming increasingly evident in physics as it has long been taught in Eastern thought, that (1) everything interdependently emerges, such that it is conditional and momentary and has no permanence; and (2) everything is ultimately dependent on 'voidness,' or 'emptiness,' which is not merely 'nothingness' or 'annihilation,' but rather, 'no-thing-ness,' for there is 'no-thing' at all, there is just 'emptiness,' which, strange as it may seem, is itself empty of its very 'emptiness.' Actually, Peirce subdivides the semiotic object into two types and the interpretant into three types. In keeping with the finer points of the sign one should make these distinctions; however, given the objectives of this inquiry, and as a matter of economy, I have chosen to omit further classification of Peirce's sign components. For the interested reader, I would recommend Liszka(1996). Besides, in view of the above on the how of living, the way of living, and 'whaling,' we can hardly ask 'What is a sign?' for there is no what and there is no is. There is just the how, the way, and the 'whaling' or the 'Iling' of ihe 'signing.' The allusion — indeed, ihe very lerm 'emptiness' — is from Buddhisl ihoughl (lo which Peirce refers on occasion). In lighl of noles 2 and 3 above, my sources have by no means been exclusively Peircean; rather, they have converged from a variety of directions. My apologies to those who follow the letter of Peirce, but I sincerely believe that one should strive to place Peirce within our contemporary sociocultural milieu. For further, I would respectfully suggest Almeder (1980), Hookway (1985), Liszka (1996), Savan (1987-8), and - if you are so inclined - perhaps even Merrell (1995a, 1995b, 1998b). From this juncture onward, I often allude to Peirce's different types of signs. I must ask, however, that you constantly bear in mind that the sign classes and categories are no more than that: sign classes and categories. They are a handle by means of which linguistically we can get a certain vague and tentative grip on sign processes. But these processes never cease eluding any and all categories, for signs are above all else impermanent, never fixed. The signs and categories I allude to, time and time again, are in this respect artificial and partly arbitrary. Ultimately they are partly false to themselves.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes to pages 50-61

315

Nevertheless, I dare say that without them I couldn't have finished a single sentence in this book. Such are the travails and tribulations of language use. 9 I should point out that Peirce was stuck with the logical nomenclature of his day, 'terms,' 'propositions,' and 'arguments.' I have taken the liberty to expand the types of symbolic signs to include natural languages in their everyday use.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

3: The Peircean Decalogue 1 For Peirce's own account of these signs, see CP: 2.227-73; for further along the lines developed here, Merrell (1995a, 1995b, 1997). 2 In using the terms 'looking,' 'seeing' and 'perceiving' with respect to signs 7, 8, and 9, it might appear that I am favouring visuality. That is not my intention. Quite simply, since the English language, and by and large Western languages in general, favour ocularcentric labels and metaphors, I have resorted to these terms for the sake of brevity. However, sound, smell, taste, and touch have their place with respect to these and all ten signs on a democratic basis. 3 At this point, a word on my use of the label 'decalogue' is in order. The word bears on the idea of dialogue in the sense that all ten signs are constantly in interdependent, interrelated interaction, or in other words in 'dialogue,' with one another. None of the signs is autonomous - not even the first sign, since without it none of the other signs could have entered the light of day. As a matter of fact, in view of Peirce's dialogic, I have a bone of contention with Damasio, which can't be taken up in this essay in detail though it at least merits mention at this juncture. Damasio doesn't take into due consideration the interdependent, interrelative interaction between the individual conscious and self-conscious self and the self's community. For Peirce the self's function in the community is dialogical through and through. This is by way of the three others of the self: (1) the self and its inner other, with which it engages in dialogic exchange that is always replete with community conventions, values, and standards, (2) the self and its dialogic exchange with its outer other, consisting of its entering into negotiation with its physical other, and (3) the self and its social other, which includes the entire community in continuous polylogue (for further, Colapietro 1989). It becomes apparent that (1) involves chiefly Firstness, (2) involves chiefly Secondness, and (3) is largely the domain of Thirdness. Damasio, I would suggest, doesn't take into due account the concept of community, the social self, and the dialogic. 4 For more on the sign in general, I suggest you consult Almeder (1980), Fitzgerald (1966), Greenlee (1973), Liszka (1996), and Sebeok (1976, 1994);

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

316 Notes to pages 62-7 if perchance you wish for a more detailed outline of Peirce's signs according to the present interpretation, you might try Merrell (1995a, 1995b).

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

4: Up and Down the Semiosic Mainstream 1 A few words of explanation are perhaps in order. Doxic is from the Greek doxa (opinion, judgment, what appears to be the case). According to the Western tradition, doxa is a type of knowledge that is inferior to epistemic knowledge, from episteme (scientific, systematic, and true knowledge). Ontic is from onto (presumably, existing things). It is the basis for 'ontology,' the study of the essential characteristics of Being, the Beingness or universal nature of things, in contrast to the study of particular existing things. Phenomenalrefers to phenomena and 'phenomenalism,' the concept that only phenomena (sense data) can be known as they appear to consciousness, and that the ultimate nature of 'reality' cannot be known in its entirety; hence knowledge is limited to particulars that are accessible to consciousness within a given cultural setting. It would appear that there is a conflict between Leg 2 and Leg 3 of the tripod in Figure 5. And so there is, in the order of the perennial conflicts that Western metaphysics has been caught up in for centuries. Unfortunately, I have neither time nor space nor the talent to go into this issue. What I wish to suggest here - as will become evident in the next few paragraphs - is that classical logic itself is caught in a trap between the phenomenal world and the precepts of classical logic. In other words, the phenomenal or experienced world does not always conform to the ideals of logic, which is to say that these ideals are put to the test, and they come up short. 2 The notion of a 'horizon' will be taken up briefly in chapter 5. For the moment the term can be tentatively defined as a culturally shared 'horizon of meaning' (shared preconceptions, presuppositions, and prejudices) consisting of a broad sociocultural tradition within which each human finds herself and from within which there can be no total extrication. 3 I say 'roughly,' since within one culture and one language each individual will understand meanings of words that are slightly to radically different from those meanings of other individuals. 4 Discussion of the interrelations between radically distinct perspectival frameworks bears on Richard Bernstein's (1983) distinction between incommensurability, inconsistency, and incomparability, the first of which allows for comparison and contrast by logical procedures, by use of bivalent, eitheror categories, and the latter two of which do not. 5 Quine's argument plays victim to the 'paradox of translatability,' namely, that

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 68-76 317 if the incommensurability thesis - or the language relativity principle (Whorf, 1956) - is valid, then it should be impossible for anyone to break out of the categories of her own language to learn the categories of another, roughly incommensurable, language (see Schultz, 1990). 6 The problem of translation of words and their meanings from one language into another language as if words and languages and meanings were fixed entities recalls John Searle's (1980) 'Chinese room' thought experiment, which goes something like this. Assume you know no Chinese. You are placed in a room and given instructions (a set of rules) regarding how to transform (according to a cut-in-granite code) the Chinese-language characters that are fed to you into English. You are then to push the English symbols out of your room through a slit in the wall to some recipient. You are acting much in the order of a robot or a translation machine. It most likely follows, then, that like a robot or translation machine, even though you carry out your translations methodologically and faithfully, you have no idea whatsoever whether your translations are correct. You are simply following the rules provided for you with respect to an established code according to which you can map unknown characters in Chinese onto words in English. Nor do you necessarily have any comprehension regarding your mechanical procedures. You are simply operating as if you had been programmed by a computer expert to do what you do in the way you do it. In other words, you are simply exchanging one set of signs (bits) for another set of signs (bits) without any notion of their significance, without any regard either for you as sign creator or for your addressee. The lesson to be derived from this tale - a bitter pill to swallow for those who maintain faith in language as a relatively stable corpus and in the computer analogy regarding language and the human brain — is that language, like all signs, is a flow of perpetual change. Hence there are no fixed lines of correspondence between words and things and their meanings, or between one language and another language. 7 Putnam's move is admittedly controversial, since it is applicable to logic of the most basic sort and hence, according to many observers, is simply irrelevant with respect to the relative loose flow of natural language use (for a critique of Putnam see Hacking, 1983). 8 Quine asserts a holistic view of language, for sure, but that is the problem: faithful to the 'linguistic turn,' he remains obsessed with language. As we shall note below, much the same can be said of Richard Rorty, in spite of his celebrated departure from the analytic philosophy camp (for an overview, and comparison and contrast, of these scholars, see Blackburn, 1984; Harris, 1992; Malpas, 1992; Roth, 1987; Sacks, 1989; Shusterman, 1997; and Vuillemin, 1986).

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

318 Notes to pages 77-84 9 This, conceded, at the outset seems comparable to the so-called 'principle of charity,' about which Davidson makes much intellectual hay. The term will be given more time in the spotlight below. In essence it involves a sense of'I think I know what you're driving at and I assume you think the same about me. So let's talk, and most likely we'll get along swimmingly.' I realize my words will be looked upon as a hopelessly inadequate caricature of the 'principle of charity,' but in a nutshell, that's about it. The problem is, however, that on embracing the principle, one runs the risk, if one is not careful, of assuming that interlocutors share some 'semiotic,' 'ontic,' and/or 'epistemic' - and hence 'linguistic' - background. This can and sometimes does smell of essentialism, of fixed ideas and the idea of a relatively fixed world. As far as I can tell, Davidson quite effectively avoids this trap. The same cannot be said of all the contributors to the book on Davidson and literary theory edited by Dasenbrock (1993a).

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

5: From Signification to Understanding 1 I would like to think that Figure 10 carries rough implications for chapter 4's narrative regarding Quine-Putnam-Goodman theses on the problems of reference, translation, meaning, and the 'riddle of induction.' The following discussion surrounding the Figure 10 form entails an attempt to illustrate that communication is possible between languages and cultures and their respective worlds. 2 Complementarity as the term is used here is inspired by the work of Niels Bohr in quantum theory. Bohr alludes to complementarity of basically two sorts: 'wave-particle complementarity' and 'classical-quantum' complementarity. In Bohr's words, the first involves the dual nature of light, the complementary views of which 'are rather to be considered as different attempts at an interpretation of experimental evidence in which the limitation of the classical concepts is expressed in complementary ways ... In fact... we are not dealing with contradictory but with complementary pictures of the phenomena, which only together offer a natural generalization of the classical mode of description' (1961: 56). This complementarity combines two contradictory classical concepts of light - light as photon or paniculate, and light as of radioactive wave nature — into a single view, the one proposed by quantum theory. Thus the two classical conceptions are incompatible: if you have the one, you can't have the other. Quantum theory, in contrast, combines them into one complementary package as mutually exclusive but interdependent, inter relative, interactive manifestations of one whole: you can't have the one without the other, yet you can't have them both at the

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes to pages 85-94 319

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

same time. The second sort of complementarity has to do with the nature of quantum theory, which 'forces us to regard the space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterises the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description' (1961: 54). In this interpretation, the classical view (of causality, with space and time separate) is complementary with the quantum view (of space-time coordination). 3 See Abram (1996), Classen (1993), Classen et al. (1994), Cytowic (1989), Hastrup (1995), Howes (1991), Merrell (1998b), Stoller (1989, 1997), and Taussig (1993). 4 I should note that my idea of a participatory universe is not only that of participatory consciousness prior to the Renaissance and before the mind/ body, subject/object, and human/world splits as effectively revealed in Herman (1981). It includes the concept of a 'participatory universe' by none other than the quantum physicist and coiner of the term 'black holes,'John Archibald Wheeler (1980a, 1980b, 1990, 1994; also Merrell, 1998b, 2000a, Skolimowski, 1987). 5 One must bear in mind that the thrust of this inquiry comes from an attempt to swim against the current of linear, mechanical, quantitative, dualistic, and rational thinking, and, as was pointed out in the Preface, from an attempt to get into the flow of non-linear, organic, qualitative, topologically patterned feeling and sensing and thinking. 6: Interim: From the Pen of Jorge Luis Borges

1 I cannot do justice here to the long-standing debate between the Kuhnians and the Popperians and others concerning whether or not 'paradigms' can be transcended. Briefly, for Kuhn, and for the 'radical meaning variance' theorists in general, we are caught in the framework of our theories and can step outside them solely by conversion to a distinct framework, within which we are then held captive. For Popper (1974), this 'myth of the framework' is exaggerated; we can break out any time we choose. I would suggest that the plausibility of Kuhn's idea has been exaggerated, for 'paradigms' are not totally unbreachable corrals fencing one in: they always reveal, at some juncture, a certain degree of openness. And Popper's freedom of choice is perhaps optimistic, for alternatives are often difficult to come by, depending upon how high one has climbed on the belief scale. 2 As we shall note in the next section, a four-dimensional being would see Scharlach's trajectory - or our own, for that matter - in an instant, much as Schlarlach saw that of Lonnrot in an instant. 3 J.M.E. McTaggart's notorious and often maligned argument distinguishes

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

320 Notes to pages 95-139 between what he calls the A-series and the B-series. The former consists of past, present, and future, the latter of 'earlier than' and 'later than.' The B-series is static insofar as the statement 'The Battle of Hastings occurred before the Battle of Waterloo' is permanently true: an event takes its place in a static series of events. In contrast, the A-series characterizes our concrete experience of events: an ever-changing stream giving meaning to the idea (or illusion, as McTaggart puts it) of 'becoming.'

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

7: Doing It Tacitly 1 Damasio separates emotion from feeling as follows: emotion is publicly observable with respect to the consequences that ensue from the emotion; feeling in others is not observable, though one can observe one's own feelings (this makes up the essence of Wittgenstein's 'private language' argument [Kripke, 1982]). If we label feeling-emotion at the outset sign 111, becoming aware q/Teeling-emotion involves 211-221, which can be accessible to private observation and intelligibility from 222 to 311 and upward. Then, sign 222 would be the consequent action-reaction q/"which there is a primitive form of awareness that is publicly observable and made meaningful along the lines of 311 and upward. 2 See N. Katherine Hayles's (1999) comments on The Embodied Mind, which I would endorse and would fit into the interpretation presented here, although I hold reservations regarding the author's lingering tinge of 'linguicentrism.' 3 A newborn chick instinctively reacts to an inducer in the form of a hawk flying overhead. In experiments, paper hawks attached to a wire and sent flying cause young chicks in the area to scurry for cover. The inducer (222) is perceived as a substanceless form (211, 311), and is then acted on in a habitual or instinctive manner. 4 Such deceit and self-deceit has recently caught the eye of philosophers, and it is quite apropos to Damasio's findings (see Brown, 1998). 8: Bodymind Doing 1 I am conflating core self and core consciousness somewhat for the sake of synthesizing Damasio's subtle and complex argument, hopefully without doing it excessive violence. 2 'Tones,' 'tokens,' and 'types' are terms Peirce used throughout his writings the latter two especially, as was pointed out in the earlier discussion of the Peircean sign. These latter two terms have been picked up in philosophical

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes to pages 140-93 321 circles, and for good reason: they are more precise and easier to talk about. However, the import of this essay, inspired by Damasio's work, rests mainly on tones - which are non-linear, of the body, of feeling and emotion - and on the becoming of consciousness of them. 3 The underdetermination-overdetermination pair of terms will play an increasingly important role in this inquiry. Indeed, these two, along with incompleteness and inconsistency, and generality and vagueness, make up a key sextet of terms found in the concept of the sign (chiefly following Peirce) that I have developed over the years. If I might be so presumptuous, I might suggest a perusal of Merrell (1995a, 1997, 1998b). 9: When There Is Nothing on the Mind 1 I will have more to say about the term 'abduction' in chapters 10 and 11. For an introduction to the topic, I would recommend Davis (1972), Eco and Sebeok (1983), and Fann (1970). 2 I should point out that the child's utterance, 'Mama!,' can be comparable to the adult's response, 'Fine,' to the query 'How're you' (see above). In either case we have what would be called a 'holophrastic sentence,' basically sign 322, a sign of commonplace expressions and associations.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

10: Hasta la Vista Descartes 1 Dewey held that the old soul/body or mind/body are still alive and well in the form of brain/body, which is specifiable as 'the brain and the rest of the body,' as a counterpart to the mind and the rest of the body (Dewey, 1916: 336). 2 In note 3 of chapter 3 I expressed some reservations about the focus of Damasio's studies, suggesting that he was seriously lacking in dialogic considerations of the self. The 'symbolic self within bodymind in the cultural setting as an individual at one with other individuals making up a dialogic community self is what Damasio tends to ignore, given his physiologicalneurological focus on the individual organism. 11: Language Fixation 1 Putnam's articulation of what in this inquiry and elsewhere (Merrell, 1995a, 1997, 1998b, 2000a) might be called my 'overdetermination-underdetermination thesis,' is partly inspired by what is known as the Lowenheim-Skolem paradox, developed in mathematical logic and applied to natural language

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

322

Notes to pages 194-200

by Putnam (1983b; but see Hacking, 1983, for a critique). Very briefly stated, this paradox says that, given a countable infinity of terms - such as the whole number series, generativity of Chomsky sentences, or unlimited ars combinatoria in Saussurean linguistics - there is no end to the possible unexpected and unintended interpretations (models, as they are termed in mathematical logic) that might be forthcoming. I might add that linguist George Lakoff (1987) and psychologist Mark Johnson (1987) find Putnam's rendition of the Lowenheim-Skolem paradox applicable to their own fields of investigation. 2 Tarski believed that proper account of meaning cannot go outside undefined semantic concepts. His 'Convention T" sentence, '"Snow is white" if and only if snow is white,' holds an object language fit for hooking words onto the world. However, in practice, the truth of 'Snow is white' is not forthcoming within the sentence itself, for there must be a theoretical language or metalanguage - the sentence outside the quotes. A self-referential antinomy is obviously implied in Tarski's sentence. This is inevitable, since Tarski himself admitted that 'the very possibility of a consistent use of the expression "true sentence" which is in harmony with the laws of logic and the spirit of everyday language seems to be very questionable' (1956: 165). Another way of saying this is that a language cannot complete its own truth-theory or theory of meaning, because in dealing with itself both as object and metalanguage it is always stretching itself to the limit. Since there is no time here for a debate over whether Davidson can legitimately encompass natural language within Tarski's theory developed exclusively for formal languages, for further reading I would suggest Evnine (1991), LePore (1986), Malpas (1992), and Ramberg (1989). 3 You will recall that when discussing Peirce's concept of the sign in chapter 2 I registered my discomfort with customary notions of reference, representation, and correspondence in Western discourse and opted for the terms interdependency, interrelatedness, and interaction. This, I believe, is in keeping with the spirit of Peirce, if not exactly with the letter. Not the letter, for he continued to use those customary terms, and especially representation, throughout his writings, though, I would contend, their meaning for him was not that of the logical positivist variety during the twentieth century (Merrell, 1997). For this reason I opt to avoid the stocked, neatly stacked, and conveniently packed terms as far as possible. 4 It bears mentioning at this juncture that Damasio fails to entertain any process comparable to Peirce's abduction. He is hardly concerned with more than inducers, and largely ignores creativity or a 'logic of discovery.' This is in part understandable, perhaps, since most - though by no means all - of the patients Damasio studies enjoy few creative powers; they are largely out of

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 200-10 323 tune with signs of Firstness that make up the emerging signs of abduction. However, given Damasio's keen focus on feeling and emotion, his disregard for Firstness in this respect sends him slightly in the direction of Cartesianism, a direction he wishes to avoid at all cost. I raise this issue, but can go no farther in this essay, since my focus is on parallels between Damasio's and Peirce's signs rather than a detailed critique of Damasio. 5 The pros and cons of Goodman's riddle make up a rich dialogical debate, a summary of which can be found in Blackburn (1984), Goodman (1965), Hacking (1993), Hesse (1969), Kripke (1982), Rescher (1978), Mark Sacks (1989), and Stalker (1995) (see also Merrell, 1997, for an interpretation of Goodman along the lines mapped out here). 6 Very briefly put, Peirce's philosophy entails 'objectivism' in the sense that the 'method' chosen by a community applies to what is taken to be 'real.' His philosophy also entails 'idealism,' since by an indefinite number of possible 'methods' the 'real' can be more or less accounted for, but no 'method' devised by any finite, fallible community - and Peirce never ceased propagating the idea of human fallibilism - is capable of accounting for the 'real' in its entirety (for further, Almeder, 1980, Hookway 1985, Rescher and Brandom, 1979). 7 There is the issue of Davidson's 'triangulation,' which I cannot discuss in detail here, though it bears passing mention. Triangulation involves knowledge of our own minds, knowledge of other's minds, and knowledge of a shared cultural and physical world. This corresponds closely to Peirce's tripartite concept of the self and of the other - the inner other of the self (Firstness), the self's physical world (Secondness), and the self's community or social world (Thirdness), as outlined by Max Fisch (1986). In Davidson's words: 'Each of two people finds certain behavior of the other salient, and each finds the observed behavior of the other to be correlated with events and objects he finds salient in the world. This much can take place without developed thought, but it is the necessary basis for thought and for language learning' (Davidson, 'The Measure of the Mental' [unpublished paper], 7; quoted in Kent, 1993: 49). 12: Topology at the Core 1 I feel I must reiterate that in view of note 3 of chapter 3, this is the sense of community in Peirce and much contemporary neopragmatic philosophy that Damasio ignores - chiefly, I would suspect, due to his focus on the physiological-neurological impairments of the individual patient. 2 Except, perhaps, as many scholars have argued, the community of interlocu-

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

324 Notes to pages 211-35

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

tors as outlined by Donald Davidson's 'principle of charity' (Davidson, 1984; also Evnine, 1991; Hopkins, 1999; Ramberg, 1989; Stroud, 1999). 3 See especially Murphey (1961), and you might consider taking a look at Merrell (1998b), where I discuss this aspect of Peirce's thought in more detail. 4 'Wormholes,' one would guess, are not for the uninitiated. That would be a correct assumption. While I by no means have nuclear physicist expertise on the topic, I have read up on it as far as my limited faculties will allow, and have come to the tentative conclusions outlined below (for an educated layperson's account of 'wormholes,' see Goswami, 1993; for the concept of 'wormholes' applied to a calculus of 'forms' in a manner reminiscent of an important aspect of Peirce's cosmology, briefly to be discussed in the following paragraphs, see Spencer-Brown, 1979). 5 Admittedly, this notion of two types of time within two dimensions goes against our very nature. In more mundane terms, Einstein's four-dimensional spacetime continuum consists of three dimensions of space: the space of our everyday living, and a dimension of time, a dimension conceived as an extra dimension of space. This is the static time or imaginary time of which Dobbs speaks. We need, in addition to this abstract mathematical time, the time of our consciousness, of our experience in our concrete world, of psychological time. This is Dobbs's real time, conceived as the time of our concrete experience within yet another dimension. 13: On What Is New 1 I cannot overemphasize the importance to the premises of this essay of my using the words 'chiefly,' 'primarily,' and other such loose qualifications in regard to Peirce's categories. I do so with the hope that I may not be taken to task for presenting the categories as fixed pigeon-holes. Since Peirce's signs, with the exception of 111 and 333 - the former unavailable to our conscious attention and the latter invariably incomplete, because it is never given a meaning so replete that it cannot be up for revision - are combinations of the categories, I take it that every sign made and taken in the course of human interaction is never pure, categorically speaking. 2 For more in this regard, I have treated the topic of'knowing how and 'knowing that,' in part inspired by the work of philosopher of science Norwood Hanson (1958, 1969) and Wittgenstein (1953), elsewhere (Merrell 1995a, 1995b). 3 This assertion, and the following outline of the maxim, I must point out, goes against the grain of customary 'cognitive,' 'intellectual,' or 'conceptual'

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes to pages 236-45 325 interpretations of the maxim, as especially exemplified in Nesher (1983, 1990). 4 A most notable exception to this assertion can be found in the work of Professor Lucia Santaella of Brazil (1992a, 1992b, 1993, 1994), though, unfortunately for most readers, the vast majority of her work is in the Portuguese.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

14: Contextualizing the Pragmatic Maxim 1 If we wished to jump from the frying pan into the fire we could combine Hempel's inductivity paradox with Goodman's riddle of induction by positing that the Grueworlder could state 'All non-grue things are non-emeralds,' and the Realworlder could state, 'All non-green things are non-emeralds.' For the Grueworlder an observed 'Green' object would not qualify as an emerald, in contraposition to the Realworlder, for whom an observed 'Grue' object would also be a non-emerald - assuming they could by the charity principle get into 'Green' objects and 'Grue' objects respectively. In this respect also, we become aware of the symmetrical interrelation between their worlds. But that would be a long story that we best put to rest for now. 2 See, for example, Anscombe (1976), Baker and Hacker (1984), Hacking (1993), and Malcolm (1989). 3 For a general survey of the exceedingly complex and heated debate surrounding Wittgenstein on rule following, see Baker and Hacker (1984), Blackburn (1981), Bloor (1983, 1997), Chihara (1982), Coates (1986), Holt/man and Leich (1981). Kripke (1982), Malcolm (1989), McDowell (1984),Puhl (1991),Schiffer (1986), Smart (1992), Werhane (1987), and Wright (1984). 4 Controversy over interpreting Wittgenstein bears mentioning at this juncture. The question arises as to whether or not Wittgenstein is a conventionalist. This envisions humans as creators or inventors rather than as discoverers of their world and of meanings. Michael Dummett (1966) interprets Wittgenstein's account as entailing an extreme version of conventionalism. According to conventionalism, sign making and taking are imposed not on reality, but on our language. A particular statement is necessary by virtue of our having chosen not to count anything as falsifying it. Our recognition of logical and practical necessity thus becomes a particular case of our knowledge of our own intentions. All necessity derives from our linguistic conventions. Dummett would have it, then, that Wittgenstein is a full-blooded conventionalist, since for him what is said is said in the way it is said because that is the way linguistic conventions dictate what must be said. The necessity of saying a

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

326 Notes to pages 246-64 particular statement at a given moment rests on our having decided to say it that way because convention makes us do it. The individual is always free to choose for herself at each step of the way, without constraint. It's up to her to decide. She has a right to choose her words and the meanings of the words. But actually, in playing a cultural 'language game,' she cannot simply say what she says in any way she chooses. She would not be playing a uniform 'language game' if at any point she chose arbitrarily. She must abide by the rules or at least simulate abiding by the rules. Quite obviously, in this interpretation of Wittgenstein, (1) communication is not simply linguistic; it entails the entire spectrum of signs, and (2) the sign maker and taker constantly pushes against conventions and rules as she navigates her way along semiosis (see Conway, 1989). 5 See Bloor (1997: ch. 9) for detailed treatment of the Hume-Reid controversy and its similarities to the controversy surrounding Kripke's essay on Wittgenstein. 6 These comments and, indeed, many remarks to this point about Peirce's inconformity with the tenets of classical logic call for a few words. It has long been recognized that Peirce anticipated many fundamentals of two-valued classical logic. His contributions to three-valued logic were discovered only in the 1960s, by Max Fisch and Atwell Turquette (1966; see Lane [1999] for a discussion). The general assumption has had it that Jan Lukasiewic and Emil Post developed the operators for three-valued logic. Much of that credit must now go to Peirce, for his work with two key terms I have used in this inquiry — vagueness and generality - and their relevance to inconsistency and incompleteness and overdetermination and underdetermination (Merrell, 1997). 15: Maximizing the Maxim 1 Finally, I must confess: what I have suggested here, and indeed on many of the earlier pages, is to a large extent in line both with Buddhist philosophy and with the implications of quantum theory (for more, I suggest consulting Fritjof Capra's [1975] wildly successful book, also Balasubramaniam [1992], Brown [1999], Goswami [1993], Hayward [1987], Mansfield [1989], Siu [1957], Smith [1995], Squires [1993], and Wilber [1984]). 2 Here, I'm afraid I must reiterate my reservations about Damasio's avoiding the nature of interhuman dialogic and community interdependent, interrelated interaction. In this regard, Damasio doesn't adequately reveal any notion comparable to Peirce's Thirdness, social conventions and practices, and tacit, habituated, entrenched rule following, fudging, and breaking, and above all, collective rather than private sign making and taking. All of this is

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes to pages 265-77 327 sorely lacking in Gage and other Damasio patients, in most of Sack's case studies, and in Lonnrot, Funes, Averroes, Menard, the Tlonians, and other characters from Borges's stories. They all lack some aspect of community interdependent, interrelated, interactive sign processing, in addition to whatever neurological deficiencies they might have.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

16: Distinctly Human Umwelt?

1 In the pages immediately following, 'mind' will be used in place of 'bodymind.' This is not to suggest that the premises underlying this volume have been subverted. Rather, the focus is altered somewhat in order to accommodate a particular aspect of Peirce that is patterned in Umwelt theory. Since the concept of Umwelt was developed along the lines of mind and virtually mind alone, I find it necessary to backtrack somewhat. The story will reintegrate bodymind at a later moment. 2 t/wu^-engendered worlds follow species-specific biologically embedded rules, in contrast to Wittgenstein's culture-specific rules and Peirce's concept of community-specific sign making and taking. The latter processes are incessantly becoming something other than what they were becoming, in contrast to relatively fixed species-specific semiotic modes. 3 On the 'many faces of realism,' see Putnam (1987). For 'realism' and 'idealism' in Peirce, see Smith (1983) and Turley (1977). 4 I should point out at this juncture that Eddington's 'mind-stuff placed within the context of Peirce's pantheistic concept of'mind' and nature would bring one to the conclusion that to say 'mind' is to say 'nature' and hence also to say 'body.' This would support mindbody and bodymindsign assumptions behind this book's writing. 5 I write 'not necessarily,' since the sign can function in the absence of its object, that object being implied by the sign and thereby evoked in the mind. 6 Allusion is to the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure (1966) as it has generally been interpreted in the French semiological tradition (for example, Hawkes, 1977). 7 I must emphasize that I am speaking of symbols and symbols alone as signs that in the beginning can have no more than arbitrary interrelations with their semiotic objects and their interpretants. Iconic and indexical signs can and are used in nature by non-human organisms, though the purpose for their use is debatable. Examples: insects that appear as what they are not (a leaf or a twig), animals that blend in with objects in their surroundings, birds that feign a broken wing when a predator approaches the nest with young ones, and so on (see Count, 1969, Sebeok, 1976).

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

328 Notes to pages 278-97 8 For the difference between 'development' and 'evolution' - a topic of relevance whose full discussion is not permitted here due to limited time and space, see Sal the (1993). 9 See in this regard Rotman (1977) and Piaget (1953,1968,197la, 197lb, 1977). 10 We will recall, here, work in philosophy of science from the likes of Feyerabend (1975,1987), Hanson (1958,1969), Hesse (1980), Kuhn (1970), and Polanyi (1958). 11 For further along these lines, see Capek (1961), Comfort (1984), and Skolimowski (1986).

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

17: Space Dancing through Time 1 For studies of van Gogh and other artists in a comparable vein, see Gombrich (1960), Ivins (1973), LeShan and Margenau (1982), Lowe (1982), Panofsky (1960), Romanyshyn (1989), Shlain (1991), Szamosi (1986), Vitz and Gilmcher (1984), and Waddington (1970). 2 This is significant, in view of the notion now prevalent in geometry that Euclidean perception and conception is not the only way, for there exists an indefinite number of alternative geometries. The example usually cited is that of Einsteinian physics, which is based on Riemannian curved space geometry, an alternative to Newtonian-Euclidean geometry. 3 In this respect, see also Wittgenstein (1953, 1956) on the philosophy of mathematics, and Bloor (1983, 1991, 1997) on the possibility of different mathematics for different cultures. 4 See Costa (1974), Haack (1978,1996), Heelan (1983), Kosko (1993), Lupasco (1947), Melhuish (1967), Merrell (1998a), Putnam (1983a), Rescher and Brandom (1979), and Zadeh (1965, 1975). Postscript 1 Including, I might add, my somewhat stretched use of the term 'postmodernism' in Semiosis in the Postmodern Age (Merrell, 1995a). While I would stick to much of what I had to say in that book about the relevance of Peirce to contemporary thought, I must say that I have become dismayed over the way the terms have been abused, even in regard to some Peirce scholarship (e.g., Deely, 1994). 2 I must reiterate my contention that however salutary Johnson's research and that of kindred spirits may be, they remain to an extent mired in what I have

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Notes to pages 298-312 329

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

often termed 'linguicentrism,' in the priority they place on linguistic signs to the detriment of all other signs. It is, very significantly, these other signs that are most genuinely topological in orientation. 3 For one of the most vitriolic, though controversial, critics of the AI program, see the work of Hubert Dreyfus (1979, 1992, Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1986). 4 With neither time nor space to indulge here - though I have tentatively developed the theme elsewhere -John Archibald Wheeler's interpretation of the quantum universe is through and through participatory. This, and this alone, should help put lingering Cartesianism to rest (Wheeler, 1984, 1984, 1990, 1994, Merrell, 1997, 1998a, 2000a). 5 Here's Galileo: 'This grand book of the universe ... is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth' (in Jones, 1989: 22). Notice that the book is written in language, mathematical language, and its characters are geometric figures. Galileo's words give a favourable nod toward symbols (Yang), since even the geometric figures must be couched in language. If they are not so couched, then darkness will surely prevail, and we will wander unknowingly in the labyrinth (of Yin) to the end of our lives. The priorities, I believe, are quite evident.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

This page intentionally left blank

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References

Abram, David. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a MoreThan-Human World. New York: Vintage. Adams, Colin C. 1994. The Knot Book: An Elementary Introduction of the Mathematical Theory of Knots. New York: W.H. Freeman. Agassi, Joseph. 1975. Science in Flux. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Almeder, Robert. 1980. The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce: A Critical Introduction. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Anscombe, G.E.M. 1976. 'The Question of Linguistic Idealism.' In Essays on Wittgenstein in Honour of C.W. von Wright, J. Hintikka, ed., 188-215. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Anzaldua, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Baker, G.P., and Hacker, P.M.S. 1984. Scepticism: Rules and Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Balasubramaniam, Arun. 1992. 'Explaining Strange Parallels: The Case of Quantum Mechanics and Madhyamika Buddhism.' International Philosophical Quarterly 32(2): 205-23. Barfield, Owen. 1965. Saving the Appearances. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Barth, John. 1969. End of the Road. New York: Bantam. Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Chandler. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983a. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). - 1983b. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, trans. P. Foss, J.Johnston, and P. Patton. New York: Semiotext(e). - 1988. The Ecstasy of Communication, trans. B. Schutze and C. Schutze. New York: Semiotext(e). Benardete,Jose. 1964. Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

332 References Bergson, Henri 1964. [1911]. Creative Evolution. London: Macmillan. Berman, Morris. 1981. The Reenchantment of the World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bernstein, Richard J. 1983. Beyond Objectivity and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bigwood, Carol. 1998. 'Renaturalizing the Body.' In Body andFlesh: A Philosophical Reader, D. Welton, ed., 99-114. Oxford: Blackwell. Black, Max. 1937. 'Vagueness, an Exercise in Logical Analysis.' Philosophy of Science 6: 427-55. Blackburn, Simon. 1981. 'Rule Following and Moral Realism.' In Wittgenstein: ToFollow a Rule, S.H. Holtzman and C.M. Leich, eds., 163-87. London: Routledge. - 1984. Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language. London: Clarendon. Bloor, David. 1983. Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press. - 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. - 1997. Wittgenstein: Rules and Institutions. New York: Routledge. Bohm, David. 1965. The Special Theory of Relativity. New York: Benjamin. Bohr, Niels. 1961. Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boler.John P. 1964. 'Habits of Thought.' in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, E.G. Moore and R.S. Robin, eds., 382—400. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Bordo, Susan. 1987. The Flight to Objectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1962. Labyrinths, Selected Short Stories and Other Writings, D.A. Yates and J.E. Irby, eds. New York: New Directions. Braidotti, Rosi. 1991. Patterns of Dissonance. New York: Routledge. Broglie, Louis de. 1939. Matter and Light: The New Physics, trans. W.H.Johnson. New York: W.W. Norton. - 1953. The Revolution in Physics. New York: Noonday. Brown, Alison Leigh. 1998. Subjects of Deceit: A Phenomenology of Lying. Albany: State University of New York Press. Brown, Jason W. 1999. 'Microgenesis and Buddhism: The Concept of Momentariness.' Philosophy East and West 49(3): 261-77. Burks, Arthur W. 1980. 'Man: Sign or Algorithm? A Rhetorical Analysis of Peirce's Semiotics.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 16(4): 279-92. Butler, Judidi. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of'Sex.' New York: Routledge.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 333 Calvin, William H. 1989. The Cerebral Symphony. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell. Capek, Milic. 1961. The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics. New York: van Nostrand. Capra, Fritjof. 1975. The Tao of Physics. Berkeley: Shambhala. Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of 'Everyday Life, trans. S. Kendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chihara, C. 1982. 'The Wright-Wing Defense of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Logic.' Philosophical Reviewed: 99-108. Chipp, Herschel B. 1968. Theories of Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chow, Rey. 1993. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Classen, Constance. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures. New York: Routledge. Classen, Constance, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott. 1994. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. New York: Routledge. Coates, P. 1986. 'Kripke's Sceptical Paradox: Normativeness and Meaning.' Mind 95: 77-80. Colapietro, Vincent. 1989. Peirce's Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cole, K.C. 1984. Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life. New York: William Morrow. Comfort, Alex. 1984. Reality and Empathy: Physics, Mind, and Science in the 21st Century. Albany: State University of New York Press. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conway, Gertrude D. 1989. Wittgenstein on Foundations. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Cornford, F. 1936. 'The Invention of Space.' In Essays in Honour of Gilbert Murray, H.A.L. Fisher et al., eds., 215-35. London: Allen and Unwin. Costa, Newton C.A. da. 1974. 'On the Theory of Inconsistent Formal Systems.' Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 15: 497-510. Costa de Beauregard, Olivier. 1981. 'Time in Relativity Theory: Arguments for a Philosophy of Being.' In The Voices ofTime,].T. Fraser, ed., 417-33. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Count, Earl W. 1969. 'Animal Communication in Man-Science.' In Approaches to Animal Communication, T.A. Sebeok and A. Ramsay, eds., 71-130. The Hague: Mouton. Cytowic, Richard E. 1989. Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses. New York: SpringerVerlag.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

334 References Damasio, Antonio R. 1994. Descartes'Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: G.P. Putnam. - 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. Dasenbrock, Reed Way, ed., 1993a. Literary Theory after Davidson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. - 1993b. 'Do We Write the Text We Read?' In Literary Theory after Davidson, R.W. Dasenbrock, ed., 18-36. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Davidson, Donald. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon. Davis, James. 1972. Peirce's Epistemology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Deely, John. 1994. New Beginnings: Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. DeLong, Howard. 1970. A Profele of Mathematical Logic. New York: Addison Wesley. Dennett, Daniel. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Litde, Brown. Derrida, Jacques. 1973. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. D.B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Devlin, Keith J. 1997. Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind. New York: John Wiley. Dewey,John. 1916. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan. - 1985 (1925). Experience and Nature. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. - 1987 (1934). Art as Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dobbs, H.A.C. 1972. 'The Dimensions of the Sensible Present.' In The Study of Timet].1. Fraser, F.C. Huber and G.H. Miller, eds., 174-92. New York: Springer-Verlag. Douglas, Mary. 1975. Implicit Meanings. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dozoretz, Jerry. 1979. 'The Internally Real, the Fictitious, and the Indubitable.' In Peirce Studies /, J.E. Brock et al., eds., 77-87. Lubbock, TX: Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1979. What Computers Can't Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Harper and Row. - 1992. What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Stuart E. Dreyfus. 1986. Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. New York: Free Press. Duhem, Pierre. 1954. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P.P. Wiener. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 335 Dummett, Michael. 1966. 'Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics.' In Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations, G. Pitcher, ed., 420-47. New York: Anchor. Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eco, Umberto, and Thomas A. Sebeok, eds. 1983. The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eddington, Arthur S. 1946. Fundamental Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1958a. The Philosophy of Physical Science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. - 1958b. The Nature of the Physical World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Einstein, Albert. 1949. 'Autobiographical Notes.' In Albert Einstein: PhilosopherScientist, vol. 1, P.A. Schilpp, ed., 1-95. New York: Harper and Row. Ekman, Paul. 1992. 'Facial Expressions of Emotion: New Findings, New Questions.' Psychological Science?!'. 34—8. Engel-Tiercelin, Claudine. 1992. 'Vagueness and the Unity of C.S. Peirce's Realism.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28(1): 51-82. Evnine, S. 1991. Donald Davidson. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fann, K.T. 1970. Peirce's Theory of Abduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Feigl, Herbert, and Michael Scriven, eds., 1956. The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Feyerabend, Paul K. 1975. Against Method. London: NLB. - 1987. Farewell to Reason. London: NLB. Fisch, Max H. 1986. Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fisch, M., and A. Turquette. 1966. 'Peirce's Triadic Logic.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2: 71—85. Fisher, Seymour, and Roger P. Greenberg. 1977. The Scientific Credibility of Freud's Theories and Therapy. New York: Basic Books. Fitzgerald, John J. 1966. Peirce's Theory of Signs as Foundation for Pragmatism. The Hague: Mouton. Flax, Jane. 1990. Thinking Figments. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frank-Kamenetskii, Maxim D. 1993. UnravelingDNA. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Fraser, J.T. 1979. Time as Conflict: A Scientific and Humanistic Study. Basel: Birkhauer. - 1982. The Genesis and Evolution of Time: A Critique of Interpretation in Physics. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

336 References Freiro, Eduardo. 1957. O Brasileiro Ndo e Triste. Rio de Janeiro: Institute Nacional do Livro. Fried, Yehuda, and Joseph Agassi. 1976. Paranoia: A Study in Diagnosis. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1979. Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. W. Glen-Doepel. London: Sheed and Ward. Gardner, Howard. 1983. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: HarperCollins. - 1987. The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution, 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books. Gibbins, Peter. 1987. Particles and Paradoxes: The Limits of Quantum Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glaserfeld, Ernst von. 1974. Tiaget and the Radical Constructivist Epistemology.' In Epistemology and Education (Report 14), C.D. Smock and E. von Glaserfeld, eds., 29-41. Athens, GA: Mathemagenic Activities Program. - 1979a. 'Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self.' In A Cybernetics Approach to the Assessment of Children: Toward a More Human Use of Human Beings, M.N. Ozer, ed., 121-35. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. - 1979b. 'Radical Constructivism and Piaget's Concept of Knowledge.' In The Impact ofPiagetian Theory, R.B. Murray, eds., 109-24. Baltimore: University Park Press. - 1984. 'An Introduction to Radical Constructivism.' In The Invented Reality, P. Watzlawick, ed., 5-19. New York: W.W. Norton. Gleick, James. 1987. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking. Godel, Kurt. 1949. 'A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy.' In Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, vol. 2, P.A. Schilpp, ed., 557-62. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Gombrich, Ernst H. 1960. Art and Illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goodman, Nelson. 1965. Fact, Fiction andForecast, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill. - 1976a. The Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. - 1976b. Problems and Prospects. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. - 1978. WaysofWorldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett. Gorman, David. 1993. 'Davidson and Dummett on Language and Interpretation.' In Literary Theory after Davidson, R.W. Dasenbrock, ed., 201-31. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Goswami, Amit. 1993. The Self-Aware Universe. New York: J.P. Tarcher. Greenlee, Douglas. 1973. Peirce's Concept of Sign. The Hague: Mouton.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 337 Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Grunbaum, Adolf. 1967. Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press. - 1993. Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Madison, CN: International Universities Press. Haack, Susan. 1978. Philosophy of Logics. New York: Cambridge University Press. - 1996. Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Habermas.Jurgen. 1987. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: MIT Press. Hacking, Ian. 1975. Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1983. Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1984. 'Language, Truth, and Reason.' In Rationality and Relativism, M. Hollis and S. Lukes, eds., 48-66. Cambridge: MIT Press. - 1985. 'Styles of Scientific Reasoning.' In Post-Analytic Philosophy,]. Rajchman and C. West, eds., 145-65. New York: Columbia University Press. - 1993. 'On Kripke's and Goodman's Uses of 'GrueV Philosophy 68, 269-95. - 1995. 'Entrenchment.' In Gruel The New Riddle of Induction, D. Stalker, ed., 193-223. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Hadamard, Jacques. 1945. The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hanson, Norwood R. 1958. Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 1969. Perception and Discovery. San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper. Harris, James F. 1992. Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Hartshorne, Charles. 1970. Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Hastrup, Kirsten. 1995. A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory. New York: Routledge. Hawkes, Terence. 1977. Structuralism and Semiotics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hayward, Jeremy. 1987. Shifting Worlds, Changing Minds. Boston: Shambhala. Heelan, Patrick. 1983. Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1953. Identity and Difference. New York: Harper and Row.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

338 References Heisenberg, Werner. 1958. Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row. - 1971. Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations. New York: Harper and Row. Helmholtz, H. von. 1876. The Origin and Meaning of Geometrical Axioms.' Mind 1:301-21. Hempel, Carl. 1945. 'Studies in the Logic of Confirmation.' Mind 54: 1-26, 97-121. Herrigel, Eugen. 1953. Zen in the Art of Archery, trans. R.F.C. Hull. New York: Vintage. Hesse, Mary B. 1969. 'Ramifications of "Grue."' British Journal of the Philosophy of Science?.®: 13-25. - 1980. Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1979. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books. Holtzman, S.H., and C.M. Leich, eds. 1981. Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule. London: Routledge. Hookway, Christopher. 1985. Peirce. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hopkins, J. 1999. 'Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Radical Interpretation.' In The Philosophy of Donald Davidson, L.E. Hahn, ed., 255-85. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Horton, Robin. 1984. 'Tradition and Modernity Revisited.' In Rationality and Relativism, M. Hollis and S. Lukes, eds., 201-60. Cambridge: MIT. Howes, David, ed. 1991. The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hume, David. 1960 [1739-40]. A Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Biggs, ed Oxford: Clarendon. Huxley, Aldous. 1946. Brave New World. New York: Harper and Brothers. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which is Not One.Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ivins, William L.,Jr. 1973. On the Rationalization of Sight. New York: DaCapo. Jagit, Singh. 1966. Great Ideas in Information Theory, Language, and Cybernetics. New York: Dover. James, William. 1920. Collected Essays and Reviews, ed. R.B. Perry. New York: Longmans. - 1950 (1890). The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. New York: Dover. Jameson, Fredric. 1992. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jeans, James. 1948. The Mysterious Universe. New York: Macmillan. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 339 Jones, Edwin. 1989. Reading the Book of Nature. Athens: Ohio University Press. Kafka, Franz. 1957 (1925). The Trial, trans. W. Muir and E. Muir. New York: Knopf. Kaku, Michio. 1994. Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension. New York: Oxford University Press. - 1997. Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century. New York: Doubleday. Kauffman, Louis H. 1986. 'Self Reference and Recursive Forms.' Journal of Social Biological Structure 9: 1—21. - 1991. Knots and Physics. London: World Scientific. Kauffman, L.H., and FJ. Varela. 1980. 'Form Dynamics. 'Journal of Social Biological Structure 3: 171-216. Kent, Thomas. 1993. 'Interpretation and Triangulation: A Davidsonian Critique of Reader-Oriented Literary Theory.' In Literary Theory after Davidson, R.W. Dasenbrock, ed., 37-58. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Kline, Morris. 1980. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Korner, Stephen. 1970. Categorial Frameworks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kosko, Bart. 1993. Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic. New York: Hyperion. Kripke, Saul. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laing, Ronald D. 1965. The Divided Self. Middlesex: Penguin. — 1971. Self and Others. Middlesex: Penguin. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lane, Robert. 1999. 'Peirce's Triadic Logic Revisited.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35(2): 284-311. LePore, E., ed. 1986. Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. London: Basil Blackwell. LeShan, Lawrence, and Henry Margenau. 1982. Einstein's Space and van Gogh's Sky: Physical Reality and Beyond. New York: Macmillan. Libet, Benjamin. 1981. 'Timing of Cerebral Processes Relative to Concomitant Conscious Experience in Man.' In Advances in Psychological Sciences, G. Adam, I. Meszaros, and E.I. Banyai, eds., 75-88. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon. - 1985. 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action.' Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 529-66. Liszka, James J. 1996. A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

340 References Lorenz, Edward. 1963. 'Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.' Journal of Atmospheric Sciences 20: 131-40. Lowe, Donald M. 1982. History of Bourgeois Perception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lugones, Maria. 1994. 'Purity, Impurity, and Separation.' Signs 19(2): 458-77. Lupasco, Stephane. 1947. Logique et contradiction. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Malcolm, Norman. 1989. 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules.' Philosophy 64: 5-28. Malpas,J.E. 1992. Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mansfield, Victor. 1989. 'Madhyamika Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics: Beginning a Dialogue.' International Philosophical Quarterly 29(4): 371-91. Margolis, Joseph. 1991. The Truth about Relativism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Matte Blanco, I. 1975. The Unconscious as Infinite Sets: An Essay in Bi-Logic. London: Duckworth. Maturana, Humberto, and Francisco J. Varela. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. - 1987. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boston: Shambhala. McClary, Susan. 1995. 'Music, the Pythagoreans, and the Body.' In Choreographing History, S. Foster, ed., 82-104. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McDowell, J. 1984. 'Wittgenstein on Following a Rule.' Synthese58: 325-63. McGinn, Colin. 1984. Wittgenstein on Meaning. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. McTaggart, J.M.E. 1927. The Nature of Existence, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melhuish, George. 1967. The Paradoxical Nature of Reality. Bristol: St Vincent's Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith. New York: Humanities Press. Merrell, Floyd. 1991. Signs Becoming Signs: Our Perfusive, Pervasive Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. - 1995a. Semiosis in the Postmodern Age. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. - 1995b. Peirce's Semiotics Now: A Primer. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press. — 1996. Signs Grow: Semiosis and Life Processes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. - 1997. Peirce, Signs, and Meaning. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. - 1998a. Simplicity and Complexity: Pondering Literature, Science, and Painting.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 341 - 1998b. Sensing Semiosis: Toward the Possibility of Complementary Cultural 'Logics'. New York: St Martin's Press. - 2000a. Signs, Science, Self-Subsuming (Arti)facts. Dresden: Thelem. - 2000b. Complementing Latin American Borders. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press (forthcoming). - 2000c. Tasking Textuality. Berlin: Peter Lang. - 2001. 'Signs, Chaos, I Ching, Life.' Semiotica (forthcoming). Miller, Arthur I. 1978. 'Visualization Lost and Regained: The Genesis of the Quantum Theory in the Period 1913-27.' In On Aesthetics in Science,]. Wechsler, ed., 73-102. Cambridge: MIT Press. - 1986. Imagery in Scientific Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press. Minar, Edward H. 1990. Wittgenstein's Treatment of Following a Rule. New York: Garland. Minkowski, Hermann. 1952. 'Space and Time.' In The Principle of Relativity, H.A. Lorentz et al., trans. W. Perrett and G.B.Jeffrey, 75-91. London: Dover. Murphey, Murray G. 1961. The Development of Peirce's Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nadin, Mihai. 1982. 'Consistency, Completeness and the Meaning of Sign Theories.' American Journal ofSemiotics 1(3): 79-98. - 1983. 'The Logic of Vagueness and the Category of Synechism.' In The Relevance of Charles Peirce, E. Freeman, ed., 154-66. LaSalle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophy. Nagel, Ernst, and James R. Newman. 1964. Godel's Proof. New York: New York University Press. Nagel, Thomas. 1974. 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' Philosophical Review 83: 435-51. Nesher, D. 1983. 'A Pragmatic Theory of Meaning: A Note on Peirce's "Last" Formulation of the Pragmatic Maxim and its Interpretation.' Semiotica 44(3/4): 203-57. - 1990. 'Understanding Sign Semiosis as Cognition and as Self-Conscious Process: A Reconstruction of some Basic Concepts of Peirce's Semiotics.' Semiotica 7 9 ( I / 2 ) : 1-49. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968 (1909). On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. W. Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage. - 1973 (1909). Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. - 1974 (1909). The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Ogden, C.K., and I.A. Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Panofsky, E. 1960. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

342

References

Pattee, Howard H. 1979. 'Robert Rosen, Howard Hunt Pattee, and Raymond L. Somorja: A Symposium in Theoretical Biology.' In A Question of Physics: Conversations in Physics and Biology, P. Buckley and F.D. Peat, eds., 84-123. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Peirce, Charles S. 1931-5. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, eds., vols. 1-6. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. - 1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, A. Burks, ed., vols. 7-8. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. — 1976. The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, 4 vols., C. Eisele, ed. The Hague: Mouton. - MS (unpublished manuscripts). Piaget.Jean. 1953. Logic and Psychology. Manchester: Manchester University Press. - 1968. Logical Thinking in Children, I.E. Sigel and F.H. Hooper, eds. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. - 197la. Biology and Knowledge, trans. B. Walsh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. - 197lb. Psychology and Epistemology: Towards a Theory of Knowledge. New York: Viking. - 1977. The Development of Thought: Equilibration of Cognitive Structures, trans. A. Rosin. New York: Viking. Piaget, Jean, and Barbel Inhelder. 1956. The Child's Concept of Space, trans. FJ. Langdon and J.L. Lunzer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Plotnitsky, Arkady. 1994. Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Poincare, Henri. 1914. Science and Mind, trans. F. Maitland. London: Thomas Nelson. - 1952 (1905). Science and Hypothesis, trans. F. Maitland. London: Thomas Nelson. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. - 1969. Knowledge and Being, M. Grene, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ponzio, Augusto. 1990. Man as Sign: Essays on the Philosophy of Language, trans. S. Petrilli. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Popper, Karl R. 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Harper and Row. - 1962. The Open Society and Its Enemies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. - 1972. Objective Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - 1974. Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Popper, Karl R., and John C. Eccles. 1977. The Self and Its Brain. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 343 Potter, Vincent G. 1996. Peirce's Philosophical Perspectives, ed. V.M. Colapietro. New York: Fordham University Press. Pradhan, Shekhar. 1993. 'The Dream of a Common Language.' In Literary Theory after Davidson, R.W. Dasenbrock, ed., 180-200. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Prado, Paulo. 1931. Retrato do Brasil: Ensaio Sobre a Tristeza Brasileira, 4th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Briguet. Prigogine, Ilya. 1980. From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. New York: W.H. Freeman. - 1997. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. New York: Free Press. Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. 1983. Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam. Puhl, K., ed. 1991. Meaning Scepticism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Putnam, Hilary. 1969. 'Is Logic Empirical?' In Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, 1966/1968, R.S. Cohen and M.W. Wartofsky, eds., 216-41. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. - 1971. 'How to Think Quantum Logically.' In Logic and Probability in Quantum Mechanics, P. Suppes, ed., 47-53. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. - 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1983a. 'Vagueness and Alternative Logic.' Erkenntnis 19: 297-314. - 1983b. Realism and Reason, Philosophical Papers. Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1987. The Many Faces of Realism. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. - 1988. Representation and Reality. Cambridge: MIT. Quine, Willard van Orman. 1969. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Ramberg, B.T. 1989. Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Redhead, Michael. 1987. Incompleteness, Nonlocality, and Realism: A Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Clarendon. Reichenbach, Hans. 1956. The Philosophy of Space and Time, trans. M. Reichenbach. New York: Dover. Reid, Thomas. 1969 (1788). Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind. Cambridge: MIT. Rescher, Nicholas. 1978. Peirce's Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Rescher, Nicholas, and Robert Brandom. 1979. The Logic of Inconsistency: A Study of the Non-Standard Possible-World Semantics and Ontology. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

344 References Revesz, Geza. 1957. 'Optikund Haptik.' Studium Generated: 374-9. Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born. New York: W.W. Norton. Richards, J.L. 1979. The Reception of Mathematical Theory: Non-Euclidean Geometry in England, 1868-1883.' In Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, B. Barnes and S. Shapin, eds., 143-63. London: Sage. Rochberg-Halton, E. 1986. Meaning and Modernity: Social Theory in the Pragmatic Attitude. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Romanyshyn, Robert D. 1989. Technology as Symptom and Dream. New York: Routledge. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. - 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roth, Paul A. 1987. Meaning and Method in the Social Sciences: A Case for Methodological Pluralism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rotman, Brian. \Q77.Jean Piaget: Psychologist of the Real Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Russell, Bertrand. 1910. 'The Theory of Logical Types.' In Principia Mathematica, by A.N. Whitehead and B. Russell, 37-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sachs, Mendel. 1988. Einstein versus Bohr: The Continuous Controversies in Physics. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Sacks, Mark. 1989. The World We Found: The Limits of Ontological Talk. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Sacks, Oliver. 1984. A Leg to Stand On. New York: HarperCollins. - 1985. Migraine, revised and expanded ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. - 1987. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales. New York: HarperCollins. - 1989. Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf. New York: HarperCollins. - 1995. An Anthropologist on Mars. New York: Vintage. Salthe, Stanley N. 1993. Development and Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology. Cambridge: MIT. Santaella, Lucia. 1992a. A Assinatura das coisas: Peirce e a literatura. Sao Paulo: Imago. - 1992b. Cultura das midias. Sao Paulo: Razao Social. - 1993. A Percepcdo: Uma teoria da semiotica. Sao Paulo: Experimento. - 1994. Estetica: De Platdo a Peirce. Sao Paulo: Experimento. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1966. Course in General Linguistics, trans. W. Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 345 Savan, David. 1987-8. An Introduction to C.S. Peirce'sFull System ofSemeiotic, Monograph Series of the Toronto Semiotic Circle 1. Toronto: Victoria College. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schiffer, S. 1986. 'Kripkenstein Meets the Remnants of Meaning.' Philosophical Studies 49: 147-62. Schneider, Mark A. 1993. Culture and Enchantment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schrodinger, Erwin. 1954. Nature and the Greeks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1967. What Is Life? and Mind and Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schultz, Emily A. 1990. Dialogue at the Margins: Whorf, Bakhtin, and Linguistic Relativity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Searle,John R. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 1980. 'Minds, Brains, and Programs, with Open Peer Commentaries.' Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417—57. Sebeok, Thomas A. 1976. Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. - 1979. The Sign and Its Masters. Austin: University of Texas Press. - 1994. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sherrington, Charles S. 1940. Man on His Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shlain, Leonard. 1991. Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light. New York: William Morrow. Short, Tom L. 1982. 'Life Among the Legisigns.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 18(4): 285-310. - 1996. 'Interpreting Peirce's Interpretant: A Response to Lalor, Liszka, and Meyers.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32(4): 488-541. Shusterman, Richard. 1992. Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art. Oxford: Blackwell. - 1997. Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life. New York: Routledge. Siu, R.G.H. 1957. The Tao of Science. Cambridge: MIT. Skolimowski, Henryk. 1986. 'Quine, Ajdukiewicz, and the Predicament of 20th Century Philosophy.' In The Philosophy ofW.V. Quine, L.E. Hahn and P. A. Schilpp, eds., 463-91. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. - 1987. 'The Interactive Mind in the Participatory Universe.' In The Real and the Imaginary: A New Approach to Physics, J.E. Charon, ed., 69-94. New York: Paragon.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

346 References Small, Kenneth. 1961. 'Professor Goodman's Puzzle.' Philosophical Review 7Q: 544-52. Smart, JJ.D. 1992. 'Wittgenstein, Following a Rule, and Scientific Psychology.' In The Scientific Enterprise, E. Ullmann-Margalit, eds., 123-37. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Smith, John E. 1983. 'Community and Reality.' In The Relevance of Charles Peirce, E. Freeman, ed., 38-58. LaSalle, IL: Monist Library of Philosophers. Smith, Wolfgang. 1995. The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key. Peru, IL: Sherwood Sugden. Spencer-Brown, G. 1979. Laws of Form. New York: E.P. Button. Squires, Evan J. 1993. 'Quantum Theory and the Relation between the Conscious Mind and the Physical World.' SyntheseQJ: 109-23. Stalker, D. 1995. Gruel The New Riddle of Induction. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Stewart, Ian. 1989. Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos. London: Blackwell Stewart, Ian, and Martin Golubitsky. 1992. Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer? London: Penguin. Stoller, Paul. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. - 1997. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Stroud, Barry. 1999. 'Radical Interpretation and Philosophical Skepticism.' In The Philosophy of Donald Davidson, L.E. Hahn, ed., 139-61. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Stove, D.C. 1982. Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists.Oxford: Pergamon. Sudnow, David. 1978. Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. - 1979. Talk's Body: A Meditation between Two Keyboards. New York: Knopf. Szamosi, Geza. 1986. The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tarski, Alfred. 1956.Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. London: Clarendon. Tate, John W. 1998. 'The Hermeneutic Circle vs. the Enlightenment.'Telos 110: 9-38. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Taylor, Charles. 1971. 'Interpretation and the Sciences of Man.' Review of Metaphysics 25 (1): 3-51. - 1984. 'Rationality.' In Rationality and Relativism, M. Hollis and S. Lukes, eds., 87-105. Cambridge: MIT. Thompson, Manley H., Jr. 1952. 'The Paradox of Peirce's Realism.' In Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, P.P. Wiener and F.H. Young, eds., 13342. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

References 347 Turley, Peter T. 1977. Peirce's Cosmology. New York: Philosophical Library. Uexkiill, Jakob von. 1957. 'A Stroll through the World of Animals and Men.' In Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept, C.H. Schiller, ed., 5-80. New York: International Universities Press. Uexkiill, Thure von. 1982. 'Jakob von Uexkiill's The Theory of Meaning.' Semiotica 42(1): 1-87. - 1986. 'Medicine and Semiotics.' Semiotica 61 (3/4): 201-17. - 1987. 'The Sign Theory of Jakob von Uexkiill.' In Classics of Semiotics, M. Krampen, et al., eds., 147-79. New York: Plenum Press. - 1989. 'Jakob von Uexkiill's Theory.' In The Semiotic Web 1988, T.A. Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok, eds., 129-58. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Varela, FranciscoJ. 1979. Principles of Biological Autonomy. Amsterdam: NorthHolland. Varela, FranciscoJ., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. 1993. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press. Vitz, Paul C., and Arnold B. Glimcher. 1984. Modern Art and Modern Science: The Parallel Analysis of Vision. New York: Praeger. Vuillemin, Jules. 1986. 'On Duhem's and Quine's Thesis'. In The Philosophy of W.V. Quine, L.E. Hahn and P.A. Schilpp, eds., 595-618. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Waddington, Conrad H. 1970. Behind Appearances: A Study of the Relations between Painting and the Natural Sciences in This Century. Cambridge: MIT. Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wang.J.C. 1982. 'DNATopoisomerases.' Scientific American 247XI): 94-109. Wasserman, S.A., J.M. Duncan, and N.R. Cozzarelli. 1985. 'Discovery of a Predicted DNA Knot Substantiates a Model for Site-Specific Recombination.' Science229: 171-74. Werhane, PH. 1987. 'Some Paradoxes in Kripke's Interpretation of Wittgenstein.' Synthese 73: 253-73. Weyl, Hermann. 1949. Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science. New York: Atheneum. Wheeler, John Archibald. 1980a. 'Beyond the Black Hole.' In Some Strangeness in the Proportion, H. Wolff, ed., 341-80. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. - 1980b. 'Law without Law.' In Structure in Science and Art, P. Medawar and J.H. Shelley, eds., 132-68. Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica. - 1984. 'Bits, Quanta, Meaning.' In Theoretical Physics Meeting, 121-34. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. - 1990. A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime. New York: Scientific American Library.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

348 References - 1994. At Home in the Universe. New York: American Institute of Physics. White, David A. 1985. Logic and Ontology in Heidegger. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1925. Science and the Modern World. New York: Macmillan. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality, Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, J.B. Carroll, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press. Wilber, Ken, ed. 1984. Quantum Questions. New York: Random House. Wilden, Anthony. 1972. System and Structure. London: Tavistock. Winfree, Arthur T. 1987. When Time Breaks Down. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wirth, Uwe. 1999. 'Abductive Reasoning in Peirce's and Davidson's Account of Interpretation.' Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35(1): 115-27. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan. - 1956. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Cambridge: MIT Press. - 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Works and Worlds of Art. London: Clarendon. Wright, C. 1984. 'Kripke's Account of the Argument Against Private Languages. 'Journal of Philosophy 81: 759-78. Yourgrau, Wolfgang. 1966. 'Language, Spatial Concepts and Physics.' In Mind, Matter, and Method, P.K. Feyerabend and G. Maxwell, eds., 496-99. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Zadeh, Lofti. 1965. 'Fuzzy Sets.' Information and Control8(3): 328-53. - 1975. 'Fuzzy Logic and Approximate Reasoning.' Synthese3Q: 407-28.

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Index

abduction, 80, 160, 167, 168, 170, 183, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 211, 222, 224, 225, 227-35, 241, 242, 243, 252, 255, 257, 260, 261,281,306, 321nl, 322n4; abducers, 181; inferential, 228; innateness, 232; instinctive, 232-3; learnability and accountability, 229, 279; perception and perceptual judgment, 223-4. See also deduction; Firstness; induction actualization (of signs), 49—50, 64, 66, 82—3. See also possibility

Anzaldua, Gloria, 92 arguments (texts), 49-51, 58-60. See also sign Aristotle, 18, 101, 103, 194, 204, 257, 288 artificial intelligence (AI), 300-3, 306-7, 309, 329n3 automatism, elliptic, 151-3, 160. See also automatism, epileptic automatism, epileptic, 160. See also automatism, elliptic Barfield, Owen, 300 Earth, John, 4

Bateson, Gregory, 125, 291-2 Baudrillard,Jean, 93, 167 Bergson, Henri, 124, 192 Berkeley, George, 168 Berman, Morris, 14-15, 94, 296-7, 309 Bernstein, Richard J., 78, 85, 86, 88, 103, 290 Bigwood, Carol, 92 Bloor, David, 243, 249 bodymind, 6-7, 8-17, 19, 33, 50, 90, 91-2, 93, 95, 120,125, 134-5, 137, 140,160,162,163,167, 176, 179-81, 182-7, 190, 192, 193, 199, 212, 234, 237, 244-5, 251, 252-4, 257-8, 260, 266, 278, 280-1, 290-2, 296, 299, 304, 308-10, 327nl, 327n4; body/ mind distinction, 47, 48, 50; dance of, 33; embodiment, 120, 131, 1324; in everyday activities, 135-48. See also focal-subsidiary; tacit knowing Bohm, David, 288 Bohr, Niels, 41, 75, 271, 294, 308, 309, 318n2 Bordo, Susan, 92 Borges, Jorge Luis, xiii, 62, 90, 120, 143, 191, 212, 213, 224, 238, 264,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

350 Index

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

265, 266, 280, 281; 'Averroes' Search,' 101-7, 204; 'The Circular Ruins,' 140-2; 'Death and the Compass,' 107-11, 204; Tunes the Memorious,' 123-4, 146, 167-8; 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,' 111-14, 204; Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,' 167-8 Borromean knot, 44, 48, 257 Braidotti, Rosi, 92 Brandom, Robert, 270 Broglie, Louis de, 271-2 Butler, Judith, 92 Calvin, William, 13-4 Capote, Truman, 60 categories, Peirce's, 17, 31, 64-5; possible-actual-potential, 43; and ten signs, 43-61. See also Firstness; Secondness; Thirdness Certeau, Michel de, 248 Cervantes, Miguel de, 111-12,118, 257 chance, 3-4. See also chaos chaos, viii, ix, x, 41, 89, 227, 256, 304; fractal theory, 294; order out of, 256-7, 310; science of complexity, 78, 256, 280; strange attractors, ix-xi Chaplin, Charlie, 10 Chow, Rey, 92 Churchill, Winston, 37-8 complementarity, 84, 91, 118, 120, 161, 165,172, 176, 300, 309, 310, 318n2; incongruous, 97-100,110, 202-3 conception, 235, 236-7, 239-40, 242, 248, 252, 253, 254, 255-6, 260, 265, 272, 276, 278, 279, 280, 283, 288, 289, 293, 305, 306. See also consciousness; perception

Connerton, Paul, 94 consciousness, 6-7, 12-13, 15,16, 17, 18,19-20, 22-4, 26, 29-30, 32, 36, 38, 43, 44-5, 82, 83, 87, 99-100, 104, 120,124-5, 131, 134, 135-6, 137,138-40,141,150-5,156,158, 159, 160,161, 163, 207, 213, 221, 224, 225, 234, 236, 258, 261, 270, 300, 305; autobiographical, 15960, 225; and becoming often signs, 52-60, 129-34; core, 135-48, 150, 152-3, 155, 156, 158,159, 160, 161,171,173, 299, 321nl; Damasio's concept of, 135-48; emerging of, in Mel, 20-3, 26, 28, 29; emerging of, in Gage, 24-30, 49-50, 53-5; extended, 135-48, 151,152-3,155,156, 159, 160, 169, 171, 173; feeling of, 129-34, 175-6; participatory, 309-10; peripheral awareness, 104—5; and proprioception, 176, 178; and self-consciousness, 182, 232, 281; unconscious and preconscious, 141, 148. See also focal-subsidiary; Polanyi; tacit knowing constructivism, 282-3, 289 continuum, 283, 289; Peirce's concept of, 249-52 conventions (conventionalism), 58-60, 77, 80,105,159,172,188, 200, 204, 207, 210, 228, 243, 248, 256, 266, 269, 286, 289, 306, 315n3, 325n4, 326n2 Cornford, R.M., 288 Cusa, Nicholas of, 288 Dalton, John, 75 Damasio, Antonio, xiii, 16, 18, 36, 48, 62,90, 93,119,120,131,135,137,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Index 351 142, 148, 149, 150-8, 160, 165-8, 171, 172, 174, 178-80, 184, 188, 191, 206, 211-12, 213, 221, 234, 238, 262, 264, 265, 266, 280, 303, 304, 307, 311, 315n3, 320nl, 320n4, 321n2, 322n4, 323n7, 326n2; concept of feeling and emotion, 23-30; David, a patient, 132-4, 139, 143, 154, 156-9, 172, 175, 263, 266, 281; Elliot, a patient, 26-8, 36-7, 82, 167, 200, 263, 266, 281; emotions, primary and secondary, 171-4; Gage, Phineas P., a patient, 24-30, 36-7, 48, 51, 82, 111, 119, 122, 123, 130, 131, 134, 139, 142, 143, 154, 167, 172, 175, 211, 234, 254, 263, 266, 281, 282, 303, 304, 311; patient A, 28-9; patient S, 134; somatic markers, 131, 183. See also consciousness; focal-subsidiary; images; tacit knowing dance, 33-4, 64 Davidson, Donald, 93, 94, 113, 191, 198-9, 204, 213, 221, 295, 322n2; conceptual schemes, 193—4; incommensurability, 193-4; principle of charity, 99, 195, 318m9; prior and passing theories, 205—7, 295, 305, 323n2; radical interpretation, 78-9, 195; triangulation, 323n7 deduction, 80, 160, 168, 170, 183, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, 227-34, 255. See also abduction; induction; Thirdness Democritus, 75 Dennett, Daniel, 165 Derrida,Jacques, 111 Descartes, Rene (Cartesianism), vii,

6, 47, 66, 67, 85, 88, 91, 94, 95, 118, 120, 126,165, 171, 174, 180, 185, 188, 190, 198, 211, 215-16, 219, 230, 233, 261, 262, 284, 288, 296, 307,308-9 Dewey, John, 192, 195-6, 197, 321nl dimensionality, viii, x, 82-5, 90, 10811, 114-19, 214-16, 216-21, 234, 249-50, 258-60, 261-4, 276,292-5. See also Firstness; Secondness; space; Thirdness; time disenchantment, 15, 26, 299-300, 307. See also enchantment Dobbs, H.A.C., 216-19, 324n5 Douglas, Mary, 125 doxa, 63-5, 66, 67, 68, 70-5, 316nl. See also episteme; ontic Doyle, Conan, 71,72 Duhem, Pierre, 69, 248 Dummett, Michael, 325n4

Eccles,John C., 6 Eco, Umberto, 39-40 Eddington, Arthur S., 216, 270, 327n4 Einstein, Albert, 89, 110, 112, 169, 216, 266, 269, 271, 289, 290, 328n2 Ekman, Paul, 174-5 Eliot, T.S., 137, 197 embodiment, 120, 132, 133, 211, 212-13. See also bodymind; focalsubsidiary; tacit knowing emptiness, 43, 44, 45, 75, 81, 84-5, 97, 15, 214, 258, 260, 314n3; empty set, 81 enchantment, 96. See also disenchantment episteme, 63-4, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70-1, 316nl, 318n9. See also doxa; ontic Escher, Mavrits C., 109, 287

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

352 Index

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Euclid (Euclidean geometry), 45, 214, 215, 216, 219, 275, 284, 286-9, 296, 328n2 fallibilism, Peirce's concept of, 63, 79,114, 205, 233, 237, 306, 323n6. See also incompleteness; inconsistency feeling and sensing, 27-8, 30, 36, 48, 49-50, 80, 87, 98, 120-3, 130, 135, 139,140, 141,143,149,150,152-3, 160,165,168, 169,170,171,172, 174,175,181, 212-13, 225, 228, 231, 232, 293, 306, 320nl, 320In2; and concrete reasonableness, 233-4; Damasio's concept of, 123-34; emotion and sensation, 118, 129-34; loss of, 155; and qualisigns, 52-4; and viscerality, 121-2. See also, Firstness; focalsubsidiary; qualisigns; tacit knowing; viscerality Feyerabend, Paul K., 78, 93, 103, 106 Feynmann, Richard, 75 Firstness, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 90, 105, 120, 123, 125, 126, 129, 134, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144-5, 149, 150, 157, 171, 181, 186, 188, 189, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 210, 216, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 242, 249, 252, 253, 255, 260, 262, 267, 278, 279, 297, 315n3, 322n4, 323n7. See also feeling; focalsubsidiary; qualisigns; Secondness; signs; tacit knowing; Thirdness Fisch, Max H., 326n6, 323n7 Flax, Jane, 92 focal-subsidiary (awareness, attention), 12, 99-100, 126, 127, 140,

141,160,161,162,165-6,170,171, 176-8,183, 213, 244, 292, 299, 305. See also Firstness; Polanyi; tacit knowing Foucault, Michel, 93,132, 211 fractals, viii, ix, x. See also chaos Fraser, J.T., 267-8, 274 Freud, Sigmund, 17, 18, 313nl Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 85-6, 88, 94-5,113,125 Galileo Galilei, 233, 288, 298, 310, 311,329n5 Gardner, Howard, 198 Geertz, Clifford, 93, 103, 111, 113, 299; experience near-experience distant, 98-9, 105-7, 118-19. See also focal-subsidiary generality, 77, 79, 120, 146, 147-8, 156-7, 159, 168, 206, 219, 222, 230, 241, 294, 321n3. See also incompleteness; inconsistency; overdetermination; underdetermination; vagueness Glazerfeld, Ernst von, 282-3 Godel, Kurt, 66, 146, 294 Goodman, Nelson, 75-6, 191, 202, 204, 207, 209, 213, 221, 323n5, 325nl; grue/green, 74, 113, 200, 202-4, 207, 208-11, 250; 'New Riddle of Induction,' 199, 200-1, 318nl; primary and secondary extension, 71-2; similarities, 201. See also abduction; induction Habermas.Jurgen, 195, 196 habit, Peirce's concept of, 7-8, 30, 50, 80, 86,105,125,127,128,141, 150,153, 163,170, 171-2, 178-9, 184, 205, 210, 213, 224, 229, 231,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Index 353 233, 237, 243, 253, 260, 277, 278, 326n2; and automatism, 132,151-2, 153; and non-habit, 170—1. See also consciousness; focal-subsidiary; tacit knowing Hacking, Ian, 5-6, 208, 209 Hanson, Norwood R., 289, 324n2 Harding, Sandra, 93 Harlow, John, 24-5 Harris, James, 200 Hayles, N. Katherine, 320n2 Heelan, Patrick, 286-90 Heidegger, Martin, 176, 195 Heisenberg, Werner, 269, 294, 308 Helmholtz, Hermann von, 289 Hempel, Carl, 240, 325nl hermeneutics, 85-93, 94, 95, 120, 122, 125, 204, 205, 206, 307. See also focal-subsidiary; horizon Hesse, Mary B., 88, 93 holism, 69, 105 homeostasis, 280 horizon, Gadamer's concept of, 65, 66, 85-6, 88, 90, 91, 95, 98, 215, 264, 287, 316n2; horizon fusion, 94-6. See also hermeneutics Hume, David, 123, 200, 204, 207, 246 Husserl, Edmund, 86, 94, 176 Huxley, Aldous, 165 icons (iconicity), 17, 31, 49-51, 5261,90,120,124, 143,149,159,181, 211, 227, 228, 230-1, 242, 262, 276-7, 278, 309, 310, 327n7. See also Firstness; indices; qualisigns; signs; symbols images, Damasio's concept of, 30-1 incommensurability, 75, 78, 84, 95, 98, 102, 103, 110, 112, 113-14, 144, 193-4, 317n6,316n4

incompleteness, 70, 79,120,134,146, 147-8, 203, 222, 230, 233, 241, 255, 258, 306, 321n3. See also generality; inconsistency; overdetermination; underdetermination; vagueness inconsistency, 79, 120, 147, 157, 222, 230, 233, 241, 255, 306, 321n3. See also generality; incompleteness; overdetermination; underdetermination; vagueness indices (indexicality), 17, 31, 49-51, 52-61, 90, 120, 130, 138, 147,159, 178, 211, 230-1, 276-7, 278, 309, 310, 327n7. See also icons; Secondness; signs; sinsigns; symbols inducers, Damasio's concept of, 170, 171, 178, 181, 320n3, 322n4. See also abduction; induction induction, 80, 160, 168, 203, 183, 199, 200, 202, 207, 208, 227-34, 234, 257. See also abduction; deduction; Secondness inference, 229-30. See alsoabduction; deduction; induction interaction. &einterdependency interdependency (interrelations, interaction), 8-9, 14-15, 17, 30, 31, 34, 42-3, 45, 46, 47-8, 50, 55, 58, 65, 76, 80, 83, 84, 86, 90, 113, 120,126,127, 129,140,160,175, 178, 183, 185, 193, 205, 235, 242, 256, 258, 259, 270, 274, 308, 313n3, 314n3, 315n3, 322n3, 326n2 interpretant, 16, 35-7, 38-43, 45, 62-3, 74-81, 83,113, 159, 181, 210, 224, 252, 270, 273, 274, 278, 311, 314n4; mediation of, 36-7; and ten signs, 52-61. See also object; representamen; signs; Thirdness

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

354 Index interrelationality. See interdependency intersubjectivity, 86-7 Irigaray, Luce, 92 James, William, 6, 17, 111, 137,143, 169,192,195, 236 Jameson, Fredric, 41, 93 Jeans, James, 269 Johnson, Mark, 297, 321nl, 328n2 Jung, Carl G., 18

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Kafka, Franz, 121, 123, 134, 166, 300 Kant, Immanuel, 274, 275, 280, 28 282, 283, 284, 295 Kauffman, Louis, 219 kinesthetics, 212, 125. See also bodymind; proprioception King, Martin Luther, 256 Kripke, Saul, 208, 209, 210, 213, 243, 245, 247 Kuhn, Thomas S., 78, 93, 319nl Lacan, Jacques, 17 Laing, Ronald D., 300 Lakatos, Imre, 93 Lakoff, George, 321 nl language (limits of), 154-9; tacit use of, 162-4. See also linguicentrism legisigns, 31, 49-51. See also Firstness; qualisigns; Secondness; sinsigns; Thirdness Libet, Benjamin, 12 linearity, 40-41. See also non-linearity linguicentrism, 71, 72, 76, 92-3, 94, 139,143, 154,191, 210-11, 212-13, 310, 320n2, 328n2. See also language; ocularcentrism linguistic turn, 17

logic, 5,18, 48, 279, 286, 293, 29 298, 308, 316nl, 317n7, 321nl, 322n2; Boolean-binary, vii, 68, 215-16, 284, 299-300; classical, 66, 67, 68, 326n6; of continuity, 214; first-order, 211; inductive, 239; non-classical, 66-7, 68, 71-2, 76-8, 91-2, 97, 99,118, 218, 219, 247, 250, 294-5, 296, 298-9; pre-logic, 294; and reason, 25, 247; tense and non-tense, 223-4. See also incompleteness; inconsistency; overdetermination; paradox; underdetermination Lorenz, Edward, ix, x, xi Lugones, Maria, 92 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 93 Margolis, Joseph, 68 Marx, Karl, 18 maxim (pragmatic), 206, 234-8, 239, 242, 253, 254-6, 279, 306, 324-5n3 McGinn, Colin, 243 McTaggartJ.M.E., 110, 124, 311; A- and B-series, 319n3. See also time mediation, 43, 46. See also interpretant; symbols; Thirdness Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 176, 213, 230, 289-90 Mobius, August Ferdinand, 218 Mobius-strip, xi, 218, 225-7, 256, 258 263, 292, 299; and Tenrose triangle,' 116-17; principle of, 114-19 morphogenesis, 280 mutism, akinetic (Damasio's concept of), 151-3, 160 Nagel, Thomas, 265-6 Newton, Isaac (Newtonian physics),

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Index 355

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

viii, 112,120,284,288,308-9, 328n2 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, 94, 290, 291, 295; perspectivism, 291-2 non-linearity, vii, x, 12, 40-1, 105, 136, 137, 138, 213, 218, 220, 225, 256, 287, 298, 306, 319n5, 320n2. See also linearity numbers (complex, imaginary, irrational), 216-21 Oakeschott, Michael, 195 object of the sign, 16, 35-7, 38-43, 45, 62-3, 74-81, 159, 181, 210, 211, 224, 273, 278, 281, 292, 311, 314n4; and ten signs, 52-61. See also interpretant; representamen; Secondness; sign objective idealism, 270, 272, 278. See also maxim (pragmatic) ocularcentrism, 30, 93, 94, 291, 310, 315n2. See also linguicentrism ontic, 63-5, 67, 68, 316nl, 318n9. See also doxa; episteme; ontology ontology, 69, 70, 71 other (otherness), 55, 102, 125, 134; and Secondness, 47 overde termination, 120, 142, 145, 146, 147-8, 157, 193, 203, 206, 207, 233, 321 n3, 321 n l , 326n6. See also generality; incompleteness; inconsistency; underde termination; vagueness paradox, 16, 20, 78, 85; of consciousness, 16, 249; of imaginary numbers, 217; of induction, 240-2; of knowledge, 102; liar, 294, 302-3; of logical types, 294; Lowenheim-

Skolem, 321nl; of one and many, 20; of spontaneity, 174; of translatability, 316n5; Wittgenstein's, 244-6, 249 participatory nature of feeling, consciousness, and semiosis, 14—15, 42, 96, 213, 259, 260, 269, 297, 299, 300, 308, 309, 312, 319n4, 329n4. See also interdependency Pascal, Blaise, 184, 288 Pattee, Howard H., 294 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 16-17, 31, 64, 65, 74, 76-7, 80, 82, 83, 88, 117, 120, 125,139, 140, 146, 153, 160, 167, 178, 186, 192, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 207, 211, 213, 214, 216, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 229-30, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 249, 251, 252, 256, 262, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 276, 278, 280, 281, 283, 285, 290, 306, 322n3, 322n4, 324nl, 326n2, 326n6, 327nl, 2, 4; 328nl; book of assertions, 214-15, 249; concrete reasonableness, 213, 233-4; cuts, 213-15; dialogic, 315n3; logic of discovery, 199; objective idealism, 201, 323n6; pragmatic maxim, 222; pragmatism, 203; signs, 35-51; sign decalogue, 52-61. See also Firstness; icons; indices; interpretant; object; representamen; Secondness; signs; symbols; Thirdness perception, 223, 235, 239, 255-6, 260,165, 275, 276, 280, 283, 284, 286, 288, 289, 305; hyperbolic vision, 287; perceptual judgment, 223-4; Uexkull's' perceptual and

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

356 Index effector organ, 271-4, 278-9, 282. See also conception; Uexkull, Jakob von; Umwelt perspectivism, 291-2 Piagetjean, 280, 281, 282, 288, 289; assimilation and accommodation, 279 Plato, 15, 146 Poe, Edgar Allen, 121 Poincare, Henri, vii-ix, 225, 226, 227, 232,289 Polanyi, Michael, 120, 140, 141, 170, 177, 213, 244, 299, 307, 308. See also focal-subsidiary; tacit knowing Popper, Karl R., 6, 88,112,194, 222-3, 293, 319nl possibility of signs, meaning, 49, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 82-3, 97, 105, 210, 217, 219, 226, 227, 228, 229, 236 242, 249, 251-2, 253, 255, 256, 257, 260, 262, 267, 279, 305. See also abduction; Firstness; overdetermination presuppositions (and preconceptions, prejudices), 80, 86, 88, 89, 96, 248, 316n2 Prigogine, Ilya, 32, 256, 280, 290, 309-10 process, 34, 36, 63-4, 65, 66, 68, 83, 122, 135, 141,153, 162, 171-2, 192, 203, 206, 229, 230, 232, 235, 253, 263, 280, 290, 304; and becoming, 36, 74-5, 83, 89,118,129-34,137, 167,168, 249, 251-2, 253-4, 257, 260, 262, 307-8, 310-11; bottom up-top down, 170-4, 178; extralinguistic, 154-5; flow of, 67, 74, 80, 88, 137, 141, 266; Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, 310-11; and jazz, 181; non-linearity, x, 137;

and rhythm, 136-7; of semiosis, 41, 43, 51; in sign translation, 40, 64; of signs becoming signs, 61, 62-6, 184-5, 211, 216, 253-4; timebinding of, 166. See also semiosis; signs proposition (sentence), 49-51, 58-60. See also signs proprioception, 125,126, 127, 128 176, 177-80. Seealsobodymind; kinesthetics Protagoras, 67-8 Putnam, Hilary, 73-4, 75-6, 89, 94, 191,198,199, 213, 221, 3l7n7, 321 nl, 327n3; internal realism, 193 qualisigns, 31, 49-51, 227. See also Firstness; legisigns; Secondness; sinsigns; Thirdness qualities, primary and secondary, 198-99 quantum theory, 18, 98, 266-8, 18n2 and Buddhism, 326nl; and time, 276 Quine, Willard V.W., 69, 248, 3l7n8; background language, 69-72; indeterminacy of translation, 69-70; inscrutability of reference, 69-72 reasoning, styles of, 5-6,14, 231, 247, 293 receptor and effector signs, 281 re-enchantment, 213, 296-300. See also disenchantment; enchantment Reichenbach, Hans, 283-5 Reid, Thomas, 247-8 relativism, 18, 67-8 relativity, theory of, 266-8 representamen, 16, 35-7, 38-9, 39-41,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Index 357 41-3, 45, 62-3, 74-81, 159, 181, 210, 311; and ten signs, 52-61. See also Firstness; interpretant; object; signs Rescher, Nicholas, 270 Revesz, Geza, 288 rhythm, 33, 63, 118, 121-3, 137, 160, 171,180-1, 207, 185, 212, 218-19, 304, 311, 312; of bodymind, 92; of complex plane, 218-21; dance and music, 33-4; Dewey's philosophy, 192; non-linear, 171; and polyrhythms, 140; syncopated, 9 Rich, Adrienne, 92 Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard, 214, 215, 216, 289, 328n2 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 37-8 Rorty, Richard, 88, 93, 191, 193, 195-7, 209, 210, 213, 221, 3l7n8; 'conversation of mankind,' 99, 195-6, 198, 204; cerebroscope, 300-1 Russell, Bertrand, 294 Rutherford, John, 75 Sacks, Oliver, xiii, 90, 120, 138-9, 142, 143, 149, 158, 174, 191, 207, 212, 213, 221, 238, 263, 264, 265, 281, 303; autistic twins, patients, 145-6; Ms B, patient, 143-5; Christina, 126-9, 178-80; Jimmy G., 1235; Jose, 142-5; Rebecca, 212-13 Santaella, Lucia, 325n4 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 274, 321 nl, 327n6 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 185-90, 207 Schneider, Mark, 87-8 Schrodinger, Irwin, 7, 75, 288 Searle, John, 210, 301-2, 304, 305, 306;, Chinese room, 301-3, 3l7n6

Secondness, 82, 83, 90, 120, 122, 123, 124, 129, 138, 139, 143, 144-5,147, 150,153,157, 158, 159,170, 171, 181, 186, 187-8, 189, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 210, 216, 223, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 242, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255, 260, 261, 262, 277, 279, 315n3, 323n7. See also Firstness; object; signs; sinsigns; Thirdness selection (choice, decision), 3-4, 4-5, 7, 8-9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 25-6, 82, 132, 133, 138, 166, 167, 168, 228-9, 263, 275, 284, 305-6; decision, regarding Gage, 25, 26, 181-2; and Goodman's 'projection,' 202, 203-4, 210 self, Damasio's concept of, 30-1, 186; autobiographical, 136-9, 139-40, 150, 151, 155, 159, 160, 169, 171, 304, 311; conscious, 154, 156, 186; core, 159, 171, 173, 299, 304; symbolic, 321n2. See also consciousness semiosis, 35, 39-41, 43, 45, 50, 51, 62, 63-5, 67, 71, 74, 76, 77, 83, 84, 87, 100, 113, 122, 137, 153, 154, 160, 185, 190, 203, 222, 227, 228, 230, 233, 235, 266, 268, 274, 282; semiotic context of, 304-6, 313n3 Sherrington, Charles, 125 Shusterman, Richard, 92-3, 95, 196, 197 signifier and signified, Saussure's concept of, 17, 27,154, 274 signs, xii, xiii, 35-51; becoming of, 227-9; of induction, inducer signs, 132-4; natural signs, 133; nine signs, 49-51; ten signs, sign decalogue, 52-61, 120-3,125-34,

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

358 Index 137-48, 151-4, 159-60, 166-83, 190, 200-1, 204, 207, 211-13, 300, 303, 304, 305, 309, 310; tripod model of, 35-51, 273-4; transformation-translation of, 16-17. 39-41, 69, 72-81, 78-91, 102, 154, 317n6. See also Firstness; interpretant; object; representamen; Secondness; semiosis; Thirdness sinsigns, 31, 49-51. See also legisigns; object; qualisigns; Secondness Socrates, 3 space, 108, 109, 110, 114-9, 174-5, 266-8, 276, 289-90, 293; hyperbolic, 286-90; spacetime, 216-21; related to time, 324n5; visual, 289-90. See also dimensionality; time; topology Stalin, Josef, 37-8 Sudnow, David, 8-12, 137 symbols (symbolicity), 17, 31, 49-51, 52-61,138, 141,159, 160, 196, 228, 277-8, 281,198-9, 309, 310, 327n7. See also icons; indices; legisigns; signs Thirdness tacit knowing, 9, 57, 58, 59, 64, 79, 83, 99-100, 104, 105-6, 150, 162-4, 170,177-8, 244, 245, 253, 257, 258. See also Polanyi Tarski, Alfred, 194-5; Convention T, 322n2 Taylor, Charles, 87, 88, 94 term (word), 49-51, 58-60. See also proposition; argument; Firstness Thirdness, 79, 82, 83, 105, 118, 122, 123,124,126, 129, 138,139,141, 142,143, 144-5,150,157, 159,168, 171, 186, 188, 189, 198, 199, 200,

201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 210, 216, 218, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 235, 237, 238, 239, 242, 252, 253, 255, 260, 277-8, 279, 315n3, 323n7, 326n2. See also, Firstness; interpretant; legisigns; Secondness; signs; symbols Thompson, Manley, 271 time, 108-9, 274-5, 276, 293; A-series and B-series, 110, 124; atemporal, protemporal, eotemporal, biotemporal, nootemporal, 267-8; -binding, 166; chronometric, 268, 275; imaginary versus real, 216-18, 225, 234-5, 260; mind-engendered, 268; spacetime, 265-80; two-dimensional, 324n5; Umwelt, 265-80. See also dimensionality; space tokens, 58, 108, 139, 146, 320n2. See also tones; types tones; 139. See also tokens; types topology as model, xi, xii, 83, 84,90, 98,99,100,103,122,191-2, 214-16, 221,222,226,227,249-50,258, 259-60, 263-4, 265, 272, 284, 288, 296, 297, 298, 304, 305, 310, 311, 328n2; and dimensionality, 109-11, 114-19; hypercube, 85. See also, dimensionality, space, time Toulmin, Stephen, 94 Turing, Alan, 301; Turing test, 301-2, 306. See also Searle types, 50, 108, 139, 142, 146, 320n2. See also tokens; tones Uexkiill, Jakob von, 264, 265, 269, 273, 271-74, 285, 288 Uexkiill, Thure von, 268-9, 274, 276,

277, 285, 288

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.

Index

Copyright © 2003. University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved.

Umwelt, 36, 167, 185, 264, 265-80, 285, 286, 288, 292, 293, 294, 295, 327nl, 2; and Innenwelt, 266 underdetermination, 69, 120, 145, 147-8, 157, 193, 203, 206, 207, 233, 248, 258, 321nl, 321n3, 326n6. See also generality; incompleteness; inconsistency; overdetermination; vagueness vagueness, 44, 47, 52-3, 57, 77, 79, 84, 114, 120, 122, 142, 146, 147-8, 157, 160, 206, 219, 222, 230, 239, 241, 242, 294, 310, 321n3; vague precision, xii-xiii. See also generality; incompleteness; inconsistency; overdetermination; underdetermination van Gogh, Vincent, 287, 328nl Varela, FranciscoJ., 132, 219, 294 viscerality, 121-2, 160, 180, 182, 306, 308, 312. See also feeling vortex of sign tripod, 44, 45, 75, 80—1,

359

83,114,122, 251, 258, 274, 310, 31. See also process; semiosis Werhane, Patricia, 243 Wheeler, John Archibald, 269, 270, 275, 290, 308, 319n4, 329n4 Whitehead, Alfred North, 192, 233, 276 Winch, Peter, 94 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 87, 112, 125, 195, 210, 222, 255-6, 265, 266, 270, 284, 294, 320nl, 325n4, 327n2; forms of life, 89-90; language games, 244-5; rule following, 243-9, 252-5, 306, 325n3 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 71-2 Yin/Yang, 176, 299-300, 307, 309, 310, 329n5 Yourgrau, Wolfgang, 288, 289, 290

Zen, 8

Merrell, Floyd. Sensing Corporeally : Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=4671945. Created from duke on 2020-02-05 12:15:41.