Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 13:08:15 +0800
From: Paul Bains <P.Bains-AT-murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: RE: dialectic


At 11:33 AM 1/7/99 -0800, Michael wrote:

>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Paul Bains wrote:
>Paul, 
>
>You've mentioned the distinction between mind-dependent
>and mind-independent entities several times in the past,
>but your particular usage continues to puzzle me.  It did
>so earlier when you somewhat blithely dissed Aristotle,
>and it does so now in reference to Nietzsche, Hegel and
>Kant.
>
>Here I would point out that Hegel's entire project can
>be reconstructed as "showing how categorial schemes are
>derived from experience" -- this is one way of describing
>the Begriff.  However, quite a bit hinges on what you
>mean by "mind".  Please explain further.

Hm, you would ask that. There's the v. long and the short. Here's the short:

Mind-dependent and mind-indep. are John Deely's translations of the staple
scholastic latin terms 'ens rationis' and 'ens reale.' These terms are
commonly trans. as 'being of reason' and 'real being', but this is becomes
inadequate in a semiotic.

The terms 'cognition-dependent being' and 'cognition-indep. being' could
also be used.

The extra-perceptive reader will have already noted that the distinction
btwn these terms is made cognitively. This cut up is made in our experience.

Mind-indep. in the tradition of Aquinas refers to that which is presumed to
exist indep. of human thought (the paradigm case being the physical presence
of a thing acting upon an external sense organ).  Physical, however, in the
trad. of Aquinas  includes both material entities and divinity, angels..

Thus we have the mountains and rivers that have a natural existence indep of
being perceived, (the 'opinion' 'strangely prevailing amongst men', and
lamented by Berkeley).


Mind-dep. originally referred to that which was thought to only exist as a
cognitive construct, having no extra-mental reality. (paradigm cases being
chimeras, unicorns, centaurs, elves??). That whose _whole_ existence
occurred as a result of distinctions made in cognition. For Ockham/kant and
the 'moderns' this would include e.g. 'relations'.

The originality of the late Thomistic tradition (exemplified in the work of
John Poinsot [John of St Thomas], partic the *Tractatus de Signis*, 1632, is
the way the notion of 'objective being' is used in relation to the mind-dep,
mind-indep couplet.

Take note that this is not the modern dichotomy btwn objective/subjective.
(cf. Expressionism in phil, p.406,n.e.).


Objective being for the Latins is _something that exists in awareness_. It
has been 'objected'. Objective beings are something known, these objective
beings _may_ also be part of a prejacent physical environment. Plato's
celestial spheres were objective beings thought to be physical beings
(mind-indep). As were ether and phlogiston.

What is occurring here is a distinction btwn things and objects whereby
something can occur only physically, only objectively (as known) and
physically and objectively. The trad mind-dep/mind-indep couplet becomes
related within objective being. How is this possible? Through an
understanding of the univocity as known of being in relation. Which i might
get to sometime.

Things do not reduce to exp. but are only known thru exp. Objects of exp are
sometimes identical with physical things (the north star). Sometimes they
are purely objective (Cinderella, elves?, the relation btwn a flag and country).

Were do the relations come in? In the thomist tradition relations are
indifferent to the mind-dep/mind-indep distinction. They remain relations
whether posited of ens rationis or ens reale (they are ontologically
peculiar, like 'sense'). This allows for a semiotic based on an
understanding of concepts as signs (which are relations) that allow us to
anticipate a storm or scorn a flag. 

"Sheer" relative being (whose whole being is in 'being toward' is
indifferent to its ground or cause. It is if one likes 'external' to its terms.

"Relation is the one type of being for which the qualification 'existing in
the mind' does not detract from what is proper to it.' Cajetan, 1507.

So altho i used the couplet mind-dep/mind-indep, they are transcended in a
univocal semiotic.

The long version, which i will spare your frayed tempers and attention,
would include a the pertinence of the concept of 'being as first known'
(primum cognitum) as it comes down to us from Avicenna/Scotus. In experience
there is a concept of being that precedes the distinction mind-dep/mind-ind
and allows for their relation. 

Paul.