File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 116


Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 18:43:44 +0200 (EET)
From: j laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: M-TH: Re: about Hugh vs Justin


OK Justin, 

here comes another try.

You wrote:

> JL:  And how can they even be perceptible?
> Thought or emotion (or intention) as state of mind is
> one thing, its expression another. On the other hand,
> introspectively they aren't perceptible at all, because
> they are "on this side of senses", "inside", internal to
> mind: they don't come from outside like sounds.

" I'm with Hugh here. I think thoughts are something like perceived by
having them. That's how we know what we think, when we do. "

I don't get. First, "something like perceived" isn't exactly the same
as "perceived", so what do you mean? Secondly, If 'perception' means
the act by which we gain information from 'external world' - in
quasi-kantian parole: 'data' provided by senses becomes filtered and
structured by transcendental categories, results being 'phenomena' -
then how we can apply the concept of perception to 'inner experiences'
(because we don't gain information about our thinking through our
senses but directly, by introspection, or by 'intuition' perhaps)?


> Beyond? And I thought that he was in great pains to show
> that it's exactly a question of internal workings of our
> minds: forms of perception (time, space) and transcendental
> categories are so to speak 'immanent' to our minds. Or are
> you saying that 'head' is just a part of 'mind'?

" No, quite the opposite. "

Good.

" You have to distinguish between the empirical mind, for Kant, the
sort of thing Hugh and I are going on about with respect to cognitive
processes, and the transcendental locus of the categories and space
and time for Kant, which are a priori conditions of the possibility of
experience. They're not mental the way thoughts are., They're
conditions for having thoughts. They are quite objective. They're not
in the external world: for K the external world depends on them, nor
in the noumenal world, by definition, since the n-world is thew orld
as it apart from these conditions. But they are not in or dependent on
our minds either; the reverse, rather. They are very pecilair things.
"

I don't get. I don't find anything peculiar with trans. categories.

You're splitting the mind into two: empirical and transcendental? And
empirical mind is subjective, transcendental objective? Haven't found
such a formulation in Kant so far. Seems like you're somehow
restricting mind to thoughts, as if they were co-extensive? Or rather:
you're restricting mind into our everyday awareness and experience of
our own mental activity. Thereby you're forced to claim that
trans.cat's aren't "in the same place" (so to speak) with rest of
mental. Yet they are "here and now" all the time. Kant wasn't able to
give them precise theoretical status and genesis - otherwise we all
would be kantians - but surely he thought that they are in mind but
not of mind. They aren't dependent on our empirical minds, of course,
except in a sense that there has to be a mind in order there to be
transcendental categories... (Neo-kantians, however, speculated with
the idea that forms of perception of time and space and trans.cat's
somehow depend on us as living bodies (thereby denying Kant's own
belief in apriorism of them).)

About the objectivity of trans.cat's: Yes, Kant surely aimed at idea
that they are objective, but he wasn't able to provide a theory for
that. So strictly conceptually they remained subjective ones.

(Gee, I have to check this Kant-thing as soon as I get back home)


" I think emotional states are cognitive. They have content. I fear
that I may run into trouble. I love being with my children, Etc. A
better counterexamplea re qualia, pain, sensastions of color, which do
not appear to have content. I would still say that having these states
is thinking, at least sentience. They are not conceptual, fair enough.
The emotions are conceptual, however. "

Now you got me interested in your concepts of cognitive (and
cognition) and sentience: how do they relate to that of thinking on
one hand, and to language and conceptuality, on the other?

For example, animals can be in a state of fear without being able to
express their fear conceptually (due to their lack of linguistic
skills): for them fear is plain fear, not a meaningful state, though
they can be aware of it.

With humans it's different. We can not only be aware of our emotional
states but also articulate them conceptually. But surely you aren't
saying that this (in a loose sense) cognitive surplus is somehow part
of the emotion? And besides, what about emotional states that we
'repress' into 'unconscious' and let their energy or force enter
consciousness only as modified or transformed? How the original "real"
emotion can be conceptual if we cannot be aware of it?


> [Perhaps Hugh isn't referring to 'meaning' as an effect of
> linguistic operations only (Sense/Sinn), but as a combination
> of it and referent (that is, as Bedeutung)? And yes, I know
> there are more ways to 'define sense and meaning' than room
> for them all in a single post... but I can't grasp Hugh's aim
> in any other way at the moment.]

"Well, I can't grasp it at all."

Ok, I try explain. My problem is that I'm not always able to follow
what you folks mean, partly because in Finnish there seems to be lots
of words more or less close to 'sense' and 'meaning' that can and have
been used to differentiate nuances. That makes it difficult to choose
proper English words (because it seems that there isn't so much
alternatives; on slightly different terrain I'm not happy at all with
words 'mind', 'spirit', and 'psyche' in relation to philosophical
discourse on 'mental totality'). The same applies to German too. Yet I
try to clarify my point with some German examples (especially because
I can't suppose you to know Finnish) in order to draw the picture. I
can't be sure whether this makes any sense - but it'll be interesting
to try it.

To Hugh you wrote: "The notion you are getting is the sentence Schee
ist weiss expresses the same content as now is white, right? It's in a
sense artibtrary whether we express this content using German or
English. That's right, but it doesn't follow that there exist meaning
that we try to put into language"

As Hugh said:
> Depends how closely you tie meanings to propositions, doesn't it?

That is, according to some views, meaning is inherent to language, but
according to other views, it (that what's called meaning) may
supposedly have some reference or intention to extra-linguistic
reality. This sort of difference can be behind the distinction of
sense and meaning (in German; Sinn-Bedeutung) for some people (Frege,
for example, used that distinction in one sense in relation to planet
Venus as you sure recall).

Unfortunately I don't happen to have any manuals at hand, so I can
make mistakes now, but I'm sure that Malgosia or Hugh will correct me.

Philologically the German word 'Bedeutung' has several dimensions or
threads: Verb 'deuten' has been translated as 'to point (or refer) at
(or to) something' and 'explain', but also as 'to interprete'
(remember Freud's book "Traumdeutung", "Interpretation of Dreams").
The prefix 'be-' makes the twist (prefixes give different meanings
according different contexts of use which isn't unsystematic though):
'bedeuten' means 'to mean', 'to signify'. Finally, 'Bedeutung' means
'meaning', 'importance', and 'significance'. Paradoxically 'Sinn' also
means 'meaning' but also 'sense' (in both basic senses), even
'content'.

You see, even when references to sensual organs or capabilities are
skipped, there remains several signifying possibilities for sense/Sinn
and few of them overlap with meaning/Bedeutung. I have used (learned)
to use them basically this way: 'Meaning'/Bedeutung I seem to use (in
Finnish) in the same sense as you do - you choosed to use 'meaning' in
a sense of meaning-internal-to-language (should it be called
'significant content'?). 'Sense'/Sinn I use in special cases only. And
then there's 'referent' to refer to real thing itself (for example,
the cat on the mat which doesn't have or produce any meaning but to
which are referring).

That leaves open the issue of what word to use as a combination of
both meaning/Bedeutung sense of 'to point' and sense/Sinn sense of
'content'... To this I hastily tried to refer in my "Perhaps Hugh..."
paragraph (above) as "Bedeutung".

Forwards:

> Let's take your cat, for example. Justin is proved to
> *know* that cat is on the mat when he utters that "cat
> is on the mat", that is, makes a proposition.

" No, I submitted that to prove that I know that I think the cat is on
the mat. The issue between H and myself here was whether I can know
the contents of my own mind. "

And my concern are the questions: Is it really *knowledge* and
*knowing* when we are *aware* of the contents of our minds? Is it
really a question of knowing to be aware of some present thought in
one's own mind? Can it be "false knowledge" or untrue proposition? How
it can be proved to be true? See, our *knowledge* concerning some
state of things in reality and our *awareness* of our own states of
mind aren't exactly of same nature - or are they? According to your
conception they are?

I have the impression that Hugh too tries to simplify this issue by
trying to minimise the role of our self-conscious efforts to make
sense of thinking. He somehow wipes the whole problematics away by
calling it subjectivism filled with antinomies resolved by Hegel - as
if it isn't exactly to self-conscious thinking beings that these
questions are questions. I mean, it's one thing to resolve Kant's
antinomies and another thing to clarify concepts referring to our
mental skills, functions, structures - and their relations to social
processes and structures etc. We cannot by-pass such issues as simply
subjectivist ones, because at some moment we have to relate the used
concepts to our own experience (to see whether they make any sense) if
not any other reason.


" Well, I've argued that a lot of thought isn't propositional. See Mmy
"Propositional Attitude psycholofy as an Ideal Type," Topoi 1992. "

Unfortunately Topoi isn't available here. You don't happen to have
your article as a file...?


> They can manipulate signs (and researchers) by hitting
> proper sign, (...) There's no thinking and knowledge
> proper involved, yet there's clearly some intelligence
> and mental activity (not only gene-based responses to
> external stimulus).

" Sure. Sentience comes in degrees. I think that chimps definitely
think and cats probably do to some degree. "

What's the relationship between sentience and thinking?


" Maybe. Ruth Milikan has rgued to the contrary very powerfully. "

OK, I try to find some of her works.

Jukka




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