From: open1-AT-execpc.com Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 16:06:36 -0700 Subject: Re: PLC: Authority again Howard Hastings wrote: > > A few brief comments on Dennis Polis's response to Brian Connery. > > On Mon, 1 Sep 1997 open1-AT-execpc.com wrote: > > > Locke writes largely in the Scholastic tradition, and his political > > philosophy has passed into the American political tradition. It is as a > > participant in those two traditions that I write. > > I can understand that the two main tendencies in modern philsophy, > empiricism and rationalism, are transformations of Scholastic philosophy, > and do not by any means represent a "clean break" from the latter. > However, I am puzzled by the claim that Locke "writes largely IN the > Scholastic tradition." It seems to me that his starting point and method > of inquiry are rather different from those philosophers conventionally > called "scholastics." If he writes in the Scholastic tradition, then I am > wondering who does not, or in what sense he might be said to write in > that traditon. Locke differs from most modern philosophers in being schooled, at Oxford, in Scholastic philosophy, and he actively engages that tradition. To point out only a few Scholastic positions that Locke takes: 1. His realism. 2. The distinction of knowledge and belief in book IV of the *Essay,* and the correlative distinction between natural and revealed theology. 3. His rejection, in book I of the *Essay,* of innate ideas and his insistence on sensation as the sole source of knowledge. Compare Aristotelian Scholastic dictum: "Nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu." 4. The role of mental "capacities" in his epistemology - compare Scholastic "powers." 5. The secondary and derivative role assigned to words in book III. 6. The employment of Aritotelian categories throughout his writings. 7. His view of obligations as deriving both from ends and from divine commands. 8. His general position on Natural Law. 9. The role of sin in his political philosophy, reflecting the Augustinian traditon. 10. His views on the scientific method as centering on combination, division, generalization and abstaction, rather than on prediction and verification. These show an awareness of, and engagement with, the Scholatic tradition beyond that found in Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, or the pre-critcal Kant. That does not meant that Locke was a Thomist, but then neither was Scotus. It does mean that there is no effort on Locke's part to break with the tradition, either explicitly, or implicitly. His form is not the Scholastic Disputed Question, but that is because he has a different audience in a different time. > Regarding Dennis's characterization of Saicho's Uzi-- > > > Yes. But, both as a signifier and as a material object, it is only an > > instrument, not an agent. We must penetrate symbols to the agency the > > express. > > This raises an interesting question which my be connected to the problem > of authority, and how authority is conceived. If we think of an agent as > a kind of "prime mover" or "unmoved mover", then we can perhaps think > of signs and language as mere "instruments" of agency. Hmmm. I do not conceive of human agency as the act of an unmoved mover. God is an unmoved mover. We are all move movers. Rather, human agency is specification of one of multiple, real possibilities in response to a stimulus. There is a sense of moved which reflects initiation without specification. It is used when we say that we had a moving experience, or that a play or set of circumstances moved us. The fact that we can distinguish initiation from specification shows that the initiation of action need not entail the specification of action. > But what if we > take the more modern view that the subject (or agent) emerges within > discourse, is always already "moved" so to speak. What if thought cannot > precede language, but must somehow always be articulate with it, so > that one cannot have "agency" first, which then gets expressed through a > sign-as-instrument? Then we wouyld never have the expereince, which we do have, of searching for le mot juste. If all thought were in a lingustic medium, the articualtion of thought would never be an act separate from the thought itself. We could never be aware of a color and, at the same time, realize that we do not know the word for that color. We could never see a nameless pattern. In fact we could never be aware of a novel experience of any kind. Language would never grow, as there would be no need of new words and modes of expression. Of course all thinking employs insturments of thought. But, these are phenomenologicaally different than those employed in communication. "Cow," whether spoken or written, is an insturment of communication. <Cow> is the instrument of thought that "cow" expresses, and both symbolize a *cow* in nature. In order for "cow" to function symbolically, it must first be recognized for what it is. Until the sound or graphic "cow" is recognized as a word, it cannot function in its symbolic role. <Cow> (the idea of a *cow*) is different. In thinking of a *cow,* there is no requirement to first recognize that <cow> is an idea. In contradistinction to "cow," <cow> functions independantly of being recognized as a object in itself. In effect <cow> functions transparently. It is only on reflection that we come to realize that in thinking of a *cow,* we are employing an insturment of thought, <cow>. Two points follow from this phenomenology: (1) Locke was wrong in saying that all we know directly is our ideas. Rather we know the objects symbolized by our ideas directly, and our ideas reflectively and indirectly. (2) The symbols employed in thought are specifically different from those employed in the expression of thought. Hence, thought is not identically linguistic. None of this denies that there is a collateral and functionally important inner dialog that forms a part of our stream of consciousness. It simply means that the inner dialog is not exhaustive of our field of awareness. As for the subject, I am well aware of theories of the narrative self. But, to tell ourselves a story of which we are the protagonist, there must to be a self as narrator, i.e. a narrating agent prior to the narration, ans a self as audience, i.e. a receptive cognizant subject. Further, the narration is an imposition of new form on experienced material. In any such experience, there is an experiencing subject and not simply a stream of events passing in the absence of awareness. Thus, while there definitely is a narrative self, its esistence presupposes a self that is cognitively receptive and intellectually active. Such a self is the traditional self aware of its interactions with the environment and creatively responsive to them. > This is not a very original question, but it seems > pertinent to the authority thread in that the establishment of authority > so often depends upon rescuing the "agency" of some traditional source > of authority (especially sacred and legal texts) from the accidents > of linguistic, historical and cultural change. I am not supportive of the view that sacred texts or laws are dictated by a divine agent in any way that makes them immune to linguistic, historical and cultural influences. I am supportive of the view that human agents are responsible for many of their acts and omissions. To be perfectly clear, I mean by responsible that they are the specifiers of new lines of development not fully immanent in any state prior to their commitment to a course of action. > If this makes sense so far, then I shall risk adding that, on the view > I am suggesting (much under the authority of one Jacques D.) there > may be a sense in which signs do have agency. They are never entirely > free of that "indication" which Husserl seeks to deny expressive signs in > the first section of Logical Investigations I. > > hh To defend the view that signs are agents requires an understanding of signs and agency that allows for this. I understand signs to be objects taken as means of knowing something beyond themselves. I take agents, in the present context, to be sources of creative action. Given this understanding, I do not see how a sign can be an agent, except accidentally. Dennis Polis
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005