File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9709, message 14


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


   

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