Re: Vedr.: Re: Clarifying our aims

Fine, Norbert. Then I will give you this one too. I will be gone for the next five days.

"To begin with the psychologists have not yet made it clear what Mind is. I do not mean its substratum; but they have not even made it clear what a psychical phenomenon is. Far less has any notion of mind been established and generally acknowledged which can compare for an instant in distinctness to the dynamical conception of matter. Almost all the psychologists still tell us that mind is consciousness. But to my apprehension Hartmann has proved conclusively that unconscious mind exists. What is meant by consciousness is really in itself nothing but feeling. Gay and Hartley were quite right about that; and though there may be, and probably is, something of the general nature of feeling almost everywhere, yet feeling in any ascertainable degree is a mere property of protoplasm, perhaps only of nerve matter. Now it so happens that biological organisms, and especially a nervous system are favorably conditioned for exhibiting the phenomena of mind also; and therefore it is not !
surprising that mind and feeling should be confounded. But I do not believe that psychology can be set to rights until the importance of Hartmann's argument is acknowledged, and it is seen that feeling is nothing but the inward aspect of things, while mind on the contrary is essentially an external phenomenon. "
(Peirce, CP 7.364.)

S�ren Brier, +45 3528 2689

http://www.flec.kvl.dk/personalprofile.asp?id=sbr&p=engelsk

Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing

http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK

>>> norbert@ufpa.br 12-06-02 13:25 >>>
Dear Soeren,
Thanks for the message. I cannot give you any statement to these word of
Pierce at the moment. I promise that I will think about and give you my
comments in a next occasion.
Norbert Fenzl

----- Original Message -----
From: "S�ren Brier" <sbr@kvl.dk>
To: "Multiple recipients of list FIS" <fis@listas.unizar.es>
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 8:59 PM
Subject: Vedr.: Re: Clarifying our aims

> Dear Norbert (from S�ren Brier)
>
> Allow me a somewhat late contribution to the topic of mind whit a quote
from Peirce:
>
> "Hence, it would be a mistake to conceive of the psychical and the
physical aspects of matter as two aspects absolutely distinct. Viewing a
thing from the outside, considering its relation of action and reaction with
other things, it appears as matter. Viewing it from the inside, looking at
its immediate character as feeling, it appears as consciousness. These two
views are combined when we remember that mechanical laws are nothing but
acquired habits, like all the regularities of mind, including the tendency
to take habits, itself; and that this action of habit is nothing but
generalization, and generalization is nothing but spreading of feelings."
(Peirce 1931-58, CP 6.268).
Received on Wed Jun 12 23:45:30 2002