semiotica cosmos and creativity brier

7/31/2019 Semiotica Cosmos and Creativity Brier

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Cosmos and creativity: Man in an evolvinguniverse as a creative, aesthetical agent

some Peircean remarks

BENT SRENSEN, SREN BRIER, and

TORKILD THELLEFSEN

Abstract

Any great new theoretical framework has an epistemological and an ontological

aspect to its philosophy as well as an axiological one, and one needs to under-

stand all three aspects in order to grasp the deep aspiration and idea of the

theoretical framework. Presently, there is a widespread effort to understand

C. S. Peirces (18371914) pragmaticistic semeiotic, and to develop it by inte-

grating the results of modern science and evolutionary thinking; rst, produc-

ing a biosemiotics and, second, by integrating it with the progress in cybernetics,

information science, and system theory to create a cybersemiotics.

In this paper, we focus on the understanding of the evolution of the universe

that Peirce produced as an alternative to the mechanistic view underlying clas-

sical physics and try to place man in an evolving universe as a creative, aes-

thetical agent. It is true that modern non-equilibrium physics has made a

modern foundation for a profound physical understanding of the basic evolu-

tionary processes in the universe. But science still has not produced a theory

that can explain how the creativity of the universe could produce signication,

interpretation, and rst-person consciousness. To this end, Peirces thoughts

on agapastic evolution coupled with the aesthetical inuence of the growth of

ideas and reasonableness on man could make a contribution.

Keywords: Charles S. Peirce; creativity; evolution; objective idealism; aes-

thetical attraction.

I hear you say: This smacks too much of ananthropomorphic conception. I reply that everyscientic explanation of a natural phenomenon isa hypothesis that there is something in nature towhich the human reason is analogous; and that it

really is so all the successes of science in its ap-plications to human convenience are witnesses.


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214 B. Srensen et al.

They proclaim that truth over the length andbreadth of the modern world. In the light of thesuccesses of science to my mind there is a degreeof baseness in denying our birthright as children

of God and in shamefacedly slinking away fromanthropomorphic conceptions of the universe.

Charles S. Peirce (EP2: 193, 1903)

1. Introduction:Theevolutionaryproblemofclassicalphysics

andatheoryofmind

The classical physical view of the cosmos is as a purely physical universe. It is

a closed system determined by universal natural laws. According to thermo-dynamics, the sum of the energy in the universe is deemed to be constant. Assuch, this view is in accordance with a deistic view of the universe created byGod, who withdrew from it after having created it. It is a perfect machine thatcan run by itself maybe for eternity. Roughly, this was the theology that theearly philosopher of science Ren Descartes (15961650) and the mechanical

physics foundational scientist Isaac Newton (16421727) adapted and com-bined with the machine metaphor to describe the world. This paradigmaticframework was needed to underpin the classical concept of universal physical

law and its vision of science as the knowledge tool that would be able to ndthe deepest knowledge of the world by nding the mathematical models of thelaws, which even might be the laws in themselves. As is well-known, GalileoGalileis (15641642) premise was that mathematics was equal to Godsthoughts and therefore was the very language of nature. The claim of the uni-verses closure towards inux of other forces and/or energy from outside iscrucial for physics in order to create a complete overview of the basic laws andmechanisms in the universe. But the problem from a scientic point of view

is that the laws are taken for granted and are not possible to explain, exceptas from the anthropogenic principle that if they were not as they are, we wouldnot be here to observe them. Peirce complained about this problem in the fol-lowing way:

Uniformities are precisely the kind of fact that needs to be accounted for. That a pitchedcoin should sometimes turn up heads and sometimes tails calls for no particular expla-nation; but if it shows heads every time, we wish to know how this result has beenbrought about. Law is par excellence the thing which wants a reason. Now the onlypossible way of accounting for the laws of nature and the uniformity in general is tosuppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be

obeyed precisely. It makes an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chancein nature. (CP1.121.13)


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Cosmos and creativity 215

Another problem with the idea of absolute law in a material and mechanicaluniverse is that it also requires a dichotomy as the one Descartes advocated for,where the human self and its thinking and rationality lie beyond the physical

world and therefore is in a qualitatively different sphere or world. Descartescalled it the world of thoughts. This design was practical in an epistemologythat was based on the belief that human observations did not disturb naturewhen being observed and experimented with, which was necessary for makingreal the assumption that science could identify the worlds composition downto the smallest parts and also mathematically determine the laws of nature. Inaddition, they did not operate with irreversible time and evolution. Naturally,however, the model caused major problems in making a model of how the soulcould affect anything in the world, such as its own body, and what was ex-changed between perception and cognition (Brier 2008a).

In contrast to this view is the theistic idea, where the universe is either Godsbody, or is created by God and still holds his presence. This opens up greateropportunities for scientic and rationally completely unexpected events occur-ring in the world through divine force entering the open universe. In Christian-ity, this power of creation is called the Holy Spirit and the events are deemedeither engendering or transformative for nature or are seen manifested as mir-acles. This would make the world as a whole opaque for human intelligence toget to the bottom of. The lord works in mysterious ways, said Einstein. Thisview is close to Thomas Aquinas (about 12251274) philosophy, where theresults of natural philosophy can only lead us to the threshold of faith, but can-not make us understand Gods thoughts, and, thus, what is behind the universe.Here we only have Gods revealed Scripture. From a human point of view, theindependence and unpredictability of the divine force on the one hand putssevere limits on the extent of scientic knowledge while, on the other, it opensup great divine creativity (Brier 2008d).

But in a universe where time and evolution are fundamental, and man is aproduct of evolution and therefore observes the universe from inside, thismakes the situation different. The assumption that the sum of energy in the

universe is constant is also fundamental to thermodynamics, even in the formof non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This is the science that led to the under-standing of information as negentropy (see Schrdinger 2006 [1967]), andwhich Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (1984) developed as the theory ofdissipative structures in a science of complexity and irreversible time. This

book is called Order out of Chaos and builds on Ludwig Boltzmanns prob-abilistic interpretation of thermodynamics (see also Prigogine 1980, 1996).Prigogine and Stengers developed a knowledge and science understanding thatdistances itself from the determinism of mechanics, based on the belief that it

is possible to nd some universal natural laws behind the complex forms ofrepresentations that determine all events in the universe. Thereby, they place


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themselves more in accordance with Peirce who, in an article to Monist (1893),wrote: I object to absolute universality, absolute exactitude, absolute neces-sity, being attributed to any proposition that does not deal with the {A} and

the {}, in the which I do not include any object of ordinary knowledge(CP6.607).Prigogine and Stengers accept chance as a real and necessary element of

evolution. In their understanding, evolution requires the creation of radicalnew things, patterns, and phenomena that cannot be predicted from a basic

physical understanding of the universe (Brier 2008a, 2008b). This is in accor-dance with Peirce, who clearly sees the inconsistence between accepting boththe idea of universal laws and evolution at the same time. In an unpublished

paper (1897), he wrote:

The infallibilist naturally thinks that everything always was substantially as it is now.Laws at any rate being absolute could not grow. They either always were, or they spranginstantaneously into being by a sudden at like the drill of a company of soldiers. Thismakes the laws of nature absolutely blind and inexplicable. Their why and whereforecant be asked. This absolutely blocks the road of inquiry. The fallibilist wont do this.He asks may these forces of nature not be somehow amenable to reason? May they nothave naturally grown up? After all, there is no reason to think they are absolute. If allthings are continuous, the universe must be undergoing a continuous growth from non-existence to existence. There is no difculty in conceiving existence as a matter of

degree. The reality of things consists in their persistent forcing themselves upon ourrecognition. If a thing has no such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then, is per-sistence, is regularity. In the original chaos, where there was no regularity, there was noexistence. It was all a confused dream. This we may suppose was in the innitely distantpast. But as things are getting more regular, more persistent, they are getting lessdreamy and more real. (CP1.175)

Prigogine and Stengers realized that the acceptance of the evolutionary idea isin a fundamental paradigmatic conict with classical physics, but perhaps notwith quantum physics. The science theoretical work by Prigogine had great

difculty being accepted in the well-established physics circles. But it becameeven worse when Prigogine suggested importing thermodynamic considerationsinto the inner of the atoms, and thereby discarded the idea that their stabilitywas fundamental in a mechanistic understanding. However, we know that noneof the elementary particles are eternal. They all have a time of decay, althoughvery long. This is one of the reasons that physics is still looking for smalleritems that they can make fundamental, and for a short time they were believedto have been found with quarks (Brier 2008a).

Building on thermodynamics research in complexity, non-linear systems

and fractal mathematics, researchers have continued to attempt to explain oneof the major creative elements in the universe not least from the perspective


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of classical physics, as Jacques Monod so clearly outlined in the bookChanceand Necessity (1971), namely, life. By life, we mean more precisely all the liv-ing systems and their ability for cognition based perception. How can con-

sciousness, which is an inner world of a rst-person experience, occur in thedead, deterministic, physical, and closed world? In Genesis, it is God who cre-ated life, but in the paradigm of evolution, science has to explain life as some-thing that occurs inside the universe by virtue of the same general principlesthat science uses to explain the physical and chemical aspects of the universe.So how do living systems emerge from dead nature? From where does theinternal spark of life occur and thus its creativity? Evolution is creativity,constantly creating new systems, and these systems become, when they arealive, more and more creative (Brier 2008d).

Since Norbert Wiener established cybernetics and united information theoryand thermodynamics, research scientists have tried to explain the phenomenonof life using the new concept of information that Wiener and Schrdingercreated. Their starting point was Claude Shannons mathematics, but theyredened information from being entropy (Shannons view) to negentropy.This view has been imported into cognitive science and articial intelli-gence research, looking at the human brain as an information processing sys-tem in line with the computer, and on the same basis they hope to uncover thecreativity of the language function. However, in recent years it has becomeclear that we cannot explain cognition based on meaning this way, nor canwe explain human creativity based on this paradigmatic basis (Brier 2008b,2008c).

It was Peirce who outlined a new expanded paradigm, based on a similarconcept as the one of Prigogine, where coincidence or chaos is fundamental toan evolutionary view of the creative universe. This paradigm integrated theidea of chaos and law, determinism and randomness by means of a theory ofmeaning and feeling, which was compatible with the previously developedscience but changed the fundamental philosophical framework. This frame-work is Peirces theory of three basic categories: Firstness, Secondness, and

Thirdness, and the theory of semeiosis as the basis for the development oflogical thinking. The most fundamental new feature is that Firstness notonly offers chance, but also pure sensory feeling, which is the law of mind, andits tendency to habit formation as a basis for the creativity of evolution, andhence living systems and the human being. In the following, we will tenta-tively place man as a creative, aesthetical agent in this evolving universe withthe aid of Peircean concepts. The article has the following structure: First, wewill briey describe Peirces objective idealism being his fundamental cosmo-genic framework, and second, we will couple the agapastic development with

an aesthetic nality making up the most basic condition for the creative natureof man.


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2. Objectiveidealism

The process through which the universe develops must rest on the nature of the

universe. Consequently, the question one must ask is: Of what does this natureof the universe consist (cf. Murphey 1993: 335)? The starting point for Peircesanswer is that there are three ontological monisms, which each have put fortha hypothesis on the matter, i.e. neutralism, materialism, and idealism. SincePeirce meant that the old dualistic understanding of mind and body as beingtwo radically different instances hardly would be able to nd advocators anymore, one had to turn to a kind of hylozoism and in The Architecture of Theo-ries (1882), he proceeded by asking in the following way:

. . . the question arises whether physical laws on the one hand and the psychical law onthe other are to be taken

(a) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I would name neutral-ism; or

(b) the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law alone as primordial,which is materialism; or,

(c) the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial,which is idealism. (CP6.24)

Peirce quickly dismissed neutralism since this doctrine falls victim to the log-ical maxim known as Ockhams razor by assuming more independent elementsthan is necessary, or in Peirces own words . . . by placing the inward andoutward aspects of substance on a par . . . it seems to render both primordial(CP 6.24). And if we remember Peirces harsh critique of determinism which he saw as the most important conceptual presupposition for materialism

it is obvious that he would not choose it. In Mans Glassy Essence (1892),Peirce tried to show how the amorphous substance of which all living creaturesconsist i.e., the protoplasm of the cell has a mode of operation that can-not be explained through physical and chemical terms alone. Not only does

protoplasm show the ability to feel, it shows all the functions of the mind, andthe problem is to nd a suitable hypothesis to account for this. Peirce wrote:

But what is to be said of the property of feeling? If consciousness belongs to all proto-plasm, by what mechanical constitution is this to be accounted for? The slime is nothingbut a chemical compound. There is no inherent impossibility in its being formed syn-thetically in the laboratory, out of its chemical elements; and if it were so made, it wouldpresent all the characters of natural protoplasm. No doubt, then, it would feel. To hesi-tate to admit this would be puerile and ultra-puerile. By what element of the molecular

arrangement, then, would that feeling be caused? This question cannot be evaded orpooh-poohed. Protoplasm certainly does feel; and unless we are to accept a weak dual-


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ism, the property must be shown to arise from some peculiarity of the mechanical sys-tem. Yet the attempt to deduce it from the three laws of mechanics, applied to never soingenious a mechanical contrivance, would obviously be futile. It can never be ex-plained, unless we admit that physical events are but degraded or undeveloped forms ofpsychical events. (CP6. 264)

Hence, there is a property of pure feeling, and this property is inexplicable inmaterialism and mechanism. In Peirces philosophy, feeling is prior to habitformation, and only if it is accepted that matter is effete mind, a form of lifethat is stagnated in obdurate habits, an explanation can be put forth: there is acontinuous contact between mechanical laws and mental laws. Mechanicallaws are near the one end of a continuum and mental laws are near the other.The exactitude and regularity of mechanical processes can be seen as beingonly differences in degree from the tendencies that regulate the mental acts.Mechanical laws are never really exact. In The Law of Mind (1891), Peircemade himself spokesman for the view that feeling has a tendency to becomespread out continuously, a tendency to affect certain other feelings. During thespreading the feeling loses its intensity and force, which means the force toaffect other ideas; however, it gains in generality and enter into a network withother feelings (cf. CP6.104).

In connection to this, there is an inverse relation between the vitality of thefeeling and the inertness of the habit, and since the vitality of the feeling is in

a direct correlation with consciousness, it is clear why the grade of conscious-ness is higher in the kind of mind that is least hidebound with habits, and lowerin the kind of mind that is most hidebound with habits (cf. Murphey 1993: 346).Put another way, when necessity and uniformity are dominant features, themind almost disappears, and when these are less dominant, mind spreads itselfand increases its inuence, and causes new forms of necessity and uniformity.In connection to this, in the article Mans Glassy Essence (1892), Peirce wrote:

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 mechanicallaws are nothing but acquired habits, like all the regularities of mind, including thetendency to take habits, itself; and that this action of habit is nothing but generalization,and generalization is nothing but the spreading of feelings. (CP6.268)

If evolution is general, the unity between mind and matter is necessary; thatmind is primary and matter is diverted and special is necessary that is, theremust be a tendency to avoid sinking into the perfect sterile order if evolutionis to be possible (cf. Esposito 1980: 17374). In connection to this, evolution

must start in a continuum of pure feeling, and this was exactly what Peircemeant. Thus, in The Architecture of Theories (1891), he wrote:


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. . . that in the beginning innitely remote there was a chaos of impersonalizedfeeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without exis-tence. This feeling, sporting here and there in pure arbitrariness, would have started thegerm of a generalizing tendency. Its other sportings would be evanescent, but thiswould have a growing virtue. Thus, the tendency to habit would be started; and fromthis, with the other principles of evolution, all the regularities of the universe would beevolved. At any time, however, an element of pure chance survives and will remainuntil the world becomes an absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system, inwhich mind is at last crystallized in the innitely distant future. (CP6.33)

Thus, Peirce imagined that evolution has its starting point in an impersonalizedfeeling, pure potentiality, nothing has been actualized yet. The transition fromthe non-determined and dimensionless possibility, feeling, takes place by aid

of chance, and the result is determined possibility. However, this possibility isnot self-actualizing; feelings swing out here and there and collide, and accord-ing to the same principle, new swings occur, etc., (see Brier 2008d for moredetails). Through this process, a world of events occurs, a world of facts, whose

being consists in the mutual interaction of feelings or actualized qualities. Inthe world of events, an inherent tendency to habit formation exists. A tendencyto habit formation is a generalization process, and all regularities, e.g., fromtime to space to matter and laws, represent and can be described by aid of theuniverses tendency to form habits (cf. Turley 1977: 61). This tendency has a

self-perpetuating character, as Peirce stressed in a letter to C. Ladd-Frankling(1891): The tendency to form habits or tendency to generalize, is somethingwhich grows by its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Itsrst germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to obey rulesthat had been followed, and these tendencies were rules which were more andmore obeyed by their own action (CP8.317)

However, even if Peirce noted in The Architecture of Theories (1892) thatevolution would end in a total crystallization of mind and be completely sub-dued to law, he also stressed in the manuscript A Guess at the Riddle (c. 1890)that in any given time, no law is completely xated, since:

Conformity to law exists only within a limited range of events and even there is notperfect, for an element of pure spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at leastmust be supposed to mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is afact requiring to be explained; and since law in general cannot be explained by any lawin particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of purechance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (CP1.407)

These seemingly contradictory views of Peirce may best be explained by C. R.

Hausmann in his work Charles Peirces Evolutionary Philosophy (1993),where he stresses that even if Peirce maintained a convergence towards a sym-


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metrical universe as totally intelligible, the convergence is: not proposed as anactual future state, rather it is projected beyond any nite moment in time.Convergence, therefore, must evolve (Hausmann 1993: 160). These matters

aside, the starting point of the evolution of the universe is an impersonalizedfeeling, and the development progresses from possibility to determinacy, to-wards greater and greater order, or a perfection of law. As Peirce wrote in themanuscript A Guess at the Riddle (c. 1890): Uniformities in the modes ofaction of things have come about by their taking habits. At present, the courseof events is approximately determined by law. In the past that approximationwas less perfect; in the future it will be more perfect. The tendency to obeylaws has always been and always will be growing (CP1.409).

So, Peirce understood the universe as rational it becomes more and morerational there is a growth in its order, intelligibleness, and Thirdness in allof its variations (cf. Reilly 1970: 136; Esposito 1980: 167).

3. Thecreativeuniverseandtheplaceofmanwithinthisuniverse

But what place does man hold in the creative universe? In his article Evo-lutionary Love (1898), Peirce described how an idea (where the concept ofidea must be understood as widely as possible) can attract and be understoodas follows:

The agapastic development of thought is the adoption of certain mental tendencies, notaltogether heedlessly, as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the mere force of circum-stances or of logic, as in anancasm, but by an immediate attraction for the idea itself,whose nature is divined before the mind possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is,by virtue of the continuity of mind. (CP6.307)

Since Peirce stressed that it is the idea in itself that is attractive, we can con-clude that there must be an attraction of ideas taking place on an aestheticlevel. Only the aesthetically good idea might be attractive in itself, by itself.

For, as Peirce stressed in one of his Harvard Lectures (1903), the aestheti-cally good is characterized by being: . . . a state of things that reasonablyrecommends itself in itself aside from any ulterior consideration. It must be anadmirable ideal, having the only kind of goodness that such an ideal can have;namely, esthetic goodness (CP5.130).

Peirce proposed three ways in which the idea may be attractive to man. First,a community holds the idea, and then transfers the idea to the individual, whichotherwise is in no position to discover the idea; second, by an individual dis-covering the idea, but only because the individual is feeling sympathetic

towards a community such that the sympathy allows him to experience the at-traction of the idea. Third, the individual discovers the idea by force of the


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ideas own attractiveness. As the scholastic realist that Peirce became overtime (cf. CP5.77, note 1; CP1.27), he let the ultimate admirable, the ideal, be

part of the anchor of the natural order. He ascribed it objective reality, made it

authentic and independent of human imperatives. Peirce let the growth in theconcrete reasonableness connect with the ultimate admirable, as he mentionedin the Monist article What Pragmatism is (1905):

. . . the pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to consist in action, but makesit to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent comes more and more toembody those generals . . . which is what we strive to express in calling them reason-able. In its higher stages, evolution takes place more and more largely through self-control, and this gives the pragmaticist a sort of justication for making the rationalpurport to be general. (CP5.433)

Henceforth, evolution is not a value neutral process. Rather, it has close afn-ity to an aesthetic and moral ideal; man should be striving to make his semeiosisdevelop in accordance with the universe. Only if man is trying to contribute torendering the universe more reasonable, he may nd his true place in it. InLowell Lectures (1903), Peirce stressed that:

The creation of the universe . . . did not take place during a certain busy week, in theyear 4004 B.C., but is going on today and never will be done, is this very developmentof Reason. I do not see how one can have a more satisfying ideal of the admirable thanthe development of Reason so understood. The one thing whose admirableness is notdue to an ulterior reason is Reason itself comprehended in all its fullness, so far as wecan comprehend it. Under this conception, the ideal of conduct will be to execute ourlittle function in the operation of the creation by giving a hand toward rendering theworld more reasonable (CP1.615).

In his workCharles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals (1997), V. G. Potter writesabout the Peircean conditions for human participation in rendering the uni-verse more reasonable, in which the ability to self-control is absolutely crucial:

Man . . . holds a privileged and unique place in this evolving world. Although he him-self is a product of that process of development and still is in great measure subject toit, he has reached a stage where he is capable of a very high degree of self-control . . .Man has evolved to a point where he now can cooperate in the process of evolutionitself, since he can deliberately control his own actions and inuence the society ofwhich he is member. (Potter 1997: 202)

Man shows a rational behavior to the extent that he is able to control his emo-tions, actions, and thoughts in a particular kind of way, namely, in accordance

with Summum Bonum, the highest good (cf. Hookway 1997: 202). In anunpublished manuscript, Peirce stressed how the main task is to nd out how:


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Feeling, Conduct, and Thought, ought to be controlled supposing them to bein a measure, and only in a measure, to self-control, exercised by means ofself-criticism, and the purposive formation of habit, as common sense tells us

they are in a measure controllable (MS655, quoted in Stuhr 1994: 12).Man is now able to criticize his own feelings, acts, and thoughts, and com-pare them to a standard. He is able to investigate whether these are consistentwith an intention, to investigate whether these cause a feeling of satisfaction ordissatisfaction. Further, he can learn from experience, make his standards sub-

ject to review, or even completely give up on them, and, as a result of all this,grow new habits (cf. Feibleman 1943: 104; Misak 2004: 171). Man may exerciseself-control in three areas: i.e., by the pursuit of the aesthetic self-control,regarding the control of thought over feeling; ethical self-control, regardingthe control of thought over action; and, nally, logical self-control, regardingthe control of reasoning over ideas (cf. Short 1997: 301). These three typesfollow the same intricate development, and in the manuscript Pragmaticism(c. 1903), Peirce described the phases of self-control in the following way:

. . . of course there are inhibitions and cordinations that entirely escape consciousness.There are, in the next place, modes of self-control which seem quite instinctive. Next,there is a kind of self-control which results from training. Next, a man can be his owntraining-master and thus control his self-control. When this point is reached much or allthe training may be conducted in imagination. When a man trains himself, thus control-

ling control, he must have some moral rule in view, however special and irrational itmay be. But next he may undertake to improve this rule; that is, to exercise a controlover his control of control. To do this he must have in view something higher than anirrational rule. He must have some sort of moral principle. This, in turn, may be con-trolled by reference to an esthetic ideal of what is ne. (CP5.533)

Instead of examining the rational consciousness as a form of logical core,Peirce tried to look at self-control as a number of phases. Peirce was, of course,well aware of as the conscientious fallibilist he tried to be that he scarcelyhad counted all the stages, but, nevertheless, there is an interesting continuumranging from instinctive self-control to a self-control where the most generalrule is controlled in relation to an aesthetic ideal (cf. Colapietro 1997: 280).

The continuum also corresponds to levels of consciousness. According toPeirce, consciousness forms a system of three and only three, as his catego-rial logic dictates classes of elements known as feeling, alter-sense, andmedisense. In an unnamed manuscript (c. 1900) Peirce stated:

There are no other forms of consciousness except the three that have been mentioned,Feeling, Altersense, and Medisense. They form a sort of system. Feeling is the momen-

tarily present contents of consciousness taken in its pristine simplicity, apart from any-thing else. It is consciousness in its rst state, and might be called primisense. Altersense


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is the consciousness of a directly present other or second, withstanding us. Medisenseis the consciousness of a thirdness, or medium between primisense and altersense, lead-ing from the former to the latter. It is the consciousness of a process of bringing to mind.(CP7.551)

It is not an easy task to decide in what way this trichotomy of consciousnessmore accurately can be correlated with the aforesaid continuum. Let us, there-fore, only touch upon a few matters: the highest degrees of self-control arelinked with medisense, and thus the kind of self-consciousness where thoughts,actions, feelings, intentions, decisions, and the individual parts of the body

become a unit. Further, the past is associated to the future, decisions added toeach other, and thus constitute a plan, and plans are added to each other, andthus represent a life. All of this happens in reference to a particular unit, a sign-condition that Peirce calls the self.

It is the self that thinks these thoughts, performs such acts, feels this or that,and has those intentions, etc. (cf. Short 1997: 302). The lowest levels of self-control are linked to feeling and instinct, so the ability for self-control andrational thinking is not limited by these; rather, feeling and instinct are a foun-dation for it. In the lecture, Detached Ideas on Vitally Important Topics,(1898), Peirce emphasized: It is the instincts, the sentiments, that make thesubstance of the soul. Cognition is only its surface, its locus of contact withwhat is external to it (CP1.628).

Man is endowed with a kind of emotional rationality; he possesses the abil-ity to cognize from his ability to feel. The possibility that man can develop hisfull rational nature, is not only linked to the fact that he can cultivate his think-ing and habits of action, also his habits of feeling must be subject to cultivationand development, otherwise he cannot pursue Summum Bonum. However,what is the aesthetic good more precisely? Concerning the effect caused by theaesthetic good, again from the Lectures of Pragmatism (1903), Peirce wrotethat it is about: . . . a sort of intellectual sympathy, a sense that here is a Feel-ing that one can comprehend, a reasonable Feeling. I do not succeed in saying

exactly what it is, but it is a consciousness belonging to the category of Repre-sentation, though representing something in the Category of Quality of Feel-ing (CP5.113).

Thus, an intellectual kind of sympathy is caused that involves a syntheticquality of feeling that is intelligible. Feeling possesses a generality; it can beidentied, and therefore it can be understood (cf. Anderson 1984: 80). Thismeans that we have to do with a generality involving an attractive quality; or aform of emotional rationality a recognition that is linked to the ability tofeel. Basically, the aesthetic quality is fundamentally felt as it is cognized, as

an expression of the universality, continuity, and order of the universe (cf.Harris 1997: xxii; Apel 1995).


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But is this not a kind of hedonism? No. Peirce was repelled by hedonism, tosay the least he believed that hedonism was an irrational doctrine, and thatsustained hedonism would lead to insanity and in his manuscript entitled

Reexions upon Pluralistic Pragmatism and upon Cenopythagorean Pragmat-icism (c. 1906), he wrote:

Is the Satisfactory meant to be whatever excites a certain peculiar feeling of satisfac-tion? In that case, the doctrine is simply hedonism in so far as it affects the eld ofcognition. For when hedonists talk of pleasure, they do not mean what is so-called inordinary speech, but what excites a feeling of satisfaction. But to say that an action orthe result of an action is Satisfactory is simply to say that it is congruous to the aim ofthat action. Consequently, the aim must be determined before it can be determined, ei-ther in thought or in fact, to be satisfactory. An action that had no other aim than to be

congruous to its aim would have no aim at all, and would not be a deliberate action. (CP5.5595.560)

To Peirce, satisfaction can be identied as a feeling that cannot be reduced tothe individual feeling of the satisfactory. The aesthetically good is exactly theintended object of the satisfactory. Of course, the aesthetically good causessatisfaction; however, it is a satisfaction that involves a higher ontical dignitythan other kinds of satisfaction. In his review of Frasers The Work of GeorgeBerkeley (1871), Peirce put forth the following rhetorical question: The

question whether the genus homo has any existence except as individuals, isthe question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth, and impor-tance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life.Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to beconsidered as an end in itself . . . (CP8.38).

Is the aesthetic good attractive in itself, and does the attraction act as a causanalis (cf. Oehler 1993: 112113)? According to Peirce, in the article, A De-tailed Classication of the Sciences (1902), ideas have: . . . a power of nd-ing or creating their vehicles, and having found them, of conferring upon themthe ability to transform the face of the earth (CP1.217). This means then thatit is the idea, based on its intrinsic quality, the aesthetic good, that causes at-traction and yields life to its advocators, rather than it is the advocators whoyield life to the idea. This could sound like pure intellectualism, but Peirceclaried his denition by adding:

Do I mean that the idea calls new matter into existence? Certainly not. That would bepure intellectualism, which denies that blind force is an element of experience distinctfrom rationality, or logical force . . . What I mean by the ideas conferring existenceupon the individual members of the class is that it confers upon them the power of

working out results in this world, that it confers upon them, that is to say, organic exis-tence, or, in one word, life. (CP1.220)


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The aesthetic nality makes up the most basic condition for the rational andcreative nature of man; thought as a kind of self-controlled action can only beintentional if reason as an aesthetic ideal has been transformed into a habit of

feeling (cf. Sheriff 1994: 81). The aesthetic nality provides in other words atelos that points at self-controlled action, and creates the possibility for thegoodness of action, the truth of reasoning, and the attraction of feeling. Itmakes up the basis for reasoning, allowing the feelings, actions, and thoughtsof man to move in a certain kind of direction, in harmony with the develop-ment of the universe, towards a greater rationality.

According to Peirce, this is the manifestation of the progressive state ofreason, or the growth in the concrete reasonableness, which he used synony-mously with summum bonum, the highest good. In other words, evolution isan aesthetical-moral process, rather than a process that moves in any directionwhat so ever. Man is marked by the living telos of reason. He is attracted to it

by aid of the intrinsic aesthetic goodness of the idea(s), so that there can emergean intellectual sympathy in his mind. Only in that way, he can truly becomecreative.

References

Anderson, Douglas R. 1984. Creativity and the philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Dordrecht: MartinusNijhoff.

Apel, Karl O. 1995. Charles S. Peirce: From pragmatism to pragmaticism. Amherst: University ofMassachusetts Press.

Brier, Sren. 2008a. Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough. Toronto: University ofToronto Press.

Brier, Sren. 2008b. A paradigm for biosemiotics. Signs 2. 3081.Brier, Sren. 2008c. Bateson and Peirce on the pattern that connects and the sacred. In J. Hoff-

meyer (ed.),A legacy for living systems: Gregory Bateson as a precursor for biosemiotic think-ing(Biosemiotics 2), 229255. London: Springer Verlag.

Brier, Sren. 2008d. A Peircean panentheist scientic mysticism. International Journal ofTranspersonal Studies 27. 2045.

Colapietro, Vincent M. 1997. The dynamical object and the deliberative subject. In J. Brunning &

P. Forster (eds.), The rule of reason, 262289. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Esposito, Joseph L. 1980.Evolutionary metaphysics. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.Feibleman James K. 1943.An introduction to Peirces philosophy. New York: Harper.Harris, Stanley M. 1997. Introduction. In Charles S. Peirce on norms and ideals by Vincent Potter,

ixxxiv. New York: Fordham University Press.Hausmann, Carl R. 1993. Charles S. Peirces evolutionary philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.Hookway, Christopher. 1997. Sentiment and self-control. In J. Brunning & P. Forster (eds.), The

rule of reason, 201223. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Misak, Cheryl (ed.). 2004. The Cambridge companion to Peirce. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press.

Misak, Cheryl. 2004. C. S. Peirce on vital matters. In C. Misak (ed.), The Cambridge companionto Peirce, 150175. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Monod, Jacques. 1971. Chance and necessity: An essay on the natural philosophy of modern biol-ogy. New York: Vintage.

Murphey, Murray. 1993. The development of Peirces philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress.

Oehler, Claus. 1993. Charles S. Peirce. Munich: Beck.Peirce, Charles S. 19311966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne,

P. Weiss & A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [Reference to Peircespapers will be designated CPfollowed by volume and paragraph number.]

Peirce, Charles S. 1967. Manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as identiedby Richard Robin,Annotated catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce. Amherst: Universityof Massachusetts Press. [Reference to Peirces manuscripts will be designatedMS.]

Peirce, Charles S. 1998. Essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, vol. 2 (18931913).Peirce Edition Project (eds.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Reference to vol. 2 ofEssential Peirce will be designatedEP2.]

Potter, Vincent G. 1997. Charles S. Peirce on norms and ideals. New York: Fordham University Press.

Prigogine, Ilya. 1980.From being to becoming. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Prigogine, Ilya. 1996. The end of certainty: Time, chaos, and the new laws of nature. New York:

Free Press.Prigogine, Ilya & Stengers, Irene. 1984. Order out of chaos: Mans new dialogue with nature. New

York: Bantam.Reilly, Francis E. 1970. Charles S. Peirces theory of scientic method. New York: Fordham Uni-

versity Press.Schrdinger, Ernst. 2006 [1967]. What is life? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Sheriff, John K. 1994. Charles S. Peirces guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press.Short, Thomas S. 1997. Hypostatic abstraction in self-consciousness. In J. Brunning & P. Forster

(eds.), The rule ofreason, 289309. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Stuhr, John J. 1994. Rendering the world more reasonable. In H. Parret (ed.), Peirce and value

theory, 315. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Turley, Peter T. 1977.Peircess cosmology. New York: Philosophical.

Bent Srensen (b. 1971) is an independent scholar . His research inter-ests include semiotics, metaphor, and advertising. His publications include Effects in printedcommercials: The moment of exposure and the signicance-effect (with T. Thellefsen & C. An-dersen, 2007); and Some features of the normative function of C. S. Peirces pragmatic maxime(with C. Andersen & T. Thellefsen, 2008).

Sren Brier (b. 1951) is an associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School . His research interests include cybersemiotics, philosophy of the foundation of informationscience and semiotics, and biosemiotics. His publications include Cybersemiotics: Why informa-tion is not enough (2008); A Peircean panentheist scientic mysticism (2008); Cybersemioticpragmaticism and constructivism (2009); and Cybersemiotics and the question of knowledge(2010).

Torkild Thellefsen (b. 1969) is an independent scholar . His research in-terest is the semeiotic and philosophy of C. S. Peirce. His publications include Some commentsregarding metaphor and cognition in a Peircean perspective (with B. Srensen & M. Moth, 2007);A semeiotic note on branding (with B. Srensen, M. Danesi & C. Andersen, 2007); Emotion

and community in a semeiotic perspective (with B. Srensen & C. Andersen, 2008); and Sevenshort comments on branding and semeiotic (with B. Srensen, 2009)


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