Home
CP 1.331. "Although the mode of consciousness we call volition, or willing, contrasts decidedly with the mere perception that something has been done, yet it is not perfected, and perhaps does not take place at all, until something is actually effected. Trying to shove something too heavy for the man to stir nevertheless accomplishes, in considerable measure, the only thing that he directly willed to do -- namely, to contract certain muscles. In the days of table-turning we used to be commanded to sit quite away from a table, and "with all our might" to will that the table should move; and since the whole weight of our outstretched arms soon made our finger-tips unconsciously numb (for things are not apt to be consciously unconscious; and there were other concurring physiological effects that we did not suspect), while we were possessed of no other "might" over the table than through our muscles, we used to be speedily rewarded, by a direct consciousness of willing that the table move, accompanied by the vision of its wondrous obedience. Until it moved, we were only longing, not willing. So when certain psychologists write, chiefly in French -- a language abounding in exquisite distinctions, but one in which any analytical method of interpretation is so sure to lead to misunderstandings, that the language is not well adapted to psychology or philosophy -- about "involuntary attention," they can only mean one of two things, either unpremeditated attention or attention influenced by conflicting desires. Though "desire" implies a tendency to volition, and though it is a natural hypothesis that a man cannot will to do that which he has no sort of desire to do, yet we all know conflicting desires but too well, and how treacherous they are apt to be; and a desire may perfectly well be discontented with volition, i.e., with what the man will do. The consciousness of that truth seems to me to be the root of our consciousness of free will. "Involuntary attention" involves in correct English a contradiction in adjecto."
A contradiction as described means "is a logical inconsistency between a noun and its modifying adjective" according to our Internet. This entire section seems to be saying that one may have a divided will. An ambivalence. But if I take the context aright, there is a deeper matter.
Here we find Peirce in seance mode. The table-tipping description cannot be but indication that Peirce not unlike your author and perhaps all of us in prospect, being souls, are beset with the impulse to prove once and for all that there is life beyond, continuity, eternity, whatever name you give it. And at the same time there is awareness that even if you see the Light or move the table in an act of prodigious longing, willful feeling, you may not finally be satisfied. This is about an existential conundrum. Perhaps it is the existential conundrum.
Peirce speaks of a mode of consciousness. But there are no modes of consciousness save our infinitely varied reactions to it. Consciousness is what it is independently of anything including our volition.
This may seem a quibble. But, like the Triadic Philosophy contention that reality is all, it allows consciousness the versatility that is required when we operate from the true holism that includes all there is whether we know it or not.
A contradiction as described means "is a logical inconsistency between a noun and its modifying adjective" according to our Internet. This entire section seems to be saying that one may have a divided will. An ambivalence. But if I take the context aright, there is a deeper matter.
Here we find Peirce in seance mode. The table-tipping description cannot be but indication that Peirce not unlike your author and perhaps all of us in prospect, being souls, are beset with the impulse to prove once and for all that there is life beyond, continuity, eternity, whatever name you give it. And at the same time there is awareness that even if you see the Light or move the table in an act of prodigious longing, willful feeling, you may not finally be satisfied. This is about an existential conundrum. Perhaps it is the existential conundrum.
Peirce speaks of a mode of consciousness. But there are no modes of consciousness save our infinitely varied reactions to it. Consciousness is what it is independently of anything including our volition.
This may seem a quibble. But, like the Triadic Philosophy contention that reality is all, it allows consciousness the versatility that is required when we operate from the true holism that includes all there is whether we know it or not.
