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Peirce: CP 8.291 Cross-Ref:††
"In its widest sense, consciousness, as opposed to unconsciousness, denotes all modes of mental life. It comprises all cognitive, emotional, and appetitive states which are capable of being apprehended; it is, in fact, synonymous with the sum-total of our psychical existence. In its second sense, it signifies the mind's direct, intuitive, or immediate knowledge either of its own operations, or of something other than itself acting upon it . . . . In its third meaning the word is limited," etc. etc. ([Michael] Maher, Psychology, Empirical and Rational, 4th Ed., [1900], p. 26.)
Peirce: CP 8.303 Cross-Ref:††
303. I mean to begin by drawing a distinction between what I call "Psychology Proper," meaning an account of how the mind functions, developes, and decays, together with the explanation of all this by motions and changes of the brain, or, in default of this kind of explanation, by generalizations of psychical phenomena, so as to account for all the workings of the soul in the sense of reducing them to combinations of a few typical workings, -- in short a sort of physiology of the mind, on the one hand, -- and what I call "Phaneroscopy" on the other, or a description of what is before the mind or in consciousness, as it appears, in the different kinds of consciousness,†43 which I rank under . . . three headings . . . . First, "Qualisense," which means that element of Feeling which consists in consciousness of the Quality of the Feeling, but omitting the element of Vividness, which does not alter the Quality (thus a faint memory of a highly luminous, and chromatic vermillion does not appear less luminous or less high colored, for all its dimness) and omitting all other concomitants of present feeling that are absent from a correct recollection of the same Quality. Second Heading: what I call Molition, which is volition minus all desire and purpose, the mere consciousness of exertion of any kind. Third Heading: the recognition of Habit of any kind in consciousness. END
We are at the end of this hardly exhaustive look at Peirce on the matter of the psychic by which he means far more than our faculty for going beyond the normal. For him and for us it is helpful to understand psychic as embracing the entire range of conscious action.
The sections here help us to see links between the conscious and the psychic. Psychic refers to the entire reality of consciousness. I have little impulse to do more than I have already done in this brief text. I think I have carved out a space where we can see that the range of intellectual activity that exists is dominantly within what we might call the psychic and metaphysical.
Triadic Philosophy sits lightly on all terms and indeed is partial to a certain vagueness, even ignorance, about things.
It also consciously violates the stricture of Wittgenstein at the close of "Tractatus" which suggests we cease speaking of those things of which we can create nothing but nonsense. That eliminates everything psychic. We will henceforth accept the challenge to make sense of what cannot be spoken of.
To do otherwise renders discussion of values and ontology moot and mute.
The value of this exercise is to lodge in the thought of Peirce the foundations of a broad and useful triadic perspective which is the basis of a future in which ethics and aesthetics will over time dominate the current binary, mindless mode of the past.
It is this revolutionary movement toward higher consciousness that we celebrate and seek to embody.
"In its widest sense, consciousness, as opposed to unconsciousness, denotes all modes of mental life. It comprises all cognitive, emotional, and appetitive states which are capable of being apprehended; it is, in fact, synonymous with the sum-total of our psychical existence. In its second sense, it signifies the mind's direct, intuitive, or immediate knowledge either of its own operations, or of something other than itself acting upon it . . . . In its third meaning the word is limited," etc. etc. ([Michael] Maher, Psychology, Empirical and Rational, 4th Ed., [1900], p. 26.)
Peirce: CP 8.303 Cross-Ref:††
303. I mean to begin by drawing a distinction between what I call "Psychology Proper," meaning an account of how the mind functions, developes, and decays, together with the explanation of all this by motions and changes of the brain, or, in default of this kind of explanation, by generalizations of psychical phenomena, so as to account for all the workings of the soul in the sense of reducing them to combinations of a few typical workings, -- in short a sort of physiology of the mind, on the one hand, -- and what I call "Phaneroscopy" on the other, or a description of what is before the mind or in consciousness, as it appears, in the different kinds of consciousness,†43 which I rank under . . . three headings . . . . First, "Qualisense," which means that element of Feeling which consists in consciousness of the Quality of the Feeling, but omitting the element of Vividness, which does not alter the Quality (thus a faint memory of a highly luminous, and chromatic vermillion does not appear less luminous or less high colored, for all its dimness) and omitting all other concomitants of present feeling that are absent from a correct recollection of the same Quality. Second Heading: what I call Molition, which is volition minus all desire and purpose, the mere consciousness of exertion of any kind. Third Heading: the recognition of Habit of any kind in consciousness. END
We are at the end of this hardly exhaustive look at Peirce on the matter of the psychic by which he means far more than our faculty for going beyond the normal. For him and for us it is helpful to understand psychic as embracing the entire range of conscious action.
The sections here help us to see links between the conscious and the psychic. Psychic refers to the entire reality of consciousness. I have little impulse to do more than I have already done in this brief text. I think I have carved out a space where we can see that the range of intellectual activity that exists is dominantly within what we might call the psychic and metaphysical.
Triadic Philosophy sits lightly on all terms and indeed is partial to a certain vagueness, even ignorance, about things.
It also consciously violates the stricture of Wittgenstein at the close of "Tractatus" which suggests we cease speaking of those things of which we can create nothing but nonsense. That eliminates everything psychic. We will henceforth accept the challenge to make sense of what cannot be spoken of.
To do otherwise renders discussion of values and ontology moot and mute.
The value of this exercise is to lodge in the thought of Peirce the foundations of a broad and useful triadic perspective which is the basis of a future in which ethics and aesthetics will over time dominate the current binary, mindless mode of the past.
It is this revolutionary movement toward higher consciousness that we celebrate and seek to embody.
