A Symposium on Consciousness and C. S. Peirce`s Semiotics

Symposium Organiser: Jelena Issayeva (jelena.issajeva@gmail.com)
Rank and Affiliation: Doctoral Candidate, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Symposium Name:
Against Mindless Pragmatism: A Symposium on Consciousness and C. S. Peirce’s Semiotics
Symposium Description:
In his forthcoming book, Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs, Marc Champagne argues
that current philosophical puzzlement about the qualitative dimension of consciousness stems,
historically and logically, from a failure to properly handle the fine-grained distinctions found in
the semiotic theory of the American polymath, Charles Sanders Peirce. The aim of this symposium
is to reflect on what that might mean for the other body of ideas Peirce is known for, pragmatism.
Most philosophers are familiar with the term-of-art “qualia,” but few know that it originally
came from Peirce (Livingston 2004). He called them “qualisigns.” Indeed, Peirce used a
sophisticated set of categories to show how all representations must have some nonrepresentational core. Since we humans have the ability to suppose those further elements of
absent, we can artificially divorce or “prescind” any given quality we experience (like red or the
taste of pickled herring) from the causal and inferential relations it is sandwiched in. Once enlisted
in cognitive processes (like recollection, etc.), such qualities may act as signs, but those qualities
are not themselves signs, unless they are linked to something else by an interpretation. Building on
this seminal Peircean idea, Champagne argues that many recurring confusions about consciousness
result from a failure to track where we have deliberately omitted those objects and interpretations.
The conjunction of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs is thus a natural one. In an
essay titled “What is a Sign?,” Peirce tells the reader that “[i]t is necessary to recognize three
different states of mind” (EP2, 4). The first state of mind Peirce invites us to consider is that of a
red feeling, and nothing else. The reader who, saddled with an unexamined folk semiotic theory,
came in expecting a discussion of traffic signals, will likely wonder at this point whether Peirce
has veered off topic. He has not. Peirce’s goal is to evince the conditions for the possibility of
sign-action. He wants to make a point: with a quality like red and just red, there can be no flow of
consciousness. If one finds such a flow, the impetus must have come from a source different from
the quality itself. Implicitly, Peirce is making an additional point, just as important, which is that
we can follow through with his invitation to consider a quality like red in complete isolation from
anything else. Logically, as well as psychologically, it can be done. Peirce makes sure to
emphasize that “nobody is really in a state of feeling, pure and simple” as he just described it. Yet,
he observes that “whenever we are awake, something is present to the mind, and what is present,
without reference to any compulsion or reason, is feeling” (ibid.). Hence, on this reading, Peirce is
not a “verificationist” who denies the experience of qualia. Much the opposite, he begins by telling
us that qualia are the most fundamental constituents of any mind. Champagne’s claim, in essence,
is that Peircean semiotics is exactly the sort of “fundamental theory” David Chalmers has been
searching for since his 1996 The Conscious Mind.
The question posed by this symposium is: can one agree with this semiotic account of
consciousness and still identify as a “pragmatist?”
This is a question worth asking, because some prominent Peirce scholars like T. L. Short
(2007) have described semioticians as “the wrong crowd.” In saying this, Short aligns himself with
Cheryl Misak (2013), who argues that anything other than a naturalist outlook corrupts the ideas of
Peirce. Of course, Peirce’s fellow pragmatist, William James, was never an enemy of conscious
experience, but scholars like Short and Misak think pragmatists should rid themselves of such
Jamesian influences. Their stance thus makes functionalism—the idea that mental states are
exhaustively characterised by how they relate inputs and outputs—into the only account a selfrespecting pragmatist should endorse. Champagne’s work, however, shows that there is much in
Peircean semiotics which can vindicate the claim that, in addition to functions, there is something
“it is like” to undergo an experience, even if that quality cannot be scientifically studied.
One might argue that, because Chalmers (1996) asks us to imagine “zombies” who display
no practical difference from regular humans, that idea violates the founding intent of Peirce’s
pragmatic maxim. Still, before Chalmers can delete qualia from such experience-free zombies, he
has to focus on a very narrow construal that deletes all relations from a given quality. This
construal of a lone quality bears a striking resemblance to what Peirce wrote about “Firstness.”
Participants to this symposium are thus invited to reflect on whether the commitments of
pragmatism require a complete dismissal of conscious experience.
Presenter 1 of 5
Name: Dr. Vincent Colapietro (vxc5@psu.edu)
Rank and Affiliation: Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy,
Pennsylvania State University, United States
Title: Overcoming “Tone”-Deafness: Minding Qualia as a Means of Qualifying Consciousness
Abstract:
Especially in recent years, there has been an effort to link considerations of felt qualia (or “raw
feels”) and the cognitive accessibility of various dimensions of human consciousness. This
undertaking has not, until now, been much informed by C. S. Peirce’s writings. This is
unfortunate, since Peirce’s triadic categorial scheme and various distinctions regarding signs
provide us with the means by which to investigate consciousness in both its irreducibly
phenomenal presence and its cognitive accessibility. Even before my 1989 book, Peirce’s
Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity, I have been preoccupied with
showing the relevance of Peirce’s work to this area of inquiry. My commitment to this task was
thus renewed and indeed deepened by a recent monograph. Marc Champagne has provided those
interested in questions of consciousness with both an informed introduction to the most salient
features of Peirce’s thought and a painstaking treatment of pivotal questions in light of Peirce’s
doctrine of categories and philosophy of signs. For someone who has long been interested in both
this philosopher and these questions, Champagne’s book is an extremely welcome addition to the
literature. There are, however, points about which even a sympathetic reader of Champagne’s
timely contribution might ask for fuller or deeper consideration. One of these is the distinction
between qualia and qualisigns (firsts in their utter firstness and in their semiotic function). Another
is the role of phenomenology (or, as Peirce often termed it, phaneroscopy) in the investigation of
signs. If I would like to take this occasion as an opportunity to break a lance for both qualia in
their utter firstness and phenomenology in its semiotic salience, it is out of deep appreciation for
what Champagne has accomplished in Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs, not out of any
fundamental dissatisfaction.
Presenter 2 of 5
Name: Dr. Erkki Kilpinen (erkki.kilpinen@helsinki.fi)
Rank and Affiliation: Adjunct Professor and Academy Research Fellow, Department of
Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland
Title: The Possibility of Naturalism
Abstract: I am trying to do something analogous to the impressive new contribution by Marc
Champagne, namely to stand in defence of the naturalist approach to the semiotic consciousness,
after his interesting opening. My starting point is that semiotic is not about signs, it is about
semeiosis, that is: sign-action (processes of interpretation), to borrow expressions by Max Fisch
and Thomas Sebeok. “We are forced to conclude that consciousness is an emergent from
behavior,” declared George Herbert Mead some eighty years ago, continuing “that so far from
being a precondition of the social act, the social act is a precondition of [consciousness]. The
mechanism of the social act can be traced out without introducing into it the conception of
consciousness as a separate element within that act.” Mead is here bringing to consummation the
pragmatist project in the philosophy of mind that Peirce initiated a generation earlier. That project
can also be called semiotic, although, aside from his “significant symbol,” Mead scarcely uses
concepts redolent of semiotics. If one is not unduly enamoured with semiotic terminology, one
might add that so much the better; the famous Peircean trichotomies are to be taken as our servants
(called to service when need be) in semiotic studies, not as our masters. If one takes a look at
consciousness studies today, one finds that Mead has more than verbally foreshadowed the
interpretation of consciousness that emerges from Antonio Damasio’s psycho-physiological work,
for example. Both share the starting point that only an acting being has any need for mind and
consciousness in the first place. This points toward the conclusion that a naturalistic philosophy of
mind is possible from pragmatist premises. How far it is useful in practice is a question to be
settled by empirical research.
Presenter 3 of 5
Name: Dr. Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (ahti-veikko.pietarinen@ttu.ee)
Rank and Affiliation: Chair of Philosophy, Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and
Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Title: Pragmatism as a Logical Study of Consciousness
Abstract: Peirce’s pragmatism is a statement of the scientific method, concerned with finding out
the highest grade of clearness, that is, the meaning and purpose of signs that are of the nature of
“thoughts, intellectual concepts and generalities.” Seen in this pragmatist light, the scientific
method would not seem to leave much room for the study of non-intentional phenomena
pertaining to the category of firstness. In that category, we find not only the terms familiar from
contemporary philosophy of mind, such as appearances, sensations and feelings, but more
importantly, the more qualified ones of (i) “immediate consciousness of quality” (and so not just
any quality as such) and “single non-compound sensations” (and so not just any sensation), as well
as (ii) the sign-theoretic “tones and qualisigns,” “icons and images” (the latter the “first
firstnesses” of icons) and “rhemas,” and (iii) the phaneroscopic, logical and diagrammatic
“logically indecomposable elements of thought,” “spots and potentials,” “substantive
possibilities,” and “sheets of consciousness.” Yet, a deeper analysis of what belongs to Peirce’s
preferred groups of notions (i)-(iii) reveals a rich theoretical structure within which they are
embedded. Peirce wanted consciousness to be a subject matter for logic. Objects of consciousness
such as “the feelings a symphony inspires or that which is in the soul of a furiously angry man in
[the] presence of his enemy” can, Peirce held, be “perfectly well be expressed” in the various
logical graphs he pioneered. Interpreters work on a “special area of consciousness” which is
similar to the “sheet” used in all his calculi. Hence, as a complement to Champagne’s contribution,
I propose to analyse the senses in which the study of consciousness, or even qualia, could fall
under the auspices of pragmatism.
Presenter 4 of 5
Name: Tyler Bennett (rogueborg@hotmail.com)
Rank and Affiliation: Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Semiotics, Tartu University, Estonia
Title: The Status of Degenerate Signs in the Application of Peirce
Abstract: T. L. Short attempts to distance Peirce’s sign theory from a great deal of current
scholarship by claiming that semioticians often lack a comprehensive enough understanding of his
philosophy to perform persuasive analyses. Herman Parret adopts a similar stance when he writes
that semioticians’ use of Peirce “leads to the worst interpretations” (1994, p. xiii). It comes out
later that, for Short and Parret, the use of Peirce for object analysis, particularly analyses
pertaining to art objects, is categorically incorrect. Although art objects can be targets of conscious
awareness, they are presumably disqualified on account of their failure to match the sort of
pragmatic apprehension that Short prizes. In his contribution to the Cambridge Companion to
Peirce (2004), Short argues that artistic objects are essentially meaningless. This strangely
positivistic take on Peirce has it that, since the meaning of artistic objects can be grasped wholly in
emotional interpretants, and since emotional interpretants are never ultimate, art objects are
meaningless. On Short’s view, only those parts of the sign process directly involving arguments
and producing ultimate interpretants are worthy of description. I believe that this provincial brand
of pragmatism downplays some of the most distinctive aspects of Peirce’s theory of signs, like the
importance of primary iconicity, abduction, and the genesis of signs. Hence, siding with
Champagne, I argue that an effective Peircean taxonomy of signs for object analysis depends on
the ability to treat sub-tertiary signs independently of their eventual crystallization into concrete
habits of action. While degenerate signs like experiential qualities may not be fully-fledged signs
in themselves, this should not be used to separate semiotic inquiries deemed appropriate from
those presumably conducted by “the wrong crowd.”
Presenter 5 of 5
Name: Dr. Marc Champagne (gnosiology@hotmail.com)
Rank and Affiliation: Post-Doctoral Researcher, Diagrammatic Mind Project, Department of
Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland
Title: Must a Pragmatist Interested in Consciousness be Pragmatic 24 Hours a Day?
Abstract: C. S. Peirce said, quite rightly, that if we want to make our ideas clear(er), then we
should look downstream to their actual and potential effects. Yet, there is a tendency to overlook
that this quintessential pragmatist recommendation is nested in a conditional: if you want clarity,
then you should do this and that. I see no reason why anyone should feel obliged, in the strict
deontological sense of a categorical imperative, to pursue intellectual clarity, come what may.
Rather, that pursuit, which finds its maximal expression in scientific inquiry, seems to be one
among many. Of course, it is normal to think that, if you are offered various options and you know
which is best, then you should pick that best one. So, predictably, when Peirce offers us three
“grades of clearness” culminating in the pragmatic maxim, we naturally assume that the other two
were there mainly to rhetorically set the stage. However, the moment we do this, we walk away
from the possibility of something not defined by its causal or inferential role(s). Part of what has
happened, I think, is that in their rush to be branded “naturalists,” some pragmatists have lost sight
of the fact that not everything is appropriately gauged by its current or anticipated practicality. In
Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs, I openly acknowledge that studying consciousness in
its qualitative “Firstness” will yield no tangible return on the investment. Yet, given that Peirce’s
most primitive category admits of a prescissive vindication, I argue that pragmatism is more
plausible/palatable when it makes room for inefficiency, in the double sense of a respite from
progress and an escape from efficient causation. Hence, I think pragmatists interested in
consciousness needn’t—indeed shouldn’t—be pragmatic 24 hours a day.