Logical and practical advantages of double consciousness
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Donna E. West
Donna E. West (PhD., Cornell University) is a Professor of Linguistics at the State University of New York, Cortland. For nearly forty years, she has presented and published internationally (70 plus articles/chapters) on Peirce’s semiotic. She currently serves on the Board of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, as well as several editorial boards. Her 2013 book,
Deictic imaginings: Semiosis at work and at play , investigates the role of Index in the acquisition of demonstrative pronouns. Her 2016 edited volume on Peirce’s concept of habit is a global collaboration with twelve nations being represented. West has nearly completed her new book on scaffolding abductive reasoning via the narrative structure of Peirce’s double consciousness. She is presently editing the “Mathematics and cognition” section for theHandbook on cognitive mathematics (Springer, forthcoming). Her own contribution to the section entails a treatment of how chunking in working memory underlies abductive reasoning.
Abstract
This account augments Peirce's concept of consciousness in two ways: 1) it highlights its double nature and 2) it explores how this two-sided consciousness advances modal logic. Double consciousness facilitates inferencing in that differences between old information and new information are noticed; logical conflicts between the two can then be explored and resolved expeditiously. This often natural but a forced need to consider new facts in light of old ones provides a scaffold for a higher level of consciousness, namely, self and heterocriticism — inciting interpreters to attend to the new facts, to intentionally compare facts and propositions, and to reflect upon the reasons for their comparative efficacy. In his call to double consciousness, Peirce enlivens us to draw deeply from the well of logical and practical affordances — surprising events and sustained interactive platforms. Peirce’s call requires us to utilize consciousness from its very basic level: attention to stimuli, awareness of unexpected facts, mental wrestling of effort and resistance, and finally synthetic consciousness which engenders binding frames of legitimate meanings from reliable genres. In this effort, Peirce informs us that the most reliable inferencing can only be ascertained by weighing ego with non-ego — through an active course of careful synthesis.
About the author
Donna E. West (PhD., Cornell University) is a Professor of Linguistics at the State University of New York, Cortland. For nearly forty years, she has presented and published internationally (70 plus articles/chapters) on Peirce’s semiotic. She currently serves on the Board of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, as well as several editorial boards. Her 2013 book, Deictic imaginings: Semiosis at work and at play, investigates the role of Index in the acquisition of demonstrative pronouns. Her 2016 edited volume on Peirce’s concept of habit is a global collaboration with twelve nations being represented. West has nearly completed her new book on scaffolding abductive reasoning via the narrative structure of Peirce’s double consciousness. She is presently editing the “Mathematics and cognition” section for the Handbook on cognitive mathematics (Springer, forthcoming). Her own contribution to the section entails a treatment of how chunking in working memory underlies abductive reasoning.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Primitives of Peirce’s concept of consciousness
- Habit-change, heightened consciousness, and agential “crises”: impersonal mechanisms, personal agents, and their complex entanglement
- Pragmaticism as a logical study of consciousness
- Logical and practical advantages of double consciousness
- Conscious self-control as criterion for reasoning
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Primitives of Peirce’s concept of consciousness
- Habit-change, heightened consciousness, and agential “crises”: impersonal mechanisms, personal agents, and their complex entanglement
- Pragmaticism as a logical study of consciousness
- Logical and practical advantages of double consciousness
- Conscious self-control as criterion for reasoning
