On the bottomless lake of firstness: conjectures on the synthetic power of consciousness

Ivo A. Ibri

doi:10.1515/sem-2021-0120

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On the bottomless lake of firstness: conjectures on the synthetic power of consciousness

Ivo A. Ibri

Published/Copyright: October 18, 2021

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From the journal Semiotica Volume 2021 Issue 243

Abstract

This essay focuses on the concept of consciousness in C. S. Peirce’s work, revealing how its ways of being are associated with the three Peircean phenomenological categories. In this article, I intend to reflect on the heuristic power of the mind, namely, its ability to bring about new ideas, which, within Peirce’s logic of inquiry, is called by the well-known term of abduction. The abductive logical step promotes a synthesis of signs that constitutes a logical structure capable of proposing a new mediation or representation of a new phenomenon. I make use of a metaphorical passage from Peirce (CP 7.547, undated) not only to give the title to this essay, but also to highlight the importance of the first category as a sort of synechistic envelopment of an unprecedented logical structure of signs that composes a new synthesis. Two continua intertwine themselves, namely, those of the first and third categories, to account for what appears as a fact of the world in the theater of secondness. The essay also seeks to bring to light the core realism of Peirce’s philosophy, the genetic aspect of this bottomless lake, through its cosmology, where the generalization of forms and the acquisition of habits of reality are the proper ground of his Objective Idealism. One of the heuristic aspect of the lake metaphor is a sort of invitation to extend the concept of synthesis from the realm of logical structures to that one of arts, which in this essay will remain as a suggestion for a further reflection.

Keywords: abduction; consciousness; continua; Peirce; synthesis

Corresponding author: Ivo A. Ibri, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, E-mail: ibri@uol.com.br

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Received: 2021-08-31

Accepted: 2021-09-22

Published Online: 2021-10-18

Published in Print: 2021-11-25

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https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2021-0120

Keywords for this article

abduction; consciousness; continua; Peirce; synthesis