The aim of this article is to address the problem of what is usually called “self-consciousness” by studying Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic treatment of self-referential statements. Peirce believes that an adequate study of the mind requires “to reduce all mental action,” including “self-consciousness,” “to the formula of valid reasoning” (W 2:214, EP 1:30, 5:267, 1868) and its semeiotic nature. While Peirce makes frequent use of the notion of “consciousness,” he is at the same time distant from the understanding of the “conscious mind” that Descartes invented and made canonical (e.g., W 1:491, 1866), and which from the modern epoch stretches out to the contemporary discussion on, as David Chalmers put it, the “hard problem” of the mind.1 In what follows, I argue that Peirce puts forth a powerful theory of self-consciousness based on his semeiotic understanding of self-reference and indexicality.2 To the question, “How can we elucidate the phenomenon of self-consciousness?”, we should answer, with Peirce, “What we call self-consciousness corresponds to the practice of narratives and descriptions ultimately based on indexical self-referential statements, which are in turn rooted in very specific dimensions of human experience.” It is also important to underscore from the outset that the problem of indexical self-reference cannot be separated from Peirce’s concept of experience, which is one of the most interesting insights of Peirce’s philosophy and classical American pragmatism. In particular, it will be essential to see what are the experiential-perceptual conditions under which indexical self-referential statements can work as such.3 Peirce scholarship has usually seen the problem of self-reference as a chapter of the major metaphysical problem of individuation and has consequently dwelt with it in the light of this latter. It has been long claimed that Peirce’s

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Knowing One’s Own Mind

"I" Who?: A New Look at Peirce's Theory of Indexical Self-Reference

1 For comments and discussion, thanks from both authors to David Davies, Andrew Lamming, Jerrold Levinson, Eric Lewis, Josh Loeffler, Eric Marcus, Michael Matthews, Cynthia Read, Guy Rohrbaugh, Martin Rom, Tim Schroeder, Jeff Speaks, Julie Van Camp, and two anonymous referees; to students in the first author's Ontology of Art seminar at the University of Manitoba in Fall 2004; to students in the second author's Ontology of Art class at UCLA in Spring 2006; and to participants at talks at McGill University in November 2005, at Auburn University in March 2007, and at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in San Francisco, CA, also in March 2007. For funding in the form of a Standard Research Grant (410-2004-0702), thanks from the second author to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

background

Modality, Individuation, and the Ontology of Art

Given (1) Wittgenstein’s externalist analysis of the distinction between following a rule and behaving in accordance with a rule, (2) prima facie connections between rule-following and psychological capacities, and (3) pragmatic issues about training, it follows that most, even all, future ‘artificially intelligent’ computers and robots will not use language, possess concepts, or reason. This argument suggests that AI’s traditional aim of building ‘machines with minds’, exemplified in current work on cognitive robotics, is in need of substantial revision.

The Implications of an Externalist Theory of Rule-Following Behaviour for Robot Cognition

Williamson (2000) [Knowledge and its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press] argues that attempts to substitute narrow mental states or narrow/environmental composites for broad and factive mental states will result in poorer explanations of behavior. I resist Williamson’s arguments and use Twin-Earth style cases to argue for the causal inertness of broad mental states.

Additional excerpts

Primeness, Internalism and Explanatory Generality

IN FAVOR OF TELEOSEMANTICS: A Millikanian Treatment of the Intentional Content of Mental Representation

/pdf/in-favor-of-teleosemantics-a-millikanian-treatment-of-the-1nx0naugr9.pdf

Knowing One’s Own Mind

Citations

"I" Who?: A New Look at Peirce's Theory of Indexical Self-Reference

Modality, Individuation, and the Ontology of Art

The Implications of an Externalist Theory of Rule-Following Behaviour for Robot Cognition

Primeness, Internalism and Explanatory Generality

In Favor of Teleosemantics: A Millikanian Treatment of the Intentional Content of Mental Representation

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