The Politics of Survival

Peirce, Affectivity, and Social Criticism

Lara Trout

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780823232970
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Deconstruction in Philosophy

How can sincere, well-meaning people unintentionally perpetuate discrimination based on race, sex, sexuality, or other socio-political factors? To address this question, Lara Trout engages a neglected dimension of Charles S. Peirce's philosophy - human embodiment - in order to highlight the compatibility between Peirce's ideas and contemporary work in social criticism. This compatibility, which has been neglected in both Peircean and social criticism scholarship, emerges when the body is fore-grounded among the affective dimensions of Peirce's philosophy (including feeling, emotion, belief, doubt, instinct, and habit). Trout explains unintentional discrimination by situating Peircean affectivity within a post-Darwinian context, using the work of contemporary neuroscientist Antonio Damasio to facilitate this contextual move. Since children are vulnerable, naïve, and dependent upon their caretakers for survival, they must trust their caretaker's testimony about reality. This dependency, coupled with societal norms that reinforce historically dominant perspectives (such as being heterosexual, male, middle-class, and/or white), fosters the internalization of discriminatory habits that function non-consciously in adulthood. The Politics of Survival brings Peirce and social criticism into conversation. On the one hand, Peircean cognition, epistemology, phenomenology, and metaphysics dovetail with social critical insights into the inter-relationships among body and mind, emotion and reason, self and society. Moreover, Peirce's epistemological ideal of an infinitely inclusive community of inquiry into knowledge and reality implies a repudiation of exclusionary prejudice. On the other hand, work in feminism and race theory illustrates how the application of Peirce's infinitely inclusive communal ideal can be undermined by non-conscious habits of exclusion internalized in childhood by members belonging to historically dominant groups, such as the economically privileged, heterosexuals, men, and whites. Trout offers a Peircean response to this application problem that both acknowledges the "blind spots" of non-conscious discrimination and recommends a communally situated network of remedies including agapic love, critical common-sensism, scientific method, and self-control.

ONE

PEIRCEAN AFFECTIVITY

Peirce viewed the individual human organism as a body-minded, social animal who interacts semiotically with the world outside of her. He had little patience for the Cartesian portrayal of the individual as a disembodied, solipsistic knower with immediate epistemic access to truth. I use the term “naive individual” to convey a Cartesian knower who ignores her situatedness as an embodied, socially shaped organism in constant communication with the external environment. I reserve the term “individual” to convey a Peircean knower who is inescapably situated (and who may or may not be aware of this situatedness). For emphasis, I occasionally refer to the Peircean knower as a “synechistic individual.” I call on “synechism”—a term referring to the philosophical importance Peirce grants to continuity1—to highlight the continuity of the human individual’s body and mind, self and society, and inner and outer worlds. These continua reflect the affectivity of the human organism, whereby she is in ongoing body-minded interaction with the external world, including the latter’s socio-political dimensions.

My first objective in this chapter is to introduce and situate Peircean affectivity within a post-Darwinian context. I use the work of Antonio Damasio as a tool for elucidating the post-Darwinian themes in Peircean affectivity. I also introduce aspects of Peirce’s thought—self-control, phenomenology, and socialized instinctive beliefs—that facilitate a rich dialogue between Peircean affectivity and social criticism. My second objective is to highlight the specific social criticism thematic of my project: Well-meaning people in hegemonic groups (such as heterosexuals, men, whites, and so on) can nonconsciously perpetuate discrimination toward those in non-hegemonic groups (such as GLBTQs, women, people of color, and so on). My focus is the unintentional perpetuation of racism and (to a lesser extent) sexism. I present a preliminary sketch of this problematic, the details of which will be taken up in subsequent chapters, as I bring Peircean affectivity further into dialogue with social criticism.

Post-Darwinian Evolutionary Context and Self-Control

Peirce’s philosophy occurs within a post-Darwinian evolutionary context, in which human beings are animal organisms who must successfully navigate the external world in order to survive and grow. While his preferred model of evolution is Lamarckian,2 the post-Darwinian thematic of embodied, survival-mediated habit-taking must be held firmly in place, even when Peirce is not explicitly highlighting it for us. In fact, drawing out the post-Darwinian connections and implications of his ideas is the type of work that Peirce prefers his readers to do on their own, impatient as he is with having to spell out the obvious.3

Accordingly, my working definition of Peircean affectivity is the following: the ongoing body-minded communication between the human organism and her or his individual, social, and external environments, for the promotion of survival and growth. This communication is shaped by biological, individual, semiotic, social, and other factors.4 This definition embraces the nonconscious, social, and semiotic dimensions of human reasoning. It is also influenced by the work of Antonio Damasio, to which I turn below. I offer it in a fallibilist spirit that welcomes further inquiry and suggestions. I should note that Peirce does not use the term “affectivity.” Nonetheless, the affective dimensions of his work—including feeling, emotion, sentiment, interest, instinct, agape, and sympathy, as well as belief, doubt, and habit—are harmoniously interrelated within my working definition. I employ “affectivity” as a synechistic term that encompasses the continuum of the human organism’s ongoing communication with its environments, from the subtle nonconscious5 physiological and semiotic processes to the more obvious forms of habit-taking and habit-modification.

Human habit-taking is an affective venture whereby individuals and groups communicate with their various environments in order to successfully cope and grow without undue interruptions from environmental factors outside their control.

For Peirce and the other classical American pragmatists, human habits are not merely mechanical, repetitive behavior like one’s routine of brushing her teeth before bed or like “bad habits”—that is, behaviors one would like to eliminate from conduct, like slamming doors or smoking. Instead habits are body-minded patterns of behavior by which human organisms intelligently interact with their physical, social, and internal environments.6 Habits span a continuum from uncontrolled activity, like the body’s homeostasis mechanisms, to self-controlled conduct, whereby humans self-consciously take on new habits and critique existing habits. Habits, therefore, inform all human conduct, whether we (humans) realize it or not, and whether we like it or not. Peirce describes habits as patterns of nerve firings and attributes to each one a particular feltness, which can be confirmed experientially. For softball/baseball players, one’s batting stance has a feel, for example. As a piano player, I can attest that my habits of playing scales have a feel to them. So do the habits of signing my name, typing on a keyboard, and driving my manual-transmission (stick-shift) car.

Two additional points about habit need to be introduced. First, habits are tendencies; they are not absolute laws that regulate behavior without exception. Thus my habits represent patterns and generalities that are not always executed in behavior. For example, my habit of walking to my favorite coffee shop every weekend reflects behavior in which I engage often, even very often. This habit does not rigidly dictate my behavior, however. Some weekends I have obligations with friends or family that preclude my routine; other weekends I am out of town. Still other weekends I try new coffee shops, for a change of pace. The same notion of habit-as-tendency applies at the level of communal or societal habits. In the United States, for example, there is a mainstream cultural habit of forbidding men to wear skirts. There are exceptions to this tendency, such that kilts are generally considered acceptable for men.

Moreover, because habits are tendencies and not absolute laws of human behavior, they can be changed. This change can be initiated by humans, because they have the self-control to set purposes/goals/ideals for their conduct.

A second point to consider is that, for Peirce, our beliefs are habits—that is, embodied patterns of nerve firings. The significance of this point will unfold in subsequent chapters. For now, I note that in the discussions to follow, I often use the term “belief-habit(s),” in order to keep the embodiment of belief in the foreground as I trace the affective themes in Peirce’s work.

This second point, that beliefs are habits, relates to the first point, just noted, that habits are tendencies versus absolute laws. How is it that belief-habits are tendencies? One answer to this question is that someone’s behavior may go against her belief-habits, which shows that belief-habits do not dictate behavior absolutely. For example, I believe that eating healthfully is best for my health, and my usual behavior is to eat foods that are good for me. Nonetheless, my behavior does not always reflect this belief-habit, especially when buttered movie-theater popcorn is involved. When my behavior diverges from my beliefs, I may or may not be aware of it. In the case of eating, I often know when I am eating foods that are unhealthy. With other beliefs, I may not know that my behavior contradicts them. My belief that racism is wrong, for example, may be contradicted by unintentional racism on my part. For example, years ago, the first time I taught an introductory philosophy course, my syllabus had no readings from people of color, which perpetuated the racist view that only white people have made significant contributions to philosophy. I was not trying to be racist in this case. Instead my focus was to have the typical historical survey of Western philosophy accounted for, which my department wanted me to cover, and I forgot to make room. Nonetheless, my syllabus was all white. How this unintentional contradiction between belief and practice is possible will be addressed in this and subsequent chapters.

Let us return more specifically to the affectivity of habit-formation in humans. Keeping the working definition of affectivity in mind, note that habit-formation is affective because it is a process of inquiry whereby one’s habits are consistently attuned to environmental feedback that may interrupt one’s conduct. My own habit of walking, for example, “communicates with” the ground on which I walk and the traffic patterns I encounter. Failure to attune to either set of “feedback” could result in, say, slipping on a patch of ice or getting hit by an oncoming car. So accustomed are humans to this ongoing communication between their habits and their environments that they often fail to notice that it occurs. This is one of the reasons why Peirce’s phenomenology, to be presented below, is indispensable to a study of Peircean affectivity. Attention to the firstness, secondness, and thirdness of experience highlights how humans learn (thirdness) to avoid unwanted obstacles in their environment (secondness), which often results in habits that become so automatic as to function without their awareness (firstness).

Throughout the following chapters I will address the subtle and often unnoticed influences on human belief-habits that stem from two interrelated sources, the unique embodiment of each person and social-shaping. These influences often occur underneath the radar of human consciousness (cf. Damasio 2003, 228). I will be using the term “nonconscious” to describe such influences. My working definition of “nonconscious” is occurring without one’s conscious awareness. My use of “nonconscious” is inclusive of both the “just beneath the surface” meanings often ascribed to “subconscious” and psychoanalytic treatments of the “unconscious.”7 While I will not be explicitly examining psychoanalytic work in the present project, I want to keep inquiry open on this front. Thus in a synechistic spirit, I take “nonconscious” to embrace shadings and ambiguities that span from the subconscious belief-habits that are just shy of conscious attention, like my habit of pacing while I lecture, to “unconscious” habits that are repressed and thus not readily accessible to conscious attention.8

My use of “nonconscious” encompasses the following interrelated dimensions of human experience: (1) the homeostasis-promoting physiological processes that ensure survival as an animal organism; (2) the human organism’s ongoing homeostasis-driven object assessment; (3) each person’s idiosyncratic associations with ideas, events, and objects in her world; and (4) instinctive beliefs, which can also be described as common-sense or background beliefs. This list is compatible with Peirce’s description of “instinctive mind,” which is discussed below. Each of these four experiential facets often occurs outside of consciousness, with varying degrees of conscious accessibility. The possibility for conscious accessibility, especially regarding facets 2, 3, and 4, allows someone to change unwanted nonconscious behaviors. In this context, testimony from others can be a key resource in bringing such behaviors to one’s conscious awareness. Like my working definition of affectivity, my conception of “nonconscious” is offered in a fallibilist spirit that welcomes further discussion and critique.

Exploring Peircean affectivity within a post-Darwinian context gives rise to a significant concern that must be addressed before we proceed. It might be objected that this post-Darwinian affective context undermines a view of the human person as capable of self-controlled conduct, whereby she shapes her own ends. Mapping survival concerns onto human projects may seem to reduce, to an unacceptable degree, human activity to mere animalistic concerns for staying alive and propagating the species.9 In response, I would argue that the opposite is indeed the case. Attention to a post-Darwinian thematic enlarges self-controlled human activity, by drawing explicit attention to ways self-control can be undermined by factors that might otherwise escape conscious attention. Achieving awareness of these factors is a step toward bringing them under the domain of self-control. Let me explain this point much more fully, by placing it within the multifaceted context of nonconscious belief-habits, self-control, Critical Common-sensism, communal inquiry, fallibilism, agapic sympathy, and reasonableness.

Whether humans acknowledge it or not, their ends are shaped by factors outside of their complete control, including culturally mediated interests in the survival of self and species.10 A primary focus of my project is the dependency of children on their caretakers and community for survival, which leaves children vulnerable to internalizing unreasonable belief-habits about how reality works. By “internalization” (and its derivatives), I mean the incorporation, by means of reinforcement or trauma, of a belief into one’s personal comportment and worldview, such that the belief is difficult to eradicate rationally.11 On the whole, adopting the spoken and/or behavioral belief-habits conveyed by her caretakers and community promotes the young child’s survival (cf. A. Rorty 1980, 122; Dewey [1922] 1988, 43–53, 65–68). Yet some of these belief-habits may promote racism, sexism, or other discriminatory thinking, which may be reinforced at the societal level. The young child does not have the resources to determine which caretaker and/or community belief-habits are survival-rich (such as “Hot stoves are dangerous”) and which convey mere socio-political prejudice (such as “Women are inferior to men”). I discuss this tension in Chapter 2. By the time critical thinking develops in the human organism, problematic belief-habits—like those that promote racism, sexism, and so on—may be so internalized as to escape conscious awareness. Failure to embrace humanity’s post-Darwinian legacy implicitly blocks the road of inquiry into human conduct by leaving such influences unexamined. To neglect inquiry into nonconscious, growth-inhibiting individual or communal habits is to promote blindness to the limitations such habits can place on us. This blindness undermines self-control.

For example, neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, drawing on work in social psychology, explains how we can be affected without conscious awareness by stereotypes that affect how we treat people whose race or gender is different from our own:12

[E]motions, attitudes, goals, and intentions can be activated without awareness, and … these can influence the way people think about and act in social situations. For example, physical features (like skin color or hair length) are enough to activate racial or gender stereotypes, regardless of whether the person possessing the feature expresses any of the behavioral characteristics of the stereotype. This kind of automatic activation of attitudes occurs in a variety of different situations and appears to constitute our first reaction to a person. And once activated, these attitudes can influence the way we then treat the person, and can even have influences over our behavior in other situations. (1996, 61–62, my emphasis; cf. Alcoff 2006, 242–43)

Since these reactions can occur without one’s awareness, they can undermine self-control. That is to say, if my ideals for myself include acting in a nondiscriminatory fashion, yet I am having prejudiced reactions to people of color, for example, without noticing these reactions, then my self-control is undermined. My actual actions do not square with my consciously intended ideals for conduct.

Social psychologist John Bargh notes, with a measured optimism, that when people are educated about the nonconscious influen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Half Title
• Introduction
• 1. Peircean Affectivity
• 2. The Affectivity of Cognition: Journal of Speculative Philosophy Cognition Series, 1868–69
• 3. The Affectivity of Inquiry: Popular Science Monthly Illustrations of the Logic of Science Series, 1877–78
• 4. The Law of Mind, Association, and Sympathy: Monist “Cosmology Series” and Association Writings, 1890s
• 5. Critical Common-sensism, 1900s
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Series List