The Other Side of Peirce's Phaneroscopy: Questioning and Analogising Phaneron... without 'Being'1 Iraklis Ioannidis (University of Glasgow) Abstract Research on Peirce's phaneroscopy has been done with and through the paradigm or the conceptual schema of "Being" - what has been critiqued by post-structuralist philosophers as the metaphysics of Being. Thus, such research is either limited to attempts to define "phaneron," or to identify whether there is a particular and consistent meaning intention behind Peirce's use of this term. Another problematic characteristic with such a way of engaging with phaneroscopy is the very anonymity of the schema of "Being." While all scholars admit to the universality of "phaneron," rarely, if ever, do we see an account of how such universality can be instantiated. In this paper, I attempt to engage with phaneroscopy differently. Instead of presenting a better version of what phaneroscopy is, or making arguments about what is the case with phaneroscopy, both of which are ways of philosophising with "being," I attempt to enact phaneroscopy. This would mean to undertake to follow Peirce's instructions for the phaneroscopist and report the findings. Based on the latter, I shall analogise phaneron with the possibility of understanding. Finally, instead of having a conclusion which would imply an intention of making a case, and thus closure, I shall open up the 1 The first version of this paper was presented at the "Pragmatism and the Analytic - Continental Split" conference held at the University of Sheffield in August 2017. I would like to thank Professor Shannon Dea, Professor James Williams, and Dr. Cyril Orji for their constructive feedback which I have incorporated in this final version. I would also like to thank Rosi Braidotti for her remarks on Luce Irigaray, as well as Susan Stuart, Olivier Salazar-Ferrer and Ryan J. A. Gemmell whose critical interventions helped me arrive at this final version. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 75 possibility of further dialogue by raising some additional questions concerning how phaneroscopy has thus far been represented. Keywords: Charles S. Peirce; phaneron; phaneroscopy; pragmatism; metaphysics of presence; the Other; Nietzsche; Irigaray; feminism 1. Introduction The vast majority of the research on phaneroscopy, important as it undoubtedly is, reveals two problems. First, it interprets "phaneron" through the paradigm of "Being" which, according to Peirce, is nominalistic - Peirce was against nominalism.2 Thus, such research is either limited to attempts to define "phaneron," or to identify whether there is a particular and consistent meaning intention behind Peirce's use of this term.3 Second, while all scholars admit the universality of phaneron, rarely, if ever, do we see an account of how such universality can be instantiated. In the first part of this paper, I address these issues. In the second part, I attempt a different interpretation of "phaneron." Thinking without "Being" does not aim to reach a definition, a conclusion or what the case is. If phaneroscopy is released from the orthodox way of thinking about what is, what there is, or any other form of what has been referred to as the metaphysics of presence,4 then phaneron could be analogised with the possibility of understanding. We can justify this analogy by enacting what Peirce requests us to do: replicate his experiments, report and compare our findings with others. Finally, instead of having a conclusion which would imply an intention of making a case, and thus closure, I shall open up the possibility of further dialogue by raising some additional questions concerning how phaneroscopy has thus far been represented. 2 Two indicative passages where Peirce expresses his feelings concerning the tyranny of nominalism, not only in philosophy but also in everyday life as a way of thinking, are CP 4.1 and CP 4.5. 3 Gary Fuhrman, "Peirce's Retrospectives on His Phenomenological Quest," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 2013, vol. 49, n. 4, 490-508. 4 See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The John Hopskins University Press, 1998). 76 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW 2. Peirce's (In)Decision: Indefinite Decision5 Let us start with Peirce's much cited definition of phaneroscopy: "Phaneroscopy is the description of the phaneron; and by the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not."6 If we ask in whose mind this presence is taking place, where and when, then Peirce says "I reply that I leave these questions unanswered, never having entertained a doubt that those features of the phaneron that I have found in my mind are present at all times and to all minds."7 This universality, this "phaneron" makes no claim for the kind of being for whom (such) presence (it) is; be they blind or of whatever ethnic persuasion, sex(uality), gender, age, etc. That means that the phaneron, or the features of the phaneron, must be objective or objectively given in the sense that they should be present and/or presented to everyone. This is another way of saying that if everyone were to describe, to report about what is present in their mind, their reports would have some universal features, or would have overlapping points. "Indeed, he [anyone] must actually repeat my observations for himself, or else I shall more utterly fail to convey my meaning than if I were to discourse of effects of chromatic decoration to a man congenitally blind."8 We could thus say that phaneron is blind to differences. Using the possibility of blindness as a starting point for the investigation of the phaneron is critical. This decided indecision allows Peirce to look for and look after rather than look at the phaneron as "the collective 5 As we shall shortly see, one of the traditional ways of thinking that Peirce questions, and which he does not allow for the phaneroscopist, is thinking with the principle of non-contradiction. To follow such a thinking, we employ linguistic schemata and wordplay both of which allow for nuances and possibilities of meaning to come forth; meanings which as possibilities would otherwise be left concealed and marginalised in the tyranny of Being. 6 Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. I-VIII (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), CP I.284. Citing from the Collected Papers and The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings: 1867-1893 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992), I will be using the canonical referencing style (CP and EP) respectively. Referencing with pages will refer to various other collections. 7 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1955), 141. 8 Ibid., 74-5. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 77 total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not."9 There are certain implications for this. First, we have to dispense of the definite article. Phaneron is indefinite with respect to whom "it" is presence for. Phaneron is indifferent to our differences be they physiological, psychological, or historical. However, since we are starting from a particular starting point, the particular being of the phaneroscopist that we are, the question comes to be how to achieve this universality as phaneron. Phaneroscopy "scrutinizes the direct appearances, and endeavours to combine minute accuracy with the broadest possible explanation."10 Thus, the question is not what the phaneron is, but how we are to understand the universality of phaneron, which must be familiar to everybody. Let us follow Peirce through the principles of phaneroscopy and scrutinise. 3. Minute Scrutiny Following the traditional way of engaging with Peirce's phaneroscopy we shall start with Peirce's so-called hierarchy of sciences. In this hierarchy, mathematics is placed as the foundation giving its principles to phaneroscopy: This classification, which aims to base itself on the principal affinities of the objects classified, is concerned not with all possible sciences, nor with so many branches of knowledge, but with sciences in their present condition, as so many businesses of groups of living men. It borrows its idea from Comte's classification; namely, the idea that one science depends upon another for fundamental principles, but does not furnish such principles to that other.11 First, this hierarchy could not be taken as foundational precisely because it reflects the contemporary conditions, i.e., the time of Peirce's writing. If it were to be taken as foundational and immutable, such decision would clash with Peirce's strong adherence to the principle of fallibility according to which no established and eternal truths exist. For Peirce, everything evolves, there is synechism in the world and, thus, such a hierarchy cannot be taken as absolutely foundational - it has pragmatic rather than ontological value. 9 Ibid., 75. 10 Ibid. 11 CP I.180; emphases added. 78 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW Second, the sciences at the time, and to a large extent today, are not carried out irrespectively of one's self-preservation. To occupy oneself with the investigation of truth "for some ulterior purpose, such as to make money, or to amend his life, or to benefit his fellows, he may be ever so much better than a scientific man."12 Here Peirce's worries parallel those of Plato and Nietzsche with respect to the professionalization of the sciences. To what extent can any science be a business for making a living without itself being compromised by that end? "Relatively," says Peirce, "knowledge even of a purely scientific kind has a money value."13 Finally, the third reason concerns the idea that a foundational science can provide its principles to other sciences without itself being dependent on the other sciences for its own. Now, this is an idea borrowed from Comte. Again, it is an idea and not a fact or an absolute truth. But is "idea" itself a proper fit for phaneron? Any kind of "idea" is particular and thus impertinent for an investigation of phaneron. Peirce writes: [P]hilosophers have quite commonly used the word idea in a sense approaching to that which I give to phaneron. But in various ways they have restricted the meaning of it too much to cover my conception (if conception it can be called), besides giving a psychological connotation to their word which I am careful to exclude. The fact that they have the habit of saying that "there is no such idea" as this or that, in the very same breath in which they definitely describe the phaneron in question, renders their term fatally inapt for my purpose.14 The term "idea" as it is being used is fatally inapt for phaneron. We have also seen earlier that phaneron cannot be something definite or particular. Thus, no idea will be able to take us to phaneron. No idea is pertinent for phaneron, even the idea of "Being" which feels like an empty conception - or no thing in particular.15 Every idea is not only particular, but a particular habit - and phaneron is exhausted neither in an idea nor in a habit. To say "there is" or "there is not" is a habit. Thinking with "Being" is therefore a habit. For Peirce, thinking or conceiving is an act carried out through signs and signs are tools we use in order to perform actions. The habit of speaking 12 CP I.45. 13 CP I.120. 14 CP I.285. 15 CP I.53; CP I.548. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 79 is a habit of performing an action. This is not just a Humean reiteration that thinking relies on a customary association of ideas. This thesis is much stronger. It is akin to Nietzsche's thesis that thought is nothing more or less than habits or addictions of doing or making things.16 Does this mean that mathematical reasoning is also such a habitual thinking? Let us go back to the classification. "Peirce's classification of the sciences stipulates that mathematics is the most fundamental of all sciences for the reason that it is the only one that is completely groundless, unsupported by any other science, and independent of worldly experience."17 Indeed, Peirce writes that mathematics is rigorous, consistent, yet, groundless. But this groundlessness belies irresponsibility. The groundlessness and independence is not some ultra-transcendental form of the book of the universe. Peirce states explicitly: "Mathematics studies what is and what is not logically possible, without making itself responsible for its actual existence.18 It is a tool in the sense that "mathematical reasoning is a logica utens which it develops for itself, and has no need of an appeal to a logica docens.19 Mathematics is not a "closed book" as some "family of minds" take it to be.20 It is very rigorous and consistent because it is utterly ideal. The principles of mathematics are not to be deliberated. Once set, everything follows from them objectively irrespectively of idiosyncrasies. Once axioms are set, everything follows in one way only. Mathematical thinking is a train of thought. But so is man's reasoning overall, "a train of thought."21 Just like in the case of a railway train, once the tracks for a course are set, there is only one way to go. The direction is determined by the tracks, always already. But how are these tracks, these principles set? Are the principles universally obvious? If "phaneron," as we saw earlier in Peirce's definition, refers to "the collective total of all that is, in any way or in any sense present to the mind,"22 could they be characterised as phanera? 16 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Random House, 1989). 17 André De Tienne, "Is Phaneroscopy as a Pre-Semiotic Science Possible?" Semiotiche, 2:30 2004), 1. 18 CP I.184. 19 CP I.417. 20 CP I.570. 21 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, 54. 22 CP I.284. 80 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW Peirce himself writes that his whole work is but a mathematical treatise, rigorously following from some basic axioms. But when it comes to these axioms, Peirce states "my book will have no instruction to impart to anybody. Like a mathematical treatise, it will suggest certain ideas and certain reasons for holding them true; but then, if you accept them, it must be because you like my reasons, and the responsibility lies with you."23 The responsibility lies with us. We can either decide to accept them or not. And this is also the case for any form of mathematical reasoning. Peirce seems to be following Berkeley and Erasmus in that, when it comes to formulating axiomatic principles, there is no transcendentality involved, but just responsibility:24 But of late mathematicians have fully agreed that the axioms of geometry (as they are wrongly called) are not by any means evidently true. Euclid, be it observed, never pretended they were evident; he does not reckon them among his κοιναί ἔ ννoιαι [common concepts/concerns], or things everybody knows, but among the αἰ τήματα postulates, or things the author must beg you to admit, because he is unable to prove them.25 If the axioms of arithmetic mathematics26 are not by any means evidently true, on what grounds do we use them for describing phaneron? This seems to leave little room to think phaneron according to arithmetic mathematics or the hierarchy. Those things that the author must beg you 23 CP I.11. 24 Or folly; for Erasmus mathematics just like the sciences "crept into the world with other the pests of mankind, from the same head from whence all other mischiefs spring" [sic]. Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 63. Berkeley's admonition, however, is closer to that of Peirce, as we shall see. For Berkeley, mathematics, though producing statements with rare clarity and consistency according to its own rules and principles, and though "their way of deduction from those principles clear and incontestable... there may be certain erroneous maxims of greater extent than the object of Mathematics, and for that reason not expressly mentioned, though tacitly supposed, throughout the whole progress of that science." George Berkeley, The Works of George Berkeley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), 324; emphases added. 25 CP I.130. 26 Although this phrase might seem awkward today, still, it is necessary in order to remind us that the inceptual meaning of "mathematics" is a way of learning not a way of learning only with numbers, that is, arithmetically - see Liddell and Scott relevant entry http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=66639. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 81 to admit reveal an ontological thinking that is not necessarily phaneron. Peirce seems to suggest what Agamben calls "two ontologies." Before saying what there is, there seems to be principles which we have tacitly allowed as a criterion based on which the "there is" will take place. Before the ontology of what there is, there is another ontology of "letting be."27 Yet, the most important reason for which Peirce cannot mean traditional mathematics as a foundation for analysing phaneron is his attitude towards the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of excluded middle that is derived from it. Setting the principles of any science is an event. And for Peirce, as Sandra Rosenthal aptly put it, "the independently real as a continuum of events is precisely that to which neither the law of noncontradiction nor the law of excluded middle is perfectly applicable."28 A phaneroscopist "will be sure sooner or later to become entangled in a quarrel with the principle of excluded middle."29 Mathematical reasoning in the modern sense excludes the middle. We, as phaneroscopists, shall quarrel with it, and with logical entailment, we shall quarrel with such mathematics. Perhaps, Peirce's mathematics is rigorous and consistent reasoning in another sense. Nearly all Peirce scholars talk about the emphasis that Peirce puts on logic. But this logic is not the mathematical logic that we take today as the valid and proper way of thinking. As Joseph Ransdell carefully observes, what we refer today as logic would be classified as 27 Girgio Agamben, "What Is a Commandment?" in https://waltendegewalt. wordpress.com/2011/04/01/giorgio-agamben-what-is-a-commandment (2011; Accessed November 20, 2017). 28 Sandra Rosenthal, "Peirce's Pragmatic Account of Perception: Issues and Implications" in The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, ed. Cheryl Misak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 193-213, 206. It is thus very difficult to follow Houser's and Bellucci's conclusion that there is an isomorphism between experience and arithmetic mathematics, i.e., mathematics in the colloquial sense. We could conclude that experience actualises a mathematical structure with the proviso that we are responsible for this actualisation. As Husserl admits in Ideas I, if we had not learnt to count in (particular) numbers, it is highly unlikely that the world would reveal itself arithmetically. Francesco Bellucci, "Peirce on Phaneroscopical Analysis," Journal Phänomelogie (2015), 56-72. Nathan Houser, "La structure formelle de l'expérience selon Peirce," Études Phénoménologiques (1989), 77-11. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (First Book), trans. F. Kersten (Hingham, MA: Kluwer, 1983). 29 CP I.434. 82 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW logic in the narrow sense in Peirce:30 "There are still other operations of the mind to which the name 'reasoning' is especially appropriate, although it is not the prevailing habit of speech to call them so."31 Analogously, this other sense of mathematical reasoning could be the foundation of phaneroscopy but will imply operations of the mind which we do not have the prevailing habit of speech to call them so. Let mathematics be in the ancient literal semeiosis: the way of mathesis, that is learning.32 If we disentangle mathematical reasoning from arithmetic, from numbers, which by the way is our creation, then mathesis, will be animated by our desire as "the true scientific Eros."33 Eros is not love, but what precedes the materialised/realised question. Peirce calls it the first principle of reason: desire to learn.34 The desire to learn starts with questioning. Untainted by any authorities, this ἔρως (eros) takes its authentic meaning as a continuous rhythm of questioning (ἔρώ-τησις) which is not arhythmetic. It questions the rhythm of life. Numbers, however, are a system with a determinate rhythm asynchronous to life: Numbers are merely a system of names devised by men for the purpose of counting. It is a matter of real fact to say that in a certain room there are two persons. It is a matter of fact to say that each person has two eyes. It is a matter of fact to say that there are four eyes in the room. But to say that if there are two persons and each person has two eyes there will be four eyes is not a statement of fact, but a statement about the system of numbers which is our own creation.35 This creation is a technology - devised for a particular purpose. But this technology belies particularity: "science of the eye."36 Mathematical reasoning 30 Joseph Ransdell, "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" in: http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/ menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/PHENOM.HTM (1989) Accessed October 16, 2017. 31 CP I.608. 32 See von Fritz and Snell: "B. Snell has shown that μαθεῖ ν and its derivatives originally mean a knowledge, a skill, or also an attitude which is acquired by training, by being brought up in certain ways, or by practical experiences - as, for instance, when a man "learns" to be cautious or even "learns to hate." Kurt von Fritz, "ΝΟΥΣ, ΝΟΕΙΝ, and their Derivatives," Classical Philology (1945), 223-242. 33 CP I.620. 34 CP I.135. 35 CP I.149. 36 CP I.34; emphasis added. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 83 as reasoning with numbers is, as all thinking, notational. That is, it is a system of names, signs, revealing a logica utens, a tool. And this tool requires eyes and hands. Mathematical reasoning with numbers like algebra and geometry are indeed powerful instruments - one could even say that it is magical. As Peter Skagestad mentions, Peirce has shown how "the specific material quality of a sign enables the precise kind of reasoning it makes possible."37 Any instrument, any tool requires a particular manipulation for a particular end. But this particularity is not consistent with the generality of phaneron. If mathematics in Peirce's hierarchy of sciences is to be taken as first which amounts to being foundational, then it cannot be the kind of mathematics that is restricted to numbers with a particular aim. The aim must be universal. Let the mathematics of Peirce be mathematics of desire, responsibility, and justice. This mathematical reasoning is just as ethics (is). There is almost an exact parallelism between them. They bear the same logic; they are homo-logous, that is, analogous to each other. One is the counterpart of the Other. Two sides of one shield. The "ideals of good logic are truly of the same general nature as ideals of fine conduct."38 Therefore, we could take mathematical reasoning as foundational not as applying numbers to life to calculate it, but by being rigorous and consistent in the sense of an unlimited desire to learn which is represented through responsible and just questioning with no particular aim.39 Hence, if there are really any such necessary characteristics of mathematical hypotheses as I have just declared in advance that we shall find that there [are], this necessity must spring from some truth so broad as to hold not only for the universe we know but for every world that poet could create. And this truth like every truth must come to us by the way of experience.40 After all is said and done, "nothing is truer than true poetry."41 The poet is rhythmic mathematician rather than an a-rythmetic one. Peirce 37 Peter Skagestad, "Peirce's Semeiotic Model of the Mind." In The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, ed. Cheryl Misak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 241-256, 252. 38 CP I.333. 39 Again, Peirce seems to approximate the ancient way of philosophizing which did not rely on quantification; see W. J. Verdenius, "Science grecque et science moderne," Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger (1962), 319-336. 40 CP I.417. 41 CP I.315. 84 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW talks about mathematics without numbers: "The common definition, among such people as ordinary schoolmasters, still is that mathematics is the science of quantity. As this is inevitably understood in English, it seems to be a misunderstanding of a definition which may be very old."42 Mathematical reasoning is rhythmic; it is just about universal life and experience. Peirce appears as the first bio-logist - the first scientist of life. So far, we have seen that we could not rely on or re-lie with the traditional mathematical reasoning to approach the universality of phaneron; those elements which Pierce takes to make up phaneron and which are present to everyone with no exception. Objectivity is, as Nietzsche was claiming during the same period in an untimely manner,43 justice, as something common to all. This objectivity is not an object conceived in a nominalistic way - it cannot be captured with "is" or "being." It is universal in the sense of being versed by all, uni-versed. Therefore, we cannot rely on any hierarchy because any such classification compromises justice. We need a just classification symphonious to all, one which brings all together, i.e., one (ac)cording (to) all - in all senses of according. Therefore, we need another passage to phaneroscopy, an other Peircean passage to follow: The student's great effort is not to be influenced by any tradition, any authority, any reasons for supposing that such and such ought to be the facts, or any fancies of any kind, and to confine himself to honest, single minded observation of the appearances. The reader, upon his side, must repeat the author's observations for himself, and decide from his own observations whether the author's account of the appearances is correct or not.44 Let us put into praxis what Peirce recommends. Let us enact and then report. 4. Question and Analogy as the Universal Tools for Phaneroscopy Peirce starts with an analogy with chemistry. De Tienne advises to "bear in mind the importance of the chemical analogy, which explains why Peirce was for a while tempted to call his new science by the name of 42 CP IV.231. 43 Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 44 CP I.286. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 85 'phanerochemy.' It was with the eyes of the trained chemist and mathematician that he wanted to observe the phaneron."45 We have seen how the eyes reveal a particular logic - which, by the way, has been criticised by all pragmatists.46 Let us look for and look at De Tienne's quotation where Peirce talks about the importance of chemical elements and their valences and see how he goes on: Why do I seem to see my reader draw back? Does he fear to be compromised by my bias, due to preconceived views? Oh, very well; yes, I do bring some convictions to the inquiry. But let us begin by subjecting these to criticism, postponing actual observation until all preconceptions are disposed of, one way or the other.47 Peirce never denies that we all have presuppositions and that there is no objective presuppositionless way of knowing or doing science. The only thing that allows us to reason in an authentic scientific manner is to question those presuppositions and preconceptions, even those that we are accustomed to think or have been brought up to believe that are definitively true, like 1 + 1 = 2. So, how can we account for the importance of this analogy? Does Peirce talk at random? I fear I may be producing the impression of talking at random. It is that I wish the reader to "catch on" to my conception, my point of view; and just as one cannot make a man see that a thing is red, or is beautiful, or is touching, by describing redness, beauty, or pathos, but can only point to something else that is red, beautiful, or pathetic, and say, "Look here too for something like that there," so if the reader has not been in the habit of conceiving ideas as I conceive them, I can only cast a sort of dragnet into his experience and hope that it may fish up some instance in which he shall have had a similar conception.48 By casting a sort of dragnet in order to find a similar conception, an analogy. Peirce questions his habitual ways of thinking and proliferates analogies. 45 André De Tienne, "Is Phaneroscopy as a Pre-Semiotic Science Possible?" 13; see also Francesco Bellucci "Peirce on Phaneroscopical Analysis." 46 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 47 CP I.289-90. 48 CP I.217. 86 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW Thinking, that is using signs, consists in habits of use. It is these habits that the questioning disturbs. And this questioning within his writing is not reducing the Other in order to try to find them afterwards in a particular schema of what is supposed to be there according to what he takes it to be the common sense in which they partake. The Other is always already there as the possibility of being questioned: Peirce writes, and the Other questions through Peirce. The Other is there in the form of questioning. The presence of the Other is not felt with the eyes of a chemist or a mathematician in the arithmetic way. The Other becomes a critical blind eye on the self, he is trying to "duplicate himself and observe himself with a critical eye."49 To allow for phaneron, Peirce fallows (his) being critically.50 The constant presence of the blind representation attests to that. Peirce attempts (to) the blind who pierces Charles Sanders' thinking, the writer with vision, or even perhaps the envisioned writer. He creates shocks for himself, he attempts selfcriticism, he is letting tell of his Other: Unfortunately, to be cocksure that one is an infallible reasoner is to furnish conclusive evidence either that one does not reason at all, or that one reasons very badly, since that deluded state of mind prevents the constant self-criticism which is, as we shall see, the very life of reasoning. Congratulations, then, from my heart go out to you, my dear Reader, whom I assume to have a sincere desire to learn, not merely the dicta of common sense, but what good reasoning, scientifically examined, shall prove to be. You are already an unusually good logician.51 The very life of reasoning is constant self-criticism. Questioning and looking for and looking after reasons for rather than looking at reasons that explain in the modern (common) sense. This is another form of mathematical reasoning through justice and responsibility in doing justice to the Other through self-criticism. In the end, "nothing can be more 49 CP I.626. 50 Although "fallow" usually means to leave a piece of land uncultivated or inactive for a certain period of time, we are a using an older sense whereby "fallow" means plough in order to sow - see the relevant entry in www.OED.com. Since we are trying to follow Peirce in a way that does not mimic the paradigm of Being, also known as the Metaphysics of Presence, creating relations through all rhetorical devices comes to supplement the logic of "logical" argumentation. 51 CP II.123. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 87 precious to a sincere student than frank and sincere objection."52 The scientific spirit is always questioning, "demands reasons" echoing Nietzsche, while "the rest demand faith."53 Before we proceed, we need to make another observation. Keeping the rhythm, the flow of questions coming through, we are compelled to see "family resemblances"54 with some feminist reasoning which "continues to interrogate,"55 to keep questioning itself. Luce Irigaray writes one passage according to her point of view, writing (as) woman, just like Peirce's writing (as) a man of vision. A passage is written and immediately after, another passage comes to pass a question on it as a whole inspired by the Other. The order is not of expropriating the Other. The Other is not grasped and asphyxiated. The Other is not categorized according to what seems evident to oneself. The Other is neither seen nor gazed upon, not captured by an eye/I. The Other is not re-garded. It is the Other who regards the self. The Other is not looked at, the Other is looked for through an extension of (the one of the) self; there is a quest for the Other through questioning oneself. This is an extension of oneself, a quest(ion) towards the Other. It is an effort of resisting oneself in being blind toward the Other. It is a move toward the tempo of the Other, an attempt to touch their course of experience.56 An "effort - for one cannot simply leap outside that discourse - to situate myself at borders and to move continuously from the inside to the outside."57 And since the properly Other is missing in writing, it is writing that invites the Other as an interlocutor who questions at the borders.58 52 CP I.570. 53 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 108. 54 CP I.29. 55 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), 119. 56 When Husserl decides to set phenomenology as the Critique of Knowledge, the possibility of the knowledge of the possibility of knowledge, it is the Other as deaf and blind who come to help him. Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy (Leuven: Kluwer, 1999), 30; 46. 57 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, 122. 58 An anastrophe: "to turn back on our path to question ourselves about where we are already situated." Luce Irigaray, To Speak Is Never Neutral, trans. Gail Schwab (London: Continuum, 2002), 7. This questioning allows for the creation of a new epistemic space, 88 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW As Margaret Whitford notices, in the writings of Irigaray there is a dual purpose; "she wishes to occupy the position of analyst and analysand simultaneously."59 Just like Peirce who states and questions in order to verify or question a statement further. The quest starts with what there is according to one's logic and continues as a dia-logic, a dialogue through questioning. Pierce does not only see(k) to find what the universal elements of phaneron are, but also, to have them versed by all, universally.60 To use Merleau-Ponty's phrase, questioning as we try to reach the Other provides a "second openness"61 to the world. At the same time that it limits my own view of the world; it enlarges it with another possibility - with extra eyes/Is. Without quarrelling with the principle of non-contradiction we cannot see how limiting a subjective view is at the same time enlarging it. If we keep the schema of what the world is, the schema of Being and episteme, which by the way amount to the same, the Other fallows my limited schema to allow for an addition, an enhancement. Only with myself, one I, I can only look at what is for me. With questioning myself, I can extend this look by looking for the Other, another I. And with the Other present, phaneron comes to be the possibility of meaning in an indefinite dialogue with an indefinite Other; and its mathematics: questioning. one which includes the otherness of the Other as fundamental for episteme rather than reducing or neutralizing the embodiment of the Other as non-important based on abstract and/or moralistic rules. See Luce Irigaray, "Perhaps Cultivating Touch Can Still Save Us," SubStance, 40:3, (2011). This "vigilant self-critical process of interpretation of our own limitations" in Irigaray is, as Oliver underscores, not sacrifice but an "acknowledgement" to the other as Other even in loving relationships. See Kelly Oliver, "The Look of Love," Hypatia (2001), 56-78, at 72, 73. 59 Margaret Whitford, "Luce Irigaray and the Female: Imaginary: Speaking as a Woman," Radical Philosophy (1986) 3-8, at 8. 60 This is different from creating an objective phenomenological vocabulary which does justice only to a particular set of people as Atkin's argues. Richard Kenneth Atkins, "Toward an Objective Phenomenological Vocabulary: How Seeing a Scarlet Red is Like Hearing a Trumpet's Blare," Phenom Cogn Sci (2013), 837858, at 838. Phaneron, if it is "obvious phenomena" (CP I.127), it must be obvious to all. 61 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York, NY: Routledge, 1962), 59. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 89 5. Questioning Peirce's Experiments: Testing and Reporting Having made these observations, let us follow Peirce and try to find those a priori elements of phaneron. Peirce sometimes calls them categories and, as such, phaneroscopy could be called a "doctrine of categories."62 The fundamental a priori features of phaneron according to Peirce are the three indecomposable elements that he calls Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. Peirce uses various words to describe these three categories which he hypothesises as the indecomposable elements of phaneron. The main cluster for each category is as follows. Firstness: feeling, presence, quality, possibility, chance, life. Secondness: (brute) fact, reaction, (brute) force, absolute last, haecceity, existence. Thirdness: thought, law, learning, habit, representation, idea. To engage with them we shall report on an experiment that we repeated according to his instructions: the door experiment. We put our shoulder against the door. There is a two-sided consciousness of resistance and effort. This is Secondness, brute fact. However, Secondness is not the above proposition "The brute fact... ." The proposition along with the thought that precedes it is about (a) brute fact as felt; it is a representation of it, not a representation of the same. The medium of representation is Thirdness - a thought about a brute fact, a representation of it. It is the course itself as (having been) felt which is the brute fact; it is what it is, "it just is."63 The justness, the exactitude of fact is past/passed as having been felt. This "is" is force or forces (having been) felt as compulsion. "Force is compulsion; and compulsion is hic et nunc."64 Secondness is all about tensed presence. Firstness, then, would be the possibility of feeling forces. The possibility of coming into presence, which is always passed through Thirdness; the ways to represent the just passed/past. Secondness is a junction of forces, therefore an event: "The event is the existential junction of states (that is, of that which in existence corresponds to a statement about a given subject in representation) whose combination in one subject would violate the logical law of contradiction."65 Let us compare this phaneroscopic report with another one. Atkins gives us the example of a perception of a black phone: "When it comes 62 Joseph Ransdell, "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" 1. 63 CP I.145. 64 CP I.212. 65 CP I.494. 90 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW to a feeling of some thing, say, my black phone. First, we have a feeling of my black phone, namely the black itself. Second, we have the brute fact of the black phone. The black phone and I stand in a dyadic relationship of ego and non-ego."66 For Atkins qualities like "red" are first.67 Let us proceed, as Peirce has advised, that is, by analyzing "the phaneron by separating the decomposable from the indecomposable elements,"68 i.e., by questioning them. Let us start with "the perception of the black phone." This perception presupposes vision. Can it be an obvious phenomenon,69 phaneron for the blind? No. For the blind there is not a black phone, whereas for a person with ocular vision there is. To take color sensations as first featuring phaneron would belie a democratic implicature - to borrow a Gricean term - of vision. Atkins's statement would be true, universal, phaneron, only insofar as one starts with the brute fact of the ones who see with their eyes; only if the indefinite community of phaneroscopists as a community of scientists had eyes like ours. This is neither universalisable nor conformable to minute accuracy. Peirce gives numerous examples with color sensations. But he is very careful to say that sensation is not "feeling" and, thus, not quality, not Firstness. A sensation of blackness is not part of the indecomposable elements of phaneron but supersedes it. Sensation is a combination of feeling (Firstness) and medium (organ of perception): "That quality is dependent upon sense is the great error of the conceptualists."70 Sensations are idiosyncratic because they depend on the particularity of each sensation. Feeling as part of phaneron cannot be a particular sensation, a modality of sense which implies a (prior) classification of sense. "The blind man from birth has no such feelings as red, blue, or any other colour; and without any body at all, it is probable we should have no feelings at all."71 66 Richard Kenneth Atkins, "Broadening Peirce's Phaneroscopy: Part One," The Pluralist (2012), 1-29, 13. 67 Richard Kenneth Atkins, "Direct Inspection and Phaneroscopic Analysis," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society (2016), 1-16, 7. 68 Ibid., 7. 69 CP I.127. 70 CP I.422. 71 CP VII.586. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 91 Atkins's statement that "qualities like red are Firsts"72 is true only if the standard of the analysis is the principle of the majority. We could call redness a phenomenon in the classical sense, but not an indecomposable element of phaneron. Christopher Hookway, for instance, appreciates that color perception is neither universalisable nor conformable to minute accuracy. He states that "[u]nless we think that all inquirers must possess visual apparatus like ours or that they will inevitably encounter creatures that possess such visual apparatus, [...] colour propositions cannot be true and that their objects are not real."73 Phaneroscopically, the black phone can neither be black nor phone, nor black phone. Phaneroscopically, there is and there is not a black phone on the table. The presuppositions of sensing through vision or through particular parts of the body as organs of perception linked to distinct senses presuppose distinctions that cannot be universalisable, not even prima facie. De Tienne writes that "L'esse du phanéron est son percipi [...] et le perceptum ne se détache pas du percipiens."74 Let us combine this Berkeleyan thesis, to which Peirce adheres, with the axiom of phaneron being present to any mind whatsoever.75 Since there are percipientia with no vision, does it not follow that the feeling as Firstness, as indecomposable element of phaneron cannot be a color sensation? And if one wants to start with color phenomena, would that not mean that color must be decomposed based on those who do not sense it? In addition, thinking of color sensations as Firstness belies a nominalistic habit. Peirce says: "If we say 'The stove is black,' the stove is the substance, from which its blackness has not been differentiated, and 72 Richard Kenneth Atkins, "Broadening Peirce's Phaneroscopy: Part One," The Pluralist (2012), 1-29, 7. 73 Christopher Hookway, "Truth, Reality, and Convergence," The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, ed. Cheryl Misak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 127-148, 131. 74 André De Tienne, "Quand l'apparence (se) fait signe," Recherches Sémiotiques (2000), 95-144, 99. 75 In Touching Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida accepts Irigaray's critique of the senses which ends up giving primacy to the sense of touch. He traces this conception to Berkeley by reformulating and advancing on his thesis that we are always already in touch with the world. The distinctions that come from the senses are not distinctions based on identity but on distance. And this distance is felt when perception takes a metonymic register by privileging particular parts of the body. Bodily-wise, we never get out of touch with the world. 92 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW the is, while it leaves the substance just as it was seen, explains its confusedness, by the application to it of blackness as a predicate."76 The perception of the phone as that of the stove already includes the color quality; it is part of the experience. Peirce seems to be following Berkeley again. A substance is the sum total of its qualities. Nominalists (following Aristotle) divide a substance between essential (primary) and accidental (secondary) qualities through some (techno-logical) medium. For instance, John Locke77 used the microscope to arrive at the universal. But Berkeley said that what we see through the microscope could still be said to have phenomenal qualities. What would be the difference? The microscope or any other kind of medium do not change the quality of the percipium, they only enhance the quantity of the quality - we still use our eyes. Color is indeed a quality, albeit not a phaneroscopic quality. Color quality refers to the experience of those who use their eyes to see. In one sense, it is accidental and not essential.78 In another sense, the blind sense, it is neither, it simply is not. What it would be, where it would "inhere," would be in the subjective discourse of a definite, particular group of scientists who have eyesight. That is, a particular sense which implies nominalism through and through.79 Or, to analogise with Irigaray, a hom(m)osensual exchange.80 76 CP I.548. 77 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Hazleton: Pennsylvania State University, 2013). 78 CP I.527 79 Again, Peirce comes in contact with Nietzsche. For Nietzsche physics "is one way of interpretation, an interpretation driven by sensualism. Eyes and fingers speak in its favor, visual evidence and palpableness do, too: this strikes an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes as fascinating, persuasive, and convincingafter all, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternally popular sensualism. What is clear, what is 'explained'? Only what can be seen and felt - every problem has to be pursued to that point." Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1966), 22. For other points of contact between Nietzsche and Peirce, see Ciano Aydin, "Beyond Essentialism and Relativism: Nietzsche and Peirce on Reality," Cognitio (2006), 25-47 and Rossella Fabbrichesi, "The Body of the Community: Peirce, Royce, and Nietzsche," European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (2009), 1-10. 80 In most of her works, Irigaray analyzes the exchanges of the same sex which are conditioned on a certain homosexual tendency, and the pleasure derived thereof, THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 93 Let us go back to what Peirce underscored: "That quality is dependent upon sense is the great error of the conceptualists."81 Let us explore this anew. Quality is not dependent upon sense. De Tienne, for instance, agrees that "le phanéron ne se limite pas à ce qui apparait à nos sens."82 But later he takes sensations such as pleasure and pain as indecomposable elements, thus as feeling. The thesis that feeling is not limited in sensations goes so far for Peirce as to say that "as for pleasure and pain, which Kant and others have represented to be of the essence of feeling [...] we certainly do not think that unadulterated feeling."83 And he later underscores that "no feeling could be common to all pleasures and none to all pains."84 Feeling is not a sensation "which is entirely contained, or superseded, in the actual sensation."85 Any sensation could be a quality of feeling, i.e., the way we qualify our feeling at a particular time. However, these qualities are not exhausted in sensations. Feeling is not being sensed. Qualities of feeling can be realized in ways other than sense. Peirce's example is telling: "I can imagine a consciousness whose whole life, alike when wide awake and when drowsy or dreaming, should consist in nothing at all but a violet colour or a stink of rotten cabbage."86 We can also add feeling pain in the sense of being heart broken. When one hears from their partner that their relationship is over, nothing is felt in the ear which senses the vibrations of the air. The (quality of) feeling which overwhelms the body and becomes untranslatable and un-locatable is not a sensation, it does not involve immediately the functional body. The abysmal pain of heartbreak is not a sensation but a quality of feeling.87 Whereas qualities can be realised or actu- hence hom(m)osexual. Here, we are analogizing this phenomenon with respect to knowing as an exchange between people with the same senses, hence hom(m)osensual. 81 CP I.422. 82 André De Tienne, "Quand l'apparence (se) fait signe," 98. 83 CP I.333. 84 Ibid. 85 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, 81. 86 Ibid. 87 Like Wittgenstein's "impoderable feeling," where everything is felt in the sense of the unusual. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1953). Or, we could use Ratcliffe's expression of "existential feeling." Matthew Ratcliffe, Feelings of 94 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW alised as particular bodily sensations, they can also be realised otherwise: for example, this or that red is a feeling; and it is perfectly conceivable that a being should have that color for its entire consciousness, throughout a lapse of time, and therefore at every instant of that time. But such a being could never know anything about its own consciousness. It could not think anything that is expressible as a proposition.88 Before something is sensed it can only be a possibility of sense, a quality that can be sensed according to the sense for which it becomes a sensation. But to say that red is a quality or possibility of sense comes after having been affected with similar red and/or other color experiences - otherwise, we could never know anything about it. We could not think anything that is expressible as a proposition. Here, we can see how Peirce follows Hegel in "a strange costume," as he avows.89 A quality of feeling is what it is not. It has to be resisted somehow in order to be able to come into consciousness and thus be spoken about. We said that to talk about qualities of feeling comes after creating some sort of rupture in feeling. We should explore this further and observe how it correlates with Peirce's statement of the "Manifestation of Firstness."90 In this paragraph, Peirce talks about freedom and the "idea of" freedom. An idea or a concept includes something having been negated and represented, whereas in modern logic we trace its meaning through an ideal opposite-negative. Peirce underscores: "To love and to be loved are regarded as the same concept, and not to love is also to be considered as the same concept."91 We cannot talk about freedom unless there is that which resists it. To talk about freedom as Firstness we put the negative, the idea in the background "or else we cannot say that the Firstness is predominant."92 Therefore, absolute Firstness is not only unthinkable, but, also, it makes no sense - in any sense. Absolute Firstness would be a purely monadic state unrelated to Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 88 CP I.310. 89 CP I.42. 90 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, 79; CP I.302 91 CP I.294. 92 Ibid. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 95 anything else, "a suchness sui generis."93 If Firstness is freedom and no otherness is to be found to negate it, then Firstness is no thing in particular, thus everything. That is why freedom can only manifest itself in unlimited and uncontrolled variety and multiplicity. It is pure positivity as measureless variety and multiplicity.94 An object cannot be Firstness as it is contained in a relation with a subject. No unity is in Firstness even if it is a determinable concept-less and unschematized appearing as a Kantian intuition. Unity implies otherness as Secondness. To approximate absolute Firstness, Peirce attempts an analogy: it would be like being in a "confused dream,"95 or a pure quality like a state of feeling in a slumberous condition.96 An absolute Firstness is sense-less possibility: "For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others."97 Therefore, in talking about freedom some negation is implied - some negation of life, of freshness, of freedom, even if it is only in the background. Such negation can be taken as reaction, resistance or relation, thus as Secondness. Not being in any relation is being free. But then Peirce qualifies that by saying that "it is not in being separated from qualities that Firstness is most predominant, but in being something peculiar and idiosyncratic."98 Because Peirce talks of the manifestation of Firstness, the latter can be construed as non-mediated, i.e., immediate and uninterrupted, nonnegated, non-reacted, unchanging presence. It could be a "manifold" of sense without beginning and end: Life. It is not even a Kantian intuition but a constant intuiting. Much closer to Nietzsche, this constant intuiting comes to be a chaos as a multiplicity of forces as "formless unformulable world of the chaos of sensations - another kind of phenomenal world, a kind of "unknowable" for us.99 This formless unfomulable is not that there is no feeling but that there is no particular feeling. While alive, we are always al- 93 CP I.303. 94 CP I.302. 95 CP I.175. 96 CP I.303. 97 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, 76; emphasis added. 98 CP I.302. 99 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1968), 307. 96 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW ready in contact with the world as Berkeley underscored. There is a continuous contact with the world, an uninterrupted course, and that is the course of life: "all that is immediately present to a man is what is in his mind in the present instant. His whole life is in the present. But when he asks what is the content of the present instant, his question always comes too late. The present has gone by, and what remains of it is greatly metamorphosed."100 This uninterrupted course, this chaotic, formless unformulable feeling is not a phaneric flow or, as De Tienne calls it, "courant phanéronique"101 or "phanéron vécu."102 This peculiar and idiosyncratic flow is Firstness composing phaneron not phaneron. Phaneron requires the question, the instant of "asking." To describe it poetically, it is the question of/as an Other which, like a witch, spells out the present; the question of/as an Other opens the door to the present. Let us question again the door experiment. This experiment is conducted in two ways: "Standing on the outside of a door that is slightly ajar, you put your hand upon the knob to open and enter it. You experience an unseen, silent resistance. You put your shoulder against the door and, gathering your forces, put forth a tremendous effort."103 And also You get this kind of consciousness in some approach to purity when you put your shoulder against a door and try to force it open. You have a sense of resistance and at the same time a sense of effort. There can be no resistance without effort; there can be no effort without resistance. They are only two ways of describing the same experience. It is a double consciousness.104 First, we have a hand and then a shoulder. Why change? Obviously, the hand, the shoulder, the foot, the tongue are all parts of a living body. We could push a door left ajar with any of these parts. The universal is the living body. There is no need to privilege the hand that grasps the knob - or a particular masculine part of the body that becomes the head of the interpretation. Peirce immediately escapes a possible psychoanalytic charge. Neither hand nor fingers; neither grasping a knob nor fingering the door. There is another justice here which is sexual. 100 CP I.306. 101 André De Tienne, "Quand l'apparence (se) fait signe," 121. 102 Ibid., 108. 103 CP I.320. 104 CP I.324. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 97 Perhaps, by not privileging any part of the body, Peirce invites women in the indefinite community of phaneroscopists as scientists.105 Phaneroscopy goes beyond sexual differences because it is living justice: just living body and door. (My/Our/Your/His/Her/Any-body's) living body against the door to open it reveals a "two-sided consciousness"106 of effort and resistance. It does not matter how much the resistance is or how much effort is put. The brute fact is that anyone who would be found in this experiential setting would agree that the course of the experience is the same. Why? Because it is logical. A logic that is not a logic of the hand or a logic of the head - or the I/eye. It is a logic of embracing, of hugging, of inviting every living body in dialogue. Whereas classical phenomenology brackets, phaneroscopy unbrackets. Peirce has pierced his vision and now pierces his sex. We could easily say about Peirce what Derrida says about Lévinas: Peirce attempts a "masculine point" of view but "a point of view that goes blindly (with no view) into this place of non-light."107 And this non-light is the no ledge of the blind and the feminine that Peirce does not have but requests, looks for, in order to arrive at the universality of phaneron.108 He asks, quests, looks for by questioning himself as the Other that he is not. The no ledge of justice is knowledge away from anything particular - beyond being. Peirce's philosophy allows pure science to coincide with pure justice. What we have to question now is this two-sidedness. Peirce says that effort and resistance are only two ways of describing the same experience. This experience of "touching" has come in handy and has been used plenty of times to describe consciousness as two-sided in classical phenomenol- 105 There is no particular sexual body or a body with a particular structure implied in Peirce's thinking. Peirce touches on Simone de Beauvoir's critique: "there are conditions without which the very fact of existence itself would seem to be impossible. To be present in the world implies strictly that there exists a body which is at once a material thing in the world and a point of view towards this world; but nothing requires that this body have this or that particular structure." Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), 36. 106 Charles Sanders Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, 76. 107 Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emannuel Lévinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 1997), 39. 108 We could risk saying with Putnam that phaneron has to be multiply realisable. Hilary Putnam, Representation and Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988). 98 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW ogy. But can it do justice to all experience without shouldering life? From Husserl all the way to Merleau-Ponty there is a hand "touching and being touched" - with the exception of the quest(ion)ing caress of Sartre.109 For Husserl, the hand touching and being touched, the two-way directionality of consciousness is instantaneous. There is no interval between the hand touching and the hand being touched. Merleau-Ponty changes a bit, displaces as Derrida put it,110 this Husserlian example. The hand that touches passes into a hand being touched depending on the direct(ed)ness of the constituting conscious body, its attention. Now, for Peirce, the two-sided consciousness seems to lack this passing into since we have a sense of resistance and at the same time a sense of effort. These are supposed to be two ways of describing the same phenomenon. Let us start with the obvious phenomenon. To talk about it, it is obvious that the reversibility from effort to resistance requires thought to be represented. While Secondness, it requires reversing, and this reversal is a re-versal that can only be attained by thought as a medium. That means, simply, that we are already within the world of representation if we reflect on it - even while it is happening. As such, it would be a Thirdness in Secondness precisely because the forces are being evaluated, reflected upon during the act.111 The reversal would be a thought on feeling and not the unadulterated feeling as being felt in the course of its uninterrupted course of action - Firstness. And such reversal cannot only be Secondness since Secondness is absolute last. Therefore, if it were in any way singled out, that would involve some Thirdness. But to what extent is this Thirdness involved? How far does its juris-diction extend? Does this also mean that the very possibility of feeling the reaction requires some kind of Thirdness too? Let us inspect two additional reports by Peirce about the change of perception. One is about his experience of being "seated calmly in the 109 Sartre was the first to argue that "to touch and to be touched, to feel that one is touching and to feel that one is touched - these are two species of phenomena which is useless to try to reunite by the term 'double sensations.'" Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel E. Barnes (Washington: Washington Square Press, 1993), 304. 110 Jacques Derrida, On Touching Jean Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). 111 Gilles Deleuze, Webdeleuze (https://www.webdeleuze.com/textes/73), Accessed 10/17/2017. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 99 dark" when "the lights are suddenly turned on"112 and the other is about a shadow which turns out to be a snake "while [...] putting my mare into her stable, in the dusk of the evening."113 Both are used to describe the two-sided consciousness, the polar sense. The shock as Secondness is Peirce's coming into contact with another existence, another force.114 Existence is manifested in Secondness through shocking resistance upon our determination, our will. Something compels us by clashing with us, with the course of our life. This interpretation aligns well with the experience of the blind who get shocked through their stick and uncover existence, as Merleau-Ponty explained.115 It is through shocks and vibrations that the extended touch of the blind, analogous to sight provides information about what there is. "Secondness, strictly speaking is just when and where it takes place and has no other being."116 What is, there and then, for whatever living body is just force: indeterminate, indefinite force that compels, that is, shock which surprises. Such compulsion is blind, it is a blind force. What is left to examine is what Peirce calls "saltus." If the instant has two sides, the polarity that allows it to be connected to the past and the future to create a junction, then there is a passage or saltus not as a process of change but as change itself, of difference. But for there to be a change there must be a possibility of change, a Firstness. The difference requires "some thing" that allows the passing from the before to the after in the sense of connecting them together. The saltus is like a shock, some kind of disturbance, an interruption. The question is whether the very possibility of this interruption requires Thirdness. Here lies all the controversy about whether phaneron includes some kind of representation as Thirdness or not; whether some sort of Thirdness is involved in enabling, in allowing for the two-sided consciousness. Since Thirdness or thought is also habit, one could say with the spiritualists, with whom Peirce was well acquainted, that only in virtue of a previous habituated sense, could a crisis, a shock, a breaking of the habit can occur. This is a phaneroscopic observation from Ravaisson: "habit remains for a change 112 CP I.381. 113 CP II.22. 114 CP I.328-9. 115 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 166. 116 CP I.532. 100 SOFIA PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW which is not longer or is not yet."117 The question now is how is the very first habit constituted? Habit, representation, thought or custom fall under Thirdness. This Thirdness comes from the Other; the indefinite Other, the community, who introduces us into particular ways of thinking and doing. We are introduced into ways of doing things and these ways are the manipulation of signs. This is the very meaning of custom. We learn how to think, which is a way of doing, based on the culture to which we belong - broadly construed. The student who learns axiomatic principles resists them says Peirce. They question them.118 But this resistance is overpowered by the teachers' and the parents' force. Phaneroscopically, we are forced into ways of doing. The question comes after some kind of thought, some kind of habit is established. Rosenthal writes that "interpretive activity begins at the primordial level of the formation of repeatable content which can activate habits of anticipation."119 In a sense, this is true. But the primordial habits are the ways in which we learn as we grow up under the care of Others. We are already brought up within recipe of doing things, already within a system of meanings, a language-game, a logica utens. In one sense, Secondness cannot take place if there is no Thirdness. However, that does not mean that Thirdness causes Secondness. Thirdness is this "uncommon gift,"120 which the Other gives us. 6. The (Im)Possibility of Phaneroscopy In one of his papers, De Tienne explores the reasons why phaneroscopy has not been followed and advanced in the same way as other phenomenological approaches. Yet, he claims that the "practice of phaneroscopy is thus not separated from truth-reaching activities [...]. The descriptive propositions formulated in phaneroscopy are neither true nor false: they state what seems, not what is, nor what could be the case."121 But, as we tried to show in this radical hermeneutic of phaneroscopy, the latter does 117 Félix Ravaisson, Of Habit, trans. Claire Carlisle (London: Continuum, 2008), 25. 118 CP I.657. 119 Sandra Rosenthal, "Peirce's Pragmatic Account of Perception: Issues and Implications," 2006. 120 CP I.657. 121 André De Tienne, "Is Phaneroscopy as a Pre-Semiotic Science Possible?" 17. THE OTHER SIDE OF PEIRCE'S PHANEROSCOPY: QUESTIONING AND ANALOGISING PHANERON... 101 not (make) deal(s) with propositions but with bodies - any-body. Phaneroscopy deals with another truth, not just the truth of scientists. Apel defines "truth" in Peirce as the agreement of an "indefinite community of interpretation [...] as the transcendental subject of valid cognition."122 Truth comes to be an intersubjective relation manifested in a community "as the dialogue of all rational beings" with the possibility "in principle of coming to consensus about meaning and truth within the frame of the infinite dialogue of the indefinite community of interpretation."123 A dialogue not only about truth, but about the truth of truth as well. But how is this consensus or agreement felt, how is it enacted? What is its Secondness like? Peirce says that truth "(if there be any truth) shall be part of the existential fact and not merely of thought."124 Indeed, phaneroscopy is impossible insofar as truth is looked for as a transcendental beyond. Phaneroscopy as a quest of understanding cannot start without the coming into contact with an indefinite Other in their own terms - by questioning. The schema or paradigm of Being, which we have been habituated into is, as Irigaray underscores, anonymous.125 The desire to learn is stifled in this anonymity or is directed towards particular aims or enacted within particular principles (logica utens) wherein pure logica docens ("Critic Greek {kritiké}"126) does not take place; questioning as "the great truth of the immanent power of thought in the universe is flung away."127 Truth as phaneron comes to be justice and requires the presence of the Other, their embodied existence, not their representation. The Other does not only play the role of the principle of verification, as Apel reads Peirce. The Other is required in order to initiate any quest to knowledge. It is the Other who questions for knowledge to begin. The only presupposition of phaneroscopy is the welcoming of all Other questions: it presupposes a space of expressing Otherness in embodied dialogue. 122 Karl-Otto Apel, Selected Essays. Volume One: Towards a Transcendental Semiotics, trans. Eduardo Mendietta (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1994), 127. 123 Ibid., 128. 124 CP I.409. 125 Luce Irigaray, Sharing the World (London: Continuum, 2008). 126 Charles Sanders Peirce, Commens: Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce (http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/logica-docens, 2017). Accessed December 28, 2017. 127 CP I.349.