DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-013

University of Oslo, Norway

d.v.d.fehr@ilos.uio.no

Abstract

In the forthcoming book The Live Body, which I am currently editing, I present the cooperation between different aesthetic fields (literature, music, theatre) and biology as a field of possibility. The cooperation makes ab­duction happen as an event forming the meaning of the book. According to Gilles Deleuze and Fèlix Guattari in Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? A concept cannot be understood unless the problem is solved. This means that concepts gain meaning in retrospect and so does the book. Only by being used and rethought in different practi­cal and theoretical contexts the book gains a definite meaning. The field of possibility works as a creative hy­pothesis. The hypothesis is that the body knows. But what does it know, and how do we know that it knows? We seem to think in this book, that what the body knows is in line with the hypothetical and uncertain quality of the abductive inference. The Norwegian literature researcher Elisabeth Løvlie, in her chapter “I know something that I do not know” (“Jeg vet noe jeg ikke vet”), draws in the newborn infant’s so-called amodal perception, a form of knowledge that is immediate and incomprehensible. According to her, new experimental science makes it clear that the body possesses this special kind of knowledge which does not rely on reflection. An infant has an immediate experiential and developmental relationship to its environment. This type of knowledge has long been a prerequisite for aesthetic and literary thinking and has been something which attempts have been made to attain, among others by emphasizing the aesthetic experience. The Danish biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer’s claim, namely that we have a biological, physical cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences of choices, and that even the simplest of organisms has it, is most important in understanding what the body knows – Charles Peirce’s understanding of realism is important in this connection, because a semiotically realistic perception of man and of the universe relies on something that is hypothetical, potential and possible (or more likely abductive) rather than actual.

That which I aim to expound in this book, is a creative and strategic space which includes sufficient knowledge to make it possible to jump ahead and give the initial hypothesis – namely that the body knows – credibility and the possibility to exist in this world. As biological organism we have a “knowledge” which art struggles to ex­press aesthetically and performatively. And this “knowledge” is real, semiotically speaking. What I want to argue for in this paper is that abduction is a starting point for expanding a hypothesis into a space for thought that has its basis in strategic principles. By virtue of having determination, the field of possibility is guided by a final causality, or in other words, a pragmatic meaning.

This paper is based on my introductory chapter in a book that I have initiated and edited, and which is now under publication. The book Den levende kroppen. Mot en ny forståelse av menneske og natur. [The Live Body. Towards a New Understanding of Man and Nature][1] is an interdisciplinary cooperation between different aesthetic disciplines; literary, theater and musical studies; biosemiotics, epigenetics; philosophy; and theology. In the book I focus on the possibility of a creative meeting between aesthetics and biology. In order to do so, I argue for the establishment of a field of possibility, that is to say a place where disciplinary diversity can express itself.[2] What makes this possible is a focus on a specific concept. For the idea that a concept can form the basis for a creative field, evidence can be found in Gille Deleuze’s theory that concepts are aspects of reality. Concepts are living and creative and bring something new into the world. Abduction is such a concept. It is both a concept regarding creative thinking, and in itself creative. In their description of what a concept is, Deleuze and Guattari argue in Hvad er filosofi? [Qu´est-ce que la philosophie?1991], that a concept refers back to a problem, to problems without which it would have no meaning, and which can even be isolated and understood as their solution reveals itself (1996: 36). We hear the similarity here between the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari and Peirce´s maxime of pragmatism.[3]

So what is abduction? It is a form of inference that forms part of Charles Peirce’s logic. Abductive inference is in the following form:

The surprising fact, C, is observed;

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course,

Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true (CP 5. 189)

Abduction as a concept brings the participants together in a fellowship. The biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer states in his chapter Viden og kropp [Knowledge and body], that an abduction comes to act as a premise for a common assumption, namely that the world is fundamentally made of the same stuff as our own body. Hoffmeyer, furthermore, in his chapter argues that projecting our own physical experience of causality onto a non-causal world, and actually gaining a credible knowledge of it, makes it possible to abductively join a world which is made of fundamentally the same stuff as oneself. According to him, causality results from physically anchored experiences gained through our lives, going back to our first actions as an infant; it does not result from an a priori. The Norwegian literature researcher Elisabeth Løvlie, in her chapter Jeg vet noe jeg ikke vet [I know something that I do not know], draws in the newborn infant’s so-called amodal perception, a form of knowledge that is immediate and incomprehensible. She maintains that new experimental science makes it ever more clear that the body possesses this special kind of knowledge which does not rely on reflection. An infant has an immediate experiential and developmental relationship to its environment. These experiences are based on effects and causality, and thereby on learning.

This type of knowledge has long been a prerequisite for aesthetic and literary thinking and has been something which attempts have been made to attain, among others by emphasizing the aesthetic experience. The work that the Danish historian of ideas and philosopher Dorthe Jørgensen did on Gottlieb Baumgarten’s sensitive aesthetics of the 1750s in Den skønne tænkning [The Beautiful Thinking ][4](2014)has increased our reflection on the epistemological meaning of the art forms. In this project, we have therefore seen the field of possibility as a space where the body’s abductive, prelogical guesswork can encounter the sensitive aesthetics of Baumgarten. The ability to have sensitive imaginations is a bodily capacity, but it is not only a matter of sensations, but also emotions, perceptual judgments and anticipations.

We propose, in other words, a similarity – or rather, a common ground – between abduction and aesthetics as it is conceptualized by Baumgarten and formulated in the chapters on esthetical phenomenon in this book. Our field of possibility is where hypothesis are born. The assertion of the existence of a common ground between what, we could view as a biological logic and aesthetics, functions as a legitimation of our elaboration of an interdisciplinary field.

1. Abduction is Real

But if we acknowledge the existence of something prelinguistic or presemiotic, we can at least attempt to form concepts that can limit the determinism in the world of ideas that we inhabit as creatures of language and symbolism. In the arts, it has always been accepted that a reality exists before we have formed our ideas about it. This is why the humanistic-aesthetic contributions to this book play an important role in the development of concepts. After all, aesthetes have strived to say that which cannot be said, that which concerns physical effects, feelings, interactions and causality. Perhaps the aesthetic disciplines are better than other disciplines in capturing the living aspects of language? Considering the great discoveries that are being made in biology and related fields of exact science, I believe it is only natural than humanists and biologists will eventually meet in the field of activity, in abduction’s field of possibility.

Clearly, Hoffmeyer’s chapter also functions on another fundamental and related premise, namely that in this book we base ourselves on an epistemological and semiotic realism in Peirce’s sense of the word. This realism implies a break with Kant because every organism is in a perpetual causal, and therefore realistic, relationship to its environment.

Realism is based in something which comes before the sign, for instance in the immediate interaction that an infant has with its environment. Frederik Stjernfelt, in his Diagrammatology, emphasizes something of great interest within our context, namely that Peirce, who considered all mental and physical processes to be sign processes, maintains a realism which implies that something fundamental and real must exist before the sign. In line with Husserl’s views, that which exists before the sign must be based on a metaphysics of presence. Peirce offers a present instant, something which has not yet been mediated through the sign. Peirce’s term for this pre-mediated something is icon. An icon is not a complete sign. It is has the capacity to communicate various aspects of experience in the present moment (Stjernfelt 2007: 29). The index, which is the existential, experiential sign, always incorporates an icon.

Not only is it important, in relation to Peirce’s realism that something exists before the sign process begins, but we must also acknowledge that the icon, because it is not a fully realized sign, stands for something that is not realized but only a possibility. The icon is an aspect of an actualization of reality, but exists in itself only as something possible, something that can come to be. A semiotically realistic perception of man and of the universe therefore relies on something (existing in the perceptive process) that is hypothetical, potential and possible (or more likely abductive) rather than actual.

If we assume it to be true that we have a biological ability to anticipate the consequences of choices, as Hoffmeyer argues even the simplest of organisms has, then we should be able to state that the possible is an important factor in this ability to recognize. And we can then argue that the possible is as real as the actual; it just has not yet been realized at an indexical level as an actual experience.

Also playing an important role in Peirce's realism is that the iconic sign, which exists as something potential, as something not yet realized in this world or actualized as an idea, also carries a possible generality (Stjernfelt 2007: 29). The fact that something exists that is not related to the actualization or mediation (we could also say symbolization) may, in Peirce's understanding of what is real, his realism, also include the general and thereby universal, as we have heard.

2. When the Possible is Real, are Concepts also Real?

Peirce's realism includes the idea that universals exists and are real. They are found in legitimate forms such as tendencies, dispositions, and patterns, and these can exists not just as actually existing but also as possibilities. Universals are products of consciousness, but are based in the possible (Stjernfelt 2007: 35). Because the presemiotic exists as a possibility that leads to actualization and conscious thought, we can safely speak of a form of precognitive knowledge, and we can also place concepts in this category. Concepts are legitimate and therefore possibilities, as Deleuze also stated. They actually exist in this world, even if we cannot observe or measure them. They are as invisible as consciousness is, but we would not deny that there is such as a thing as consciousness, would we? Stjernfelt connects Peirce’s idea of realism to the idea that the universal “is through and through a product of the mind, but this creation has in certain cases a basis – a condition of possibility” (Stjernfelt 2007: 35).

This ability to be possible or virtual is what is articulated by poetic expression indirectly and in spite of the medium being verbal.

3. Abduction and Perceptual Judgments

In his book Kant and the Platypus. Essays on language and cognition, Umberto Eco states that, to Peirce, perceptual judgment was the starting point for all critical and controlled thought.  He saw perception as a process ending in perceptual judgment. But the process begins with what Peirce called the percept. The precept is not yet a perception; it is a first stimulus that is “an index of the fact that there is something to perceive” (Eco 1997: 114). The precept is somewhere between icon and index. Something appears, but this something is still unclear and does not require any sense: “It is pure individuality, in itself dumb (1997: 114). Already in the perceptual judgment, primary iconism shades off into a generic equality (…)” (Eco 1997: 115). The moment we get an impression, its singularity – its characteristic of being a unique event – has changed into something universal. In Peirce’s terms, we have reached thirdness, that is to say, the sign as well as its rationality and interpretation.

So, perception ends with perceptual judgment, and Peirce argues that “… abductive inferences shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them” (The Essential Peirce 1998a: 227). The perceptual judgments can therefore be considered extreme cases of abductive inference “in being absolutely beyond criticism” ( 1998a: 227). In other words, behind abduction, as hypothesis-generating inference, there is something that is considered to be absolutely certain. And that which is absolutely certain does not belong to our cognitive level of consciousness, but to something precognitive. This is how Stjernfelt puts it: “the inferences at stake in perceptual judgments are of a peculiar type – they take place without any control and are immediately given without any possibility of doubt” (2007: 332). Hoffmeyer introduces the concept of perceptual semiotics in his chapter.  An example of perceptual semiotics is an impression on the retina resulting in a coordination of the brain between perception and memory. This may be the cause of a physical feeling of certainty “that can make us ‘believe’ with a surprising certainty, without any involvement of consciousness”. Here, Hoffmeyer in his chapter provides a biological explanation for the perceptual judgments’ physical sense of certainty. The perceptual judgments are perceived as belief.

In reference to Peirce, Umberto Eco calls that which precedes cognition, and is a prerequisite for abduction, primary iconicity. The very first, that which sets the perceptual process in motion and which, following the perceptual judgment, leads to semiosis or the process of interpretation, does not exist as an object or a phenomenon, as we have seen. In some ways, it does not exist at all. Nonetheless, this is the prerequisite for everything that follows. Peirce considered this primary iconicity to be pure qualia (quality) and pure possibility (Eco 1997:100–101).

The biosemiotician Kalevi Kull in the article “Where we are now in discovering the basic mechanism of meaning-making” refers to Umberto Eco’s concept of primary iconicity and indexicality in Kant and the Platypus, stating that Eco has demonstrated that the icon is a sign that not only reflects similarity, but also actively acts in a similar way (2012: 16).The prerequisite for all abductive activity therefore is that something appears, and that something, which does not have any substantial or phenomenal existence, nevertheless has an influence, and we could call this a performative abililty. Something is done in a similar way (in our perception).

This agrees well with the emphasis that Kull places on the ability of primary iconicity to create similarity: possible similarities are realized as similarity through the index. It is here that abduction has a function. Something has actually become similar, at least in a hypothetical sense.

4. Qualitative Possibility, Consciousness and Experience

Can that which only exists as a qualitative possibility play a decisive role in human existence? In his two chapters in our book, one on the reality of the phenomenology of the body and one on the cybersemiotic component in the semiotic paradigm[5], the Danish biosemiotician and philosopher of science Søren Brier states that abduction is tied to the creative part of the human ability to know. Fascinatingly, the creative element is tied to the possible rather than the actual – to that which we are able to categorize or about which we are able to theorize. Hoffmeyer’s book from 2012, Overfladens dyp [ The Depth of the Surface ] examines how evolution has been able to produce a phenomenon such as mental life, and argues that the psyche’s role in nature is to bring the world into the organism and the organism into the world (2012: 7). From this thesis follows the assertion that consciousness is a surface or interface, a place without materiality which nevertheless is real, a place for communication between the brain and the world beyond. That which characterizes the consciousness seen as an interface is that it is predictive.

What Hoffmeyer is saying by this is that large parts of our cognition is subconscious and related to the organism’s own anticipatory life. I believe it is this subconscious cognition that so concerns the aesthetics in this book, and which is expressed in Løvlie’s chapter because she so explicitly relates it to the infant’s immediate relation to the world. But such an immediately and physical cognition can only be expressed as a qualitative possibility. It can of course never be formulated in language or be expressed as a symbolically mediated sign.

Consciousness or psyche has served a function in evolution – it has enabled the organism to better interact with its environment. On the other hand, it does not exist as a physical, measurable quantity. It does not have any weight, volume, color, or substance. And, so Hoffmeyer warns, it cannot be reduced to the method of functioning of certain neural areas, but exists by virtue of the brain’s billions of communicative processes. Like psyche, Hoffmeyer asserts that the capacity to experience has developed in the course of evolution with the aim to better equip the organism to handle challenging situations. This means that experiential existence must be connected to the organism’s range of possible activities. And, he stated that we humans build layers upon layer on top of our immediate experiences, giving our experiential existence a multidimensional character which makes it hard to imagine how its appearance can be explained purely biologically. Accordingly, both the psyche or consciousness and the capacity to experience have a biological function.

However, as stated, such subconscious knowledge cannot be directly communicated. On the other hand, all of the participants in the project, which belongs to the aesthetic disciplines, will say that it can be staged indirectly in the aesthetic expression, be it musical, literary or theatrical. In other words, our hypothesis implies a perspective that is not only biosemiotic but interdisciplinary – because we believe that art can express that which the body knows and keep abduction alive. We further believe that this can be experienced and that it has an epistemological function.

What both the humanities and the natural sciences need is a common grasp on the nature of change, creativity and freedom on one side and constraints and stability on the other. In order to establish such a field of research the natural sciences and the esthetic disciplines must cooperate to keep open the immediate quality of the possible.

References

DELEUZE, Gilles & Félix GUATTARI. 1996. Hvad er filosofi? Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

HOFFMEYER, Jesper. 2012. Overfladens dyb. Da kroppen ble psykisk. Copenhagen: Ries.

KULL, Kalevi. 2012. Advancements in biosemiotics: Where we are now in discovering the basic mechanism of meaning-making. In Silver Rattasepp & Tyler Bennett (eds.), Gatherings in Biosemiotics, 11–25. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.

PAAVOLA, Sami. 2004. Abduction as a Logic and Methodology of Discovery. The Importance of Strategies. Foundation of Science 9. 267-283. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

PEIRCE, Charles S.1931–66. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce.Vol.1-8.Charles HARTSHORNE & Paul WEISS (eds.).Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

PEIRCE, Charles S. 1998a. Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction. In Nathan HOUSER & Christian KLOESEL (eds.). The Essential Peirce.Vol II. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

PEIRCE, S. Charles. 1998b. The Maxim of Pragmatism. In Nathan Houser & Christian Kloesel (eds.). The Essential Peirce.Vol II. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

STJERNFELT, Frederik. 2007. Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.