"Common Sense" and Ideology

Deleuze's distinction between common sense and good sense goes back, through Descartes, to Aristotle's faculty of common sense.  However, philosophers and politicians since the Age of Revolution have looked at "common sense" more like what might be called "commonly accepted good sense."  Common sense to them were things like self-evident truths, commonly accepted judgements such as "all men are created equal," with little or no worry about the prevalent common sense of the times that "men" only applied to white, propertied males.
 

Common sense, as I understand it, is the standard by which diagrams or concepts are applied to experience.  But what of commonly accepted good sense?  Where does this fit within the context of diagrammatic thinking?  If we return to Mackenzie's two (good) senses of "market" — as a source of freedom and prosperity on the one hand and a source of exploitation and impoverishment on the other — one or the other those characterizations can become the standard for judging any and all uses of the concept.  The good sense understanding will then determine appropriate applications (if this thing is not a source of freedom and prosperity, it is not a "market"); the viability of any consequences drawn from the concept (if the consequences of this concept do not reflect exploitation and poverty, they are false); while the internal consistency of the concept will be rendered all but irrelevant.

This, I propose, is what distinguishes ideology from other varieties of diagrammatic thought.  Ideological thinking answers to a commonly accepted notion of good sense, to how the thing should be characterized rather than how it works.  The standard of thought shifts from a diagrammatic assessment or conceptual analysis to the ingenuity by which thought can be brought in line with a particular assertion of good sense.  Thought becomes, first and foremost, a matter of loyalty.

Common Sense and Good Sense

In Repetition and Difference Deleuze makes the distinction between "common sense" and "good sense."  (See also the post "Semantic Consistency" on this blog)

"At this point, however, we must refer to the precise difference between these two complementary instances, common sense and good sense.  For while common sense is the norm of identity from the point of view of the pure Self and the form of the unspecified object which corresponds to it, good sense is the norm of distribution from the point of view of the empirical selves and the object qualified as this or that kind of thing (which is why it is considered to be universally distributed)." [p.169]

First of all, I think we have to look at both common sense and good sense as assumptions, since they are normally understood within a given community and often not made explicit. Common sense, then, would have to do with the commonly understood reference of a concept or diagram, the kinds of things it refers to or its extension; while good sense would have to do with commonly understood attributes or consequences of that concept or diagram.

Examples of common sense are not that difficult to come by.  For a concept like "market" the extension might (or might not) include farmers' markets, shopping markets, buying and selling in some kind of wholesale markets, stock markets, and so on.  And, of course, all sorts of games can be played by assuming one kind of reference while actually employing another.  But examples of good sense can't really be just any kind of attribute or consequence of the concept.  They have to be assumed, unquestionable, and taken as universal.  Donald MacKenzie (in in An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets) provides an example of good sense with regard to at least on kind of "market".

"Some are convinced that markets are sources of human freedom and prosperity; others believe markets to be damaging generators of alienation, exploitation and impoverishment. [p. 25]"

These to characterizations of "markets",  representing the "good sense" of different communities, are assumptions generally left implicit that can do as much to distort our understanding of the concept or what is said about it as any of the various assumptions made by common sense.

Contextual Interpretations

Richard Peet in "A Sign Taken for History" considers a plaque, erected in 1927 in the town Petersham, Massechusetts commemorating Shays' Rebllion from a perspective that seems to follow Erwin Panofsky's structure of interpretation as set out in the "Introduction" to his Studies in Iconology.  There is what Panofsky called the "secondary" or "conventional" interpretation of this plaque in terms of the linguistic categories by which we understand what it says, that it commemorates the daring, hardships, and success of General Benjamin Lincoln in suppressing Shays' Rebellion in 1787.  We could also include the implication that his deed had some bearing on the writing of US Constitution and the general assertion that "OBEDIENCE TO LAW IS TRUE LIBERTY" within this conventional understanding of the plaque.  And, this conventional understanding would seem to correspond to what Peirce thought of as an interpretant.

But Peet goes on to consider what Panofsky called the "intrinsic meaning" of this plaque, the actors producing the plaque — the New England Society of Brooklyn, the Petersham Historical Society, and Petersham's elite — within the historical context of its production — America in the late 1920's and their concerns with politics, immigration, and economics at that time.  This provides a much deeper understanding of the plaque, resolving, if nothing else, my own surprise at reading there was a plaque commemorating Shays' rebellion and then seeing that it actually commemorated the suppression of that rebellion.  Peet also notes a second plaque, more in line with my expectations, commemorating Captain Daniel Shays and asserting more generally that "TRUE LIBERTY AND JUSTICE MAY REQUIRE RESISTANCE TO LAW" that was erected in 1987.  But the intrinsic meaning in this case revolving around 1987 America would be just as enlightening as the original set in 1927.   Are these intrinsic meanings another form of interpretant in Peirce's terminology?  Doesn't Shays' Rebellion remain the object to both of these signs and their interpretants?

But if we were to characterize Shays' Rebellion as an object, I think it would look a lot like the intrinsic meanings associated with these plaques.  There would be the various actors in the historical context of 1787 America with its different influences and their different responses to those influences.  While objects within that context could be understood in terms of a single diagram, such an object taken in context, or the situation as a whole as an object in its own right, would have to be understood in terms of interacting diagrams in a much more complex and intricate kind of evolution.

Playing with Language

The common view of language today seems the revolve around the idea of an "infinite semiosis" of one kind or another.  Words go from words to words in an intensional play among a network of meanings.  There is a cursory nod to reference, to the extension of things referred to by a word, but it is soon forgotten in a fractal animation of possible tropes.  With the question of reference left behind, though, there can be no question of the truth and falsity for what is being said.  And without any concern for truth and falsity, following Frankfurt's definition, it's all bullshit.

The object, shifting to the Peircean terminology, is left behind and forgotten because (1) it is placed at the beginning of the process and (2) it is understood materialistically (as opposed to semiotically).

Object → Sign₁ → Interpretant/Sign₂ → … → Interpretant/Sign_n

Where we ostensibly start triadically, we are immediately proceeding within a dualism of sign and interpretant.  It seems to me, the object should instead be at the center of each transition from sign to interpretant: Something more like:  

Sign₁ → Object → Interpretant/Sign₂ → … → Object → Interpretant/Sign_n 

a circular motion around the object that remains triadic.  However, this also requires that we realize the object itself as a semiotic entity — let's say our diagrammatic understanding, such as it is, of the thing in question — rather than as an opaque material reality.

Diagrams and Metaphors

For Peirce diagrams are part of triad of icons that contains images on the one side and metaphors on the other.  But if he doesn't say all that much about diagrams, he says even less about metaphors. In that light, however, James C. Scott gives an interesting example in Seeing Like a State.

When the first European settlers in North America were wondering when and how to plant New World cultivars, such as maize, they turned to the local knowledge of the Native American neighbors for help. They were told by Squanto, according to one legend (Chief Massasoit, according to another), to plant corn when the oak leaves were the size of a squirrel's ear. [p. 311]

He notes with regard to this advice:

As a rule of thumb, it was a nearly foolproof formula for avoiding a frost. [p. 312]

And comparing it to a specific date or calendar event in an almanac Scott notes that this means is transferable to different latitudes and longitudes (wherever there are oak tree and squirrels) and is more efficient (as any specific date would have to be set more conservatively).  What strikes me is that it is a metaphor, a comparison of two systems whose diagrammatic complexity is ignored in favor of characteristics they share. Several hypotheses suggest themselves from this.

1. Rules of thumb should generally be interpreted as metaphors.
    
2. Rules of thumb (metaphors) generally come first and the diagrams later. Euclid's geometry, for example, was not so much abstractions directly from nature, but abstractions that could incorporate the geometric rules of thumb already in use (Euclid's Window).
    
3. In using language, following Peirce, we go from the object to a sign (in name only) to an interpretant. In this way we can talk, endlessly it seems, without really knowing what we are talking about.
    
4. Thinking diagrammatically is the effort of going back to the sign and laying out an analogous system that produces that interpretant, and others, from internally generated consequences.

Non-Implications (Part 2)

I put this question as to what Peirce himself meant by "non-implication" on Peirce-L.  A couple of responses there focused on the diversity, and sometimes disparity, of consequences that can implicatively follow from a term or concept.  "Non-implications" seems taken as referring to what are still implications but are ones not meant, not noticed, unexpected or unintended consequences of the term or concept.  In one of the posts, Eugene Halton modifies the passage from Peirce's to say:

In another sense, honest people, when joking, intend to make the meaning of their words multi-determinate, so that there shall be latitude of interpretation. That is to say, the character of their meaning consists in the implications and non-implications of their words; and they intend to ambiguate what is implied and what is not implied.

This semantic ambiguity is not only the basis of humor, but also of art. And I would argue it is the basis for trapping, tricking, and taking advantage of all sorts of unthinking animals, unsuspecting humans, and various situations.

Further still though, it is these different, and even contrary, consequences that drive us back into our understanding of a term or concept itself. Cathy Legg noted:

Plato was also brilliant at 'speaking doubly' for purposes of awakening philosophical insight …

Thus, for example, the disparity of the use-value and exchange-value as consequences of the concept of "commodity," that can be taken advantage of on a practical level, can also propel us to look at the diagrammatic structure of that concept, its applications and consequences, such that it does produce, rightly or wrongly, these contrary consequences.

Non-Implications

In a colloquium I recently attended this passage was cited from Peirce.

In another sense, honest people, when not joking, intend to make the meaning of their words determinate, so that there shall be no latitude of interpretation at all. That is to say, the character of their meaning consists in the implications and non-implications of their words; and they intend to fix what is implied and what is not implied. They believe that they succeed in doing so, and if their chat is about the theory of numbers, perhaps they may. But the further their topics are from such presciss, or "abstract," subjects, the less possibility is there of such precision of speech.  ["Issues in Pragmatism," The Monist, 1905]

What, however, are "non-implications"?

Apparently, non-implications can be looked at as just the negation of implication, in which case the non-implications would seem to refer to any exceptions to the implications.  That is, we would have certain implications or consequences by which a word or concept is generally understood, but to understand it clearly, we would also have to be aware of any exceptions to those inferences.  I'm not sure how must sense that makes, and it does seem a bit strict.  As Peirce says, "perhaps" we can do this with something like the theory of numbers but with other things it's not really feasible.

The speaker at the colloquium (Dave Beisecker of UNLV) approached this use of "non-implication" in terms of implications that would be "permitted" as opposed to those that would be "obligatory."  Diagrammatically, I find this proposal interesting.

For example, within the context of a roadmap inferences regarding distances and towns are obligatory but those regarding the shape of the roads or rivers drawn on it are not.  In general, some elements of any diagram (or concept) would seem to be functionally obligatory while others are not.

Or, in the case of Mark Twain becoming a steamboat pilot, he says:

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! [Chapter 9, Life on the Mississippi]

Is that really true?  Twain goes on to describe a memorable sunset in vivid and exquisite detail. Don't those permitted inferences continue within the diagrammatic functionality of obligatory inferences, giving some color and life to sterility of the diagram itself?  It would seem such experiences would still be possible, that they are still part of the concept.  Is that where the diagrams of our thinking go astray?  When our concepts are not coupled to a direct acquaintance with the thing itself and all those merely permitted implications that can come along with the strictly functional ones?