Predication and Consciousness

Predication and Consciousness

From Wittgenstein to psychosemiotics: A grammatical shift in the analytical meta-language combining text and token in sign-use.


Let (S is P)* be a schema for any subject-predicate sentence; that is to say, any use of signs such that the second term is predicated of the first, as in “Felix is a cat”. This predicates cathood (however that is defined), truly or falsely, of whatever is named by “Felix”. Variants of this strict form, such as “Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher,” “the house next door is empty,” are also predications, in so far as they make a true or false assertion, and are formally reducible to the form S is P from the standpoint of logic. In general terms, what the word “is” expresses may be called “predication”.

There are two ways in which an instance of (S is P)* are true: when the “S” term explicitly contains “P”, as in “AB is A” (equilateral triangles are triangles); or when it is not explicitly contained but connected otherwise. In the second case what the predicate stands for is said to “inhere in” the subject, as the color blue inheres inheres in clear daylight sky. Thus inherence is the objective correlate of predication for non-trivially (tautological) true assertions.

This is an old fashioned account of the way sign for signs were used in meta-logical discourse in the Principia Mathematica era. It was a preface to the mode of analytical philosophy advocating a single unified field of logic through which all true propositions are connected. Such a conception is implicit in the concept of a ‘universe”, a totality of existing things and which could not, therefore include contradictory descriptions. Of any given predication P, exactly one of the two terms “true” or “false” can be asserted of it; the totality of what is real is described by the true ones only. This was first deduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The ideal of a “logical syntax of language,” a formally articulate system for the totality of propositions including quantification theory and relations through which all systematic deductions are possible was advanced by Rudolf Carnap. The ideal of a unified field theory of scientific language resting, at bottom, on propositions whose ultimately analyzed subject terms referred to people’s brain-events supplying the momentary sense-data through which reality is known was the core of Russell’s “Our Knowledge Of The External World.” From perceptual data to cosmic dome – plus all connections necessary to explain how we know what we know – such is the world. “The World”, as Wittgenstein also noted, is a sign that stands for this totality of totalities; excluding itself, as name, else creating two “worlds” – a contradiction. In the Tractatrus Logico Philosophicus, he elaborated the form of all true propositions in what he called “logical space”; this would organize all possible scientific propositions of whatever subject terms. The forms used in, and expressed by, logical discourse are not among the things propositions are about. (Nor is “God” an object which The World, as a totality, could possible include; as neither the “I” of personal self-reference predicable of any possible content of “my” experience. The chief contribution of this great tradition, I think, lies in the categorical separation between talk about talk ands talk about things – when the latter is done rigorously, through the use of analyzed, mathematical propositions.


One thing, however, this bold vision did not do, though Gustav Bergmann labored mightily toward it. Many other kinds of objections were raised, also, but none as crucial as completing its account of consciousness. “Consciousness” itself is not used in analytical philosophy except infrequently, colloquially, non-systematically. Although all post-Cartesian philosophy began with it, the term itself hardly acquired a use in philosophy other than among esoterics. Depth psychology, of course, treated it as an empirical concept; in Freud, a state of anatomical arousal undergoing waking-sleeping rhythms, and functioning in the waking state in observation, thought, will, ego* (a term said about, not by, the user). Carl Jung spoke of the “four functions of consciousness”: perceiving, thinking, feeling, intuition. This takes it to be predicable of these anatomically based processes, through undetermined intervening mechanisms (neurological routes leading to and from the brain). This use, elaborated for changes of state induced by drugs, by peaking experiences, by being “in love”, religious ritual, etc. – these variations of mental condition need a common denominator for reference together with the distinction between waking and sleeping and Jung’s four functions. These cannot all be descriptions of different things; they are different aspects, or ‘sides’ of the same thing.

This second use of “consciousness”, from esoterics (including “existentialism” and “Heidegarianism”) to depth psychology, through hypothetical continuing processes in the “anatomical preparation” as Freud called it, was split off becamr split off from analytical philosophy because of Wittgenstein’s grammatical argument. The same grammar that Wittgenstein applied to the use of “The Word”, “God”, “I”, would apparently apply to the use of “consciousness”. How could conscious include conscousness? Can a hammer strike itself?

The consequences of this verbal splitting are of a magnitude of importance yet to be realized. It has sundered philosophy from psychology, for one thing, as a matter of academic discipline, although students assume their professors are talking about the same thing. Philosophy followed Wittgenstein; it was its Platonic destiny to unfold logical outside physical space, with laws of material bodies in the latter according to the formal truths of being of the former. The meta-language of analytic language was the philosophical bifurcation of the split in sign-use for “consciousness.” What has been lacking historically and systematically in the use of signs, namely, a distinction between what is communicated by its text and what is communicated by it (as a) token becomes the key to unlocking the enigmas this split has caused. The Wittgensteinian grammar construes “consciousness” textually: as a nominal term of reference (making it non-referable); whereas the psychoanalytic tradition et al takes its use as a token of what the text stands for. It is not that “consciousness contains consciousness”: it is a process, not an instrument. The word “consciousness,” in its individual, subjective personal inherence, is a predicate used in predicating on itself. What the categorical distinction between form and content in a logical language-schema corresponds to is the distinction between text and token in sign-use. It is in the notion of “sign-use” as a given totality for conscious experience, qua communicated, that formal psychosemiotics begins. Each unit of sign-use in communication connects two distinct consciousnesses with the textual identity, different tokens. Two people see the same token, externally, reproducing its perception internally; “tokens” is used twice, once for the common external object, once (each) for the private “sense-datum” (“cathexis”). A triad can be drawn connecting the tokens at the first level, as the base; and the single letter on the wall as apex. This triad is wholly unseen, a unity represented through bonds of sign-use alone. Nevertheless, one can say, it is real, a subject term of which predications can be made.

The proposal I wish to make here is an inversion of Wittgenstein’s argument for consciousness, as a totality unto itself, and avoid self contradiction (the Russell parodoxes), is a logical hierarchy of token-types, specifically seven predicates of predicates of….neurological discharges on the periphery and interior of the human organism; one token of which is actualized each and every time a communication is made, defined as successful transfer of the same content of consciousness form one to another by way of sign-use.

This proposal in effect takes the approach of analytical philosophy a step further than represented “truth” can reach; the step to what is shown in the saying. This, as already said, is consciousness of asserting, for example, “S is P” (among other communications), It will be said to be shown as the unseen through which the forms of sign-use themselves are given, in the manner that light is what “shines” through the seven prismatic hues, and sound is what is heard in all variations of the seven tone octave. Consciousness is awareness of content under all types of tokens. In the talking, as in the talked about. Sign-use according to token, in the first case; sign use according to text, in the second. The truth in sign-use is not identical with the truth of propositions. To refuse to recognize this gives superstition its first foothold, and seals off what is shown from what is said. The person themselves is rent in the metaphysical splitting of text and token.

The seven hypothesized token-types correspond, in their use, to seven levels of processing ‘loops’ through the organic systems, as it translates from external stimuli of the relevant sensory organ (the eye in sight, etc.) to the brain, and/with/by movement, involving memory. The necessity for such loops can be deduced by returning to the logical paradigm.

When the ‘is’ between (S is P)* is not taken to be established through the meaning of the subject term, alone (as when “AB is A”), it is established through the mental processes of the user. This itself tautologically applies to actual assertions. An advantage of beginning analysis at the meta-level of sign-use is not being required to deal with ‘dead’ signs, having a possible use; but rather with living performances, produced by those who swear by the product: their Word; their personal voucher of responsibility.