3. A Peirce-ing Insight
This is something I came across just a few days back reading John Finnis’ “Natural Law and the Ethics of Discourse” published in the American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol 43, 53-73 (1998), which also appears in Ratio Juris, Vol 12 (4), 354-373 (2002). There’s an exciting footnote in that paper, which talks about C S Peirce and abductive thinking, and insight. Now, in several earlier chapters I have been making the case that the logic which allows us to grasp the precepts of natural law is what C S Peirce calls abduction. Photography, particularly rangefinder photography, puts us in touch with phenomena that afford the abductive grasp of the natural law. I argued that the semiosic structure is as such: phenomena (representamen)–>synderisis (interpretant)–>principles of natural law (significate). You will find all this in Chapter 3: Signs of Good and Evil, above.
I did not think Finnis had said this; in fact I only recall him insisting that natural law was self-evident. Now that is not a very informative claim except to say that it is not derived from merely factual claims. One would ask, as Joseph Raz recently has in his “A Menu of Questions”, (2013) what else can be said positively about the grasping of the natural law, if “self-evidence” does not do much work. My own intended contribution is to suggest that the process can be explained as an abduction, and abduction in turn by the triad of semiosis. Perhaps one could even call it a kind of zoo-semiosis. Anyhow, I have just discovered that Finnis has intimated something of this line of thought, even though he nowhere develops the idea in terms of the triad of semiosis: representamen-interpretant-significate.
In this selection that I will lift from his paper, he is adamant that the abductive grasp of natural law needs to be checked against the results of dialectical examination. The example he has in mind is the one which checks and confirms that the knowledge of truth is a good, when the serious and reasoned denial of the good of knowledge involves one in a kind of retorsive, performative self-contradiction. But the point nevertheless is that he has thought about Peirce’s ideas and the grasp of the natural law. Any way here it is, from his “Natural Law and the Ethics of Discourse”, AJJ :
“…[p. 57]…Considered as a benefit to be gained or missed in a discussion (or in a course of reflection), truth is a property of the judgments to be made by those (or the one) engaged in the common (or solitary) inquiry. Its intelligible goodness, its character as not merely a possibility but also an opportunity, is grasped, in practice, by anyone capable of grasping that the connectedness of answers with questions, and with further questions and further answers, is that general and inexhaustible possibility we call knowledge. This grasp of a field of possibility is a field of opportunity originates in an act of that undeduced (though not datafree!) understanding which C S Peirce, in common with the tradition originated by Plato, calls insight.”
That para ends with a footnote 20, also on p. 57:
“See e.g. Justus Buchler, The Philosophy of C S Peirce (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1940), 304, a passage in which Peirce, italicizing the word “insight,” speaks of “the abductive suggestion [which] comes to us like a flash” as “an act of insight.”…
Well, there you go. A Peirce-ing “insight”, with abduction and all…
4. Vain Studies in Studium
I have been struggling with 35mm film photography for weeks now, with my 1934 Leica II, paired with an 5cm collapsible Elmar. Between shooting film, which is rarely – and I will get to that in a while – I’ve also been shooting and enjoying shooting my Leica Digilux, and the digital workflow is smooth and fanastic, and a couple of my shots uploaded into Leica Fotographie International (LFI) gallery have even been selected for the Master Shots section. It’s easy to shoot and not worry about the cost: it’s free. I take many shots, and even though I remain selective and evaluative, I am less hesitant, and more generous with myself when confronted with any of these picture opportunities.
But not so with my Leica II. I’ve just sent in my first roll of film to develop – after a month, and I nearly decided to not do that. I’ve been extremely selective, and very careful. Indeed scrupulous. Is this really worth a shot? What does this mean? Is it just another pretty image, or nice colors? Leave it to the Digilux. For film, this has to matter a little more. It has become very evaluative. Talk about practical reasoning: what I’m getting is that there are lots of things that, whilst visually attractive – what merely delights my senses – really don’t matter, and don’t deserve my roll of film. Many things pass by, and I pass many things by. I walk around and end up thinking I should go home and save my shots for the people I love, and whom I care about.
In some sense my reflections mirror the insights derived from thinking through Robert Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment, discussed by John Finnis (1980: 95-97) . For all the pleasure and delight if I plug in for life, I would rather not: what about the other important things in life?
Mother and Child. Leica II with 5cm Elmar f/3.5 on Kodak ISO 400.
I have already said much about how the viewfinder and peering through it, i.e., the photographic process, invites such practical and evaluative reflections. But I wish to dwell on this with respect my experience shooting film a little. For there is a difference shooting film and digital in this regard.
Roland Barthes (1982) writes in Camera Lucida that there are two kinds of photographs, one with studium and others with punctum. I find that distinction helpful. Studium shots are those which we appreciate but do not prick or puncture us. They are nice, but don’t specially appeal. Barthes (ibid.) writes:
“The studium is that very wide field of unconcerned desire, of various interests, of inconsequential taste: I like / I don’t like. The studium is of the order of liking, not loving; it mobilizes a half desire, a demi-volition; it is the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in people, the entertainments, the books, the clothes one finds ‘all right’ ”(27)
The punctum on the other hand is different – it grabs us, involves us, and engages us specially. But it is not shock either. Hence Barthes notes that news photographs often shock, even traumatise, but “no puctum…no disturbance; the photograph can “shout”, not wound…I glance through [these journalistic photographs], I don’t recall them…I am interested in them (as I am interested in the world), I do not love them.” (41) Barthes unfortunately is less clear about what it is exactly:
“certain details may ‘prick’ me…A detail overwhelms the entirety of my reading: it is an intense mutation of my interest, a fulgaration. By the mark of something, the photography is no longer “anything whatever” This something has triggered me.” (47)
Whatever it is, it is what is not merely the studium. It is that which arrests us, and however it pricks, perhaps it is what matters, and is for us what stands out, and is significant. In any case, I will borrow and use Barthes’ studium and punctum in this way. I would say that when shooting digital, I am after both studium and punctum, but when shooting film, I am keen to capture merely the image with punctum, and filter out the unworthy studium. I want to record and develop only what could puncture – and wounds, leaving an impression, a scar if lost and missed – and not merely what is likeable.
Film teaches me to abstract the punctum, and to leave behind the studium, much better than does digital, which is quite indifferent to this distinction. Indeed, when shooting digital, after a while I take so much delight when capturing successfully the pretty studium that I am addicted to it, and seek no more than the likeable, but which I would disregard in film. I loose the subject, the meaning, and think of no more than the phenonema: the colors, the shapes, the lines, mostly attractive, but meaningless.