The element of surprise in Peirce’s double consciousness paradigm

Abstract

Abstract This account will demonstrate that the element of surprise is a fundamental device in establishing double consciousness regimes; it further shows how such dialogic paradigms foster abductive inferences by filtering out irrelevant percepts/antecedents. The account sets up Peirce’s Pheme to be the primary device which shocks interpreters’ sensibilities (CP 8.266, 1903) – starting them on a course to question conflicting principles between ego and non-ego (CP 5.53, 1903: CP 8.266). The natural disposition of surprise to instantaneously deliver insight into which antecedents are relevant to vital, anomalous consequences demonstrates its indispensability in generating logical and semiotic advances. For Peirce, vividness, as an element of surprise in Secondness, is largely responsible for the nuts and bolts of how surprise facilitates logic; its means to activate searches for plausible antecedents makes vividness the prime candidate. The success of vividness at turning the mind of interpreters to new ways of explaining the consequence largely hinges upon the external properties of the unexpected consequence – not merely objects’ instantaneity, but their striking characteristics, as well. Even though vividness is external (MS 645, 1909; cf. Atkins 2018: 198), it produces internal responses, in the form of a war against feelings (CP 8.330, 1904). In this way, double consciousness paradigms are initiated, which, in turn, call for hypothesis generation.