Truth and Mirrors: Umberto Eco's Last Stand on Cognition

I took some time off from the Internet, and during that time I was able to (finally) finish Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition." The second part of the book dealt with more than just Cognitive Types, as Eco embarked on a semiotic examination of abstractions that could perhaps only be defined by way of pragmatism. Eco details "The True Story of the Sarkiapone" which becomes more convoluted, funny and entertaining with every turn. The Sarkiapone does not exist; it's an imaginary animal that a passenger in a train pretends to have in his luggage. Another person in the same compartment of the train expresses the idea that he knows everything there is to know about the Sarkiapone (one of those know-it-all people we hate so much). At any rate, as the first passenger continues to change the story of the Sarkiapone and its characteristics (physical and behavioral), the second passenger continues to adjust his "expertise" to match the conversation. In the end, the first passenger reveals that the Sarkiapone does not exist. The second passenger quickly states that he knew it all along, and that he was playing along with the "creation" of the strange animal. Umberto Eco uses this story to illustrate how people construct meaning from definition; that is to say, the Sarkiapone did not exist, but as the first passenger "mutates" the characteristics of the animal, and the second passenger adapts to those mutations, meaning is created out of nothing. It's an interesting trick of cognition and reference of "contract."


Visual cognition as reference of contract is a bit more complicated. What do we see in a mirror? How does the reversal of the image signifies a different type? Eco explains everything from the reversal of the image and the fact that what is returned from standing in front of the mirror is not fully a representation of what stands in front. Why? A reflection is composed of light/color spectrum and the eye perception of the same. Other perception examples include the classic "Mexican riding a bike" image. Why, I wonder, after 500 pages of some of the most insightful meanderings on epistemology, semiotics, etc. did Eco finish this tour de force with this funny trick of perception? Who knows, really. I did enjoy the reading tremendously. I realize now how much I marked this book. Normally, I do a lot of underlining (no highlighters allowed), marginalia, etc., but I think I over did it with this one. I still have two more Umberto Eco volumes to go this year, but before I get to them, I have to play catch up with some others and with my writing. And summer is almost over!

Umberto Eco's Cognitive Types and Bach's Suites for Cello Solo

Johann Sebastian Bach's Suites for Cello Solo have been a part of my life since I was 11 years old. These are essential pieces for every cellist. As a cellist, I have played them and enjoyed them over 2/3s of my life. They are never old or boring; I always find some thing new in them when I play them, and also when I listen to the numerous recordings I have by different cellists. So, imagine the surprise I received when upon turning a page in Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition," I discovered that our good Italian semiotist included a chapter on Bach's Suite No. 2 as an example of cognitive types and nuclear content. The issue at stake here is as follows. The simplistic premise of the book itself is "when we say 'cat' how do we know that a 'cat' is a 'cat'." Basically, how does language transfers the meaning (or fails to do so) of 'cat' if we don't have a sample of a cat at hand? When applied to music, Eco makes a wonderful problematization of performance of a piece vs. the written work, and the potential variations within. In his example, Eco writes about a recording of the Suite No. 2 for Cello Solo performed on a recorder flute. The question related to the "difference between the physical phenomenon and its transcription on the stave, on the one hand, and between it and the 'musical idea' on the other. Transcription to the stave certainly represents a (highly conventional) way of rendering the musical idea public. That the procedure is conventional (highly codified) does not eliminate the fact that the sequence of the written notes is motivated by the sequence of the sounds imagined or tried out on an instrument by the composer." Add to this the idea of whether or not a piece that is not executed on an instrument, sang by a singer, etc. or even played in a record exists. That is to say, since the piece is transferred and made public by being printed (much as we print works of literature) it remain static and "dead" until someone picks it up and plays it. But imagine an orchestra conductor picking up an orchestral piece and seeing the entire piece (all instruments) in front of him, as he begins to read the score (much as you are reading this page... with the same facility) does that not constitute bringing the piece to "life?" I suppose that perhaps humming counts, no? At any rate, Eco then takes the argument to another level where he believes that "[i]t is clear that, if the relationship between the sound waves and the grooves of the disc is a case of primary iconism--and if the relation between [the performer's] execution and the notes of the score is already substantiated by multiple interpretative inferences, choices, and accentuations of pertinency--we have then arrived, with the physiognomic type, at an extremely complex process that seems very difficult to take account of." Looking at it from another angle, if a recording of the Bach Suites for Cello Solo performed by say, Mischa Maisky differs from that of Pablo Casals in the way each of them interprets them, then what we have is a version of the piece in execution that is much different from what the composer intended, if it was in fact that he intended anything at all but the phraseology and "message" behind it (which I admit is interpretable as well). I remember having a similar argument with a philosophy professor of mine when I was an undergraduate. I resorted back to my music training (which might have been unfair) and asked whether or not it was the same piece of hundreds of people played the same notes but with a different interpretation (his contention was that there was no variance). I can't remember how we resolved the matter, but he was a gracious old scholar and a lover of classical music. I do remember we ended up meeting at his house where his wife prepared elaborate dinners for three, and afterwards retiring to the salon to listen to his old LP recordings collection. The man had every one from Leonid Kogan to Gaspar Cassado, and numerous difficult to find recordings. Those were happy days, but I digress.

Eco posts another excellent problem. If the Bach Suite for Cello Solo No. 2 is an artistic endeavour that appears differently to everyone, could the Mona Lisa be appreciated similarly? Where do Da Vinci's brushstrokes end, and our appreciation begin? I'd be hard press to think that even a contemporary professional painter would stand in front of the Mona Lisa and say, "oh, sure... but I would have changed the light hits the side of her cheek here..."

I do, however, enjoy reading Eco very much. This is the kind of thing my students tell me to stop thinking about, just to "let it go," or the proverbial "you think too much." How little do they know of the pleasures of the life of the mind.

Cognition and Language: Eco Still Echoes of Nishida

I am still a long way from finishing "Kant and the Platypus" by Umberto Eco, and the reason behind it is my perverse habit of linking everything Eco writes about to Kitaro Nishida's study of "Pure Experience" in "An Inquiry into the Good." Their theories are linked by the idea that to experience something, whether or not for the first time, one must make sense of language first. At first this seems like a basic idea, until Eco explains the paradox of present tense and all the other goodies of how we construct meaning (cognition) from language. For example, if you've never seen a mouse, and you look up the definition in a dictionary, will you get an accurate appreciation of what a mouse is? The limitations of language notwithstanding, still with the pictures and not a language communicated categorical imperative, you might still be off target. The delicious "chicken-before-the-egg" equation of the entire book convinces me of 1) the importance of this reading, and 2) how enjoyable is to read Umberto Eco's non-fiction. Despite this I have had no time to devote to my reading because my teaching obligations. I will try to make up between June 9th and June 14th all of the time I haven't devoted to my reading list. At any rate, where these two excellent thinkers (Nishida and Eco) meet is where experience links us to the objects around us and how we make sense (cognition) of them. Eco explains the idea of Categorical Types and links everything quite nicely to Kant. Where things get really complicated is Eco's "diagnosis" of Categorical Types and schema. For example, a cat is a cat and that is one category. To the "untrained" eye, the fact that the cat is a Persian, or a Siamese, or a Tabby is irrelevant to how we communicate the idea of what type of cat is is. What Eco explains is how we make sense of language/cognition when talking about Categorical Types and experience. I am going to make a list of Eco's main points and tie them to Nishida (whose book I have been carrying around for this purpose for the last three weeks). I love making these connections.

Umberto Eco and Kitaro Nishida "On Being"

The interesting aspect of the first 100 pages of Umberto Eco's book "Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition" is the fact that it connects to Japan's only rational philosophy (at least historically) on the topic of "Pure Experience" and on "Being." Eco conventionally cites much Heidegger simply because one cannot write about Being without considering the great German. Having said that, Kitaro Nishida appears ignorant of Heidegger on theory and method, perhaps because he was writing before Heidegger became known, or even developed his ideas. This relates to that most obscure topic of serendipity, etc. I studied Nishida in 1994 while I lived and studied in Hikone, Japan. I came across his book "An Inquiry into the Good" by chance at the Michigan State University Center for Japan Studies right there in Hikone. Right away I knew I had to read this book. The introduction by Masao Abe alone is worth the price of admission. This introduction is brilliantly written; clear enough for a lay reader of philosophy like myself to be able to follow it and understand it on the first reading. Nishida, however, is a bit more complex and it took me several readings to understand at least half of what I read. While for the most part I am citing Umberto Eco's work, I am actually PDFing my notes on Nishida on this LINK. These are my original, handwritten notes from 1994.

Eco's first section of the book, entitled "On Being," covers for the most part the basic definitions of self-recognition and being that most people associate with Heidegger. However, Eco presents a clear and expertly shorten chronology on the ideas of self/being and recognition from Aristotle and Aquinas, to Descartes and Kant, and, as the expert semiotologist that he is, he refers to the process of how we recognize self/being and how symbols help us do so. Here's an example: "The problem with Aristotelian being lay not in the pollachos but in the leghetai [these are terms Aristotle uses to define the self/being from a substantial or transcendental or spiritual self/being]. Whether it is said in one or many ways, being is something that is said. It may well be the horizon of every other evidence, but it becomes a philosophical problem only when we begin to talk about it, and it is precisely our talking about it that makes it ambiguous and polyvocal." This is precisely what Kitaro Nishida problematizes when he creates the polemic of "Pure Experience" and "Reality" where he explores the phenomena of consciousness as the sole basis of reality. Because Eco is dedicated to the way we symbolize or recognize being (ourselves and others) he seems as disparate from Nishida, but a closer look reveals a distinct connection: both philosophers see language as a symbol used to recognized our own being. For that reason, symbols are primary as they appear in language and secondarily as material being. Eco continues "Being is that which enables all subsequent definitions to be made. But all definitions are the effect of the logical and therefore semiosical organization of the world.... if being is the horizon of departure, saying that something 'is' adds nothing to what was already self-evident by the very fact of naming that something as the object of our discourse." And here's a major clash with defining being/self as it appears to the cognition, especially as it refers to Heidegger. Heidegger's Dasein, and the problematic question he posted as "What is 'is?'" Eco explores that idea that since Heidegger begins and ends with language, he continues to be enslaved to language for a definition. To post it in an easier way... Could we recognize (cognition) the self and being without the intrusion of language? Do we need language in order to define our self/being? If language had never developed, would we be reasonable/logic-driven humans who recognize we exist and are substantially a being?

I am also reading a book on fiction writing theory where the author asks the reader/writer to create an emotional map of his/her history and try to sketch it in a way that is not biographically inspired. I find this exercise fascinating and very difficult to do, which is the reason why I am so engaged with it. I'll possibly be writing about this next here in the blog before continuing with Eco/Nishida.