KARL JASPERS FORUM
TA1 (Muller)
Commentary 24 (to Muller's R 17)
TO BE, AND TO NOT-BE
by Jan Holmgren
18 May 2000, posted 30 May 2000
<1>
Dear Herbert, you made Hamlet speak in your favour, saying 'ay, there's the rub' [13]. However, you found the Danish prince in one of his irresolute moods, where '… the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought'. Now, I will turn him against you, in defence of responsibility founded in reality. As played with un-poisoned rapiers, I trust this stimulating wager will not come to deadly final hits.
<2>
To the point, Hamlet now says: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Herbert, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy'.
<3>
Hamlet also said, to Ophelia: '… the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometimes a paradox, but now the times gives it proof. I did love you once.' It seemed that the force of ever so honest abstract reasoning could not translate it into the beauty of concrete conscious experiences. This was sometimes a paradox, but now the times give proof that they both are conscious experiences. They both may love each other, and become one in the happy end.
<4>
In the ABSTRACT, you say: 'The as-if-MIR point of view concerns structuring but not inventing experience and reality, which is not any less real (indeed more real) than if it were pre-assembled out side of experience.' I try to understand this: (1) There is experience and reality, unstructured. (2) We (humans?) structure it, so it becomes conceptual structures, etc. I suppose we can experience and know about that which is structured. Can we humans also experience and know about that which is unstructured? If yes, can we experience and know about *all* that which is unstructured? Clear answers to these questions are required for a start. You use structuralism to get away from materialism, which I think is praiseworthy. However, you should consider that there may be much more in the world than human experiential and conceptual structures, and, if you deny that, make it clear why you deny it. It is a demanding task to understand these complex relations. For example, Whitehead thought he had to consider that structuring and experiencing is one process, 'actual occasion', so it is simultaneously 'one', 'many', and 'creative'. He rejects materialism, the 'simple location' of substances. I agree with Whitehead's scheme, which is in principle similar to my 'detectism', but expressed much clearer and in much more detailed.
<5>
Then you say: 'The difference from traditional MIR does not concern events, but the belief about the source of certainty and the extent of responsibility. It is important in this connection to distinguish between mental tools and unreachable nature-in-itself, as Vico had suggested.' Do you not say here that there *is* an 'unreachable nature-in-itself', i.e. a MIR? This would seem to place you in the position I suggest in 'detectism': I only have access to my conscious experiences, all 'knowable' relations are internal within my conscious experiences, what is external to my conscious experiences may appear to me to be nothing, but it has potential force, since parts of my experiences appears to be given, etc. Thus, there appears to be massive self-structuring in nature, far beyond human conscious experiences. My responsibility is not only to care about that which I know about. For example, it is responsible to care for freedom in society, without knowing the outcome, and it may be responsible to try to prevent the forcing of harmful new structure on prevailing natural systems, which are not understood. Why do you say that your difference from traditional MIR does not concern events? If you want to get away from materialism, you certainly must deal with events.
<6>
'Where is this sight?' I turned to the process-philosophy list at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/process-philosophy/ , in search of support for my way of reading Whitehead. Among many distinguished listers, there is Jorge Luis Nobo, who (1986, p.xiii) said: 'The received interpretations of Whitehead's metaphysics are many; the areas of agreement in those interpretations are few, particularly so when the discussion goes beyond paraphrasing vague doctrinal generalities.' Hopefully, Nobo's own fresh perspective may inspire a move towards consensus in the understanding of Whitehead's philosophy.
<7>
I was advised to read Whitehead's (1967) 'Adventures of Ideas' (AI). In the preface (p.vii), Whitehead said: 'The three books – Science and the Modern World, Process and Reality, Adventures of Ideas – are an endeavour to express a way of understanding the nature of things, and to point out how that way of understanding is illustrated by a survey of the mutations of human experience. Each book can be read separately; but they supplement each other's omissions and compressions.' I indeed recommend reading all three books, which are extremely interesting, but especially 'Adventures of Ideas'; it is very readable, with pleasure.
<8>
In AI, chapter XV, 'Philosophic Method' (p.222), Whitehead said: 'Philosophy is a difficult subject, from the days of Plato to the present time haunted by subtle perplexities. The existence of such perplexities arising from the common obviousness of speech is the reason why the topic exists. Thus the very purpose of philosophy is to delve below the apparent clarity of common speech. In this connection, it is only necessary to refer to Socrates. Another illustration is to be found in the *Sophist*, where Plato states that 'not-being' is a form of 'being'. This statement is at once an extreme instance of the breakdown of language, and the enunciation of a profound metaphysical truth which lies at the foundation of this discussion.'
<9>
Herbert: Be ruled; you shall not go into this unknown.
Hamlet: Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen,
By heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me:
I say, away! Go on, I'll follow thee.
[Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET].
<10>
However, you seem to have softened somewhat, Herbert. In TA24 R5, in your answer to John Mikes, you mention 'a still unstructured encompassing aspect which one cannot get rid of', and to Hugh Bone you comment 'In 0-D terms one might say 'how do we build viable structures in the flow of experience?' A universe without mysteries would mean that we only deal with our accepted structures, not suspecting anything beyond.' You are close to accepting John's 'we are part of the MIR', but raises the persistent argument 'it means that the mind is part of mind-independent reality'. You need to attempt to 'delve below the apparent clarity of common speech'. What we need to find is precisely a way to understand human minds as integral parts of nature.
<11>
I cannot see how the formulation [2] 'mind-independently structured truth and reality' improves your argument. I insist that the meteorite [1] must have been structured somehow, by universal self-organization, constituting a truth and reality admittedly still unknown to any of us, long before it entered into the human sphere of interest. Truth and reality cannot be constructed arbitrarily in relation to the potential unknown.
<12>
I don't hold [4] 'that because we (have to) structure reality, it is somehow less real'. I want to move away from materialism, following Whitehead, and it follows that *all* kinds of conscious experiences should be considered, so 'the source of security for thought and action' may become more internal, as you say.
<13>
In [6] you say that 'MIR, nature-in-itself, cannot permeate our experience because it is out of reach in principle (cf Plato), not just outside current conscious experience', and you call it 'a concept-generated fiction'. Whitehead's solution makes finer distinctions (AI p.251): 'Appearances are finally controlled by the functionings of the animal body. These functionings and the happenings within the contemporary regions are both derived from a common past, highly relevant to both. It is thereby pertinent to ask, whether the animal body and the external regions are not attuned together, so that under normal circumstances, the appearances conform to natures within the regions. / The attainment of such conformation would belong to the perfection of nature in respect to the higher types of its animal life. There is no necessity about it. Evidently there is failure, interference, and only partial adjustment. But we have to ask whether nature does not contain within itself a tendency to be in tune, an Eros urging towards perfection. This question cannot be discussed without passing beyond the narrow grounds of the truth-relation.'
<14>
When you say [12] 'one cannot jump over (ie, omit) subjective experience, which is the only possible entrance to any kind of reality', you must be aware that this is also my position. Also [14], obviously, 'ongoing subjective experience is not, and cannot become, an outcome of objective studies.' (Objective studies, on the other hand, have to be performed in ongoing conscious experiences.) I have never said [13] that correlates of qualia are qualia. Still, it would be very interesting if someone could find and describe correlates of qualia (again, this would have to be performed in ongoing conscious experiences, formed in qualia different from those whose correlates were described).
<15>
Jorge Luis Nobo (1997) suggests an 'Ontogenetic Matrix', which may seem to have some similarity to your 'starting from no structure' (zero-derivation, 0-D). His matrix, however, is filled with potential and is basic for our belief in universal solidarity, while your 'given experiences' seem to explain nothing but arbitrariness. I have argued (available, with Nobo's comment, at
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/process-philosophy/2000-04/0119.html )
that Nobo's matrix 'has to be our necessary ontogenetic matrix that means very much for us, and lets us believe in a metaphysics of creative solidarity', even though it in principle is not achievable for us. It has the potential 'to be, and to not-be'.
<16>
'there is no question: 't is nobler to take thoughts against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them!'
------------------------------------
REFERENCES
Nobo, J.L. 1986. Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity. State University of New York Press.
Nobo, J.L. 1997. From Creativity to Ontogenetic Matrix: Learning from Whitehead's Account of the Ultimate. Available at http://pweb.cc.sophia.ac.jp/~yutaka-t/process/tetugaku/nobo1997.html .
Whitehead, A.N. (1933) 1967. Adventures of Ideas. The Free Press.
-------------------------------------
Jan Holmgren
e-mail: <j.holmgren@telia.com>
homepage: <http://w1.411.telia.com/~u41104695/index.html>