ABSTRACT:

For his quantum mechanics theory, Henkel suggests the 'complete elimination of mind-independent reality', rather than qualifying MIR as an 'as-if' structure, which term he finds is too fuzzy. It appears, however, that the elements of thinking have the characteristics of as-if-MIR-entities, and for this reason elimination of MIR is not feasible, it would imply the elimination of thinking. It seems helpful for the scrutiny of this area to distinguish between absolute MIR (or absolute metaphysics) and as-if or working MIR (or working metaphysics). The as-if provision can often be neglected but it is required for certain areas of enquiry, and could perhaps be rendered more precise. It might be useful to evaluate working metaphysics: by testing it as applied to a few specific examples from particle physics and the subjectivity-brain relation question, and perhaps from other areas. The 'reality status of quantum systems between observations' may be a function of expectations, extrapolated from earlier experiences.

[1]
In his continuing work on the conceptual aspects of (a non-Cartesian view of) quantum mechanics, Henkel has recently suggested (TA1 C14) to eliminate mind-independent reality (MIR) altogether, without or with qualifications, from discussion. The problem with this proposition, so far as I can see, is that all thinking uses extrapolated ('as-if they were mind-independently true and real') constructions. This applies even to animals, who appear not to doubt the independent reality of foods, or of enemies, etc., even though only limited clues of either are available to them. Henkel's proposal thus prompts further scrutiny of the MIR function.

[2]
Because in areas like particle physics and the mind-brain relation traditional MIR (usually in the form of empiricism) no longer works, one must now, when dealing with such topics, find methods to become and remain aware in practice (not only in principle) that our presently used thought structures have been extrapolated from individual and collective past-ongoing unstructured (mind-nature) experience. These structures had been produced on an ongoing basis as they were needed, and then stored by various means. At the same time, to make life easier we all are and will continue to be naive realists or objectivists most of the time, using unqualified MIR as a shortcut procedure. It might thus be helpful to use a sort of 'conversion instrument', which would be used (as a plug-in module so to speak) as required in problematic situations. An awareness of the 'as-if' nature of concepts, I suggest, might serve as such an appliance, which allows one to continue with the habitual structures but qualifies them as working tools rather than as absolutes of one sort or another. It modifies understanding of the world from 'real' (traditional or MIR metaphysics) to 'as-if real' (working or as-if-MIR metaphysics). That is not a big change but a central one, and it has some implications.


[3]
HENKEL'S TERMS

How does this apply to the points raised by Henkel ? The reality status of quantum mechanics, or more specifically of 'potential' states between observations, he writes <3>, is usually hidden in the Cartesian belief system of physics. This is rarely brought up in discussion, he states, but objective reality of matter is usually implied. In an extra-Cartesian view, in contrast, the reality question must be directly addressed, or specifically: the question of 'what comes next ?' in an experimental situation. Henkel suggests it may help to say that 'the reality status of both cosmos and logos is subjective/ objective'. And 'the Bateson experiential loop ... plays the role of the cosmos, i.e., available potentiality'.

[4]
'The most elementary aesthetic act is (according to Kant) the selection of a fact' <4>. Bateson suggests that in a piece of chalk there are an infinite number of potential facts, and that the Ding-an-Sich, the piece of chalk, can never enter into communication or mental process because of this infinitude. The sensory receptors ... filter it out, they select certain facts out of the piece of chalk, which then become ... information. According to Bateson, Kant's statement can be modified to say that there is an infinite number of differences around and within a piece of chalk, such as between the piece of chalk and the rest of the universe, etc.. 'What we mean by information ... is a difference which makes a difference, because the neural pathways along which it travels .. are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may say that the question is already implicit in them. Particular 'facts' about the chalk 'spring into existence ...'

[5]
'I would like to renounce any use of the term MIR, both qualified and unqualified' <5>. 'Observation is free from banished MIR' <6>.


[6]
DISCUSSION OF THIS TERMINOLOGY


For the purpose of this discussion I will distinguish between absolute and working metaphysics (or MIR):

(A) Absolute MIR is identical with traditional or absolute metaphysics including ontology. Truth and reality are thought to exist independently of anyone's experience, and sources of knowledge to be mind-independent. Discussions about this type of metaphysics tend to be centered about the question whether or not metaphysics is necessary or desirable or possible, and answers have varied greatly during history. Because absolute MIR cannot be scientifically proven, it was tried to deny its possibility, but then serious problems of understanding were encountered as well.

(B) Working metaphysics in contrast is identical with as-if MIR (or corrected, or modified MIR). Here one is expressly aware of the make-believe quality of the assumption of mind-independence of reality, and therefore ontology is impossible. As-if-MIR is used as a tool, which has been created within ongoing primarily undivided and unstructured (mind-nature) experience (which is its undefinable origin or matrix, cf. TA1). As-if MIR can also be called temporary or ad-hoc metaphysics. Mental structures almost always transcend ongoing experience, and are thus metaphysical in nature (it might be argued that expressions of strong present feelings are not transcendental, but all statements at a distance, such as in 'observation', are). The concepts of reality and truth are included in this, and the as-if view similarly acknowledges them to have been created within unstructured (mind-nature) experience and fixed by belief. Since all conceptual thinking needs such mental structures, it is self-contradictory to question or deny their existence, because the question or denial themselves are structured thinking processes. Instead one may try to understand the functions of MIR, and its background.

[7]
My use of the terms 'metaphysics' and 'as-if' in this context extends beyond their meaning in much of the philosophical literature (including Vaihinger). I do not want to suggest that those meanings be changed in general usage, but clearly a concept is needed to cover the extended meaning, and I do not want to introduce yet another term. The reason for this extension is evident for instance from Henkel's report on Bateson's piece of chalk <4>: concepts transcend (that is, their meanings extend beyond) what is presently experienced, and this applies not only to what is usually meant by Aristotelian metaphysics, or by Vaihinger's as-if fictions, but to all concepts. Indeed the meanings go beyond whatever could possibly be experienced by anyone at one single instant, and they include the possibility of all sorts of experiences. (It may be worth examining to what extent the use of restricted meaning of terms such as 'metaphysics' or 'as-if' has historically caused difficulties in understanding.)

[8]
The above quoted [3-5] concepts of Kant (see also Note a, below), Bateson, and Henkel seem to all be absolute-MIR-view based, without correction. 'The thing-in-itself has an infinite number of potential facts which are filtered by sensory receptors and neural pathways': this is an unmodified MIR statement because it asserts the outside existence of the fictitious thing-in-itself and of the 'potential facts' within it (it is actually an example of the unavoidable paradox, or 'weirdness' (cf.TA1R11), of an unmodified MIR view - and besides, it accepts 'neural pathways' at the naé{ve reality level). Instead, I suggest, experience constructs ('a piece of chalk' or whatever else) within its own activity, rather than 'extracting' items such as 'facts' or 'differences' from a fictitious entity called a thing-in-itself, which, as is pointed out <4>, cannot talk for itself. It cannot talk for itself: not because it hides too many (mind-independent) facts inside, but because our constructive activity within ongoing experience and our belief are required for it and them to be there (or to 'spring into existence' in Bateson's terms). This is also where the infinite number of potential facts, or of differences, etc., comes in: we can expand ongoing (mind-nature) experience in an (in principle) unlimited number of ways, to arrive at an infinite number of potential gestalt formations, processes, etc. The 'existence' of the thing, as well as of its many facts or differences, depends on our construction and belief. For Henkel's second and third reality models <7>, clarification of the term 'potential' will be needed. Concerning his term 'organism experience', it would be of interest to emphasize the constructive-creative aspect, as opposed to the passive reception of pre-fabricated absolute-MIR entities.

[9]
Observation <6> is not free of MIR: the concept of 'observation' usually implies that the observer is separated from the observed, and the observed entities are assumed to pre-exist experience. If this is done in thorough fashion, it leads inevitably to Einstein's procedure, who replaced the 'observer' (with whom he might not have felt at ease because this was a subject) by the zero-point of a coordinate system and a clock, which were considered by positivists to be exclusively objective. The epistemological aspect of that step was developed by Nagel in his (in my opinion self-contradictory) 'view from nowhere', which is in effect a thorough formulation of the absolute-MIR point of view. (Nunn's opinion (N15) that the Copenhagen interpretation is a cop-out may also well be a consequence of an (implied) view from nowhere). The only possibility to free 'observation' of absolute-MIR would be to change the meaning of this word to something like 'construction within unstructured and undivided (mind-nature) experience' (but this might cause confusion, because 'observation' is usually defined as an objective process, in an absolute-MIR view). And finally, as already discussed, the as-if MIR (working metaphysics) is needed for any structured thinking, even in case the absolute MIR can be eliminated.

[10]
'The Bateson experiential loop plays the role of the cosmos <3>, i.e., available potentiality': the potentiality is 'available' within the activity of construction of our understanding of the 'cosmos', or of 'objects', or of their 'possibilities', because we expect them according to what we (individually or collectively) have experienced earlier, and to how we have structured it. 'What comes next' is answered, like all expectations, on the basis of extrapolation from past experience. In particle physics this is often done in statistical terms. Expectations have the general form: if you do A, you will experience B ('doing' here includes perceiving). And the 'reality status of a system between observations' <3> - clearly a traditional-MIR-based question which forgets that permanent entities are extrapolations from past experience (or as it is usually put, from 'observations') - is identical with our expectations (here in statistical terms): we certify reality by belief, and statistical expectations are no less real than others. (Opinion poll results are more ephemeral, because no longer lasting political structures result from them, but not less real, within confidence limits, than election results. The confidence limits are a quantification of the trustworthiness for belief in reliability.) The conceptual problem in the QM question seems to result from an implicit absolute-MIR expectation, which is based on an image, 'the quantum system itself' <3> as a thing-in-itself, which in this situation is apparently dysfunctional.

[11]
Henkel's general background of 'subjective/objective' <3> also suggests an absolute-MIR start with assumption of primary separate subject and object, which he (secondarily) wants to unite. Unstructured and undivided experience I suggest is the (first) origin, and only secondarily does experience become split along the subject/object differentiation. To make this clear I think it would be better to use a term like 'original' (ongoing, undivided, unstructured, etc.) experience rather than subjective/objective, which would at least appear to imply the notion of a primary split. Please correct me if my understanding of Henkel's term 'subjective/objective' is a misinterpretation.

[12]
It therefore appears to me that Henkel's above mentioned [3-5] descriptions (including Kant's and Bateson's terms), in the form in which they are used here, are themselves illustrations of the impossibility of the proposition in his title. This situation reflects a fundamental characteristic of structured thinking: structures are created, quickly extrapolated (outward) and thereafter usually believed in and used as absolute-MIRs, or things-in-themselves (although these views are in the strict sense impossible, paradoxical, and can lead to 'weird' consequences). Nor, for practical reasons, do I think that one should try to change this procedure, other than by adding a qualifying statement (when needed), to the effect that this is something we allow ourselves to believe (namely that it were true without a mind): it results in useful structures much of the time, but not always. In contrast, in a theoretical discussion it is a mistake to claim that the uncorrected MIR view describes the epistemological situation adequately, and such opinions should probably be eliminated from consideration in Henkel's theory.

[13]
For particle physics, this result might mean something like that: the question about the continued extra-mental existence of electrons, etc., is wrongly formulated, on the basis of an image (the mind-independent persistence of existence of the items in question, such as waves or particles) which does not work here. It appears though that the more general notion of 'something', or 'entity', as opposed to a specific type of image such as particle or wave, still has meaning in the relevant experiments, such as the double slit. - An inappropriate image certainly plays a main role in the attempts to find an (impossible) objective subject, on which so much effort is presently being spent. Descartes' procedure of 'cogito ergo sum' can perhaps be understood not only in the sense that he has 'found' an ego-structure (Hume said he was unable to find it in himself, and Kant (a) wrote that it is 'empty'), but instead as meaning that a reliable 'I' needs to be created for everyday thinking (cf. Taylor, (b)). We utilize this structure (for instance in the form of an image of ourselves) as-if it were a stable and persistent structure, although the structure cannot be mind-independent because it includes the center of the mind. From here, one might understand the present conceptual problems as resulting from a failure to distinguish between structures which can profitably be understood as mind-independent, and the QM structures or the subject structure which cannot.

[14]
THE FUZZINESS OF THE AS-IF

For those who like to think in mathematical terms, it may be useful to consider the 'as-if procedure', using Henkel's earlier term, in analogy to an asymptotic function. If we take a simple function like y = 1/x, we can give an x-value and a y-value for each point of the resulting curve, they can be projected onto it from the coordinates, or if you prefer the curve points can be projected onto each of the two coordinates, but the line will never touch the x coordinate nor the y coordinate. Never, that is, unless of course we play a trick by setting x = 0, or y = 0. In that case, the zero value of the one results in the other becoming infinite, and the asymptote has suddenly become symptotic. I want to stress that this is an analogy to (or at most a specialized example of) everyday thinking, and not a claim that everyday thinking is such a mathematical function. If this mathematical analogy is acceptable for the illustration of certain aspects of everyday thinking, the question of the 'as-if-fuzziness' may become at least somewhat more concrete.

[15]
Although this is rather simple-minded mathematics, I suggest that there is something of use in this. Ongoing thinking corresponds to the curve, and the unreachable metaphysical referents to the points on the x and y axes. We use metaphysics (i.e., MIR) in an asymptotic (namely, 'as-if') fashion; and that is fine so long as we are aware of it. The trouble starts when we assume (explicitly or implicitly) that the metaphysical entities, the so-called 'referents' (whatever is referred to, and including 'matter') are in our hands, as absolute realities, and presto: not only do we suddenly 'know reality' (such as Bateson's piece of chalk), but this knowledge of metaphysical reality even includes items like infinity, time, space, the universe, and maybe God. We have then lost all perspective concerning the problem, by in effect declaring it non-existent, we see it with a distance of zero, and the resulting obstacle to comprehension in turn becomes infinite. And we all do this all day long, forgetting about the as-if. In traditional empiricism (such as Henkel's positivistic First Type of Reality Model <7>) this is indeed the prescribed procedure.

[16]
Setting the mathematical analogy aside, being aware of the as-if aspect is important, and indeed essential, in case one needs to appreciate the function of the structures which are used in everyday thinking procedures, namely: the function of working metaphysics. If one jumps to conclusions by asserting the reality of matter (or of anything else) without the 'as-if' qualification (as per naé{ve realism, etc.), understanding may become impossible. To say that the piece of chalk 'contains' all the 'potential facts' or 'data' or 'differences', which we then extract or discover, so that they 'spring into existence': this is unqualified absolute MIR, and I submit that it is incomprehensible. Who is supposed to 'give the data', or to 'make the facts', so that they can 'spring into existence' ? The answer used to be straight-forward: 'God', and more recently something called 'nature' or 'matter', all of which were usually seen as mind-independent entities. But these were answers of simpler times, and they can no longer be used, because we can no longer avoid the responsibility of being at the origin. And besides, the old answers don't seem to work for particle physics, nor for the mind-brain problem, for instance. - And finally, the as-if qualification might become more easily acceptable if we can agree that in scientific studies everyone uses working hypotheses all the time; they are special instances of working metaphysics (that is, of as-if-MIR - although most scientists are naé{ve realists and assume that working hypotheses are anticipations of mind-independent realities).

[17]

CONCLUSIONS

To briefly summarize the situation as I see it at present:

(a) Thinking works with the help of ad hoc structures, and this already at the pre-verbal and pre-human level.

(b) The structures are developed (by individuals and collectively) as needed within original ongoing undivided (mind-nature) experience, and then stored in various ways, and re-utilized in further ongoing experience. 'Subject' and 'object' are already such (secondarily created) structures. 'Reality' and 'truth' are expressions of belief in the reliability of the created structures.

(c) Traditional absolute metaphysical views including empiricism turn this development on its head by assuming that the structures are at the origin, and thus mind-independently real and true (absolute MIR). This view functions as a (supposedly mind-external) stabilizer, and as a shortcut procedure it works well for much of experience, despite the error in the underlying assumptions.

(d) But because absolute-MIR is a mistaken view it fails for some areas such as particle physics and the subject-brain relation, where its impossibility (or its paradoxical properties) cannot be overlooked since it may lead to 'weird' consequences. For such fields it needs to be corrected by a procedure which points back to the ad-hoc-creative origin of structures in ongoing experience (as per point b above). The as-if qualification of MIR (which is the same as using temporary or working metaphysics) appears to achieve this goal, for instance by helping to prevent erroneous expectations; but this question needs further study.

I am interested in commentaries on these points.

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NOTES AND REFERENCES

(a) In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had declared that ontology is not possible (B303), but he wanted to retain other parts of traditional metaphysics. Thus he said on the one hand (B59) that: 'wir kennen nichts, als unsere Art (die Dinge) wahrzunehmen', that is we know only 'phenomena'; but also that there are metaphysical things-in-themselves, which cannot be known, and further, in accordance with Hume, that the subject is an empty concept (B404: 'eine gaenzlich leere Vorstellung'; cf. [9] above). In my understanding Kant's analysis has led to only a partial abolition of traditional metaphysics, and the result is therefore a hybrid, which corresponds only in part to the working or as-if metaphysics which I discuss here.


(b) In his book 'Sources of the Self, The Making of Modern Identity' (Harvard University Press, 1989) Charles Taylor wants to 'designate the ensemble of (largely unarticulated) understandings of what it is to be a human agent: the senses of inwardness, freedom, individuality, and being embedded in nature which are at home in the modern West' (from the preface). The book 'is concerned not only with the issue of self and its construction but with modernity' (from the cover). Nonetheless Taylor, like Kant, wants to retain some (old-style mind-independently absolute, I think) metaphysics or theology (p.491) for this purpose; he writes that it offers hope, even though he admits that its historical record has often been disappointing (p.521).


(c) Hans Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob, Leipzig: F. Meiner. 1911, 7&8. Aufl. 1922. English translation by C.K. Ogden.
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[Herbert FJ Muller
<mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>]