[1]
I am much indebted to Jan Holmgren for his thorough commentary on my TA1,
in which he proposes an alternate approach ('detectism') to the question
of subjectivity. He maintains that 'there is a mind-independent external
world'. Thus he presents a variety of the majority realism (MIR) opinion,
which implies a Plato-type metaphysical reality. My response is essentially
that: if, as he states, he proposes that reality is mind-independent, and
secondly also that the mind is real, he would have to demonstrate that the
mind (specifically, subjective experience) is or can be mind- (specifically:
experience-) independent, and I don't think he has done that. In the following
I will discuss some of his chief arguments.
[2]
He quotes <3> a recent statement by Stapp who wants to 'incorporate
human beings, including both their body/brains and their conscious experience
into the quantum mechanical description of nature'. This strikes me as impossible
because QM is a mental product rather than vice versa: the experiencer is
the describer of QM in nature - just as he is the describer of objective
events in general. (Whether or not this role of the experiencer is acknowledged
as such is a separate question.) One can show how QM - or objective science
in general - originate in subjective experience, but not how subjective
experience originates objectively in QM, for instance <9> in terms
of a hidden variable.
[3]
Further<4>, JH agrees (i) that we have access only to our experiences,
but writes (ii) that 'they (our experiences) are just small parts of a much
more extensive external world which is no less real, even though it is absolutely
beyond reach ... ' and: (iii) 'each conscious experience is the 'exposure
to immediacy of a fragment of the world' ...' The first part is a re-statement
of Plato's cave parable, which has been a headache for a long time, but
the second and third parts are problematic for a different reason : they
are not compatible with the first. If the external (MIR) world is beyond
reach, fragments of it are beyond reach too.
[4]
What we can know is not nature but our constructions : 'scire est facere,
verum est factum' (Vico). And one of the built-in aspects of our constructions
(numbers, triangles, word-meanings, concepts, truths, goals, etc.) is that
they transcend experience. The structures last longer and as tools they
are designed to cover a greater territory than any momentary experience,
or also than the combined experiences of one's life time, or of all collective
life times put together, can ever cover. In this respect the meanings per
se of words and concepts are similar to gestalt formations, and at a more
elementary (and objective) level even to receptor configurations, which
outlast and outreach momentary events and 'meanings', even for single cells
or bacteria. That many such configurations are inherited, or else socially
transmitted to a large extent, does not change the fact that they influence
one's reality-building. And the reality building includes 'objects' (as
Piaget showed for children).
[5]
If one watches birds <5>, or also cars, or politicians, one does not
have to go into such considerations, it is in fact more helpful to take
the experiences as real with no immediate need for doubt (at the basic conceptual
level, I mean). That is, here the MIR works well enough, and systematic
skepticism would be impractical. (It is different for QM or the mind-brain
relation where MIR does not work satisfactorily for some questions, and
it has to be analyzed and modified, and perhaps dis-assembled.) All these
entities (gestalten including people and their spontaneity), words, concepts,
are built within our experience which would otherwise not be structured.
This consideration does not contradict the immediacy of the resulting everyday
reality-feeling, but the latter cannot serve as a guarantee of truth because
it may at times mislead, such as when we mistake one person for another.
[6]
The structure-building does not imply that the experience is invented: experience
is 'given', but the experiential structures are not (this difference between
structuring and inventing is sometimes not made clear in constructivist
proposals). Similarly <6>, 'it is absurd to deny that there was a
world before the human mind appeared on earth' : this is the question of
the tree in northern Siberia which falls with no one hearing or seeing it,
or Einstein's question whether the moon disappears when no one looks at
it. It is absurd once one has accepted an objective (MIR) picture of the
world as valid-in-itself, and within this world-view, but it might not have
been absurd for cave-men. And it is not absurd now, I suggest, to consider
that this world-picture is our creation. This creation originated in ongoing
experience, extrapolating from there with the help of structures which we
have built, earlier or simultaneously (ad hoc, and including for instance
the big bang), within experience, to deal with and expand on experience
as needed.
[7]
And further, other world-views are possible, and not entirely useless, though
they may be less convincing or helpful tools for some purposes. In pursuit
of certain goals, such as technical or analytical ones, people converge
on MIR (or as-if MIR) views of the world, because they are helpful; in pursuit
of common action, or individual and communal inner peace, on other views,
such as religious, political, or scientistic doctrines and cults. The various
views may or may not be (entirely or partly) compatible with each other.
(Except in the case of systematic skepticism, all tend to promote certain
or 'true' structures of some type, on which they suggest to rely.) To see
these different views as tool sets, built for differing purposes but originating
from a common source (from structure-building in experience) may be helpful
for understanding what happens.
[8]
Concerning 'the enormously richly structured organism-environment system'
<6>: do you suggest that the system creates all the structures itself,
and that when we notice it, it is already pre-self-assembled ? In that case,
how can we know about it, since we have no access to it ? (see [3] above).
I guess you do assume something like this <11>, else you would not
call your theory 'detectism': one can only detect something already there.
- 'The evolutionary origin explains the permanence of qualia' : it does,
on an objective level. But it remains that we can only start from experience,
there is no choice, and explanations are secondary. That is, qualia (and
structure-building) are first, objective (evolutionary or other) explanations
come later, based on and extrapolating from the accepted (standard) structure-entities.
[9]
'Human conscious experiences can change the external world' <7> :
that we can create automata is only one part of the picture. Earlier on,
we already build mental tools, such as both internal and external world
(ie, mind-nature) structures, and the border between the two is itself one
of these structures, it is a secondary product. Otherwise, we would have
no access to the outer aspects (see [3]). 'We make use of regularities'<8>,
sometimes in a non-reflective fashion, which is often reasonable to do.
As JH writes, even space and time are formed within experience. - The absolute
speed limit <9> by the way is an interesting example of structure
positing, because for his theory Einstein presented it not as an experimental
result, but posited it (as a pre-supposition, Voraussetzung), and to my
knowledge this is still so. At least in principle this could act as a self-fulfilling
prophecy, because if you accept a postulate as fundamental truth, your experimental
results may tend to confirm it.
[10]
<10> 'Psychology has a key role for the integration of all knowledge':
one can put it that way, but it is important to realize that some of the
greatest present difficulties concern conceptual rather than experimental
aspects. This is often referred to as epistemology, but as JH notes it may
be best handled in an inter-disciplinary exchange, because it concerns many
people in many fields.
[11]
CONCLUSION
JH writes <12> that he sees no need for an as-if. He wants to stay
with a variety of Platonic metaphysical outside reality. ('Realism' always
implies this, although in contrast to him, other authors commonly neglect
to mention the metaphysical aspect.) I suggest that such MIR-belief is a
special case of (or a shortcut for) 'as-if-MIR' (or 0-D) use. Or if you
prefer, that traditional static metaphysics can be seen as a special case
of and shortcut for 'working metaphysics', in extension from the notion
of working hypothesis. The shortcut is viable (in von Glasersfeld's terms)
for those uses where it is possible to keep things at a distance from the
subject.
[12]
This proposition is a consequence of the notions (a) that all mental-mind-and-world
structures are developed within a not originally divided, nor otherwise
structured, but not-invented, ongoing subjective experience, and (b) that
concepts have experience-transcending aspects built into them from the start,
as do also gestalten and (objective physiological) receptor configurations.
For this reason, transcendence (metaphysics) is unavoidable, and the question
is not whether but how to use it. My present opinion is then that MIR has
a more limited range of usefulness for analytic purposes than as-if-MIR,
while in contrast traditional MIR - to the extent that it takes things for
granted - may offer greater stability (certainty) for individual and group
action than as-if-MIR. This certaintymay of course turn out to be illusory.
I thank Jan Holmgren for his stimulating comment, and would be much interested
in further discussion of this topic.
---------------------------------
REFERENCES
Einstein Albert, Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Koerper, Annalen der Physik,
17, 1905, 891-921.
Vico Giambattista, De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia (1710). Translated
into English, with an introduction and notes by LM Palmer. Ithaka : Cornell
University Press, 1988.
---------------------------------
Herbert FJ Muller
e-mail <mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>