KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA1 (Muller)

Response 18 (to C24 by Holmgren)

REALITY-DETECTION VERSUS REALITY-BUILDING
by Herbert FJ Muller
12 June 2000, posted 20 June 2000

[1]
In your recent commentary, you have brought up a number of important points. But it seems that for some reason I have not succeeded in communicating certain aspects of my opinion to you.

[2]
The awareness of ‘responsibility founded in reality’ <1> is greater in reality structuring rather than in reality detection. In the zero-reference view (0-D) we know that we are the concept builders, while in MIR-belief some of this is delegated to a fictitious agency or entity outside the subject.

[3]
Abstract reasoning <3> : this was recently discussed (in TA24-R9 [10]). Abstraction of concept properties occurs when mental tools are isolated from their application. This can be done because we make the mental tools, as opposed to nature itself, which we do not make but can only handle with the help of the created tools. Abstraction can obscure the beauty of concrete experiences, as you say, but mathematicians may also tell you about the beauty of their abstract creations.

[4]
As interpreted in the MIR-view, conceptual and perceptual features (count-ability, roundness, whiteness), start out as an aspect of the objects (sheep, cows, stones, etc), but can then be taken away ('abstracted') from them. But ‘abstraction’ is a misnomer, which may lead to the notion that it results in an impoverished view; the word suggests derivation of a quality from a primary property of MIR objects. This MIR-interpretation is difficult to understand: how can one take properties away from objects?

[5]
The situation becomes more comprehensible I think when one accepts using mind-nature structures as having been built by us instead of trying to detect properties of detached 'MIR-objects-in-themselves'. The mental tools are not identical with, nor limited to, present experiences, they transcend them, they are in principle independent of them. Therefore the tool-properties can be considered in isolation from the application of the tools to practical tasks, and this is the basis of ‘abstraction’. Pure mathematics is one example among many. In any case, what matters chiefly is how the mental tools work in actual specific experience.

[6]
'Can we experience and know (all) that which is unstructured ?'<4> To deal with experience effectively we need mental (perceptual and conceptual) tools. Experience is wider than the concept-tools which we make to handle it, therefore experience encompasses concepts (TA24[61]). For instance, the color red is not implied in 'ball', one needs an additional (percept and) concept for a red ball. Even pain and love have a (perceptual and) conceptual side, or one could not talk about them. But even the widest concepts do not capture some encompassing experience which is not included.

[7]
For practical purposes, this widest encompassing aspect of experience however also requires some structure, to coordinate the specific experiences, and to satisfy a need to stabilize thinking and action. Such very wide structures are less determined by percepts than by the need for coherence, security, and direction, thus depend on belief more exclusively. Like all MIR-belief in general, they lead to conflicts between intellect and need for stability. Also, the widest encompassing experience remains inevitably unstructured, despite what some doctrines teach. In answer to your question : I would say that we can only structure a part of the total experience - this limitation is unavoidable due to the nature of experience and of concept-function. Consequently structured knowledge is inherently limited, beside the fact that there is a good deal of variability in knowledge, depending on how we structure experience.

[8]
You write 'there may be much more in the world than human experiential and conceptual structures' <4>. The unstructured encompassing experience is the source of structures, of imagination, and of intuition. Since we are now into the warm season, we should perhaps turn from cool Hamlet to the Midsummer-Night’s Dream : ‘ … as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’ And not only poets do this, we all have to, if we want to go beyond what has been handed down to us, and deal with life in the full meaning.

[9]
But I am puzzled to read <2,4,10> that I deny unstructured experience. From where did you get this opinion ? I have spent a good deal of effort, particularly in recent months, to emphasize its importance (eg, TA24; if you get around to it, I would be interested having your commentary on this paper.) I have not changed my opinion on this either, in contrast to what you suggest in <10>, for instance I presented it already in TA1[8ff], in 1997. My discussion also includes the topic of mystery <10> in TA24[58-59].

[10]
I did not say that 'there is an unreachable MIR' <5>, quite the opposite : it is, in my opinion, an impossible though often useful fiction. It is a concept property which is useful in that it provides stability for our reality structures, if it is used with caution. For this reason, and despite the impossibility of the existence-in-itself which it implies, such traditional static metaphysics (MIR) is a common belief, among philosophers and others. But because belief in static MIR is unworkable in some areas, I suggest that it should be replaced by working-MIR- (or as-if-MIR-) belief, which terms remind us of its paradoxical features.

The difficulty is that traditional MIR implies not only 'mind-independently existing' but also 'inaccessible to any-one's mind' (cf Plato's cave parable). And thus, in science and elsewhere, the MIR-assertion amounts to claiming that 'one can prove statements about something which is not available for study' (cf also Riegler’s TA24-C15<10>). As I understand your detectism proposal at present, you imply that one can do that, as do other advocates of metaphysical beliefs - please correct me if I got this wrong. In my opinion it is more helpful to specify instead the usefulness of the as-if-MIR procedure.

[11]
'Whitehead suggested that structuring and experiencing is one process' <5>. This opinion is justified, because all experience is formed, even at the elementary level. It also applies to pre-conceptual formations such as percepts including 'qualia' (smell, pain, etc). In all instances, the experiences cannot be easily separated from the forms.

But it is nevertheless helpful to keep the two processes apart, since we create all percepts and concepts, we are their makers in Vico's sense (TA24[40]), and use them to deal with experience, which would not be structured without them. You are the constructor, with the perceptive and intellectual-linguistic apparatus as tools. You structure the experiences which you experience, they do not come in pre-constructed form, neither from outside nor from inside yourself. In contrast, experience as such is ‘given’ to us, or if you prefer ‘detected’ by us, but not made by us.

[12]
The ‘structuring in the unstructured’ does not require a tabula rasa mind (TA24-R8[14]), nor a meditation state. The 0-D, or construction in the unstructured matrix, or apeiron, means that : all mind-nature structures are formed, by animals as well as by humans, in ongoing (unaware pre-experience and in conscious) experience. The objective physiological basis is receptor and CNS activity. Without this activity (in the subjective as well as in the objective sense) there would be no structures. Structures are therefore not derived from any pre-existing or pre-assembled inside- or outside-structures (if they were, this would imply MIR, which is impossible). Newly created structures may replace older ones, if they are more suitable.

[13]
There are no exceptions to this rule, even when the structures are socially transmitted. In the latter case, they have originally formed in someone else's mind, and are transplanted as-is or with modifications. They may be new tools, or replace discarded old structures, which had been found inadequate. We think that nature-structures have been there earlier than our subjective experience. This is correct in any objective reasoning, but objective reasoning is a secondary elaboration with the help of memory. It is an extrapolation from momentary ongoing experience, for instance knowledge or predictions of meteorites <11> which are extrapolations from our (or somebody else's) ongoing stargazing experience at some time.

The distinction between experience and concepts provides a handle for understanding knowledge. And further, it is possible to experience without concepts, eg, without language, with percepts only, as for instance animals do. 'Experience is given' as you write <5>, but the structures which we use to handle it are made by us.

[14]
'You must deal with events' <5> : this seems to be a misunderstanding. I did not say that I do not want to deal with events, but that the difference between the two views concerns not chiefly events but other factors (TA1-R17-Abstract).

[15]
Some of the impossibilities of the MIR-view are, in my opinion, further illustrated by the quotation from Plato as given by Whitehead <8>. But the difficulty, I suggest, is not primarily a breakdown of language <8> (which is only a tool) but an error in basic assumptions.

[16]
Nobo's point <15> about 'potential filling the matrix’ : what is possible (‘potential’) is decided on the basis of extrapolation from ongoing (actual or remembered) structured experience. Otherwise you would have to posit an unknowable metaphysical (MIR) potential. You seem to be prepared to go along with such an MIR postulate, which I find impossible to do. Then you give a reason for such metaphysical belief : that it is ‘basic for our belief in universal solidarity’, while otherwise everything is arbitrary. But arbitrariness is not implied in 0-D or as-if-MIR. Our constructions work only within the constraints of their possibilities, as we find out in using them; only within these limits do we have choices or can we be arbitrary. ‘Solidarity’ is action prompted by common experiences of needs and limitations. A pre-structured MIR-potential is not required for this.

[17]
CONCLUSION

Comparing your view with my own, there are two main areas of agreement : that subjective experience is central and the only entrance-point to knowledge; and that unstructured encompassing experience is the source for mental structures. There is an area of disagreement, in that you suggest that traditional static metaphysics (MIR) is not only needed for thinking in general, and for solidarity in particular, but also possible, while I doubt its necessity as well as its possibility.

However, since there have been some problems in our communications, these conclusions are only preliminary, and I would like to ask you for correction if my statement contains errors.

(Some of the material in this text is adapted from previous discussions.)

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Herbert FJ Muller