[1]
ABSTRACT
Chris Lofting has presented a theory of the relation of the subject to the
world which is largely based on C.S. Peirce's pragmatism, and which emphasizes
logic, mathematics, and quantum physics. My reply suggests that a possible
future common language in this field ought to be based on a non-ontological
view rather than a subjective mapping of external reality, and the possibility
of an eventual agreement on such terms is discussed.
[2]
SUMMARY OF LOFTING'S ARGUMENTATION
In 'A Common Language' (TA1, C7, responding to R3, 'Experience, Universal
Mind, Quanta'), Chris Lofting presents a theoretical approach which consists
of a feedback process, involving 'maps' which describe 'out there' for 'in
here'. This, he states, suggests an underlying commonality across disciplines
that is species based, and forms a template upon which all our maps are
based, despite the considerable differences in the approaches of various
disciplines. This in turn shows that our models of 'out there' are projections
of 'in-here' functionality. Resolutions of 'paradoxes', he states, can be
found by looking IN, that is, Psychology/Cognitive Science can help resolve
'problems' in Physics.
[3]
Specifically he proposes <1> that the common language is founded on
emotion, which stems <2> from 'our use of dichotomisation' in the
establishment of 'meaning', which is established <3> only 'in here'.
He says <4> that objective approaches to reality are based on cerebral
left-hemisphere based behaviours (location, explicit identification, reductionism,
self-containment, emphasis on independence), and <5> that this is
important for the development of models and categorisation. However, this
development may also contribute to creating illusions <6>. But <7>
as we go 'deeper' in the structures we find a mixing of left and right hemisphere
emphasis, which then includes aspectual aspects such as colours and harmonics.
'The creation of symbols and metaphor leads to the replacement of 'out there'
with a representation of in here'. <8> Discoveries of facts are RH
instigated, in Quantum Mechanics this corresponds to the wave collapse.
From this he concludes <9-11> that our map-making has structure which
is projected outside, especially in the visual system, while the auditory
one <12> can more easily deal with complex wholes, because <13>
there, text and context are more tightly configured. <14> From here
he discusses the QM double slit experiment and suggests <15> that
particle discovery is left hemisphere, wave detection right hemisphere activity,
although photographic plates show both, <16-18> where the wave pattern
evolves over time, like the development of any statistical pattern happens
over time. <19-22> The analyses in these experiments are always dichotomous
in nature, but there is also a midpoint condition, where both alternatives
apply. Dichotomisations lead <23-35> to interference patterns in QM
which are based on 'lumpiness' as in <36> Planck's study of the black-body
radiation, where in Lofting's opinion <37> 'the right hemisphere biased
aspectual processing system ... demonstrates 'in here' mapping and the 'fact'
that any relationship over time will be 'lumpy' ...'. <38-40> This
he writes shows how patterns out-there are influenced by behaviours in-here.
And <41-48>, using the terms of Charles S. Pierce, 'whole analysis'
is first, 'parts analysis' is second, and 'relational analysis' is third.
<49> 'Thus the 'Common Language' is that of mixing text/context, whole/aspects,
and using terms that are synonymous with this mixing.' <50> 'Thus
the process of dichotomous categorization comes with a linked set of 'meanings'
and it is these that are refined' through becoming metaphors, analogies,
symbols and enables a degree of resonance which enables 'understanding'
and 'meaning' and it is this context combined with relational considerations
that gives 'intuitive' assessments where the 'correct choice' of aspects
gives a 'sudden' awareness of something. <51> All these points are
involved in map-making.
[4]
DISCUSSION: PEIRCE'S PRAGMATISM
A large part of Lofting's argumentation is based on Peirce's terminology
and theories, and I will start my discussion from there. I have tried to
acquaint myself with Peirce's ideas, with the help of Murphey's summary.
(The page numbers refer to the latter.) I would appreciate corrections from
those who are more familiar with Peirce's thought.
[5]
Peirce's pragmatism was always, despite several shifts in viewpoint, oriented
toward ontology, that is toward an assumed mind-independent truth or reality
which has to be approached in some manner by science, even though he also
said (p.71) that 're-presentations' of such a reality are all that can be
before the mind, and (p.72) that there is no such thing as an incognizable
cause of cognition. (P. 73) Doubt, or the absence of belief, is unpleasant,
while inquiry (or also escape) leading to belief is pleasant because it
provides certainty on how to act.
[6]
(P.71) From Kant's doctrine of the Transcendental Sciences he derived a
threefold ontological classification of all there is: Matter (the object
of cosmology), Mind (the object of psychology), and God (the object of theology);
or respectively: It (the sense world), Thou (the mental world), and I (the
abstract world); or subsequently: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness,
by which he usually called his categories, and which he associated with
logico-mathematical procedures. (This categorization I assume is the reason
for Lofting's emphasis on trying to clarify the relation of 'in-here' to
'out-there'.)
[7]
Furthermore, Peirce proposed (p.75-6) a 'classification of knowledge by
pre-supposition', where he considered mathematics as the first science which
is pre-supposed by all others. (Peirce's emphasis on mathematics is also
evident in Lofting's writing). Next comes philosophy, which Peirce divided
into phenomenology (which he claimed deals with categories), normative science
(aesthetics, ethics, and logic), and metaphysics. After philosophy comes
'idioscopy', subdivided into physical and psychical sciences. Perception
is taken (p.75) as ultimate evidence ('the object, or percept, is given
to us by a synthesis in intuition'). He combined his doubt-belief theory
with considerations of evolutionary adaptation, and a concept of critical
common sense (p.76), leading to 'evolutionary cosmology', whose assumptions
are subjected to empirical validation. He saw scientific inquiry as responsible
for fixing beliefs, by distinguishing true from false assumptions.
[8]
I will concentrate here on Peirce's basic orientation (which seems to be
Lofting's as well), and in particular on what impresses me as a discrepancy
between two elements. He wrote that perception is the ultimate evidence
for knowledge, but on the other hand that mathematics is the first science
which is pre-supposed by all others. Since 'perception' is the source of
science, and since perception (even in case one pre-supposes that it deals
with 'data' or 'objects') does not usually occur in the form of differential
equations or even of simple numbers, what can it mean to say that 'mathematics
is the first science' and pre-supposed by all others ? One may understand
mathematics as a basic science, which has developed as a general tool arsenal
for investigation of experiences. For instance, animals and people have
looked at the stars for millions of years, but only in the recent millennia
have numerical methods been developed which can help determine which star
will be seen where and when. Since numerical techniques can be used in many
different fields of investigation, they can be called 'common' or 'fundamental'.
But certainly, they are not first in a historical sense. The 'pre-supposition'
could thus only have a present-day technical meaning, such as architecture,
masonry, and carpentry have in relation to interior decorating. But Peirce
wanted (p.75) a universal classification of knowledge, which did at the
same time not contradict his doubt-belief theory of inquiry (p.73).
[9]
The only other possibility which I see here is a belief (or as Peirce might
have said, a 'pre-supposition') of a (ontological, that is persistent metaphysical)
mathematical essence of reality, which may have been a natural inclination
for a mathematician such as Peirce (and probably for Lofting too) though
not necessarily or everyone else. He must have pre-supposed that nature
'is mathematical' in itself, and this can only refer to a nature, or to
a reality, which is independent not only of perception but of thinking altogether.
(Such an assumption of the mathematical nature of reality is quite analogous
to recent suggestions that nature's nature 'is quantum mechanical', which
could not have been proposed as recently as just 100 years ago.) In other
words, the pre-supposition of the mathematical nature of nature is an ontological
belief, which is of course compatible with Peirce's acceptance of a mind-independent
'ontological reality' which has to be 'approached' by knowledge (science)
even though, as outlined above, it is entirely unknowable.
[10]
DISCUSSION OF LOFTING'S PROPOSAL
The topic of Chris Lofting's communication is of great importance at the
present time. Considering the present-day conceptual jungle in the area
of subjective experience, we will eventually need to arrive at a common
language if we want to study the relation of subjective experience to the
objective knowledge which is related to it, such as concerning the physiology
of the central nervous system, computer programs, and the like. The common
language, if I understand his proposal correctly, is founded on emotion
but the emotion is tied to a primary strong tendency to dichotomize when
making mental maps, and emotion is the reason for 'meaning'. He wants to
show the 'neuro' and 'logical' mechanisms which relate inside meanings to
outside reality, and this question occupies a large part of his text.
[11]
An interesting part is his proposal of a relation of hemispheric specialization
to the wave collapse in particle physics, on which I am in no position to
form an opinion. This also applies to his derivation of wave phenomena from
particle statistics.
[12]
Although 'emotion' is clearly important in the establishment of meanings,
I am not certain I have understood how he thinks this relates to the dichotomies.
But my main difficulty with Lofting's proposal is that it is based upon
an assumption of a primary ontological (or 'Cartesian') distinction between
'in here' and 'out there'. I don't think that this can help in the task
of establishing a common language for the understanding of subjective experience.
For instance, the question of 'maps' immediately brings up the question
of a 'homunculus' who might do the map-reading - a topic on which a great
deal of effort has been spent in recent years, without much benefit, so
far as I can see. And furthermore, he says the maps relate to external reality,
which (as in the case of Peirce's theories) is entirely inaccessible to
experience. The ontological subject/object distinction may be a 'dichotomisation'
in the sense of Lofting's commentary, and it is useful for many purposes
but not for the investigation of subjectivity.
[13]
Lofting may have a somewhat ambiguous opinion about 'reality'; on the one
hand he talks <4> about 'so-called objective approaches', as though
he does not think that they are valid; on the other hand this is immediately
followed by a statement that 'there are some absolutes' such as cell, electron,
sine waves. It did not become clear to me from what he writes how these
latter concepts acquire their supposed absolute status. A further difficulty
is his alternation between terms taken from different domains such as neuro-physiology
(hemispheric function), logic (categorization, A/~A, etc), phenomenology
(emotion), quantum mechanics (wave form collapse, etc), for instance <8>
' this neurological behaviour is abstracted in QM to the concept of a wave
collapse '. Again here, I did not quite understand how he wants to tie these
various fields together, and for instance what is his 'criterion of reference',
or basic assumption.
[14]
If I may briefly here re-state my own position (which I have described in
more detail elsewhere): concepts, logic, mathematics, and particle physics,
etc., are tool kits, created by people for the exploration and expansion
of mind-nature experience, they are not ontological baselines or units.
In my opinion, a non-ontological point of view is needed, which does not
assume mind-independent reality and truth, and thus permits intellectual
access to the process of reality-structuration, from no structure, within
experience. In that case metaphysics ceases to be immutable ontology and
becomes a functional tool ('working metaphysics').
[15]
Experience per se does not automatically lead to ontology. Ontology is the
result of the endowment with unlimited validity of certain aspects of (or
structures inside) experience, with the help of the force of belief. This
I assume would be the method by which Lofting reaches the conclusion that
cells, sine waves, and electrons are 'absolute'; please correct me if this
is not so. To assume mind-independent reality means to neglect its origin
from the unstructured matrix, with the result of missing the access to subjective
experience. Experience is not primarily mathematical. The pragmatist's belief
in the mathematical constitution of nature is not compatible with his own
postulate that 'reality' is built up from experience. Mathematics cannot
be the first line of experience, not even for those who are mathematically
gifted, and for this reason this belief cannot be validated by experience,
which as Peirce agreed is the 'ultimate evidence'.
[16]
More generally, the 'looking-in' aspect of Lofting's proposal would then
become a pre-subject/object-split procedure. The 'maps' ARE our world structures,
rather than being 'in-here descriptions' of a (fictional) 'out-there reality',
which is by definition unreachable because it transcends experience. Thus
I would agree with him that it is necessary to step back from implicit (exclusive)
objectivity, but I think the goal of this distancing process has to be a
non-ontological view rather than subjective explanations of objective (ontic)
processes.
[17]
I wonder whether an agreement on such or similar terms might in principle
be attainable.
------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCE
Murphey M.G. (1976), Peirce, Charles Sanders, in: Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
New York: MacMillan, Vol. 6, pp.70-78.
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[Author: Herbert FJ Muller
e-mail <mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>]