KARL JASPERS FORU
TAs
102-104 (Vimal)
Commentary
7 (to R7)
MIR VERSUS WORKING-MIR
by Herbert FJ Müller
29 February 2008, posted 8 March 2008
Re [1]
I don’t know the terms ‘MDR’ and ‘EMR’.
I have not been in nirvana either, but from descriptions
I understand that it means emptying one’s mind, and that would mean
disappearance of mental structures, which agrees with the idea that mental
structures are formed (and dissolved) in the mind. Kant said that we cannot know MIR but that it
is needed for thinking, which agrees with the notion that it is a mental tool.
Re [2]
What do you mean by ‘experiences that are not SE’ ? Who experiences them ? This is rather unclear to me. If they are supposed to be mind-independent
(you seem to say they are SE-independent) they imply naϊve
MIR-belief. You say they are similar to
‘strings’ which would mean that they are ‘physicalist’
mind-independent matter – but you also claim not to be a materialist, which
would imply the opposite.
Re [3]
‘Matter is already there’ : that means
materialism. There is an important
difference between structuring and inventing reality-experience. (From my paper ‘Brain in
mind’, 2007 :)
“ There is a difference between “structuring” and
“inventing or creating or causing”. This
is decisive for questions such as: do we only structure the world, or do we
also create it ? The conflation of the two is not compatible with
the 0-D-structuring view.
(i) We do not create the acoustic nerve or the planet
Jupiter; there is no place for invention, since there are reliable earlier
spontaneous (non-deliberate and non-verbal) subject-inclusive structures, such
as visual-gestalt forms. Deliberate
verbal structures are, or can be, added to them in order to include them in deliberate
world-and-self-and-all structures.
(ii) But
we have to invent structures where working-structures are needed or desired,
but no earlier spontaneous structures are available: to create a song, to
structure our identity or self (to a degree), a political constitution, or a
religion, etc.
This does
not imply that the former, (i), are pre-structured (ontic MIR-) objects: they require our structuring – mainly
non-deliberate, but also deliberate – and can then be treated as as-if- or
working-MIR (the latter, (ii), can too).
All of
reality is our subject-inclusive structure, within the limits of operational
possibilities: the structures do not arise by themselves. But only some of it
is our creation in the sense that we make it.
The traditional way to distinguish between these two kinds of structure
is to assume that the non-invented ones are mind-independently pre-structured. But, as just discussed, there is no need for
MIR-ontology-realism; it is replaced by von Glasersfeld’s
criterion of the “viability” of the structured items, as per feedback during
use of the structures.
To repeat:
all of reality is our structure and must be able to pass the feedback test, but
we invent only some of it. ”
Re [4]
From where does the ongoing experience come ?
It is what we have, our start point. It is ‘given’, as some people put is, but
given in an unstructured state, all structures include the subject’s activity,
either automatic or deliberate. If you
say they come from somewhere else then you are in MIR-belief, for instance
materialism, subject-exclusive objectivity.
But one can say that, in a working-objectivist view, they are dependent
on biological processes (i.e., as-if-MIR).
Re [5]
MIR-belief is human construction but erroneously believed to refer to something
outside SE. The corrected version is
as-if-MIR (or working-MIR, where the tool-nature of this MIR notion is clear).
Re [6]
Crystallization of matter within mind : see [3] above.
Re [7]
‘Most neuroscientists will say that the
‘neural net’ is a materialist entity’. That
is quite true : they do because most neuroscientists are materialists,
i.e., subject-exclusive objectivists. And
the consequence is that they cannot deal with the mind-brain problem.
----------------------------------------------
Herbert FJ Müller
e-mail <herbert.muller
(at) mcgill.ca>