KARL JASPERS
FORUM
TA106 (Müller)
Response 21 (to C50 by William A. Adams)
PRAGMATIC DISTANCING
by Herbert FJ Müller
18 September 2009, posted 26 September 2009
[1]
Thank you for your note. I will in the
following try to answer to the points you make. Concerning dualism, in general terms, after
discarding ontology one uses pragmatic (working) dualism instead of ontological
dualism. One has to utilize the tools
created in the mind at some distance, at arm’s length, to be effective. Thus I don’t know whether we are not really
saying more or less the same thing in different words.
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[2]
About your more specific questions:
<4> ‘Epistemological dualism distinguishes between the knower and the
known’ : this sounds like a
working- or as-if- dualism, which can be used for practical
purposes provided that one keeps in mind
that it has nothing to do with ontology-metaphysics (the assertion that there
exists a mind-independent reality). But a problem is that
your argumentation here still implies ontology : ‘the fact of the matter’.
[3]
<5> ‘2+2=5’ is a statement about a
mathematical procedure which is wrong by the mathematical rule itself (such as
counting and parcelling) that is being used, and is thus not a mind-independent
fact. Mathematics does not involve
ontological claims. In that it differs from ‘that God
exists’ which can be a ‘communal’
ontological assertion. In
reality-design there is no such thing as ontology. It is replaced by feedback-testing during use
of the created structures.
[4]
‘Epistemological dualism’ apparently
refers to Husserl. <6> You say he distinguished
between noema and noesis,
and that he left ‘the world’ suspended in mid-air, so to speak. But so far as I can determine, Husserl was an
ontologist. He
wanted to go to the (somehow mind-independently pre-structured) things
themselves (‘zu den Sachen selbst’) and obtain a view of essences (‘Wesens-Schau’), which to me sounds not only like straight
metaphysics-ontology, but in addition like knowable
metaphysics-ontology. But paradoxically
he wanted to do it on the basis of phenomenology (which would mean description
of mental phenomena without metaphysics).
Therefore I don’t think that he
was a pure phenomenologist.
[5]
I should add though that this is a conceptual problem that all phenomenologists (including Heidegger, Jaspers, and Merleau-Ponty) had in one form or another. In addition, and that may actually be the
reason for this difficulty, they understood the phenomena not as structured by
subjects but as ‘given’, per ‘aletheia’ for instance, which is similar to Wesens-Schau, and implies subject-independent
self-structuring, despite the start-point in phenomenology.
[6]
<7> The ‘disappearance of
mind-independence in thorough phenomenology’
concerns ontology : it means that
when we base ourselves (for instance) on an unrestricted understanding of
Jaspers’ notion of the encompassing aspect of experience, there can be no ontological
mind-independent concepts (of self, others, world, all). Since this seems to be your main point of
concern, let me elaborate a bit.
[7]
Using the notion of the
‘encompassing’ in an unrestricted
meaning leads to several closely interrelated points in the understanding of
mind and reality, which have far reaching implications. The encompassing aspect of experience
entails that (a)
there can be no mind-independent reality.
(b) All structures, and the differences between them, are pragmatic
working-structures, not ontic, because we could neither create onta (noumena), nor know them in case
they did ‘exist’, and (c) there is consequently also only a pragmatic
difference between self and non-self.
(d) The subject is an aspect of all structures, even when the subject’s
influence is minimized in order to reduce personal bias. Finally, (e) the matrix or background of
structures is unstructured, except for the structures created within it.
[8]
<7> ‘A state
of unknowing existence is brute existence, in which nothing is observed,
nothing is known, nothing is believed, etc. In
order for any knowledge, belief, or observation to emerge, an epistemological
dualism must be established’. - This
sounds like a horror vacui, or fear of nihilism. But in order ‘to overcome nihilism one has
to face nothingness’ :
namely the task to structure in the unstructured. One has to create structures rather than
find ready-made ones. For practical
purposes one has to then distance oneself from the created conceptual tool, and
uses a pragmatic dualism from one’s own structures in order to employ them; but that is a
second step. ‘Knowledge’ means the
subjects’ use of reliable structures (which can be said to be ‘real’, to make
things more practical, but with the awareness that this is a shortcut).
[9]
One might also note that in mythological times (before the first millennium BCE,
the ‘axis time’ of Jaspers) people by and large did not have the choice of
selfhood and objectivity, and understood themselves as effects of super-human
agents.
[10]
The ‘idea of knowledge without a knower’ <7>
is actually a side-effect of objectivity; it develops because for many objectivists the
mind is not real because it cannot become an object and vanishes from
discussion. In the words of Heinz von Foerster : ‘Objectivity is a subject’s delusion that
observing can be done without him. Involving
objectivity is abrogating responsibility – hence its popularity.’ (Glasersfeld 1995,
p. 149) It implies an
‘inversion of thinking‘, in which
agency, including goal-setting, is displaced from the subject onto postulated
external entities (a sort of theism without gods), a circular procedure which
actually reduces working-ontology (reality-design) to traditional metaphysics-ontology. But the traditional view is commonly
maintained by excluding the circularity from awareness, and often also the
outward leap of faith.
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REFERENCES
Glasersfeld,
E. von (1995) Radical constructivism. A way of knowing and
learning. Studies in mathematics education series 6. Falmer Press:
London.
Jaspers K (1955), Vom Ursprung und Ziel der
Geschichte. Fischer Bücherei (Piper,
München).
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Herbert FJ Müller
e-mail <herbert.muller (at)
mcgill.ca>