KARL JASPERS FORUM
TA112 (Müller)
Response
1 (to C1, Byers)
DREAM OF REASON
by Herbert FJ Müller
9 February 2009, posted 21 February 2009
[1]
In C1, William Byers comments that he agrees with the following statement
from TA112 [24] :
‘ The wish of the formalists had been to complete the ‘dream
of reason’, the wish for order and
predictability, in the work of not only
Euclid but also of Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. In effect this is a part of what could be
called a 2500 year long search for ‘truth without people’, or at least without
minds, which, as mentioned in the first
part of this paper, has recently produced
puzzling results such as wanting to replace the mind by ‘embodied cognition’, or by the
‘mind-brain’, and the development
of ‘analytic metaphysics’. ’
[2]
An interesting point here is, I think, that this assessment of the historical
development results from dealing with two quite different questions. It expresses a central concern in both his
concept of what mathematics is or should be,
and in my notion of epistemology in more general terms, as needed for
the purpose of finding an access to the mind-brain puzzle. CP
Snow’s problem of the ‘two cultures’ re-appears, surprisingly, at the center of
mathematics :
mathematical problems and ideas versus algorithms and computers. And also, Byers’ proposal evidently means a
break with the metaphysical-ontological assumptions which have prevailed in
occidental thought since the Greek classics.
[3]
For purposes of discussion, I will summarize the conceptual situation as follows,
with inclusion of the numerical aspects.
(a) Spontaneous qualia and
gestalt-formations, and the distinctions between one, two, and many, are biological
ad-hoc tools for dealing with otherwise unstructured experience, for both
animals and humans. They do not per se
imply anything about a mind-independent reality (MIR).
(b) MIR-belief starts with the
assumption of knowledge of complete objects (and events), which is not entirely
supported by, and thus transcends, gestalt-formations, toward ontology-metaphysics :
things-in-themselves, noumena. (A non-metaphysical description would be that : this and the
following steps are mind-internal heuristic completions, reality-designs for
comprehension and action). From here
on, language use plays a role in at least two ways. Firstly, the use of language is a crucial
factor in the great increase of communication, and particularly of
possibilities for thought and action of humans, with the side-effect of
uncertainty of what to do (which is under-determined by instincts). This in turn results in a wish for
guidelines from ‘outside’. Secondly, the
notion of noumena (complete objects), and also of
everything having to do with numbers beyond level (a), can only be achieved and
stabilized with the help of language (in the general sense, and in the more
specialized sense of mathematics-language, for instance).
(c) Once a constructed ‘outside’ reality
has been accepted as the true reality, it tends to replace the more direct
original subject-inclusive experience, and individual structure-creation-as-needed. And then a wish for more complete knowledge
of the imagined MI-reality naturally arises.
In response, holistic structures are designed, they
are of theistic, naturalistic, or other, type.
They are thought to be true-in-themselves, for instance on the basis of
theistic or other dogma. For
naturalistic MIRs the
idea emerges, mainly since Descartes, that they are mechanical and can become
algorithmic, with the more recent consequence that they can be handled by
machines. (This development started from the ‘dream of
reason’ of Euclid, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle; and was
recently renewed in programs of Hilbert, Frege,
Russell and Whitehead, etc).
(d) MIR-belief results in inversion of
agency and of thinking : our tools - ascribed
authorities, postulated noumena, a mind-independent
realm of mathematics, even computers and other machines -
are thought or implied to be the agents, and humans are in that case
only their extensions. The source of subject-inclusive
agency, including of structure-formation, is thereby obstructed. As Rilke put it, there are structures (Gestaltung) that act as ‘traps around the free exit’. That is, instead of dealing with
subject-inclusive experience itself
- the existence of which is often
simply denied, and which may even be condemned as a ‘disease of thinking’ (Wittgenstein) - thinking
becomes confined to accepted and transmitted structures of imagined
MI-reality.
(e) Difficulties with the
MIR-proposition have long been pointed out, for instance that theistic belief,
although desired, is absurd (Tertullian); that logical-mathematical structures
are inherently, and thus inevitably, incomplete (Gödel), circumscribed (Feyerabend), local, or paradoxical (Byers). The dream of reason, it turns out, was not
only a pie in the sky, but beyond that a
potentially counter-productive idea which would have made human thinking
superfluous, and replaced it by
mind-less algorithms or machines.
(f) The problem of inversion can be
addressed by returning to the unstructured : as the origin, or as a goal such as nirvana. That does not abolish the structures but it
helps us to see them once again as tools of humans who use them in order to
master the unstructured. (Metaphysics-ontology
is neither accepted nor rejected as such but instead understood as mind(s)-internal
reality design, a change from incomprehensible MIR-belief to a
subject-inclusive structuring activity.)
One might add that the question of science versus religion can also be
addressed from here :
provided that ‘religion’ is not equated with theism. A non-theistic religion, based on nirvana,
poses no principal difficulties to a unification with science - including evolution.
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[4]
Concerning
the other points of Byers’ commentary :
Re.TA112[18] : Plato said in the cave parable that the forms
or ideas are not accessible to humans; we can only know their shades. This implies that he understood them as
mind-independent, so far as I can see. The term ‘objective’ as it is mostly employed
also implies mind-independence; although one can argue, as I have in TA112,
that the scientific method of objectivity does not necessarily exclude
subjects; it only brackets them. The
‘provability’ would seem to be a different question, at least in
principle.
Re.[22] : I agree
entirely that numbers are more than tools for counting, but I cannot see that
the philosophical questions have been discussed before counting action began
(i.e., long before the Pythagoreans). That is difficult to study in the absence of
written documentation from those times. But it may be relevant for this question that
there are still now some tribes in the Amazon area who have no numbers beyond
two or three. See
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_24_168/ai_n16029317/pg_2
Re.[23, 26] : My
question is : is the ambiguity primary,
or secondary to the original lack of structure ? - The
Lakatos quote is on p.262 of your book.
Re.[27] : Popper was an
ontologist, and that is necessary for belief in
objectivity of the kind which is independent of what people think. I don’t think there can be something like a
‘relative objectivity’. Either reality
includes subject(s)’ thinking or it does not.
-
The notion of ‘relativity’ is
often understood to mean that all opinions are equally valid. But
opinions have to prove themselves to be ‘viable’ (vonGlasersfeld’s
term); if they are not viable they need change or
replacement. In the political and
ethical fields, the absence of absolutes is something one has to learn to deal
with -
as it becomes very clear in everyday political negotiation.
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Herbert FJ Müller
e-mail <herbert.muller (at)
mcgill.ca>