KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Commentary 13

( CONCEPT-DYNAMICS )
by Ken Bausch
17 December 2000, posted 9 January 2001

Commentary on Herbert Muller's TA 32

I agree with most of M's wording in paragraphs 24 - 58. I have, however, a perspective that is somewhat different from his that gives those words altered connotations and nuances. I believe that my perspective better describes the complexity of concept-dynamics.

I begin by unpacking the density of your opening paragraphs (paragrapg numbers from TA32 in [], quotes indicated by " ", comments in <brackets>).

[1]"Momentary ongoing experience is the nucleus of thinking (consciousness) and must not be neglected in the study of this question. It is "given" (i.e., not invented by us) but it is structured by us in its entirety".

<"Us" in this context is too specific a term. Experience is structured in evolution by the universe as a whole. Galaxies, planets, vegetation, animals, and humans have proceeded by zero-derivation (0-D) in the course of general evolution. They have structured the realities that populate our consciousness. We, as individuals, are socialized into those realities and only generate minor variations on themes that transcend our bounded rationality.>

[2]
"Thinking does not come from the brain, the brain comes from thinking."

<I agree with this proposition in the sense of Maturana and Varela's statement: "Knowing is doing" but only in the context of evolution. The structures of thinking ("brains") develop in living things as they co-adapt (structurally couple) with their environments.>

"Ongoing experience encompasses all data."

<To my mind, this is a confusing overstatement. Data are objectivated, often mathematicized, facts. There is no way that anyone's experience can encompass the virtually infinite amounts of data.>

[12]"0-D means ... that structures (both pre-conceptual and conceptual ones, and including the difference between subject and object) are neither "given" in a pre-formed manner, nor are they copied from inner or external schemes (e.g., so-called "referents"). They all imply the activity of a subject, without pre-given patterns."

<Where does a subject without pre-given patterns exist? We are embodied consciousnesses, inheritors of innumerable processes of pattern-formation that enable our living. As such, we are replete with pre-given patterns. Chris Lofting expresses this most clearly in his analysis of the WHAT and WHERE of consciousness. The WHAT is object-oriented and "left brain". The WHERE is context-oriented, ill-defined, and "right brain". This basic part-whole dichotomy is unfolded in our functioning brains. We think by using these pre-structured brains. In this sense, our brains structure our thinking.>

"Both THE "SELF" AND THE "NATURE" (INCLUDING, for instance, "THE BRAIN") ARE CONSTRUCTED INSIDE EXPERIENCE, and this is why the appear in thinking".

<This sentence is self-evident in the sense that the linguistic concepts self, nature, and brain are constructs within our experience. It is not evident, however, that we, as conscious individuals, construct this experience. The experiences of "self" and "environment" (nature) have their origin in the very existence of an autopoietic organism. Brains" develop as processing structures that make autopoiesis possible and progressive.>

[15]"Concepts ... are caught inside experience, and only from there are they comprehensible."

<Experience (consciousness) is not static. It is different for me now that it was yesterday or when I was an infant, yet it is the same autopoietically reproducing stuff that I was born with. Concepts and other structures are the stuff of that reproductive experience. These structures and concepts are not caught inside experience. They are that experience insofar as we can say anything about it. Without the ongoing structure-making, there is no experience.>

[39]

"These "irrational events" come out of the unformed and always encompassing background (the plenitude, abundance) of experience."

<As I indicated above, my demystified version of this encompassing background is the right-brain world of ill-defined relationships as it is described by Chris Lofting.>

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Ken Bausch