KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA26 C43 and TA32 C1

TRANSCENDENCE AND MIR

by Peter Mutnick and Herbert Muller

21-25 November 2000, posted 28 November 2000

[NOTE : this is a discussion, over several days (21-25 November 2000), starting from points in TA26 C40. Because material from C32 is also discussed, it is listed under both articles. - In the following, the word "TRANSCENDENCE" is used in two differing meanings, and this may cause difficulties. (a) I use it in the sense that word-contents go beyond present experience, and this is an unavoidable feature. (b) PM uses it (at least mostly, I think) in the sense of experiences which go beyond conceptual everyday (subjective or objective, and thus incomplete) thinking; this is done by re-introducing the encompassing aspect of thinking, which is often omitted, or even denied. I would think that both meanings are valid but that they have to be kept apart in order to avoid misunderstandings of the type which occur in the first part of this discussion. - HFJM]

<1>[Peter Mutnick, in response to TA26 C40 by Herbert Muller on KJF:]Interesting discussion, but you still miss my central point, and I think Husserl's and Descartes'. There is not just *subjective* experience, which is after all the natural standpoint, but *transcendental* experience, which is not subjective because it is both subjective and objective, i.e., transcendental to the dualism.

[Herbert Muller]

Could you specify in what you think you diverge from what I wrote? Specifically, what do you mean by transcendental experience?

<2>

[Peter]

It is like Zen experience, or religious experience in general, often called the experience of cosmic consciousness. This is not just another way of describing ordinary experience - it is an entirely different kind of experience, although it has implications for ordinary experience. ESP, psychical phenomena, and altered states of consciousness sometimes point in the direction of this quantum leap in consciousness. Philosophers sometimes intuit its necessary existence, perhaps without experiencing it. I really don't know enough about Descartes or Husserl to know if they in fact had what I am calling transcendental experience or not. But it is a bit of a paradox - everyone manifests Buddha nature all the time whether they realize it or not, i.e., whether they experience it as such or not.

[Herbert]

This is what I call (with Jaspers) the encompassing part of experience. The word "transcendence" does not apply to this, because it does not transcend experience.

As you say, everybody uses it all the time, but often without being aware of it, or even denying it.

On the other hand, concepts transcend experience, because they contain a fictitious extension which - although it is practically very useful - goes beyond what one experiences or can even possibly experience.

<3>

[Peter]

No, not transcend experience, but transcend subjectivity and *subjective* experience. It is a different kind of experience. That is what I said. My meaning is this: in ordinary experience, there is arbitrariness and freedom, but that is precisely the measure of the inadequacy of experience. Complete transcendental experience lacks arbitrariness or capriciousness - there is no slack in it - it has the force of necessity - and yet only in it is there true free will, which is God's Will. It is a bit of a paradox.

Because it lacks arbitrariness or capriciousness and because there is no slack in it, it is not 'subjective' in the sense that we ordinarily mean by that word. Even the term God's Will should not be understood anthropomorphically.

The encompassing part of experience is not what I am talking about, per se, although it is true that transcendence encompasses all mundane experience because it turns it into phenomena, as Husserl explained. But there is also negation in transcendence. It is not ordinary experience, although it encompasses all ordinary experience. Where can I read Jasper's conception of 'encompassing experience'.

[Herbert]

"Transcend subjectivity" seems to mean not to be confined to subjective introspective aspects. (See initial note.)

<4>

[Peter]

No, just the opposite. The idea is that if one achieves true internality, i.e., the phenomenological reduction, then one achieves a state of existence prior to the subject object split, a unitive identity that is not subjective because not in external relation to the objective, and yet not solipsistic because truly transcendental. The notion that all dualities, including subject and object, have a unitive transcendental source is as old as the hills. This notion is prevalent in Eastern religions, such as Zen, Taoism, some forms of Hinduism, etc.

[Herbert]

But original ongoing experience is always mind-and-nature experience, i.e., before the subject-object split.

<5>

[Peter]

I would say experience is always both phenomenological and ontological. For me phenomenological means the noumenon is internally transcendental, the foundation of the transcendental ego. Ontological means the noumenon is external to the transcendental mind and in nature, although nothing is originally external to the transcendental mind, which is the quantum implicate order. But because the noumenon is not graspable within the transcendental mind, because it is internally transcendental to the transcendental mind, the transcendental mind, as the quantum implicate order, unfolds itself into the quantum explicate order, wherein it can have an internal and external experience of the noumenon simultaneously, hoping in that way to know it more completely. It then becomes an observer relative to the noumenon as the observed. The identity of the observer is the abstract "ego" of von Neumann, which is distinct from the transcendental ego. From the above one should conclude that the transcendental mind is always full, even after being depleted by unfoldment of its contents. The noumenon is always within the transcendental mind, even after being unfolded into its external position in nature. That is why the mind can know the noumenon in nature, and yet that knowledge is still incomplete even after projecting the noumenon in the attempt to know it better.

[Herbert]

The structures of thinking are created by us within unstructured (for instance not yet s/o divided) experience, which is the same as encompassing experience. Ontology is our invention.

<6>

[Peter]

Who is to say which came first the structured or the unstructured? The claim of idealists and transcendentalists is that there are 'a priori' structures of an ideal or transcendental character. I suppose this is still what all the fuss is about, since materialists want to assume that there are no such 'a priori' structures. I think as a working hypothesis it is absolutely necessary to assume that there are such 'a priori' structures, whether or not in the last analysis there are. If God did not exist, man would have to invent Him, but in the very invention there is the presumption of His pre-existence, or else He wouldn't be God.

[Herbert]

It is not capricious, because you have to live with it, and it is open to testing, in fact its viability is an essential aspect. You can call that God's will if you like, but one should be aware that this does not depend on theological formulations. Your comments on the qualities of God are similar to the attempts to prove God's existence ontologically (Anselm of Canterbury, Kurt Goedel; see TA32 [23] and [49]).

<7>

[Peter]

Well, but it is capricious, if at any moment you could have taken a completely different turn. No, I would not by any means call the capricious human creation God's Will. To me that would be blasphemy of the highest order. What humans have done with their lives and life on this planet cannot be attributed to God at all. God is only responsible for the actions of those who have surrendered completely to His Will. In that case, one has made the phenomenological reduction, discovered the transcendental ego, and pursued to the uttermost the implications thereof.

[Herbert Muller]

[From TA26 C40 <2>] … The problem is how to change this into a generally acceptable proposition. … How does your suggestion apply to scientists who do not share your particular religious persuasion, for instance a Buddhist, or an atheist scientist ?

<8>

[Peter Mutnick]

When I say that the problem with subjective experience is precisely that it is slack and therefore it lacks, one should not assume that any sort of necessity equates to transcendence or God's Will. Marx said that 'freedom is the recognition of necessity'. But that is indeed a material necessity, what we would now call in physics a *classical* necessity and in psychoanalysis anal compulsion. Quantum necessity is of an entirely different order and necessarily involves transcendence.

[Herbert Muller]

The "slackness" is indeed the reason for the invention of religion (see TA32 [45]). [From TA32[9]:] But the forms can be created ad libitum only within the functional limits which stem from the requirement that they must prove themselves within given experience. If that is not the case they will sooner or later be replaced by others.

[Herbert]

Concerning Jaspers : (from TA 32 [37]:) Encompassment and THE ENCOMPASSING are therefore a built-in property of experience, or more precisely : a result of the relation of ongoing individual experience to the utilized concepts. This is just as inevitable - and not only facultative - as the transcendence of concepts. Here too one observes an asymptotic relation, because concepts can grasp experience to any desired degree, but never completely. (Mainly Karl Jaspers has emphasized the importance of the encompassing, but it appears also otherwise, under many names.) - The reference is : Jaspers Karl, Von der Wahrheit (1947). Pieper, München-Zürich, 1991, for instance Zweite Einleitung, 3c. (But there are also many other places where he writes about it.)

<9>

[Peter]

This seems confused to me. The question is rather can the ideal grasp perfectly the noumenon which is transcendental to the mind. That is the project of unfoldment of the noumenon from the mind, which is the whole ongoing project of the creation. That the noumenon can never be perfectly known is a false assumption most philosophers make. The idealists are right, that the ideal is potentially up to the task of perfectly revealing the noumenon. Fundamental ignorance can be completely eradicated and the state of perfect enlightenment achieved. Experience is a means to that end. You deny the purpose of experience and make of it an end in itself or at least a reality in itself, whose existence cannot be questioned. This I think is probably a symptom of fundamental ignorance. It is ironic, but as I have suggested before, you make of experience a mind-independent reality. Experience is fundamentally a relationship between the mind and some dark recess of the mind which it wishes to know better. It therefore unfolds the creation replete with subjective experience. The experience lasts only so long as the ignorance lasts. Once it is eradicated and the purpose of creation achieved, the mind returns to its transcendental state. Such a motif seems to me closer to the truth than your presumption that subjective experience is the inescapable truth.

<10>

[Herbert]

The encompassing experience is given and functions as unstructured background for thinking. Within it the mental structures are formed. The structures transcend experience, see the following, from TA32.

[19] TRANSCENDENCE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The words have a further effect, which may however be easily overlooked. More clearly than the earlier structures, (word-)concepts go beyond the momentary situation, that is, they transcend the presently ongoing experience. The word and the concepts "stone" mean not only a stone which I hold in my hand at present, but all ever possible stones, anywhere and at any time. This is probably due to the prominent communication function of words; because I can only communicate something to others if it goes beyond my own present experience, ie, if it is also valid for them. This results in a certain general validity of concepts. "Objects" are therefore mostly more easily communicable than "qualia", where the subjective aspect may predominate.

<11>

[Peter Mutnick]

You see, I have a problem with your initial premise, that any such thing as an unstructured background exists. In Buddhism, there is the saying, 'form is emptiness and emptiness is form'. Structured and unstructured interpenetrate. What now seems unstructured, upon examination turns out to be structured. What now seems like a complex structure may, by application of a unifying principle, turn out to be in essence unstructured or simple.

If I view your statement in a possible context, namely Whiteheadian process theory, then one could say that the initial present subject is relatively unstructured, and it progressively acquires structure and form. But I am not sure whether Whitehead's present subject corresponds in any way to Jaspers' encompassing experience.

In any case, it is not obvious that such a thing as 'unstructured experience' exists, and you must lay a foundation for it. To just say that it is 'given' seems entirely inadequate. It also seems identical to your claim for 'subjective experience' in general, that it is 'given'. What is the difference in your view between 'encompassing experience' and 'subjective experience' in general?

<12>

[Herbert Muller]

Concerning Whitehead's metaphysics, see our previous discussions. [From TA32 [11]:] ORIGIN OF STRUCTURES. The origination of structures of thinking, self, and nature from within non-structured experience may be called zero-derivation (0-D). This does not mean that in practice thinking takes place without structures, nor that one would have to, or even could possibly, start with an unstructured experience - a la "tabula rasa" - nor also that all structures have to be always created anew. They are stored in individual and collective memory (eg, in books).

[12] 0-D means, in contrast, 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 (eg, so-called "referents"). They all imply the activity of a subject, without pre-given patterns. Without such activity no thought-structures exist, not in humans and not in animals. (Here one has to avoid the notion that for instance objective receptor-configurations should be understood as given schemes : this would be an objective, ie., secondary consideration.) Both THE "SELF" AND THE "NATURE" (INCLUDING for instance "THE BRAIN") ARE CONSTRUCTED INSIDE EXPERIENCE, and this is why they appear in thinking.

[Mutnick]

What you are claiming here is simply an impossibility, namely that starting with no structures whatsoever, you can generate structures. This has no more meaning than a square circle.

[Herbert Muller]

Please specify why this should be impossible. Animals and humans structure their experiences. Without this there would be no structures. Even in objective consideration, this is clear : for any visual structures the visual system is needed, and visual systems do not exist without subjects (unless of course they are unconscious, in which case there are no structures). Mind-independent structures are only fictions - this does not mean that these fictions are not helpful as mental tools, but that we should be aware of their fictitious nature. In case you suggest that MIR structures are possible, then how do you propose we can know about them ? Or more precisely, how can you know about something which is by definition unknowable, as already Plato said ?

<13>

[Peter Mutnick]

Whitehead attempted to construct a system based on the activities of subjects, but he allowed both a pre-existent framework (based on the flow of time and other cosmic verities) and eternal objects (universals) as foundations for the subjective processes. To spin *everything* out of entirely subjective processes would require a very profound definition of the intrinsic nature of a 'subject', and this itself would be a kind of structure.

[Herbert Muller]

The "processes" are not entirely subjective. The experience is originally always of undivided mind-and nature. Mind as well as nature are (secondary) structures.

[Peter Mutnick]

I suppose there is some general principle that could be formulated here about the limits of transformation with respect to structure and information, similar to the conservation laws in physics. My contention is that structure can never be completely eliminated, but only transformed, within perhaps well-defined limits. Nor can we assume that structure came into being from an entirely unstructured boundary condition. Even to formulate this is contradictory, since identifying the unstructured condition as a boundary condition would constitute a structure. I believe these are foundational principles for any kind of science, whatsoever.

My contention is furthermore that Muller's whole positing of an unstructured condition or unstructured experience is itself a highly structured abstraction or product of the imagination. In *reality* structure interpenetrates non-structure in such a way that we can never abstract the one from the other. Ours is not to wonder why, ours it but to do or die.

[Herbert Muller]

This is opaque. Concerning the unstructured experience, see <11-13> above.

<14>

[Herbert Muller, from TA32]

[20] And furthermore, the word includes in principle all aspects of the stone, whether or not I study it now further (cf. Merleau-Ponty). Because words are only used by humans, this trans-momentary effect of structures becomes evident more clearly in humans. This transcendence-effect (that is, the transcendence of ongoing experience by word-concepts) is inevitable, whenever one uses concepts. It has an asymptotic quality insofar as multiple experiences can approach the meant word-content but they cannot become entirely identical with it.

And further :

[24] STATIC METAPHYSICS AND THE SUBJECT/OBJECT SPLIT

Here, in the transcendence of momentary experience by the meaning of (word-)concepts, is the FORMAL CAUSE of the tradtional fictitious STATIC METAPHYSICS including ONTOLOGY to be sought. It was declared by Kant and others to be "needed by reason". But one may ask how reasonable such an assumption really is when it implies ontology and not only the use of a tool for a purpose (Kant himself has apparently later on - in his opus postumum - changed his opinion). Instead of such an assumption, metaphysical structures can be "rational instruments", without ontological status (see below [34ff]).

<15>

[Mutnick]

Here is rather the source of your confusion about really existing static structures which are only *discovered* by abstracting from primitive experience. Your assumption is that the *REALITY* is unstructured,

[Herbert Muller]

see <11-13> above

[Peter Mutnick]

and so what is later derived from the *REALITY* by way of abstraction has no ultimate status of reality. My supposition would be that the unstructured 'REALITY' is at best some sort of primitive approximation to what is - it is raw material, chaos - that is the view of the Greeks. Only once it is given form through a process of several stages does it approach what it really is. The One, the EN, is the most actual - it is not the primordial unstructured 'potentia'. You seem to make the mistake of hypostatizing only the lowest hypostasis and the one considered *least* real by the Greeks. This is the central mistake of modern materialism.

[Herbert Muller]

The Greek "Hen" I think corresponds to subjective undivided mind-and-nature experience. That makes it easier than having to look for additional (external and/or internal) sources of unity, with or without religion and/or mystical notions.

<16>

[From TA32[25]:] The first effect of a belief in word-transcendence-reality is mostly that (for instance in the terminology of Descartes) one makes a PRIMARY DISTINCTION BETWEEN RES COGITANS AND RES EXTENSA (ie, not only as a practical method but as ontologically given.) Such an assumption were of no concern if it did not have some difficult consequences : once one has accepted such a distinction as being primary (either explicitly or only implicitly, which further complicates matters), it is difficult to find the way back to the origin. This tends to make this step irreversible, and even discussions about it are sometimes impossible.

<17>

[26] Secondly, one is then faced either with a DUALISTIC-HYBRID SITUATION, which is probably always unsatisfactory. Of this type are not only explicit dualisms (eg, Dilthey), but also attempts to accept experience as basic, but nevertheless to attempt to explain it with the help of physiological or other mind-independent objective ("truly real") mechanisms. (This means a salto mortale of reason, from phenomenology to objectivity, without announcement, perhaps even without noticing it).

[27] OR on the other hand, if one wants a uniform point of view, there is only a CHOICE BETWEEN TWO IMPOSSIBILITIES : either "the subject" is the only reality, and nature is only fantasy (but such an ontological solipsism is so absurd that it is rarely taken seriously). Or else "the objective nature" is seen as exclusively and mind-independently real, and the subject disappears or at best it is demoted to an "explanatory postulate". (And despite the equal absurdity of such a position, many pro- and anti-metaphysicists have tried without success to follow this reasoning, presumably because nothing more suitable seemed to be available.)

<18>

[28] THE DEAD END OF MIR-BELIEF

The static-metaphysical, MIND-INDEPENDENTLY ALREADY PRE-STRUCTURED REALITY AND TRUTH (MIR) thus starts in part as a consequence of a language by-product, which explicitly or implicitly becomes fixed by belief. In natural science, MIR-belief with exclusive objectivity is still the most common view, with the result that the mind-brain question is stuck in a blind alley.

[Mutnick]

Buddha said that all forms of attachment could be cured, except for one: attachment to the void. It seems to me that is what you are doing. You eschew all positing of structured reality, but you posit unstructured reality as an existing structure. Similarly, you make of subjective experience an undeniable truth, and fail to realize that you thereby take the subjectivity out of it and make it in essense a mind-independent reality. By denying one contrary, you render the other contradictory, since contraries cannot exist except in complementary relationship to each other.

<19>

[Herbert Muller]

The unstructured is (surprise) not a structure. It is also unavoidable, as you seem to say. All structures are posited by us within unstructured experience (or Tohu-va-Bohu, or as Paul Feyerabend called it, Abundance - this comes to the same). [From TA31-C3, discussion of PF's "Conquest of Abundance", <34>:] This agrees with the idea that reality is the result of investment of belief in our structures, if ontology becomes working ontology (see <41>). But actually Feyerabend's formulation is an understatement. Reality can not only be modified but its structures are our individual and collective products (though much of its experiential basis is not).

[Peter Mutnick]

Then you are just making the 'experiential basis' the new definition of 'reality'. This contradicts the meaning of 'experiential basis'. You turn everything on its head in this way. If you let reality be reality, then you can let experience be experience. Subjective experience, to remain truly subjective, must always allow freedom - it must be something *chosen*, NOT something 'given'. I believe this is a definition for Sartre of authenticity. The *conditions* for experience can be and are 'given', and that constitutes our definition of reality. The claim of phenomenology is that the conditions for experience are primarily transcendental and only ostensibly external, in an ultimately illusory sense.

The phenomenological method, as I understand it, does not invert the meanings of things. It simply sees everything, including the transcendental possibilities, exactly as they are. It enables theory to encompass experience and experience to encompass theory. Theory requires structure, as probably does experience as well, even though it is only theory that reveals the hidden structure of experience. Such discovery is called science.

[Herbert Muller]

The structures are enforced by our belief, and become our assertions and bootstraps (and "reality"). If we de-construct this conceptualized world, we end up with our initial assertions, in a circular way, or if we are more thorough, with nothing.

<20>

[Herbert Muller, from TA32]

[29] MIR-formulations are a 2 1/2 thousand year old problem, which was re-activated but not solved by Descartes. He thought he was able to replace the then usual theistic basis of certainty by a kind of Archimedean point - although he personally maintained a theistic backup - chiefly by means of the res extensa. This led to the "modern" MIR-belief of objectivity.

[30] As mentioned [25], a jump into such an imaginary transcendent word-concept-reality can easily have the consequence that the POINT OF ORIGIN IS FORGOTTEN. The access to an understanding of the development of MIR becomes thereby blocked. It has often been attempted to do without metaphysics, but this resulted mostly in relapses, because the question of why (both the conceptual reasons and the motivations) for the belief in metaphysics was not asked : one is beside oneself and cannot come back, not even with cool reasoning. One looks for instance for objective "theories of everything", which ignore the subject (this could at most become a "theory of all physical objects").

[31] So long as one is committed to an MIR-belief, there exists a BARRIER AGAINST ideas and means to try SOMETHING ELSE. One does not try to search outside of MIR - specifically by including subjective experience in addition to nature. Indeed many feel uncomfortable with such proposals, and consequently are defensive against them, in particular if they have invested much effort on formulating, or accommodating, a static-metaphysical system, be it objective-realistic or of other type.

[32] A further reason for the strength of objective MIR-belief is, however, also that it can have a survival function, because in most practical and theoretical situations it is sufficient. It is simple and immediately at hand, while more complex considerations require more time, and may even prevent action (as for instance in thorough skepticism). This may also be understood as a phylogenetic maintenance of the immediate reactions of animals, for whom - due to the lack of language - conceptual considerations with their advantages and disadvantages do not arise. The structures, gestalten and simpler forms, are used by them as reliable tools - although one can show, for instance in the laboratory, how they evolve, and that they may lead to errors.

-------------------------

Peter Mutnick

e-mail <saint7peter@hotmail.com>Herbert FJ Muller

e-mail <hmller@po-box.mcgill.ca>