KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Commentary 26 (to R7)

THE GOLDEN FLEECE
by Maurice McCarthy
19 February 2001, posted 20 March 2001

My responding comments are given in braces. {}

<1>
Q1. [ ... This leads to a contradiction. If reality is seen as independent of (for instance) mind, how can mind ("consciousness") be real ? ]

{By 'independent' here was meant that which 'is' in its own right, self-existent and so without reference to any other. This is a monism where reality is not separate from mind. Mind does not constitute a limitation or opposite to the real.}

<2>
Q2. "<6> The pure ego is prime matter. The mind is intelligent sentience."

[This can help further. The way I see this, we start with an ongoing unstructured experience, within which mental structures are built. To begin with, even the structural difference between self and other and environment is not given. If you wish you can call this matrix the "pure ego" (but see below). Thereafter the intelligent sentience depends on the use of the (to-be-) created structures.]

{Here you are correct and I should not raise phrases like 'pure ego' before an epistemological exposition. Phenomenalism is a worldview which I had refused to contemplate seriously until very recently, and I had failed to realise that its acceptance is still rather nascent, so that the most fundamental suppositions are still under examination. An epistemology is attempted in outline below.}

<3>
Q3. "<2> ... All the activities of discrimination reduce to two - feeling and thinking. ... Feelings are perceptions and perceptions are feelings. Feeling is dependent on a given input and so can only be real in a diminished sense. Thinking, as the thinking about something, also depends upon a given."

[No, rather it must use structures, which are built by us. This applies too for perceptions. To assume given structures (at input or in thinking) leads into a dead end.]

{We have perhaps three confusions here:

a) a difference in definition of consciousness

b) a difference in the meaning of what a concept is, yielding

c) a difference in nomenclature - to me structures are concepts.

I cannot appropriate the gradual biological evolution of Man from other animals to William James's definition of consciousness as human linguistic self-consciousness. I find the sudden break from one to the other inadmissible, inadequately explained. For this reason I revert to the ancient and common public opinion that any animal awake is conscious. Further a concept to me has objective reality and is not merely wordage. This is defined in the epistemology below.}

<4>
Q4. <"(Thinking) is the distinguishing of concepts in the given percepts. Thinking, as the thinking about your own thoughts, has a given created by the activity itself.>"

[The last point is not clear. In which sense is something which you create "given"?]

{To develop the worldview of Phenomenalism from the beginning, the phenomena we must take as given are those of adult human consciousness of the present era. To take any other is to add an unnecessary presumption. Amongst those phenomena are our own created thoughts. They are merely a phenomenon just like any other. The knowledge that we did create them must be pared away by thought (there is no other way) to leave only the bare phenomenon. This is a paradox of a self-created given but it is necessary to the worldview. Not to accept this is to repudiate phenomenalism and another beginning must be made elsewhere for a different worldview.

<5>
Now certainly this is possible, but there are outstanding reasons why everyone should acquire an understanding of phenomenalism now. Please allow me to put this in a historical development from the pre-scientific era up to today. Following St. Augustine, early medieval worldviews had a certainty of the soul but presumed no right to attain to absolute truth, that was the province of God alone. All cosmological theories were correct provided they 'saved the appearances' or 'suzein ta phainomena' (3). Ultimate knowledge of the world would have to be described as transcendental, mystical or occult - where occult is in its original sense of 'hidden' and without the connotation of evil it has recently acquired. As little as 100 years before Copernicus mathematics and numerology were still an identity. Man did not aspire to the intelligence to discriminate between equal theories.

<6>
The Nominalists proceeded to defeat the Realists. Universals (concepts or ideas) had no true existence, so an ontology of the pre-existence of matter developed which laid the ground for Galileo to be able to launch physics as the variation of matter in time and space. Hand in hand with physics, Rationalism arises, dogmatically asserting the presumption to absolute truth. This is crystal clear in Leibniz's principles of contradiction and sufficient reason, for instance. Science is the descent of intelligence into Mankind as a whole. Empirical Materialism attained the golden fleece of absolute truth, at least in its own mind. The world was so well ordered that a British gentleman could set his fob watch by the passing steam train. Everyone had their station in life; nation state and traditional morals were valued by all. We knew pretty well all that needed to be known - the principles of all reality, just a little tidying up to be done. The price was heavy, however, for nowhere in all materialism was a soul to be seen. The fleece had made Man's own being invisible.

<7>
A century later that golden fleece of absolute truth has been lost. We speak of 'justified belief' or other such phrases and just as reality is not as hard so morals are less strict. The whole world is again phenomenal and not absolutely true. In fact Phenomenalism is thrust upon us, in some regard, by the necessary development of physics in the early 20th century. Relativity ends the era of object consciousness or individual objects seen as self-existent (MIR) and shows that all objects are existentially related. SpaceTime was the new concept - the separation of *mutually dependent* existents. Whereas formerly existents were referred to spatial coordinates through sequential time and their being was assured (presupposed), now their mutual being was derived from algebraic abstract coordinates - gravity, once the proper act of matter, is now the distortion of coordinates. Covertly the subjective construct became prior to the reality of the objects. Quantum Physics made explicit that the being of the object is related to the subject. (1) The object only 'is' when and where it is seen. With the end of object consciousness the age of the World-I duality draws to an end and we embark upon a whole new era.

<8>
The entire world is now subsumed in the phenomena of the soul, of consciousness. Ancient Man had a heaven-earth duality; the next era was world-I or world-soul; we now begin a soul-I or soul-spirit duality. For this reason it is predictable that Phenomenalism will be the dominant world view for the next few hundred years. It is the nascent paradigm and as such it is our duty to all civilization to lay its foundations as soundly as possible. The world will be moulded according to how we battle out ideas now.

My summary of our present situation is that just as the Greeks brought to realisation the entire content of thought in its principles - it does not matter what you think its root essentials are to be found in Ancient Greece - we have begun unveiling the processes of the will. This is the destiny of constructivism. There is a deep atmosphere of voluntarism everywhere in consciousness studies. Such moods are cravings of the soul and must be satisfied every bit as much as hunger for food. They are satisfied by the truth they help define, or structure, and are the motive force behind the evolution of human consciousness itself. Here is signified the march of the soul back into known existence, to re-take its rightful place after centuries of exclusion.}

<9>
Q5. <"Thinking, as the thinking about your own thoughts, has a given created by the activity itself. As not dependent on an other thing it is real. Form and content coincide - a form whose content is its own essence or a content upheld by its own form.">

[It is real because you assert (believe) it is real. And that depends on you (and others).]

{This is the single most important question in all philosophy since Descartes. The question of whether thinking is self-existent leads directly to whether the I exists. Before setting this out I wish to lay down the epistemology first, so I shall return to this last.}

<10>
Q6 "<3>Thinking therefore precedes feeling and perception. ..."

[Animals have experience but do not use language, and have therefore no concepts in the human sense, which are constituted by the addition of words to earlier mental structures (see TA32[5ff]). In case you accept this definition of "concept", which I have adopted for reasons of clarity, the structures of feeling and perception are earlier than conceptual thinking. ... ]

{The epistemology below leads to the objective reality of concepts. Prime matter is the passive form of all initial existence, i.e. that of the encompassing or continuum, its being. Matter and prime matter are concepts and as such their becoming is the activity of the concept of the concept, i.e. self-consciousness as such. Restated this says that the becoming of all existence is self-consciousness, consequently concepts precede the arrival of life on the planet in an ontological and a temporal sense. Thus I re-open the medieval battle of Realism versus Nominalism. At the preliminary stages of phenomenalism we are discussing, what is variously called the continuum, the encompassing, the unconscious, prime matter, world-reason, self-consciousness as such, and all subjective ideas of God are similar equivalent supernatural speculations - none of them are perceived phenomena. The proper beginning has to be from the phenomena themselves.}

<11>
Q7. [ ... For instance form perception can occur without language. "Possession" can only refer to words, not to experience per se, to which our words are added. "Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus" (quoted by U. Eco from a 12th century poem, "De contemptu mundi", by Bernard of Morley.) This evidently brings up the question why we can own words but not form or color or olfactory structures (as in "rose"). The difference here is, I think, that (for instance) gestalt forms are our structures as used in dealing with given (unstructured) experience, which we cannot possess, while words are not given, they are entirely our doing and cannot be experienced without that.]

{Negative. Possession refers to the presence of concepts in observation.}

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<12>
The time has come to proceed to the epistemology. (2) This concerns adult human cognition of the modern era, for we dare not presume to grasp another consciousness: any other form of consciousness would have to make suitable alteration to this. At the start of any epistemology all knowledge must be dismissed and a beginning made from immediately perceived phenomena, i.e. the given experience, so that there are no presuppositions. In this regard the exposition below is defective. Existence should be that which 'is' by proceeding from grounds for that existence. Existent is here used as anything that shows itself, no matter how trivial that being is. In the attempt at clarity the following is a summary.

1. A percept is the experience of an existent.

2. A concept is a relation between existents.

3. Thinking is the act of conceiving.

4. Truth is the agreement of concept and reality.

5. Reality is truth and percept.

6. The act of cognition is observe-produce-realise

a) perceive the phenomenon

b) create/extract its concept(s)

c) realise the fact, i.e. observe the restored totality.

7. Every object in experience is an original unity of concept and percept except one.

8. Consciousness itself is a two: the original separation of concept and percept.

<13>
Given are all the contents of consciousness as phenomena. To begin with there is no categorisation of the being of these contents. The 'I', that house-brick, the appendix, the brain, feelings and emotions, the mind, dreams, other people, consciousness itself, blue, space, time and hallucinations all have the same being in an undistinguished manner; there is no difference of inner or outer experience. Every phenomenon is a percept, except that percept includes the nuance of the activity of the perceiving being. From its etymology, a percept 'takes' the existent 'through' its phenomenon. (If it is clearer, 'the percept structures the continuum to isolate an object from it,' but this formulation involves presumptions not properly allowable here, for the continuum is merely a thought, another phenomenon, and has not established its own continuity through all the other phenomena.) At the beginning of epistemology the existent may or may not be its own phenomenon, that is to be decided later. The percept guarantees the being of the existent without any further qualification. All further determination must be in relation to another, for as Kant showed the thing-in-itself cannot be known: neither perception nor thought has any access to it.

<14>
Every beginning is an assumption. Once the given phenomena are accepted as the starting point the assumption has to be made that there is an organising activity to structure the ongoing activity of experience. Without this all further pursuit of a worldview ceases. Critically the first object to be distinguished from all other phenomena, in however generalised a manner, is implicitly that which must become a self, a soul. Paradoxically this, more than any thing else, is what Phenomenalism wishes to deny - the soul is supposed to be a category error. This shows that all knowledge depends, first of all, on a grasp of your own being. Nevertheless, the worldview made the author shrink, for he felt, in an unrealised manner, that this was solipsism, the Hades of all philosophy. Yet we have seen there is no absolute truth behind us and we must enter these gates or abandon any hope of finding the truth again.

<15>
A concept is a relation between existents: etymologically 'taken together.' All form, all determination, qualification or categorisation and so all truth is conceptual. Thinking is the act of conceiving, the feminine apprehension of the relations between all being. Blue is an interesting percept. It cannot be known as blue except in relation to other colours so blue is a concept. But anyone colour-blind to blue could not have it described to them what blue is, so blue is a percept. Concept and percept are not separable in colour. (It takes us much too far afield here, but I think this indicates that cognition may be perceptual or conceptual in its emphasis, this being a matter of the mode of consciousness; i.e. whether you face the wall of the cave or the other way, or in the middle an equal participation. This is to look, in both directions, very far beyond the present era to which I wish to contain matters.)

<16>
A thought is an immediate phenomenon of consciousness, a percept, *exactly* like any other. But unlike all other phenomena, as 'I' created the thought there is no question of another reality lying behind it. Here the phenomenon is one with its reality beyond dispute, there is no thing-in-itself behind it, to the extent that to ask if it can be known is a nonsense. It is transparent to me, I know its becoming and being through and through. Amongst these thoughts are all the scientific laws of the world. They are all concepts and ideas - an idea is a complex concept. This forces the truth that reality is always its own phenomenon. The thing-in-itself is unknowable so it may or may not exist. In the words of Goethe, "That which leaves no possibility of its refutation thereby declares its own falsehood." For the same reason I will have no truck with multiverses for they catapult us back to a situation even less intelligent than pre-Copernicus - there is no appearance to be saved. The thing-in-itself is not a scientific proposal on Popper's method of negation and so should be dismissed without further ado from all scientific and theological speculation. Equally any subjective religious faith which places itself in the same position should be dismissed. Reality is a one, the one before you in phenomena. If the thing-in-itself had any effect upon the one reality then it would no longer be unperceived, i.e. would be phenomenal and no longer the thing-in-itself, so nothing is lost by dismissing it but integrity is gained.

<17>
The category of being of the existent, that is its truth, is found in the combination of concept and percept. Reality is truth and percept, refutable by reason and observation. The division of factual reality into truth and percept is not inherent in reality, but characterises consciousness of the knower who receives the percept as a given but can only apprehend its concepts in a creative act. Fact is an actuality co-created by the knower. The conceptual content as such could never exist without a knower, for the knower makes or realises the concept into a percept. Ultimately this is why evolution builds on its own achievements - blind forces produce desire, a kind of purpose, (consciousness in general) and this ultimately must produce a cognising being. The cognitive core of the epiphenomenon we know as human consciousness was implicit from the beginning. As the only 'mechanism' which creates the different from the same, evolution is the polar axis of creation, the whole world turns on the truth of this concept, i.e. on evolution. This explains further why there is no mind independent reality (MIR).

<18>
As illustrated above, in colour there is in actuality no pure percept and no pure concept. These isolations, i.e. concept and percept, may only be made by thinking. All objects are an original unity of percept and concept. Now it is for cognition to determine what consciousness is and not vice versa. Cognition is a form of consciousness but you must be conscious to study anything, consciousness included. When cognition turns its attention to its own consciousness, emptied of all content, it is difficult to get any purchase, just because it is so thoroughly empty, like empty space. The really confusing thing is that it is two spaces, one for given percepts and one for subjective creations, for concepts. This is made into a whole only by a continuous activity, the activity uniting percept and concept, which has just been described as cognition. The stunning genius of language calls 'con-scio' (with knowledge) that which must result in cognition. Consciousness realises itself in its own continuous act. We must grasp the fact that the world seems to split into dualities because that duality is in our own nature, in our consciousness and further if we were not split in two then no cognition would be possible as there would be no mystery needing to be known.

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<19>
Q5 Is the act of thinking about thinking self-existent or is it my belief only?

{From the above epistemology, the act satisfies all three steps of cognition. So logically it is real. Driven further, the core of this is that the ego, the I, the concept of the concept, is the most emphatic actuality to be found. But this is unconvincing for many, since they do not accept the reality of concepts, nor the soul, nor the spirit and its free will. (I use soul for what is conscious at all and spirit for what is self-conscious) They cling to the dualism of real and phenomenal worlds because they need to presuppose a 'solid' support for their own being, but the thing-in-itself has been shown to be illusory. Thus they do not regard themselves as self-existent. What each needs, individually, is to experience the agent conducting the act of cognition in a personally indisputable manner. Since thinking is a subjective act it cannot be an immediately public, inter-subjective proof. How can anyone experience the activity which is the point of contact between the two spaces of consciousness, the intersection of the lemniscate casting its cloak around the whole subjective consciousness to render it self-conscious? Each may only enter their own being and search for it.

<20>
Meditative practices are now common, and this is the only method I know to achieve what I assert here. Rummage through all the bric-a-brac of your own subjective life to find any absolute truth in this solitary wilderness. What is true? 2+2=4? The law of inertia? The Benny only takes one trick? The humble stinging nettle is the idea of cleanliness made life-form? This last brings a gasp. Surely, I've drunk the ptisane; freshly picked, tasteless, clean and refreshing; bathed in it, washed my hair in it (odd without suds but it cleans beautifully); watched it clear the skin, put sparkle in the eyes, settle a stomach, dissolve cataracts and ease asthma and other ills. All these are in vain. They are not absolute unfailing truth. You must sit in the furnace of your own despair, burning off all external relation or stand on the abyss and feel the terror of falling forever. It burns like fire into the soul. And in this torture 'I am' is still here. I am. The one absolute truth which materialism placed beyond its own grasp. However short or long a time it takes, your own spirit becomes a certainty. The thought of your own immortal being is perceived, absolute knowledge when you objectively realise it in this way, but only to you.

<21>
At first you seem no different, but slowly by undetectable means the integrity of your whole being is restored. Then does the voice of a One crying in the solitude begin to be heard. Having found your treasure there is no need to remain in the desolation and your own spirit begins to shine forth in free creative thought which takes you by surprise. Sweeping aside dogma and mere opinion, no psychology can touch it for psychology is natural law, external determination, but the spirit is ethical, self-determined and so a law unto itself. Psychology has, as its height, a person with a conscience, someone who has adopted someone else's law but cannot create their own, unless that is psychology, or science of the soul, rises to an as yet uncreated pneumatology, science of the spirit. A man is not merely defined by what he is but also by what he is capable of becoming. Anyone announcing that he cannot help being what he is thereby declares his unwillingness to be free, for we are as free as we are able to change our own feelings and emotions.

<22>
To another it is still only a belief, a faith, but I *know* that *I am*. Until a multitude of individuals find their own 'voice,' there is no inter-subjective knowledge to be had on this point. Thought also begins to take on an aspect like a new power of perception: it 'feels' concepts and 'gathers' from this touch whether it is knowable. No one has the right to deny the experience of another but all are welcome to search their own souls for themselves. If I could now rebuild the temple at Delphi the inscription over the doorway would read "Know that Thou Art!"

<23>
There is, however, one indirect means of indicating that what is said above has validity. All truth and all reality is related so a new truth must bring new insight, that is be useful, give explanation where none existed previously. In fact, this is the primary means by which we know that our thinking is correct. When we realise a fact, if nothing comes of it then we have thought wrongly. What happens if the 'I' does not realise itself inside its own being? I see two possibilities

a) escapism of some form: mental illness, drugs, suicide, hedonism

b) define your own being vis-a-vis another: 'mindless' violence, lone serial killers etc.

<24>
We are looking a unifying cause behind a host of modern phenomena. Lone serial killers are evil because what should be realised in their own being is realised against someone else, repeatedly. We all know how thin and unconvincing merely psychological explanations are here. In modern society each of us is isolated in ourselves to an extent far greater than at other times. The destruction of the family and digital technology are amongst the factors contributing to the abolition of direct human contact. But there is no going back, we can only go forward and with each passing year it becomes more and more imperative that people find the certitude of their own being, irrespective of their religious or philosophic persuasion.

<25>
That such mass phenomena as 'mindless' violence are new shows that the evolution of human consciousness in a substantive sense is true. We are not the same beast we were even 500 years ago. Human nature has changed. People today are born expecting a degree of freedom which their upbringing, education and society do not provide. The ideas which won the intellectual battle 30 to 35 years ago moulded the then society to produce what we have today, so we get what we co-created and it is up to us to tackle its problems. Freedom always brings responsibility.

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NOTES.

(1) Xavier Zubiri, 1898-1984, grasped this with great clarity early in its development. Though still little known in the English speaking world he dominated Spanish philosophy from 1940 to 1980. Rejecting Husserl's phenomenology as unsatisfactory from a metaphysical point of view, because it had both a phenomenal and a 'real' world, he set to work redefining the concept of essence: a monumental task over 20 years, and worked out a structuralistic realism, with a point of departure in sensation. His major published works, in Spanish and English, are downloadable and online at www.zubiri.org. A more qualified opinion cannot be given, as I have not the comprehension of Zubiri yet. However, I have gained the suspicion that he will become more and more important in the coming decades.

Sentient Intelligence (1980-83), trans. (1999) by Thomas B. Fowler, Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, Washington DC. This is the major work.

On Essence (1963) trans. (1980) by A. Robert Caponigri, The Catholic University of America Press

Nature, History, God (1981) trans. by Thomas B. Fowler, University Press of America - a collection of older essays and lectures: in which I found 'Socrates and the Greek Idea of Wisdom' and the humanities undergraduate lecture on 'The Idea of Nature: The New Physics' to be most interesting.

(2) In its entirety the epistemology is only a rephrase of the doctoral dissertation of Rudolf Steiner (1891), Truth and Knowledge, which may be found at:

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA003/TaK/GA003_index.html. The present writer has merely coloured-in between the lines.

(3) Simplicius (6th century) in his commentary on Aristotle's 'De Caelo'. See Owen Barfield (1965, 1988) 'Saving the Appearances', Wesleyan University Press Pp. 48-49. This work is an attempt to demonstrate that there has been a substantial evolution of human consciousness. It is the constant theme of Barfield's life work. See also www.owenbarfield.com.

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Maurice McCarthy