KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Commentary 2

THE PERIECHONTOLOGY OF KARL JASPERS:
A FRAMEWORK FOR QUANTUM ONTOLOGY?
by Peter Mutnick
26 November 2000, posted 5 December 2000

[On : Karl Jaspers, from 'Von der Wahrheit', pp. 47-50]

 <1>
*THE FIRST STEP*
We live in the world but do not have the world before us as if we stood outside of it. Everything we can cognize is in the world but never is the world. The world as a whole cannot be an object for us.

[Peter Mutnick]
I disagree on all three counts. The abstract "ego" and the unity of the psyche in general do indeed stand outside the classical world and encompass it. Every phenomenon involves a body-world schema, which constitutes the background and condition for the appearance of the phenomenon. The background is an inseparable part of the phenomenon. Even in the sense where the world is regarded as the horizon for the appearance of any noumenon, since a noumenon must by definition be something in nature, such a being-world is still an object for us, not in a phenomenal sense, but in the sense that we are also quantum subjects (actual entities), or involved observers.

[Jaspers]
Kant understood this when he stated: the world is merely an idea.

[Mutnick]
The world is always a thing or an object. The body of the body-world schema is in the position of an idea. We do not in unimpeded phenomenal consciousness experience the thingness of the body, but rather its idea-like aspect as a viewpoint for our consciousness.

The German terms 'in-der-welt-sein' or 'Lebenswelt' do indeed imply a conception of the world neutral between idea and thing, subject and object. Such is the difference between languages. Perhaps in yet another language, the word for world would imply idea or subject, but I do not know what language that would be.

[Jaspers]
If we attempt to understand the world as a whole, it defies this attempt at knowledge and our thinking becomes entangled in insoluble contradictions (the Kantian antinomies). The world is the Encompassing [Umbegriefende] in which and out of which all being-world presents itself to us in the form of particular objectivities. Designating the world as idea expresses its character as being encompassing.

All cognition of the world (i.e., all being-object) is, for us, conditional upon our cogitative consciousness. For example, the unity of any object at all is, in its apperception, conditional upon the respective unity established by the unity of consciousness-as-such. Expressed differently: all "being-for-us" is an appearance of "being-in-itself" in the form in which it presents itself to our consciousness-as-such. The development of these notions in Kantian philosophy brings about this jolting of our consciousness of Being: it produces and illuminates our knowledge of the phenomenal nature of being-world by our becoming aware of the Encompassing of consciousness-as-such.

Thus we have seen the Encompassing appear in two modes: The Encompassing in which Being itself appears is *world*; the Encompassing which I am and which we are is *consciousness-as-such*.

[Mutnick]
The general gist of this seems to be that the Encompassing is the noumenal on the one hand and the phenomenal on the other hand. These are just the two big chunks of ontological reality, the quantum worlds of the observed (1-3: physical, emotional, and mental; von Neumann's I) and the classical worlds of the observer (5-7: phenomenal, causal, and archetypal or meta-physical; von Neumann's III). World 4, BTW, is etheric. To grasp, as does Jaspers, that our true position is far removed from the physical reality of the noumenon and constitutes in its own way a complete totality is indeed a profound insight.

 <2>
[Jaspers]
*THE SECOND STEP*

The Encompassing which I am is more than consciousness-as-such. I am also *existence* which supports my consciousness. We can regard ourselves as actuality only by taking the step from mere consciousness to actual existence.

[Mutnick]
This is a very important point, upheld by Copenhagen and misunderstood by most current researchers, Henry Stapp in particular. Consciousness is involved in the experience of the phenomenal object in the fifth or phenomenal world. But the actual observer, as defined by the classical archetype, which includes classical physics, is in the seventh or meta-physical world. Consensus reality and unambiguous communication are phenomenal world concepts, but the basis for them is in the classical archetype of the meta-physical (classical) world. Since quantum physics is just an extension of classical physics into the atomic domain, it is impossible to understand the framework of complementarity without understanding the classical archetype of Cartesian philosophy, which tells us who we are as actual observers.

[Jaspers]
This is the existence that has a beginning and an end, labors and struggles in the world surrounding it, or tires and gives in, enjoys and suffers, experiences fear and hope.

[Mutnick]
In other words, it is the classical world. Again, however, Jaspers does not comprehend that the unity of the psyche surrounds the world, not the other way around.

[Jaspers]
As actuality, however, I am not only existence but am actual as *spirit*; all that is thought by consciousness and all that is actual as existence can be taken up into spirit's ideal totalities and become the movement - revolving in itself and penetrating itself - out of which grows the construction of worlds such as those of communities, of works, of the professions.

[Mutnick]
To me, this bespeaks of the capacity of the abstract "ego" for self-transcendence. The quantum implicate order exists seed-like in the classical order as the attribute of thought. Quantum reality is thought-like, and what was unphysical in the classical conception is revealed in quantum theory to have a physical basis, but of course, this involves a new metaphysical and ontological conception of the physical.

 <3>
[Jaspers]
*THE THIRD STEP*
Altogether, these modes of the Encompassing constitute what is undoubtedly present. They comprise the *immanence* of what I am, namely existence, consciousness-as-such, spirit, and of what becomes object for me, namely being-world. One can ask further if such immanence is sufficient unto itself of whether it points to something else. Indeed, men have maintained that there is only immanence, and they believed that they were living lives based on this knowledge. For such an attitude immanence would suffice and beyond it one would see nothingness. But throughout all periods of history there have been men who have taken the leap our of immanence and beyond it. Immanence was not enough for them. They became aware of being lost in it and they came to understand that immanence does not exist out of itself and cannot be comprehended out of itself. Hence they took the *transcending* leap, all in one: the leap from the world to the *deity* and from the existence of the conscious spirit to *Existenz*. Existenz is the self-being that stands in relation to itself and thereby to transcendence; it knows itself as given to itself through, and bases itself on, transcendence.

[Mutnick]
This could be taken as a history of quantum theory from the Copenhagen Interpretation to the modern ontological approaches. Instead of the noumenon and the noumenal world being just the unknown basis for our phenomenal experience, there is the idea of a genuine interaction with them that implies both genuine objective features on their part and genuine subjective features on our part. But of course, the noumenon as the ultimate object remains transcendental (it is "deity" or God in nature), and this is actually the basis for our authentic Free Will, which exists in the oroboric abyss connecting the genuine object in the first world with the genuine subject in the seventh world.

<4>
[Jaspers]
*THE FOURTH STEP*
Not only are there several Encompassings but in all the modes of the Encompassing we encounter a multiplicity. A manifold may come apart, contraries seem to destroy or exclude each other. It is possible to move within a multiplicity, to let its components exist side by side, not to be affected by anything alien, to live unquestioningly within mere aggregation. But which I experience aggregation as insufficient, a decisive leap becomes a necessity: this is the case when I can no longer rest content in the side-by-side, when I can no longer contain my urge to experience everything in relation to everything else, to grasp for unity and bring it about.

[Mutnick]
This ("to experience everything in relation to everything else, to grasp for unity and bring it about") is probably the literal meaning of 'Umgreifende' (Encompassing).

[Jaspers]
This leap leads me to *reason*. Reason wills - and is - the bond between all the modes of the Encompassing and phenomena within them. Here a silent restlessness, springing from its own origin, lies in readiness. But it is only through living Existenz that this reason in me is set in motion as the Encompassing which, open in all directions, wants to join together everything there is.

[Mutnick]
Existenz is achieved through the self-transcendence of the actual observer or abstract "ego" of von Neumann. The classical brain opens into the quantum implicate order, which is the true mind of the observer. Even the noumenon in nature is unfolded from this quantum implicate order, so it is the ultimate basis for unification of all that is. This last phrase, "open in all directions", signifies the panoramic vision of all the worlds and systems of worlds implied by modern philosophy and by modern physics.

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Peter Mutnick