KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 32 (Muller)

Commentary 32

CONCEPTS AND COMMUNITY
by Timo Järvilehto
28 April 2001, posted 15 May 2001

<1>
I share many basic ideas developed by Herbert Muller in his target article, especially in respect to criticism of MIR beliefs, or to the search for consciousness in the brain.

<2>
However, the main problem with radical constructivism (which Muller seems to represent in the target article) is that it absolutizes the subjective experience, and in this way represents only an opposite position to physicalism or objectivism. Or, to be more exact, physicalism and radical constructivism are only variants of the same position (which may also explain why they are such enemies) of starting with the basic separation of the organism and environment. Physicalism sets the origin of thoughts, etc., into the environment, radical constructivism into a subject separated from all his relations.

<3>
I agree with Muller that the mainstream of the studies on the neural basis of thinking or consciousness is flawed in taking a priori the brain as the basis of consciousness. In its stead, one should see that it is consciousness which makes possible the concept of the brain: "Thinking does not come from the brain, but the brain comes from thinking" [Muller, TA32 [2]]. Thus, the mainstream studies take the condition created by consciousness as a determinative of consciousness itself. This circularity will certainly prevent all progress in the study of consciousness, and leads to an endless amount of empirical studies which cannot be properly interpreted.

<4>
But does this mean that the reality is only our construct within the subjective experience? No, because neither consciousness nor physical reality are in some sense primary. When thinking about the world we start, of course, with our subjective experience. However, this experience is not existing as such, but it is possible, because it has a long evolutionary history. We have subjective experience, because we are parts of the human species and human communities, and it is this context, in which the subjective experience is possible. This point was well formulated by Bruce Kirchoff: "Rather they [consciousness and the brain] exist as intrinsic parts of a system with a community of people who credit the type of consciousness that is sustained by the physical reality that this consciousness is creates" (Kirchoff, 1999).

<5>
This idea could perhaps be expressed also by saying that consciousness and matter cannot be separate or in a causal relation, because they belong to the same system. On one hand, matter may not be separated into some kind of basic substance with absolute existence, the properties of which would exist also without any living being. On the other hand, consciousness does not produce matter as a some kind of "subjective construction", because the properties of matter are not something "fictional" or an outcome of negotiation (cf. social constructivists), but real properties of the world which are concretized by living beings, giving by their actions to these aspects of the "stuff" of the universe their significance and meaning in a community of organisms. It is consciousness and the sharing of the world that makes possible the existence of material objects, and the description of the properties of matter, but only from the point of the human beings.

<6>
In conclusion, the main problem with Muller's approach is his neglecting of the contribution of other human beings to the subjective experience of the individual. No concept may be created by the individual alone, but presupposes a community and a culture, in which relations between the individuals and the world may be abstracted by the help of the concepts. The existence of concepts themselves, is precisely a strong support for the idea that we do not live in the solipsistic prisons of our subjective experiences, but in a shared world which is shaped according to the action possibilities of the human beings.

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

REFERENCE

Kirchoff, B. (1999) Consciousness, communities and the brain: toward an ontology of being. In: Jordan, J. Scott (Ed.) Modeling Consciousness Across The Disciplines. Boston: University Press of America, pp. 243-267.

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

Timo Jarvilehto

http://wwwedu.oulu.fi/homepage/tjarvile/indexe.htm

Professor of psychology, University of Oulu

PB 2000, 90014 Oulun yliopisto, Finland