KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Commentary 35 (to C32 by Jarvilehto)
( SUBJECTS, OBJECTS, AND SOCIETY )
by Brad McCormick
16 May 2001, posted 29 May 2001

( NOTE : Quotations from Jarvilehto’s C32 are in "quotation marks", responses to them by McCormick are in [brackets]. The <paragraph numbers> are those from C32. - HFJM )

I wish to reply to the following item, which I found interesting because it seems to "capture" succinctly how difficult it is in our society to escape "metaphysics" in the form of scientific (or scientistic) reification of human existence, etc. I argue this has global practical implications for the whole shape of our life, as well as being "a philosophical issue".

" <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. "

[ My "background" is Husserl et al. It seems to me that <2> above does not distinguish between "a subject" as part of an empirical universe, and "a subject" as the event of a world in which an empirical universe finds its place. The empirical (what Husserl called: psychologistic) self is indeed just part of the universe, but both that self and that universe are part of the event of there being a world with a universe in it (I am aware that this is awkward, but the word "consciousness" seems to be politically incorrect these days...). ]

" <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. "

[ <3> seems to me to be "right on the mark". Indeed, it is stated better than I have been able to do myself. *However*: I propose that <3> is not consistent with <2> or, more precisely, with <4>.]

" <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. "

[ This is ambiguous: In thinking about the world (or is it in thinking about the universe?), "we start with our subjective experience". I take this to mean that we start by imagining ourselves as localized lumps of stuff situated in an infinite geometrical, i.e., object, space. But this is not the same as endeavoring rigorously [like, e.g., Husserl...] to think about the event of thinking in its wholeness (both the knowing and the known -- see <3>). The latter is very difficult for those of us who were child-reared into objectivistic reification, as I think most of us in our society have been. ]

" However, this experience is not existing as such, but it is possible, because it has a long evolutionary history. "

[ Here is where I see a direct contradiction to <3>: "evolutionary history" seems to me to be just as much object-stuff as "the brain", and therefore to be just as much a target of the incisive critique in <3>! Perhaps the author means by "evolutionary history" a hermeneutical exegesis of the history of science and historiography, and, if that is the case, I apologize for imputing objectivism where it is not present -- but then the exposition surely could have been clearer, especially since the danger of misunderstanding is so great in a culture where "Darwin" has largely replaced G-d. ]

" We have subjective experience, because we are parts of the human species and human communities, "

[ Once again, isn't "species" a construct of the event of signifying (AKA "consciousness")? "Human communities" is, I think, more interesting, as I hope to show forthwith .... ]

" 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). "

[ What does "system" mean, if not some object-constellation? Unless "system" means the event of signification, which Husserl called (after Kant, et al.) "transcendental [inter]subjectivity". Again, perhaps it is too easy to misread the text here? ]

" <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. "

[ "The properties of which would exist without any living being." What can this mean except for some kind of "object"-in-itself, which, of course, cannot be any kind of ob-ject, since an ob-ject is precisely an object-of/in-consciousness (as Kant argued, although, perhaps it goes back as far as Heraclitus, with his assertion that the limits of the Logos are so vast that no matter how far you travel, you will never reach its limits?). ]

" 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 does seem, lamentably, to be the case that we *are* objects in the world *as well as* being the subjects of/for/... the world. People die and some people make this happen to other people by putting bullets into their skull cavities, etc.

(But, as Sartre said: "We die only for others.")

These are mysteries for understanding and hermeneutics (etc.), but philosophy is a luxury for times when we can afford to reflect on experience rather than trying [however philosophically naively!] to "save our necks". On the other hand, perhaps Buddhist "enlightenment" is an ultimate carrying through of what Husserl called "reduction" -- perhaps the enlightened sage is able to differentiate the event of meaning (AKA "consciousness", etc.) from its object-content even while he is being roasted in the Phylarian(sp?) bull?

" 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. "

[ Here is where I think the most radical and difficult break is needed to escape from the category mistakes which pervade our society, including, apparently, the world of scientists as well as "the man in the street". There are two kinds of "community": (1) denumerable aggregations of person-lumps (AKA "citizens", "people", "human resources", etc.). There is also: (2) the community of enumerators -- as, for example, exists in the event of two or more teachers discussing the disposition of one or more student-lumps.

I would argue (following Husserl et al.) that human existence in an emphatic or normative sense is the event of conversation, which, from the perspective of objectivity, is *pre-personal*. In a real conversation, what "I" say and what "you" say is a vital unity of meaning in which "who said what" is not relevant, but rather the object being discussed is the "object pole" of what we might call loosely and easily mis-interpretably(!) a "we subject".

The objects which enter into this event of meaning as things-meant are not human, even if they are taxonomically classifiable as "anthropoid bipeds". This sounds bizarre, but I propose the evidence for it is painfully close at hand: Just imagine the difference between participating in a juridical proceeding as (1) the defendant vs as (2) "a member of" the jury. To borrow a Heidegger term (apart from his use of it...), I would argue there is an "ontological difference". The phrase "alienated labor" is also helpful for illuminating this.

The pediatrician/psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott beautifully described how the infant constructs *both* self and other, "together", out of pre-personal experience (yes, even Winnicott's descriptions are all too easily subject to objectivistic misinterpretation as describing the adventures of object-of-consciousness-lumps AKA "infants"!). Husserl said that "transcendental subjectivity is intersubjectivity", by which I understand he meant that the event of meaning (AKA "consciousness" as having a world, etc.) is intrinsically *universal*, and that attributions of "self" and "other" are empirical constructs, just like billiard balls and quarks, etc.

The event of meaning is apodictically given, but that "I said this" whereas "you said that" (etc.) are empirical hypotheses about "consciousness" as an empirical or psychologistic construct.

There is a "practical payoff" from all this, which, mythologically, is expressed in such Biblical statements as: "When two or three are gathered together in my name, then I am among them", or the words from an Episcopal hymn: "God's whole will will not be done, till all mankind is one". In a *real* democracy, as opposed to the objectivism of voting, there is a living and "unified" event of conversation, not an aggregation of voter-lumps which are arithmetical objects [for the, in that case, real community: the community of *vote counting*]. ]

" <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. "

[ "the subjective experience of the individual" can be understood in an objectivistic way, and then the above statement is a true sociologistical statement about such object. But if "the individual" is understood as the event of meaning, then "other human beings", like every-thing else, is a meaning structure "constituted in consciousness", but not "my" i.e.: "Bradford McCormick, SSN XXX-XX-XXXX"'s consciousness (<3>, again!), whereas the event of meaning is "wherein" that meaning structure ('"Bradford McCormick, SSN XXX-XX-XXXX"'s consciousness', i.e.), like every meaning structure, has its place. ]

" 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. "

[ It seems to me that the problem of "solipsism" is addressed by observing that "consciousness" is implicitly *universal*. Even if there was no other empirical "being" in the universe, even if "I" was empirically alone in the whole world, "my thoughts" would be structurally even though (obviously!) not empirically *universal* -- and one part of the evidence for this is that we often worry "that somebody else might read our thoughts", etc. [Psychoanalysts speak of "introjects", etc.] Empirical "self" and "other" are empirical articulations of the living event of meaning – articulations which, presumably, the infant starts making to "explain" why "my hands" behave differently than "the other person’s" hands, etc. and thereby keep from going mad. In a world without "frustration", perhaps there would be no reason to differentiate "self" from "other"?

These issues seem to me to be very difficult. I would hope the reader would think about the text on which I have commented (and which I have included in toto for the reader's reference), and ask him or herself if part of it does not speak against ("contra-dict") the rest of it. ]

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[ I acknowledge that there are *both*: (1) ways in which we are in the world, and also (2) ways in which the world is in us. Only when the dead are raised will the project of "consciousness" be fulfilled (and I'm not betting on that...).

Aristotle spoke of "that condition the god is in always but man is in only sometimes". Jean de Coras, the Inquisitor of Martin Guerre, anticipated Husserl by almost 400 years, when he said:

For the spirit alone lives; all else dies. ]

"Yours in discourse...."

Respectfully,

brad mccormick

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Let your light so shine before men,

that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

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Brad McCormick, Ed.D. /

914.238.0788

27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA