KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Müller)

Commentary 40

CONSTRUCTIVISM, DECONSTRUCTIVISM
AND THE METANARRATIVE
by Dan Smith (preceded by an exchange with H Müller)
June 2001, posted 31 July 2001

<1>
( Eschatology, encompassing and the totality of the Construct. )

[DS]
Experiencing exists.

[HM]
What do you mean ? We experience, and create structures inside this experience as it happens, in order to deal with it, and to expand on it, etc. I think that things would be easier if Descartes had said "I think, and I assert that I am and that the world is". This would point to what we do, but without a mind-independent reality postulate. Namely : truth and reality (existence, being) result from our investment of faith in the created structures. We posit existence, being.

<2>
[DS]
Can being transcend experience? Can experience transcend being?

[HM]
Yes, if you start from my statement above : Mental structures transcend experience, : (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, i.e., 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 (TA32 [19]). - But it is helpful to replace static MIR by as-if-MIR.

And experience encompasses all possible concepts : The concepts are used, among other things, to define parts of (and from within) ongoing and remembered experience. As a side-effect, these parts are isolated from the remainder of experience. This means of course that many other aspects of the same overall experience are not included in the used concept. If one talks about a stone, its color is for instance not automatically included, even if it is experienced; for this one needs a further concept, such as "black". (The "black"-concept itself transcends of course again the momentary "black"-experience.) But there is always much left over of the experience, which is wider than all used concepts, and which would not be completely grasped by any possible number of concepts, used successively or simultaneously, and thus experience encompasses the concepts. [36]

<3>
[DS]
What are the horizons of experience? What are the experiential horizons of history? Are these legitimate questions?

[HM]
I would say they are legitimate. But one has to start, in my opinion, from all-encompassing unstructured experience. We experience history in terms of our mental structures, that is why it is constantly being re-written.

[DS]
Jaspers' extension of existentialism invites an organic functionalist cosmology, distinct from any objectivist scientific cosmology.

[HM]
Objectivity is a specialization of belief (or "knowledge" as strong belief), in other words a special form of experience.

<4>
[DS]
Radical constructivism invites a view of the mind that is not encompassed nor necessarily encumbered by neurophysiology.

[HM]
Neurophysiology is objective science, it takes place inside experience (or "mind"), not vice versa.

[DS]
What then are the horizons of personal experience? What are we to make of human spirituality?

[HM]
Spirituality tries to deal with unstructured (or at least not inhibited by structures) experience. In the process people build some more structures, but I think it should be possible to avoid nebulous thinking nevertheless.

<5>
[DS]
Is there a personal eschatology that is appropriate to a Jasperian constructivism? This question is not answerable in an acosmic context. Thus are we forced to turn to a constructivist cosmology. We seek a cosmology that transcends any ontology. This would be an organic cosmology. It would have elements of panpsychism and pantheism.

[HM]
I don't think that Jaspers used the term "constructivism". He wrote about "eschatological myths", for instance "An der Grenze des Tages ... die Leidenschaft zur Nacht durchbricht alle Ordnungen. Sie stuerzt sich in den zeitlosen Abgrund des Nichts, der alles in seinen Strudel zieht ... die Unklarheit als das zeitlose Dunkel des Eigentlichen" (Philosophie III, p. 102-3) - this sounds like an apotheosis of foggy thinking. With this I dont want to say it is all "negative" : the rich historic myths start in foggy circumstances, such as the Bible, Ilead, Romulus and Remus, Beowulf, Wagner's operas, the Grimm fairy tales, etc. It is just important - while using them as sources of inspiration - not to get stuck there, and not to make them replace "daylight" structured thinking, in form of dreams or even delusions.

<6>
[DS]
But the overriding concern of an eschatologist is the teleology. Can constructivism speak to teleology? Does the ecology of mind militate against a teleology of mind?

[HM]
I am not sure what you mean. Mind always has a forward looking side, if that is what you referring to. This involves extrapolations from present (on-going) experience. But maybe you better explain your meaning of this term.

[DS]
A casual google search nowhere finds these words conjoined. Are we to suppose that a constructivist teleology is an oxymoron? The oxymoronic potential of a constructivist teleology is greatly reduced by the bracketing of the scientific strictures of physical causality. To say that ecology is antithetical to purpose and reason is to declare ecology to be mindless, not exactly in keeping with the tenets of constructivism, I dare say!

[HM]
Please explain what you mean.

<7>
[DS]
With encompassing experience there is encompassing mind. I agree, experience encompasses structures, see above. Might this encompassing mind not have a telic aspect with a culturally ingressive potential? If the telos is not a MIR then we should find it well represented in the history of spirituality, and indeed we do. Indeed we do!

[HM]
Sounds ok, but you better elaborate on your meaning.

<8>
[DS]
It seems that I am inquiring into the function of experience. Or, what is the logical end of (temporal) experience? Am I out of the constructivist court in this line of inquiry?

[HM]
Experience is the entrance to us and the world. - For all (animals and humans) the UNDIVIDED AND UNSTRUCTURED EXPERIENCE IS THE ONLY AVAILABLE ENTRANCE to any sensation or knowledge (including objective knowledge). This entrance can be neither circumvented, jumped over, nor even neglected, without producing an error which makes understanding difficult. We are all caught in our (self-and-nature) experience, it is not possible to start somewhere else. All STRUCTURES, the pre-conceptual ones as well as scientific and all other (word-) concepts, ARE LATER than experience itself. Concepts too are caught inside experience, and only from there are they comprehensible. (from TA32 [15]).

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<9>
[DS]
A primary aspect of constructivism is its pragmatic bent. So I trust that it will not count against me to focus on the 'bottom line' of constructivism, which, in my mind at least, is its deconstructive potential.

How so?

Here's the story:

Constructivism entails constructors. We are among those. The world is our construct. The apparent unity of the world entails a minimal ecology of mind. The fact that each of us constructors spends her waking hours in a common semi-coherent construct is remarkable even from a physicalist perspective, and is even more so from a constructivist perspective. Some ecology!

<10>
How about that ecology? What is the nature of the ecology of mind which pervades our world of mind? The key issue is coherence. A swamp is an ecosystem, but we do not normally attribute the degree of coherence to a swamp that we do to the world. The coherence of the swamp is seen as derivative of the physical and biological coherence of the world as a whole.

It has been remarked by more than one physicist that the most incomprehensible aspect of the world is its degree of comprehensibility. The world is remarkably comprehensible from many perspectives and we are its primary comprehenders.

<11>
So what?

Consider the ecology of our neurons. A casual examination of the brain gives a rather swampy impression. The most detailed possible objective examination gives an even stronger swampy impression. And yet here we are, you and I philosophizing about the Metanarrative. The whole point of constructivism is, after all, that there is much more to the world than meets the purely objective eye. Or even more succinctly: there is no such thing as an 'objective eye'. Our constructs are never just objects. They are irreducibly subjective, and, like some swamp monster, we subjects arise out of the swamp of our own neurons to contemplate the infinite depths of 'reality'.

<12>
The question then arises in every spiritual tradition as to whether, out of the near chaos of we constructors, there might similarly arise a meta-constructor, in which case we constructors would also assume the role of constructees. Almost invariably the answer is' yes'. There are, of course, many possible degrees of theism, but never are there no vestiges of it, outside of the purely scientific cosmology.

We constructors are the narrators of our individual life-worlds, and every significant culture remains founded upon the prospect that we are also the narratees of a putative Metanarrator.

What then is the Story? From whence do we come, whither do we go?

<13>
Every gnosis that has ever seen the light of day has us embarked upon a sojourn far from our spiritual home. The only divergences in this Metanarrative concern the timing. Are we still outward or are we now homeward bound?

If our materialism is the measure of our estrangement from our spiritual home, then clearly we have gone about as far into that wilderness as it is cognitively possible to wander.

Furthermore, every coherent narrative has a linear temporal structure with a beginning, middle and ending. Our history is the story of our progressive fascination and infatuation with the material antitheses of the spirit. Our very close encounter now with the Grand Unified Physical Theory of Everything might suggest to some that our long march into materialism is at a turning point. This would place us at the beginning of the end of our materialist sojourn within the coherent Metanarrative.

<14>
If you have any horse sense you will know that saddle horses tend to increase their gate as soon as they know they are headed back to the barn. So too might we humans. If our herd instincts were allowed to take over at the crucial turning point of the Metanarrative one might envision a veritable stampede. The fact that the traditional eschatologies speak also of apocalypses is not terribly reassuring on this score.

What are we would-be prophets of the deconstructive turn of the Metanarrative to do if we wish also to be vigilant of the public welfare? The obvious move at this point would be to contact the authorities.

<15>
It is fair to say that I have a call into the White House on this matter. An acquaintance of mine happens to be a senior officer with the National Intelligence Council. He and I periodically discuss eschatology. Our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Saturday. A few years ago we did meet with Gore's national security staffers on a related topic. Also my sister happens to be a long-time confidant of the Bush family. It's really just a question of the proper timing. Having survived the run-up to Y2K, we now have a modest breathing space, but only very modest.

In the meantime, concerned citizens may keep their ear to the ground, listening for the tell-tale hoof beats.

I might suggest to Ron P. that the Jaspers forum would be a likely candidate for a talking and listening post, conveniently placed on the fringes of academia.

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Dan Smith