KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 2 (to R1 by Leslie)

A WORLD OF EXPERIENCE
by Herbert FJ Müller
15 October 2003, posted 26 October 2003

[ NOTE : It is always good to have frank exchanges, and I really hope to continue the exchange with Professor John Leslie, which started from his book review in TLS. Discussion ought to be possible, I hope, even though constructivism denies the possibility of traditional metaphysical knowledge, which he advocates. Such dialogue is the main purpose of our forum, as I see it. - In the following I answer to some of JL's remarks. Quotations from his R1 are in "BOLD" ]

(Abstract)

" IF YOU KICK ME DOWNSTAIRS, I'M A SUBJECT, AND YOU, WITHOUT PHILOSOPHICAL ERROR, ARE TREATING ME AS AN OBJECT "

HM : I cannot physically kick your subjective experience (or self, ego, or soul, if you prefer).

<3>
… TO COLONIZE THE GALAXY. WHERE IS THE CONTRADICTION …"

HM : I see the contradiction in the proposal to colonize the galaxy with unreliable intelligence, which is a source of problems. The main task is closer at hand : to improve the trust-worthiness of intelligence on earth.

<4>
"… THE UNIVERSE EXISTED LONG BEFORE HUMANS …"

HM : This is quite true in a naturalist framework, but nature is itself a concept within our experience, which necessarily comes first. In that sense, past and future are extrapolations from now. Naturalism (empiricism, realism, positivism) is one of the possible structure creations within thinking. It is helpful, often compelling, but still it is an experience-internal structure formation. Nature as a tool is not the same as (ontological or metaphysical) nature-in-itself. But the latter, if one subtracts the "in-itself" because it is unknowable, actually is a working fiction, helpful within limits (that is to say, nature-as-a-working-tool).

<7>
"… CERTAIN THAT TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR …"

HM : True, and you can be certain of this because you have made the 2+2 procedure up this way (or rather someone else has, and you adopted it because it is helpful), and it turns out to be a very reliable (i.e., reproducible) procedure, for a number of reasons. This means that what we know is our mental structures (procedures, and knowledge as shades on the wall of a cave à la Plato, etc), not a reality beyond that (as he said).

<12>
" I THINK THAT THE FACT THAT ELEPHANTS AREN'T CONCERNED WITH THE LONG TERM FUTURE OF THE RACE OF ELEPHANTS IN NO WAY SHOWS THAT IT IS INAPPROPRIATE FOR HUMANS TO BE CONCERNED WITH THE LONG TERM FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE."

HM : I agree. On the other hand, that does not imply colonizing the galaxy in order to make us feel better.

<16>
" I USE GOD TOSSING COINS OR ROLLING DICE JUST AS A MEANS OF ILLUSTRATING POINTS IN PROBABILITY THEORY. IT IS AS IF I ASKED WHETHER GOD WOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING EVIL IN PREVENTING HUMANS FROM EVOLVING, IN ORDER TO ILLUSTRATE THE POINT THAT I SEE IT AS A GREAT GOOD THAT HUMANS DID EVOLVE. "

HM : May be it is a great good, and I hope you are right, but other opinions are available. See for instance the story of the ecologist Garrett Hardin, who said (1996) that "The human species viewed as a whole has been a disaster for the earth." (Science 302, News of the week, 3 October 2003). Perhaps this is an over-statement, but it seems to me that both your doom prognosis and his pessimism might serve as incentives for everybody to work on the possibilities to make intelligence in general and technology in particular more trustworthy.

<18>
" SEEMS TO ME THAT WHETHER THE WORLD IS DETERMINISTIC IS A QUESTION OF FACT, AND THAT A THING CAN BE A QUESTION OF FACT WHETHER OR NOT HUMANS CAN EVER KNOW WHAT THE FACTS OF THE MATTER ARE. "

HM : This I find baffling. How can one discuss the facts of the world when it is not possible to know either the world or its facts ?

" MORE AND MORE, YOUR COMMENTS STRIKE ME AS COMING FROM INSIDE A PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION WITH WHICH, I'M SORRY TO SAY, I HAVE VERY LITTLE SYMPATHY. IT'S HARD INDEED TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN HOW YOUR MIND WORKS IN THIS AREA AND HOW MY MIND WORKS IN IT. "

HM : Sorry about that, but until further notice I believe that everybody is confronted with the same experiential conditions, even though concept frames shape them. The conceptual schemes are tools we create inside our ongoing experience for dealing with that same experience, and one can always try to see where and why there are difficulties. Thus I think it makes sense to discuss things in order to establish bridges (denying this is like saying "you cannot get there from here" - that we are imprisoned by our concepts). Could such a proposition meet with sympathy ?

" VIRTUALLY ANY ARGUMENT THAT I GAVE WOULD, I THINK, BE REJECTED BY YOU AS BEING CONCERNED WITH FACTS THAT AREN'T RELATIVE TO HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY, AND VIRTUALLY ALL YOUR ARGUMENTS WOULD BE REJECTED BY ME BECAUSE I THINK THAT THE IDEA THAT FACTS ARE RELATIVE TO HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY IS BADLY MISTAKEN. HOW, FOR A START, AM I TO UNDERSTAND THE SUPPOSED FACT IN WHICH YOU BELIEVE, THAT ALL FACTS ARE THUS RELATIVE ? IS IT ITSELF TO BE CONSTRUED AS A RELATIVE FACT ONLY ?"

HM : What I reject is only what Plato and Kant have said is not possible. Some naturalists disregard their message, and claim they know the world-in-itself (i.e., that they know metaphysical entities) - but that I really think cannot be done. Hermann Weyl proposed this explicitly in 1927, but changed his opinion a few years later, when he faced the conceptual problems of particle physics. And also, in my opinion facts are not relative to human subjectivity, rather they are created inside it, as mental structures, which are always those of mind-and-nature, with no primary subject-object split.

" NOTE: NOT ONE OF MY ABOVE COMMENTS IS MEANT AS AN ATTACK ON THE IDEALIST TRADITION IN PHILOSOPHY. IN FACT, MY LATEST BOOK, "INFINITE MINDS" (OXFORD UNIV. PRESS, 2001), IS FIRMLY INSIDE THAT TRADITION. "

HM : Could you elaborate on that statement ? According to Hegel, ideas are in a sort of super-world, primary and absolute and (?) mind-independent but we can somehow know them. In other words, ideas before experience. You say : the world (or nature) is a super-world and comes before experience but we can know it. But the two don't match. Marx had already tried to combine them, starting from Hegel but claiming to be a scientist, and used his "science" to justify his dogmatism. And further, my opinion is neither of those, it is that ideas (including the idea of the world, and what is called perception) are tools, constructed within experience, and in that sense secondary to it. My main reason for using this view is that it is the only one - that I know of - that can deal with the mind-brain question.

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Herbert FJ Müller