KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 86-87 (Umpleby)

Commentary 32 (to C29, Barnett)

"INNOCENCE LOST"
by David Kenneth Johnson
6 June 2006, posted 10 June 2006

<1>
With respect to von Glasersfeld's spectral subject, Barnett apparently agrees that there is no organizing self, no "subject of the subject," but simply a Mullerian "structure of constructed concepts whose organization one endeavors to understand by virtue of a model, itself a constructed concept, which contains concepts of self and objective reality and all the rest."

<2>
If I understand this right - and I suffer from no great illusion that I do - "one [a "subject," I take it] endeavors to understand" the organization of a "structure of constructed concepts" using a "constructed concept or "model" which "contains" the concept of the self or subject (along with everything else).

<3>
The passivity of the prose is revealing. We rightly wonder how this might occur in the absence of an agent capable of forming and entertaining "constructed concepts." No sensible person, I imagine, accepts as adequate the wily politician's evasive claim that "mistakes were made"; neither should we find satisfactory the constructivist dictum "concepts were constructed."

<4>
Barnett will undoubtedly insist that there is no agent - that these are "to be understood" (again, by whom?) as unexperienced experiences. Again Barnett: "The idea of free-floating experiences (experiences without a subject that experiences them) may seem absurdly abstract, but it follows directly from the [Muller's] constructivist view…."

<5>
Now, as an inveterate realist, I can and often do entertain thoughts of unexperienced objects (rocks on Jupiter, to raise one mundane example). I have no problem imagining as well hitherto unexperienced yet potential experiences (holding a rock from Jupiter) and, of course, the commonplace individualistic notion of unexperienced-by-me experiences. But unexperienced experiences, sans phrase, are best left to the logical netherworld of unthought thoughts and other lifeless critters. More than simply "abstract," this homely characterization of the self is flatly nonsensical.

<6>
Barnett is uncomfortable with my phrase the "domain of being," which I described in the following way: "the world (of people, things, ideas, relations, etc.) that we all share." Barnett's is a grand idealistic vision: "I offer the suggestion that reality consists of one's subjective experiences - including the concept of, as Johnson says, "the world (of people, things, ideas, relations, etc.) that we all share."

<7>
In truth, I accept the term "reality" as an economical substitute for "domain of being," though I must, of course, resist on principle the Carnapian reduction of the real to "one's subjective experiences." Reality = experience is the Spartan equation of every idealist. Yet, as I have labored to show in previous replies to Muller and von Glasersfeld, the crafty use of the deceptively singular pronoun "one" (as in "one's subjective experiences" above), though a great foil to solipsism, is logically at odds with the subjectivist thread of their constructivism, since, as we all know, one, or anyone, is shorthand for "any of us." What I have called constructivism's pronoun problem (the "problem of others," in von Glasersfeld's phrase) is Barnett's problem, too.

<8>
Barnett's commentary contains an odd mischaracterization of my view. Just prior to quoting my description of the domain of being as "the world of people, things, ideas, relations, etc.," he writes: "I do not agree with Johnson's suggestion that reality consists of "the world," by which I assume Johnson means the physical universe as described by science and that exists whether or not anyone observes it."

<9>
Reductive physicalism - if that is the doctrine he means to invoke here -- is an intriguing ontological view, I admit, but nothing in this phrase or in my previous posts commits me to it. Clearly enough, my description of the domain of being includes the many impersonal objects of the physical sciences, but that is to neglect or ignore the other members of my list, namely, "people, ideas, relations, etc." There is a tendency, I suppose, (reinforced by my own preference for macro-sized, observable, inanimate examples) to caricature realists as one-sidedly concerned with impossibly transcendent sticks and stones.

<10>
Barnett continues: "Johnson postulates the actual existence of a "world" that corresponds with that concept [of the world]; i.e., the reference to "robustly realist ontology". The onus is now on Johnson to justify his postulation."

<11>
Not so fast. As I see it, this is but a constructivist slight-of-hand:

<12>
Constructivist: All I can know is my concept of the world, not the world itself.

<13>
Realist: Are you not invoking the world itself in your very characterization of your concept of the world?

<14>
Constructivist: Just the world as I experience it, never as it is in itself.

<15>
Realist: But are you not again invoking the world as it is; this time at least twice: once as the potential object or cause of your experience and for a second time in order to contrast some aspect of that world with your experience of it?

<16>
Constructivist: I do not claim to know anything about the way the world really is; I content myself merely with how it appears to me.

<17>
Realist: But are you not for a third time invoking the world as it is to account for these subjective appearances and again to offer some contrast to the way things "really" are (etc., etc.).

<18>
The point is that there could no more be an "epistemology without metaphysics" (von Glasersfeld's phrase) than there could be thoughts without thinkers (or experiences without experiencers or conversations without conversants). Therefore, I am no more obliged to justify my invocation of that which exists beyond my conception of it than is anyone else (that it to say, not obliged at all); and, furthermore, I have yet to meet anyone, constructivist or no, who doesn't, at the moment of our meeting, effectively do the same ! As I've pointed out to Muller and von Glasersfeld in previous posts to this forum, "all we can know are our experiences," is, by virtue of the sentence's plurality and the subjective basis of experience, a self-reflexively inconsistent phrase akin to "No sentence has exactly six words."

<19>
Clearly, Barnett has something else in mind: "He [Johnson] can satisfy that onus by verifying the correspondence between (1) the subjective experience of the concept of "the world" and (2) the actual world. I don't see how he can do that because, whatever means of verification one may attempt, the attempt would involve only more subjective experiences, and one would not have escaped one's subjective bubble."

<20>
This is simple verificationism or, in the parlance of first-year philosophy students, "How can you know for sure that x?" Verificationism, with respect to the constructivism-realism debate, dissolves as we reject apodictic certainty as a condition of knowledge and recognize (as above) the unavoidable, nonsolipsistic ontological presuppositions of our sayings and doings. (Notice, too, the switch to the generic pronoun "one" to introduce a kind of ontological innocence to Barnett's paradoxical suggestion that someone else must accept the burden of "proving" that anything exists beyond his "subjective bubble"!)

<21>
Barnett continues: "I may be wrong and Johnson may be very clever. [So, if he's right… ()] He may have some philosophically unassailable means that I cannot conceive to establish the existence of a reality independent of subjective experience."

<22>
Of course, Mr. Barnett has graciously, if unwittingly, satisfied his own demand for proof of a world "independent of subjective experience" by asking me for it.

<23>
Unless, that is, he's willing to entertain, however falsely from my - or anyone else's -- perspective, solipsism.

<24>
It should be clear now how I would respond to the remainder of Barnett's commentary. For example, Barnett writes: "Johnson cannot satisfy the onus by citing examples of the usefulness or importance of science or other ideas that constitute robust realism. On the importance of those ideas we fully agree, but their importance is itself a part of the grand constructed subjective reality. The importance of those ideas does not prove nor tend to prove the existence of a corresponding actual objective reality."

<25>
My reply is the same: This "grand subjective reality," to the extent that it contains both me and you, is, apparently, not so subjective after all. I'll leave it to others to decide just how grand it is.

<26>
And Barnett writes: "Nor can he satisfy the onus by suggesting that constructivism leads to solipsism. The term "solipsism" has become an all-purpose label of philosophical heresy and contagion. In this regard, I think it is appropriate to invoke the principle stated in the KJF statement of purpose not to use labels or refer to "some author or epistemological school, because the labels are used in different ways by different writers". If Johnson thinks constructivism leads to a contradiction or absurdity, then he should spell out the absurdity or contradiction explicitly and not just invoke the "threat of solipsism", or the "specter of solipsism."

<27>
This line of thought is a red herring. Indeed, I have done precisely what Barnett asks; and I refer the interested reader to TA 75 (and the many subsequent commentaries) where I present five independent reasons for thinking RC self-reflexively inconsistent. I would define solipsism as subjective idealism - the idea that the world consists solely of my ideas (sensations, perceptions, experiences, etc.). And I join von Glasersfeld in thinking it an absurd, perhaps ineffable, doctrine. My point is simply that von Glasersfeld's radicalism is logically incompatible with his rejection of solipsism (as well as the many other undeniably realist elements of his theory).

<28>
And about all those extra-subjective constraints on subjective constructive activity, Barnett writes: "Von Glasersfeld acknowledges that there are principles that constrain one's constructions, and it may be true that von Glasersfeld does not explain what those principles are, where they originate, or how they are imposed…. But it does not follow from the existence of constraints on conceptual creativity that there must be an objective universe that imposes those constraints as Johnson suggests without any supporting argument."

<29>
Objectivity. Now there's a constructivist "all-purpose label of heresy or contagion" ! Imagine, if you will, two persons, Barnett and Johnson, each locked within the confines of his subjectively constructed world. This simple scenario amounts to anti-constructivist heresy, since, by hypothesis, each of these two subjective worlds is, from the standpoint of the other, extra-subjective. And, constructivist mystification of such terms notwithstanding, extra-subjective simply means "objective." Therefore, Barnett's mere invocation of von Glasersfeld and me supplies all of the "objective universe" (and then some) one needs to house these extra-subjective constraints. Objective ontological innocence is for the solipsist alone.

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

David Kenneth Johnson