KARL JASPERS FORUM
TA92 (Beamish)
Commentary
39 (to C38, Adams)
DEFINING
ORIGINS
by Herbert FJ Müller
10 August 2008, posted 16 August 2008
I am obliged to Bill Adams for his answer, which may
help to specify the items of concern a bit further.
Re <1>
The ‘grammatical’ request for an active voice implies
an active speaker, so far I can see. The
problem is that we tend to be so used to being defined speakers that we may
forget this pre-supposition. The ‘final
cause’ is simulated in evolution by the selection process subsequent to random mutations. Thus in effect biological development becomes
teleological. This sneaky trick of
‘nature’ makes teleology ‘modern’. If
that makes you feel uncomfortable you can say ‘as-if-teleology’.
Re <2>
Newborns have some built-in structures, obviously. They are the seeds for later
differentiation. But that does not
contradict the need for structuring, which is a lifelong task. And besides, in case birth is ‘too late’, one can go back to before birth. The important point is that the difference
between self and the world out there is a pragmatic and not an ontic distinction.
Re <3>
Kant wanted a ‘Copernican revolution’ of thinking, but got stuck half-way. He showed that subjective efforts are needed
for the formation of reality, but (as I pointed out in C1 to TA108) he wrote :
[ in my
translation of Kant’s discussion of the Copernican Revolution of thinking, in
the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason (1787).
I have not broken up his long and complicated sentences. ]
(B XVI-XVIII)
“ I should think that the
examples of mathematics and natural science, which have, by way of a once
accomplished revolution, become what they now are, should be remarkable enough
to reflect on the essential aspect of the change in the way of thinking, which
has become so advantageous for them, and to imitate as possible inasmuch as
their analogy, as science of reason (Vernunft),
with metaphysics, allows, as least in an attempt. Until now one has
assumed that all our understanding (Erkenntnis)
should be geared to the objects; but all attempts to say something about them a
priori with the help of concepts, by which our understanding would be enlarged,
have been defeated under this pre-supposition. One ought then to try for
a change whether we cannot become more successful in the tasks of metaphysics,
if we assume that the objects have to conform to our understanding, which in
that way already a priori agrees better with an understanding which should
determine something about them before they are given to us. With this it
is just as with the first thoughts of Copernicus who, after things did not
proceed well with the movements of the heavens when he assumed that the whole
army of stars turns around the spectator, whether one might not be more
successful when the spectator turns around, and leaves the stars at rest.
Now in metaphysics one can, as far as the view (Anschauung) of the objects is concerned, try
something similar. If the view should be guided by the properties of the
objects, I cannot see how one could know something about them a priori; but if
the object (as sense object) is guided by the properties of our ability to
view, I can quite well imagine such a possibility. But because I cannot
remain at these views, when they should become understandings, but I have to
refer them to something as object, and determine the latter by the former, I
can either assume that the concepts (Begriffe)
by which I effect this determination, conform to the objects, and then I am
again in the same difficulty of having to know something about them a priori;
or I assume that the objects, or which is the same, the experience (Erfahrung) in which alone they
can be understood (as given objects), conform to the concepts, so I see at once
an easier information (Auskunft)
because the experience itself is a form of understanding, the rules of which,
even before the objects are given to me, therefore I have to presume a priori,
to which thus all objects of experience have to conform and agree with. ...”
And : ‘It is absurd to have appearances without
something that appears’ [but that is a logical consequence of the ad-hoc
assumption of ‘appearance’ which implies something appearing].
[ Kant said here that our mental structures determine the world, rather than
vice versa; the ideas = noumena = metaphysical
things-in-themselves were no longer something one could know by looking at them
but instead they are our structures which we create and try out. But he
still maintained that ‘objects are given’. Despite the revolutionary
change, this is an ambiguous or mixed message; the change is incomplete.
He went a bit further in his opus postumum. ]
I should add that I think one has to distinguish
between structuring (which applies to all structures in experience) and
inventing. Invention applies only to
some structuring activity, where no spontaneous structuring (like pain, or
visual gestalt formation) takes place, namely for inventions like the one of
religion, or of business ideas, songs, and to some degree one’s own identity,
etc. This might clarify some questions
about the subject’s activity in reality-creation.
Concerning the ‘self-existent unstructured experience’ : my
start-point is Jaspers’ emphasis on the encompassing nature of human
experience. I think this is a
fundamental point, and implies that all mental structures (including structures
like ‘self’, ‘objects’, or ‘world’) are created inside it. It also implies that experience is
unstructured aside from the structures that arise within it. To mention a simple example
: a toothache depends on the
subject’s structuring because it can be eliminated by anaesthesia. The moon can be eliminated by closing your
eyes. Except that of course we have are
all evolved to become objectivists, and take persistence of structured objects,
not experience, as fundamental.
Re <4>
Now if we can get ourselves to shake free from that habit, we might get some
wiggle room by recognizing that objectivity happens within experience, not vice
versa. The emphasis on the unstructured
in Buddhist epistemology may help with that : structures are not the start-point, they are
secondary developments. And Jaspers’
encompassing was developed in the western tradition, and so were the efforts of,
among others, Nietzsche and Derrida, who wanted to de-construct metaphysics,
which is the core of objectivity. For
this, the position of an unstructured basis and/or goal and background, as
discussed by the authors who describe the Buddhist theory of knowledge can be
helpful, and this is the main reason why I believe it is of interest.
Re <5>
And that goes for objective science too. It has been very successful (and that is a
major obstacle for corrections, as you imply), but that does not mean that it has
to continue to show things upside down forever.
And I don’t see that being a structure within experience would make the
objective method less successful, while it might prevent trying to use it where
it does not work.
------------------------------------------------
Herbert FJ Müller
e-mail <herbert.muller (at)
mcgill.ca>