KARL JASPERS FORUM
TA93 (Müller)

Response 22 (Addition)

COMMUNICATING MINDS : SHARING EXPERIENCE
by Herbert FJ Müller
5 May 2008, posted 10 May 2008

[1]
The mind is a bubble of experience (Müller 2007); all mental structures are formed within it, transcending it is not possible. When this is acknowledged metaphysics-ontology ceases being a fictitious knowledge of impossible mind-external reality, to become a mental tool for structuring and handling experience : ‘working metaphysics-ontology’ (Müller 2002). It is used like other tools, such as language or mathematics.

[2]
But there is another phenomenon, which might seem in conflict with the notion of confinement to a bubble : that communication with others is a prominent part of life. We experience in common with others, with society, communicating in various ways, verbally and non-verbally, emotionally, even with animals.

[3]
The answer to the apparent puzzle is for one thing that others (society) are also structured within subject-inclusive experience, as vonGlasersfeld (2008) has recently again emphasized. And secondly, the mind encompasses all structures within it, as Jaspers (1947) showed. And furthermore, ‘you’ are not only a fixed image, but all of your reality, all you do and say as well, are in my bubble of experience; and ‘I’ am in yours.

[4]
Strictly speaking one cannot know directly what happens in someone else’s bubble. We know only what we have structured; including that others have bubbles too, which cannot be transcended. So why does this work in practice ? People are part of the world, they are structured within experience, like all structures. And for practical purposes, people are right to assume that they have a large part of their working reality in common with others, that much (though by no means all) of the content of their bubble of experience is shared. But the supporting evidence is indirect only : by inference from results.

[5]
Although such sharing is of great practical importance, it always remains approximate and presumptive, never entire. This is not surprising : because all knowledge is structured subject-inclusively, approximate, pragmatic. Purported absolute and transcendent realities (things, people, gods, theories) are templates for thinking. We use them because they are helpful. Some of them can be seen ‘as-if they were’ subject-independent - in case that is desired in order to simplify thinking; and provided the as-if aspect remains acknowledged.

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REFERENCES

vonGlasersfeld E (2008), Who Conceives of Society ? Constructivist Foundations 3 (2) 59-64.

Jaspers K (1947), Von der Wahrheit. München, Zürich : Piper.

Müller HFJ (2002), Effect of Working-Ontology on Some Conceptual Puzzles. Karl Jaspers Forum, TA57.

Müller HFJ (2007), Brain in Mind : the Mind-Brain Relation with the Mind at the Center. Constructivist Foundations 3 (1) 30-37.

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Herbert FJ Müller
e-mail <herbert.muller (at) mcgill.ca>