Commentary 04 on
Karl Jaspers Forum, Target Article 15, 19 January 1999
HOW DO PHYSICISTS BUILD REALITY?
By Herbert F J Muller
I DO EXIST. DO YOU?
by Paul Jones
25 January 1999
Abstract
The inconsistency of idealism is demonstrated in both ontology
and epistemology. To become applicable in scientific methodology,
the article has to be re-interpreted in a materialistic way,
accounting for the social nature of consciousness.
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Notation:
{ } paragraphs of the source text
The article tries to appeal to science (physics, biology and
psychology) for support of an intentionally idealistic position
denying the existence of any reality beyond "ongoing experience"
and "ad-hoc constructions". However, it is only the quotes from
idealistic philosophers of science (including scientists acting as
amateur philosophers) that tend to agree with the principles
proclaimed. The quotes describing the physical models of
special and general relativity or quantum theory do not contain
anything idealistic about them, representing the usual stand of
most physicists commonly known as natural-science materialism,
and, despite all the variety of idealistic philosophies,
"scientific materialism is the dominant contemporary paradigm"
[R.Leonard, Comm. 8 on KJF TA 7, {7}]. Dr. Muller may complain
that materialism is "very prevalent" {6}, but the very fact
of its prevalence speaks for its scientific value. Paradigms
do not change in response to somebody's desire any change
has to be economically and socially determined, which implies
materialist approach to consciousness as well.
The very title of H.Muller's paper contains a conceptual
displacement from scientific objectivity to solipsism. Physicists
do not "build" reality, at least no more than any other person who
acts and produces material traces in the world. One could speak
about reconstruction rather than construction of reality in science,
reconstruction in specific material forms serving to objectify
the natural correspondence between reality and the patterns of
human activity. The forms of this reflection necessarily
reproduce the features of material things or processes they
reflect, and there is no idea that would not refer to a material
prototype.
This latter statement needs explanation. The intuitive materialism
of most scientists cannot account for existence of abstract ideas
as naturally as existence of physical, chemical, biological or
other systems. The numerous attempts to reduce abstract thought
to mere physiology have largely discredited the materialist
approach to consciousness in general, commonly being identified
with vulgar (reductionist, metaphysical) materialism. Still,
abstractions in human thinking must correspond to material
phenomena, and there is no need to invent any self-existing
consciousness to explain them. The only solution possible
would be to attribute consciousness to a social rather than
biological body, so that abstract ideas would reflect social
rather than physical or other formations. Nevertheless, since
the society is a part of Nature, albeit specific, social processes
are as material as physical, and they can be studied in a
consistently objective way.
Part I of the article may produce a strange impression of void
talking to emptiness. H.Muller's desire to persuade the reader
in that there is no need to admit any reality independent of one's
ideas about it is intrinsically fallible, since, following the
author's reasons, there is no need to admit the existence of anybody
to persuade, or even the existence of the author himself and all
his texts. I doubt that many participants of the Forum would
agree to consider themselves as Dr. Muller's fantasies otherwise,
what might be the sense in sending them anything for comment?
When H.Muller speaks about "ongoing mind-nature experiences", one
gets immediately perplexed: what can be meant by that if there
is no nature outside the mind, and nothing can happen outside
"subjective experience"? Moreover, where does that experience
come from? If there is something beyond the mind, it has to be
different from it in at least one respect, being not identical to
the mind, and hence be independent from the mind in that respect;
what is then the use in denying the existence of mind-independent
reality? If we admit anything (let us call it nature) existing
along with the mind, why should we admit the mind's existence
outside nature? Why not merely a part of nature reflecting nature
and itself? If Kant and Plato said that things as they are can
never be perceived, this does not mean that things cannot be
perceived at all, and that we cannot study them using indirect
methods quite common in any science.
If one assumes that H.Muller does not deny the existence of the
world in ontology, only denying the existence of any structures
in the world outside the mind, the problem of the consistency
of thinking comes forth. If there had been no material correlates
of human thoughts, there would have been no joint activity of many
people and communication between them. However, we can quite often
see hundreds of individuals working for a common goal, and many
people can communicate efficiently enough, despite of all the
misinterpretations that have to be gradually eliminated. This can
only be explained if we admit that people's mental processes
reflect regularities existing outside their minds, some of these
regularities being natural and some being the products of human
activity. Once again we come to reflection as an attribute of
any natural motion, with its social form including self-reflection
in the form of consciousness.
Certainly, the reflections of things are not identical to the
things themselves; however, this distinction cannot be
consistently drawn within idealism. We could recall the medieval
struggle of "nominalism" and "realism": "nominalists" said that
the categories (usually those listed by Aristotle) were mere names
for something in the outer world, while "realists" admitted
independent existence of categories as specific entities. One
cannot identify, say, "nominalism" with materialism, and "realism"
with idealism both contained materialistic and idealistic
elements. However, the assumption of the existence of ideas
outside an individual mind often lead to admitting the existence
of ideas prior to any mind at all, which is the corner-stone of
idealism. H.Muller might be called a "nominalist", if one
interpreted his words in the sense that human ideas fully belong
to consciousness, and not to reality they reflect. One could
also agree that ideas are produced by people only, and not by
non-conscious nature. The difference between materialism and
idealism depends on what is meant under "consciousness". If
consciousness is said to be entirely different from nature,
existing somewhere "outside" it, we deal with idealism; if, on
the contrary, consciousness is understood as a natural (namely,
social) phenomenon, there is nothing strange in admitting the
existence of ideas outside individual mind as long as they
belong to a collective motion in the human society. Individual
consciousness (mind) is only a projection of the collective
consciousness of humanity onto certain material formations
including both biological bodies and their cultural environment.
It should be stressed that the question about objective existence
of human ideas does not coincide with that of objective existence
of structures in nature. There is no reason to deny structured
world before any perception in particular, the existence of
different things in the world. It would be much more logical
to admit that mental structures reflect something in the world,
thus being a little different from mere delirium. Certainly,
there is no need in pre-existence of ideas before any activity,
and structures in cognition do not appear before cognition—but
this does not deny the objectivity of the structures they
reflect. If the world had not been structured beyond any mind,
the participants of the Forum, would not have differed from each
other save in Dr. Muller's imagination, and the existence of the
Forum itself would have been under question.
One could note an obvious inconsistency in H.Muller's discourse,
in his speaking about the "adequacy" of cognitive structures and
"proving" or "testing" it {6}. If there is no correspondence
of mental structures to anything else beyond the mind, why would
anybody have to bother about adequacy and proof? anything imagined
would do equally well. There would be no need in "reporting"
one's imaginary structures to anybody, including oneself, and hence
no need to construct or experience anything at all.
One could analyze every sentence of H.Muller's article demonstrating
the same inconsistency within an idealistic stand. To summarize,
the cognition side of human activity is overestimated in the text,
up to identifying any activity at all with cognition. As a result,
consciousness gets reduced to "subjective experience" {14}, becoming
disconnected from the rest of nature. The well-known direction of
any cognition from syncretism to analyticity, and further to synthesis
and practice, gets distorted in exaggerating the role of the syncretic
stage. Yes, science can only feed on syncretic ideas produced on
the lower levels of cognition, and there is no direct assimilation
of objective distinctions. However, one could note that people's
experience (which is a material process precedes any cognition,
including syncretic one) is already a reflection of natural (and
cultural) processes, and it may be quite non-trivial and
hierarchically organized. H.Muller admits structure formation
"on a biological basis" {4}; he has to make just one more step
to admit social structures, and proceed to the structuredness of
the physical world.
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