Martin Striz (striz1@MARSHALL.EDU)
Sat, 1 Nov 1997 12:05:25 +0100
I've enjoyed reading the multitude of essays found on the net and your
own pages. They offer clear presentations of the MOQ on a level most
people can understand. But I've noticed it's the 'intellectual'
community that puts up the greatest resistence against the MOQ, so I've
decided to write a more 'intellectual' essay in support of it. The
essay isn't finished yet as I still have to add the pro-MOQ material,
but the anti- Idealism, Materialism, SOM, and phenomenalistic
metaphysics arguments have been written. I've included them. Please
let me know if I'm being overly-rationalistic. I suppose Pirsig would
have my head over this. :-)
(Note: I'm not a professional philosopher, nor do I have any formal
study in philosophy. All definitions or presentations of varying
philosophical schools are merely my best understanding of them.)
>>>>>>>>>>>Here 'goes>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE NOUMENON OF QUALITY
Phenomena are the experiences or sensual appearances of things by a
perceiver. They can be distinguished from noumena, or
things-in-themselves. The perceiver, or subject, experiences sense data
about an object, but as to whether the actual object is experienced has
been a controversy in philosophy. The main cause of this controversy is
the ontological presuppositions that one holds—usually either
Materialism, Idealism, or a metaphysical dualism that incorporates both
subjects and objects. Phenomenology is a philosophical tradition that
originated with Husserl and attempts to examine the ontological nature
of reality from a presuppositionless view point. This tradition
culminated in Jean-Paul Sartre’s work "Being and Nothingness." It is my
intention to show that none of the three presuppositions mentioned,
which are individually held by almost everyone, are a logical or
practical framework for reality. They cannot make complete sense out of
the questions of reality that can be posted. Furthermore, it is my
intention, by using the argument espoused in "Being and Nothingness," to
show that phenomenology is not a presuppositionless framework, and that
any ontological viewpoint will have some basic presuppositions. It is
up to us to select the best one in terms of its sense, goodness, and
practical utility. I will conclude by offering one that is both
rational and practical.
First let us examine each of the three main ontological cases in turn.
Materialism posits an ontological framework of reality in which all
real things are of one nature, that being objects. In phenomenological
terms they are noumena, things-in-themselves. Objects are independent
of a potential perceiver, static in their existence, follow strict
‘natural’ and logical laws, and contain the perceivable data that a
‘subject’ can obtain. However, a ‘subject’ is not a real entity
in-itself. It is only real in the sense that it is objective material
arranged in a state where perception is possible. In mind-body
considerations, a mind is the result of neural and chemical interactions
in a physical brain.
Materialism fails in that it posits a ‘nature’ of existence that it
cannot possibly justify. This nature is the object devoid of
perceivable values, the noumenon. As Locke pointed out, if we try to
talk about an object aside from the sense data the subject perceives, we
find ourselves talking about nothing at all. Perception is a purely
empirical activity, and the positing of an underlying object that
contains or holds the empirical data, but is not the perceivable data
itself, is completely meaningless. It cannot be justified by empirical
means, however it cannot be justified by rational means, either. What
logic would necessarily lead one to conclude that a non-sensual,
objective entity underlies the data of experience? None. The data of
experience can exist in-themselves just as easily, and the underlying
‘object’ becomes unnecessary and easily eliminated with a swipe of
Occam’s Razor. The object has over time become ‘intuitively obvious’ to
Western thinkers, but in reality offers nothing useful. And since it is
unjustified, unnecessary, and meaningless, there are no logical grounds
for taking it into consideration as an ontological framework.
However, aside from its unjustifiable position, there is no practical
use in accepting the Materialist position. In fact, there are
contradictions and problems inherent with this ontological framework, so
it must necessarily be thrown out. For example, in the view of
Materialism, objects, or substances, are continuous through space and
time. This is part of their independent and static nature. However,
quantum physics has shown that on the subatomic level particles consist
of quanta, which are essentially packages of existence. These quanta
appear and disappear rapidly and continuously, so that an ‘object’ is
never completely there at once. Since objects do not satisfy in
practice their own ontologically objective nature, they are
contradictory within the framework of Materialism! Since quantum
physics is based on materialistic presuppositions, Materialism defeats
itself. Another example is the free will paradox. (Although
determinism does occur to a degree, in that one’s choices are always
pre-determined by the limits of one’s environment, the ability to act or
not to act is always a free choice. That is, if one can either go to
the movies or to the mall, one has been relegated in a deterministic
sense to these two options because they may be the only viable choices
on a particular Saturday, but no causal event goes into the choosing of
one or the other, or of simply choosing to stay home.) Within the
Materialistic framework, this freedom of will cannot exist because any
choice or thought made by the mind must be reduced to a set of chemical
or neural interactions within the brain. And since objects function on
a causal basis and adhere to strict natural laws, any choice must be
caused. So, if one chooses to go to the mall, this thought is formed by
neural signals. Taking causality into consideration, what triggered
those neural signals? If one has never made such a choice (i.e. taken
that neuro-chamical path) before, there is no precedence on which one to
take. Do the neurons or chemicals interact randomly to make a choice?
This would violate their causal nature. So Materialism cannot account
for the ability to choose or make new thoughts. These are just two
simple examples, but hopefully the point is clear. There is no
practical use for Materialism, but in fact it is quite unuseful in
practical affairs.
Leaving Materialism aside, or rather discarding it wholly, let us now
turn to Idealism. This framework also posits an ontological monism,
however in this case any real thing is a subject, or a conception of
that subject. The whole of reality is of this particular nature.
Consciousnesses and subject-based ‘things’ differ from phenomena in that
the latter are considered to be fallible, sensual appearances of real
noumena, while the former are reducible to conscious thoughts not based
on any noumena, and these thoughts or concepts consitute reality. In
this case the ‘subject’ is not a special state of objects, but rather
objects are false intuitions about things that are nothing more than
concepts that subjects hold.
Idealism can logically justify the nature of its reality (thoughts) by
employing the idea of empirical means of gaining knowledge, however
Idealism cannot logically account for several concepts without positing
additional concepts that are unjustifiable. For example, causality. The
notion of causality is that given the occurance of A, the occurance of B
will always follow. Causality is a very very important concept. It is
the force that makes science and experimental repetition valid, and
indeed gives us the certainty to believe a chair we sit on will hold us
up and not fall, or fly straight up for unkown reasons. Causality is
central to our understanding of reality. In the context of perception,
the Materialist held that the occurance of B, the phenomenon, was caused
by the occurance of A, the noumenon. This made sense until we realized
the noumenon was an unjustifiable proposition. For the Idealist, the
occurance of B, the thought, is apparently caused by nothing, since
thoughts are the whole of reality. Without any other ‘thing’ out there,
there is no thing to produce thoughts aside from the creative will of
the subject. Then the whole of reality is reduced to whatever the
subject wills it to be, which is a contradiction to how we know reality
functions (by causation that is usually independent of ourselves). We
certainly don’t will to have our houses robbed, but it happens. So what
causes the occurance of ‘things’ and ‘events’ in the subject? The
Idealist answer is usually that another mind, or subject, exists on a
higher plane of existence. This mind, often called Big Mind or World
Spirit, contains within itself all subjects and their concepts, and all
of reality can be reduced to concepts within Big Mind. The problem for
the Idealist now becomes that Big Mind cannot be empirically determined,
but the entirety of their position originally rested on the empiricist
method of gaining knowledge! Now they have had to resort to rationally
inventing a concept to reconcile Idealism with causality. However, when
inspected, it really amounts to nothing more than what was just stated,
it is an invention. Much like the noumenon, it cannot be justified,
only supposed. Anything else could likewise be supposed, including an
infinite regress of Big Minds, each on a higher plane of existence than
the former.
As for the practicality of Idealism, this should be even more clear.
Intuitively we tend to assume noumena exist, and the rejection of
noumena by Idealism clearly shows its lack of intuitive or rhetorical
soudness. It does not make practical sense to say an elephant charging
at one’s self is merely a concept in the mind, an intuitive illusion,
when that elephant can easily kill you. It can be answered that the
concept becomes glaringly real when you consider that your belief in
yourself, the subject, is also a concept. And so it becomes the case of
the elephant illusion charging at the self illusion. All this amounts
to is that the terms ‘subjective concepts’ or ‘illusions’ are
unnecessary descriptions of a charging elephant, which the Idealist
admits is a real and ‘objective’ event by saying the subject and
elephant are equal (the elephant is no longer ‘just’ a concept of the
subject, but it is obviously not of the same nature as the subject
either, so its ‘objectivity’ is all that remains). The word ‘illusion’
or ‘concept’ becomes meaningless and unnecessary if every real thing is
one. These unnecessary descriptions just complicate matters and can be
eliminated with the swipe of Occam’s Razor. They are not practically
useful for the sole reasons that it is not practically useful to treat a
charging elephant as merely a concept, and to treat the objectivity of
the situation as a false intuition!
Having thrown out Materialism mainly for its logical absurdness, and
Idealism mainly for its practical absurdness, let us now turn to a
metaphysical position that is often considered to be a common ground
between the two, or an inclusion of both. This is the framework of
subject-object dualism whichs states that there are two primary forms of
reality, having different natures, and interacting by the process of
perception. The object realm is physical, continuous, causal, and
follows set laws, while the subject realm is creative, changing,
unpredictable, and perceives the object realm.
The main problems with subject-object dualism, aside from sharing many
of the logical and practical inconsistencies with Materialism and
Idealism, are found in the interaction of subjects and objects, and the
many disjunctions formed by this line of thinking. Having completely
different natures, subjects and objects are deeply divided. Perception
is an attempt to interact between the two realms, but it is a fallible
form of interaction that is often mistaken and misguided. The subject
cannot actually know about an object as it exists; only by sensation and
further interpretation of sense data, and then by conceptualization, can
a subject get to know about the world. This is a fallible form of
gaining knowledge since the subject necessarily ‘subjectifies’ its
perceptions. In all other respects, it is utterly trapped within its
own realm. Some dualists may disagree with this view and posit the
notion that a subject ‘comes out of itself’ to experience objects. This
is a position that cannot be justified and is met with much opposition,
furthering the uselessness of subject-object dualistic thinking. The
subject-object division causes people to concentrate their efforts in
one half of the dualism or the other, producing such divisions as
romantic or classic, theoretic or aesthetic, nature or nurture, Eastern
or Western, and scientific or artistic modes of thinking. People from
the West find it difficult to communicate with and understand people
from the East because of such disjunctions. The impracticality of this
mode of thought is quite evident.
Casting subject-object dualism away with Materialism and Idealism, and
without further ado, let us examine phenomenology. To the
phenomenologist following Husserl’s example, one must start examing the
ontological nature of existence without any presuppositions. This line
of thinking practically culminated with Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous
existentialist book "Being and Nothingness." However, upon further
investigation, one will find that Sartre indeed starts with many
presuppositions of his own. For example, he is an ardent atheist and
never gives any justification for this view, but rather pronounces it as
a given fact. Sartre and other phenomenologists also treat the noumena,
the things-in-themselves, as objects much the same way Materialists do.
An object of the noumenal kind is not just a thing-perceived, but it
includes many of the characteristics of materialistic objects. These
include continuity, rigidity, causality, and so forth. In fact, Sartre
concludes that subjects are ‘nothingness,’ they are negations of
‘being.’ All the world consists of as ‘actual existences’ is the
noumena. This is for all practical purposes a Materialist account of
ontology!
If one were to start from a truelly presuppositionless ontological
stance, where would one start? There is none. There can be no
presuppositionless stance since all rationality and investigation
requires a necessary foundation to start from. Thus far we have
investigated Materialism, Idealism, their inclusive counterpart called
subject-object dualism, and a contradictory phenomenological account.
Western thinking is in one way or another completely made up of these
views, however our investigation has led to the conclusion that they are
all somewhat irrational and impractical. But instead of stopping here
and letting the whole of this essay turn into one pessimistic scorn at
reality, I will advance a positive, rational, and practical ontological
framework for reality.
(To be completed.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I'm ready for the lashing. :-)
Martin
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