STRUCTURING REALITY

by Herbert FJ Müller
5 August 2006, posted 12 August 2006

In the following I will comment on RBG's TA90 and also on his C7 to TABS, which deals largely
with the same questions. Since there is a great deal of material offered, I can only respond to a
part of it; other points could be taken up later if desired.

RBG's paper is a spirited defense of traditional metaphysics against constructivism. I believe it is

of importance to constructivist thinking to deal with such opinions, because self-satisfaction
with one's own thinking tends to be self-defeating.

[3]"... there is no way to deny that [our] creativity comes directly from Reality; that Reality,
being bigger than our concepts, gives us the conditions to vary our definitions. ... Reality
provides the conditions to our creativity, and not the opposite ..." (also [6]).

That depends on your pre-assumption, namely that there is a pre-existing and pre-structured
(by whom?) reality (you write 'Reality' with capital R) which makes us tick. This CAN be denied
by acknowledging that this reality, and it includes all the world and all possible experience-
structures, is our creation. We cannot avoid producing such structures, and in that sense we
are not free, we can also not create them ad libitum - except to some extent perhaps in poetry.
But our structuring activity is central in this process, there is no mind-independent reality. Can
you give an example of mind-independent reality which is not our structure ? Mr. Muller, The
point is not one against another (independent reality versus produced structures). The point is
one with another. Why they must deny or exclude each other? I can’t see that. What I see is a
pre-done condition that gives us the possibility to affirm a mind independent reality or to deny
it. And what is this pre-done condition? We can think it as our organic substratum, but this
substratum doesn’t exist alone, it is a part of a system that includes our organism, and this
environment pertains to a cosmic system that includes everything else… (And what includes this
thing we say that includes everything else?). The question here is to affirm or deny that this
pre-done condition has some pre-structure, some pre-done meanings. Well, it’s possible, as a
logical assumption. This is what I tried to show in my TA 90, and this is important to show,
indirectly, that sentences like “there is no mind-independent reality” are as indemonstrable as
“there is mind-independent reality”. You ask me to show some mind-independent reality which
is not our structure and I say to you that it is impossible because the mind-independent reality
is also our structures, and shows up through our structures. For me there is only one problem
in your question: the assumption that the structures are ours. We can’t demonstrate it. Who
belongs to whom? We have control about these structures or we simply manage them? If we
can do things different why we simply don’t do? We create the invariants or the invariants
create us?

[4] "... Reality is not just a social construction..." I agree. There is sometimes a conflation of
epistemological construction with social construction. Social constructs are one type of
construct, but the epistemological ones are more fundamental and form the basis of the social
ones. One should add that epistemological constructs may later become social constructs, even
in difficult areas like particle physics, where most people don't understand what goes on. And I
also agree with you, but where these epistemological constructions have their foundations?

[5] "... we can't delimitate Reality completely" - no we cannot : because reality is the result of a
continuous structuring process. The temptation to want a complete picture of reality (for
instance in 'theories of everything') is a side-effect of the idea that reality is completely pre-
structured, and we only have to find it. The 'reality fishhook' is the result of the limitation of
viability of the concepts we structure and use. In that situation we have to try some more,
changing or modifying the conceptual tools we use. "... strategies of knowledge are fiction ..."
fine, they are working fictions, like numbers and other mathematical mental tools. But some of
them work quite well, although even you would perhaps not claim that numbers or triangles are
given to us in pre-fabricated form. The viability of concepts is the crucial factor. I think the
crucial factor is to understand that affirms reality as a “result of continuous structuring process”
is also a kind of “theory of everything” because here Reality is again “domesticated”. Now we
know completely what reality means, now we understand fully why we can describe reality
entirely, now we have a full description of the reality’s structure and functioning. As far as I
understand, it is metaphysics. When you say that the “reality fishhook” is the “result of the
limitation of viability of the concepts we structure and use”, I must ask: what determine these
limitations? If reality is a construct why we construct so imperfectly? Why we need to rebuild all
the time? Why we simply don’t create definitive pictures? What advances despite our theoretical
constructions that obligate us to continue?

[7]"... if there is some reality beyond experience ..." Science (and other areas of experience)
constantly expand the limits of our experience. Next year we may become aware of experiences
which no one has had before. They become a new reality, perhaps, if one finds the appropriate
tool-structures for them. But that does not require an assumption of pre-structured mind-
independent reality. And this does not require the assumption of the inexistence of a pre-
structured independent reality. Once again, this is the point; both are assumptions and the
traditional standpoint is not necessarily a limitation. But it is necessary, for constructionism, to
affirm itself on the dead body of traditional metaphysics. Why? Beyond that, it isn’t possible to
affirm that this new tool-structure permitted the access to a new part of the Reality?

[8] "... electrons did exist before the man of the twentieth century... " Yes, this is clear if you
use an objective way of thinking. Now the crucial point is : the objective way of thinking
happens inside ongoing experience; it means extrapolating from structures we now use, to the
past (or also to the future). This is viable with differing degrees of reliability. It is fairly safe for
the existence of electrons before 1900, but somewhat less clear for notions like the big bang,
brane theory, or string theory.

[9] The construction of objects "is not random" - I agree - but a referent is not required [see
5]. The referent is our construction too, a mental tool which helps to stabilize our world. In
other words, instead of a MIR-referent, we can switch to an as-is-MIR-referent. The difference
is that in constructivism we are aware of our (the subjects') role in this process, rather than
shifting responsibility to entities like Nature or God, outside of us. This does not imply instability
- it can still be a "concrete base". I don’t think the traditional standpoint implicates that Nature
or God is outside us (in Saint Augustine, for instance, this dichotomy is interrogated {despite
other problems} and in the Taoist thinking this is simply an absurd). To affirm that the referent
is also our construct you must find out a way to explain why we need this stability in our world.
In the way of thinking I’m working on TA 90, the referent is the stabilizing point, which would
be apart of our constructions, touched only relatively by our abstractions. If you deny it, where
do you find the foundations for the stability you infer? How can we hold ourselves by our own
hair?

[10-11] "Linguistic reduction" - that is another type of inversion of thinking. Words are tools for
us.

[12-13] "Game between spirit and things" - how about "game between ongoing experience and
our own ad-hoc structures" ? The "definite knowledge" is an illusion based on MIR-belief.
"Reality is multi-dimensional" - ok, it is an ongoing process with structures that are in principle
temporary even if long-lasting. But we have to pay attention, for instance, when Nicolescu
speaks about a “transubjective” aspect of Reality, which means, as far as I understand, the
assumption of a pre-done reality which is the condition for science and any other kind of
knowledge.
[14] "False questions": they relate largely to the wish to have coherent structures for all of
experience including the subject, and this is not possible. As we see in the daily news, religious
structures can be very powerful even if they appear nonsensical.

[15-18, 29-31] "Universality" - we want overall coherent views. The problem is : this Wunsch
cannot be fulfilled in a positive structure, but only negatively (e.g., nirvana) if it is meant to be
coherent.

[26-28] "more we know about external universe, more the meaning of our life ... is
insignificant" : this is an important point, and arises directly from the method of objectivity. All
objective knowledge happens within subjective experience; the subjectivity shrinks forever but
nevertheless remains central. This has first been pointed out by Kierkegaard and the
existentialists, and remains the basic situation. What one can do about it is : become and
remain aware that we can never get away from the subject, that we have to start from it no
matter what else happens. In this way I think constructivism directly addresses the problem
that RBG points out; it cannot be addressed in a MIR-belief. It is fundamental not only in the
humanities but also in science including physics. Also, as mentioned above [5], reality is not
"invented freely", but constrained by viability requirements. I have already discussed this
“viability requirements”, but I want to complement saying that the problem is not exactly the
seek for objectivity but the dogmatism that grew up inside the seek for objectivity. Scientificism
emerges when the possibility to know a part of Reality turns into inferences about reality itself,
about he structure and functioning of the entire life. The presupposes of “working structures”
and “as-if-MIR” are, indeed, objectives and universal, because they want to be a description of
what really happens when we want to know something, and they intend to fit to any human
being. Therefore, and considering the fact that these presupposes don’t want to create
dogmatisms, the problem, once again, is not the objectivity, but what we make with this
possibility.

[35] "Pre-done meanings" : perhaps it is better to talk about universal human needs for unity of
experience. Just if you prove that these pre-done meanings are free inventions of our mind and
not imperatives. Jung’s argumentation runs in an opposite direction to yours, and he shows
how the religious symbols contribute to demonstrate these pre-done meanings, in the psychic
and philogenetical sense, but also extending to Nature.

[47-49] "The path of knowledge" refers largely to how-to knowledge, rather than what-is
knowledge. "Our incompetence to know" : this I think refers to the process of knowledge-
structuring, which is never complete, and involves many instances of needed change. Then the
notion of "unsustainable omnipotence" idea can be avoided.

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

On C7 to TA88 :

<1> Can constructivism slide into the same problem ? Yes indeed, and this by relapsing into
MIR-belief, as it appears to happen on some occasions. In that sense it has the same difficulties
as did past attempts to get away from metaphysics (empiricism, positivism, etc). The decisive
point is to keep the subject's structuring activity at the center.

<2> Converting MIR to as-if-MIR "is not sufficient to eliminate the ontological problem"...
because "I can agree with this and also affirm that mental structures are created by a kind of
imposition of the reality itself." No you cannot, that would be self-contradictory. First of all, as I
said above, it is self-contradictory only if you create dichotomies, but I think these two paths
may add each other.
<3> "I say that working-structures are the touchable part of the mind-independent reality" :
cannot be done, because working-structures are the working-reality. If you say that, you imply
two separate realities.

<4> "The act of denominating this or that as true or false, valid or not, is already a defensive
act... to justify our positions" : I agree. The point is not what is true or false (in an absolute
MIR-sense) but what works reliably (is viable). The defensive acts are probably signs of a
failure to be honest. These defensive acts are structural and not a moral question. And the
pragmatism of “viability” looks like, to me, as a crossroad of this kind of arguments, because I
can always escape to this and say: well, it can be explained by the viability, or, it is not possible
because it is not viable. We create here a new dichotomy.

<5> Husserl's epoché is the (technical) suspension of the question of the relation between
phenomena and MIR. If MIR becomes as-if- or working-MIR, this question is automatically
settled in the sense that a search for (transcendental) MIR has no meaning.

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

Herbert FJ Müller