Chapter III

Prolegomena to Any Future Noumenology

David C. Braun

© 2006 David C. Braun

Chapter III

13

[A.  The independent harmony:]

                [i.  Introduction to the experience:]

That harmony apprehended as internal element in addition to any other abstracted elements and by the general sense of harmonized unity that is the center of the system incorporating all discursively anticipated definitions, i.e., the definer within the system of percepts, is to be found as independent harmony.  The notion that internal consolatory harmony connected by belief to a “cause” outside sensed nature is nothing more than a work of consciousness as recipient of a placebo falls apart in any deprivation of a similar experience from one who expects it not and who would be united to that delectation, regardless of that one’s fear of being in a state that should, given belief, not allow the harmonic experience.  Suppose one who, claiming an additional experience, could bring himself or herself into enthusiasm marked by an apparent but counterfeit manifestation, though he or she could not find the usual experience in the sign of belief whether or not he or she was in a peak emotional period.  Where one believes in some experience which is in his or her power to bring about and wills to experience it, its absence bespeaks in general the absence of contrivance.

                [ii.  Objections based on the experience and “shallow structure;” questions of ethereality and honesty:]

The aforesaid absence shows the harmony to be independent of consciousness’ system of subjectivity, independent both of its power and of its knowledge, against which independence objections internal to the experience are lodged.  The harmony’s independence from consciousness’ power, as shown by that absence, would be challenged, on the one hand, by the objection that the two states occur as separate stages of involuntary productivity.  Thereto the reply is that the experience is not contingent on nature and is unanticipated, but is unnatural, in addition to the reply made on the other front.  That objection is that the experiences occur as separate competing stages of voluntary productivity, either successive or simultaneous.  The successive stage argument fails on noting that the power to contrive remains simultaneously with the absence’s occurrence.  The competing simultaneous stage argument fails on the following grounds. If there is contrivance of experience, it must be of the mechanism of belief, so that whatever occurs conforms to expectation.  (A hidden level that is brought out by fear of being in a barring state cannot avail where the state of mind of a recipient as to past or present questions and fear of that state is not necessarily dispositive of the presence vel non of the experience.) Moreover, the believer could and would contrive the experience if desired (e.g., he desires to meet with any cause), as the other experience’s subject hopes to be taken over by that experience’s source, though either or both would want to let the cause control.  Sometimes even the one might contrive, as the other did in the way noted in the preceding paragraph, though neither does so conscious of contrivance.  The power to contrive continues.  Per hypothesin, even to one usually experiencing absence an experience can be given, although to such a one is it given who is more often weak in his or her path than to one who is strong, so that anxieties and the like are not dispositive.  On these grounds the placebo is seen not to apply, for occurrence is not according to belief, and there is no dichotomy of levels in contrivance bound to notions of being in the proper state for the working of the sign.  All being equal, the contrivance of the additional experience may continue, though the signatory experience come not at all, even under the same conditions.

Another internal objection to the independence of the harmony is to independence as unanticipated in the system of knowledge and belief, which was raised in the rejection of the argument of simultaneous differing levels of contrivance.  The objection thereto is that the absence, for example, might be anticipated by nonordinary paranormal cognition.  In reply, the subject of the additional experience could begin its exhilaration, which would touch the same part touched by the experience of the sign and its absence, without knowing to end the other experience upon entering its exhilaration.  As to the argument from inner experience affected (not obviously at first) by the outer, there is a similar door of resolution (and merger of the arguments) in the case of a cure of the body (as, e.g., by a similar sign or medicines).  The cause could produce some results at the time it would fail to produce others, where power to contrive was coextensive.  Thus the same would reduplicate the reply to the objection to the independence of harmony in the former argument with respect to consciousness’ power.

Externally to this harmony may arise the objection statable variously as the problem of the ethereality of the signatory experience or of the veracity of the sources within.  The substantiation hereof might parallel the concern of the argument of the second type to merge with that from the sign alone for purposes of meeting the independence of knowledge requirement against its objection.  Thus, for example, suppose a cure of the outer part’s ill through a sign such as was invoked in relation to pure inner experience; how should reply be made where the sign’s working occurred even absent consciousness of the subject?

An important question here is whether the individual who thus seeks the truth is internally sincere in the quest.  Many are ills that one in the night of privation may review, as if not obliterated, and here one is likely to err.  Indeed, one’s life can be reflected by, and color, what one professes and how one views facts. The measure of a critical philosopher is perhaps the philosophical quality of one’s life and, above all, candor. In such philosophy, which seeks truth independent of one’s subjectivity, one must steer the argument clear of desires within, so as to find a truly independent order.  [Even if one relies, so to speak, on an estoppel to secure reality through Being (i.e., God) after showing being through harmony and distinguishing the finite self from aseity,[1] one has the duty to inquire with candor to rely reasonably on the representations of, e.g., the world.]

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[A.  (cont’d.):]

                [iii.  “Deep-structural” and extrastructural issues:]

            One might object that an unconscious transcendent[al] Self responsible for ordering definitional percepts is the cause of the harmony found to be otherwise independent of consciousness by belief because unanticipated in rule where, all other things being equal, inclination toward, ability to perform, and belief in the experience remained.  But, in the one case, the sine qua non for the experience’s occurrence includes the information or belief not only concerning the sign but also concerning its conferee’s inner status.  However, the internal knowledge or belief is not a contriving cause; so no power in the self as ground of internal definitions can be the constituting agent of experience, although some source is necessary.  Thus no such source exists in the ground of the system of internal definitions, which must yet be harmonic. The source must be that which, by its own harmony and power, separate from the ground of my self-definition. The same result can be accomplished for any similar argument rooted in, e.g., that part of internality affected by externality not at first apparent by considering the ability and general inclination toward resolution in respect to two or more in one act, so that no question of an internal block will arise.  Thus the ground of self-experience could not have acted in that instance.  The result in either case is that there must be admitted some real existent governed by the harmonic laws of reason and thus amenable to the notions or categories of substance, cause, etc.  If one would call it a transcendental Self, so be it, although such an act of lexicographical fiat accomplishes little, in view of that faculty’s separateness from the ground of the internal definitional system.  One may still follow thence to the arguments concerning the reality of God and the world as guaranteed by God.[2]

That which is not of the totally dedicated necessary and sufficient ground of self-experience as a whole in unity is independent of my consciousness’ ground because it is a different ground.  Moreover, whatever free entity that is not of my ground’s unity is likewise independent of me.  If my ground nullomodo produced an experience which has no regularity, then no part of an unfree ground can have produced it because of the irregularity.  Hereto I add that the experience is consonant only with a state of consciousness which is either the ground of the experience or a merely negative, regulatory sine qua non, if of the consciousness, and that the latter is eliminated by the fact that doubt should be a negative, regulatory sine qua non according to the rule of information and belief, though not every doubt forecloses the experience, and no constant rule on that basis can obtain.  If the ground of experience is of the unity of the consciousness, a channel to it by which the ideas of the ego flow must exist, within which it functions, so that it will have the ideas of the ego.  The information and belief as possible cause eliminated, I come, on showing that no state related to my conscious ground could involuntarily produce the harmony, to learn that the possible ground thereof (if any) cannot be of my consciousness-system’s ground of the conscious harmony.  Thus, via the dedication rule (supra), I see that any “subconscious” cause is not the ground of the conscious harmony but is of itself transcendent, as is the concept of “subconscious” to the extent separable from the unity of conscious mind and content and the immediate ground thereof.

One might hypothesize heuristically what otherwise is an objectionable (as “deep-structural”) subconscious interruption of or interference with the action of the thing otherwise called independent.  This question rests on the premise that the ground of the conscious acted and was somehow neutralized or somehow faltered.  That premise fails in light of the subvening respite which is not according to expectation and thus not of action.  This and the answer to the question of expectation and disposition tend toward the contrary of the premise of the argument for an occult interruption or interference.

Herefrom I find the experience is not an exertion grounded on the ground of the self and its experience, though it is a positive act or exertion.  Hence the thing is independent as thing. Given that the independent thing is only positive harmony as to its perceived content in a part that can perceive disharmony, and that the harmony is such that only the harmonic can harmonize therewith (as otherwise “A=A” emanating from “A=not-A” will be at the mediation-point one with the latter), it follows that the thing must be independent in its harmony, which is that of the interrelation with my harmony.  If that independent harmony is of a void, it is of a harmonic void, which is not ground of the positive harmony so that its and my ground is the nonvoid being (a corollary of the general logical law “A is not not-A”).  The harmony is that of a relationship, the relation of which is wholly from the part of the other and not my part, in that which can know harmony and disharmony, so that the harmony is independent as harmony. The relation to me yet independent of me and as to me harmonic would be, if not, per se, harmonic, not per se harmonically so relating to me (and, if it relate harmonically to me, it cannot relate disharmonically to me, as if to annihilate me, and is thus of the rule “A=not-not­-A”).  Insofar as its only content is the independent relationship of the harmonic, it must thus be independent of me even as harmony and not only as thing.

The independent thinghood (so to speak) I may affirm because there is a definition in the self of “good feeling” or of non-disharmony, i.e., a kind of euharmony, with the consciousness, involved in the cited experience.  The definnition is not caused by the consciousness and is not identical with the self and its system of perception, for otherwise the crucial difference would be impossible if not caused by the consciousness-­system.  The definition is of a relation of a harmonic sort, involving an advent of the relation.  But it is not the act of my consciousness, even though it be act, nor is it the act of the ground of my conscious activity; otherwise it would be identical with the state of consciousness precedent thereto or caused by my ground of consciousness.  The harmony arises, the arising being an action, as a touching and affecting and involving the conscious self,[3] but the activity that is the consciousness cannot be the act of this arising, so that the relational harmonic activity must be other than and independent of the consciousness as thing, and its independence is transcendent in nature.

            Lest it be suggested that the activity, without being identical with and while being independent of the activity of consciousness, can yet be merely in and for consciousness alone, I note that the activity of harmony in and permeating the consciousness in its voluntary productive region is an uplifting of consciousness. If the event is activity in and for consciousness, it must be that of the uplifted consciousness. The consciousness in general operates according to the rules of and is subordinated to its means of production, one of which within the voluntary consciousness concerns continuity of the part according to harmony. If the activity of voluntary consciousness has not produced the arising or self-elevation, that elevation transcends consciousness. I admit that, insofar as I cannot predict, without harmony, that the world will continue according to its present nature, it seems presumptuous to assert that the product of consciousness’ activity is according to its harmonic rule. I note in connection herewith the continuity of harmony in my general consciousness during all phases of the times in question, so that the continuity of the part and the resulting production-rules are nevertheless applicable and the frame of former consciousness must continue.

Lest it be suggested that the happening (or non-happening) of a disharmony deauthorizing application of the rule, in connection with the argument on the harmonicity of production according to rule of events in the affected part of consciousness, the part in which the exaltation occurs, I note that in all prior moments was the conscious activity harmonic in nature. Crucial hereto is that the experience inheres in the consciousness’ activity as its uplifting, so that it can be of consciousness alone only if produced as part of that part of consciousness, which must continue to be according to rule, to its harmony, and thus act (or not act, as the case may be) accordingly, given consciousness’ harmony.

“Consciousness as activity” appears to assume a vehicle of change called “activity,” as opposed to the merest effect customarily called “change.” But I note the positive changing in its arising, in that whereof I am conscious. Even were I to confine discourse concerning consciousness to discussion of events of consciousness, the events have their own positivity, as also their connection with those events occurring as events of reflective consciousness I call self-consciousness. These events have their own harmonicities, none of which allows for the reflective consciousness-events to shift into certain foreclosed events previously denominated as “unanticipated arisings of the activity of consciousness.” That one might wish to adopt event-language should not obstruct the framing of argument elsewhere in favor of the independent harmony. Moreover, consciousness knows events not merely as effects, but as (so to speak) becoming-events, within the transition of change. The chief event, that of consciousness in general, is that ex quo according to the harmony (with relation to that which is of the consciousness stricte).

To an extent there are movings within consciousness, movings that indeed are consciousness (viz., thoughts aborning), so that to speak of mere effects as that whereof I am conscious is to introduce a deep-structure (as cause of mental events) of which one is not entitled to speak prenoumenologically.  Before then must I deal with consciousness as a sort of definitionality without seeking any defining occult cause. I am yet entitled to see the continuity of the harmony within the principal event, my consciousness.  Thus events may be described as act-events, the principal of which is my consciousness, the others of which, to the extent of consciousness alone, must be identified therewith.  Within the context of that harmony can I attain to the production rule mentioned in the foregoing and affirm the alienity from self-consciousness of the arising not thereunder subsumable, i.e., that it cannot owe its eventuation thereto alone.  Indeed, its esse can hardly be identified with that of the event of consciousness it touches and affects.  (The “stripped” nature of the harmonic experience is needed to show this independence as harmony; the occurring not so stripped may well be as to its harmony but an item of consciousness.  The stripped harmony is known in a part capable of apprehending either harmony or the nonharmonic but, though inhering therein, is not thereof according to production rules.)

Regarding the “genesis” or “causation” of the independent harmony, I note that, should it be argued that one cannot assign causation thereto, one can sustain the argument regarding independence of harmony by referring to the identity with the “activity” of the self as of experience.  The “noncausation” argument is in a way a discussion regarding mental activity.

The “deep structure” objected to absente noumenologia may have a purely logical validity and possibility prenoumenologically, e.g., in the case of language (viz., Chomsky’ s transformational-generative grammar). But, aside from its being a logical possibility, “deep structure” is nonetheless transcendent and transphenomenal absent the independent harmony; until achieving it I cannot gratuitously invoke it to avoid the conclusion of the independence of the harmony that must inhere in such a deep structure. To the objection that deep structure is assumed through the objection that consciousness is mere effect, I should add that consciousness should be held to be harmonic ­noncontradictory for that inhering in the “immediate substratum” of (what may be, before noumenology, as far as I can tell, for consciousness alone) harmonically existing “being” (which, it seems, I immediately apprehend). The word “being,” I should explain, can be used because of the harmonic nonvoid of immediate perception, with the understanding that it could be valid, strictly speaking, only for self-consciousness, though that is sufficient for grounding the noumenology.

As for the idea that everything exists alone for a “transcendental ego” (in whatever sense that is taken), I note first that, for argument’s sake, even the transcendental ego in turn may exist alone for consciousness. Moreover, if harmony exist alone in and for consciousness, it must not exist aside from experience, certainly not for a “transcendent[al] ego” taken as a deep-structural entity.

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[B.  The meaning of independent harmony:]

                [i.  Reality, or mere cathartic reaction, or paper system?]

The implication of the independence of harmony is that reason as such will not allow it to have origin in nihility, but rather only in being, as harmony is consistent only with being.  Internally to the harmony, it might be objected that the harmony may be but that rooted in a catharsis resulting from the release of tension and is consistent with the nondisturbance of a phenomenal void, as could subjective harmony so be.  This objection ignores the positive term nature of the independent harmony that thus cannot come ex nihilo. It is a positive entity in harmonic terms, even though apophatically communicable.  Externally it may be objected that harmony is of a paper system on the surface of a contradictory nihility, and only of the system. But positive-term harmony, as independent of the perceiver or the phenomenal realm, cannot come into the system unless the act of its entry into givenness is pervaded substructurally by harmony, which implies the independent reason that, with it, does not admit of any origin other than harmonic being.  Insofar as the harmony is independent, whatever is analogous to phenomenal void must be of nondisturbance and neither harmonizes with nor generates harmony, whereas if harmony were not independent, one could not so say with certitude.

                [ii.  But what can one say of “being,” after all?  Being’s harmony established:]

Harmony I can conveniently define as the absence of conflict or contradiction.  The consistent entity is harmonic in that it is capable of being perceived as such if I may suitably engage it by means of my (internal) sensibility, insofar as so doing does not conflict with my constitution or that of my sensibility.  But if I define being as the harmonic nonvoid or as a nonvoid harmonicity, it might be objected that the former signifies merely a consistent object having transcendent content, which hardly entitles me to speak as if there were some special entity to which content is related, whereas the latter signifies an actual perception of a positive-term harmony.  In view of the above definition, the problem would seem not to be so, but here another objection arises.  Aside from the transcendent fact that there is something governed by harmonic laws of logic, I might arguably gain nothing further from the notion of being as a harmonic nonvoid.  For the fact that a thing is nonvoid means simply that it has content, to which one must now repair.  I can obtain further content only by examining the thing.  I should content myself therewith and quit trying to invent extra entities like being on the strength of the notion of the nonvoid, which is inseparable from content.  To the argument I would thus require an adjustment.  Certain contents may be held to be illusory, though they are undeniably contents of experience and, in their givenness, perhaps in some cases harmonic.  Other contents are undeniably real, and my mentality and general sensibility are among these. The illusions themselves are real to the extent I treat them as in and of my sensation, though I am misdirected by their content, etc., to treat them as independent of me as given.  The “ultimate” givens are those most closely tied to transcendently acceptable (which is the harmonic nonvoid I call “the real”), which include the activity, etc., of my own constitution, the independent harmony’s own activity, etc.

But every object thus admitted has, in addition to content, its harmonicity (as defined above, in at least the potential sense).  I do not hereby deny the possibility of conflict involving two or more objects.  It would be a law of inquiry that one must search for an extra force unreckoned, or for a division within, whenever one finds a single in (apparent) contradiction, if one cannot discredit perception of the thing.  Nor do I deny that a free person can think a contradiction in some way or think in some way contrary to that person’s thought-constitution or thought-processes’ normal course.  Otherwise, in the singular and in the void, there is no contradiction; both are in some sense harmonic, though the void’s is the harmonicity of repose or rest alone.  This is the harmonicity confining itself to the law of identity and does not admit of causation.  The real, on the other hand, can have a positive-term harmony.

If every real content must be nonvoid and harmonic, at least the real is that object having a content and a harmony that can be under appropriate circumstances perceived as positive, but that is at any rate (undeniably) not of the void.  Moreover, all these must be present and connected.  But to these I add what the fact of harmony and nonnihility entitle me to say, that such a thing or content may participate in the law of causation.  This entitlement advises me, further, that the void can neither act nor receive ordinary action, so I may say of being that it is the ground of the harmonic, nonvoid possibility that a thing may either transmit or receive action.  I may even say that being is the harmonic nonvoid that is the condition for any further content.  That condition as entity or thing, in relation to the possibility of self-grounding activity,[4] must itself really be the act of being, implying a power to be.  Moreover, being is that which has the inseparable attributes of harmonic nonvoidness. This confirms my verdict that being is the condition for further content.

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[1]See §21, infra, regarding the reality of God, and §29, infra, regarding the reality of the perceived world.

[2] See §§21 and 29, infra, respectively.

[3] Note that, but for the stripped harmony known, one would have no arising at all, i.e., within consciousness; the activity involved, the arising, is but harmonization. Hereby I avoid any erroneous temptation to view the arising as a harmony-neutral event clothed by my harmony, erroneous because it necessarily involves a premature deep-structural reification, it misdescribes the event and the arising is shown to be independent of me as thing and would not harmonize with me were it not of itself harmonic.

[4] See §21, infra.