Chapter IV

Prolegomena to Any Future Noumenology
David C. Braun

© 2006 David C. Braun

Chapter IV

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[A.  From “within the charmed circle” of consciousness and its system; issues and alternatives:]

                [i.  Many-valued logic; contradiction, harmony, and definiteness:]

To the extent one works from within time (as opposed to sempiternity), indeterminate future events have no definite nature.  Statements concerning them are properly neither true nor false.  Neither prophecies nor matters allegedly known by precognition come under this rule; assent to either can be based on showing the determined character, as revelation or as a reliable faculty, of an issuer of the statement in question.  Where the real referent of any statement is indefinite (whether because of an undetermined future system or because of my confronting an indeterminate entity, e.g., a microcosmic physical entity in quantum mechanics), not only will such a three-valued logic apply but the rule of contradiction fails to apply to such indeterminates.  This cannot be said of any proposition whereof the truth-value is definite; for such both the law of noncontradiction and the law of the excluded middle apply because of the harmony of the definitude. For this reason the independent harmony allows use of these laws in relation to the transcendent to which that independent harmony points.

                [ii.  Phenomenalism’s inadequacy:]

In holding phenomenalism inadequate, ad interim I accept at very least that science is supposed to seek “truth” (witness the problem of motion of the earth or the sun). I do not sense the revolution of the earth or its axial rotation in Copernican or Keplerian fashion.  Only by invoking the transphenomenal can I learn that either occurs even should it by explaining other phenomena show its correspondence to the most inclusively coherent phenomenally-based object-system.  Science must assume such objects, yet neither it nor any philosophy (absente noumenologia) can justly arrive at the assumed object.  Second, a specific case within phenomena leads one to regard the phenomenalist view with suspicion; when one drinks alcohol to excess one accepts alcohol as cause of the affected state of consciousness, though any such causal relationship must treat the ground of consciousness as an object in the world of other independently existing objects in no wise contingent on the conscious, which this view can never substantiate.  Yet such a view is of the greatest use to (e.g.) the healer or toxicologist.  Arguably I imply there is a noumenon in my asking about a world existing outside me or about truth. Is “truth” a meaningless bit of babble?  I insist on watching the answer; it has consequences for the possibility of a credible neuropsychology or neurotoxicology.  Is knowledge really the lore of truth or on the level of the crystal ball and the astrologer’s predictions?  (Toxicology asserts, for example, that the conscious has a ground subject to laws, yet the denial of noumenology suggests somewhat the contrary, for if the connection between the harmonic and God be truthful there can be no such thing as transcendent harmony without the possibility of noumenology, and at any rate such harmony would be unknowable.)

To the above I add that consciousness is twofold as both waking consciousness and not necessarily harmonic dream-consciousness. I submit for consideration (e.g.) the question of Zhuangze whether one having dreamt of becoming a butterfly were really a butterfly dreaming it was a human.  Were I so to dream, could I have a harmonic self-­knowledge or knowledge of other objects, or would harmonic knowledge be an error?  Why should I give any priority in knowledge to the harmonic or noncontradictory, thus segregating the inconsistent material of dreams to a separate compartment for later analysis in terms of an objective, harmonic theory founded either upon notions of the harmonic deep-structure or of a ground of consciousness influenced by yet other independent objects?  The undergirding of phenomenalism can give no answer whatever thereto; this failure in an area important not merely to the possibility of self-knowledge but to that of any knowledge manifests the bankruptcy of phenomenalism, though absente noumenologia it would be the only tenable theory.  The obvious further question is whether one can predict a future event in scientific fashion (e.g., the trajectory of a moving object) on the basis of prior phenomena, given the dependence of such prediction on harmonic laws.

                [iii.  The self as “limit” of the world or as ground of the world:]

The notions of the subject’s circumscribing the world and the nonexhaustibility of objects lend themselves to challenge of the harmony.  Thereto I reply that the solipsistic reduction of all to consciousness requires placing the experience’s root aliquomodo in my consciousness, against which this thing found independent of my consciousness is elucidated, even as independent of any part of my consciousness, according to the rules of harmonic connection therein, so that something in the “world” is not mine by origin.  (If one takes “world” in the sense of mere phenomena, perhaps the “beyond-my-world” would put it better.)

One might discuss the ground of consciousness (from which the harmony independent of consciousness is found to be independent), notwithstanding the idea that the metaphysical self is the limit of the world, because of the harmonic rule of causation, as long as it is taken to be identical with the cogito.  One might, incidentally, place psychology beyond the pale (i.e., of phenomenalism) to the extent it applied causation to the “preconscious ego” it supposes, so that one could never establish the independence from consciousness of any experience of harmony, all such of which would be merely events of consciousness.  But if the question is whether they are bare phenomena of harmony perhaps not otherwise so, the causation by the cogito of the stripped harmony comes to be a relevant and dispositive issue.  Thus I eliminate projects of the cogito as grounds of the harmonic event in question to arrive at the independence thereof

A transcendental ego, never experienced but necessary concomitant of all experience and thought and giving rise alike to the experienced self and the world of experience, is reminiscent of the foregoing on the self as a transcendental subject, the limit of one’s world, even though sketched in what was otherwise a rejection of metaphysics. Interestingly, one of the proponents of the transcendental ego rejected the noumenon allegedly because to do so would save human freedom.  Rejection of philosophy without the independence of harmony raises the prospect that if there is no noumenon the world of my experience is as real as I am.  If objects of experience are only in and for consciousness, they have yet the same basis for reality as have I.  Indeed, the self of the I-think is a causal construct, as are objects, to the extent not held during conscious observation, as are “occult causes.”  (If I grant an occult cause like, e.g., an atom, have I not an object subject to laws?  Then why live by the constraint against applying causation beyond experience as reason for rejecting argument for the reality of God?)  The other position, admitting that phenomena were objects in and for the subject and ground of the organic body that, in turn, constituted the brain and mind of the individual self, accepts as noumenon the transcendent[al] self as anterior to and outside the principle of causation, of determinism, of sufficient reason, thus free, unrestrained, blind, undifferentiated will.  Either position assumes (to a certain extent) a causal agency, occult in nature, the ground of experience or its sine qua non that is in esse continuous aside from experience, an assumption unwarranted without the independent harmony (for which I have no possibility of scientific experiment to establish).

                [iv.  The “other:”]

Without independent harmony I can conclude nothing transcendently, such as a ground beyond any sensation thereof.  While the existence of the consciousness not my own as ground of the behaviors I encounter in the “form of the other” cannot be inferred without assuming the transcendent application of the laws of noncontradiction and of causation, the same can be said of a “ground of my consciousness.”  While the cogito identifies a definitional constant of experience, its constant identification with a definitional nonvoid I call the ego, the persistence of the self as a ground of consciousness, to the proof of which the cogito aspires, is facilitated only by my being allowed both cited principles beyond sensation, a conclusion allowable only within the noumenology, if at all.  Without the independent harmony at all, one could say that the other existed with as much right as one could say (s)he existed.  That self and other both exist in one consciousness, however, one would have to say in the premises, in the only sense one could then meaningfully give to “exist,” even though one could still speak of the “self’ (now the subject of consciousness) in a nonpsychological way as a metaphysical subject, the limit of the world.  (An attempt to argue that otherness is a necessary condition of my objectivity assumes that I have objectivity, an assumption unwarranted absent noumenology.)

How one answers the challenge, “Prove to me you exist,” depends on the meanings of “prove,” “you” and “exist.”  Is proof by a preponderance of evidence, by clear and convincing evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt or beyond all doubt, even a speculative doubt?  By “you” do I mean merely a configuration as in and for experience or another person (i.e., in the way that I am a person)?  Is “exist” to be taken as “present for my experience” (in which event proof of a configuration in my experience is unnecessary), or does it refer to some entity which is as such even outside my experiencing it?  I could as well challenge myself to prove my own existence especially if I mean the latter.  The Cartesian cogito may be no help here, if by “I” should be meant not the activity I call “consciousness;”  were that the self, or implied ego of the cogito, that famous argument would be superfluous because the ego would be a definition, though then I would have a being that dissolved at night and then ex nihilo was restored to being on waking or dreaming.  If I mean to show the existence of some ground of the cogito (which must be what Descartes meant), I must have recourse to that which allows me to apply the category of cause beyond all experience.  (I do not experience the ground of the cogito or transcendental subject.)  Arriving thereat has been part of the point of the noumenological travail.  But not even that travail will enable the limited other to prove to me, imprisoned in my world of sensation of the same, its ground as ground of a like person, subsisting independently of my sensing the same, which is commonly taken as the meaning of the challenge, “Prove to me you exist,” if taken radically (as opposed to calling for proof that one is as represented and not a persona fabricated for, e.g., illicit purposes or those of espionage).

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[B.  Attempts to avoid noumenology:]

                [i.  The linguistic short-cut against solipsism:]

Against the whole of the foregoing endeavor one might object that no language of inner sensations or private states may legitimately be used because one has no assurance that the “harmony” of the past, for example, will not be what one now calls “pain.”  This would render constant or regular speech thereabout impossible insofar as such speech cannot be corrected by other persons.  This might be argued to overcome solipsism without resort to the elaborate trappings of the noumenology, just as others would argue that personal objectivity’s necessary condition is the reality of the other (without at all showing that personal objectivity is altogether a truth-reflective notion).  But if all cognitively meaningful speech refers to experience, allowing that it may be explained through use, all language might thus become unsure, as all experiences are internal; the “publicization” of language is actually a secret version of transcendent causality a priori and thus metaphysical.  Moreover, the solipsist cannot accept the basis of the argument, as memory’s objects, experiences, are not (for the solipsist) in themselves but alone for consciousness while it experiences them and are for it determined, so that recapitulation of memories can be used and taken in definitions.  This does not, however, run contrary to noumenology’s effort to break out of the “prison of the subjective givens.”  One’s ability to perform that altogether essential task is the most effective showing of phenomenalism’s inadequacy as doctrine, though thereto could one add that the latter doctrine can ill serve as foundation for secure knowledge in general, let alone that of the self (cf. the dream of Zhuang Zhou that he was a butterfly, and the difficulty of rational knowledge as contingent on a harmony partially absent in, e.g., dream consciousness).

                [ii.  Physiology-based efforts to find the transcendent:]

One can find all sorts of things that, given causation, could be taken as independent of the ground of consciousness, such as sudden, awakening events of nature or of others (a thunderclap) or as events that infiltrate dreams.  But the fact of independence from the mental part of consciousness means not independence from consciousness in general, let alone that the thing would be independent as harmony (or that one may take a causal event outside consciousness as origin).  Similarly, from the vantage of the body (e.g., the back) one could by moving change sensations in different surfaces thereof presented to an object immediately.  It would seem odd to propose that these shifts of “arisings” in consciousness were arisings without reference to an object outside but confronting some ground of my consciousness (i.e., the body).  But, considered from the possibility of such experience’s being like a dream, without substance outside consciousness, as by the question of Zhuangze, the question posed seems to dissolve into the transcendent problem.  Moreover, it seems the occurrence I attribute to shifting my body against the (unseen) surface confronted might be misinterpreted and involve a host of fortuities that I suppose are of a continuity of object when I shift my body in relation to “it.”  This does not, incidentally, vary materially the results won in the course of finding the independent harmony.  In connection therewith, I ask whether sleep can be regarded as an overtaking of the conscious by some deep-­structural strike or as merely the tiring out of the activity of consciousness.  If the former is the solution, it must assume causation but fails to yield an independent harmony.

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[B.  (cont’d.):]

                [iii.  The harmony’s origin, and why the problem must arise:]

Given the rule that from harmony alone can come harmony, how can one hold otherwise than that the harmony was of the transcendent real?  How can the problem thereon arise upon the realization of the unitive-extensive nature of the harmony?  To be explicit, on what is my subjective experience grounded if not on the harmonic?  Herein I note two problems.  First presented is that of the subjective notion of experience in general and of the harmony therein; barring what is herein accomplished, one can arguably never know a harmony not of the system which is the means of organizing sense data within the transcendental ego, and within which (1) there must always be a ground in harmony and (2) my perceived positive harmonies may (except for those known to be independent and stripped) really be the harmony of repose in the transcendental ego, plus the phenomenon in question.  Second presented is that of the suggestion that I have no knowledge of what the “transcendently real” world is like to the extent that it is outside perception, and though I note a connection between harmony and time, it could be that, outside the abstraction unto itself without ground in harmony that is our harmonic world of the transcendental ego, things are not in time but a blur of contradiction which cannot necessarily give rise to the idea of causation.  This state of affairs obtains only to the extent that the harmonic is but the abstraction, the system that is of the subjective and the transcendent ego manifesting itself through consciousness.  Upon my showing a stripped harmony, independent thereof, I can finally come to the question of that on which the harmony is grounded.

The subjective system is harmonic in and for my consciousness, I can at least prenoumenologically maintain, but that harmony might not apply beyond the level of my consciousness, wherein things are “hard and fast” in their harmony.  The condition for applying the rule of causation is that there be something hard and fast in the harmony, and the rule is that that which is on a certain level have, within the same level, a continuity, to the extent that the same is harmonic.  “On the same level” refers to the problem of metasubjective extension of purely subjective harmony. I read that harmony as hard and fast, though every object having it could be no more than illusory.  The harmony otherwise found may be really but a repose state without positivity on its own, so that it is, of itself, no commitment to a real metasubjective entity but a mere abstract system of harmony, the system into which fit the phenomena revealed by the senses.  One might think there is still the positing activity of the thinking, sensing ego, which necessarily accompanies every sensation or is affected by sensations come to it.  This may be the positive entity which anchors the system of harmony as it adheres to it.  But are not phenomena of consciousness variable, with the harmony being also of the system, so that it is, once again, either of some transcendent, harmonic thing real, or of the system that I called the subjective system of the harmony?

It would seem I have, on the one hand, a system of harmony and, on the other, a manifold of otherwise possibly unordered phenomena, representing perhaps something other than the things themselves.  But the system is on its own level, as it were; the idea that the disharmonic or contradictory would lead to complete annihilation is itself of the harmonic world of the hard and fast, so that I need not apply the idea of the community of harmony and its interruption to negate the idea that the harmony is not to be applied transcendently.  Between the harmonic system and the transcendent world would stand nothing; nothing would connect them.  Were I to hold that the harmonic were positive harmony and were such as to be connected with the transcendent and nonharmonic, I would then hold the untenable.  But within its own level alone, one could contend, it is the harmonic, hard and fast in harmony, that level being the level of the purely subjective.  I repeat that I cannot derive the subjective system from a transcendent ground where the reality I merely perceive as harmonic might be itself nonharmonic, even the system.

The question of the validity and origin of the harmony are intertwined thus.  Harmony is of and within a subjective system, which is but the totality of the harmony in and for itself and the perceiver thereof I could not (per the ensuing theory) be able to say whereof it comes in transcendent terms because I cannot say that the system has any transcendent existence.  Once that is conceded, the law of the community of harmony applies.  The thing that is for me harmonic could be really otherwise, even that which I know as the harmonic system. Even the so-called “transcendental ego” can really be taken to be harmonic only within and for the system.  Outside the system the hard-and-fast which I had as present may not be so, in view of the time problem (time being perhaps condensible unto a possible disharmony).  The very harmony and its system are, for the theory, harmonic only within the system.  But I find a harmony independent as harmony as well as in its thinghood, stripped, wholly on its side relating to me, thus harmonic not only for observer but also necessarily for itself, so that I can assign it transcendent value.  It is of the harmonic only and can have its relation only with the harmonic as such, so that I am transcendently harmonic and real.  Without any independent harmony I cannot assign a transcendently valued origin to the system of harmony; I would know nothing but consciousness to which the law of harmony is fitted or fits itself.  A system that is only for and within itself harmonic is a thing apart on its own level, perhaps but an abstraction within an illusion.  I am tempted to apply the harmonic law, especially that of the community extending to the prior or the ground, to give the system a ground in the transcendent, so that it is also harmonic.  So far I had no entitlement to hold the harmonic as so in the thing, not merely for the perceiver in the system, as long as harmony is manifested only in the consciousness which is so for its self-contained system.  Only after finding independent harmony can I so apply it.

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[B.  (cont’d.):]

                [iv.  Pragmatism’s inadequacy, or “Does it merely work, or is it the truth?”]

Why do I go through this travail instead of blithely accepting the world in the face of its being possibly “unreal?”  Why should I prefer the “true” (transcendent) over the “false?”  What falsifies the “false?”  Illusion (e.g., hallucination, mirage) is surely not a subject of knowledge as that which is real is a subject of knowledge.  One might be able to show how, at bottom, the preference for truth seems to be a value judgment, the better to proceed to the preference for “that which succeeds in the realm of thought.”  [Science has widely been hailed as successful; metaphysics seems to be a failure, thus deservedly (in the view of disparagers) in disrepute.]  Aside from suspicions a pragmatic theory of thought of this kind invites (e.g., the Ptolemaic theory seemed to “work” for its purposes), I think the definitions of “true” and “real” too close to each other, in strict lexicography, to jettison any sort of correspondence theory in favor of a pragmatic theory not necessarily hitting at the object of knowledge.  The “true state of affairs” I call “reality;” thence is it legitimate to ask whether speech thereof is legitimate and whether one can learn about reality.  I note that “true” and “real” both refer ultimately to the not-nothing, the not-illusory, wherein I can trust.

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[C.  Special problems regarding the implications of independent harmony:]

To the above I add as the companion implication that the unanticipated configurations of definitions are, as such, independent in their constitution of the subjective system.  As the configurations of definitions result from the definitions and the harmony pervading them, the rational configurations are truthful in themselves because of their coming from independent harmony, of which the independent configurations are signs.  The independence of harmony I seek likewise to demonstrate that I may avoid any charge of being an imposer of harmony which of itself is dependent on the subjective system.  Objects as constituted in my experience (to the extent perception is not of deception) in harmony of constancy in time, even so constituted by consciousness historically, are also constituted in the configurations independently in the world.  The same is dependent also on lack of disharmony evident in the means of perception, especially such as is anticipated or explicable in terms of the system (e.g., a dream, or a drug-induced hallucination).  Against the implications arise two areas of objection.  One is within the system of perception though undetected, analogous to the configurational disorder known (e.g.) by a dyslexic.  The other is outside the system, consisting of perceived accidents not conforming either by reason of succession (as in the case of “phenomenal star” simultaneous with “noumenal star-death”) or simultaneously by reason of transcending change in the nature of the suppositum (as in the case of transubstantiation, if one indulges the doctrine), to the nature of the thing as it is.  To the first of the three I would reply that the objection would seem to lose its force of itself.  For if the putative mechanism of misconfiguration is not in the system, and its product (i.e., the harmony) is independent of the system, the harmony is still, as independent, of being at some point and as such the harmony cannot have an origin in disharmony or nonbeing.  The second and third, which treat more the independent configuration, fail to note the reality of the accidents (e.g., noumenal star-light; the forms of bread and wine).  The noumenal harmony as conveyed is immediately noted and is valid.  The third, a special case, involves an underlying essential configuration not often sensuously revealed and is known by a revelation of God to the directees of a Love that would preserve them from falling into error (so a Catholic should argue; if certain signs are manifested, given the reality of the sensed, the argument will carry special force).[1]

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[1] See §§21 and 29 and Appendix I, infra.