Introduction

Prolegomena to Any Future Noumenology

David C. Braun

© 2006 David C. Braun

Introduction

Carnap[1] mentions, as if it were worthy of little more than summary treatment, and hardly a crucial part of his system, the concept of “genidentity,” whereby he means the continuation of self-identity throughout time, and contrasts it with identity to state that genidentity is not logically necessary, whereas identity is.  (One surmises that, should he have admitted the necessary truthfulness of genidentity-statements, Carnap would have been forced to abandon his denial of Kant’s synthetic a priori propositions as a genidentity statement necessarily involves more than strict identity.)  But I must first determine the logical conditions for the possibility of self-identity in one moment in relation to the environment, which leads me to say that A=A must also mean A=A+0.  Thence I frame the following rules:

(1)   As a consequence of A=A, A cannot contradict itself even within the single moment;

(2)   As a consequence of A=A+0, that having the value of 0 is (so to speak) inert vis-à-vis A (which cannot contradict itself), a further consequence of which is that ex nihilo nihil fit[2]  (I characterize this dual relationship of A to both itself and its environment as “harmonic”);

(3)   As a consequence of all the foregoing, any differing determination of A that is otherwise A=A and any origination of A in a moment after there is not A but 0=0 must be by the causal activity of another thing, which produces change that one comes to know in time;

(4)   And, except through causation, A=A must persist throughout time, thus yielding “genidentity” as the obverse of the law of causation, in conjunction with the law of noncontradiction.  Where A(Tx) is known by the law of causation to proceed from A(Tx-i), A(Tx-2), etc., there is a harmony of persistence among them that, absent interruption according to the manner the constitution of A permits (if such interruption be possible), A(Tx) will persist as A(Tx+1), A (Tx+2), etc., as the harmony of persistence is not contradicted from within A.  If A is an event constituted so that it may be discontinued at will (e.g., a thought), there must yet be some antecedent [thus, e.g., A(Tx-­1) would be either the elements of A(Tx) as thought aborning or the ground of consciousness of A(Tx), if I may be permitted that luxury at this point[3]], but I need not seek a necessary consequent, given my knowledge of the constitution of A, except on the further showing that the will constituting A is likewise in bondage (as Luther suggested and Calvin and classical determinists explicitly held).

These are not the only dimensions of harmony; the last is one to be introduced through the general work lying ahead, and will be of crucial importance to the knowledge of the thing-in-itself, the noumenon beyond possible experience to which Kant referred in that first Critique.  Though much profitable work may be done by the method of suspending the question of the reality of the perceived to undertake a phenomenological examination of given experience, I retain my question of the world even after fruitful description of what is given in experience and of what is concomitant thereof, as also did not a few who undertook such descriptions.  The work will show my conviction that the thorny old question can be solved, and some of the consequences of each possible answer.  I warn that the experience hinted at in the work is paradigmatically (not necessarily categorically) asserted, and that the reader must devise personal means of finding (or not finding) a similar experience.  My divulging a specific experience to a reader will create a set of anticipations and render that mode of experience useless to such in attempting to gain experience of an independent harmony.

            That I persist in using either a singular impersonal pronoun or the first person singular pronoun wherever possible is a concession to methodological doubt about the other until I am fully in a position to conclude that another person is real as given.[4]  Counter-skeptics could argue that there is no point in publishing (as opposed to preparing for personal use) a work that denies absolutely the other’s reality, except as a colossal exercise in egotism of the worst sort, an accusation I will not make against the early Wittgenstein.  As a further indulgence of methodological doubt, I will caution that reference to specific persons named can be taken as reference to texts appearing in the phenomenal world, and (by egomorphic analogy) per hypothesin to their (putative) authors at least until I have reached the point of allowance of the external world as given.  In using third-person personal pronouns, I try to write gender-neutrally but refuse to shift from singular to plural (as is customary in these times) for reasons of grammar as well as of indulgence of methodological doubt up to the previously mentioned point.  (I expect the reader will take “I” to refer to herself or himself in attempting to follow the argument.[5])

If the description of the experienced world without regard to whether it exists is phenomenology, the knowledge of what is (or is not) beyond experience, including whether the experienced world is “real,” is noumenology.  Hereto I set my hand, as to the plow.

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[1] Der logische Aufbau der Welt, §§128, 159.

[2] See §4, infra.  Some hold that one may not with certainty infer B from A where B is not strictly identical with A as a consequence of the rule that the only statements certain are those of personal sense-impressions and analysis.  But A=A+0 allows holding as certain the rule ex nihilo nihil fit.

[3] See §§14, 16, infra.

[4] See §§26, 27, infra; the point of acceptance of the world will be reached in §27 and 29, infra. To a certain extent, specifically to avoid the problem of the deceiving spirit. I must rely on the veracity of God in this also, though I have at this point also a more coherent basis for allowing at least an organic “other person” by analogy through causation, the behavior of which likewise suggests an intellectual causal agent as connected with the body. e.g., through its ability to use intelligent language. As to that other’s being endowed with freedom and soul, praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui (to quote a hymn out of context). See the Appendices.

[5] One last methodological or logical note is in order. Although “if A, then B, B, thus A” and “if A, then B, not-A, thus not-B” are rightly characterized as, respectively, the fallacies of affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent, when “only” precedes “if” in those statements, they clearly cannot under that circumstance be fallacious. In the ordinary fallacies, there may be other causes or conditions for B besides A. The word “only” eliminates those other causes or conditions.