Chapter VI

Prolegomena to Any Future Noumenology

David C. Braun

© 2006 David C. Braun

Chapter VI

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[A.  General result of the argument, stated as general epistemological and metaphysico-eschatological conclusion; moderate logical realism:]

I may on the trust God deserves and on the independent harmony in the world rely on reason in constructing my idea of the perceptual world independently present.  By that same harmony it continues to be maintained.  I may likewise harmonize characteristics to know the reality of universals as subsisting in particulars.  I may hereby recognize the order that reflects God’s order to which all is to be drawn in unity.

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[B.  Personal approach to reality:]

                [i.  The three stages of trust, skepsis, hope:]

I pass a three-stage dialectic of personal approach to reality.  Acceptance of God, Freedom, Other Persons and the World can be due to valid argument of reason with categories based on harmonic rule, as is the point of the noumenology at this step.  Yet such an acceptance can also be indicative of the attitude of the subject, the thinking intellect.  Here I may have, regarding other behavior, the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, thus:  1) First, the mind rests on naïve trust, whereby it investigates the world and the roots of intellectual knowledge so as to build a logical and empirical Weltanschauung.  2) But in so doing the mind is brought forth to skeptical doubt, the root of its probing its method and finding to what extent it builds the world. 3) Yet skeptical subjectivism leads, in the clash, to a new kind of trust or loving hope; after exploration of the inner constitutive self s needs where, without love, it perishes, the mind finally approaches love and commits itself to love as its path of life and as its faith.[1]

                [ii.  A question of skepsis as to causation and miracles:]

Although it is the last stage and perhaps the transition into it from the second that should be my concern, although it is really subordinate to the noumenology, I could yet not pass over the transition from the first to the second, which is of no little importance to noumenology.  I noted the mind’s effort to build a Weltanschauung both empirical and logical, a knowledge of the thing based on perceptual abstraction of data and the synthesis in the intellect in forming judgments and syllogisms.  It is not difficult for me to accept the notion of knowledge as of these two.  Of the former, I realize the possibility that each datum is but a representation without referent in the “world,” like a hallucination or a dream, though I suppose in naïveté that such sensum must be caused by something bearing the nature compatible therewith, as object in the world.  But (aside from the rule of harmony I do not see as applying in dreams, etc., which brings me to wonder why I should give the “waking state” priority in scientific investigation of the world, which leads to an answer to the argument of analytic philosophy) I almost never see causation.

I might find an exception to that empirical disclaimer in the hot fiery torch’s application to a pile of sticks in the open air.  For a time I see one flame on both; but often I see less, when (e.g.) I produce fire from friction, by sparks from flint and steel, or by release of chemical, electrical or nuclear energy.  With the example of friction, even with identification of several instances of heat from friction, how does fire follow according to the senses?  As for the example of sparks from flint and steel, although the latter are hot, did they cause spark as I see it?  Or could a spirit be cause?  The Lakota yuwipi ceremony, wherein the Lakota attest the production of sparks in the lodge wherein they perform the rite, a white European would love to explain away because native American religions offend against the European world-view, as one of the secular world-view would love to explain away miracles at Lourdes (even though attested by a secular medical board) in connection with a Catholicism deemed repugnant. But the Lakota report seeing the sparks in that rite’s unburned lodge-situs.[2]  One might ask whether fire actually causes burning.[3]  Thus one sees the need to find a real ground for asserting causation, something more than the Kantian argument that without it one can hardly make sense of the “before” and “after” of time.[4]  Such an answer merely contains, in a disguised way, the answer that the rule is required by the harmony of the thing.

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[C.  The question of basis for trust in sensed reality, and arguments for the reality of the sensed world:]

                [i.  Recapitulation of results:  independent harmony, being, the cogito, and a God in whom one can trust:]

The accomplishment of this inquiry has been, first of all, showing the contingency of application of the rule of causation on objects’ and their world’s harmony, which requires that rule, and the independence of some harmony from the internal system (whether by act or by the receptivity as passive means of imposition), as thing and as harmony, so that it must be of the transcendent, or noumenal, harmony.  Thence one proceeds to the general reality of the perceiving individual (by the rule of the causation and the harmony as independent nonvoid, and by the Cartesian cogito), and the reality of the Pure Act of Being.  I note that all these conclusions or inferences are from a phenomenon, not the transcendent Cause (if it be God), albeit one which is pure harmony and not of me, so that it must support no conclusion other than that of the independence of harmony, and the independence of the agent harmony. I had inferred, from the reality of a God Who, as Love, does not deceive, that the objects I perceive are real as perceived by a normal sense-faculty.  Hereto I make some additions.

                [ii.  The role of contradiction in pointing out illusions:]

It might well be useless to talk of a thing as “real,” as the given in experience is always in some sense “real,” even if it be that which is grounded entirely on my own sensory or mental apparatus.  I must eliminate, firstly, anything which reduces to my own invention, contrivance or involuntary product, whether by mental disease or by physical or pharmacological problem.  Afterward, I should regard as illusory that which is of contradiction.  But my stripping away all the above-mentioned may distort and fail to deliver the fullness of the independent.  As an example, aside from the cases of the establishment of the independent harmony, I note the problem of the ultimate building-blocks of matter as sometimes waves, sometimes particles, ways of manifestation that could be held to be contradictory.  But the conclusion drawable therefrom, that the physical world is really an illusion, is premature, for the apparent contradiction could be resolved according to the means of perception, etc., because the internal system as harmony supports the noumenological conclusions, and because God has not to date made it possible for me to see such a “contradiction.”

                [iii.  Sensation as transaction between God and ego; divine trustworthiness:]

The totality of the phenomenal world involves a transaction between God (the ultimate Cause of the independent) and the ego (the coconstitutor of defined objects), a transaction that is not a mere one-sided definition, though definition it is.  Some transactions are merely from within (e.g., the locutiones within the mystical tradition).  Strictly internal phenomena are also transactional (in some sense, at least).  The external, common transaction, such as that of the other person and of the external physical world, I call the object.  Lest this be called just another act of God without separate existence and I be accused of pantheism by holding regarding them as did the Eutychians the phantom theory or the creation theory regarding Christ’s apparent human nature,[5] I note that God can create a separate existence as transaction and make further transactions with respect thereto. Not every transaction need be a separate creature.  While the honest dealing of God in the transaction is still to be taken as a principle, God is not the only possible party thereto.  I myself am still involved in the transaction by my perceiving and coconstituting.  Which level of the real the transaction involves is to be determined under the totality of the transaction’s circumstances.  Thus, e.g., for purposes of ethics, even should it be said that I must love others but need not love illusions, I should give the benefit of the doubt to what appears to have the form of the person, as St. Martin of Tours did (in the legend) toward the “poor old unclad man” in the snow.  The example illumines further the possibility for need of my treatment of givens as part of a transaction in which all the circumstances and the dealings of the parties (including those relating to “intersubjective” transactions) should be taken into account.  Only because of the dealings of Another with me can that Other be estopped to deny the veracity of the representations, given that I have made as reasonable an inquiry as warranted.  The initial dealing in general (as opposed to treatment of specifics) must involve honest dealing by the Divine Other; any allowance of a “Cartesian devil’s” total control over my perceptual apparatus would block my access to any authentic content in terms of speech or sign from that Divine Other absent a specific intervention. As my world is without such, I can by right trust it.

                [iv.  Percipio, ergo sum, and the trust reposed in senses structured by God and in the coherent world they reveal:]

Sensation, a part of my consciousness, is possible only via a certain part of me, though not necessarily the same as the faculty of thought, as the particular sensations I have can be inhibited in the parts so sensing them, though this per se does not inhibit my thinking capacity, and the sensory consciousness comes without my exerting thought.  This part of me not of my thought-faculty is as real as that faculty; by the logic of the definition and the cogito it is real and ultimately of God, so that it reports to me, in its normal state, what God, no misrepresenter, implicitly conveys.  I can have the normal state in me as the harmonic state, so that I have an idea as to (e.g.) injury.  Because it is harmonic, the faculty operates and is affected according to harmonic laws of causation.  I can discern general ideas of the nature of the sense by those laws.  (For example, from the general impassibility of a given outer limit of tactile sensations I can infer the presence, within that outer limit, of the ground of sensations and consider what is within that outer limit to be my real body.)  But beyond this limited beginning I can find difficulties, such as the problem of the “phantom leg,” dreams, etc., lying in wait for me.  I should imagine some such problems to be as solvable as that embodied in the Einstein­-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (i.e., how two oppositely-directed moving particles could be simultaneously determined as to such details as direction of spin, etc., without some communication of an instantaneous nature, or at a speed greater than relativity physical theory will allow, between particles) as reason for denying the reality of the world as so represented.[6]

My possession of the faculties of perception and logical knowledge (and of the independent harmony) shows that I am intended for knowledge, especially of God, which must be to my benefit.  This, acquired with independent harmony, is general, not coming to such specifics as it seems I am capable of achieving because of my faculties, and that specific content I can obtain only through phenomena.  The etiology of phenomena can be found only in the general, not in the particulars, where I know no nonphenomenon by sense (other than the independent harmony); thus nothing intrinsic to perception can assure me of itself as actually so and external, as opposed to being of the hypothetical Cartesian devil.  Thus must I be able to rely no the given realm, to the extent of its harmony in givenness, because of a basic trust in God Who gives me the faculty of representation.  If God intends me to know, the real world would be allowed to invade on the means of apprehension in general and, in general, would be discernible as such.

            Only by the thesis of the reality, in an independent sense, of the sensed world can coherent explication be had of it.  For the coherent body of laws of the world calls for the affecting of my body thereby (as, e.g., anesthesia or the cutting off of my faculty of sensation by pressure can show).  Above all, it is in the harmony of coherence of the world and in my intended means of sensation that I can know my world not to be impossible.  But ultimately I can depend only upon trust in God’s veracity because God has so designed my means for sensation that, of themselves, they should not miscommunicate.  Moreover, the means of sensation and their object are given as a coherent whole, according to the form of objective causation and its coherent laws.  By itself this will little ward off the argument that the deceiver could not be herein at work; in combination with the general end involved and the nature of the task in assuring me and in view of the fact that only the world must thus be taken as the sign that this is the intended means by which God will provide guidance.  Only within the context of this now trustable world can a particular item be trusted.  The causality of certain specific sensations (such as anesthetic effects of substances or cut-off pressure) and the relation of body to object set up the crucial representation which may implicate the honesty of communication or involve causation.

I cannot find intrinsic evidence for any phenomenon except insofar as it is a necessary part of the cogito or percipio.  But more can be attached to the percipio (ergo sum) than the mere existence of some ground of perception whereby I can sense my hand whereby I can sense my body, so that sensor is at the same time sensum, it should seem.  Sensory reportage might still, with respect to either, be infected with an illusion.  But the ground of sensation has a reality, and local anesthesia without affecting of the whole is possible; any agent affecting the center should inhibit the whole or areas larger than the specific and limited area actually affected.  I note, moreover, the merely negative rule that no object in the world about me bound to act upon the means of representation can fail to be represented to me; this is to be used in conjunction with the other foregoing rules (including the one that God would not allow a deception to remain unanswered).

                [v.  Sensation as transaction, reprised:]

Sensa are the common items of my working and that of some other; their ground of possibility is the gift of God, so far as I can sense them.  Thus I can know I have a sensible body as necessary component of sensation and the activity of sensa.  The system of sense phenomena is a transaction itself, moreover, worked in and through the common mediation and taking advantage of the activity-passivity relations as inhering in things.  Ultimately I must trust in the veracity of the Transactor (or transactor) behind it, though the fact of transaction implies a servile commune quid not the subject of removal simply by cessation of action of the false stimulator.  (I should note that the order is such that every entity is either engaged or not engaged in activity, the latter being ordered to passivity.)

                [vi.  An objection based on “naturalism” answered:]

One is tempted by daily experience to say, “I know that the world is real as independent of me,” as if it were by some intuition of “reality” notwithstanding the apparent “reality” of the “external” world of some vivid dreams, for example.  But based thereon it seems clear that such a naturalist can (when pressed) hardly justify such an assertion except in such terms as “If I say otherwise, they might declare me non compos mentis.”  Might “they” not equally as likely declare that one a “great philosopher” as a lunatic?  Admittedly nobody indulges such propositions of skepticism in mundane, practical projects, geared as they are totally toward the phenomenal world of the manipulable given.  But greater objection can be made by noting that the invitation to pass from the “externals”’ apparent influence on my outer limit of sensation to a proposition of the independence of the “objects” inferred as “external to a body,” to-wit:  that this leap of transcendentist faith assumes that the law of causation applies beyond the objects of experience.  [Kant’s treatment of sensation in, e.g., the Transcendental Aesthetic need not be regarded as inconsistent with the well-broadcast rule against applying the category of cause to any situation beyond phenomena if one takes his treatment of objects or things as affecting sensibility as hypothetically and not categorically asserted.  Likewise, the distinguishing of a noumenon in his philosophy is not necessarily a sin against his doctrine and method if the noumenon is taken as purely the unknown, possibly nonexistent (if one can so state) antonym of the phenomenon.]

                [vii.  Assent to the perceived requires act of faith; limitations of science; experimental proof will not establish independent harmony:]

Ultimately, my allowing the “reality of the perceived world” requires an act not so much of knowledge as of faith (as for that matter, would formal assent to Catholicism), even though (in either case) I could show how such assent was an informed, rational assent.  On that basis one might state (especially given the analogy) that this was not a truly scientific philosophy, once one passed the point about the independent harmony, as if that can be shown by what is generally regarded as scientific, experimental proof — it cannot.  But Kant was only partly wrong to say he had to “destroy science” for his purpose;[7] science was already fairly destroyed by Hume, and Berkeley before him, ere a critical philosophy ever dawned in the mind of Kant.  Experimental proof, incidentally, might not be forthcoming in the attempt of a reader to establish an independent harmony, especially if the reader has a certain idea about its proper (thus anticipatable) workings; but a person “outside” the subject, even if admitted to be a subject also, cannot enter the consciousness of the subject attempting to determine the presence of the experience.

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[D.  How a rational ethic is possible:]

How can I speak of ethics except in purely emotive terms; how can ethics be in any sense a rational science?  Personal values (the concerns of ethicists) are, in such thought, wholly a matter of societal imposition or personal taste, hardly the subject of absolute affirmations, but relative to time, place and person. But any value truly a value (as opposed to something thought to be valuable but actually not) must be consistent with itself and with reality.[8]  Thereby can one begin making absolute judgments as to values according to which one lives. (One should not fix on, e.g., selfishness as a true, enduring value, to the extent it lies at the root of a decision to commit suicide or to exhaust scarce resources.)  Thence one should be able to argue that the ethical course is that which is in harmony with itself and with the “true world” most eminently; this leads one to adopt love, especially of God, but also that of other persons, as that path to be valued, as that according to which one should live.  (I refer to the love not necessarily seeking for self)  Surely that love would be what God would want of a free creature; yet God’s love can hardly be less a love by nature than that expected of the creature, if God be somehow superior to the creature.  Thus God’s love is the same. That improvements could be made upon what is above set forth would not surprise me, but it indicates a beginning for further inquiry, according to the method set forth.

                        I caution a reader that reference to God’s loving kindness or providence or honesty in the argument for the reliability of perception need not be taken to rest solely on the above.  Besides the foregoing, I recall that God intends for knowledge of truth that one to whom is given in creation the capacity (even in potency) for sensing and for logical thought.  The means of sensation are thus to be adapted for faithful reportage the better to impart information leading to knowledge.  Moreover, deceptive communication is disharmonic communication by its nature, thus beneath the dignity of a well-ordered work of the harmonic Pure Act of Being.

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[1] See this work, §21, supra, and §30, infra.

[2] For material on the ceremony, see Erdoes, “My Travels with John Lame Deer,” Smithsonian, vol. 4, no. 2 at 30, 32, 34f (1973).  I assume the Lakota are not misleading in the matter.

[3]See, e.g, Exodus III: 3. A believer should argue for the miracle through the rule of harmony, through noumenology’s finding God to certify the reality of the phenomenal world, and through an argument that the God of Love would communicate with human beings so as (inter alia) to protect them from error.

[4]Kant, op. cit., Transcendental Analytic, bk. II, ch. II, section III, iii, B, Principle of Production, A: 194, B: 239f.

[5]Either theory sought to explain how Christ, regarded by Eutychian opponents of Leonine-Chalcedonian orthodoxy as having but the divine nature, could suffer on the Cross.

[6] One resolution (not necessarily herein endorsed) is reported by Wiley in “Phenomena, comment and notes,” Smithsonian, vol. 11, no. 11, pp. 30-38 (1981).

[7] Kant, op. cit., Introduction to the 2d ed., B: xxx.

[8] As I had but hinted in a parenthetical in §8, supra, it is said that statements regarding a topic (e.g., the “world,” be it solely for consciousness or otherwise) are statements in the object-language of that topic (e.g., “world”).  Statements regarding propositions about that topic are called statements in a metalanguage.  Allowing that one cannot use statements in metalanguage as if they were statements in object-language, I can notice that propositions about the “world” must be consistent for one to give them due regard.  I can notice also the harmony in the “world,” a harmony that ties the world with propositions about the world.  I do not foresee my being impeded at this juncture by the noted stricture from being able to find a harmony independent of my consciousness and from discussing it.  But the question here is whether I am using a metalanguage of ethics as if it were the object-language of ethics.  I am here stating that there must be a harmony in the object-language of what is to be valued, which in substance makes this a project of clarification of values.