THE “KARL JASPERS FORUM” UPDATE 28 (OCTOBER 24, 2006)—A SHORT REITERATION OF WHAT HAS BEEN BELABORED: THAT HERBERT LARGELY MISAPPLIES KARL JASPERS’ ENCOMPASSINGS CONCEPTS

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1. This UDATE 28 mainly focuses on the misapplication of Karl Jaspers by Herbert Muller, including by association Ernst Glasersfeld’s agnostic tendencies relative to pre-structured values, and including the scientific attitude or quest for transparency exhibited by Alexander Riegler. Though probably without malice but some forethought Herbert misapplies Jaspers…repeatedly…as in N71 (response to Alexander Riegler) where he says in item [2] “…the mind is encompassing (Jaspers) and therefore cannot itself be encompassed”. The quote immediately follows a clause using and confusing an absolute category (e.g., “All mental…structures”) with the categories of “mind”, “ongoing experience” and “consciousness”. Those categories can be seen participating in complex reality but are distinguishable too from one another; they fluctuate and can be encompassing and encompassed…for there are encompassing limits and encompassing positive potential. We encompass while simultaneously being encompassed by a world of others’ structures and inherent in this process are questions about spatial synthesis and temporal synchronization. Epistemic error takes the form of origin thinking and omissive thinking engaged inappropriately in the wrong places and wrong times. (See my Site Map and item 22.2 on my Richard Dawkins Webpage regarding Glasersfeld and agnosticism.)

2. Countering this out-of-context reference to Jaspers’ concepts of the encompassing is this quote by Jaspers: “Man’s finiteness [includes] his dependence on other men, and on the historical world…” (p.63, Perennial Scope of Philosophy). Herbert, to propound his “0-D” principle, would have us…believe…that one is born in an unstructured world of others. At least he feels and wants to impart the feeling that every mind ought to think as though there are no structured principles, e.g., no familial influences, no spirit of sacred literature, transferred upon consciousness resulting in a meaningfully inherited conscience. Herbert has the free-speech right to do this. But there is no shielded right to misapply encompassing phenomena such as that of Karl Jaspers’ ideas and thereby identify the name of Jaspers with what he hopes to accomplish through claims of belonging to a  “‘0-D’ Constructivist” movement.

3. Herbert identifies his mind with the minds of “Constructivists” to establish interdependency amongst others of a special guild, thus fulfilling the unavoidable in Jaspers quote about human dependency. Herbert does this in TA79, C48, and item {2}: “…the zero-derivation (0-D)” is identified also as the “constructivist position” and he thereby begs the question regarding the ground of communication. An example: There’s a begging of the question about differences in the effort for a Glasersfeld-Muller union.  Herbert makes another effort to initiate a formulae-principle via the initials “0-D”.  What is going on here seems to be an effort to establish an elite-school where specialists (“experts” [5]) can establish some authoritative consensus, and after the professionals have established a turf, invite the public to conditionally participate if they can submit to established interdisciplinary presumptions (“discussion…open…perhaps to the general public” [5]). Also, please see my Site Map, the Richard Dawkins Webpage, items 28.3. and 28.4. regarding the Humboldt tradition.

4. Moreover, due to the less than successful effort to draw Karl Jaspers into the “Constructivist Foundation” by way of its “Journal”, there is now the apparent effort to drag the Foundation over and cover it up in Herbert’s “Karl Jaspers Forum” where it can inappropriately gather momentum via association with Jaspers’ name. Without the name of Karl Jaspers the Constructivist faction is absorbed in other disciplines, such as that of Karl Jaspers, and dissipates. The misapplication of Jaspers’ fundamental concepts as propagated through the use of a vanity-cybernetic press must not be used to establish an elitist’s school. There are now no Jaspers-protagonists contributing to Herbert’s website. Ernst Glasersfeld and Alexander Riegler seem to simply accept that Herbert has with adequate propriety used Karl Jaspers’ encompassing ideas, or at least they--and others currently contributing—exhibit neither concern or question. (See Site Map, and the Webpage on the Constructivist Foundation Journal.)

5. Notations on time concepts—Comments by Richard Conn Henry (item 5.3.) and Bill Lyon (item 5.4.)

5.1. Time—Although time concepts are subjective tools (collective and personal) that work to handle objective phenomena (whether subjective-objectivity or objective-objectivity), in the sense of a hard or molecular tool. It can be said that time does not flow as something that overcomes and cannot be overcome. But time-consciousness does flow partly in a quantum-mechanical way between dependent others in the sense of the dependency involving a consciousness-continuum as in the quote by Jaspers in item 2. above. Time flows in the sense that conscience is either coming or going, either sustained or restrained from generation to generation. See Jaspers’ forms of thinking in his General Psychopathology, on Pheno-Genotype in genetics pp. 508 ff, 1963 English translation by Hoenig and Hamilton.

5.2. When “time” is talked about by Herbert and Glasersfeld and it is said “not to flow”, the intent at best is to maintain a neutrality with regard to measuring a preferred urgent need for a disregard of eternal ideas or increased regard for acting loosely toward popular consensus. At worse their talk about time not flowing means that there is nothing (zero and unstructured reality) of worth that can flow from what is structured and sustained by others in the only world—the world of dependency and interdependency. “Time” is objectively structured in the negative sense to create…some time…for the establishment of a foundation or school that reduces the value of timeless values and eliminates precursors such as Jaspers. Constructivists must throw precursors to the wind of timelessness to make room for their personal value systems. In the latter “personal” case, the diminution of flow is radically emphasized and results in a loosening of conscience that has heretofore had historical though painful meaningfulness. (My Short Note 36 currently available on Herbert’s Forum is accessible on my Website: see my Site Map, click on EXTRACTS FROM THE “KARL JASPERS FORUM” TARGET ARTICLES, RESPONSES, COMMENTS AND NOTES, then click on SECTION 1, and Short Note 36 is the first item. Short Note 39 is no longer accessible on Herbert’s Forum and I’ve not relocated it in my files but it might be pertinent enough to be made inaccessible on Herbert’s Forum.

5.3. Richard Conn Henry, In TA79, C49, post-dated Oct. 21, 2006, relates his demonstration of the subjectivity (my impression) involved in measuring the flow of phenomena, i.e., the dropping of a pen under variable spatial conditions about which a few…thought…they saw acceleration and others did not see it. I suppose it would depend on how much quicker the hand is than the eye and the quicker inner-eye of the imagination over the hand. But what is not given enough attention is the place of pain rather than pre-structured ideas in experimentations. Pain might bring about a more immediate release, that is, a less prolonged grip and less friction in the releasing process. A heated pen might be released and observed accelerating with less hesitation. And this brings us to a Comment by Bill Lyon who compliments Herbert for not being a naïve realist. Bill does not relate his contributions to Karl Jaspers but thinks “your”, i.e., Herbert’s Forum, is a good one especially in as much as Bill notes that his email was posted by Herbert (see TA90, C9). 

5.4. Bill Lyon In TA 90, C 7, post-dated 8-19-2006, mentions that in dreams the observer and the observed are “inextricably intertwined and how minds are susceptible to reality”.  He states that kicking a stone to determine reality is “exceedingly naïve”. But I think that “Time” from the bare-neural exposure to burning a person alive at the stake determines reality most intensely. Time not only flows but boils and most objectively and subjectively. Bill’s Comment is given greater consideration in item 30 and 30.1. in my FIFTH CONTINUUM on the Dawkins Webpage. I suppose Bill is saying in effect that reality is not limited to discomfort and comfort in some objective sense but also objective in a subjective sense. Jaspers extends the empirical to include the discomforts of those diseased by schizophrenia... See my item 7. Richard Conn Henry Responds with Wisdom, UPDATE 11, my “Karl Jaspers Forum” Webpage.

6. The origin-sin and the omission-sin (Herbert’s “0-D” or zero derivation and Glasersfeld’s agnostic reposing tendency--respectively) are errors in the application of time-perception and immaculate-time-conception and is being applied to the naïve realism or catholicism (universal truth) manifested by Richard Dawkins; it is being epistemologically critiqued on my Richard Dawkins Webpage, such as in the FIFTH CONTINUUM.